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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 EARTH BEINGS 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 TO PREVENT PIRACY 34 AND PROTECT THIS 35 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, 36 PLEASE 37 DO NOT CIRCULATE OR FORWARD THIS PDF. DELETE IT WHEN YOU ARE DONE WITH IT.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 e Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures / 2011 14 15 presented at e University o Rochester 16 17 Rochester, New York 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 MARISOL 7 8 9 DE LA CADENA 10 11 12 13 EARTH BEINGS 14 15 16 ECOLOGIES OF 17 18 19 PRACTICE ACROSS 20 21 22 ANDEAN WORLDS 23 24 25 Foreword by Robert J. Foster and Daniel R. Reichman 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 Duke University PressDurham and London2015 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 © 2015 Duke University Press 12 All rights reserved 13 Printed in the United States o America on acid-free paper ♾ 14 Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill 15 Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. 16 17 Library o Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data 18 appear on the last printed page o this book. 19 20 21 Cover art: TK 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 TO MARIANO AND NAZARIO TURPO 11 12 AND ALSO, 13 TO CARLOS IVÁN DEGREGORI 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 N 10 11 Ocongate to Madre de Dios 12 ad (Amazon rainforest) to Cuzco Ro 13 14
15 Pacchanta 16 17 18 19 Ausangate PERU 20 Mountain 21 DEPARTMENT OF 22 CUZCO 23 Lima Cuzco 24 Map Area 0 21 345 mi 25 02 468 km 26 27 Ausangate and surroundings. 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 CONTENTS 11 12 13 FOREWORD 14 xi 15 16 PREFACE 17 Ending is Book without Nazario Turpo 18 xv 19 STORY 1 20 Agreeing to Remember, Translating, 21 and Carefully Co- laboring 22 1 23 24 INTERLUDE 1 25 Mariano Turpo: In- Ayllu Leader 26 35 27 STORY 2 28 Mariano Engages “the Land Stru le”: 29 An Unthinkable Indian Leader 30 59 31 32 STORY 3 33 Mariano’s Cosmopolitics: 34 Between Lawyers and Ausangate 35 91 36 37
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1 STORY 4 2 Mariano’s Archive: 3 e Eventfulness o the Ahistorical 4 117 5 INTERLUDE 2 6 Nazario Turpo: “ e Altomisayuq 7 Who Went to Heaven” 8 153 9 10 STORY 5 11 Chamanismo Andino in the ird Millennium: 12 Multiculturalism Meets Earth- Beings 13 179 14 STORY 6 15 A Comedy o Equivocations: Nazario Turpo’s Collaboration 16 with the National Museum o the American Indian 17 209 18 19 STORY 7 20 Munayniyuq: e Owner o the Will 21 (and How to Control It) 22 243 23 EPILOGUE 24 Ethnographic Cosmopolitics 25 273 26 27 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 28 287 29 NOTES 30 291 31 32 REFERENCES 33 303 34 INDEX 35 317 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 FOREWORD 11 12 13 Marisol de la Cadena delivered the Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures in Octo- 14 ber 2011, marking the ¨ © ieth anniversary o the series, which was conceived 15 in 1961 by Bernard Cohn, then chair o the Department o Anthropology and 16 Sociology at the University o Rochester. A founder o modern cultural an- 17 thropology, Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–81) was one o Rochester’s most fa- 18 mous intellectual ¨ gures and a patron o the University o Rochester. He le© 19 a substantial bequest to the university for the founding o a women’s college. 20 e ¨ rst three sets o lectures commemorated Morgan’s nineteenth- 21 century contributions to the study o kinship (Meyer Fortes, 1963), na- 22 tive North Americans (Fred E an, 1964), and comparative civilizations 23 (Robert M. Adams, 1965). Marisol de la Cadena’s lecture, as well as lectures 24 in the subsequent two years given respectively by Janet Carsten and Peter 25 van der Veer, addressed the topics o the original three lectures from the per- 26 spective o anthropology in the twenty-¨ rst century. e lecture series now 27 includes an evening public lecture followed by a day- long workshop in which 28 a dra© o the planned monograph is discussed by members o the Depart- 29 ment o Anthropology and by commentators invited from other institu- 30 tions. e formal discussants who participated in the workshop devoted to 31 de la Cadena’s manuscript were María Lugones from the University o Bing- 32 hamton; Paul Nadasdy from Cornell University; Sinclair omson from 33 New York University; and Janet Berlo, omas Gibson, and Daniel Reich- 34 man from the University o Rochester. 35 De la Cadena’s work marks an important milestone in the history o both 36 the Morgan lecture series and ethnographic practice. Her book is based on 37
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1 ¨ eldwork in the Peruvian Andes with two renowned healers (and much 2 more), Mariano Turpo and Nazario Turpo, his son. rough her ethno- 3 graphic co-labor with the Turpos, de la Cadena traces changes in the politics 4 o indigenous people in Peru, from 1950s liberalism and socialism to the neo- 5 liberal multiculturalism o the 2000s. Mariano Turpo was a key participant 6 in the Peruvian land reform movement, which in the 1960s ended a system 7 o debt peonage under which native people were essentially bound to the 8 hacienda on which they were born. Later, Mariano’s son, Nazario, worked as 9 an Andean shaman leading groups o international tourists in Cuzco; he was 10 also invited to work as a consultant on the Quechua exhibit at the National 11 Museum o the American Indian in Washington, D.C. 12 De la Cadena’s work extends and critically transforms the legacy o Lewis 13 Henry Morgan, whose landmark contributions to anthropology were made 14 possible by ethnographic collaboration with Native American intellectu- 15 als, particularly Ely S. Parker, a member o the Tonawanda Branch o the 16 Seneca, whom Morgan met while browsing in an Albany bookstore in 1844. 17 Parker was in Albany to convince New York lawmakers that Seneca land had 18 been illegally sold to representatives o the Ogden Land Company under 19 the Treaty o Bu± alo Creek. Beginning with this chance encounter, Mor- 20 gan had a lifelong collaboration with Parker, who became Morgan’s prin- 21 cipal source o information about the Iroquois. Morgan dedicated his ¨ rst 22 major work, e League o the Iroquois (1851), to Parker as “the fruit o our 23 joint researches.” 24 e Turpos talked about their experiences, especially their interactions 25 with earth- beings, in ways that many people, including powerful Peruvian 26 politicians, are not inclined to take seriously. rough the Turpos’ stories— 27 and recursive consideration o the terms (in all senses o the word) for tell- 28 ing their stories—de la Cadena re´ ects on issues o paramount concern to 29 current anthropology, from the meanings o indigeneity in the context o 30 multiculturalism to the contested agency o nonhumans and material things. 31 Moreover, this book questions the basic premise and promise o ethnogra- 32 phy—namely, to translate between lifeworlds that, although di± erent and 33 distinct, remain partially and asymmetrically connected. What are the oppor- 34 tunities and imponderables, the risks and rewards, that inhere in the work o 35 translation across epistemic and hegemonic divides? 36 One o de la Cadena’s central claims in the present work is that the exis- 37 tence o alternative modes o being in the world should neither be dismissed
xii FOREWORD
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as superstition nor celebrated as a diversity o cultural beliefs. Rather than 1 thinking o cultural diversity as the range o ways that di± erent human groups 2 understand a shared natural world, we should rethink di± erence in ontologi- 3 cal terms: how do shared modes o human understanding interpret funda- 4 mentally di± erent, yet always entangled, worlds? ese intellectual concerns, 5 which are fundamental to anthropology and humanism in general, take on 6 increasingly practical importance in the context o contemporary politics. As 7 in Morgan’s time, the expansion o extractive industries like mining threatens 8 the lives o native peoples throughout the Americas. e capacity to de¨ ne 9 and imagine the sensible world in terms besides those o nature partitioned 10 from humanity has therefore become a crucial instrument o stru le. By re- 11 vealing the ontological dimensions o contemporary politics that shape mu- 12 seum exhibitions in the United States as well as public demonstrations in 13 Peru, de la Cadena gives us a compelling example o how anthropology can 14 promote recognition that there might be more than one stru le going on. 15 Her co- labor with Mariano and Nazario Turpo yields a cosmopolitical vision 16 that pre¨ gures the possibility o respectful dialogue among divergent worlds. 17 18 19 Robert J. Foster | Daniel R. Reichman 20 21 CODIRECTORS Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture Series 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Nazario’s happiness (riding a horse) April 2007—a few months before he died. 32 (photographs are by the author unless otherwise indicated). 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 PREFACE ENDING THIS BOOK 9 10 WITHOUT NAZARIO TURPO 11 12 13 e book that follows this preface was composed through a series o con- 14 versations I had with Nazario Turpo, and his father, Mariano, both Andean 15 peasants and much more. I met them in January 2002, and a© er Mariano’s 16 death two years later, Nazario and I continued working together and even- 17 tually became close friends. On July 9, 2007, Nazario died in a tra· c acci- 18 dent. He was commuting from his village, Pacchanta, to the city o Cuzco, 19 where he worked as an “Andean shaman” for a tourism agency. He liked the 20 job a lot, he had told me; he was a wage earner for the ¨ rst time in his life, 21 making an average o $400 a month—perhaps a bit more, considering the 22 tips and gi© s he received from people who started a relationship with him as 23 tourists and ended up as friends. His job had changed his life, and not only 24 because Andean shamanism is a new colloquial category in Cuzco (created 25 by the convergence o local anthropology, tourism, and New Age practices) 26 and therefore also a new potential subject position for some indigenous indi- 27 viduals. It made him very happy, he said, to be able to buy medicine easily 28 for his wife’s leg, which was rheumatic because o the constant, biting cold 29 in Pacchanta, which is more than 4,000 meters above sea level. To be able to 30 buy and eat rice, noodles, and fruit instead o potatoes, the daily (and only) 31 bread at that altitude; and to purchase books, notebooks, and pencils for his 32 grandson, José Hernán (a charming boy, who was twelve years old when I 33 last saw him, immediately a© er Nazario’s death)—that made him feel good. 34 On many counts, Nazario was living an exceptional life for an indigenous 35 Andean man. His labor was crucial to the bene¨ ts that tourism generated in 36 the region, and the lion’s share o the pro¨ ts from his work went to the owner 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Nazario and Mariano saying good-bye. January 2003. Nazario’s job 19 as an Andean shaman had recently begun. 20 21 22 o the agency that hired him. Even so, Nazario’s takings were better than the 23 vanishingly small income people in Pacchanta (and similar villages) get from 24 selling alpaca and sheep’s wool for the international market at ever- decreasing 25 local prices. Also unlike his fellow villagers (common Indians to Cuzqueño 26 urbanites), Nazario was a well- known individual. When he died, I got a ´ urry 27 o e- mail messages from people in Cuzco and from the many friends and 28 acquaintances he had in the United States. Some o them wrote obituaries. 29 Illustrating the power o globalization to connect what is thought to be dis- 30 connected, an obituary commemorating Nazario’s life appeared in the Wash- 31 ington Post a month a© er he died (Krebs 2007); that same day, there was a 32 post about his death in Harper’s blog (Horton 2007). I also wrote something 33 akin to an obituary and sent it to several friends o mine to share my sadness. 34 Parts o what I wrote appeared in a newspaper in Lima (Huilca 2007), and a 35 monthly le© - leaning political newspaper called Lucha Indígena published the 36 whole two pages (de la Cadena 2007). I want to introduce this ethnographic 37 work with that piece, to honor Nazario’s memory and to conjure up his pres-
xvi PREFACE
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ence into the book he co- labored with me. I had thought we would write the 1 book together; it saddens me that we did not. Here is what I wrote when Na- 2 zario died; it is my way o introducing Nazario and his father to you. 3 4 5 6 NAZARIO TURPO, INDIGENOUS AND 7 8 COSMOPOLITAN, IS DEAD 9 On July 9th [2007], there was a traffic accident in Saylla, a small town near 10 the city of Cuzco. A minibus crashed; so far sixteen bodies have been found. 11 A friend of mine was among them; he was very well known in the region, 12 and was admired by people in several foreign countries. He was known as a 13 “chamán” in the city of Cuzco, and as a curandero or yachaq (something like 14 a curer of ills) in the countryside. My friend’s name was Nazario Turpo. He 15 spoke Quechua, could write a little Spanish although he hardly spoke it, and 16 would have been considered an extraordinary person anywhere in the world. 17 He was exceptional in the Andes, because unlike other peasants like him, life 18 was being gracious with him—it even seemed as if his grandchildren’s future 19 could change, and be somewhat less harsh than their present. The most out- 20 standing part of it all was that he was well known—a historically remarkable 21 feature for an Andean herder of alpacas and sheep. The Washington Post had 22 published a long piece about him in August 2003. Around the same time, Ca- 23 retas [a Lima-based magazine that circulates nationwide] had a story about 24 Nazario, including several pictures of him in its glossy pages. By then he had 25 already traveled several times to Washington, D.C., where he was a curator 26 of the Andean exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American 27 Indian (NMAI). An indigenous yachaq mingling with museum specialists in 28 Washington, D.C., was certainly a news-making event in Peru. 29 Nazario took real pleasure relating to what, to him, was not only new but 30 immensely unexpected as well. Complexly indigenous and cosmopolitan, he 31 was comfortable learning, and completely at home showing his total lack of 32 awareness of things like the inside of planes, the idea of big chain hotels (and 33 their interiors!), subways, golf carts, even men’s bathrooms. He asked ques- 34 tions whenever he had doubts—just as when I or other visitors asked ques- 35 tions when learning how to find our way around his village, he said. (Weren’t 36 we always asking how to walk uphill, find drinking water, hold a llama by the 37
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1 neck and avoid its spit, wade a torrential creek—even how to chew coca 2 leaves? It was the same, wasn’t it?) Back at home, his travels provided stories 3 that he told Liberata, his wife, and José Hernán, his twelve-year- old grand- 4 son (who I suspect was his favorite). His journeys abroad also intensified his 5 appeal to tourists, and what had started as an occasional gig with a creative 6 tourism entrepreneur gradually became a regular job. Relatively soon, and 7 through New Age networks of meaning, money, and action, Nazario saw his 8 ritual practices translated into what began to be known as Andean shaman- 9 ism. During the peak tourist season, from May to August, his job became 10 almost full time, as it required commuting from the countryside to the city at 11 least four times a month, for five days at a time. When he died, he was on one 12 of these commutes, half an hour away from his final destination: the tourism 13 agency where the following day he would meet a tourist group and travel with 14 them to Machu Picchu, that South American Mecca for foreign visitors. Those 15 of us who travel that route are aware of the dangers that haunt it; yet none of 16 us imagined that this exceptional guy would die so common a death in the 17 Andes, where, as a result of a state policy that has abandoned areas deemed 18 remote, and a biopolitics of neglect, buses and roads are precarious at best, 19 and frequently fatal. 20 Nazario was the eldest son of Mariano Turpo, another exceptional human 21 being, who had died of old age three years earlier. They all lived in Pac- 22 chanta—a village inscribed in state records as a “peasant community” where 23 people earn their living by selling (by the pound and for US pennies) the meat 24 and wool of the alpacas, llamas, and sheep that they rear. Pacchanta is in 25 the cordillera of Ausangate, an impressive conglomeration of snow-covered 26 peaks where an annual pilgrimage to the shrine of the Lord of Coyllur Rit’i 27 takes place. Local public opinion has it that around 60,000 people attend the 28 event every year; I know they come from all over Peru and different parts of 29 the world. The zone is also known locally as the area where Ausangate, an 30 earth-being—and a mountain that on clear days can be seen from Cuzco, the 31 city—exerts its power and influence. In the ’60s, leftist politicians visited Pac- 32 chanta with relative frequency, lured by Mariano Turpo’s skillful confrontation 33 against the landowner of the largest wool-producing hacienda in Cuzco— 34 it was called Lauramarca. Mariano was a partner in struggle with nationally 35 famous unionists like Emiliano Huamantica, and socialist lawyers like Laura 36 Caller. Back then, the journey usually took two days. It started with a car ride 37 from the city of Cuzco to the town closest to Pacchanta (Ocongate), and then
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required a combination of walking and horseback riding. Changes in the world 1 order have affected even this remote order of things: currently tourists arrive 2 [in Pacchanta] from the city in only five hours, ready to trek the paths that cut 3 through imposing mountains, lagoons of never-before- seen tones of blue and 4 green, and a silence interrupted only by the sound of the wind and the distant 5 hoofs of beautiful wild vicunas. This idyllic scenery is not the result of con- 6 servationist policies, but rather of a state politics of abandonment, which is 7 at times shamefully explicit. But the new visitors do not seek the revolution 8 like the previous ones; until his death, they were lured by Nazario’s complex 9 ability, which he had learned from his father, to relate with the earth-beings 10 that compose what we call the surrounding landscape. 11 I was lured to Pacchanta by Mariano’s knowledge. If tourists learned about 12 Nazario through networks of spiritualism generally identified as New Age, my 13 networks were those of peasant politics, development NGOs, and anthro- 14 pology. Mariano had built and nurtured complex connections during his years 15 as a local organizer, and though the individuals changed as people grew old, 16 and politics and the economy changed, too, the networks survived. When I 17 arrived in Pacchanta, it was not politics that wove those networks, but tour- 18 ism. They continued to connect the village to Cuzco and Lima—but this time 19 links also existed with Washington, D.C., New York, New Mexico, North Caro- 20 lina . . . and through me, in California. As they had been from the beginning, 21 Cuzco anthropologists were prominent in the networks, which did not surprise 22 me given their hegemonic (and almost exclusive) interest in “Andean culture.” 23 I admired Mariano profoundly. He was very strong, extremely courageous, 24 and relentlessly analytical; although he did not intend it, I constantly felt 25 dwarfed by him. An exceptionally talented human being, it was, without a 26 doubt, an honor to have met him. His cumulative actions—physically con- 27 fronting the largest Cuzco landowner, and then following up this confrontation 28 legally and politically through union organizing among Quechua speakers— 29 had been crucial at effecting the Law of Agrarian Reform in 1969, one of the 30 most important state-sponsored transformations Peru underwent in the last 31 century. Mariano was undoubtedly a history maker. Yet, in contradiction with 32 the far-reaching networks he built, the national public sphere—leftist and con- 33 servative—had always ignored this local chapter of Peruvian history. As a 34 monolingual Quechua speaker, Mariano’s deeds could amount only to local 35 stories—if that. And of course he had stories to tell; those were the ones I had 36 gone after and listened to for many months. 37
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1 His community had chosen him as its leader, among other things, be- 2 cause he could speak well—allinta rimay, in Quechua—and because he was a 3 yachaq—a knower, also in Quechua. This resulted in his unmatched ability to 4 relate assertively with his surroundings, which included powerful beings of all 5 sorts, human and other-than- human. Mariano used to describe his activities 6 as fighting for freedom—he said the word in Spanish, libertad—against the 7 landowner, who he qualified as munayniyuq, someone whose will expresses 8 orders that are beyond question and reason. Being a yachaq, Mariano had the 9 talent to negotiate with power, which in his world emerged both from the let- 10 tered city and from what we know as nature; the hacendado also drew power 11 from both but was also firmly anchored in the first. To negotiate with all aspects 12 of power, and enable his own negotiations with the lettered world, Mariano 13 built alliances; his networks ramified unpredictably, even to eventually include 14 someone like me, a cross-continental connection between the University of 15 California, Davis, and Pacchanta—and, of course, to Lima and Cuzco. The 16 networks also cut across local social distances and included individuals who 17 did not identify as indigenous in the nearby villages, the hacienda, and the sur- 18 rounding towns. Reading and writing were crucial assets that Mariano strived 19 to include—and he also found them at home. Mariano Chillihuani—Nazario’s 20 godfather—could read and write, and was perhaps Mariano Turpo’s closest 21 collaborator; his puriq masiy, “companion in walking” in Quechua. The two 22 Marianos traveled to Lima and Cuzco, talked to lawyers, hacendados, politi- 23 cians, state officials, and, according to many, they even had an audience with 24 Peruvian President Fernando Belaúnde. “They always walked together,” Na- 25 zario recounted, “my father talked, my padrino read and wrote.” That means 26 that together they could talk, read, and write. 27 Mariano and Nazario’s knowledge was inseparable from their practice; 28 it was know-how, which was also simultaneously political and ethical. And 29 not infrequently, these practices appeared as obligations with humans and 30 other-than- humans: the failure to fulfill certain actions could have conse- 31 quences beyond the practitioner’s control. Their political experience enabled 32 them to communicate with and participate in modern institutions; their ethical 33 know-how worked locally, and traveled awkwardly because not many beyond 34 Ausangate’s reach can understand that humans can have obligations to what 35 they see as mountains. Some of the obligations are satisfied through what the 36 anthropology of the Andes knows as “ritual offerings”; the most charismatic 37 and currently popular among tourists are despachos (from the Spanish verb
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Nazario’s death was covered by La República, one of the most important 15 nationwide newspapers; the title means “The Altomisayoq That Went to Heaven,” 16 and the piece contributed to Nazario’s prominence as a public shaman. It also 17 featured an excerpt of my writing—the obituary that I also present here. The 18 smaller photographs, taken at the inauguration of National Museum of the 19 American Indian, in Washington, D.C., are mine. 20 21 despachar, to send or dispatch). These are small packets containing different 22 goods, depending on the specific circumstance of the despacho and what 23 it wants to accomplish. Mariano and Nazario were well known for the effec- 24 tiveness of their dispatches, the way they offered them, what they contained, 25 the places they sent the offering from, and the words they used to do so. 26 The popularity of despachos even reached former President Alejandro Toledo, 27 who, in indigenist rapture, inaugurated his term as president with this ritual 28 in Machu Picchu. Nazario Turpo was among the five or six “authentic indige- 29 nous experts” invited to the ceremony. The invitation had reached Pacchanta 30 through Mariano’s networks, which as they had in the past, included state offi- 31 cials. This was 2001, however; multiculturalism was the name of the neoliberal 32 game, tourism its booming industry, and “Andean Culture” one of its uniquely 33 commodifiable attractions. Mariano was too old for the journey, so Nazario 34 went instead. “I did not perform the despacho,” he told me, “I cured Toledo’s 35 knee. Remember how he was limping? After I cured him he did not limp any- 36 more.” He did not explain how he did it—and I did not ask. I imagine that he did 37
