Abstract

ELLISON, Nicolas. Altepet /ChuChutsipi: Nahua-Totonaca Territorial Cosmopolitics and Biocultural Heritage in the Sierra Nororiental of Puebla, Mexico. Trace (Méx. DF) [online]. 2020, n.78, pp.88-122.  Epub Apr 28, 2021. ISSN 2007-2392.  https://doi.org/10.22134/trace.78.2020.742.

This work reveals how the Nahua-Totonac concept of territorial community, known as “altepet / chuchutsipi” respectively, is updated in the context of the threat of “death projects”, as the Nahua and Totonac people in the Sierra Norte de Puebla (Mexico) call both mining concessions and transgenic maize. In this context, what do the notions of territory and biocultural landscape imply from the perspective of everyday experience and local categories about the environment? What do they exclude? And in the same way, what is left out when the “defence of the territory” leads to enclosing local relations between humans and non-humans within the framework of biocultural heritage? I will argue that the “defence of the territory” through biocultural heritage is an necessary and legitimate political position, which however hides the complexity (including hybridizations and re-elaborations) of the perceptions, daily practices and ecological representations anchored in Totonac-Nahua cosmopolitics.

Keywords : cosmopolitics; altepet; biocultural landscape; Nahuas; Totonac.

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