Territory–Body of the Earth: Pachamama as a living body

What if the Earth were not a resource, but a living body we are part of?

This question reshapes how we understand politics, economy, science, and consciousness. Modern colonial thinking taught us to treat the Earth as backdrop, raw material, property, or stock. Mountains became ore. Rivers became energy. Forests became timber. Soil became an asset. Life was reduced to price.

For many Indigenous peoples of Latin America, this separation never made sense. The Earth is not outside the human body. It is a larger body—memory, nourishment, shelter, ancestry, and the very condition of existence.

Here emerges the force of Pachamama.

In Andean traditions, Pachamama is often translated as “Mother Earth,” but that is too narrow. Pachamama expresses a living continuity in which mountains, waters, plants, animals, ancestors, communities, and cycles are intertwined. It is not a metaphor—it is a way of organizing life through relation.

Within the BrainLatam2026 framework, Pachamama aligns with the concept of the Territory–Body of the Earth. If Body–Territory shows that the body is territory, then Territory–Body shows the inverse: territory is also body. The Earth is not merely ground we stand on; it is a living system that organizes and sustains us.

Rogério Haesbaert articulates this shift by moving from body-as-territory to territory-as-body, especially in Latin American decolonial thought that integrates Indigenous knowledge, feminist perspectives, and struggles for existence. This inversion is decisive: when the Earth is understood as body, politics shifts from domination to care.

A body is not something to be exploited without consequence.
A body feels, responds, stores memory, and requires balance.

In colonial logic, land is an object.
In Pachamama logic, Earth is relation.

This difference transforms everything.

If Earth is object, it can be divided, sold, extracted, and discarded.
If Earth is a living body, every act of extraction becomes an act upon a body.

Contaminating water is not just environmental damage—it is bodily harm.
Destroying forests is not only ecological loss—it is respiratory disruption of the collective.
Fragmenting land into property titles is also fragmenting the body’s capacity to feel continuity.

This is why Pachamama connects directly with APUS. APUS describes the body beyond the skin—extended proprioception through territory. Pachamama extends this further:

• APUS → the body sensing the Earth

• Pachamama → the Earth as body itself

Together, they form a continuous system.

This also connects with Jiwasa. Collective intelligence does not emerge only between humans—it emerges within a territorial field that includes water, soil, climate, food systems, and memory. A healthy collective is not just socially organized; it is ecologically grounded.

When this bond breaks, Jiwasa deteriorates. The collective begins to operate as if separated from Earth. Economy assumes infinite growth within a finite body. Politics manages land as an asset. Science studies bodies as if detached from the environment that forms them.

This is one of the limits of colonial scientific language: it measures extensively, but separates excessively.

It studies:

• brain apart from body

• body apart from territory

• territory apart from economy

• economy apart from life

Then it attempts to recombine these fragments through linear models.

But life was never fragmented to begin with.

Contemporary neuroscience is beginning to move beyond this separation. Relational neuroscience argues that cognition and behavior must be understood across interacting systems—brain, body, physiology, and social context (De Felice et al., 2025). Similarly, embodied hyperscanning integrates simultaneous measures of brain activity (EEG, fNIRS) with bodily signals such as respiration, heart rate variability, posture, and movement, showing that interaction is fundamentally embodied (Grasso-Cladera et al., 2024).

However, one dimension remains largely absent: territory and Earth.

It is not enough to ask how two brains synchronize.
We must ask: within what territory does this synchrony occur?

It is not enough to measure cooperation in laboratories.
We must ask: what relationship with Earth sustains or disrupts that cooperation?

It is not enough to study stress in individuals.
We must ask: what kind of world is placing the body in chronic defense?

This is the contribution of Pachamama to Decolonial Neuroscience: it forces us to move beyond the isolated individual and recognize that consciousness depends on ecological, territorial, and relational networks.

