Body-Territory in Energy Transition: Wayúu Women’s Struggle in Colombia

This article contextualises the implications of green-energy investment on the body-territories of the indigenous Wayúu women of La Guajira, Colombia. We conducted a qualitative study to explore the struggles of Wayúu women to preserve and defend their territories when impacted by large-scale investments through the theoretical frameworks of decolonial feminism and body-territory. The multidimensional problem that underpins wind-energy investment in La Guajira is intertwined with community conflicts caused by disputes over territorial control and lack of respect for indigenous peoples’ epistemologies. This is economic colonialism under the rhetoric of a pressing need to invest in green-energy. Wayúu women are ready to use decolonial feminism to protect their lands from new green-investor colonists in defence of Mother Earth due to their cosmovision of body-territory: bodies suffer when the land suffers. We contextualise a dichotomy between ‘decolonial feminism practices through body-territory cosmovision in defence of Mother Earth’ and ‘territorial control perpetrated by new green-investor colonisers’. Long-term investment and energy transition rhetoric that respects indigenous peoples’ ancestral territories could aid in the development of coherent public policies towards decarbonisation while protecting the rights of indigenous women.