Andean Territoriality in Mi Ciego, Mi Gallo y Tú (2003) by Percy Zaga Bustinza

Abstract

Andean territoriality constitutes a contested space shaped by the coloniality of power, extractivism, and dynamics of dispossession that transform the relationships among embodiment, community, and nature in southern Peru. This study examines Andean territoriality in Percy Zaga Bustinza's Mi ciego, mi gallo y tú (2003) through the lens of decolonial ecocriticism, focusing on the inscription of a relational ontology in response to territorial dispossession. The research adopts an interpretive paradigm, a qualitative approach, and a hermeneutic design based on textual analysis. The corpus consists of the poems “Aldea,” “Tierra,” and “Campesina,” selected through purposive homogeneous sampling and analyzed using the categories of the coloniality of power, relational ontology, earth-beings, the ch'ixi condition, territoriality, and r-existence. The analysis suggests that territoriality emerges as a relational network linking embodiment, community, and nature, in which the land possesses agency rather than serving as a passive backdrop. It also shows that poetic language articulates forms of r-existence in response to structural violence, extractivism, and modern Western rationality, while reshaping Spanish so that it can accommodate the expressive structures of Quechua, thereby producing a ch'ixi coexistence of heterogeneous cultural matrices. The study concludes that Zaga Bustinza's poetry challenges the colonial separation between subject and territory and contributes to understanding territorial agency, relational ontologies, and the practices that sustain collective life under conditions of structural inequality.