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1 what he knew, like when a U.S. traveler fell when she was climbing a small hill 2 near Nazario’s house. After carefully lifting her, he wrapped her body—actu- 3 ally bandaged it—in a blanket to prevent her bones from moving and hurting 4 even more. Once in the bus, he took care of her all the way from Pacchanta to 5 the city. I met the woman during what would be my last sojourn with Nazario 6 in his village; she assured me that Nazario’s treatment had helped. That she 7 went back to the remoteness of Pacchanta was proof to me that she believed 8 what she said. 9 Nazario was aware (indeed!) that, depending on the circumstances, many 10 knowledges, things, and practices were more effective than what he knew and 11 did. Once I asked him why he was not able to cure José Hernán, his grandson, 12 who was suffering from stomachaches. He looked at me, and with a you’ve- 13 got-to- be- kidding- me smile said, Because up here I do not have antibiotics. 14 But learning, in this case about antibiotics, did not replace Nazario’s healing 15 practices; rather, it extended his knowledge: knowing about antibiotics meant 16 to know more, not to know better. Following him, I learned about the complex 17 territorial and subjective geometry that his practices cut across; their bound- 18 aries are not single or simple. His practices indeed may be incommensurable 19 with the “extraneous” forms of doing and thinking that they have cohabited 20 and negotiated with for more than 500 years. Yet, most complexly, Nazario’s 21 practices—and those of others like him—variously relate to these “different” 22 forms of doing without shedding their own—or as I said above, thinking that 23 “now they know better.” An anecdote may provide a concrete illustration. As 24 part of the inaugural ceremonies for the NMAI in Washington, D.C., the indige- 25 nous curators were invited to a panel at the World Bank, and Nazario Turpo 26 was of course among them. Nazario gave his presentation in Quechua and 27 requested funding from the Bank to build irrigation canals in his village. The 28 water was drying out, he explained, “due to the increasing amount of airplanes 29 that fly over Ausangate, making him mad and turning him black.” I do not know 30 who told him what, but later at the hotel he explained to me: Now I know that 31 these people call this that the earth is heating up; that is how I will explain it 32 to them next time. And half seriously, half jokingly we talked about how, after 33 all, in Spanish to heat up, calentarse, can also mean to be mad. In the end, 34 I was sure that Nazario’s will to understand “global warming” was far more 35 capacious than that of the World Bank officials, who could not even begin to 36 fathom taking Ausangate’s rage seriously. Nazario certainly outdid them in 37
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complexity; he had the ability to visit many worlds, and through them offer 1 his as well. Today all those worlds are mourning because Nazario is no more. 2 3 4 5 Nazario was not only a co- laborer in this ethnographic work. He was a very 6 special friend; we shared pleasurable and strenuous walks and talks between 7 2002 and 2007. We communicated across obvious boundaries o language, 8 culture, place, and subjectivity. We enjoyed our times together—thoroughly. 9 We laughed together and were scared together; we agreed and disagreed with 10 each other; and we also became impatient with each other when we failed 11 to communicate, which usually occurred when I insisted on understanding 12 in my own terms. I have already told you enough about suerte—you cannot 13 know what it is, how many times do I have to explain suerte to you? You do not 14 understand, and I am repeating, and repeating, he told me the last December 15 I saw him, in 2006. And I pleaded: “Just one more time, I will understand 16 Nazario, I promise.” But o course I did not understand, and I cannot re- 17 member i he repeated the explanation or not. is is what Nazario had said: 18 Apu Ausangate, Wayna Ausangate, Bernabel Ausangate, Guerra Ganador, Apu 19 Qullqi Cruz, you who have gold and silver. Give us strength for these comments, 20 these things we are talking about, so that we have a good conversation. Give us 21 ideas, give us thoughts, give us suerte now, in the place called Cuzco, in the place 22 called Peru. en he looked at me and said, I you want you can now chew 23 coca, i you do not want to, do not do it. But I intuited that it would be better, I 24 would have suerte i I did it, and I wanted to explore that intuition. Suerte is 25 a Spanish word whose equivalent in English is luck, and I was not asking for 26 a linguistic translation—I do not need it. Rather, I wanted to understand the 27 ways in which Nazario paired suerte (was it luck?), thinking, and the entities 28 that Nazario referred to as Apu, which are also mountains, and whose names 29 he had invoked before starting our conversation. Among tirakuna, or earth- 30 beings—a composite noun made o tierra, the Spanish word for “earth,” and 31 pluralized with the Quechua su· x kuna—Apu (apukuna is the plural) can 32 be the most powerful in the Andes.¼ Nazario’s refusal to explain again was 33 one o many signi¨ cant ethnographic moments—those moments in our con- 34 versation that slowed down my thoughts as they revealed the limits o my 35 understanding in the complex geometry o our conversations. In this geome- 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 The author and Nazario say goodbye in the town of Ocongate 21 as Nazario gets ready to take the bus to the city of Cuzco where 22 a group of tourists awaits him. July 2004. Photograph by Steve 23 Boucher. Used by permission. 24 25 try, tirakuna are other-than- human beings who participate in the lives o 26 those who call themselves runakuna, people (usually monolingual Quechua 27 speakers) who like Mariano and Nazario, also actively partake in modern 28 institutions that cannot know, let alone recognize, tirakuna.½ 29 My relationship with the Turpo family started with an archive—a collec- 30 tion o written documents that Mariano had kept as part o an event that 31 lasted for decades, which he explained as the ¨ ght he engaged in against a 32 landowner and for liberty. When we worked with the documents, Mariano 33 would always start our interaction by opening an old plastic bag where he 34 kept his coca leaves and grabbing a bunch. A© er inviting me to do the same 35 thing, he would search in his bunch for three or four o the best coca leaves, 36 carefully straighten them out, fan them like a hand o cards, and then hold 37 them in front o his mouth and blow on them toward Ausangate and its rela-
xxiv PREFACE
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tives—the highest mountains and most important earth- beings surround- 1 ing us. is presentation o coca leaves is known as k’intu; runakuna o± er 2 it among themselves and to earth- beings on social occasions, big or small, 3 everyday or extraordinary. O± ering k’intu to earth-beings, Mariano was 4 doing what Nazario had also done when I asked about suerte (and he refused 5 to explain): they were welcoming tirakuna to participate in our conversa- 6 tions. And they were doing so hoping for good questions and good answers, 7 for good remembering, and for a good relationship between us and all those 8 involved in the conversation. Nazario’s refusal to explain suerte sent me back 9 to this moment, for Mariano’s practice su ested a relationship between the 10 two o us, the written documents, and the earth- beings. All o us—including 11 the documents and tirakuna—had di± erent, even incommensurable, rela- 12 tions with each other, yet through Mariano, we could engage in conversation. 13 Mariano’s capacity to mediate highlighted an interesting feature o our re- 14 lationship. On the one hand, he could interact with Ausangate and the other 15 tirakuna who could in´ uence our conversation, and he had also learned, at 16 least to an extent, the language o the documents. On the other hand, I could 17 read the documents and access them directly; I could access tirakuna only 18 through Mariano and Nazario and perhaps other runakuna. With my usual 19 epistemic tools, I could not know Ausangate—not even i I got lucky. 20 Nazario’s refusal “to explain again” highlights the inevitable, thick, and 21 active mediation o translation in our relationship—and it worked both 22 ways, o course. I could not but translate, move his ideas to my analytic se- 23 mantics, and whatever I ended up with would not, isomorphically, be identi- 24 cal to what he had said or mean what he meant. erefore, he had already told 25 me enough about suerte to allow me to get as much as I could. Our worlds 26 were not necessarily commensurable, but this did not mean we could not 27 communicate. Indeed, we could, insofar as I accepted that I was going to leave 28 something behind, as with any translation—or even better, that our mutual 29 understanding was also going to be full o gaps that would be di± erent for 30 each o us, and would constantly show up, interrupting but not preventing 31 our communication. Borrowing a notion from Marilyn Strathern, ours was 32 a “partially connected” conversation (2004). Later in the book I will explain 33 how I use this concept. For now, I will just say that while our interactions 34 formed an e± ective circuit, our communication did not depend on sharing 35 single, cleanly identical notions—theirs, mine, or a third new one. We shared 36 conversations across di± erent onto- epistemic formations; my friends’ expla- 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 A cross marks the place of the traffic accident where Nazario 25 Turpo died. September 2009. 26 27 28 nations extended my understanding, and mine extended theirs, but there 29 was a lot that exceeded our grasp—mutually so. And thus, while in´ ecting 30 the conversation, the Turpos’ terms did not become mine, nor mine theirs. 31 I translated them into what I could understand, and this understanding was 32 full o the gaps o what I did not get. It worked the same way on Mariano and 33 Nazario’s side; they understood my work with intermittencies. And neither 34 o us was necessarily aware o what or when those intermittencies were. ey 35 were part our relationship that, nevertheless, was one o communication and 36 learning. For Nazario and Mariano such partial connections were not a novel 37 experience; their lives were made with them. I will not dwell on this now, for
xxvi PREFACE
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this historical story o partial connections is what the whole book is about. 1 For me, however, the realization that a “gappy” circuit o connections was 2 what I would write o m (and not only about) was an important insight. It 3 made me think back to Walter Benjamin’s (1968) su estion o making the 4 language o the original in´ ect the language o the translation. But o course 5 I had to tweak this idea too, for following Nazario’s refusal to explain more, 6 I could not access the original—or rather there was no original outside o 7 our conversations: their texts and mine were coconstituted in practice, and 8 though they were “only” partially connected, they were also inseparable. e 9 conversation was ours, and neither a puri¨ ed “them” (or him) and “us” (or I) 10 could result from it. e limits o what each o us could learn from the other 11 were already present in what the other revealed in each o us. 12 Rather than chapters, I have divided this book into stories because I com- 13 posed it with the accounts Mariano and Nazario told me. Story 1 presents 14 the conceptual, analytical, and empirical conditions o my co- labor with the 15 Turpos; I intend it to take the place o the usual introduction. e rest o 16 the book is divided into two sections o three stories each, both preceded 17 by a corresponding interlude. e ¨ rst one introduces Mariano Turpo; his 18 political pursuits with humans and earth- beings are the matter o the fol- 19 lowing three stories. e second interlude presents Nazario, whose activities 20 as “Andean shaman” and local thinker occupy the rest o the book. Ausan- 21 gate, the earth- being that is also a mountain, occupies a prominent place in 22 our joint endeavor for it made our conversations possible in its “more than 23 one less than many” (see Haraway 1991 and Strathern 2004) ways o being. 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
PREFACE xxvii
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 The road to Mariano’s house. January 2002. 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 STORY 1 AGREEING TO REMEMBER, 7 8 TRANSLATING, AND CAREFULLY 9 10 CO-LABORING 11 12 13 ere are things to remember, these friends, these sisters have come 14 here, we are getting together, we are conversing, we are remembering. 15 Yuyaykunapaq kanman, huq amigunchiskuna, panachiskuna chayamun, 16 chaywan tupashayku, chaywan parlarisayku, yuyarisayku. 17 NAZARIO TURPO July 2002 18 19 20 At the National Museum o the American Indian, and most speci¨ cally 21 within the walls that circumscribe the Quechua Community exhibit, there 22 are pictures o most o its curators: Nazario Turpo; a councilwoman from 23 Pisac; and two anthropology professors from the University o Cuzco, Aure- 24 lio Carmona and Jorge Flores Ochoa. Nazario’s picture includes his family— 25 his wife, children, and grandchildren—and his dearest friend, Octavio 26 Crispín. e caption explains he is “a paqu—a spiritual leader or shaman.” 27 Carmona is described as an ethno- archaeologist and professor o anthro- 28 pology who “is also a shaman who studies and practices traditional medi- 29 cine.” And Flores Ochoa says o Carmona and himself: “We are anthropolo- 30 gists o our people. We feel and practice those things—we are not a group that 31 just observes.”¼ All o these curators attended the inauguration o the mu- 32 seum, where I took the picture that I o± er here.½ 33 Anthropology is part o these pictures—those at the exhibit and the one 34 I took—and behind anthropology, as we all know, there is translation (Asad 35 1986; Chakrabarty 2000; Liu 1999; Rafael 2003; Viveiros de Castro 2004b). 36 Importantly, there are di± erences in the relationship between translation 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Aurelio Carmona, Nazario Turpo, and Jorge Flores Ochoa at the inauguration of 21 the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington D.C., September 2004. 22 23 and my practice o anthropology in Cuzco, and that o Carmona and Flores 24 Ochoa in the same region. I was born in Lima. Quechua is not my native 25 language, and my pro¨ ciency is weak, to say the least. In contrast, Carmona 26 and Flores Ochoa were born in the southern Andes o Peru and are native 27 speakers o both Quechua and Spanish. When they interacted with Naza- 28 rio—whether as anthropologists or as friends—they did not need transla- 29 tion. However, the Turpos and I could not avoid it. Articulated at the inter- 30 section o disciplinary practice and regional belonging, this di± erence—and 31 not only my theoretical views—made translation a very tangible feature in 32 my relationship with Mariano and Nazario. rough our conversations we 33 worked together to understand each other, co- laboring through linguistic 34 and conceptual hurdles, assisted by many intermediaries, particularly Eliza- 35 beth Mamani.¾ Our joint labor created the conversations that we could con- 36 sider “the original” for this book. us it was not Nazario’s or Mariano’s cul- 37 tural text that I translated. Instead, the original—which, I repeat, consisted
2 STORY 1
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o our conversations—was composed in translation by many o us. Inevi- 1 tably, as Walter Benjamin warned, in cra© ing our conversations we selected 2 “what could also be written [or talked among us] in the translator’s own lan- 3 guage”—in this case, Quechua and Spanish, and their conceptual practices 4 (Benjamin 2002, 251). Countering the usual feeling that regrets what is lost 5 in translation, my sense is that in co- laboring with Mariano and Nazario I 6 gained an awareness o the limits o our mutual understanding and, as im- 7 portant, o that which exceeded translation and even stopped it. 8 is ¨ rst story in the book is about how Mariano, Nazario, and I got to 9 know each other. It recounts the initial conversations and the agreements 10 that led to the book, and the last dialogues that Nazario and I had. e ¨ rst 11 discussions set the terms o our working together; they describe the pact the 12 Turpo family and I made. When Mariano died two years into our conversa- 13 tions, I began working with Nazario—who as I mentioned in the preface, be- 14 came a very dear friend. Although I start this narrative foregrounding trans- 15 lation, it was only during our last visits that I became aware o the intricate 16 manner in which it had mediated our conversations and created a shared 17 space o sensations, practices, and words, the valence o which neither o us 18 could fully grasp. A© er Nazario’s death, and as I wrote and thought through 19 this book, the feeling o those last conversations made it palpable that no 20 translation would be capacious enough to allow me to know certain prac- 21 tices. I could translate them, but that did not mean I knew them. And fre- 22 quently not knowing was not a question o leaving meaning behind, because 23 for many practices or words there was no such thing as meaning. e prac- 24 tices were what my friends did, and the words were what they said; but what 25 those practices did or what those words said escaped my knowing. O course 26 I described them in forms that I could understand; but when I turned those 27 practices or words into what I could grasp, that—what I was describing—was 28 not what those practices did, or what those words said. Our communication 29 (as with any conversation) did not depend on sharing single, cleanly overlap- 30 ping notions; yet very particularly, it did not depend on making our di± er- 31 ent notions equivalent. Were I to have created equivalences, they would have 32 erased the di± erence between us, and this—the di± erence—was too palpable 33 (and its conceptual challenge important) to allow inadvertent erasures. Our 34 conversation was “partially connected,” in Marilyn Strathern’s sense (2004; 35 see also Green 2005; Haraway 1991; Wagner 1991). Intriguingly, this partial 36 connection was composed of, among other elements, our shared and dissimi- 37
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1 lar condition as Peruvians. Our ways o knowing, practicing, and making our 2 distinct worlds—our worldings, or ways o making worldsÁ—had been “cir- 3 cuited” together and shared practices for centuries; however, they had not be- 4 come one. In the circuit, some practices have become subordinate, o course, 5 but they have not disappeared into those that became dominant, nor did 6 they merge into a single and simple hybrid. Rather, they have remained dis- 7 tinct, i connected—almost symbiotically so, i I may borrow from biology. 8 Inhabiting this historical condition that enabled us to constantly know and 9 not know what the other one was talking about, my friends’ explanations 10 conversed with mine, and mine with theirs, and in´ ected the dialogue with 11 our heterogeneity. I translated what they said into what I could understand, 12 and this understanding was full o the gaps o what I did not get. It worked 13 the same way for Nazario and Mariano, but their awareness o this process 14 was not new. ey were used to partial connections in their complex dealings 15 with the worlds beyond Pacchanta, which also emerged in Pacchanta with- 16 out consuming its di± erence. On things that are partially connected, John 17 Law writes: “ e argument is that ‘this’ (whatever ‘this’ may be) is included 18 in ‘that,’ but ‘this’ cannot be reduced to ‘that’” (2004, 64). To paraphrase: 19 my world was included in the world that my friends inhabited and vice versa, 20 but their world could not be reduced to mine, or mine to theirs. Aware o 21 this condition in a manner that does not need to be expressed in words, we 22 knew that our being together joined worlds that were distinct and also the 23 same. And rather than maintaining the separation that the di± erence caused, 24 we chose to explore the di± erence together. Using the tools from each o our 25 worlds, we worked to understand what we could about the other’s world and 26 created a shared space that was also made by something that was uncommon 27 to each o us. 28 Like the conversations I had with my two friends, this book is composed 29 in translation and through partial connections. It is through partially con- 30 nected translations—and also partially translated connections—that I re´ ect 31 on the complexities across worlds that formed Mariano’s and Nazario’s lives. 32 ose worlds extended from Ausangate to Washington, D.C., and emerged 33 through the institutions o the nation- state called Peru (which in turn iden- 34 tify my friends as peasants or Indians) and within it the region o Cuzco 35 geopolitically demarcated as a “department.” Across worlds Mariano part- 36 nered with le© ist politicians who considered him a smart political organizer 37 and an Indian (and therefore not quite a politician), and Nazario worked as
4 STORY 1
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an “Andean shaman” for a tourist agency that catered to relatively wealthy 1 foreigners interested in New Age experiences or simply in the exotic. And 2 whether in their relations with the state or the regional tourist economy, ti- 3 rakuna—which, to remind the reader, I translate as earth- beings—had a pres- 4 ence that blurred the known distinction between humans and nature, for 5 they shared some features o being with runakuna. Signi¨ cantly, earth- beings 6 (or what I would call a mountain, a river, a lagoon) are also an important 7 presence for non-runakuna: for example, urbanites, like the two anthropolo- 8 gists that accompanied Nazario to the National Musem o the American 9 Indian (ÃÄÅÆ), or rural folks like the landowner Mariano fought against. 10 Emerging from these relations is a socionatural region that participates o 11 more than one mode o being. Cuzco—the place that my friends and the 12 aforementioned anthropologists inhabit—is a socionatural territory com- 13 posed by relations among the people and earth- beings, and demarcated by 14 a modern regional state government. Within it, practices that can be called 15 indigenous and non- indigenous in¨ ltrate and emerge in each other, shap- 16 ing lives in ways that, it should be clear, do not correspond to the division 17 between nonmodern and modern. Instead, they confuse that division and 18 reveal the complex historicity that makes the region “never modern” (see 19 Latour 1993).Ç What I mean, as will gradually become clear throughout this 20 ¨ rst story, is that Cuzco has never been singular or plural, never one world 21 and therefore never many either, but a composition (perhaps a constant 22 translation) in which the languages and practices o its worlds constantly 23 overlap and exceed each other. 24 25 The Agreements That Made This Book 26 27 Importantly, I was the last in a long line o anthropologists that the Turpos 28 had met throughout their lives. Carmona was the ¨ rst one. Under the guid- 29 ance o Mariano, Carmona became what the ÃÄÅÆ translated as a sha- 30 man in the caption I quoted at the beginning o this chapter. Nazario and 31 Mariano referred to him as “someone who could.” eir relationship began 32 in the 1970s, during the initial years o agrarian reform, the process through 33 which the state had expropriated the land from the hacendado in 1969. A 34 social scientist working for the state, Carmona arrived in what had until 35 recently been the hacienda Lauramarca, which the state had already inter- 36 vened and transformed into a cooperativa agraria.È To supplement his in- 37
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1 2 3 FROM WOOL TO “ANDEAN CULTURE” 4 5 Like Carmona, Nazario and Mariano also started selling a di± erent prod- 6 uct in the market—and so did some runakuna like them. ese days runa- 7 kuna—also referred to as “peasants” following the agrarian reform—do not 8 only earn their money selling wool, the main commodity in the 1970s; now 9 they also sell Andean culture, a unique local merchandise for which, as with 10 wool, they depend mostly on an international market. Yet unlike wool, global 11 tourist markets have renewed regional interest in earth- beings and those who 12 can engage with them. Known as yachaq (and, with reticence, paqu) a large 13 number o indigenous individuals (mostly men) work for travel agencies and 14 hotels, where they are called shamans (or chamanes, in Spanish). Some local 15 anthropologists also engage in this activity; as experts they authenticate in- 16 digenous shamanic practices and participate in networks o translation that 17 include Andean New Age, an emerging ¨ eld o knowledge and practice in 18 the region that at times blurs the line between local anthropology and mys- 19 ticism (also local). It was through these networks (where anthropology has 20 a role as “expert knowledge”) that Carmona, Flores Ochoa, and Nazario 21 Turpo became participants in the Quechua exhibit o the ÃÄÅÆ in Wash- 22 ington, D.C. 23 24 25 26 27 come, the Turpos said, Carmona loaned people money in exchange for local 28 weavings— ponchos; women’s shawls known as llicllas; and chullos, or men’s 29 wool caps. He then sold the weavings in Cuzco, which in those days was a 30 good two days’ journey from Pacchanta. In his position as a state o· cial, Car- 31 mona met Mariano Turpo, then an important political leader; they probably 32 also engaged in commercial exchanges, trading wool for money. But their 33 interactions went beyond o· cial politics and economic business. Accord- 34 ing to Nazario, Carmona sought out his father because he wanted to know 35 about the local earth- beings—and Mariano taught him everything he knew. 36 ey also learned together, exchanging information about cures, herbs, and 37 the di± erent earth- beings that each o them were familiar with. When I met
6 STORY 1
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Wool buyer and seller in the nearby town of Ocongate. August 2006. 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
Liberata and Nérida, Nazario’s wife and daughter-in- law, sell their weavings to tourists in Pacchanta. April 2007.
