Andean Llamas and Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 80

5. Existential identifi cation is with the family, the land, and the village in such a
way that the individual, family, and village form an indivisible whole.
6. The basic structure/control over land resources is vested collectively in the
village.
Clearly the earth or land is fundamentally important to peasant societies. This is
manifested in the rich symbolic representations and religious rituals and beliefs
about the land that are common to peasant societies. These traditions emphasize the
earth as the substance of human genesis and as the means that make life possible.
Humanity is seen as being part of a networking of interrelationships binding together
the earth and the human, in such a way that a good and just life is facilitated. Access
to land is understood as a right that cannot be denied because the Earth, as the foun-
dation of life, belongs to all living creatures (see Eliade and Sullivan 1987 ). Among
the Quechua and Aymara of the Andes, the earth is pachamama , their mythical-
religious concept of space. Pacha signifi es the space of maximum security in the
present, and is identifi ed with the ayllu or traditional village with its homes, culti-
vated fi elds and common pasture lands. Mama, as feminine, maternalizes the pacha
and is manifested in the earth. Thus the pachamana is fertile earth apt for cultiva-
tion, that nourishes and cares for humans and other creatures (Aguiló 1988 ).
The ancient Hebrews also were concerned for fertile earth. For them, land was a
divine gift, an inheritance from Yahweh, to be respected and managed according to
Sabbath. (See Brueggemann 2002 ; for an important study of land in the Hebrew
Bible see Habel 1995 ). As “creator”, God or Yahweh, is the “owner” of the land
who establishes, through Sabbath, how the earth is to be lived. Yahweh, then, grants
the Earth in usufruct to humanity as an inheritance. For the ancient Hebrews, the
land was not property but rather the good that made life, as well as personal and
cultural identity, possible.
“Inheritance” incorporates the idea that the earth itself is the substance of human
genesis and that there is a symbiotic relationship between humans and the earth that
is activated in mutual interaction. It also lifts up the social dimension of the earth
and, therefore, was the basis of ancient Hebrew agrarian law that restricted how the
land was to be used: land could not be bought or sold; part of the produce had to be
left for the poor; the land had to rest, that is, be left fallow for certain periods of
time, among other legal provisions governing the use of land. These were provisions
required by Sabbath, the seventh day of creation according to Genesis 2: 2-3.
Sabbath restricts the use of the Earth and subverts human efforts to control accord-
ing to their own desires. To this restrictive end, the ancient Hebrew Scriptures con-
tain numerous Sabbatical laws and regulations.
The proper Biblical text for basing the Judeo-Christian idea of stewardship as a
conceptual ethical model for the earth-human relationship is the story of Adam and
Eve (Gn 2: 4-25), the oldest of the Biblical creation stories. 2 This is because the text
so clearly refl ects peasant mentality and experience.
2 Frequently Gn 1:1-2:4, the creation myth of 7 days, where “dominion” over the earth is granted
to humanity, is cited as the model for Judeo-Christian stewardship. However this text is not prop-
erly about stewardship but rather about “public administration,” although it introduces the key idea