Boruca Indigenous Community Cultural Practices And Its Relation To The Costa Rica South Pacific Coasts

Abstract

Through documentary analisis with inter and trans-disciplinary perspectives, this article explores the academic production generated from the mid 20th Century to today regarding the boruca indigenous community in the south Pacific of Costa Rica. Emphasis is put on cultural practices associated to coastal areas such as salt recollection and cloth dyeing - utilizing a Plicopurpura pansa locally known as Múrice- because their search and collection traditionally moves the boruca people from their settlements to Chamán and Ventanas beaches (South Pacific Region, Costa Rica). These usages, according to customary law, extend through Boruca indigenous territory up to the Pacific Coast. The purpose of an analytical, inter and trans-disciplinary bibliographic review of the subject is to provide the community with arguments for its territorial and socio-environmental struggles against expansive development projects; to do so, we have underpinned our approach through political ecology, as a science that deals with distributive ecological conflicts. It is concluded that there are documentary voids about the boruca indigenous population regarding traditional dyeing and the cultural practices around it; however, a more general approach is significant in that it locates the community within a macro-economic corridor, in commercial relationship of mollusc dye and salt with other indigenous peoples of Latin America.