Ailton Krenak has been central in articulating this shift. In Futuro Ancestral (2022), he challenges the modern separation between humanity and nature, calling for a reconnection with ancestral knowledge systems as a path forward.

This perspective is not only philosophical—it is practical. Communities that treat Earth as a living body tend to develop different forms of care, time, memory, and belonging. Life is organized not only by productivity, but by continuity. Territory is not only wealth—it is world-making.

Recent Latin American research on cuerpo–territorio reinforces this. Studies in Indigenous and community feminisms show that violence against land is inseparable from violence against bodies, especially under colonial and extractive regimes. Territory is understood as a living space of existence, not merely a resource (D’Arcangelis & Quiroga, 2023).

Thus, Pachamama is not a symbolic figure—it is a structural critique of modern economics.

Colonial economics asks: How much is this land worth?
Pachamama asks: What life does this land sustain?

Colonial economics asks: How much can we extract?
Pachamama asks: What balance must we maintain?

Colonial economics asks: Who owns this?
Pachamama asks: Who belongs to this?

This shift in questioning is the beginning of another politics.

If Earth is a living body, the State cannot operate merely as a registrar of property or manager of assets. It must act as a collective agent of territorial care, protecting water, soil, forests, climate, childhood, health, education, and belonging as parts of a single social metabolism.

This is where DREX Cidadão gains deeper meaning. If money is generated only through debt, banking systems, and speculation, it reinforces the logic that turns Earth into paper. But if money emerges at the level of the citizen—as a basic metabolic function of the social body—it can be reconnected to life, supporting care, presence, health, education, and participation.

The aim is not to eliminate money, but to re-anchor it in life.

Pachamama, APUS, and Jiwasa form a triad:

• Pachamama → Earth as living body

• APUS → the body sensing beyond the skin

• Jiwasa → collective intelligence emerging from relational belonging

When this triad breaks, we see Zone 3: defense, fear, extraction, fragmentation, and loss of meaning. When it reorganizes, we see Zone 2: presence, metacognition, belonging, cooperation, and creativity.

Ultimately, Pachamama teaches that there is no healthy human consciousness on a planet treated as dead matter. The human body depends on air, water, food, relationships, landscapes, memory, and future. The mind requires a world—and that world cannot be reduced to commodity.

The deeper question is not “how do we save nature,” because that still separates humans from it.

The deeper question is:

how do we remember that the Earth is also our body?

Because Earth is not outside us.

It breathes in us.
It remembers in us.
It lives through us.

And when we harm Pachamama,
it is our own body–territory that begins to lose its way.

References

DAMASIO, Antonio. Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious. New York: Pantheon Books, 2021.
Foundational for understanding consciousness as an embodied, regulated process.

HAESBAERT, Rogério. “From Body–Territory to Territory–Body (of the Earth): Decolonial Contributions.” GEOgraphia, 2020.
Key reference for linking territory, body, and decolonial thought.

KRENAK, Ailton. Futuro Ancestral. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2022.
Articulates Indigenous perspectives on belonging, Earth, and continuity of life.

ESCOBAR, Arturo. Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Duke University Press, 2021.
Develops territory as ontology and relational world-making.

D’ARCANGELIS, Carol Lynne; QUIROGA, Lorna. “Cuerpo–Territorio: Towards Feminist Solidarities in the Americas.” ANPHLAC Journal, 2023.
Connects body-territory, Indigenous feminisms, and resistance to extractivism.

MOULTON, Holly. “Indigenous Women are the Guardians of Pachamama.” Global Environmental Change, 2024.
Links territorial sovereignty, Pachamama, and climate justice.

DE FELICE, Silvia et al. “Relational Neuroscience: Insights from Hyperscanning Research.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2025.
Highlights the need to study cognition as relational and context-dependent.

GRASSO-CLADERA, Aitana et al. “Embodied Hyperscanning for Studying Social Interaction.” Social Neuroscience, 2024.
Integrates brain and body measurements in real-time interaction studies.