Pachamama and indigenous deep ecology
Explanation
Pachamama ("Mother Earth" or more precisely "Mother Time-Space" in Quechua, since pacha integrates both concepts) is the central deity of the Andean worldview, present in the Quechua and Aymara traditions of the Andes (Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, northern Chile and Argentina). She is not exactly a "goddess" in the Olympian sense but a living entity-person: the earth itself as a conscious being, generator of life, who gives and demands reciprocity.
The relationship between humans and Pachamama is governed by the principle of ayni (reciprocity): every extraction must be reciprocated with offerings. The payment to the earth (despacho), made in specific ceremonies (especially in August, Pachamama's month), includes coca leaves, chicha (corn beer), llama fat, seeds, sweets and other products. The altomisayoq or paqo (Andean ritual specialist) prepares the despacho as an offering table. The offering is burned or buried. Without these offerings, Pachamama may withdraw her favour (droughts, bad harvests, illnesses).
Pachamama is not only the spirit of the territory but the earth itself as a living body. The mountains (apus, achachilas) are her protrusions, the rivers her veins, the lakes her eyes, the plants her skin, the stones her bones. This vision is not a metaphor but an ontology: the earth is literally a living and conscious being, with whom it is possible to communicate, negotiate, offend, reconcile. This is what anthropology calls animism, although the term is misleadingly simplifying.
This worldview has had political-legal renewal in recent decades. The Constitution of Ecuador (2008) recognises rights to nature (Pachamama mentioned by name in the preamble); the Constitution of Bolivia (2009) declares the plurinational State committed to sumak kawsay (Buen Vivir); in 2010 Bolivia enacted the Law of Rights of Mother Earth. The concept of Buen Vivir (sumak kawsay Quechua, suma qamaña Aymara, küme mongen Mapuche, etc.) proposes a civilisational model alternative to capitalist developmentalism, based on harmony with nature and communal reciprocity.
For the theory of consciousness, the notion of Pachamama and indigenous deep ecology in general (which also includes similar notions in other peoples: Aluna Kogi, Ix Chel Maya, Onkwehshón:'a Iroquois, etc.) raises radical questions: is the Earth conscious? Is the planet a living being with subjective experience? The Lovelock-Margulis Gaia hypothesis, contemporary panpsychic proposals, and theories of distributed cognition offer modern scientific-philosophical formulations that have surprising affinities with these traditional worldviews.
Contemporary philosophers such as Eduardo Gudynas, Alberto Acosta and Catherine Walsh have developed theoretical proposals on Buen Vivir and rights of nature. Indigenous leaders such as Davi Kopenawa Yanomami (The Falling Sky, 2010, written with Bruce Albert), Ailton Krenak (Ideas to Postpone the End of the World, 2019), Berta Cáceres (assassinated in 2016 for her struggle in defence of land), have brought the indigenous perspective to the global debate on climate and ecological crisis. As one of the worldviews that best articulate the idea of the Earth as a conscious subject and of human consciousness as immersed in a sacred network of relations with all beings, the notion of Pachamama is a crucial philosophical contribution in the 21st century.
Strengths
- Deep ecological articulation with millennial roots.
- Real legal-constitutional impact.
- Fertile dialogue with academic deep ecology.
- Practical alternative to extractivism.
Main critiques
- Tension between constitutional discourse and real extractive practices.
- Risk of political instrumentalization.
- Generalisation about heterogeneous Andean worldviews.