Excelente Zona Social

Michael T. Taussig’s “Excelente Zona Social” is an excellent read on ethnography. It details the lifestyle, culture, and behavior of the peasants living in northern Colombia’s swampy areas. The passage on the displacement of the peasants from their land stood out because of how well-researched and documented it was, resulting in an ethnographic piece.

The passage stood out because the peasants were unvoiced as they were continuously put through injustice. Even though the peasants were the second legitimate owners of the land, after the Indians, they were forced out a couple of times by the drug dealer Emilio Escobar, who planted coca on that land and built a hacienda. They were also displaced by the paramilitary unit in 2003 and did not have a leader to fight this oppression. Additionally, Emilio Escobar sold the rights to plant African palm to wealthy men in Santa Marta and used both his army and the police to evict the peasants from their land. Out of fear of the pending violence, the peasants lived in tents far from the hacienda and turned to religion.

This passage is ethnographic because the writer Taussig lived with the peasants of the swamps and captured their displacement in photographs and detailed relays of the people’s eviction events. Although the people could not live in the land that now belonged to the African palm growers, they lived by the River Magdalena, where they gathered fish as the water levels lowered. This description shows how well-versed Taussig was with the behaviors and culture of the people.

The documentation of the peasants’ religious practices and the people’s day-to-day experiences showed how extensive his research was. Taussig describes a couple of children playing and a mentally disturbed woman who is mute. He not only spoke to the peasants about their religion but also talked to their religious leader, Efrain Alvear, about their spiritual practices and even joined in their summons and discovered their turn to religion was driven by their past experiences, such as the lack of justice faced through repeated displacements.

This particular passage was ethnographic. The writer conducted his research on the peasants through observation, living and worshiping with them, and face-to-face interviews with the people. The piece painted a clear picture of the lifestyle of the peasants.

References

Taussig, M. T. (2012). Excelente Zona Social. Cultural Anthropology, 27(3), 498–517. Doi:10.1111/J.1548-1360.2012.01156.X

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