Spy insects. Night conversations in the Guacamayo Community – Caquetá River

Abstract

This text exposes a link to a dual memory: first, the memory of the Muinane Indigenous people regarding their relationships with the insects that visit the interior of their malocas and mambeaderos at night. Such presences are interpreted as an external animal intrusion into human life, bugs fulfilling tasks of espionage. Second, the memory of the Muinane leader Aurélio Suárez (Ñuñamideeko; peach palm flower, in the Muinane language) and his words shared as a nocturnal conversation in his former maloca in Araracuara, Caquetá. Entomological espionage will be approached from two opposing perspectives. On one hand, robotic insects intended to replace extinct pollinating insects, which are also used for espionage and surveillance tasks in war scenarios. Here, the capitalist depredation of the earth's finite resources is assumed as an inevitable fact, with science and technology serving global military and economic centers of power. On the other hand, the Muinane conception of spy insects that infiltrate human nocturnal spaces, shaping relationships marked by mutual suspicion, precaution, and care, thus defining specific interactions between living beings in a specific place on the planet. This Indigenous reading of insects reveals the cultural attributes of a human consciousness defined through relationships and encounters with other beings.