Andrew Canessa

Conflict, claim and contradiction in the new ‘indigenous’ state of Bolivia

Recent conflict between indigenous people and a self-styled indigenous state in Bolivia has brought to the fore some of the paradoxes and contradictions within the concept of indigeneity itself. The contemporary politics of state sponsored indigeneity in Bolivia has as much capacity to create new inequalities as it does to address old ones and there is a conceptual deficit in understanding contemporary indigenous rights claims, in particular as they relate to the state. Anthropologists are understandably reluctant to define indigeneity in any objective way, but as indigeneity discourses proliferate, we need some conceptual tools to distinguish between competing rights claims based on indigeneity. I propose a conceptual distinction between inclusive national indigeneity for the majority which seeks to co-opt the state and a concept of indigeneity for a minority which needs protection from the state. Only by looking at the kinds of claims people make through the rhetoric of indigeneity can we make sense of such indigenous conflict in Bolivia and elsewhere.

Intimate Indigeneities Race, Sex, and History in the Small Spaces of Andean Life

About the Series ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. A Wila Kjarka Kaleidoscope 34 2. Intimate Histories 63 3. The Jankho Kjarka War 90 4. From Fetuses to Mountain Ancestors 119 5. Fantasies of Fear 166 6. Progress Is a Metal Flagpole 184 7. Intimate Citizens 216 8. Sex and the Citizen 244 Postscript. We Will Be People No More 281 Notes 293 References 303 Index 321

Contesting Hybridity: Evangelistas and Kataristas in Highland Bolivia

Two of the most striking aspects of social change in recent decades in Latin America have been the rise of indigenist movements and the spread of evangelical Protestantism. To date they have been analysed separately, but this article shows that a comparison of the two in the context of Bolivia can prove highly productive. Although in many respects evangelismo and katarismo are diametrically opposed, there are some striking similarities. They draw their adherents from the same social base, undermine the notion of a homogeneous nation-state and also clearly reject the position of cultural mestizaje at the root of Bolivian state ideology. Thus, at a time when ‘hybridised’ cultural forms are supposed to be becoming more common in Latin America and around the world, these two social movements explicitly contest hybridity.

Reproducing racism: Schooling and race in highland Bolivia

Bolivia is one of the few Latin American nations with a majority indian population. Strong assimilationist policies over the past fifty years have meant indians have been discriminated against in many areas of social life. Rural schools have been a principal tool in assimilation. Over the past decade political and education reform have shifted policy away from an assimilationist model to a multicultural one. Of great significance is the requirement for use of indigenous languages in school and, as a consequence, large numbers of teachers who themselves come from indian communities. Despite these policies, schoolteachers are still a major source of assimilationist cultural ideology and are principal agents in reproducing hegemonic racism in indian communities. It cannot be assumed that indian teachers will be positive models for indian children in a racist society; indeed, the ambiguous racial and cultural position of the indian teacher may mean quite the opposite. This paper, based on anthropological fieldwork, examines the role of teachers and schooling in an Aymara‐speaking highland village.Bolivia is one of the few Latin American nations with a majority indian population. Strong assimilationist policies over the past fifty years have meant indians have been discriminated against in many areas of social life. Rural schools have been a principal tool in assimilation. Over the past decade political and education reform have shifted policy away from an assimilationist model to a multicultural one. Of great significance is the requirement for use of indigenous languages in school and, as a consequence, large numbers of teachers who themselves come from indian communities. Despite these policies, schoolteachers are still a major source of assimilationist cultural ideology and are principal agents in reproducing hegemonic racism in indian communities. It cannot be assumed that indian teachers will be positive models for indian children in a racist society; indeed, the ambiguous racial and cultural position of the indian teacher may mean quite the opposite. This paper, based on anthropological fiel...

Sex And The Citizen: Barbies And Beauty Queens In The Age Of Evo Morales1

In this famous image (figure 1) of the ‘discovery’ of America by Theodor Galle in 1580, the European Amerigo Vespucci, erect and holding the tools of rational science (an astrolabe) and his religion, finds ‘America’ in her hammock. She is naked but full of wonder rather than fear and appears open to his advances. Europa, the female symbol of Vespucci’s continent, is nowhere to be seen in this allegorical encounter: this is not a meeting of equals. Vespucci gives the new continent a feminine version of his name and the profoundly gendered and sexualized nature of the encounter is quite apparent. Indeed the subtitle of the caption reads: ‘At once he called her; thenceforth she was always aroused.’ ‘Excitam’ means to rise up as well as to arouse or to excite; it is quite clear that America is doing both. The sexual subtext of this engraving has received considerable commentary (Hulme, 1984; Montrose, 1991; McClintock, 1995; De la Guerra, 2003; Schreffler, 2005) but what is less often noted is that America is represented by a European-looking fair-haired woman. Peter Mason (1990) has written in some detail about how the natives of the NewWorld were initially incorporated into Western notions of the ‘wild man’ – a European internal alterity transported across the Atlantic and projected onto the denizens of the new world. More importantly, it is also the case that since the conquest native Americans have been conceptualized as female: in his famous debate with Las Casas, Sepúlveda made an explicit comparison between the moral and intellectual capacities of indians and Spanish women (Pagden, 1982) and there are numerous example from courts of law to military accounts where indians have been explicitly described as comparable to European women (Silverblatt, 1987; Lewis, 2003). American natives have long been conceived as the European internal other, Mason’s point, and specifically a female one. This image goes beyond the allegorical depiction of the colonial encounter; it is also an illustration of one of its concrete manifestations: from the earliest days of the Conquest Spanish men took indian wives as part of the spoils of conquest but also as a tool of conquest. The most celebrated example of this is the story of Cortés and Malintzin/La Malinche which Octavio Paz sees as the founding myth of Mexico and Mexicans; there are, of course, countless other examples all through the Spanish Empire.