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1 Carmona, he was earning his living as faculty member at the Universidad 2 San Antonio Abad del Cuzco. His courses, like those o many o his col- 3 leagues, were classi¨ ed under the label o “Andean culture.” Nazario would 4 say that Carmona teaches what Mariano taught him: at was how Dr. Car- 5 mona learned. Later, he learned more, little by little and looking at books [read- 6 ing], he learned more. Now he teaches anthropology and teaches what my father 7 taught him. at is how he makes his money; he does not sell ponchos anymore. 8 A© er Carmona, many outsiders followed. Conversations between local 9 indigenous knowers (politicians, chamanes, dancers, and weavers) and trav- 10 elers o all sorts (anthropologists, ¨ lmmakers, tourists, New Age healers, and 11 entrepreneurs) are frequent in the area. Hence, when I met them, Mariano 12 and Nazario were veterans in interacting with people like me, and not only 13 in Pacchanta, their village. ey were also a familiar presence at Universi- 14 dad San Antonio Abad del Cuzco, where they addressed students’ questions 15 about Ausangate and other earth- beings o equal or lesser rank. eir circle o 16 intellectual acquaintances was not limited to Cuzqueños, and while “Andean 17 culture” was the topic o conversation in the 2000s, this had not been the 18 case before. Well known as a local “peasant leader” between the 1950s and 19 1970s, Mariano had met social scientists, journalists, and photographers to 20 whom he relayed stories about the stru le against the hacienda, the agrarian 21 reform, the expansion o the market place in Ocongate, and the ups and 22 downs o the wool market. He had met good and bad important people, 23 both runakuna and mistikuna.É He had seen his name published in history 24 books and newspapers. “ ey published my speech in the newspaper,” he told 25 Rosalind Gow, remembering how he had addressed a national le© ist meeting 26 in the 1960s (1981, 189).Ê A© er earning political visibility, Mariano had com- 27 manded huge respect among runakuna. Rosalind Gow wrote: “At assemblies 28 he always took the seat o honor and people jumped to obey his commands” 29 (1981, 191). Times had de¨ nitely changed when I arrived in Pacchanta. People 30 walk past me, and there is no good morning or good a ernoon for me, a er all 31 I did for them, Mariano complained. He also explained that younger people 32 in his surroundings seemed to take their “freedom” (Mariano’s word) for 33 granted. Almost everybody had forgotten Lauramarca, the huge hacienda 34 (81,746 hectares) (Reátegui 1977, 2). that had enslaved the local people since 35 the turn o the twentieth century and that Mariano, along with other leaders 36 like him, had fought against politically and legally (in the courts) for nearly 37 twenty years beginning in the 1950s, when they inherited the stru le from
8 STORY 1
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Mariano, Nazario, and Benito Turpo—with Ausangate 32 behind them. April 2003. 33 34 35 36 37
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1 their predecessors. When I arrived in Pacchanta, Mariano was the only one 2 o those leaders le© ; the rest were dead, except for one who had le© the re- 3 gion some years ago and never returned. Oblivion was dangerous, Mariano 4 thought. He had heard that times were changing again, that the agrarian re- 5 form was being dismantled in many places, and that hacendados could re- 6 turn. I am not certain that runakuna would ever forget the “time o the ha- 7 cienda,” but the idea that they were indeed forgetting was generalized, even 8 beyond the Turpo family. is made our conversation possible. 9 So, agreeing on the need to remember Mariano’s deeds against the ha- 10 cienda, and with the “more or less” tone o a tentative accord, we set the 11 terms o our relationship. A very explicit accord, almost a condition, was 12 that Mariano would be the central actor in the book. It would be written “in 13 his name.” With respect to themes, we thought that we would all decide on 14 them, with Nazario and Benito frequently helping their father to remember, 15 given his old age. When and how o© en we would meet to work on the book 16 was also a point to be negotiated. Given his age, Mariano did not work in the 17 ¨ elds or graze sheep and alpacas; he was generally at home and, i his ailments 18 permitted, he would be able to talk with me almost any time I wished. Given 19 my own work schedule in the United States, I usually arrived during the high 20 tourist season, between June and September, when both o Mariano’s sons 21 were busy—Nazario commuting weekly to work with the travel agency in 22 Cuzco, and Benito buying and selling sheep meat at regional marketplaces. I 23 had to understand that my visits more o© en than not were “a waste o time” 24 for them, as Nazario politely but clearly told me. Remembering “properly” 25 was another condition. Although the younger were forgetting, older people 26 o Benito’s age and up—he was ¨ ve during the peak period o the confronta- 27 tion, Nazario was around ten or twelve—remembered, but I could not go to 28 them directly; the brothers would have to ask i they wanted to talk to me, 29 or i they wanted to talk about Mariano at all, even with his sons. Memo- 30 ries were controversial, and some might want to contradict Mariano’s recol- 31 lections and represent him in a bad light to their own bene¨ t. But Nazario 32 and Benito would de¨ nitely ask people to help them remember; i every- 33 thing went well and the opportunity arose, they would talk to others and ask 34 them to remember, even when I was not there. Another important agree- 35 ment was to have witnesses to our conversations; there were rumors that the 36 Turpos were working with me, earning money individually by relaying in- 37 formation about Pacchanta, a topic and place concerning all families there.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Nazario introduces the author to the communal assembly 19 in Pacchanta. January 2002. 20 21 People would want to either stop the Turpos’ business or participate in it. 22 To dampen the rumors, Octavio Crispín would be present at as many o our 23 conversations as his schedule allowed. But I also had to ask permission in a 24 communal assembly (this I expected, for it is almost routine when foreigners 25 spend time in comunidades campesinas, the name the state uses for some rural 26 villages) and clearly explain the nature o my work. ey wanted me to state 27 very explicitly who was paying me (I also expected to clarify this), and that I 28 in turn was not paying Mariano, Benito, or Nazario. So I did: I attended an 29 asamblea communal, explained the purpose o my visits to Pacchanta, and re- 30 sponded to questions. en we started working. 31 I knew about Pacchanta and the Turpos through relatives—my sister and 32 brother- in- law—and a friend, omas Müller, a German photographer; they 33 all worked in an alternative development ÃÌÍ in the area o Lauramarca, the 34 former hacienda. Having arrived in the region in the late 1980s, (when the 35 agrarian reform was being dismantled by runakuna themselves) and being 36 loosely allied with some le© ist movements, all three o them developed a 37
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1 close relationship with Mariano, whose reputation as a politician and a local 2 healer was still prominent. Müller lived in Pacchanta—he spent long hours 3 with Mariano, and they became very close. He ¨ rst saw the box o documents 4 that would become the gateway to my conversations with the Turpos when 5 Nazario was using some o its paper contents to light a ¨ re—a detail I never 6 spoke to Nazario about. In any case, when I was granted access to the box— 7 which I call Mariano’s archive—it still contained more than 600 records o 8 all sorts: ´ iers; receipts; notebooks; union meeting minutes; and, most o all, 9 o· cial letters to state authorities, typewritten and signed by personeros (in- 10 digenous leaders o rural villages). I discuss my work with Mariano through 11 his archive in story 4. For now, su· ce it to say that when I arrived in Pac- 12 chanta these documents provided a shared ground that sparked the Turpos’ 13 memories. 14 15 Co- laboring Our Goals and Meeting Excess 16 17 I envisioned our work as co-laboring—and this, while it may sound simi- 18 lar, was to be di± erent from collaborative research. I did not want to use 19 my expertise to help anybody (let alone any “other”) ¨ gure out anything 20 about himself, herself, or a group. Nor did I want to mediate the translation 21 o local knowledge into universal language to achieve some political end. I 22 wanted to work (or labor) with Mariano to learn about his life and about 23 the documents that he had collected until they were transferred to Müller. 24 I knew that he had coauthored several o them, legal and otherwise, with 25 his puriq masi (Quechua for fellow walker) Mariano Chillihuani, who o© en 26 wrote down what Mariano Turpo dictated, or what his ayllu—the collective 27 o runakuna and tirakuna—had decided. (I explain ayllu in detail in subse- 28 quent stories.) Mariano had written legal texts with lawyers, too. My initial 29 intention was to go back to those documents—hoping that having cowritten 30 them, Mariano would in´ ect our reading o them with his memories and that 31 this, in turn, would enable the ethnography o his archive. In this rendition, 32 the archive would not be a repository o information but a speci¨ c histori- 33 cal production itself: I would use local memories to interpret the documents 34 beyond their exact content and consider both memories and documents as 35 material objects, connected with the circumstances and actors that produced 36 them.Î My intent to co- labor was seemingly sel¨ sh: I wanted Mariano to 37 help my thinking about the documents and my purpose with them. Nazario
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and Benito soon became part o the project and spoke o their own agendas, 1 which were not altruistic either. Mariano’s memories would serve everyone’s 2 di± erent purposes. While Mariano wanted to regain the respect o the com- 3 munity, Benito wanted more land. e fact that his father had recovered the 4 territories where they all live now had some relevance for Benito’s goal. Na- 5 zario’s individual agenda was shaped by his recent job as an Andean shaman. 6 When I asked him why he worked with me, he answered that he wanted “to 7 preserve the old ways.” ose were also his practices, he added, and he wanted 8 younger people from his village to value them. rough those practices they 9 could learn how to properly treat earth- beings and even earn some money 10 in the process. In this regard, Nazario’s agenda was not di± erent from mine, 11 which was also shaped by my job. I had always had a book in mind: an aca- 12 demic object through which I might make a political intervention in Peru, 13 the place I feel is my home. 14 Signi¨ cantly, I had no intention o going beyond the memories related 15 to the contents o the box; as my key to understanding the political event 16 that Mariano’s stru le represented, the written documents were my ¨ nal 17 horizon. But I ended up setting the documents aside, and this was because 18 o Mariano. is methodological shi© represented my induction into story- 19 telling, not as oral history but as a tool to record both Mariano’s experi- 20 ences and note the concepts through which he narrated them. While these 21 experiences were events in their own terms, many o them did not meet 22 the terms o history—or as I explain in story 4, they exceeded them. e 23 events I became privy to le© no evidence o the kind that modern history re- 24 quires—they could not. erefore, they had not made their way into histori- 25 cal archives, not even Mariano’s.¼Ï While it was not my initial intention, our 26 conversations revealed how the historical ontology o modern knowledge 27 both enables its own questions, answers, and understandings and disables as 28 unnecessary or unreal the questions, answers, and understandings that fall 29 outside o its purview or are excessive to it.¼¼ Not surprisingly, this capacity 30 granted to history—which amounts to the power to certify the real—may be 31 heightened when interrogating an archive, the source o historical evidence. I 32 also realized that my initial intentions—to recover Mariano as an important, 33 yet invisible, agent o the agrarian reform (the most important state policy 34 o twentieth- century Peru) via the ethnography o a peasant archive—were 35 within the limits o the historically recognizable as real. And Mariano was 36 also within those limits—but, as he said, “not only,” a phrase he used when 37
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1 he indicated that our work should not be contained by the documents. Co- 2 laboring with Mariano and Nazario pushed me past those limits; “not only,” 3 Mariano’s phrase, gave me the ethnographic impulse to take at face value, for 4 example, events that were impossible according to history. For what would 5 history do with Ausangate, the preeminent earth- being, as an actor in´ uenc- 6 ing trials and contributing to the successful legal defeat o the landowner? 7 And how could I deny the eventfulness o Ausangate’s in´ uential presence 8 without bifurcating our conversations into their belie and my knowledge? 9 is would cancel our commitment to co- labor, not to mention the fact that 10 Mariano would balk at the idea that what he was telling me was just belie 11 (and I would not be able to ignore his balking as irrelevant). 12 Co- laboring with Mariano and Nazario required canceling that bifurca- 13 tion, and this was consequential. It su ested a practice o politics that was 14 utopian. And this was not because it did not have a place in the world their 15 narrations o± ered me. Rather, it was because my academic and everyday 16 world would disqualify (as ahistorical) the reality o their stories and, accord- 17 ingly, their political import (even i the disquali¨ cation itsel was a political 18 act that the disquali¨ ers would not perceive as such). Avoiding complicity 19 with the disquali¨ ers, while inhabiting the partial connection between both 20 worlds (as our co- labor required) proposed a practice o recognition o the 21 real that diverged from the one I was used to. Our co- laboring su ested a 22 form o recognition that would follow the requirements o historical reality 23 (how could I withdraw mysel from it?), while at the same time limiting its 24 pertinence to the world that made it its requirement. is is usual practice 25 for runakuna. As I narrate in stories 3, 4, and 6, runakuna engage in political 26 practices that the state recognizes as legitimate while also enacting those that 27 the state cannot recognize—and not only because it does not want to, but 28 also because engaging with what is excessive to it would require its transfor- 29 mation, even its undoing as a modern state. 30 Co- laboring—my sel¨ sh request that Mariano help me think—o± ered 31 excess as an important ethnographic condition and analytical challenge. I 32 conceptualize it as that which is performed past “the limit.” And borrowing 33 from Ranajit Guha, the limit would be “the ¨ rst thing outside which there 34 is nothing to be found and the ¨ rst thing inside which everything is to be 35 found” (2003, 7, emphasis added). Yet this “nothing” is in relation to what 36 sees itsel as “everything” and thus exceeds it—it is something. e limit re- 37 veals itsel as an onto- epistemic practice, in this case, o the state and its disci-
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plines, and therefore a political practice as well. Beyond the limit is excess, a 1 real that is “nothing”: not- a- thing accessible through culture or knowledge 2 o nature as usual. Mariano’s phrase, “not only,” challenged these limits and 3 revealed that, relative to his world, the world that sees itsel as “everything” 4 was insu· cient. Similarly, the tools to learn “everything” were not enough 5 to learn what Mariano thought I should learn i my intent was to co- labor 6 with him: events and relations beyond the limit; that which history and other 7 state practices could not contain. But because practices with Mariano were 8 never simple, “everything” (or what considered itsel as such) had to be taken 9 seriously as well. 10 11 Co- laboring across Hierarchies of Literacy 12 13 Remembering Mariano’s political and legal quest against the hacienda while 14 also considering in our narratives the excesses that modern practices could 15 not recognize was important. Yet it was the form o a book—and writing— 16 that would grant Mariano’s memories the most valuable recognition. Soon 17 a© er my arrival Mariano said: e person who has eyes knows more than I do. 18 e person who has eyes, the person who speaks Spanish [is] more . . . damn it! 19 [Ñawiyuq runaqa nuqamanta aswanta yachan; ñawiyuq runaqa, castellano 20 rimaqa nuqamanta aswanta, caraju!] Ñawiyuq—to have or be with eyes— 21 is the Quechua word used to describe a person who reads and writes; con- 22 versely, the person who does not read or write, or what we call illiterate, is 23 considered blind. Mariano also reminded me that those who read and write 24 are called wiraqucha (a Quechua word that roughly translates as lord or mas- 25 ter); those who do not read or write are addressed only by the Spanish term 26 don (equivalent to mister in English)—signi¨ cantly, in Quechua there is no 27 feminine equivalent for wiraqucha. e written word was mightier than the 28 spoken one; its leverage in legal disputes (local ones included) was undeni- 29 able, and it could only be countered with another written word. By inscribing 30 Mariano’s words in writing, in a book, and then getting that book into dis- 31 trict libraries, we would be letting elementary school teachers in Pacchanta 32 know about them. e book would help people remember, and, importantly, 33 those from the region o Ausangate who could read and write would respect 34 Mariano. 35 My awareness o the Turpos’ view o the written word was another im- 36 portant key into our intellectual relationship. I had arrived with ideas about 37
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1 symmetric co- labor, which I maintained. But my initial vision was simplisti- 2 cally egalitarian, and early in our relationship, unapologetically and matter- 3 of- factly, Mariano forced me out o it. He knew that “those who read expect 4 to be served” (ñawinchaqkuna munanku sirvichikuyta), and this condition 5 would also materialize in our agreement to co- labor on what would become 6 this book. Our endeavor had a frictional (see Tsing 2004) quality to it: even 7 when about excesses, our conversations would become a book sustained by 8 and sustaining the hegemonic sca± old according to which literacy was su- 9 perior, and its counterpart, illiteracy, was inferior. is marked our relation- 10 ship inevitably and regardless o our sincere warm respect and caring for 11 each other. e superiority o literacy was hegemonic and ruled the asym- 12 metric relationship between Pacchanta and its inhabitants and other more 13 lettered towns and cities and their inhabitants. Criticizing this fact, which I 14 naively insisted on doing, seemed super´ uous and self- congratulatory. Such 15 benevolent comments only reinforced my literate condition and reinscribed 16 their position as subordinates. Nonetheless, I was aware that the participa- 17 tion o the Turpos (and other people in Pacchanta, I dare to generalize) in 18 the hegemony o literacy was not intended to replace the a- lettered practices 19 that were the stu± o Mariano’s stories and thus made possible the quintes- 20 sentially lettered object that this book is. To be productive, my critique o 21 the hegemony o literacy among indigenous Andean Peruvians required my 22 pragmatic acceptance o its factuality. 23 Rather obviously, lettered hierarchies also conditioned my own practice o 24 anthropology. Mariano’s methodological shi© to storytelling, together with 25 my desire for co- labor, most speci¨ cally required altering the practice accord- 26 ing to which we anthropologists analyze “information” by explaining away 27 its incongruities with rational sense—a sense that is assumed to be common 28 and right. Underpinning the hierarchy (according to which we know, and the 29 other informs) is the assumption o onto- epistemic sameness; my agreement 30 with the Turpos required me to disrupt it by asking what was (conceptually 31 and materially) that which I was hearing, seeing, touching, and doing and 32 how (through what practices) it was. is was knowing- doing di± erence in 33 a di± erent way—without pretending to replace my common sense, but also 34 preventing it from prevailing. Moreover, this knowing- doing di± erence dif- 35 ferently was still within my own practices (even i not my usual knowledge 36 practices) and rather obviously was not enough to (know how to) do what 37 Mariano and Nazario did—or, in their words, “to make things happen” the
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way they did. To achieve this, more was required—and this, I learned, was 1 something that not all runakuna had. 2 O the three sons Mariano and his wife raised (they had had four), Na- 3 zario and Benito were the closest to him. Nazario was a yachaq (he knew 4 how to make things happen) but Benito was not, and I was curious to ¨ nd 5 out why. So I asked, and Benito explained. He knew what his father did— 6 he could recite all the words and was familiar with all the ingredients (ob- 7 jects, words, and other things) required to commune with earth- beings; he 8 knew all places by their names and their attributes. He also knew what to 9 use to cure damage caused by suq’a (ancestors turned evil) or thunder, hail, 10 and lightning—three treacherous entities that earth- beings cultivate and at 11 times use to release their ire. He knew because he had seen his father doing 12 all o the above: at is in my head [chayqa umaypiya kashan] but I cannot 13 do it, I am a aid o doing it wrong, o not making things coincide. I know but 14 do not dare do; I am not lucky, I would not do it right, and I would not cure the 15 person who asked me to. I think it is because I do not do the k’intu right. Na- 16 zario does; that is why he can continue to do what my father did. Benito knew, 17 paraphrasing him, “with his head” but he could not translate his knowledge 18 into transformative practices with other- than- humans. In this sense, he was 19 like me (I could not do what my friends did)—but he was also unlike me, for 20 Mariano’s and Nazario’s ways o knowing- doing were integral to Benito even 21 i he did not share their capacities and what he knew could not leave his head. 22 is he explained as not being lucky, and being afraid o not making things co- 23 incide. He did not have istrilla (star; from the Spanish estrella), which I trans- 24 lated as the ability that a speci¨ c earth- being provokes in a person so that he 25 or she can then enter into an e± ective relationship with it. 26 Had I simplistically, and indeed crudely, interpreted my foreignness to 27 local knowledge as the reason why I was unable to perform local practices, 28 Benito’s case would have proved me wrong. Moreover, Mariano had suc- 29 cessfully worked with Carmona, the anthropologist and yachaq mentioned 30 above. As I have noted, according to Nazario, when Mariano met him, Car- 31 mona was already familiar with earth- beings; the two men became close 32 friends and taught each other what they knew. Carmona agreed with most o 33 Nazario’s narrative when I visited him in his house in the city. He added that 34 Mariano had told him that he had estrella (we spoke in Spanish) and o± ered 35 to teach him what he knew—in relation to their practices, the Turpos had 36 told me Carmona “could [do what they did].” Apparently knowing- doing 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 The hands of Liberata, Nazario’s wife, with k’intu. 16 17 18 in Mariano’s and Nazario’s way requires ¨ rst being able to identify the re- 19 quest an earth- being makes or imposes to establish a relationship with it, 20 then willfully entering into that relationship and always steadfastly nurturing 21 it. e relationship usually materializes in the form o a successful appren- 22 ticeship and eventual deployment o practices that can be broadly under- 23 stood as healing (or damaging) and that include actors beyond the dyad o 24 earth- being and yachaq: other humans, animals, soils, and plants. e job is 25 risky and news o failures spread across the region, a± ecting the fate o the 26 practitioner, who could ¨ nd himsel or hersel abandoned by earth- beings 27 and humans alike.¼½ 28 e kind o knowing- doing that Mariano and Nazario were famous for 29 is a relation that both earth- beings and runakuna cultivate constantly, even 30 when the practice (and the runakuna practitioner) travel to faraway places. 31 is would not be unlike science or anthropology. Yet unlike reproducible 32 anthropological theories or scienti¨ c laboratories, which can be replicated 33 wherever the practitioners travel, earth- beings are unique: they cannot be re- 34 placed by others, let alone reproduced. Also like science and anthropology 35 practices with earth-beings intersect with history, but not to evolve and dis- 36 appear as a modernist script would imagine. On the contrary: for example, 37 although being yachaq was a disappearing practice thirty years ago, today the
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practice is ´ ourishing. Tourism o± ers runakuna a potential income source, 1 and it has swayed many yachaq to the practice o “Andean shamanism” or its 2 apprenticeship. When I ¨ rst arrived in Pacchanta in 2003, Ru¨ no (Nazario’s 3 eldest son, who was then about twenty- two) claimed not to be interested 4 in learning from his father; he did not have istrilla, he said. A© er Nazario’s 5 death, Víctor Hugo (Nazario’s son- in-law) and Ru¨ no inherited his job with 6 “Auqui, Mountain Spirit,” the travel agency Nazario worked for. e fact that 7 Ru¨ no’s acceptance may have been an opportunistic economic decision on 8 his part does not cancel the respectful relations with earth- beings on which 9 local practices depend—and if, by any chance, these practices lack the ethi- 10 cal quality they require, negative consequences are to be expected. Nazario 11 always criticized the Q’ero (another ayllu, many o whose human members 12 work as chamanes for tourists). ose chamanes lied to the tourists, he said. 13 All they cared about was money, and lying—being careless about humans—is 14 disrespectful and thus dangerous, and it can kill you. A well-known anthro- 15 pologist from Cuzco I talked to had something similar to say about Naza- 16 rio: he had abused his estrella, the anthropologist thought, and that was why 17 he died in that tra· c accident. Some people in Pacchanta secretly shared 18 that thought. I disagree, but not because I qualify this causality as supersti- 19 tion. I knew Nazario was always careful in his relationships with Ausangate 20 and other earth- beings. He never pretended to do what he could not do, 21 and he did not lie. I do not think Ausangate killed Nazario, because I think 22 Ausangate liked him—however, this does not mean I know Ausangate, not 23 even with my head as Benito did. is is as far as I can bring my own prac- 24 tice into coincidence with my co- laborers; from this place o coincidence 25 (which is also one o divergence), I meet the di± erences that made a con- 26 nection between us possible. at I did not need to know what I heard and 27 sometimes saw to acknowledge it as real makes me hopeful (i not certain) 28 that I reached a place o relational symmetry, which indeed does not dissolve 29 the larger power di± erentials that made my request to co- labor on Mariano’s 30 story possible. 31 32 Cuzco in Translation/Translation in Cuzco 33 34 Most o anthropology thinks o its “others” as clearly distinct from the “self.” 35 Along with this practice, there is also the case where di± erences between “in- 36 formant” and “ethnographer” include the possibility that the “self” partakes 37
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1 o the “other.” Take, for example, Flores Ochoa’s or Carmona’s anthropology. 2 As indicated in the caption o the photograph at the ÃÄÅÆ, both Flores 3 Ochoa and Carmona participate in Nazario’s worlding practices—even i 4 “not only” (as Mariano would say) for what they do does not necessarily add 5 up to the same practice. “We are anthropologists o our people, we feel and 6 practice these things” is a complex statement. A composition o inclusions 7 and exclusions, it marks relations potentially replete with hierarchies o all 8 sorts, including the one that makes the “other” an object o study o the cul- 9 ture in which the ‘self’ also participates—a condition that, allegedly, better 10 equips the anthropologist vis- à- vis “his” (or her) people, who (also allegedly) 11 do not participate in such disciplinary knowledge. is is a fascinating situa- 12 tion whereby anthropology marks the exclusion and thus makes an “other” 13 that it is equipped to analyze, paradoxically, because o an inclusion. In this 14 anthropology, while ¨ eldwork and life may in¨ ltrate each other and become 15 indistinguishable, the social authority o the knowledge that the discipline 16 commands continues to maintain the distinction between sel and “other,” 17 anthropologist and (usually) indigenous subject. 18 Similar intricate relationships, I think, exist in Cuzco between Quechua 19 and Spanish, city and countryside, highlands and lowlands, indigenous and 20 nonindigenous practices (not respectively). e region can be viewed as a 21 complexly integrated hybrid circuit composed o o· cial wholes—for ex- 22 ample, the Quechua and Spanish languages—that lose their quality as such 23 as they persistently permeate and therefore become inseparable fragments o 24 each other, while still retaining their “wholeness” as a historical nation- state 25 classi¨ catory e± ect and thus with analytical gravitas o their own. How this 26 partial connection a± ects translation across languages and cultural practices 27 in the region is what I explain next, but I must ¨ rst take a short contextual 28 detour. 29 Ever since Peru became an independent country in the nineteenth cen- 30 tury, elites from Lima and Cuzco have vied for national leadership: Li- 31 meños proudly identi¨ ed themselves with Catholic values, formal educa- 32 tion in Spanish, and coastal access to the world. Against it, the Cuzqueño 33 political class argued that they had a deeper and more authentic nationalism 34 rooted in pre- Hispanic Inca ancestry and veri¨ ed by the regional elite’s pro¨ - 35 ciency in the Quechua language. Yet elite Cuzqueños also needed to distance 36 themselves from Indians, the quintessential national inferiors who were also 37
