Recuperation as Decolonial Practice

Abstract

In this essay I follow the history of the Boruca Indigenous artistic group named the Non Cuanxa, in Costa Rica, starting in 2009. Their work recuperates oral, visual, and spiritual elements from the past to connect the present-day Boruca people to their ancestors and spirits, and to weave their artistic practice into the communal efforts to strengthen Boruca’s political sovereignty and economic stability. I use the term “recuperation” to refer to a decolonial performance tactic that brings back the past into the present, without relying on a romanticized attachment to the purity or givenness of the past. Recuperation, as a decolonial practice, commits to the imagining and performing of something that occurred in the past, but it does so by utilizing a creative freedom to change how it is perceived, felt, or remembered. Within this space of innovation, the Non Cuanxa embody things of the past with new perspectives, to make them relevant for the circumstances of the present, and the future. Processes of recuperation require both a change of the politico-economicstructure and an investment in the aesthetic innovation of the terms of theconversation, so that people can begin viewing themselves outside a hierarchical system that demands the negation of racialized cultures.