Evil Profits in the Forest: An Amazonian Moral Play in Six Acts

Discover the seventh session of the 2025–2026 Americanist Anthropology seminar: "Evil Profits in the Forest: An Amazonian Moral Play in Six Acts".

"Like other indigenous peoples in Latin America, the Andoque of the Colombian Amazon have adopted various demonic figures from Christianity – primarily the devil as an umbrella term for dangerous forest forces and as an entity with whom one can make a pact to become wealthy. This paper proposes a unifying framework for understanding their coexistence in the current situation of the Andoque, marked by conflicting engagements with both the forces of the forest and those of the market. By articulating Lacanian theory of the symbolization of the Real and Michael Taussig’s analysis of diabolical imagery as reflections on commodity fetishism, as well as moral and ontological perspectives, destructive non-human agency appears as a reflection of a lack of restraint and self-assurance among humans, while the convergence between diabolical pacts and forest devils points to a focus on profit rather than on the satisfaction of needs. The devil thus appears as the revealer of the failings of the Andoque self."

• Eliran Arazi – University of Cambridge
• Discussant: Olivier Allard – EHESS, LAS