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Quechua speakers. Early in the twentieth century, they did this by assert- 1 ing their distinct Spanish and (noble) Inca ancestry in language, ascendancy, 2 and culture. Currently, asserting indigenous Cuzqueño ancestry is both a 3 source o pride and shame: the former is expressed eloquently in Quechua, 4 which—silently shameful—needs to be overcome through pro¨ cient use o 5 Spanish. us while Quechua marks Cuzco as a region, and everybody there 6 (or almost) speaks this language, in certain social circumstances upwardly 7 mobile Cuzqueños may claim ignorance o Quechua and request transla- 8 tion to Spanish—and the claim is not simplistically fake. Rather, it stems 9 from the culturally intimate (see Herzfeld 2005), shameful recognition o 10 self- indigeneity, which is also a necessary condition o Cuzqueño regionalist 11 pride and national belonging (de la Cadena 2000). is a± ects translation in 12 a very speci¨ c way. 13 In “ e Task o the Translator,” Walter Benjamin writes: “ e words Brot 14 and pain intend the same object, but the modes o this intention are not the 15 same. It is owing to these modes that the word Brot means something di± er- 16 ent to a German than the word pain to a Frenchman, that these words are 17 not interchangeable for them, that, in fact, they strive to exclude each other. 18 As to the intended object however, the two words mean the very same thing” 19 (1968, 74). e word for bread in Spanish is pan; in Quechua, it is t’anta. 20 In Cuzco, because Quechua and Spanish interpenetrate each other idiosyn- 21 cratically, both words participate in the same mode o intention whereby 22 the meaning o bread is interchangeable. Yet because Quechua and Span- 23 ish also exclude each other, like brot and pain, pan and t’anta also circulate, 24 each one having its own mode o intention distinguishing itsel from the 25 other and relating in a hierarchical way. Moreover, it is also possible for the 26 same Quechua word to have di± erent modes o intention depending on 27 the speaker’s relationship with Spanish or Quechua. is dynamic results in 28 a situation where being and not being indigenous interpenetrate each other 29 and create, for example, the identity condition expressed in Flores Ochoa’s 30 phrase above: “We feel and practice those things—we are not a group that just 31 observes.” is possibility creates an inclusive otherness that allows some Cuz- 32 queños both to claim indigeneity (at least occasionally) and to distance their 33 own condition from Indianness. Mirroring this, those who cannot distance 34 themselves from Indianness identify their inability to speak Spanish as the 35 main reason for their regionally imputed inferiority. 36 37
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1 2 SAME WORD, DIFFERENT MODES OF INTENTION 3 4 To illustrate the above I will refer back to the moment in my conversation 5 with Mariano when the distinction between don and wiraqucha came up. On 6 that occasion, my assistant translator was a woman who lived in the city 7 of Cuzco when I met her; she had been raised speaking Quechua, and had 8 learned fluent Spanish when attending elementary school in the rural town 9 where she lived. She was (and still is) brilliantly fluid in both languages, nimbly 10 following their urban and rural inflections. At some point in the conversation, 11 I mentioned the word señor (the colloquial sir, or the written mister in English) 12 and she translated it into the Quechua wiraqucha, which in my understand- 13 ing elevated the word señor to sound more like lord than sir or mister. To 14 use Benjamin’s ideas, my assistant’s translation switched my Spanish mode 15 of intention of señor to her Quechua understanding of the word—which co- 16 incided with Mariano’s both in Quechua and in Spanish: wiraqucha and señor 17 are elevated conditions—unlike my intention of señor in Spanish, which is as 18 plain as a colloquial mister in English. In his response, Mariano explained that 19 those proficient in Spanish are wiraqucha; those who do not read and write 20 are just don. In his answer, which was in Quechua, he used Spanish words to 21 better illustrate for me the hierarchies between someone who spoke Spanish 22 and someone who did not. He himself was a don, he said, participating in his 23 own exclusion from the Spanish-speaking dominant national order. Yet also 24 revealing the political leverage of Quechua, and its pervasive presence in the 25 region, he went on to proudly recall how he and Saturnino Huillca (a legendary 26 1960s indigenous leader like him, and also a don) had spoken in Quechua to 27 large crowds that congregated in the Plaza de Armas of Cuzco to challenge 28 the dominant order—the landowners. These hacendados, while shielded by 29 the Spanish-speaking state, were proficient in Quechua, which meant they 30 understood the challenge that these speeches represented, particularly in the 31 Plaza de Armas, the core of Spanish colonialism. One more example may clar- 32 ify the point: Quechua and Spanish in Cuzco are not as distinct as my (every- 33 day mixed) English and Spanish are; yet they are not one either. Practices and 34 relations across the region are similarly inflected. 35 36 37
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My awareness o translation, my concern with and need for a conceptual 1 understanding o Quechua words (which perhaps were not neatly distin- 2 guished from local Spanish, but were not the same either) also led to situa- 3 tions in which I made a fool o myself, to the amusement o everybody else. 4 e one occasion that I still feel embarrassed about—and cherish the em- 5 barrassment—was during a conversation with Benito. He mentioned three 6 words that my brother- in-law (who is a Cuzco urbanite and a philosopher, 7 and who was with us on that occasion) and I labored to translate from 8 Quechua to Spanish. Benito was telling us about his father’s maneuverings 9 against the hacienda and how he had escaped a plot by the hacendado to 10 kill him: Mariano was magista, like uru blancu, Benito said—or so I heard. 11 To me the words uru blancu sounded like oro blanco (white gold in Span- 12 ish), so, obsessed with translation, I turned it back to Quechua: yuraq quri. 13 Benito looked at me, puzzled, and repeated: “like uru blancu, they thought 14 my father was magista.” It took me a while to realize that in this case it was 15 not a matter o translating across meanings. In Quechua the sounds o “u” 16 and “o” are not the same as in Spanish—so my ear had mixed up the sounds. 17 Although Benito was not speaking Quechua, he was indeed pronouncing 18 in Quechua the name Hugo Blanco—a famous le© ist politician who in the 19 1960s was part o Mariano’s network o alliances. On this occasion, I did not 20 have a translator who might have prevented my misunderstanding. Instead, 21 it continued—to more humorous e± ect: having ¨ gured out that Benito was 22 talking about Hugo Blanco, a le© ist political leader, I assumed that what he 23 meant when he said magista was Marxista. Both words sounded very similar 24 to my Spanish (and nostalgically le© ist) ears. Instead, Benito meant “magi- 25 cian.” Magic as a concept does not exist in Quechua, and magista is a compo- 26 sition from Spanish, to refer to someone who practices magia, magic. Luckily 27 I ¨ gured this out the same day. When, months later, I told Hugo Blanco 28 about my snafu, he laughed at me but also con¨ rmed that many people 29 thought he used magic to evade capture. My silly confusion was productive in 30 many respects. First, it revealed that the notion o politics in Pacchanta may 31 exceed reason and that I had to consider the excess seriously. Second, it clari- 32 ¨ ed that magic as I knew it did not correspond to Benito’s intention o the 33 word—the common de¨ nition o magic as a belie in the uncanny was not 34 an adequate concept to explain Benito’s analysis o Mariano’s time- changing 35 political maneuverings. 36 Finally, there is one more element in the “uru blancu magista” moment 37
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1 that is pertinent to this section: it indicated how Mariano’s world and mine 2 overlapped. We recognized the same recent history, even i it recognized us 3 in very di± erent ways. Hugo Blanco’s activism had been an event for each o 4 us—even i in a bifurcated way. From di± erent positions, meanings, and in- 5 terpretations, the historical event that Hugo Blanco represented connected 6 our worlds in a way that was analogous to Flores Ochoa’s explanation (in the 7 ÃÄÅÆ photo caption) about sharing what he called “those things” with Na- 8 zario’s world. As in Flores Ochoa’s case, albeit also di± erently, my otherness 9 with Mariano and Nazario was also connected by what we shared, which 10 as Peruvians was nothing less than national history. is feature—that our 11 otherness was connected through a national belonging that was more than 12 one—surfaced again another day. When talking about his childhood and 13 youth, Mariano sang the national anthem o Peru and prompted me to join 14 him. Both o us had learned it at school—and we could compare di± erences, 15 and even explain some o them. We also shared knowledge o the sequence 16 o presidents that had ruled Peru since the 1940s—Mariano had even met 17 some o them face to face. I had never met one. We knew the same news- 18 papers, even i Mariano did not read them, and I got answers to my nostalgic 19 questions about what Lima or Cuzco were like in the 1950s and 1960s when 20 he sojourned in those cities, waiting for his appointments with authorities in 21 state buildings that I had also visited at some point. Our nation sharing, like 22 regional belonging for Cuzqueños, expressed, i at a di± erent scale, an inte- 23 grated circuit o fragmented o· cial wholes (and therefore not wholes any- 24 more, but not parts o a di± erent whole either). Similarities emerged simul- 25 taneously with di± erences and made possible several conversations about the 26 same event that, however, did not add up to one. 27 28 It Matters What Concepts We Use 29 30 To Translate Other Concepts With . . . 31 You are going to blow [on the coca leaves] naming them [the earth- 32 beings]. It is not in vain that we say Ausangate, they are those names . . . 33 Phukurikunki sutinmanta, manan yanqa Ausangatellachu nispa, 34 sutiyoq kaman kashan nispa . . . —Nazario Turpo, April 2005 35 36 Inhabiting the partial connections that both link and separate their vil- 37 lage and the rest o the country, Mariano and Nazario Turpo lived in the
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same place—Pacchanta—all their lives. Yet they both traveled frequently to 1 cities—Cuzco, Lima, and Arequipa, most commonly; Nazario also visited 2 Washington, D.C. (several times), and the capital cities o Ecuador and 3 Bolivia. As Nazario and Mariano moved around, they talked to intellectu- 4 als and politicians who translated the Turpos’ local activities into their own 5 language—and the translation inevitably added or subtracted from Mariano 6 and Nazario’s words and practices. us, for example, le© ist activists that I 7 talked to recognized Mariano as “an astute peasant leader who lacked class- 8 consciousness.” ey considered Mariano’s practices with earth- beings as 9 superstitions—a hindrance to conscious political activity. irty years later, 10 the same practices are a mobilizing presence in new regional networks that 11 translated earth- beings into sacred mountains and Nazario’s practices into 12 ‘Andean shamanism.’ Current translations use the languages o heteroge- 13 neous spiritualities (available from New Age travelers, museum curators, 14 and liberation theologians), perhaps disregarding the fact that practices with 15 earth- beings do not necessarily follow distinctions between the physical and 16 the metaphysical, the spiritual and the material, nature and human. Also 17 participating in the translation network, local anthropologists (like Flores 18 Ochoa and Carmona) may at times explain earth- beings as cultural beliefs, 19 thus potentially converging with the portrayal o the mountain as a spiritual 20 being or divinity. And the translation network can meet with and accrue to 21 the ¨ eld o Andean religiosity, intriguingly populated by liberation theology 22 priests and their network o indigenous catechists. Following Nazario’s prac- 23 tices and talking with him, I learned about his own mode o translation. 24 To runakuna (Nazario included), tirakuna are their names. More clearly, 25 no separation exists between Ausangate the word and Ausangate the earth- 26 being; no “meaning” mediates between the name and the being. is is pre- 27 cisely what the quote I used to open this section explains: earth- beings do not 28 just have names; they are when mentioned, when they are called upon. But o 29 course runakuna, including Nazario, are aware that to the likes o me (a non- 30 Cuzqueño modern individual) earth- beings are mountains, and that as such 31 they have names. Mariano and Nazario were also aware that to Cuzqueños 32 o diverse paths o life—scholars like Carmona and Flores Ochoa included— 33 these entities could be all o the above: earth- beings (and, therefore, their 34 names), sacred mountains, or simply mountains (and, as such, have names). 35 Nazario acknowledged these possibilities: earth- beings were the entities that 36 his relations—his practices—made present; mine made mountains present 37
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1 and neither practice detracted from the other one. What corresponded to our 2 relation, and which I learned from my friends, was a mode o translation that 3 did not seek univocal meaning nor had the vocation to tolerate what devi- 4 ated from it as irrelevant di± erence (that eventually ceases to exist). Univocal 5 meanings and tolerance may however be the mode o relation when runa- 6 kuna practices are translated through the rubric o indigenous religiosity and 7 underpinned by the tension between belie and knowledge. 8 Sacred mountains, Andean shamanism, and Andean religiosity can ac- 9 commodate the hegemonic distinction between nature and culture, in which 10 the ¨ rst exists objectively and the second is subjectively made by humans and 11 therefore includes beliefs (sacred, spiritual, or profane) about nature. For 12 example, Carmona and Flores Ochoa may come full circle in revealing their 13 complex partial connection with Nazario’s world, their circuiting in it (“we 14 practice those things”) and their short- circuiting it. ese anthropologists’ 15 explanations (to an anthropologist from Lima like me, for example) would 16 be complicated—something like this: “We [Carmona and Flores Ochoa] 17 know ‘those things’ are beliefs, but for ‘them’ [Nazario and Mariano] they 18 are real—and for us [Carmona and Flores Ochoa] they sometimes are, but 19 not really, because we know ‘those things’ are [actually] beliefs.” And these 20 two anthropologists may be in earnest on all o these counts. Sometimes they 21 may agree with the Turpos’ practices and remove the notion o belief, thus 22 participating in worldings with “those things” (which, in this case, would 23 be earth- beings). Sometimes, however, evolutionary anthropology and so- 24 cial standing may appear as obstacles (or social relief ) and make such con- 25 vergence di· cult to achieve. In this case, the notion o belie transports the 26 earth- being—Ausangate, for example—to a ¨ eld (that o culture) in which 27 it can exist as a sacred mountain, something that can be believed in, perhaps 28 even in the way “indigenous Christians believe in Jesus” as I frequently heard 29 from my urban acquaintances in Cuzco. Creating a similarity both enables 30 understanding and loses sight o the di± erence—namely, that belie does not 31 necessarily mediate the relationship among Ausangate, Mariano, and Naza- 32 rio. Rather, to them, Ausangate is, period. Ausangate is not a belie but a 33 presence enacted through everyday practices through which runakuna and 34 earth- beings are together in ayllu and that can be as simple as blowing on the 35 coca leaves while summoning their names—as in the quote above. 36 Borrowing from Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, I conceptualize the trans- 37 lation o runakuna practices with earth- beings into “beliefs” as an equivo-
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cation, not an error. Inspired by what he calls Amerindian perspectivism, 1 the Brazilian anthropologist explains that equivocations are a type o com- 2 municative disjuncture in which, while using the same words, interlocu- 3 tors are not talking about the same thing and do not know this (Viveiros de 4 Castro 2004a, 2004b). Rather than a negative condition, equivocation is an 5 important feature o anthropology, “a constitutive dimension o the disci- 6 pline project o cultural translation” (Viveiros de Castro 2004b, 10) which 7 would consist in exploring the di± erences between the concepts, grammars, 8 and practices that compose the equivocation that the interlocutors inhabit 9 and through which they communicate.¼¾ In the case o earth-beings as sacred 10 mountains, the equivocation may result from deploying the same word— 11 Ausangate—across di± erent worlds, in one o which the entity is nature and 12 in another one o which it is an earth- being. Equivocations cannot be can- 13 celed. However, they can be “controlled” (Viveiros de Castro 2004a) and 14 avoid transforming what is dissimilar into the same. For example, control- 15 ling the equivocation might consist in bearing in mind that when Ausangate 16 emerges as earth- being, it is other than nature, and therefore translating it as 17 a supernatural entity is also something other than the earth- being. To para- 18 phrase Strathern (1999), this mode o translation considers that it matters 19 what concepts we use to think other concepts. Translation as equivocation 20 carries a talent to maintain divergences among perspectives proposed from 21 worlds partially connected in communication. 22 Translations are misunderstandings that can be productive, says Benjamin; 23 he adds that a successful translation acknowledges its role by commenting 24 on di± erences and misunderstandings (2002, 250). Viveiros de Castro and 25 Strathern would add that the comment should not stop at the empirical fact 26 o the misunderstanding, but should discuss or make otherwise visible the 27 mutual excesses and, i possible, what makes them such. ese two authors 28 also su est that relations do not only connect through similarities; di± er- 29 ences also connect. Imported to anthropology, the idea that di± erences can 30 connect rather than separate would su est an anthropological practice that 31 acknowledges the di± erence between the world o the anthropologist and 32 the world o others, and dwells on such di± erences because they are the con- 33 nections that enable ethnographic conversations. us “to translate is to pre- 34 sume that an equivocation always exists; it is to communicate by di± erences, 35 instead o silencing the Other by presuming a univocality—the essential 36 similarity—between what the Other and We are saying” (Viveiros de Castro 37
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1 2004b, 10). A caveat to slow down the reading: the conjunction between we 2 and other is important, it both conjoins and separates; Mariano’s phrase “not 3 only” invited our conversations to that relational place. Our world-making 4 practices—the Turpos’ and mine—were not simply di± erent; rather, di± er- 5 ences existed (or came into being) along with similarities, which were never 6 only that—but neither were di± erences. Controlling equivocations under- 7 mines analytical grammars that produce either (similar)–or (di± erent) situa- 8 tions; and the undermining may be as constant as the either- or grammar is. 9 10 When Words Do Not Move Things 11 12 roughout the conversations that the Turpos and I had, history—as notion 13 and practice—o± ered us an opportunity to control the equivocation and 14 note the intricacies embedded in our use o the same word: history. For ex- 15 ample, when I asked Nazario why he thought I was working with them—or, 16 rather, making them work with me—he answered: Nuqa pensani huqta his- 17 toria ruwananpaq (which I translate into English as “I think another history 18 will be made [written]”). And he concluded, Yachanmanmi chay apukuna 19 munaqtin (in my translation, “It can be known i the apus [the lo© iest earth- 20 beings] want you to”). Nazario was right; I wanted to write another history, 21 unlike the one that had made us hierarchically di± erent. However, his last 22 sentence, and the absence o the word history in Quechua (which is why he 23 said historia in Spanish) su ested to me that Nazario’s historia did not only 24 coincide with my notion o the same word. at the apus would decide what 25 I could or could not do—similar to our “God willing,” or dios mediante in 26 Spanish—li© ed his notion o history away from the regime o truth in my 27 notion o history, the writing o which requires evidence (an inscribed rep- 28 resentation o a past event) rather than the disposition o other-than- human 29 beings. Co- laboring on “history,” we both realized that what he meant was 30 closer to story—a notion that the Spanish word historia can also convey, and 31 more clearly so when used in the plural: historias. What appeared through 32 the Spanish word historia was the Quechua willakuy: the act o telling or 33 narrating an event that happened, sometimes leaving topographic traces—a 34 lagoon, a cli± , a rock formation—that make the event present, but are not 35 evidence in the way that a modern historical sense o the term would de- 36 mand. Unlike the notion o history that I was deploying (which divides an 37 event into fact and evidence and requires the latter to be “innocent o human
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intention” [Daston 1991, 94]), the event o a willakuy is through its narra- 1 tion, its incidence needs not be proven, and the willakuy performs the evi- 2 dence. Other kinds o stories, in which the narration may or may not refer to 3 events that happen (or happened), are identi¨ ed as kwintu, from the Span- 4 ish cuento.¼Á We anthropologists tend to con´ ate these two narrative forms, 5 willakuy and kwintu, calling both myths. And because the events they nar- 6 rate do not meet the requirement o proof, we di± erentiate them from what 7 is considered modern history. But while willakuys are not historical (in the 8 modern sense o the term), the events they narrate happened. at they do 9 not meet the requirements o modern history does not cancel their eventful- 10 ness: willakuy is not kwintu. 11 In Pacchanta, where the Turpos live, people are also familiar with the dif- 12 ference between historia (in its mode o intention as modern history) and 13 willakuy. However, this distinction rather than separating history and willa- 14 kuy into an either- or relationship, partially connects both in a manner that 15 does not displace the eventfulness o willakuy narratives. I o± er details about 16 this—and what I call the eventfulness o the ahistorical, and its collabora- 17 tion with history—in story 4. For now, it will su· ce to say that willakuy 18 belongs to the order o things that Michel Foucault described as the prose 19 o the world: the words that are the things they name. A willakuy does not 20 di± erentiate between “marks and words” or between “veri¨ able fact and tra- 21 dition” (Foucault 1994, 34). Rather, it speaks the world with its words: the 22 things it tells about and the words with which it does so intertwine through 23 their likenesses to bring about the world it narrates. 24 A willakuy performs in a manner akin to the naming o earth- beings; no 25 separation exists between the narrative (the word) and the event (the thing). 26 Or better said: in willakuy there is no word and thing mediated through 27 meaning. A willakuy performs the event. us, when Nazario told me that 28 I would be able to write the stories that they would tell me only i the apus 29 wanted me to, perhaps what he was telling me was that in writing those 30 stories I would also be writing the earth- beings—and this would happen only 31 through their willingness. I realized this oneness between the name and the 32 named only during our last conversation, when I asked Nazario what pukara 33 was. Su esting that the word belonged to a speech regime di± erent from the 34 one I most commonly used, he answered: at way o speaking is very di© cult 35 [to explain; nichu sasan chay riman]. You will not understand, and whatever 36 you write on your paper, something else it is going to say [huq niraymi kanqa]. 37
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1 He went on to tell me: Pukara is just pukara. Rock pukara is pukara, soil pu- 2 kara is pukara, water pukara is pukara. It is a diª erent way o talking. Pukara 3 is not a diª erent person, it is not a diª erent soil, it is not a diª erent rock, it is 4 not a diª erent water. It is the same thing—pukara. It is di© cult to talk about. 5 Marisol may want to know where the pukara lives, what its name is—she would 6 say it is a person, an abyss, a rock, water, a lagoon. It is not. Pukara is a diª erent 7 way o saying; it is hard to understand [that way o saying]. It is not easy. Pu- 8 kara is pukara! His tone was impatiently emphatic about the connection; as 9 if, he wanted to delete the separation between the word pukara and the entity 10 pukara habitual o my form o understanding. 11 And the tone worked; during our last conversation Nazario made me 12 aware o a dimension o translation that I had not previously considered. 13 By saying “pukara is pukara,” he indicated that pukara, the word, is always 14 already with content and, thus, already the entity it names—not di± erent 15 from it. O course I could understand the meaning o pukara. I could write it 16 on paper, but that would not be the same; it would not be pukara. Something 17 else it is going to say. Explaining the meaning o pukara (in Quechua, Spanish, 18 or English) can be done, o course—and many authors have de¨ ned it. Ac- 19 cording to Xavier Ricard, a French- Peruvian anthropologist, the word refers 20 to the “place where pagos are made . . . synonym o Apu” (2007, 460; my 21 translation).¼Ç And this would be right—Nazario had tierra pukara (earth- 22 pukara), which I can accurately translate, linguistically speaking, as the place 23 with which he connected respectfully by way o the practice locally called 24 pago (payment) or despacho (remittance), discussed more fully in stories 3 25 and 6. But on successfully crossing the linguistic barriers, this translation 26 would leave the earth- being behind and move pukara into a regime where the 27 word stands for the being and allows for its representation (o pukara, for ex- 28 ample). In this case, translating implies a movement from one world to a dif- 29 ferent one, where “words wander o± on their own, without content, without 30 resemblance to ¨ ll their emptiness; they are no longer the marks o things; 31 they lie sleeping between the pages o books and covered in dust” (Foucault 32 1991, 48). What is lost is not meaning or the mode o signi¨ cation; what is 33 lost in translation is the earth- being itself, and with it the worlding practice in 34 which runakuna and tirakuna are together without the mediation o mean- 35 ing: naming su· ces. And while ethnographic commentary cannot put words 36 and things back together and know the world thus made, it can acknowledge 37
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the ontological di± erences enacted in the conversations across which com- 1 munication occurs. In so doing, the incommensurabilities that exceed the 2 translations connecting them might be let loose and come to the fore, allow- 3 ing for the radical di± erence that they manifest to be acknowledged even i 4 not known. Such ethnographic commentary poses an important challenge 5 to the state politics recognition and its incapacity to consider the being o 6 what it does not know. 7 8 9 10 PARTIAL CONNECTIONS: AN ANALYTICAL-POLITICAL TOOL 11 12 One simple but powerful consequence o the fractal geometry o 13 surfaces is that surfaces in contact do not touch everywhere. 14 —James Gleick, Chaos 15 16 “Partial connections” followed from conversations between Donna Haraway’s 17 notion of the cyborg (1991) and Marilyn Strathern’s rendition of Melanesian 18 practices of personhood (2004). In fact, it was the cyborg (an effective cir- 19 cuit between machine and human that is not a unit because, notwithstanding 20 the connection, the conditions of the entities composing it are also incom- 21 mensurable) that inspired Haraway’s phrase “one is too few, but two are too 22 many” (1991, 180). She used this idea to disrupt the analytical dualisms that 23 had historically organized socio-natural hierarchies and become part of the 24 leftist rhetoric (including feminism) and its proposals for emancipation via the 25 subordination of difference to political and theoretical unification. Instead, in 26 her view, “cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in 27 which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves” (181). She also 28 wrote: “A cyborg does not seek unitary identity . . . there is no drive in cyborgs 29 to produce total theory, but there is an intimate experience of boundaries, their 30 construction and destruction” (181). Figuring fusions with animals and ma- 31 chines, Haraway proposed, could stir political thought away from totality and 32 from totalitarian (and ultimately evolutionist) pronouncements that, produced 33 from a site that identified itself as complete (or better), were intended to im- 34 prove those that the site saw as incomplete (or worse). 35 Building on Haraway’s proposal to cancel analytical-political dualisms (and 36 the units that sustained them) and on Gleick’s work on fractal geometries, 37
