Colonialismo y alteridad: el discurso de K. Th. Preuss sobre la tradición oral del pueblo múrui (noroeste amazónico)

This paper seeks to examine the main topics of the discourse of Konrad Theodor Preuss (1869-1938) in his book Religion and Mythology of the Uitotos. A precursor of ethnography and archaeology in Colombia, Preuss arrived in this country at the end of 1913 as a researcher at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, and returned to Germany in 1919, at the end of the First World War. During his first year in Colombia, he carried out archaeological work in San Agustín and ethnographic work with the Múrui of the northwestern Amazon and the Kágaba of the Sierra Nevada. Then, due to the outbreak of war in Europe, he was forced to take up residence in La Esmeralda, Cundinamarca, where he lived until he returned to his country. This article seeks, through the articulation of a historical and ethnographic approach, to analyze the discourse and intellectual context underpinning Preuss’s interpretation on the verbal art and spirituality of the Múrui people.