New Indigenous Citizenship in Bolivia: Challenging the Liberal Model of the State and its Subjects

At the beginning of the 20th century, indigenous identities seemed atavistic and doomed. By its close, indigenous politics were proving to be much more dynamic and successful than other progressive political movements. This article explores the ways in which indigenous groups are engaging in novel ways with the nation-state. What is at play here is a series of articulations of the ways in which the state relates to citizens and vice versa in Bolivia where the iconic citizen has changed from being a mestizo to an indigenous person. Not all communities and not all individuals are equally well placed to take advantage of new political spaces and opportunities. This article examines the case of Khonkho in highland Bolivia and considers its response to the opportunities opened up by a new indigenous political landscape and, in particular, the role of new rituals in articulating a new relationship with the state. The relationship between cultural expression and political rights are explored, arguing that the former are much more linked to the latter than might first appear.

The Past is Not Another Country: Exploring Indigenous Histories in Bolivia

The concept of indigeneity is founded on an historical relation: my people were here before yours and are therefore legitimate occupiers of this land. This aspect of indigeneity, and its concomitant claim to justice, is most clearly articulated in the indigenous politics of postcolonial nations and the rhetoric of indigenous leaders. The discourses of politicians who invoke five centuries of oppression are frequently heard and easily accessible but much less so are the views of indigenous people far from the arena of metropolitan politics. In its focus on European colonisation and conquest the standard understanding of indigeneity necessarily invokes Western concepts of identity and being focused primarily on descent and a particular relationship to history, that of being a conquered people. This paper looks at how the people of one Aymara‐speaking hamlet understand their history and their place in it. It explores the profound differences in historical consciousness to that of “mainstream” indigeneity and raises questions about how people relate to their past; the importance of the Conquest to indigenous people; and, consequently, the consequences a differently rooted identity may have for the contemporary politics of indigeneity.

Dreaming of Fathers: Fausto Reinaga and Indigenous Masculinism

Fausto Reinaga, writing in the 1950s and 1960s, is today celebrated as Bolivias greatest indigenous intellectual by people from across the indigenous political spectrum. Few scholars have considered the role of gender in his work. I explore the ways in which Reinagas project is explicitly the redemption of the Indian man and the ways in which he shows considerable antipathy towards mestiza women and profound ambivalence towards Indian women. Despite being a close reader of Fanons work, Reinaga does not absorb his analysis of how gender and race intersect. Reinagas quandaries as he elaborated his project for the ‘emancipation of the Indian’ and the ‘revindication of the Indian man’ remain relevant today. A reading of his work offers some insight into why indigenous politicians today so often express such profound ambivalence in relation to their female political companions; and why gender needs to be at the very centre of an analysis of indigenous ideology.

Bearing witness: Testimonies, translations, and ontologies in the Andes

Comment on de la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Gender, Indigeneity, and the Performance of Authenticity in Latin American Tourism

On a trip to Mexico City in September 2009, I traveled to Teotihuacán with my eight-year-old daughter. As we considered buying an obsidian statuette for my son back home, the vendor explained to me that he had learned his craft from his father and he from his father before him, all the way back to the Aztecs. In our brief conversation he regularly used the first person plural when referring to the builders of the impressive monuments around us, and I could see my daughter’s eyes go from the man’s face to the pyramids behind us and back again. In this simple transaction, which could be reproduced on virtually any archaeological site in Latin America, what was being sold was not simply the object at hand but the putative authenticity of its maker. Beyond the obsidian statuette I was buying a piece of Aztec culture crafted by the hands of a genuine descendant of the Aztecs if not quite a genuine Aztec himself. We bought the statuette, and it was duly presented to my son as “an Aztec statue, the god of the moon, that holds the moonlight within it.” On the same day we came across two young Mexicans walking barefoot among the pyramids. I asked them why they were barefoot, and they responded, “It is a custom,” a means of identifying with their ancestors. I asked if the Aztecs didn’t have leather sandals, and I was told that, yes, the Aztecs did, but “we are Mexicans, so we identify with the slaves who were made to walk along this route.” These two experiences caused me to reflect on the commodification of authenticity, whether of the object purchased or the experience pursued, in Latin American tourism. Ronda Brulotte (2012) has recently written about the ways in which vendors of handicrafts position themselves as authentic producers of native culture just like the vendor in Teotihuacán—a strategic positioning vis-à-vis pre-Columbian ancestors the echoes of which we see in many of the essays in this issue as indigenous and other subaltern peoples turn essentialist notions to their advantage. Tourists’ desire for the authentic, the primitive, and the natural can take the form of purchasing handicrafts, as in the essays of Florence Babb and Annelou Ypeij, but may extend to the commodification of indigenous spirituality, as in the essays by Macarena Gómez-Barris and Elizabeth Bell. The essays in this issue explore the various ways in which tourists and local people, principally in Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala, engage in a complex choreography of commoditization, gender, and ethnicity. In their introduction, 456681LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X12456681CAnESSA / COMMEnTARYLatin American Perspectives 2012