Cultura caballista
Published online on July 05, 2026
Abstract
["American Ethnologist, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nThe world of Colombian gaited horses, or cultura caballista (horse‐riding culture), is often linked with uribismo, the right‐wing identity associated with former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez. Ethnographic fieldwork in conflict‐torn Antioquia reveals how horse‐human practices of training, breeding, and competition cultivate orientations toward hierarchical authority, disciplined hypermasculinity, and control over land and living bodies. This occurs within histories of racialized regional identity, paramilitarism, and narco‐culture. Combining the anthropology of the Right with multispecies ethnography offers insight into how right‐wing identities are embodied as affective dispositions cultivated through more‐than‐human worlds. An ecofeminist lens shows how horse‐human relations reproduce historically sedimented “logics of mastery,” intertwining classed, racialized, and gendered hierarchies with domination over nature—hierarchies structured by morally ambiguous tensions between domination and care. This analysis speaks to current debates on the rise of the Right by showing how “ordinary” right‐wing identities are co‐constituted with nonhuman Others through embodied practices and intimacy.\n"]