Paradise Forestalled: Animal Suitors in Sibundoy Myth

Abstract

In this essay I hope to establish the existence of an implicit moral philosophy in the mythic narratives of the indigenous communities resident in Colombia's Sibundoy Valley, and I will suggest a connection between this mode of thought and the historical circumstances of its production. I refer to a powerful conceptual paradigm that we can call paradise forestalled, a mythic reverie that contemplates the founding of an earthly paradise but draws away from this enticing prospect due to the hidden costs it contains. This moral philosophy remains implicit because it is not explicitly asserted as an overt proposition. But the weight of the evidence, from mythic narratives and commentaries on them as well as from supporting ethnographic and ethnohistorical documentation, points to the centrality of this pattern of thought in traditional Sibundoy cosmology. In advancing this line of interpretation, I first echo the voice of Sibundoy elders, by knotting the threads of several traditional discourses, and then amplify this role, by inserting these threads into the fabric of regional history.