# Re-Appropriation Through Ritual: Muysca Indigenous Resurgence and Performance February 18, 2025 [ Paola Sanchez-Castaneda ](/people/paola-sanchez-castaneda) *Edited by* [*Aaron Michael Ullrey*](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/people/aaron-michael-ullrey)*.* *This Research Reflection by* [*Andrea Sanchez Castaneda*](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/people/paola-sanchez-castaneda)[*,*](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/people/emmanuele-goulon) *Postdoctoral Fellow, Religion and Indigenous Plant Medicine Traditions of the Americas, is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions.* The *Yca ata yn aquynza chueta* ritual, meaning The Time Cycle Without Time, was celebrated on December 21, 2024, in the central plaza of Suba, a locality in Bogotá, Colombia. This annual ritual is an important way for the Indigenous Muysca community in Suba to foster cultural continuity. It is also a territorial reassertion against the Colombian State’s efforts to disconnect them from their historical lands. The event starts a period of agricultural rest, corresponding with the natural cycle of droughts, extending into March. Harmonization for the Muysca is a spiritual process (*armonización* in Spanish) often led by community elders to create or restore harmony in a space. Elders harmonized the commencement of The Time Cycle Without Time ritual by unveiling a monument of a *tunjo*, a pre-Colombian votive symbol, often made of gold, that depicts humans, animals, or deities. No mere symbolic objects, the *tunjo* is supernatural being that embodies divine forces and the spiritual power of the land. During The Time Cycle Without Time ritual, the Muysca summon sacred plant medicines, such as *hozca* (tobacco snuff) and *mambe* (powdered coca leaves). Plant medicines cleanse and balance the energies of spaces prior to an important event such as this. The plants reinforce the Muyscas’ deep connection to their land and knowledge systems, also embodied by their weaving traditions and music. Connecting to the lands reaffirms Muysca claims over their ancestral territories. ![The monument of the Tunjo, a Muysca votive offering.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2025-02/IMG_5096.jpg?itok=yNjpjV9j) The monument of the *Tunjo*, a Muysca votive offering, was unveiled during the ritual.Photo by: Andrea Sánchez-CastañedaThe Muysca once occupied the highlands of central Colombia, but they were colonized by the Spanish in the sixteenth century, who dismantled the powerful confederation of several Muysca nations and seized their land. After independence in 1819, the post-colonial Colombian state ignored Muysca territorial claims and displaced them even further than the Colonial Spanish had. After two centuries, the Muysca were recognized by the 1991 Colombian Constitution as the first urban Indigenous Cabildo or governing council. They lost their state recognition due to a perceived lack of visible “Indianness” in 1999. State authorities argued that urbanized Muysca no longer exhibited the markers of indigeneity that would distinguish them from the non-Indigenous Colombian population. Urban living, authorities presumed, had eroded the Muysca’s Indigenous authenticity. Consequently, the Muysca were excluded from legal protections, supports, and rights—including cultural preservation and political representation—granted to recognized Indigenous groups and communities. Their cultural practices were limited, and their voices were excluded from national concerns. Indigenous communities in Colombia, as in other parts of the globe, face pressure to conform to certain ideas about what “Indianness” means; for instance, they are expected to wear particular attire and live in particular ways. When the Muysca community performs their sacred rituals at urbanized historical sites, they challenge these pressures and the policies that ignore their cultural presence and land rights. At the same time, these performances ensure the intergenerational transmission of intangible cultural heritage. In their efforts to regain recognition as Indigenous, Muysca leaders sought to regain legal recognition by meeting the State’s ethnic requirements. Colombian Indigenous communities, including the Muysca, are compelled by the State to perform their ethnic identity in ways that align with the State’s official ethnic identity frameworks. Prior Muysca efforts for recognition centered on territorial claims, but their twenty-first-century agenda prioritized cultural revitalization, particularly the revival of the Muysca language (*muysccubum*) that had largely fallen into disuse. Muysca leaders turned to colonial archives and oral tradition, creating their own archival databases to reconstruct language, cultural practices, and traditions, including Muysca attire and cosmology. Their efforts succeeded in 2005, with official state recognition. This was the result of diligent community research and the conscious creation and display of cultural differences. Muysca rituals in sacred spaces, their traditional dances, and the revival and use of their native language challenge persisting technologies of coloniality that define and control Indigenous peoples in Colombia. Decolonial, feminist scholars explain that the intimate bond between Indigenous bodies and the land, *cuerpo-territorio* (body-territory), makes bodies and lands extensions of a single subject. Indigenous rituals reveal cultural, geopolitical, and spiritual dimensions that embody the inseparable link between bodies, the land, and the spiritual realm. By transforming public spaces into contested sites, the Muysca resist the erasure of their historical and cultural ties to the land and make their presence undeniable. The Time Cycle Without Time ritual and the unveiling of the *tunjo* reclaim Muysca’s rightful place in the history and future of the Suba locality. Their performances assert their land rights, enhance their visibility, and reshape narratives about what it means to be Indigenous in urban Colombia. They challenge us to reconsider whose histories define our cities and how Indigenous communities, such as the Muysca, actively shape spaces for Indigenous futures. See also:- [ Researcher Reflections ](/topic-tags/researcher-reflection)