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Death's affective experiences between boys and girls in Sumapaz (a rural area of the Capital District of Bogotá, Colombia) is rooted in violence, silence and mistrust, all characteristic of their territory. This article discusses the methodological implications of an ethnographic approach to the emotions regarding the death of children, aged 9 and 12, in Sumapaz in a post-conflict scenario. The reflexive ethnographic perspective allowed me to establish a personal and emotional position into what it means to do fieldwork among children. Ethical and methodological considerations are presented in relation to the silence of children and the intrusiveness of inquiring about personal issues such as death.

This article is a case study of the exchanges and relationships that arose from the circulation of images in the Arhuaco community of Kutunzama in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The circulation of photographs, which show the present and past history of the Arhuaco people, led to an exchange between the mamos, the community and myself —as ethnographer—. The purpose of this text is to show how the circulation of these photographs can be understood as a gift in a process of redistribution based on the evocative, material and sensual capacities of the images. This article consists of an ethnographic approach, developed between 2017 and 2019, on the basis which the community’s forms of organization and kinship are understood via the elicitation of photographs and films, interviews and participant observation. This circulation also made it possible to activate narratives of the recent history of the village, related to the settlement and the context of territorial disputes in the area. Ethnographic photography allowed us to approach notions of time and space, and to broaden the Arhuaco notion of makruma. Rather than conceiving of this notion as a gift, it is understood as a process of redistribution in which the given object possesses the characteristics of the person who gives it and the return of the object (in this case the images) becomes a way of settling a spiritual debt. The text shows the image as a means of interaction, a means of encounter, a place of circulation and sensory experience. It approaches the image as a multisensory object and the photograph not only as a representational object, but also as one that traces social relations based on the indigenous notion of makruma.

Este artículo presenta un análisis del estado de la comunicación indígena en América Latina con un enfoque etnográfico y comparativo basado en seis estudios de caso: México, Guatemala, Panamá, Colombia, Bolivia y Argentina. Nuestro estudio se ocupa de la situación de los «paisajes mediáticos», es decir, la proliferación de medios de comunicación tecnológica en cada contexto, sus usos sociales efectivos y sus transformaciones en el tiempo. Para ello destacamos tres aspectos analíticos: 1) las innovaciones en la comunicación indígena, las cuales han pasado de un énfasis en la apropiación tecnológica a la necesidad de su incorporación como valor cultural, así como un cambio de énfasis en la «resistencia» a la idea de «descolonización» de los medios, 2) las características que definen la comunicación indígena, y 3) la constatación de su heterogeneidad e implicación en realidades sociales y políticas concretas y locales.