ANDEAN ANTHROPOLOGY

This article explores the ever-shifting semantics and semiotics of the concept “indígena” in the Bolivian Andes, and argues that “indigeneity” is charged with different meanings by different actors in changing contexts of territorial and social struggles and state governance.
The article focuses on the discourse and politics of the indigenous Andean organization CONAMAQ and its response to changing pressures on indigenous territories and resources caused by the nation-building process started in 2006 by the Evo Morales administration. The article identifies a recent conflict in the Bolivian lowlands between indigenous organizations and the Bolivian State as one decisive moment in a broader historical and political process, a moment when two divergent projects of “lo indígena” emerged in the Bolivian Andes: one hegemonic state project of indigeneity and one counter-hegemonic project of indigeneity. The article shows that this was not the first time in Bolivian history that a hegemonic project from above was responded to from below with a counter-hegemonic project. And, what is more, the article argues that hegemonic projects actually tend to create the spaces that are necessary for counter-hegemonic projects to emerge and for new political visions and subjectivities to take form.

Francisco Ferreira (2015) ‘De-demonizing the VRAEM: A Peruvian-cocalero area,’ Substance Use & Misuse (USA). Online-15th December. Paper-2016, 51 (1): 41-53. 


The valley of the rivers Apurímac, Ene, and Mantaro (VRAEM) is the main center of coca production in Peru. This is a jungle area located between the southern highland regions of Ayacucho and Cuzco, and it is notorious for the presence of drug trafficking and the last remnants of Shining Path guerrillas. As a result, it occupies a central place in security policies in Peru, and has been “demonized” in the national imaginary. This article explores the current situation, recent history, and most important collectives of the VRAEM, challenging stereotypes about it.

“Este libro no es sólo el resultado de prácticas académicas usuales. No es simple entenderlo porque no responde solamente a los requisitos de la antropología ni de la historia convencionalmente entendidas—desde la derecha y la izquierda. En vez de ellos, Anders Burman usa la etnografía como relación de aprendizaje entre iguales. El no estudia a los maestros y maestras en barrios de La Paz y Bolivia en general—el aprende con ellos otra manera de conocer. Este libro entonces no es un análisis de la “cultura” de “los nuevos yatiris Paceños”, pues lo que Burman aprende como antropólogo es la necesidad de descolonizar sus prácticas de conocimiento. Entonces transforma la etnografía, de herramienta para conocer a “los otros” en herramienta para conocer de otra manera, poniendo en simetría lo que él sabe, con lo que saben otros—y en esa relación, en vez de aprender “una cultura”, él aprende otra forma de conocer. 

Burman no pretende que a través de su libro conozcamos las ‘creencias culturales’ de otros. Propone más bien un instrumento para aprender desde esa otra manera de conocer lo que está pasando en Bolivia, y que no podemos entender con la antropología e historia a la que estamos acostumbrados.

En este libro los humanos, los cerros, los ríos, las plazas, y los edificios son seres—y  no como “creencia cultural indígena” sino una manera de pensar el mundo que es diferente a aquella que distingue entre naturaleza y cultura. Pensar también de esta manera es la propuesta de este libro para de-colonizar la antropología y por supuesto las prácticas políticas que comparten con esa disciplina la creencia en su innegable superioridad.”

Marisol de la Cadena, Profesora de Antropología, Universidad de California en Davis.

The process of inclusion of the colonial 'Republic of Indians' into the framework of the Peruvian state involved a series of changes in the Indian's judicial status. This article examines the legal metamorphosis experienced by a shepherd population in Southern Peru, Phinaya, on the basis of both historical and ethnographical information. The aim of the article is to examine the extent to which republican policies designed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries recognized the existence of shepherd populations in the territory of the nation. It also explores to what extent, if any, the twentieth century policies designed to incorporate these populations within a national territory newly defined by its boundaries took account of their patterns of social organization in relation to one aspect of south Peruvian pastoralism: spatial mobility.

En el distrito de Marcapata se realiza, cada cuatro años, el "wasi chakuy" de la iglesia local. Este ritual, de una convocatoria inusitada y cuya duración se prolonga a lo largo de toda una semana, tuvo lugar por última vez en agosto del pasado 2003. En este trabajo no sólo se presenta una descripción etnográfica del "wasi chakuy" marcapateño, sino también se propone un modelo explicativo propio de una tradición antropológica en los estudios sobre organización social en los Andes.

