Indigenous mobilities, territorialization, and dispossession in the Sierra de Perijá, Venezuela: Rescuing lands and meanings in Hábitat Indígena Yukpa, Toromo-Tütari

In the Sierra de Perijá, Venezuela, the indigenous Yukpa have long faced reterritorialization and violent displacement through the expansion of cattle farms, so-called haciendas. However, the new Venezuelan constitution in 2000 guaranteed rights to indigenous territory and ushered in an endogenous, community-based development model. By the 2010s, Yukpa had reclaimed a half-dozen haciendas, taking advantage of the political leverage and economic opportunities provided by the endogenous development model. This process of deterritorialization has been accompanied by extensive migration of residents from mountain communities to the lowlands, and these reconfigurations of Yukpa spatiality have prompted reconceptualization of a diasporic, multi-sited indigenous identity.