La construcción jurídica del “ciudadano indígena”: Estado colombiano, piel y tatuaje Wayuu

Tattooing within indigenous communities is a global ancestral practice that has historically connected the tattooed individual with a profound collective history embodied in a form of corporal marking that, rather than mere decoration, constitutes a manifestation of cultural values, ancestral bonds, familial ties, and religious beliefs. Not exempt from these characteristics, the tattooing practice of the Wayuu community (Asho'ojushi, spine puncturing in Wayuunaiki) from the Colombian-Venezuelan Guajira region integrates traditions for the establishment of identity and belonging to a community and clan. However, by the mid-twentieth century, these expressions were appropriated by the State to address the problem of identification by incorporating indigenous tattoo symbols into civil identification practices that gave rise to the creation of the first national identity cards. Consequently, indigenous tattooing, previously employed to establish distinctions among clans, became instrumentalized as a tool for the colonization and "Colombianization" of these isolated populations, overlaying them with additional dimensions of identification—that is, within a political-discursive framework, with a national "personality" that suppressed ethnic identities in favor of establishing "indigenous citizenships," which proved useful in demarcating national borders and as a determining factor in the relationships between subjects and the State.