This paper presents, describes, and analyzes the sectoral fallowing system of a sector of the ayllu/community Marcapata Collana (District of Marcapata, Province of Quispicanchi, Department of Cusco) from the perspective offered by other case-studies about the same system from both Peru and Bolivia, the rest of the agro-pastoral activities in which the Marcapatenian families are engaged, and the genealogical links existing among them. The purpose of the paper, aside from dealing with the specificities of the Marcapatenian case, is to establish in which sense and how far an economic or productive phenomenon could be understood from the point of view of the kinship relationships existing among the families engaged in it. It also attempts to consider its comparative scope in order to understand other similar case-studies in the Central Andes.

Beginning with observations of the photographic material of the Čipaya of Carangas, published by Alfred Métraux, this paper is concerned with the temporal dimension conveyed in one of the first ethnographies of this indigenous population inhabiting the highlands of Bolivia. In recent years, it has been stated that Métraux’s engagement with the Andes acted out on two different levels, oscillating between love and hate. Reappraisal of the various ethnographic writings he devoted to the Čipaya in relation with other works, early and more recent, questions the existence of such a distinction, allowing us to transcend the dichotomy between “past” and “present”, that dilemma faced by all ethnographies.

The introduction of the Christian calendar into Spanish-American missionary zones often led to novel forms of calendrical record-keeping as pre-Christian methods of time-keeping were adapted to the Christian festival cycle. Yet while indigenous Christian calendars for Mesoamerica have been well studied, their Andean counterparts remain little known. This article examines a set of khipus (Andean cord texts) from the village of Rapaz in highland Peru that, according to local ritual specialists, served as annual festival calendars.  Research in diocesan archives and the Sixth Lima Council's unpublished reports (1772) reveals the episodic and intermittent nature of the liturgical worship recorded on these khipu calendars.

The article discusses the relevance and performance of the ayllu among the Quechua-speaking, indigenous-peasant populations of the Eastern corner of the Department of Cusco, focusing on two concrete ethnographic examples: Phinaya (District of Pitumarca, Province of Canchis), and Marcapata (Province of Quispicanchi). Considering several morphological, ritual and symbolic aspects, the analysis of field data suggests that despite social and political boundaries significant characteristics of the Eastern Cusco populations share outstanding similarities with the peoples of Collasuyu. Therefore, the paper proposes the necessity of linking the ethnographic data about Southern Peruvian populations with the ethnographical and ethnohistorical research concerning their Bolivian homologues.

This article explores how viscera, bodies, and forces emerge in resemblance to one another. In the connections between the animals' butcher, the treatment of body parts, and the rituals of herd marking in the Argentinean highlands, folds and wrappings of viscera, leathers, meats, and dances make things 'look like' something else in different scales, highlighting correspondences or reflections between entities. Each level of these compositions refers to another, and a change in one can affect all of them. Resemblances are constantly evaluated and topologi-cally manipulated, either to enable their mutual stimulation or to avoid connections and thus to establish differences between the perspectives of different beings. This article argues that the fabrication of similarities and differences through the manipulation of resemblances offers a privileged key to an understanding of Andean and Amerindian sociality.

El objetivo de este artículo es indagar las posibilidades comparativas entre dos conjuntos de datos: por un lado, las estructuras arqueológicas denominadas ch´ullpa en los Andes centrales y meridionales y, por el otro, la presencia de algún indicio de actividad pastoril en las que ellas han sido identificadas. Para logar este propósito se propone un balance de la bibliografía de viajeros y arqueólogos de los siglos XIX y XX. Al mismo tiempo, se argumentará que algunas de las conclusiones del balance precedente deben ser consideradas a la luz de la etnografía contemporánea focalizada en el estudio de estas mismas poblaciones. En este sentido, se aspira a explorar la relación sociedad y naturaleza a través de la eventual articulación de un espacio social en los Andes transitado por pastores y signado por ch´ullpa.

The article presents the case of a “estancia”, that is an Andean traditional settlement frame at highland of northern Chile, whose inhabitants develop the camelid pastoralism activity as a means of family subsistence, to address the field of reproduction of this system. On this basis, founded on ethnographic data, we characterize the aspects of the organizational changes experienced by these herders in a historical context that impute elements of destructuring their traditional socio-environmental management.

In this paper we discuss aspects about the sociologi­cal nature, socio-cultural and historical factors that influence the configuration of processes and popula­tion dynamics of indigenous people in the north of Chile. From ethnographic background of Arica and Parinacota region, considering cases of Codpa Valley and Visviri sector, we perform an analytical prospect­ing about the motivations of migration (expulsion fac­tors of origin sector), the attraction factors to the target area, migration as a family strategy, and the cyclical dynamics of internal migration rural – urban. As a re­sult, we identify some of the historical migration routes as well as the logical and social institutions which have supported the creation of social networks of indigenous people in the joint rural-urban.