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1 Strathern offers “partial connections” as analytical tool to use in thinking 2 “the relation” away from the usual idea that “the alternative to one is many” 3 (Strathern 2004, 52), a phrase that echoing Haraway’s above also expressed 4 a break with plurality. Strathern explained that plurality as an analytical habit 5 presented us anthropologists with “single” societies (or with many single soci- 6 eties) that we could then “relate” among each other for our diverse analytical 7 purposes (for example, comparison). In this analytical formulation, “relations” 8 connect “societies,” and both are external to each other (51–53). For example, 9 using this model, the Andes as a region has been described as a historical for- 10 mation composed of indigenous and Spanish cultures conceived as units and 11 external to the relationship of the mixture (cultural or biological) of both, which 12 resulted in a third different unit—the hybrid regionally known as mestizo. This 13 is the description that, one way or another, Andean nation-states have used 14 when implementing policies (in accordance with habits of plurality) of assimi- 15 lation, preservation, and, recently, multiculturalism. 16 The notion of partial connections offers instead the possibility of conceptu- 17 alizing entities (or collectives) with relations integrally implied, thus disrupting 18 them as units; emerging from the relation, entities are intra-related (cf. Barad 19 2007) instead of being inter-related, as in the case of the units composing 20 mestizaje. Instead of plurality (a feature premised on units), the mathematical 21 image congenial to partial connections is that of fractals: they offer the pos- 22 sibility of describing irregular bodies that escape Euclidean geometrical mea- 23 surements because their borders also allow other bodies in—without, how- 24 ever, touching each other everywhere, as Gleick explains in the quote above. 25 Thus intra-connected, and therefore not units, fractal bodies also resist being 26 divided into “parts and wholes” (Strathern 2004), for this is a quality of units. 27 Instead, emerging intra-connected, a fractal entity brings in the whole, which 28 includes the part, which brings in the whole, which includes the part, and so 29 forth—a pattern that replicates itself endlessly, in an inherently relational de- 30 sign. A fractal “deals with wholes no matter how fine the cutting,” says Roy 31 Wagner (1991, 172). In the analysis of fractal conditions, “the scrutiny of indi- 32 vidual cases runs into the chaotic problem that nothing seems to hold the 33 configuration at the center, there is no map, only endless kaleidoscopic per- 34 mutations” (Strathern 2004, xvii). And subjecting these kaleidoscopic permu- 35 tations to scale—zooming in and out of them, for example—results in similar 36 fractal patterns that, notwithstanding the recurrence, are also different. Impor- 37 tantly, since fractal parts are intra-connected, like in a kaleidoscope, relation-
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ships are not external but integral to the parts. The latter are not without the 1 former—their inherent relationality prevents their “unitization.” 2 It is the kaleidoscopic simultaneity of similarity and difference, and the 3 intra-relational condition among parts that are not without wholes that are sig- 4 nificant to the stories I tell in this book. They represent vital analytical alterna- 5 tives vis-à- vis prevalent state practices that demand simple either difference 6 or sameness from indigeneity, and thus manifest the negation of its historical 7 condition. Having emerged from inclusions in practices and institutions differ- 8 ent from itself, and thus including those practices without disappearing into 9 them, indigeneity is both with (and thus similar to) and without (and thus dif- 10 ferent from) Latin American nation-state institutions, colonial and republican. 11 Borders between indigenous things and nation-state things are complex; they 12 historically exist as relations among the fields they separate, and therefore 13 they also enact a connection from which both—things indigenous and non- 14 indigenous—emerge, even as they maintain differences vis-à- vis each other. 15 Both are together in histories, calendars, identities, and practices; but they 16 are also different in ways that the other does not—even cannot—participate 17 in. Repeating the words of Law that I have already mentioned, “The argu- 18 ment is that ‘this’ (whatever ‘this’ may be) is included in ‘that,’ but ‘this’ can- 19 not be reduced to ‘that’” (2004, 64). In this book, I use the concept of partial 20 connections as an analytical tool that is also political. It allows assertions of 21 indigenous and nonindigenous conditions outside of state taxonomies that, 22 based on the evolutionary and/or multicultural practice of plurality (that is, the 23 idea that the alternative to one is many), demand the purity of a unit or deny 24 existence. Accordingly, the indigenous cannot appear in the mestizo, or vice 25 versa. Instead, via a relational form conceived as intrinsic to the entities that 26 it brings to the fore, partial connections enable the analysis of how they ap- 27 pear within each other and at the same time remain distinct. Although sel- 28 dom read as such, the concept of partial connections is an expression of 29 political vocations—and feminist ones at that. Explaining the potential of the 30 concept of cyborg, and her translation of this analytical idea to partial con- 31 nections, Strathern writes: “The relations for forming totalities from parts are 32 questioned, as are the relationships of domination and hierarchy promoted by 33 the dualities of encompassment, such as self and other, public and private, 34 body and mind” (2004, 37). This echoes Haraway’s claim that “we do not need 35 a totality in order to work well. The feminist dream of a common language, like 36 all dreams for a perfectly true language, of perfectly faithful naming of experi- 37
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1 ence, is a totalizing and imperialist one. . . . Perhaps, ironically, we can learn 2 from our fusions with animals and machines how not to be Man, the embodi- 3 ment of Western logos” (1991, 173). More than twenty years later, the partially 4 connected cyborg continues to inspire utopian postplural politics—a proposal 5 that questions prevalent state taxonomies and also the oppositional politics 6 that aim at state recognition. As the reader has already realized, partial con- 7 nections greatly serve the conversations across similarities and differences 8 that Mariano, Nazario, and I held in the environs of Ausangate. And to jump 9 to what the reader will conclude: partial connections are the conceptual and 10 vital place from where this book emerged. 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
34 STORY 1
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 INTERLUDE ONE MARIANO TURPO 9 10 A LEADER IN-AYLLU 11 12 13 I talked with the ayllu; it was not me who was happy. [ ey told me]: 14 “It will be good, we have searched your luck in the coca leaves. We went 15 to o± er candles to Taytacha [Jesus Christ], your candle burnt well. In 16 the days to come, Don Mariano, do not be scared o the hacendado, or 17 the men from the hacienda. You are going to cause them trouble—they 18 are going to be sorry. Do not be afraid, the coca and the candle say so.” 19 ey obligated me—they had looked in the coca leaves, in the cards, 20 and inside the animals. It was my luck they told me. I wanted 21 to go get lost, but I had nowhere to go. 22 MARIANO TURPO 2003 23 24 25 The Story and the Storyteller 26 27 Who was Mariano? My answer, o course, is limited to our conversations. I 28 like to think that through them I became privy to stories about an impor- 29 tant nationwide political event. Co- labored in Quechua, the dialogues that 30 compose the stories were ¨ rst translated into Spanish and then rendered into 31 an English version for this book, which does not necessarily own any o the 32 tongues it used as conduits. Its narrative is complex. Mariano’s narratives 33 are willakuy, stories about what we would consider nonveri¨ able events. He 34 told me about caves that made him sick, and about mountains that inter- 35 vened—decisively—in stru les among humans. Clearly, I cannot under- 36 stand Mariano’s narratives using the tools o history only. And I do not want 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 Mariano remembers . . . August 2003. Photograph by Thomas Müller. 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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to translate them as myths or treat them as stories about ritual activities: 1 these categories would move Mariano’s narratives to the sphere o beliefs, 2 where considering their eventful complexity would be di· cult, i not im- 3 possible. As I have already explained, Mariano’s life included relations with 4 other- than- human persons who participated in his political activities—and 5 these were undoubtedly historical. ey occurred between the 1950s and 6 1980s and contributed to the agrarian reform, the transformation o the land 7 tenure system in Peru. A landmark, nationwide historical event, evidence 8 about it is plentiful. But Mariano’s deeds include more than can be made evi- 9 dent; his willakuy are important beyond factual proof. Without willakuy his 10 history would not only be incomplete, it would not be Mariano’s. 11 Mariano was and was not like Walter Benjamin’s storyteller. Like the latter, 12 Mariano’s stories were deeply submerged in his life; traces o it clung to his 13 narrations, “the way the handprints o the potter cling to the clay vessel.” 14 Unlike Benjamin’s storyteller, however, Mariano’s narrative intention was to 15 convey “the pure essence o the thing, like information or report” (1968, 16 91–92). So he was also like Benjamin’s historian, lawyer, or journalist, except 17 that Mariano’s terms did not ¨ t modern philosophies o history. Much o 18 the materials he used to compose his narrations were foreign to history— 19 ahistorical, some would say, and they would be right. In the same vein, he 20 eluded modern political theory; for Mariano, forces emerged from both the 21 surrounding landscape and social institutions. Among the former he consid- 22 ered, for example, willful mountains and what we call weather, and among 23 the latter he included literacy and the power manifested through the let- 24 tered word and its institutions: state representatives, lawyers, the landowner, 25 and le© ist politicians. Exceeding history and modern politics (or politics as 26 usual), his stories tell how he and others like him enlisted forces—lawyers, 27 politicians, writing, and heterogeneous earth-beings—in a confrontation 28 that ended the hacienda system, a central institution o power in the coun- 29 try that was organized around large estates and connected (legally and ille- 30 gally) to the heart o the state in Lima and provincial capitals like Cuzco, the 31 main urban center o the department with the same name. 32 Mariano presented himsel to me as a ¨ ghter, an individual who was ca- 33 prichoso, a word he always said in Spanish; the literal translation would be 34 “whimsical,” but I took it to mean that he was the boldest individual I had 35 ever met, with the strongest will I had ever heard of. He was born in the 36 1920s, in what was then Andamayo—a village that a© er the agrarian reform 37
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1 split into several smaller ones, among them Pacchanta, where Mariano lived 2 when I met him. Pacchanta is an Andean village removed from the main- 3 stream urban imagination, but which runakuna constantly connect (usually 4 through commercial activities and family relations) with the rest o the de- 5 partment o Cuzco; the rest o the country, including the main cities (like 6 Lima and Arequipa); and main international commercial centers (formerly in 7 Great Britain, currently in the United States). Rather than canceling it, these 8 connections (especially the energy and e± ort they demand) also highlight 9 the multidimensional distance between Pacchanta and Lima. Once again, 10 Benjamin o± ers the opportunity for a contrast. Evoking the passage o time 11 in a European country town, he writes: “A generation that had gone to school 12 on a horse- drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside 13 in which nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these 14 clouds, in a ¨ eld o force o destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny, 15 fragile human body” (1968, 84). My own sensations about the passage o 16 time in Pacchanta are the exact opposite: although it would be deceptive, it 17 is easy to imagine that nothing has changed in the village but the color o the 18 peaks that surround it. Formerly snow white, the mountains are currently 19 graying, perhaps due to that ubiquitous phenomenon called global warming. 20 I always felt overwhelmed by the sensation o a biopolitics o abandonment 21 every time I arrived in this region, where colds that become pneumonia and 22 kill people are a quotidian event. e amazing beauty o the landscape, with 23 looming mountains and small lagoons o unimaginable shades o blue, con- 24 trasts with the roughness o living conditions here: the temperatures are re- 25 lentlessly low, the soils are barely good enough to grow potatoes, and ichu, 26 the high- altitude grass that feeds llamas and alpacas, becomes scarcer every 27 year. People say it did not used be like that; when Mariano confronted the 28 hacienda, pastures were big and food was plentiful. Now, they face a condi- 29 tion that is common in the countryside in Peru today: “Families have grown, 30 and the land has not.” Runakuna repeat this phrase over and over. Foreigners 31 stay here rarely, and only for short stints. Locals also leave frequently to eke 32 out a destitute life in a city (Cuzco, Arequipa, or Lima) where improvement 33 seems at least a possibility. 34 Mariano used to refer to his village as a “corner o snow” (rit’i k’uchu) or 35 an “empty corner” (ch’usaq k’uchu) and regretted staying there, unlike his two 36 younger brothers, who were sent away to some city, probably Cuzco or Lima, 37 when they were children—one to work with a dentist (probably as a servant),
38 INTERLUDE ONE
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 “A corner of snow, an empty corner.” 23 Photograph by Roger Valencia. Used by permission. 24 25 the other to help a relative sell ice cones. As the oldest, Mariano had to stay to 26 take care o the crops while his mother tended the sheep and alpacas in the 27 pastureland (located at even higher altitudes than the agricultural ¨ elds) and 28 his father served the hacienda or walked back and forth from their village 29 to Cuzco to sell wool, meat, and bayeta—hand- spun and woven wool fabric 30 used to make runakuna clothing. When Mariano was o age, he wanted to 31 join the military voluntarily. is was not necessarily a good life, we might 32 suspect, but even that was preferable to staying in this rit’i k’uchu; but he 33 was not dra© ed and his mother did not let him join voluntarily. I she would 34 have let go o me, I would have learned Spanish, and I would have learned more 35 words to defend myself, I would have learned how to write. It is not like we were 36 without animals . . . they could have given me away to someone and given a sheep 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 A document in the archive in which Mariano 21 rehearsed his signature: “spelling slowly, I make 22 the letters talk.” Courtesy of Mariano Turpo. 23 24 25 to them, saying: here this is for you to take him, care for him and teach him. On 26 the contrary, in this empty corner she kept me. And now what do I know? I do 27 not read easily, and I know only a little Spanish. 28 When I met him, Mariano was able to read with di· culty—he could rec- 29 ognize letters and slowly put them together. Susiguwan deletrachispa rima- 30 chini [spelling slowly, I make the letters talk], was his explanation o how he 31 read. Sometimes he could read, sometimes he could not; it depended on the 32 script. Mariano remembers that his father managed to send him to school 33 when, a© er receiving a sheep and potatoes from Mariano’s family, the local 34 teacher boldly sent the hacendado a note saying: “Mariano Turpo has to leave 35 the hacienda a© er this harvest season and go to school every day.” Judging 36 from the chores Mariano performed, he must have then been twelve years 37 old. At school he learned to add and subtract, to recognize the letters o the
40 INTERLUDE ONE
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alphabet, to use the cardinal points for spatial orientation, and not much 1 more; soon a© er he started going to school, the house where it was held was 2 burned, and the teacher was forced to leave the area. e hacendado had won 3 a round—but more rounds were to follow. 4 As a male born in the property o the hacienda Lauramarca, Mariano in- 5 herited from his father the obligation to work as a colono, a form o servitude 6 organized around the large landowners. Undoubtedly, what made possible 7 the conditions that allowed landowners to enforce this labor relationship 8 was the identi¨ cation o runakuna workers as “Indians.” Considered abject, 9 ¨ lthy, ignorant, de¨ nitely inferior and perhaps not even fully human, runa- 10 kuna continued to be colonial subjects in a racially articulated nation- state 11 that emerged locally through the rule o the hacienda, a social and politi- 12 cal institution with undisputed power over runakuna. It was this racially 13 legitimized existence as “bare life” (Agamben 1998)—entailing the com- 14 plete vulnerability o the colono vis- à- vis the hacendado and the total social 15 invisibility o this form o existence beyond the hacienda—that the young 16 Mariano Turpo wanted to leave by migrating to Lima. Even being given away 17 as a servant in the city would have been better than being invisibly killable in 18 a remote land where the local hacendado ruled supreme. But he did not leave: 19 he stayed and became a key player in the confrontation with the owner o the 20 vast estate named Hacienda Lauramarca. 21 22 Mariano In- Ayllu Personero 23 24 Sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s the ayllu chose Mariano as per- 25 sonero—a position o responsibility in the village. Among other things, this 26 meant he had to lead the confrontation against the hacienda. According to 27 his brother- in- law, Mariano was chosen because “he [could] speak [well]” 28 (pay rimariq) and “had a [good] head” (pay umachayuq). But i I had thought 29 that Mariano had been democratically elected by his fellow colonos to rep- 30 resent them against the hacendado—and that he, in turn, had proudly ac- 31 cepted a coveted position—I would have been wrong. is is how Mariano 32 narrated his selection: ey forced me to accept. It is your luck that you will win, 33 they told me—and I wanted to run away, disappear, and get lost. But they, the 34 whole ayllu, told me: do not leave, where are you going to go? Wherever you go, 35 you will not get anything, no place will accept you. e ayllu o other places [huq 36 ayllu laruqa] will not give you chacras [land to cultivate] or anything for your 37
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1 animals. Why would you go? Where would you go? You cannot go. You have the 2 luck we have seen in the coca, we have lit a candle to Taytacha and it burned 3 well; it is your luck to win the hacendado. Do not be a aid, it is burning well. 4 en, because o all those things, they appointed me personero so that I would 5 speak om the ayllu [ayllumanta parlaqta]. 6 In the above passage Mariano mentions his ayllu several times; only 7 months later I would understand just how important this relation had been 8 in his decision to become a personero. Modesta Condori, his wife, opposed 9 the ayllu’s decision, but to no avail: My wife said, “Why do you want to stick 10 your nose in that, they are going to shoot you, they are even ° aying people, they 11 are going to do the same to you, they are going to kill you!” ¡Carajo! [Damn it!] 12 I could not escape like a thief—I had to stay. Even i the hacendado killed me, 13 I could not say no. 14 e task seemed impossible. Confronting the hacendado meant working 15 against an order that was seemingly omnipotent and permanent. e idea 16 that “Indians” were inferior and “gentlemen” (and “ladies”) were superior 17 was apparent even in runakuna bodies: their clothes, their bare feet, their 18 speech, what they ate, where they slept, the scars on their skin, the relentless 19 cold they endured—everything re´ ected a wretchedness that appeared to 20 be sealed by fate. Puzzled at the might they had confronted—and also re- 21 ´ ecting on the limits o their ¨ ght against the hacendado—Mariano remem- 22 bered a refrain that runakuna repeated to themselves, over and over again, 23 even as they stubbornly confronted the landowner: e ojota [indigenous 24 shoe, actually a sandal] will never defeat the shoe. How can a bare- kneed runa 25 defeat the one who wears pants,¼ ¡Carajo! Quechua will never be like Spanish! 26 Mariano was unprepared for the task: he did not even know how to read or 27 write—indispensable skills in a legal con´ ict. erefore, to ful¨ ll his task 28 as personero, and because personeros always walked in pairs, the commu- 29 nity assigned him a literate partner. His name was Mariano Chillihuani, and 30 Mariano Turpo called him his puriq masi, or walking partner. eir names, 31 and those o many others, appear interchangeably in the documents about 32 the stru le and compose the archive I discuss in story 4. Mariano remem- 33 bered that his ¨ rst task as personero was to build a school in the hacienda. 34 He did it, and the hacendado jailed him for it. is would be the ¨ rst o his 35 many stints in prison. 36 Carajo, accepting to walk om the ayllu, carajo, living or dying I am going to 37 defeat the hacendado [Caraju nuqaqa ayllumantaqa purispaqa, caraju wañus-
42 INTERLUDE ONE
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papas kausaspapas judesaqmi hacendaduta], he remembered telling himself. 1 And his narrative goes beyond his autobiography. It is also the story—and 2 the history—o a socionatural collective that fought against their reduction 3 to a bare existence and was, to a large extent, successful. Resulting from their 4 ¨ ght—at least in part—the state dissolved the Hacienda Lauramarca and 5 transformed it into an agrarian cooperative, a state- owned institution. Ad- 6 ministrators paid through the Ministry o Agriculture replaced the land- 7 owner and its crew. is was a feat for runakuna—albeit a temporary one. 8 Starting in the 1970s, the name o Mariano Turpo became familiar to some 9 in the region o Cuzco; he was known as the cabecilla o Lauramarca—the 10 astute leader o what many in the region knew as a “peasant uprising.” Even- 11 tually, his reputation provoked some scholarly discussions about conciencia 12 campesina or “peasant consciousness” in English (see Flores Galindo 1976; 13 Quijano 1979; Reátegui 1977). However, articulated only through con- 14 cepts derived from modern political theory, these discussions do not cap- 15 ture the relation that made Mariano’s leadership inherently connected to 16 the ayllu—“accepting to walk o m the ayllu” was indeed an act o courage, 17 maybe also generosity, but one embedded in the conditions o ayllu relation- 18 ality: Mariano walked o m the ayllu, never without it.½ 19 I could say that the ayllu obliged Mariano to accept because he had the 20 qualities o a good leader. is o course is not wrong; it is what Mariano’s 21 brother- in- law told me. But, when Mariano described his doubts about his 22 selection, he told me other stories that required my attention—and in all o 23 them the word ayllu ¨ gured prominently. For example, in the earlier para- 24 graph: what did it mean that “the whole ayllu” had told him that he had to ac- 25 cept? (Who or what was the whole ayllu?) What did the “ayllu o a di± erent 26 place” mean? Why would they not give him chacras, land to cultivate? And i 27 he was chosen as a spokesperson, would the Quechua phrase “to speak o m 28 the ayllu” (ayllumanta parlaqta) rather than for the ayllu make any di± erence 29 in terms o Mariano’s “representation” o the collective? 30 Ayllu is a ubiquitous term in the Andeanist ethnographic record, usually 31 de¨ ned as a group o humans and other- than- human persons related to each 32 other by kinship ties, and collectively inhabiting a territory that they also 33 possess.¾ I was o course familiar with this de¨ nition, and among the Andean 34 ethnographies that referred to it I had found Catherine Allen’s (2002) the 35 most intriguing. But a conversation with Justo Oxa, a bilingual Quechua- 36 Spanish elementary school teacher, o± ered the possibility o using ayllu as 37
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1 an even more capacious ethnographic concept, revealing a relational mode 2 that I had not found in my Andeanist readings. To understand Mariano’s 3 obligation, I had to understand his “being-in- ayllu,” as he said. e teacher 4 explained: “Ayllu is like a weaving, and all the beings in the world—people, 5 animals, mountains, plants, etc.—are like the threads, we are part o the 6 design. e beings in this world are not alone, just as a thread by itsel is 7 not a weaving, and weavings are with threads, a runa is always in- ayllu with 8 other beings—that is ayllu.”Á In this understanding, humans and other- 9 than- human beings do not only exist individually, for they are inherently 10 connected composing the ayllu o which they are part and that is part o 11 them—just as a single thread in a weaving is integral to the weaving, and the 12 weaving is integral to the thread. In a sense, Oxa’s notion o ayllu resonates 13 with Roy Wagner’s idea o a fractal person: “never a unit standing in relation 14 to an a regate, or an a regate standing in relation to a unit, but always 15 an entity with relationships integrally implied” (1991, 163). Similarly, com- 16 posing the ayllu are entities with relations integrally implied; being at once 17 singular and plural, they always bring about the ayllu even when appearing 18 individually. us viewed, the ayllu is the socionatural collective o humans, 19 other- than- human beings, animals, and plants inherently connected to each 20 other in such a way that nobody within it escapes that relation—unless she 21 (or he or it) wants to defy the collective and risk separation from it. When 22 this happens, the separated entity becomes wakcha, a Quechua word usually 23 translated as orphan (huérfano in Spanish)—lacking ayllu ties and therefore 24 is di± erent from those in-ayllu and similar to those without ayllu ties—like 25 me for example. 26 Ayllu is a relational mode, and it is consequential as such in many ways. 27 For example, the labor o representation that emerges from ayllu relationality 28 is speci¨ c to it and conceptually distinct. According to John Law, “to repre- 29 sent is to practice division” (1995, 158). It is to be able to separate representer 30 from represented, signi¨ er from signi¨ ed, subject from object. As personero, 31 Mariano’s practice o representation was di± erent: he was not only an indi- 32 vidual, he was also in- ayllu and thus attached to the collective that had chosen 33 him. While he indeed represented runakuna vis- à- vis the state, or the modern 34 politicians he engaged with, he was not a signi¨ er o the ayllu—he did not 35 stand in its stead. Recall what Mariano said about his appointment: “they 36 placed me as personero so that I would speak om the ayllu.” e phrase in 37 Quechua for the last three words o Mariano’s sentence is ayllumanta par-
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laqta. Manta is a su· x to indicate origin, in this case the place where speech 1 originated. Mariano was his ayllu spokesperson, and authoritatively so, for 2 the ayllu enabled his speech—yet this did not grant him the power to speak 3 individually, even i on behal o the ayllu. Rather than speaking for the ayllu, 4 personeros like Mariano spoke o m it. ey were not only personeros, they 5 were also the collective o which they were part, and which was part o them. 6 As persons with relations integrally implied, in- ayllu personeros are not the 7 individual subjects that the state (or any modern institution o politics) as- 8 sumes they are and requires them to be. Similarly di± erent, their act o rep- 9 resentation is an obligation that may grant them prestige, but not power; 10 Mariano complained about having had to accept the collective’s command 11 to lead, but being in-ayllu and wanting to remain as such, he had no choice. 12 13 14 15 MARIANO’S POWERFUL IN- AYLLU POLITICAL SPEECH, 16 17 AND PEASANT MOVEMENT AS EQUIVOCATION 18 In Society against the State, Pierre Clastres identifies speech and power. 19 Somewhat redundantly he writes: “To speak, above all, is to possess the 20 power to speak” (1987, 151). The redundancy has a reason, for he then identi- 21 fies the “man of power” as the person who both speaks and is the sole source 22 of legitimate speech, “which goes by the name of command and wants noth- 23 ing save the obedience of the executants” (ibid.). Thus he distinguishes be- 24 tween masters (those who speak) and subjects (those who remain silent)—a 25 distinction that he identifies with societies where the state is the organizing 26 political principle. Nevertheless, Clastres continues, a positive connection be- 27 tween speech and power also exists in stateless societies, but there is a differ- 28 ence: “If in societies with a state speech is power’s right, in societies without 29 a state speech is power’s duty” (153). Moreover, these groups choose their 30 chief as a result of his (perhaps her?) command of speech; the latter precedes 31 power, it does not result from power. Consequently, speech is not exercised 32 independently of that which chose it to be powerful; its purpose is not to be 33 listened to by those who identified the chief because they themselves—not 34 the chief—are the source of power. I had not read Clastres before my conver- 35 sations with Mariano about his leadership practice; but Clastres’s conceptu- 36 alization (in what he calls primitive societies) seems apposite. Yet in Mariano’s 37
