Artistic Representations of Andean Diasporas

ARTISTIC REPRESENTATIONS OF ANDEAN DIASPORAS: FOOD AND CAREWORK; MUSIC AND DANCE PERFORMANCE; AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING By Jean Marie Trujillo Submitted to the graduate degree program in Spanish and Portuguese and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson Dr. Vicky Unruh ________________________________ Co-Chairperson Dr. Stuart Day ________________________________ Dr. Jorge Pérez ________________________________ Dr. Verónica Garibotto ________________________________ Dr. Ketty Wong Cruz Date Defended: September 8, 2016 ii The Dissertation Committee for Jean Marie Trujillo certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: ARTISTIC REPRESENTATIONS OF ANDEAN DIASPORAS: FOOD AND CAREWORK; MUSIC AND DANCE PERFORMANCE; AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING ________________________________ Chairperson Vicky Unruh ________________________________ Co-Chairperson Stuart Day Date Approved: September 12, 2016 iii Abstract In this dissertation, I examine representations of Andean diasporas in film, literature, and a variety of other cultural texts, from a comic strip to a cooking show. To contextualize my readings of these cultural representations, I draw from the ever-expanding interdisciplinary fields of Migration Studies, Transnational Studies, and Diaspora Studies. The plethora of social science research in these fields is complemented by close reading of artistic texts that pose their own questions about shifting migrant identities, transnational lives, and diaspora-homeland-host country relationships. Each of my four chapters focuses on the representation of one segment of host country labor markets into which members of Andean diasporas have inserted themselves—or, in the fourth chapter, in which they have been forcibly inserted through trafficking. Each chapter, then, employs a different lens to probe questions about diaspora members’ experiences, their evolving connections with their countries of origin, and their ambivalent reception in their host countries. In Chapter 1, I explore images of Andeans working in food preparation in Argentina, and the surprising way in which diaspora food and foodways become laden with weighty questions about national identity. From that migration trajectory within the Global South, I turn in Chapter 2 to the feminization of migration on a South-North migration corridor driven by the globalization of carework. I consider representations of Andean women who engage in carework in Spain, their experiences of transnational motherhood, and the lives of those left behind. In Chapter 3, I explore music and dance performance of Andean diasporas on a global stage, looking at questions of authenticity as they intersect with possibilities of income, recognition, and connection. In the final chapter, I examine conflicting representations of the trafficking of Andean women to work enslaved in the global sex industry. I probe the complexity of narratives iv of trafficking and rescue in which victims may become traffickers and rescuers may be less than heroic. I conclude by looking at directions for future study, particularly the gaps left when the cultural representations in widest circulation are those produced by natives of host nations, not members of Andean diasporas themselves. v Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been completed without Stuart, Jorge, Verónica, Ketty, Laura, Mary, Len, Katherine, Leasa, Bekah, Sheri, Edma, and the many others who have supported me in myriad ways. Words are inadequate to express my gratitude to my advisor, Vicky, for her mentorship and encouragement over the years. Finally, I wish to thank my parents and most especially José, Alex, and our “Gandalf,” Elisa, who assured me, “More desperate ventures have succeeded.” vi Table of Contents Introduction The Andean Diaspora (1) Chapter 1 “Los kollas de mierda comen cualquier cosa”: Images of Andeans and Food in Argentine Cultural Production (23) Chapter 2 “Quedándonos aquí no vamos a poder”: Andean Migrant Women in the Global “Maid Trade” (64) Chapter 3 “This Music Is Very Cultural”: Music and Dance Performance of the Andean Diaspora (108) Chapter 4 “I was a Nice Girl Once”: Trafficked Andean Women in the Global Sex Industry (149) Conclusion (190) Works Cited (195) 1 Introduction The Andean Diaspora Despojado de tu casa, Vas sin rumbo a la ciudad. Sos el hijo de la nada. Sos la vida que se va. —Juanes, “Fíjate bien” Pero si sigo vivo, por algo ha de ser. Pa’lante, pa’lante, Errante diamante, Un héroe ambulante, Para santo aspirante. —Aterciopelados, “Pa’lante, pa’lante, errante diamante” The final two decades of the twentieth century brought turmoil to the Andean nations, which I identify here as Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.1 The troubled situation in these countries resulted in unprecedented internal displacement as well as large numbers of Andean migrants dispersing via new and established migration routes to sites around the world. Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia saw slow transitions to democratic governments, but at roughly the same time, also experienced serious financial crises caused in part by the economic policies of the military governments that preceded them. Heady with the high commodities prices of the early seventies, they had borrowed extensively. By the end of the seventies, a recession left them struggling to make payments. In the 1980s, interest rates soared, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stepped in to bail them out, but on the condition that they adopt the neoliberal principles of privatization, austerity, deregulation, and free trade (Henderson 301, 305, 307). 2 The neoliberal austerity plans were successful in solving the debt crises, but the effect of their “shock therapy” on the poor was devastating, and income inequality soared (Henderson 306). Not until 2010 would Latin America’s Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, return to its 1980 level (Economist, “Gini,” 3).2 During the same troubled decades, production for the rising international cocaine trade in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia caused further socioeconomic chaos. Particularly in the case of Colombia, drug trafficking kingpins seriously weakened the state and shredded the fabric of society. Both Colombia’s and Peru’s governments also fought against the guerrilla warfare of entrenched Marxist groups, as did paramilitaries. The brutal conflicts among these various actors, while felt throughout society, disproportionately affected the rural peoples caught in the cross fire between insurgents, counter-insurgents, and government forces. “False positives,” the extrajudicial killing of persons who were actually uninvolved in the armed conflicts, were not uncommon. One notable effect of these serious challenges to the Andean nations in the eighties and nineties, in Colombia particularly, was unprecedented internal displacement. All four of these Andean nations also experienced accelerated out-migrations, as did other Latin American countries facing similar crises in what is widely known as the region’s “lost decade.” Rising emigration from Latin America as a whole prompted anthropologist Néstor García Canclini to note in 2002 that Latin America was no longer contained within its borders: “Podemos decir que ‘lo latinoamericano’ anda suelto, desborda su territorio, va a la deriva en rutas dispersas” (García Canclini, Latinoamericanos 20). Due to the deterritorialization of Latin America, researchers working within the field of Latin American literary and cultural studies in the twenty-first century may need to travel to Europe, the United States, or Asia for their investigations, and Andeanists may work in Lima as well as in the highlands (as in the case of Thomas Turino), in 3 Queens as well as in Cuenca (as does Ann Miles), or in the “klein Otavalo” of Amsterdam as well as in Otavalo proper (as do Michelle Wibbelsman and Lynn Meisch). The boundaries of the Andean nations, while still effective markers of state power, no longer hold national or pan- Andean identities or cultures or societies within themselves as containers.3 Questions of belonging or a sense of home spill over borders, over regions, over continents. This “overflow” or “spillage” from the Andean region, with its effects both life-giving and life-threatening, is the topic of my dissertation. How flows of Andeans and Andean cultures are represented in the cultural production of various nations is a question that generates many other productive inquiries. I argue that the artistic representation of the Andean diaspora expresses social tensions about the presence of Andean populations in other countries of the Global South and the Global North and raises questions about national identity and about the newcomers’ potential place within those nations. At the same time, artistic representations of the circulation of Andeans around the world shape the experiences of these populations and serve to bind them, in desired or dangerous ways, to each other, to their countries and region of origin, and, in some fashion, to their host nations. These connections may be complex and fraught, but to explore them in literary, filmic, and other cultural production is to join a large academic project engaged in by scholars of nearly every discipline who seek to theorize aspects of our globalized world and the shifting concepts of identity that have emerged and are still emerging. My participation in that valuable project is an investigation

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