Paper short abstract:

This paper brings together the history of Geography and Anthropology in the Guyanese-Venezuelan borderland space of the Essequibo through analysis of the practice of trafficking in bodies, goods, and ideas.

Paper long abstract:

This paper develops the historical analysis of anthropological and geographical inquiries into the Guyanese-Venezuelan borderlands—the land of "El Dorado" or "lake Parima" (Rivière 1995, Burnett 2000), the homeland of the Barama river Caribs (Gillin 1931, Adams 1972, Whitehead 1988, Forte 1990, 1999), and the heart of the disputed territory of the Essequibo. I use the oral narratives—including the gossip, folklore, and conspiracies—of bush workers I met over nearly ten years of fieldwork and travel, to navigate my archival inquiry into this obscure borderland history. Beginning in the eighteenth century and ending in the present, weaving classic ethnological accounts (Humboldt, Schomburk, Im Thurn, Koch-Grunberg, and Gillin) with the records of the British Guiana Boundary Dispute, the paper argues that analyzing the historical practice of trafficking in bodies, goods, and ideas defined the region physically and temporally. The analysis specifically demonstrates how sorcery, spirituality, rumor, and conspiracy are bound together in similar land and time-scapes, and makes clear how these forms of managing power are essential to understanding local and regional ontologies. Moreover, by analyzing the practice of trafficking through the history of Anthropology and Geography in the region the paper also provides another conceptual framework to understand the political ecology of Amazonia.