The Return of Baskets: Retrieving Bosa Muisca People's Ancestral Memory and Medicine

El retorno de los canastos: la recuperación de la memoria y la medicina ancestral del pueblo muisca de Bosa

This article analyzes how Muisca people of Bosa, at Bogotá outskirts, has managed to revitalize their ancestral medicine practices, despite having long lost their lands to Spanish Conquest and today's urban expansion. Drawing from fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2019, we describe how some community members, known as sabedores (wise people), are building a «sacred house» or Cusmuy to perform their traditional practices. Also, we examine intercultural bonds with Indigenous peoples from the Amazon forest, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and other Muisca communities, in the process of redefining their spiritual and ritual traditions. The narrative of "the return of baskets" emerges as an expression of rebuilding collective memory, and linking identity claims through ancestral practices. Following a qualitative and ethnographic approach, we found that rebuilding their collective memory fits in ethnogenetic dynamics within an urban setting, rather than being a mere invention drawn from tradition.