The Itinerary Experience of Marta Paredes, an E'ñepá Indigenous Woman from Caruto

Displacements, Territorialities, and Identity Reconfigurations across the Venezuelan, Brazilian, and Guyanese Amazons

Abstract

This article investigates the forced displacements and the territorial and identity reconfiguration of the E'ñepá indigenous people of Caruto, analyzing their trajectories across Venezuela, Brazil, and the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. The research adopts the method of the experience of itineraries (Petiteau 2006), adapted to the context of cross-border indigenous mobility, and focuses on the practices of walking, speaking, and listening as means of producing situated knowledge. Through the account of Marta Paredes, an E'ñepá indigenous woman, and the data produced during the Etnomapping Workshop, the article highlights the tensions experienced by the group in institutional shelters and the territorial and identity resistance strategies developed along their journeys. By bringing together collective memory, embodied experience, and territory, the article proposes to understand E'ñepá displacement as a continuous weaving of resistance—intertwining past, present, and future in the pursuit of autonomy, dignity, and culturally grounded ways of existence in contexts of forced mobility.