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1 case, the title of Clastres’s book can be misleading, for while the socionatural 2 collective that Mariano led did not necessarily abide by the requirements of 3 the modern state (I explain this in several ensuing stories), they did not work 4 against the state either. On the contrary, they demanded visibility within the 5 state, and in a mode that would coincide with Jacques Rancière’s conceptual- 6 ization of politics. Accordingly (and like Clastres putting speech center stage), 7 politics is an event that happens when those who do not count as speaking 8 beings make themselves of some account (Rancière 1999, 27). This is what 9 Mariano’s collective did, and in doing so they involved other-than- humans 10 in the political process and practiced a mode of representation that was at 11 odds with modern democracy. What was part of their speech and constituted 12 them—and which they used to make themselves of some count—exceeded 13 the conditions of modern politics. Modern politicians might have surely dis- 14 credited Mariano’s speech and actions as superstitious belief in the best of 15 cases—a cave does not make a politician sick, nor is a mountain a being! Ex- 16 cesses notwithstanding, the ayllu confrontation with the hacendado did not 17 go unheard; on the contrary, it was heard if in terms that translated it into a 18 “peasant movement,” an equivocation (Viveiros de Castro 2004b) that became 19 the conceptual scaffold for regional and even nationwide agrarian policy in the 20 years to come. This is the topic of stories 2 and 3. 21 22 23 24 e ayllu chose Mariano to walk the complaint because o his ability to nego- 25 tiate both with the hacendado and with earth- beings. e community had 26 consulted the coca leaves and Taytacha (Jesus Christ), and both had ap- 27 proved the choice.Ç Mariano was afraid—so much so that on his ¨ rst mission 28 to Cuzco to request permission to build a school for the village, he went to 29 the cathedral to ask the Lord Jesus for his forgiveness, and to tell him that he 30 was not going to kill anybody; he had been chosen because the coca had spo- 31 ken his name, and he had to comply with the will o his place, which included 32 Ausangate. is connection between Lord Jesus residing in the cathedral in 33 the city o Cuzco and Ausangate—the earth- being, located miles away, over- 34 seeing the region o Lauramarca—exhibits the partial connections that make 35 up everyday life in Cuzco. 36 Mariano’s election as a leader bore similar complexity: the coca had chosen 37 him and the candle had burned right. Ausangate was pleased with him; so
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was Jesus Christ. And he was chosen, as his brother-in- law had told me, be- 1 cause he could speak well and had a good head; he was bold and intelligent; 2 he could talk to the lawyers and could bear the hacendado’s might—these 3 are talents modern politics would require from a peasant leader, a position 4 Mariano was known regionally for holding. His leadership thus occupied the 5 partial connection between the local state and being in- ayllu. It embodied 6 more than one rationale: from the state perspective, he was a personero, an 7 individual tasked with being the liaison between local and state authorities 8 (the alcalde [mayor] and the gobernador [the district police authority]) and 9 the villagers.È e personero was the state representative in the village, en- 10 forcing the state’s will, which was usually at the service o the hacendado; and 11 he also represented the villagers to the authorities. I have already discussed 12 the second rationale: it responded to in- ayllu practices in which entities— 13 humans and other- than-humans—obligated his actions, but inherently, not 14 from an outside. When opposing the hacendado, personeros occupied a 15 perilous position o course, but it was also a complex one capable o both in- 16 ayllu and state relations o representation. 17 18 Mariano as Yachaq 19 20 Mariano was known in his village as skillful practitioner o relations with 21 earth- beings; people like him are known as paqu, pampamisayuq, altomi- 22 sayuq, and yachaq. ese nouns are not just words, a name for someone 23 like Mariano. ey may summon the practice from which the earth- being 24 emerges; therefore, respect and care surround their utterance. Also, what 25 these word- practices summon, and the power to do so, is heterogeneous— 26 some are dangerous. When I met Mariano, yachaq was the word- practice that 27 he felt most comfortable embodying and also his preferred mode o enact- 28 ment. In Cuzco the word circulates in Quechua without translation into 29 Spanish, for most people are familiar with the practice; yet i a translation 30 is required, it is alguien que sabe (a knower). A yachaq is able to search in 31 the coca leaves for indications about conditions (usually related to some- 32 one’s life) that are visible or otherwise readily obvious to the senses: some- 33 one’s departure, or a local election. He or she (although women less openly) 34 also knows how to look in di± erent elements (human urine, animal entrails, 35 human veins, or a narrative) for explanations o a disease and a possible cura- 36 tive practice. Translating for explanatory clarity only—and acknowledging, 37
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1 o course, that my de¨ nition is not isomorphic with the practice—I would 2 say that a yachaq is someone with the capacity, granted by earth- beings, to 3 perform “diagnostic” practices the e± ectiveness o which does not require 4 a consequential event to follow and is not only related to what we know as 5 human health. I an event follows, it may or may not be attributed to the 6 practice—certainty is not a condition o the practices o the yachaq. 7 8 9 10 BECOMING YACHAQ 11 According to popular wisdom in Cuzco, a lightning strike is the earth-beings’ 12 way of choosing a person as yachaq. And an additional important signal of 13 someone’s ability to be a yachaq is his or her suerte (luck) in finding misas 14 (small stones, sometimes in the shape of animals or plants) that are both the 15 earth-being and its way of choosing the person he wants to commune with. 16 Suerte (also called istrilla, or star) is a gift that an individual can use to enhance 17 his or her ability to become yachaq. Because earth-beings are powerful, the 18 decision to become a yachaq and work to improve one’s abilities as such, 19 depends on the person’s determination to face the risks inherent in practices 20 that bring runakuna and earth-beings together. 21 Mariano was uncertain about whether he was struck by lightning or not. 22 Nazario knew that he had not been, but this did not prevent him from being 23 a yachaq; he had suerte, he had istrilla. These are his words: If people do not 24 have istrilla, it is in vain, they cannot know. Even if lightning or hail strikes you, 25 without suerte, people cannot know. If they do not have suerte they are not 26 going to find misas. Without misas you cannot know [how to do anything]. If 27 I know how to cure animals, it is because Ausangate wants me to know. For 28 those that do not have istrilla, it is in vain, they cannot know. 29 Being a yachaq may run in families, but it is not inherited; rather, it is passed 30 on through an apprenticeship that involves observing and accompanying a 31 close relative or an intimate friend. But suerte is a requirement. I have already 32 mentioned how Benito, Nazario’s brother, accompanied his father as much as 33 Nazario did, but he did not have suerte and he was afraid to stumble—being 34 with earth-beings is dangerous, they are powerful, mistakes are risky. As de- 35 fining as suerte is the qarpasqa, an important moment in the process of be- 36 coming a yachaq. Translated as carpación into Cuzqueño Spanish, the word 37
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derives from the Quechua qarpa, which can also mean to irrigate agricultural 1 plots. This practice has been translated as an initiation ritual (Ricard 2007, 2 461). I prefer to use Nazario’s words: it is the action of washing someone’s 3 body with (the water of) an earth-being. Nazario and Mariano were washed 4 with Ausangate, as it became water in Alqacocha, the name of the lagoon 5 around which Mariano’s family had their main grazing plots. I would propose— 6 without certainty—that qarpasqa connects person and earth-being by im- 7 mersing one in the other. 8 9 10 11 Mariano Turpo learned to be a yachaq from his father, Sebastián Turpo, who 12 must have been in his prime in the 1920s. Like most people living in his 13 area—and like Mariano—he earned a living raising alpacas and sheep. He 14 sold some o their wool in what was then a new local market, and he wove 15 some into a local fabric called bayeta, which he exchanged for corn in the 16 lowlands. He died o old age in the 1960s, when Mariano was already en- 17 gaged in his confrontation with Lauramarca, and in fact he did qarpasqa 18 for Mariano when he was selected as the cabecilla. And according to family 19 members’ memory, Sebastián Turpo’s father (Mariano’s grandfather and Na- 20 zario’s great- grandfather) was also a yachaq. As Nazario tells it, My father’s 21 father was a yachaq. He taught my father—he made the qarpasqa, and he also 22 taught him. When he cured people, I walked with my father. When he cured 23 animals we went together. My father also walked with his father, learning. My 24 father’s father knew how to do everything. He lived high up, far away with 25 his animals . . . he lived alone. We took his food, breakfast, lunch, his kharmu 26 [snacks]—his house was so far away. 27 So, by watching his father’s practice, Mariano “learned to know” as he put 28 it. is learning was a deliberate act involving both father and son: Sebastián 29 allowed Mariano to observe (rikuy) what he was doing, whenever he did it. 30 And Mariano wanted to learn—which, according to village consensus meant 31 he was a “strong enough” to engage earth- beings. Mariano and Nazario had a 32 similar experience—both went through the qarpasqa with their fathers, and 33 each had a partner with whom they were yachaq together. is is usually the 34 case: knowers have partners and work together, one person being stronger 35 than the other.É Partners in these practices may be relatives. Mariano’s part- 36 ner was his wife’s sister’s husband, Domingo Crispín, and he was also one 37
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1 o the organizers against the Hacienda Lauramarca. And Nazario also re- 2 membered that Mariano walked with him [Domingo] the two o them cured 3 well together, they made the people healthy, they cured the animals, the plants 4 and made despachos o all kinds—together they were good curers. Mariano was 5 stronger, he gave the orders and Domingo followed—they also lived close to 6 each other, probably in plots given to them by their wives’ father. 7 8 Mariano’s Travels 9 10 Commenting on Heide er’s argument about “dwelling” as a mode o living- 11 being, Michael Jackson proposes “journeying” as an alternative (2002, 31). 12 Intriguingly, these two modes were not contrasted in Mariano’s life. In fact, 13 while always being in- ayllu—his mode o dwelling—he successfully traveled 14 geographic distances (and ontological di± erences) that were di· cult to tra- 15 verse. Clearly, Mariano was not the only traveler among runakuna, but he 16 was indeed gi© ed at journeying between worlds. He was familiar with the 17 boundaries that separated and connected his world and hegemonic Peru. 18 He experienced the violence they e± ected, and retreating to Pacchanta was 19 not an option for life in the village transpired through those boundaries as 20 well. His option, which was also the ayllu’s proposal that he could not avoid, 21 was to journey across the boundaries engaging them to make many conver- 22 sations possible—with lawyers, with politicians, and, toward the end o his 23 days, with me, although perhaps then it was not in- ayllu ties that compelled 24 him. I had many iends everywhere, I made iends even when I could not 25 speak Spanish, he would say proudly. omas Müller, a German photogra- 26 pher who spent several years in the region o Ausangate, was one o them. 27 As they grazed animals together, they spoke about Peru and Germany and 28 their traveling across worlds. My connection with Mariano occurred through 29 Müller, whose photographs o Mariano adorn this book. 30 And so Mariano traveled across worlds even when he was in Pacchanta; 31 but he journeyed outside the village as well. His travels took him from Ausan- 32 gate to Cuzco and Lima, from jail to lawyers’ o· ces, union meetings, market- 33 places, state o· ces, and even the Presidential Palace in Lima, where, along 34 with several other runakuna leaders, he met with the president o the coun- 35 try, and sat with the gentleman himself, together, in the palace [palayciupi tiya- 36 sawaq, kikin wiraquchawan kuska]. Mariano could not remember the name 37 o the president or when he met with him. It might have been José Busta-
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mante y Rivero, a lawyer with populist tendencies who governed between 1 1945 and 1948. On that occasion Mariano stayed for a month in Lima— 2 supported by remittances from his ayllumasikuna—those who were in- ayllu 3 with him. In Lima, he went to several banks to receive the giros (money trans- 4 fers) sent to him from his village; when he ran out o money, he worked in 5 marketplaces peeling potatoes for female vendors who gave him food in ex- 6 change. He must have visited Lima in the summer months because he recalls 7 the sun coming through the window and warming up his hotel room. I have 8 wondered many times what he looked like when he walked the streets o 9 Lima: did he wear the knee-length woolen pants that typi¨ ed (and stigma- 10 tized) Indians in those days? He seemed to have a diversi¨ ed wardrobe; we 11 joked about it when he told me how he changed clothes as he traveled places. 12 For example, to avoid being captured by the hacendado men, he once dressed 13 up like an urbanite—with a brown suit and a white shirt—and traveled by 14 train from Cuzco to Arequipa, a port city from where he could take a bus 15 to Lima. Maybe he wore the same suit to meet state authorities. I asked him 16 and he laughed—he did not remember. He did remember, though, that he 17 did not chew coca leaves in front o them. Why? I asked. ose people think 18 coca stinks, I had to be polite, was his response. I do not remember making 19 any comments. According to the state, whose representatives he was visiting, 20 Mariano was an Indian, an identity replete with stigma.Ê And the remark 21 about coca stinking is replete with racist tones, but as I write this I am in- 22 clined to think that rather than being a self- humiliating response, Mariano’s 23 politeness was dignifying; I simply cannot imagine Mariano being ashamed 24 o who he was, and chewing coca leaves was part o his identity. In any event, 25 the conditions o runakuna life resulted from state racism, and he was lead- 26 ing the opposition to that. Politeness could have been his weapon, part o his 27 assertive leadership style. 28 Mariano had his moments o glory, he was an important person, and he 29 clearly knew it: us for many years I was presenting [the ayllu]; I was not 30 like everybody else [Anchiqa nuqaqa astalamantapis prinsintani kani, mana 31 kumunllanchu]. Rosalind Gow writes: “He had a great following and was 32 always treated with deference. At assemblies he always took the seat o honor 33 and people jumped to obey his commands. One observer remembered being 34 at a ¨ esta at which roast guinea pigs were served, all the heads facing towards 35 Don Mariano” (1981, 191). I had people in my hands, he remembered along 36 with memories o the hardships o a life running away from the landlord 37
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1 men. His wife, Modesta, was in charge o the family. She became a merchant, 2 and a clandestine one at that, for the hacienda prohibited all transactions 3 with her. She and Mariano had seven children, all male, and three o them 4 died at a very young age. Mariano was away in all three cases, either in hiding 5 or in Lima dealing with some paperwork related to the stru le with the 6 hacienda. Once again, I o± er Mariano’s words: [One o them] died when I 7 was in Lima. My wife sent me a letter saying the wawa [baby] had died. e 8 other died when I was in Cuzco. Her father [Mariano’s father- in- law] did not 9 let me know, thus when I came back at dusk one day, the following day was the 10 octava [the eighth day a er the death]. Older people in Pacchanta remember 11 Modesta’s su± erings, including the occasion when the hacendado had her 12 beaten. Benito, their third son, was still a toddler. He remembers that the 13 hacienda runa (the men from the hacienda) entered their house at dusk one 14 day. Grabbing Modesta by the hair, they dra ed her out o the house, kick- 15 ing her until she bled: I was a kid in those days—I may have been three years 16 old, that was as old as I was. My mamita still carried me on her back, and in her 17 arms. We were sleeping that night, we might have been sleeping, in our house 18 down there. ey might have made noise, “k’on, k’on,” but I did not hear any- 19 thing—when I woke up there were many people standing up, standing up there 20 were some mistikuna with their guns. I woke up, I woke up as a kid in my bed. 21 ey had taken my father, I am sure they had. My mamita was yelling, crying. 22 en I started crying like any kid. en we hid under our beds—in those times 23 we slept in athaku, that was the name o our beds. I was taken away . . . the guns 24 were exploding inside the house, “boom, boom, boom.” And then I dared to look, 25 I saw my mamita . . . they were dragging her on the ° oor, pulling her hair . . . 26 they were taking her to the door, the mistikuna with their hacienda runakuna. 27 All night they beat us, what they were doing I do not know . . . they were looking 28 in her bags . . . I do not know what they did. ey le at dawn . . . then, when 29 they le , I saw my mamita’s hair all over the ground . . . they had pulled it out, 30 and there were holes in the wall, they did that with their guns, with the bullets 31 om their guns. 32 Having survived this attack, but mostly le© to her own devices, Modesta 33 died o kustado (from the Spanish costado, or side), the local diagnosis for 34 what sometimes turns out to have been tuberculosis. When I met the Turpo 35 family they hardly mentioned Modesta, but other runakuna remembered her 36 with sad fondness. ey said she was “a hard worker, in the cold and with all 37 the children, always on her own. . . . She su± ered too much.” Mariano only
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mentioned her twice: when he narrated how she opposed his leadership ap- 1 pointment, and when he told me how, on a trip to Lima, he had learned 2 about the death o his children in a letter his wife sent to him. 3 Although he was proud o his achievements, Mariano also complained 4 about how much—o his time, money, body, and passion—he had given the 5 ayllu that had not been reciprocated. Today, he said, nobody remembered 6 how much he had given and su± ered when speaking from the ayllu—he 7 would not do it again. And he would not ask his sons to do what he did; 8 back then he could not have found a life without the ayllu. is seemed to be 9 possible today—what did I think? I replied that I didn’t know; some people 10 seemed to ¨ nd urban jobs, and others did not. But I understood Mariano’s 11 bitterness. As I talked to people, it was evident that something akin to pur- 12 posely forgetting had taken place in Pacchanta. ose who had been his part- 13 ners were too old and actually useless to the ayllu; the next generation—with 14 the exception o Nazario and Benito, Mariano’s sons—did not want to re- 15 member publicly. Memory could obligate the ayllu to the Turpo family, and 16 given that there were no more lands to give away, forgetting was a good way 17 o dealing with the potential impasse that memory could provoke. 18 Mariano died o old age; his grandson Ru¨ no (Nazario’s eldest child) 19 was with him. He was buried in a common ceremony attended by his 20 family—nobody made grandiose speeches, and the mass in his honor that 21 Nazario ordered in the city o Cuzco was attended only by a local anthro- 22 pologist, Ricardo Valderrama, and me. Notwithstanding the apparent obliv- 23 ion, months a© er Mariano died I heard people refer to him as a kamachiq 24 umayuq, someone who had the head o a leader. I had not elicited the phrase: 25 Mariano’s leadership had not been forgotten. 26 27 28 The Importance of Undefinitions and 29 How I Learned about It 30 31 I was riding in a car from the nearby town o Ocongate to Pacchanta when a 32 local musician told me that Mariano had been chosen as the leader because 33 he was a paqu, which he was because he had been hit by lightning. By then I 34 had already learned that Mariano had been chosen because he could “speak 35 well” and had “a good head” and because Ausangate and Jesus Christ had 36 endorsed the choice. So I asked Mariano, ¨ rst, i he had been hit by light- 37
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1 ning. en, wanting to know i this had turned him into a paqu, I asked who 2 had taught him the practices that this entailed. I thought that he had not 3 understood my second question initially—his son Benito translated it into 4 the words he would be willing to consider. Here is a bit o our conversation, 5 starting with my last question: 6 ÄÅÔÆÕÍÖ: Pin yachachirasunki paqu kayta? (Who taught you to be paqu?) 7 ÄÅÔÆÅÃÍ: Imachu? (What?) 8 ÄÅÔÆÕÍÖ (again, thinking he had not heard): Paqu kayta pin yachahirasunki? 9 (Who taught you to be paqu?) 10 ÄÅÔÆÅÃÍ (not understanding): Paqu kayta? (To be paqu?) 11 ×ØÃÆÙÍ (coming to my rescue): Ah coca masqhayta. (Ah, to search in the coca.) 12 ÄÅÔÆÅÃÍ: Ah papaypuni yachachiwanqa. (Ah, from my father I learned.) 13 14 is was a short dialogue in which I learned several things. First o all, I 15 learned about the historicity o words, the way they may acquire valence 16 as the region changes temporally or geographically. Paqu was one o those 17 words. It used to have a relatively negative accent, which it sometimes loses 18 today given tourist agencies’ increasing employment o the term to name 19 coca readers, yachaq like Mariano. I had learned the word from hearsay and 20 from signs in the streets o Cuzco that read: “Have your fortune told by a 21 paqu—the Andean shaman.” Benito, a meat merchant who walks the urban 22 marketplaces, must have heard the word in its current usage and was able to 23 translate it back into “coca searcher.” My use o sometimes above indicates an- 24 other thing I learned: terms related to earth- beings—pukara or paqu, for ex- 25 ample—were not separated from the thing they named, but what the words 26 enacted was not always the same for their utterance could draw into it the 27 myriad conditions surrounding it. is realization gave me pause. To begin 28 with, I realized that my anxiety to understand coherently (by which I meant 29 clearly and without contradiction) was o© en out o place. I had brought it 30 with me, but it was not the way practices worked in the here- and- now o Pac- 31 chanta. I also learned that the same word—for example, paqu—did not nec- 32 essarily conjure up what it named. For example, that was how I used words, 33 and Benito could understand what I was trying to ask Mariano: How had 34 he “learned to be a paqu?” When I pronounced it, it did not make paqu be, 35 or so I think—but being cautious was always necessary, and Benito thought 36 it better to translate to “searching e± ectively in the coca leaves.” Never iso- 37 lated in a world o its own, the prose that earth- beings inhabit is partially
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connected to the grammars o other socionatural formations, their episte- 1 mologies, and their practices. But because the partial connection does not 2 cease with intention, when translated into my mode the prose o the in- ayllu 3 world could also inhabit my speech regardless o my purpose. erefore, I 4 had to be taught to name things with proper words or with the required eti- 5 quette; otherwise, I could make something happen by naming it, even with- 6 out knowing it. Mariano never accepted my calling him a paqu; whenever I 7 did—forgetting his apprehensions—he would always laugh ironically at me, 8 which made me think that I did not know what I was saying, but he would 9 not clarify the matter for me either. 10 But back to my ¨ rst question: Did the lightning grab you [Qanta hapi’ira- 11 sunkichu qhaqya]?Î Mariano recalled for us what had happened: He was with 12 his herd in Alqaqucha—the very highest part o his land. It was getting dark, 13 the sky broke open with hail, and then something happened: I did not get 14 scared. I do not remember getting scared. When it said lluip, lluip, lluip [noises 15 o falling hail, like “tac, tac, tac”], I looked up and fell down. en when I got up, 16 the hail was over. . . . I do not know what it [the hail] did to me, but it did not 17 grab me, i it would have grabbed me it would have thrown me away, my body 18 would have been damaged. And then my eager question: Did he, as stories 19 have it, become a yachaq therea© er? A© er being grabbed by hail? “Well, no; 20 that is tittle- tattle [rimaylla chayqa],” interjected Liberata, Nazario’s wife. 21 And Benito said, “Not even my father knows what happened—how would 22 people know?” 23 Months later Mariano did tell me that he had been touched by the hail, 24 and a© er that moment he had been better at looking in the coca leaves and 25 learning what they say. I know [because] it [the hail] caught me [Yachani, nu- 26 qatapas hap’iwasqan]. So why did he ¨ rst tell me the hail had not touched 27 him, and then that it had, and attributed his being a yachaq to such incident? 28 Perhaps by the second time I had gained his trust, and he was then willing to 29 share his story. But it could also be that he was truly uncertain about what 30 happened and that sometimes he was inclined to think one way, other times 31 another way. Moreover, it could be both: trusting me inclined him to think 32 he could read coca leaves because hail had touched him. is nonsettled char- 33 acteristic o the story was an important feature o Mariano’s narratives about 34 his relations with earth- beings. 35 De¨ nitions that might ¨ x the being o entities were impossible in my con- 36 versations in Pacchanta, but it took me a while to give up my habit o looking 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Mariano’s tomb, Pacchanta cemetery. January 2006. 19 20 21 for them. Without forgetting that sometimes the search for meaning was out 22 o place because the word would be the thing or the event it uttered, when 23 meaning was possible I had to learn to look for it, connecting words to one 24 another. And then, o course, meaning could be ephemeral, contingent on 25 the circumstances producing it. Intriguingly, and contrasting with what I saw 26 as the instability o de¨ nitions, Mariano and Nazario had no doubts when 27 attributing some actions to the entities or practices that I found so di· cult to 28 de¨ ne. ose actions were, for example, Mariano’s pukara hiding legal docu- 29 ments from the hacendado, or the harmful actions o an evil paqu. Moreover, 30 the entities and practices were through actions, and this being was relational, 31 emerging through the events that the entity or practice made happen and 32 that a± ected runakuna. What I had to de¨ ne, because to me it was not (as in 33 “it did not exist”) needed no de¨ nition because it was there—how to relate 34 to this and learn about it would be my challenge. 35 e next two stories in this book narrate Mariano’s political activities, 36 his in- ayllu stru le for freedom and against the landowner. To write them 37 I use stories I heard from Mariano, Nazario, and Benito. Some o this ma-
56 INTERLUDE ONE
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terial can be recognized as history, some cannot, and I have divided my own 1 presentation o it accordingly. In story 2, I present what could be consid- 2 ered the history o the stru le—an oral history, at least. is story describes 3 Mariano’s in- ayllu activities that belong to the order o the plausible. In the 4 1960s these deeds were unthinkable through hegemonic analytical categories 5 and le© ist and rightist political agendas (Trouillot 1995). A non- event as 6 they were happening, these actions became an event only recently, when the 7 popularity o ethnicity as a political category allowed for the recognition o 8 indigenous leaders as actors in the public sphere. However, much o the ac- 9 tivities involved in the confrontation against Lauramarca are still unthink- 10 able today as events enabled by and enabling in- ayllu political actions. I re- 11 count those in story 3, where I further unfold the relational condition o 12 being in- ayllu, to introduce the other- than- human beings that participated 13 along with Mariano and the other runakuna in the political events that re- 14 sulted in the agrarian reform o 1969. When more than one world cohabits a 15 nation- state, not only o· cial and uno· cial events, but also historically plau- 16 sible and implausible ones, occur. However, historical implausibility does not 17 cancel their eventfulness, which—though radically di± erent from and thus 18 excessive to history—coexists with it and even makes it possible. I hope that 19 what this means will become clearer as I unfold the stories that Mariano told 20 me—in particular, story 4. For the time being, I want to su est that giving 21 up the historical as the dominant register o the real may enable us to listen 22 to stories as they enact events that, immanent to their telling, are without the 23 requirement o proof. 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
MARIANO TURPO 57
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 A younger Mariano Turpo circa 1980s. Photograph by Thomas Müller. 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 STORY 2 MARIANO ENGAGES 7 8 “THE LAND STRUGGLE” 9 10 AN UNTHINKABLE INDIAN LEADER 11 12 13 And then it all ended. e jatun juez [provincial judge] came, 14 the subprefect came, all came to the bridge in Tinki. ey said “it is 15 all done; now you have been able to get the land o the hacienda, you 16 forced the hacienda to let go o it. e land is really in your hands. Now 17 Turpo, li© that soil and kiss it [kay allpata huqariy, much’ayuy],” he said. 18 And I said [as I kissed the soil]: “now blessed earth [kunanqa santa 19 tira] now pukara you are going to nurture me [kunanqa puqara nuqata 20 uywawanki], now the hacendado’s word has come to an end, it has 21 disappeared [yasta pampachakapunña].” Kissing the land, the people 22 forgave that soil. “Now it is ours, now pukara you are going to nurture 23 us,” they all said. at is how the land is in our hands, in the hands o all runas: the hacienda came to an end. 24 25 MARIANO TURPO about his activities in Cuzco ca. 1970 26 27 I am currently working in research on peasant leadership, and last 28 year I traveled to several areas a± ected by the peasant movement. In 29 every peasant union I have visited, I have found only one indigenous leader. Indigenous leadership does not exist today within the peasant 30 movement; it appears as an exception and in isolated fashion. e 31 Indian leader is himsel going through a process o choliµ cación. 32 33 ANÍBAL QUIJANO sociologist, Lima, ca. 1965 34 35 36 37
