The Pez Capitán is a fish with long mustaches and slimy black and olive colored skin. It was named Eremophilus mutisii by Alexander von Humboldt—a testament to the fishes’ solitary roamings through shallow waters, which Humboldt equated to those of a solitary captain (eremophilus means loneliness). The Pez Capitán and María Buenaventura’s dedication to this fish is the starting point of this project.
Zanjas and Camellones is a collective composed by artist Maria Buenaventura, landscape architect Diego Bermudez, curator Juliana Steiner, archeologist Lorena Gallo, lawyer and citizen oversight for the Van der Hammen reserve Sabina Rodríguez, local sabedora Blanca Nieves and Liliana Novoa with support of the Institute of Cultural Patrimony (IDPC). Construction of the raised beds and channels are made by Guido Caicedo, Jesús Larota and Juan Rodríguez. Video work by Alejandro Bernal and sound installation by Leonel Vasquez.
The project aims to recreate the camellones and zanjas ecosystem: a planting system of raised beds and channels used by the Musicas (indigenous peoples from the Andean area). The system sought and succeeded in creating a symbiotic relationship between sowing food, fishing and hunting for over 3,000 years until the arrival of Spanish colonial infrastructure. This technology used the wetland ecosystem to regulate temperatures in order to sow and harvest maize, fruits, beans, quinoa, arracacha, potatoes; raise fishes such as the pez capitán and guapuchas; and hunt ducks, guinea pigs, and crabs.
Born with the intention of remembering the ecological relationships where the Pez Capitán (or Guamuica fish, in chibcha language) lived for thousands of years between rivers, lagoons and wetlands of the cundiboyacense plateau, the project seeks to recover the memory of the camellon as a technology and as a cultural and historical ecosystem, which understood and played with the levels of water and precipitation in the cundiboyacense plateau, creating a relationship of reciprocity with its immediate environment.
Located in Las Mercedes, at the Van der Hammen Reserve in Suba (in a property loaned to the Botanical Garden) this project wishes to become a live museum and environmental outdoor classroom that will allow visitors to learn about the biological and cultural environment that has so quickly changed the Sabaná of Bogotá—from wetland to a now developed and urbanized area.
Zanjas y Camellones is located in Las Mercedes, at the Van der Hammen Reserve in Suba, locality of Bogotá.