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1 e two quotes above illustrate the partial connections among the worlds 2 that Mariano Turpo and I inhabit as Peruvians. ese worlds know about 3 each other, talk about and to each other, and are related in a way that, not 4 necessarily regrettably, both connects and divides them, leaving much out- 5 side the relation for, notwithstanding the connection, these worlds do not 6 touch everywhere. is would not be a problem i my world, the lettered 7 world, had the ability to acknowledge the events that happen beyond its pur- 8 view, many o which it does not have the capacity to access because o episte- 9 mic reasons or even empirical conditions. However, this is not the case, and 10 i the lettered world (my world) cannot know something, it represents that 11 thing as having a weak hold on reality or even as not existing. At best, the 12 lettered world considers that which it cannot know as literary ¨ ction, myth, 13 superstition, or symbol and deems it a belief, perhaps madness. e lettered 14 world has the power, self- granted, to de¨ ne and represent events and actors 15 for history and politics, two ¨ elds that are indispensable to the making o the 16 reality that the state needs to function. 17 In the ¨ rst epigraph, Mariano Turpo remembers a moment during the o· - 18 cial ceremony that inaugurated the agrarian reform in Cuzco, and most spe- 19 ci¨ cally in the hacienda Lauramarca—the property whose owners he fought 20 against. roughout the 1970s, this state policy restructured land tenure in 21 the whole country. is was one o the most profound transformations ever 22 to take place in Peru, and, as I have already mentioned, Mariano was impor- 23 tant in bringing it about. is gave him a prominent role in the ceremony. 24 He remembers li© ing and reverentially kissing the blessed earth, santa tira: 25 the soil that represented the landed property during the moment in which it 26 was allegedly transferred to peasants and that in Mariano’s world was pukara, 27 the being—also a tirakuna—that nurtures humans, animals, and plants. is 28 moment was the culmination o several decades o runakuna activities to re- 29 cover the hacienda Lauramarca. 30 Aníbal Quijano, one o the most prominent Peruvian sociologists, is the 31 speaker o the second epigraph. He made the statement in 1965 in the context 32 o a roundtable that convened an important group intellectuals and came to 33 be known as the “Mesa Redonda sobre Todas las sangres” (see Rochabrún 34 2000, 59–60).¼ It took place at an important think tank in Lima and has re- 35 mained in´ uential; intellectuals and politicians in the country still recall it. 36 Quijano’s academic pronouncement—considered knowledge—was enough 37
60 STORY 2
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to disavow the political activities o indigenous leaders like Mariano Turpo. 1 In 1965—the year the roundtable occurred—Mariano must have been en- 2 gaged in one o his multiple political activities (maybe even in Lima, since he 3 traveled so much). For local witnesses in his village, including state o· cials, 4 there is no denying that Mariano was crucial in the movement that led to the 5 end o Lauramarca; they also agree that dismantling this hacienda was an im- 6 portant component o the agrarian reform. us, the assertion o the non- 7 existence o “indigenous leadership” proclaimed by Quijano (and other par- 8 ticipants at the roundtable) illustrates a case o factual ignorance authorized 9 as knowledge by the hegemony o the epistemic formation that had gathered 10 the intellectuals.½ It may have been the realization o this epistemic faux pas 11 that led Quijano to produce his more recent work. Published in di± erent ver- 12 sions since the late 1990s Quijano has authored the notion o “coloniality o 13 power,” which could be interpreted as an implicit self- criticism o the discus- 14 sion that took place at the roundtable discussion (Quijano 2000).¾ Analyzed 15 through the coloniality o power, the denial o the existence o indigenous 16 politicians can be interpreted as an epistemic political action inscribed in a 17 racialized nation-building project supported by both le© ists and rightists. 18 Within this project rational Indians and indigenous political leadership were 19 unthinkable. 20 In his analysis o the Haitian revolution, historian and anthropologist 21 Michel- Rolph Trouillot explains that such event was unthinkable for Euro- 22 peans as it was happening. Sustained by the notion o race, an emergent yet 23 already- powerful epistemic analytic in the eighteenth century, the idea o 24 black slaves ¨ ghting for liberty was presented as an oxymoron at best: they 25 were too close to nature to conceive themselves as free beings. Accordingly, 26 the revolution that black slaves led was a historical non- event; no Western 27 archive recorded it as it was taking place (Trouillot 1995). Similarly, in the 28 1960s, Limeño intellectuals—many o them earnest socialists and promi- 29 nent proponents o critical dependency theory—could not conceive the exis- 30 tence o rational indigenous politicians. I there were any politicians in the 31 countryside, they were mestizo. is is what choliµ cación, the last word in 32 Quijano’s quote above, means: the process through which Indians became 33 cholo, ex- Indians, literate individuals who had shed former superstition and 34 ignorance. e “indigenous intellectual” had to wait until the 1980s to make 35 its appearance, disrupting the intellectual stage and contributing to changes 36 37
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1 in the national political imagination. In the last thirty years social move- 2 ments and ethnic politics in Peru have propelled indigenous politicians into 3 public arenas, even i against the wishes o dominant circles who unabashedly 4 deplore the change. 5 Quijano’s current work has been taken up by ethnic social movements in 6 Peru, which have in´ uenced the le© -leaning political landscape in the coun- 7 try. Yet, as was the case in 1965, the lettered world (which is now peopled 8 also by indigenous politicians and intellectuals) continues to be the hege- 9 monic translator o other partially connected worlds, particularly i these 10 are a- lettered. And not surprisingly, the translation continues to represent 11 the relation in excluding either/or terms. us, changes notwithstanding, 12 the hegemonic translation cannot convey that lettered and a- lettered worlds 13 are both distinct and present in one another; the partial connection between 14 them is discarded. While o± ering inclusion in its own terms (become let- 15 tered and discontinue who you are), my world cannot fathom that what 16 it deems to be its “other” already inhabits, participates, and in´ uences the 17 nation- state that we all share. And my world has the political and conceptual 18 means to make its imagination prevail. Sympathetically or unsympatheti- 19 cally, it usually ignores practices—like the presence o tirakuna in antimining 20 demonstrations—that feel excessive to modern politics (de la Cadena 2010). 21 e situation is di± erent in places like Pacchanta, where the experience o 22 both, participating in the lettered world and exceeding it, is part o runa- 23 kuna everyday life. 24 25 26 27 DIFFERENCE AS RELATION 28 The Turpos and I were aware of the connections among our worlds. I have 29 already mentioned that Mariano and I exchanged similar memories of our 30 days in elementary school; our engagements with national politics were also 31 a source of common ground. There were differences, of course. Some were 32 commensurable (like the obvious divides of age, race, place, gender, class, 33 and ethnicity that separated us), others were incommensurable (for example, 34 being versus not being in-ayllu). Nevertheless, we had witnessed—and, in his 35 case, participated in—events that had become part of la historia del Perú, our 36 nation-state’s history. In elementary school, we both used to sing the national 37
62 STORY 2
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anthem and learned poems about the flag; Bandera Peruanita was the one 1 we both recalled. We had both celebrated national holidays, and we com- 2 pared our respective commemoration of July 28 (Independence Day) and the 3 Combate de Angamos, a maritime battle against Chile during the War of the 4 Pacific in the nineteenth century. The 1960s formed the bulk of our conversa- 5 tions some days—and about those days we also shared ideas and feelings. 6 Our familiarity with what the other was talking about—at least to a certain ex- 7 tent—was comfortable; had I not had this Peruvianness to share with Mariano, 8 my analytic perceptions of what I was then calling his memories might have 9 been different. Yet this sharing also highlighted the political and historical dif- 10 ference between us: there was no doubt that the same history had ranked 11 us differently as citizens of the same nation-state. Differences that appeared 12 through what we shared were intriguingly obvious, for they were part of our 13 similarities as well. But there was also a lot that made us uncommon to each 14 other and that could not be explained through the analytics of race, ethnicity, 15 and class; these were markers that the Turpos and I could talk about, some- 16 times in agreement and other times in disagreement. Instead, what made us 17 mutually uncommon also exceeded our comprehension of each other; the dif- 18 ference thus presented was also radical to both of us. 19 I learned to identify radical difference—emerging in front of me through the 20 conversations that made it possible—as that which I “did not get” because it 21 exceeded the terms of my understanding. Take earth-beings, for example: I 22 could acknowledge their being through Mariano and Nazario, but I could not 23 know them the way I know that mountains are rocks. But above all, I learned 24 to identify radical difference as a relation, not something Mariano and Nazario 25 had (a belief or a practice) but the condition between us that made us aware 26 of our mutual misunderstandings but did not fully inform us about “the stuff” 27 that composed those misunderstandings (Wagner 1981). 28 29 30 31 Mariano’s stories that I narrate here, and that I curated with the help o Na- 32 zario and Benito, are mostly historical. us, while they may surprise us, 33 nothing in them will provoke our epistemic disconcertment (see Verran 34 2012). Everything in them is currently thinkable. e existence o leaders like 35 Mariano could not be denied a© er rural political movements forced the in- 36 vention o new sociological categories. “Peasants” was one such category; “in- 37
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1 digenous intellectual” was another. e former articulated a Marxist analysis 2 o class. e second was oxymoronic and subversive in the 1980s; it chal- 3 lenged the narrative o mestizaje and launched a proposal for ethnic iden- 4 tity that became an alternative to class identity politics that had prevailed 5 in the 1970s. Nevertheless, both conformed to the order o the thinkable: 6 I peasants were allowed to participate in the political scene because they 7 stru led for a better position in the distribution o the means o production, 8 it was their condition as intellectuals that legitimized indigenous individuals 9 as politicians. In both cases their leadership, albeit subaltern, was within the 10 bounds o modern politics. 11 12 A Very Brief Description of Hacienda Lauramarca 13 14 Lauramarca, the hacienda Mariano was chosen to defy, was between 3,500 15 and 4,800 meters above the sea level; it was a huge expanse o land—more 16 than 81,000 hectares before and around 76,000 hectares a© er the agrarian 17 reform (Reátegui 1977, 2). It was subdivided into parcialidades (sectors) that 18 functioned both as administrative units for the state and as technical units 19 for the hacienda. Ayllu relations also took place within the con¨ nes o the 20 hacienda. Some ayllus coincided with the parcialidades, but those could also 21 include sections o more than one ayllu.Á Organized through complex forms 22 o leadership, ayllus had confronted Lauramarca since early in the twenti- 23 eth century—perhaps during an initial period o modernization o landed 24 property relations and the enforcement o ownership titles. e historical 25 record about the confrontation becomes substantial starting in the 1920s, 26 when a number o indigenous leaders were sent to die in the lowlands in a 27 region called Qosñipata. I report some people’s memories about that event 28 and explain the complexity o the leadership that it inaugurated in story 4. 29 Here, however, I discuss the period when Mariano was in charge, from the 30 late 1940s to the end o the hacienda system in 1970, when Lauramarca be- 31 came a state- owned agrarian cooperative. 32 e hacienda was owned by families from the Cuzco elite for roughly 33 sixty years, but in the 1950s it was bought by a modern corporación gana- 34 dera, a company dedicated to the business o raising ¨ ne breeds o sheep to 35 sell their wool to international markets. e company’s aim was to expand 36 the grazing pastures and modernize the traditional hacienda regime, perhaps 37 following the model o cattle ranches in Argentina, where (I was told) some
64 STORY 2
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Hacienda Lauramarca circa 1960s. Photograph by 26 Gustavo Alencastre Montúfar. Courtesy of Mariano Turpo. 27 28 o its capital originated. e process, then, was one o enclosures; as such, it 29 was violent and was met with resistance by those who were to be evicted, the 30 colonos indígenas (indigenous laborers, as runakuna are identi¨ ed in o· cial 31 documents) who occupied the hacienda territory. As I will explain in story 4, 32 for runakuna eviction was impossible because what was territory to the ha- 33 cienda was also the place that made and was made through ayllu relationality. 34 Ignoring (conceptually and politically) this condition, the corporation’s pro- 35 cess o eviction included fencing o± what it considered to be the most pro- 36 ductive area, which was to be transformed into pastures for the improved 37
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1 sheep that then would be raised on the hacienda. Runakuna had used these 2 areas to grow their food (potatoes and some corn in the lowest zones) for as 3 long as they could remember, which was back to the days o the Incas. Dis- 4 regarding these memories (o course), the enclosure process a± ected every- 5 thing the corporation could conceive that runakuna had: animals, pastures, 6 plots, crops, houses, their bodies, their time for sleeping and being awake: in 7 sum, their lives. What follows is one o the stories o this process; several ru- 8 nakuna composed it together as we were eating at a local wedding ceremony: 9 e hacendado brought the barbed wire—he put it down below, all around 10 down below, and then threw us up here. Some people wanted to plow; they took 11 their tools away and sent them to the calaboose in the hacienda. ey pulled our 12 houses down, they destroyed them all. What would you do? e hacienda forced 13 us to move up here . . . [If] you do not have a house anymore, you have to leave. 14 All those houses were destroyed. I saw that, and this is how we con onted him: 15 “I you do not pay us what you ought to, and, on top o that, where we used to 16 live, our houses, you undo them and push us away, where are we going to go—are 17 we going to eat the bare soil? Where are we going to make [cultivate] our food? 18 Are we going to chew stones? Eating what are we going to [gain strength] to work 19 for you?” We did not have any more strength to serve the hacienda, and that was 20 why we con onted him. 21 e omnipotence o runakuna’s abusers—which Quijano and the other 22 intellectuals at the think tank in Lima would have certainly identi¨ ed as ga- 23 monalismo—was a central motivation o runakuna’s legal grievance, and o 24 the stru le that Mariano led. I explain gamonalismo below. 25 26 Mariano Turpo against the Hacendado 27 28 Mariano was the maker o a history under circumstances he did not choose 29 but that were imposed on him—Marx’s (1978) well- known dictum is seem- 30 ingly apt to describe Mariano. And, not paradoxically, many o the un- chosen 31 circumstances prevented Mariano from making his way into history—both 32 as academic discipline and as national narrative. What he did remained a 33 story for many reasons, among them that his deeds were possible through 34 practices that history and related ¨ elds classify in the order o the fantastic 35 for, among other reasons, they did not leave evidence—this (as I said above) 36 is the subject o the following two stories. But also, and more prosaically, 37 Mariano’s deeds remained just a story, and not national history, because be-
66 STORY 2
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 A view of what used to be the agricultural lands and the Tinki administrative 26 center in the hacienda Lauramarca. March 2002. 27 28 yond Cuzco, and at times beyond Lauramarca, his activities as a political 29 organizer were simply ignored. e elites either considered Mariano’s activi- 30 ties irrelevant (because o their geographic, cultural, and political remote- 31 ness) or, as in the case o the intellectuals at the think tank, disavowed them 32 as an impossible event because nonmodern Indians and modern politics did 33 not belong together. In either case, at the national level—where local stories 34 can become history—Mariano’s activism did not exist. And this is ironic be- 35 cause the story that Mariano composed required his presence in the cen- 36 ters o power. Beginning in the 1940s, Mariano constantly traveled, visiting 37
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1 2 3 LAURAMARCA: CHRONOLOGY OF THE CONFLICT 4 5 1904 e ¨ rst o· cial title to the hacienda Lauramarca dates from October 28, 6 1904, and lists Maximiliano, Julián, and Oscar Saldívar as owners. 7 1922 Colonos declare a strike and refuse to pay rent for their parcels or work 8 for the hacienda. ey question the rightful ownership o the hacienda. 9 Indigenous leaders are sent to Ccosñipata, where they are killed by the 10 landowner or die o tropical disease. 11 1926 An army contingent massacres runakuna in Lauramarca. 12 1932 e government in Lima acknowledges abuses by the troops. Mean- 13 while, in Cuzco the prefect sends the Civil Guard to collect indigenous 14 taxes. Runakuna are killed in confrontation with the Civil Guard. 15 1941 e Saldívar brothers, owners o Lauramarca, sell the hacienda to the 16 Llomellini family, another powerful Cuzqueño group. 17 1952 e land is bought by an Argentinian corporation that wants to mod- 18 ernize production. 19 1954 Enclosures begin. Runakuna are evicted from agricultural land. e last 20 period o confrontation begins. 21 1957–58 Several comisiones de investigación (investigative commissions) arrive in 22 Lauramarca—one o them led by the American anthropologist Richard 23 Patch, from the American Universities Field Sta± . 24 1969 e military government decrees the agrarian reform on June 24, Día 25 del Indio (Day o the Indian) since 1944, and changes the name to Día 26 del Campesino (Day o the peasant). 27 1970 e hacienda becomes the Cooperativa Agraria de Producción Laura- 28 marca Ltda. As members o “peasant communities” also created as part 29 o the agrarian reform process, runakuna become socios, members o the 30 cooperative. 31 1980s Runakuna, in alliance with the peasant movement, dismantle the co- 32 operative. State administrators are evicted. Runakuna distribute land 33 among themselves. 34 35 36 37
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the national and regional modern spheres o politics. ere he (and others 1 like him) discussed the confrontations between the hacendados and colonos 2 indígenas (from Lauramarca and many other haciendas in the country) with 3 experts whose reports circulated nationally and internationally. 4 In fact, Mariano’s travels were part o his activities against a violent sys- 5 tem o rule known in Peru as gamonalismo. is was a regional practice o 6 power built on landed property, literacy, and a geography that overlapped 7 with demographic notions o insurmountable racial di± erence. Gamona- 8 lismo fused the representation o the local state with “the principal forms 9 o private, extrajudicial and even criminal power that the state purportedly 10 aims at displacing” (Poole 2004, 44). e political and intellectual imagina- 11 tion in Peru, liberal or socialist, has conceived o gamonalismo as a prepoliti- 12 cal residue, and it has been both denounced and condoned (frequently at the 13 same time) as the inevitable method o governing allegedly premodern spaces 14 thought to be unintelligible to modern rule. With the hacienda system as its 15 heart, before the agrarian reform o 1969, gamonalismo extended from the 16 center o state rule to the remotest areas, connecting rural sites with provin- 17 cial or departmental capitals, Lima, the National Congress, and Courts o 18 Justice. And throughout these places private manifestations o power and 19 public state rule overlapped in a way that made it impossible to distinguish 20 between the two. 21 22 23 24 MARIANO DESCRIBES THE HACIENDA 25 26 “OWNER OF THE WILL” 27 It is just like I am telling you. He was the owner of the will [pay munayniyuq]. 28 The hacendados was terrible, he would take away our animals, our alpacas, 29 and our sheep. If we had one hundred, he would keep fifty and you would 30 come back only with fifty. And if we had fifty, we would come back with twenty- 31 five, and he would keep the rest. Same with the cattle. The cattle were also 32 counted and supervised. If you had a male calf, it was the hacienda’s right to 33 have it—it was registered, it was as if it were his. We would graze in the hills 34 and the contador [the counter of animals, a hacienda worker] would come to 35 do the count in the afternoon. If the offspring is dead for any reason, then we 36 are to blame. The hacendado would say: ¡Carajo! [Damn it!] You killed the off- 37
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1 spring! You did that to insult me! Or he would say: You milked the cow! You 2 are drinking too much milk—that is why the calf died. Pay, carajo! And the calf 3 was not even his, it was ours. 4 If you sold your wool or a cow on your own, the hacienda runa would in- 5 form him and would tell where the merchants that came to buy our cattle were. 6 They had to hide as well. The hacendado would come in the middle of the 7 night and he would chase them. When he caught them he would whip them, 8 saying, “Why the fuck were you buying this cow!” We could only sell to the ha- 9 cienda and at a very cheap price; the hacendado would say, “Your animal eats 10 my grass.” That was why we could not sell anything, we only grazed animals; 11 [in the end] all the animals were his. He would say “Indio de mierda, ¡carajo! 12 [Indian piece of shit, damn you!] You are finishing all my pastures and on top 13 of that you are insolent!” 14 Those who disobeyed the hacendado were hung from a pole in the cen- 15 ter of the casa hacienda. They would tie you to the pole by the waist and they 16 would whip you while you were hanging. If you killed a sheep, you had to take 17 the meat to him, and if it was not fat enough he would punish you: “You Indio, 18 shitty dog!” And then if the sheep had good meat it could even be worse; he 19 would make charki [dry meat] with your meat and sell it in the lowlands and you 20 maybe even had to carry loads and loads on your back, on your own llamas . . . 21 and take them all the way to the lowlands. And when he made charki every- 22 thing was so supervised. He thought we would steal the meat, our meat, and 23 give it to our families. When we did not take things to the lowlands we would 24 still have to carry things to Cuzco, to his house, to his family there. From the 25 lowlands we came back carrying fruit. And from Cuzco we came loaded with 26 salt, tons of salt for the animals, and if the sacks ripped on the way and we 27 lost salt we had to pay: “You, ¡carajo! You have taken the salt! You have to pay, 28 give me more animals!” And if you did not have animals you had to weave for 29 him . . . work for him, live for him . . . and all of this was without giving us any- 30 thing, not a crumb of bread. We did not eat from his food ever, but he ate ours. 31 I think he wanted us to die. We had to take our potatoes, chuño [dehydrated 32 potatoes]; we had to take care of ourselves. We did not want to die. We did not 33 have time to do anything for ourselves, only the women worked for our fami- 34 lies, the men only worked for the hacienda. There were many lists [to classify 35 people]. There was the list of single men, the young men. To avoid that list we 36 made our boys wear the white skirts [that younger children wear] till they were 37 very big, because as soon as they started wearing pants they became cuerpo
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soltero [single body] and had to work for the hacienda. The youngest were 1 taken to the lowlands, to the haciendas there. 2 He had the will, he was the owner of the will [pay munaynin kankun, pay 3 munayniyuq]. Who are you going to complain to? There was no one here that 4 would listen. [That is why] we took the queja [the legal grievance] away to 5 Cuzco. We walked the grievance. We wanted the grievance to work [to be 6 heard by the authorities]. Those [abuses] were what I raised to judges, the law- 7 yers. “We are Indians,” we told the judges, “but we are not stupid. We are not 8 grazing his animals, it is our animals that we graze but he, he takes all of them 9 . . . even the horses, the best one he takes—same with the sheep, he takes the 10 best ones, the ones that have the wool up to their eyes, those are the ones he 11 wants.” [On one occasion] I said to him [in front of the judges], “You steal from 12 us and on top of that you make us pay more animals for the pasture . . . and you 13 do not even fix anything, you do not fix the bridge, you do not fix the roads.” 14 All those things I said in the queja in front of him. I made the judges doubt him. 15 But then, when I returned to the hacienda they punished me. That was why I 16 had to run away and hide. He was the owner of the will. 17 18 19 20 Since the early decades o the twentieth century, progressive intellectuals and 21 politicians in the country had considered gamonalismo a nationwide prob- 22 lem; some identi¨ ed its root cause as el problema de la tierra (the land prob- 23 lem), a phrase that denounced the concentration o land in a few hands. For 24 others, the source o gamonalismo was the archaic organization o produc- 25 tion. All agreed that gamonalismo led to abuses o all sorts, ranging from the 26 exaction o unpaid labor to the manipulation o state and private law enforce- 27 ment. Starting in the 1950s, the antigamonal proposal that gained purchase 28 among some liberal politicians—including le© ist groups o the period—was 29 a process o “expropriation o haciendas” that would compel landowners to 30 sell the land to the colonos indígenas who worked as peons on the property. 31 e National Congress debated this option, which most landowners rejected 32 and only a few reluctantly accepted. In Lauramarca, runakuna opposition to 33 the landowner was supported by a network o urban le© ist politicians that, 34 though punctuated by internal strife due to ideological di± erences, helped 35 bring the hacienda to an end. Mariano’s networks (and probably those o 36 most runakuna leaders like him) included members o the Communist Party, 37
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1 Trotskyite guerrilla ¨ ghters, pro- Indian state o· cials—the intellectuals at 2 the Instituto Indigenista Peruano, for example—and foreign journalists who 3 were far from being Communists.Ç As far as Mariano’s memories go, some 4 runakuna strategies against the hacienda were illegal, and others were legal. 5 Among the former were strikes, but runakuna also insistently attempted to 6 recover the land legally, either denouncing the hacendado’s illegal ownership 7 or endeavoring to purchase the land. 8 Mariano used to refer to the stru le against the landowner with the 9 Quechua- Spanish phrase hatun queja (big grievance); he labeled the related 10 activities as queja purichiy, which can be translated as “to walk the grievance” 11 or “to make the grievance work.”È e Spanish word queja means complaint; 12 because it included references to legal con´ icts with the landowner and to 13 court trials I have translated it as grievance. To walk the grievance or to make 14 it work refers to the bureaucratic wheeling and dealing necessary to oversee 15 the complaint as it enters a space—within the state—where destitute people 16 like runakuna tend to disappear as subjects o rights. Walking the grievance 17 or making it work also refers to the need to be present physically, moving the 18 documentation in the desired direction. is o© en required (and still does) 19 giving what runakuna call “gi© s” to prevent the grievance from getting lost in 20 a bureaucratic labyrinth that the hacendados were known to have direct ac- 21 cess to. In Lauramarca, the queja included a long list o denunciations coordi- 22 nated through in- ayllu relations against the owner o the hacienda. Nobody 23 remembers the queja’s starting date, but Mariano emphasized that ayllus had 24 inherited it from generations that came before him. 25 Mariano pronounced the word queja passionately. Along with legal issues, 26 queja referred to the innumerable episodes in the antagonistic relationships 27 that runakuna had been forced to endure every day since time immemorial. 28 Lauramarca did not allow runakuna to be free, Mariano stressed over and 29 over again. And whenever I elicited their memories, people in Pacchanta re- 30 membered the “time o the hacienda” (hacinda timpu) as one o unremitting 31 violence unleashed on colonos night and day. ey also remembered that 32 the work was relentless, in spite o the subzero conditions in the mountains 33 and the red- hot humidity o the lowland valleys that the hacienda’s property 34 stretched into. ere was no corner o the colono’s life that the hacendado, 35 through his own people—the hacienda runa or people o the hacienda— 36 would not touch; no animal, crop, or soil that the hacendado would not as- 37 sert his will over.
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e hacendado—it really did not matter who the exact person was, or 1 even i it was a person—was powerful. From the viewpoint o runakuna, the 2 hacendado owned the state; they referred to him (always him, never her) as 3 munayniyuq, a Quechua word that, a© er consultation with Nazario, I trans- 4 late as “the owner o the will.” As a concept, munayniyuq names the capacity 5 to surmount all other wills, sometimes even that o the state, as I explain fur- 6 ther in story 7. For now, let me say that this was a fairly exact way to describe 7 the omnipotence o the consecutive owners o Lauramarca. e ¨ rst one that 8 Mariano and his cohort o leaders fought against was Ernesto Saldívar; he 9 was a diputado, Cuzco’s representative to the National Congress in Lima. 10 One o his brothers owned the hacienda Cchuro in Paucartambo (Huillca 11 and Neira 1975, 18). Another brother was a lawyer and a high- ranking o· - 12 cial in the Superior Court o Cuzco, the highest legal institution in the re- 13 gion. e Saldívar brothers were related by friendship or kinship to other 14 landowners in Cuzco and throughout the country. One o the Saldívars was 15 married to the daughter o President Augusto B. Leguía, who governed Peru 16 from 1919 to 1930 (R. Gow 1981). Witnessing and living in relation to these 17 networks led Mariano to conclude that all o Peru is [was] an hacienda. Even 18 in Lima they did whatever they [landowners] wanted. Everybody wants them, 19 they want those who own the haciendas. When [Luis Miguel] Sánchez Cerro 20 was president, they were huge owners o the will (Prisirinti Sanchez Cerro ka- 21 shaqtin chikaq munayniyuq, munayniyuq karqan). e fact that the hacen- 22 dados were munayniyuq, absolute owners o the will—throughout the state 23 and beyond—highlights the aporetic dimension o the queja, its seeming 24 impossibility: a bunch o illiterate indigenous leaders gathered in remote cor- 25 ners o the Andes trying to confront families that occupied positions central 26 to the state; they could never succeed. And this is o© en how it felt to the ru- 27 nakuna, as Mariano said: ey [the peasants] would say, “Why do we organize 28 a queja? How can a bare- footed peon [q’ara bungu], a young man, do anything 29 against a lord who wears shoes, one who helps the government, one who helps the 30 lord president himself, one who clothes the army troops. Against this man that 31 gives everything to the country, how can we complain? Let him die i he wants 32 to” . . . that is what they said about me. 33 Walking the queja, trying to make it succeed (or even possible) against the 34 odds, Mariano befriended many people—among them the heads o the Fed- 35 eración de Trabajadores del Cuzco (ÜÙÝ; the Cuzco Workers Federation), 36 the consortium o all unions in the region. Under the banner o the Com- 37
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1 munist Party, it included newly formed peasant unions, a crucial political 2 group given Cuzco’s predominantly agricultural economy. Mariano did not 3 tell me how he became acquainted with members o this organization, but 4 according to Rosalind Gow (1981), during his ¨ rst trip to Lima Mariano 5 met a union organizer (a member o the Communist Party) who instructed 6 him on the illegality o unpaid labor and taught him about workers’ rights 7 and sindicatos (workers’ unions). And this is what he told me: I had to take 8 all these complaints to Lima. Able or unable [to understand Spanish], I had to 9 learn [atispa mana atispa, yacharani] taking my own money many times. But 10 I did get [to learn about] a resolución suprema dictated for Lauramarca. It 11 was a law prohibiting unpaid labor . . . the law had existed! He cannot kill our 12 animals for ee, it is a law; he has to pay for everything even to make you wash 13 a dish he has to pay. I had not known that, but I learned in Lima. When he 14 realized that there was a law forbidding the hacendado’s exactions, and that 15 there were organizations that could help runakuna confront the owner o the 16 will, he engaged in the adventure o “turning the law” to their side and even 17 enlisted lawyers in the process. 18 Mariano organized the Peasant Union o Lauramarca and became the sec- 19 retary general o the Sindicato de AndamayoÉ—one o the most important 20 unions in the region, he said. He participated in demonstrations, singing the 21 “Internationale,” whose lyrics he remembered: Que vivan los pobres del mundo, 22 de pie los obreros sin pan (Arise the workers o all nations, arise ye prisoners o 23 starvation”)—we sang together in Spanish, bursting into laughter and tears. 24 He even spoke publicly to the largest imaginable crowds during Labor Day 25 demonstrations, a memorable event in the city o Cuzco: ey called on those 26 o us who spoke well and always asked us to speak into the microphones. I talked 27 about the times [that had come] before us, how they sent the runas to Qosñipata, 28 and who came back or did not come back. Who the hacendado had shot . . . all 29 those things, in order, one a er another we talked, the place was full with people 30 and we talked. But what exactly did you say into the microphone? I asked. 31 His impatient answer: I am telling you, am I not?! Death to the hacendados, 32 they are thieves! Long live the peasants! Viva el campesinadu, ¡Caraju! at was 33 what we said. In Quechua, his impatience—even irritation—resonated tre- 34 mendously as I wrote this section; I share his words with those who can read 35 them: ¡Ñataq nishaykiña, kay hacendado suwakuna wañuchun! Campesinu- 36 taq kawsachun, ¡Caraju! chhaynataya, ¹que viva! ¹que viva! 37 e demonstrations he spoke at are legendary across the nation. In the
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heyday o Communism in Cuzco, and the dawn o the Cold War in the 1 hemisphere, those massive gatherings earned the region the reputation o 2 being “red” and made famous a chant that is very familiar to me—and, I have 3 to confess, dear as well: “¡Cuzco Rojo! ¡Siempre Será!” (Cuzco is red! Always 4 will be!). Runakuna from all over the region participated and ¨ lled the Plaza 5 de Armas with their woolen hats and ponchos. ose were the days when 6 campesino emerged as a political identity, coined through diverse practices 7 o the le© and used to recognize runakuna as a class (peasants); it gradually 8 displace the derogatory Indio—at least in public. Organized as peasants, ru- 9 nakuna leaders also formed a Cuzco- wide in- ayllu network that exceeded the 10 logic o the ÜÙÝ while at the same time allying with it against the haciendas, 11 even i this did not necessarily mean runakuna’s ideological adherence to any 12 le© ist group or the ÜÙÝ. rough participation in these networks, Mariano 13 met Luis de la Puente Uceda, a guerrilla organizer who died in 1965 in a 14 confrontation with the army. I saw him only once, Mariano recalled. He also 15 remembered helping Hugo Blanco—the legendary, magical, le© ist leader I 16 mentioned in story 1—escape from an infamous hacendado in whose ha- 17 cienda Blanco was hiding. Blanco was then a young union organizer; as a 18 Trotskyite, he was at odds with Mariano’s Communist partners. However, 19 as a courier in the broader ayllu network, Mariano gave Blanco a clandestine 20 message, and on the same occasion he also helped him get past some ¨ erce 21 dogs, guiding him out o the hacienda before he could be found. I consulted 22 with Blanco, who did not remember Mariano, but who said that peasants 23 from di± erent places used to take messages to him. And yes, he remembered 24 that a peasant once helped him escape from his persecutor’s dogs; that peas- 25 ant could have been Mariano. 26 Mariano’s activities were crucial to bringing the haciendas to an end, 27 as was the participation o many other peasants like him whose politi- 28 cal agency visitors to the countryside could not see and the experts at the 29 think tank in Lima denied. is may illustrate what Dipesh Chakrabarty 30 (2000) calls asymmetric ignorance: while indigenous leaders like Mariano 31 were acquainted with the socialist project in the country and with several 32 o its leaders in Cuzco, the latter could not see the former’s project nor ac- 33 knowledge the existence o its leadership, let alone identify any leader indi- 34 vidually. ey were all “peasant masses” (la masa campesina) to the leaders in 35 Cuzco. Even Blanco, whose earnest le© ism and penchant for justice nobody 36 would doubt, responded in that sense. What we know and how we know it 37
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1 not only creates possibilities for thought. It also eliminates possibilities and 2 creates that which is impossible to think. e unthinkable is not the result 3 o absences in the evolution o knowledge; rather, it results from the pres- 4 ences that shape knowledge, making some ideas thinkable while at the same 5 time canceling the possibility o notions that defy the hegemonic habits o 6 thought that are prevalent in a historical moment. On these occasions we 7 may ignore even what we see. While this does not prevent the ignored events 8 from taking place, authorized and authoritative ignorance may silence them 9 and thus deny their historical and political inscription (Trouillot 1995). Visi- 10 tors came and le© Lauramarca. ey saw runakuna leaders and sometimes 11 even exchanged words in Quechua with them, but a strong racial political 12 grammar shaped the encounters as nonevents and those they talked to as 13 needing leadership, not as leaders themselves. e Indian politician remained 14 intriguingly impossible; it was a nonconcept even as runakuna leaders were 15 making political things happen. 16 I will not comment on Patch’s pejorative tone in the report from which I 17 have excerpted here (1958: An Anthropologist Visits Lauramarca). Instead, 18 I will just mention that since to him all Indians looked alike, the fact that he 19 remembered the personero and his companion might have meant that those 20 “two Indians” were, perhaps, remarkable. In a footnote, Patch writes: “I later 21 learned that the Indian personero is the son o one o the deported Indians 22 who died while imprisoned in the jungle o Ccosñipata” (1958, 10). I like 23 to think that the “two Indians” Patch remarked upon were Mariano Turpo 24 and his brother- in- law, Nazario Chillihuani, the runa who, as I mentioned 25 earlier, told me that Mariano was chosen because he was bold and spoke well 26 and who was the nephew o Francisco Chillihuani, the leader sent to die in 27 Qosñipata. 28 Trouillot’s evaluation o the Haitian revolution as a nonevent continues 29 to be useful. e reasons that prevented intellectuals from envisioning in- 30 digenous politicians—and Mariano’s actions as political—were “not so much 31 based on empirical evidence as on an ontology, an implicit organization o the 32 world and its inhabitants” (Trouillot 1995, 73). e inability o intellectuals 33 (even those sympathetic to what was then known as the “Indian cause,” like 34 Patch and Quijano) to identify indigenous leaders (even when they saw them 35 and spoke with them) was a historical blind spot that constituted them. Yet 36 intellectual blindness did not undo runakuna’s political actions against the 37 group that antagonized them (to the point o killing them i necessary, and
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1 2 1958: AN ANTHROPOLOGIST VISITS LAURAMARCA 3 4 In 1958 Richard W. Patch, an anthropologist with a PhD from Cornell Uni- 5 versity, visited Lauramarca as a member both o the American Universities 6 ¨ eld sta± (and therefore a “correspondent o current developments in world 7 a± airs” [Patch 1958, 2]) and o a Peruvian investigative commission looking 8 into the events at Lauramarca. He wrote: “At the airport in Cuzco we were 9 met by Indians who had made the long journey from Q’eros and Lauramarca 10 to welcome us. e group, clad in ponchos and trousers which terminated 11 at the knee leaving legs and feet bare, made a peculiar spectacle among the 12 tourists who had come for a week- end o sight- seeing in Cuzco and the ruins 13 o Machu Picchu. e Indians made clear their hope that we would visit the 14 ayllus a soon as possible.” Once in the area o hacienda Lauramarca, Patch 15 reported: 16 17 We saw where the original fence had been built, to the river’s edge, and the 18 accompanying Indian personero [ayllu delegate] pointed out where the new 19 fence was to be built. . . . In the cluster o stone huts which is called Mallma 20 we were greeted by a mayordomo with a ´ at, circular, fringe hat, who was carry- 21 ing an antique sta± o o· ce carved o jungle chonta wood and covered with 22 ¨ nely worked silver. He shouted toward the huts, in a Quechua o which I 23 recognized only “hamuy” (come). e reaction was startling—dozens o men 24 poured from the dark doorways which appeared to be holes in the mountain. 25 ey ran at us in an unnerving manner even though their friendliness was evi- 26 dent. Some had been warming themselves by drinking straight alcohol. Many 27 were diseased and showed the e± ects o smallpox. All were identically dressed 28 in short grey ponchos and black wool knee- trousers. We were invited to ad- 29 dress the group at the school, which turned out to be a half- mile walk away. e 30 school was a one- room hut, which had not been visited by a teacher in years. 31 Even the rain and raw wind were preferable to its ruined interior, so we talked 32 outside. We explained why we had come (in Spanish and Ancash Quechua, 33 translated by a University o Cuzco professor o folklore who acted as inter- 34 preter for the commission). [When the conversation ¨ nished] I shook hands 35 and said goodbye to the Indian personero and his companion who had accom- 36 panied us on our reconnaissance. But the two Indians smiled and climbed into 37
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1 2 3 the truck. ey had not shepherded us this far only to have me subverted by 4 the administrator or picked o± by the Civil Guards. Since it was impossible 5 for me to explain otherwise to them in my limited vocabulary o Ancash and 6 Bolivian Quechua, the four o us drove slowly back to the hacienda- house 7 through a dusk that lasts only minutes in the Andes. e guards looked with 8 astonishment at the two Indians in the truck [when we arrived], and the Indi- 9 ans, unmoved, looked curiously at the guards’ ri´ es. ey bundled themselves 10 in their ponchos and prepared for a cold and hungry night in the cab o the 11 truck. (1958, 10–11) 12 13 14 15 16 perhaps even i unnecessary) and that they sought to alter. To advance this 17 goal Mariano, and others like him, collaborated with politicians at the na- 18 tional and regional level, regardless o whether they represented the state or its 19 opposition. Hoping to “make the grievance work,” they also conversed with 20 international observers like Patch, although they knew that the latter’s under- 21 standing o the situation was minimal. ey could not even talk to us—how 22 would they see? But we could show them, and they saw something, was Mariano’s 23 ironic and sad comment when I read Patch’s report to him. Runakuna’s ap- 24 proach was thoroughly local: it emerged from being in- ayllu, without which 25 nothing could be. Yet according to Mariano’s narration o his experience, 26 having a local approach did not mean being shy or artless. He was curious 27 about what he did not know, and strove to learn about it without demand- 28 ing a necessary translation into what he was familiar with. He did not e± ace 29 the position o di± erence from which he interacted, even i this di± erence 30 entailed his subordination. He tried to understand. Able or unable [to under- 31 stand Spanish], I had to learn, he repeated to me, so I write it once again. Away 32 from home, he recognized governmental categories that de¨ ned him and his 33 world as Indian—illiterate, infantile, without speech—while at the same time 34 opposing the classi¨ cation by demanding that runakuna have access to citi- 35 zenship—the rights that the state supposedly o± ered universally (literacy, 36 payment for labor, and the right to direct access to the market were the cru- 37 cial ones)—without this canceling who they were and how they wanted to
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live their lives in di± erence. On the contrary, citizenship would allow runa- 1 kuna to be free and own their life in terms o their own—or so they hoped. 2 As Mariano walked the queja his acquaintances became more numerous; 3 and as they expanded beyond Lauramarca and its environs, they also became 4 ethnically and ideologically diverse. I think he felt proud as he recalled: My 5 conversation partners [parlaqmasiykunaqa] in the o© ces were many. With all 6 o them I talked, yes! You µ nd someone you trust and you just ask, “Papay, where 7 shall I go?” And they say, “Go here, or there, do not go there . . . begin with 8 the subprefecture, then go to the police station, make them understand what 9 you want, and then they are going to take things to the prefectura [the highest 10 police authority in Cuzco].” And you learn, then you even know more. Along 11 his routes o activism, from his village to Lima, he incorporated strategies to 12 acquire information and to protect himsel from hacendado networks. In 13 Ocongate, Mariano had a friend, Camilo Rosas—a merchant (and therefore 14 not an Indian) and a member o the Communist Party—who hid him, typed 15 notes for him, and received messages for him from their urban allies. e re- 16 lations with lawyers were complicated. Aware o the hacendado’s power to 17 co- opt legal networks in Cuzco, Mariano worked with more than one law- 18 yer; he hired three and worked only with them: When I walked the queja in 19 Cuzco I hired good lawyers, also in Lima. First there was Doctora Laura Caller, 20 in Lima, then Carlos Valer, Doctor Medina, then Doctor Infantas. His reason- 21 ing? e hacendado could buy one or two, but he would not buy all three 22 lawyers at the same time, he told me. Furthermore, to avoid falling into a legal 23 trap, having three lawyers allowed him to consult with two lawyers about the 24 opinion o the third one, compare their advice, and sometimes even make 25 them write the same document, which Mariano Chillihuani, his puriq masi 26 who could read and write, would then compare. is complicated strategy 27 yielded the plethora o documents that compose the archive I discuss in more 28 detail in story 4. While the literate histories o all these encounters may dif- 29 fer from Mariano’s only marginally, the margins may be enough to reveal 30 the distance between the literate elite’s intellectual concept o an Indian and 31 Mariano’s memories o what he did. 32 In addition to the lettered allies and advisors, Mariano’s network included 33 state o· cials: urban bureaucrats were important, and policemen were cru- 34 cial. As the turbulence increased in the period between the 1950s and 1968, 35 the owners o Lauramarca brought a large contingent o the Guardia Civil— 36 the police force—and placed them at newly created checkpoints to control 37
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1 2 3 RICHARD PATCH NARRATES: INDIGENOUS LEADERS’ 4 RELATIONSHIP WITH THE LAWYERS 5 6 e contrast between Mariano’s astute strategy with lawyers and the image 7 intellectuals had o runakuna is striking. Take Patch’s following words as ex- 8 ample: “Political complications always present themselves in these cases, and 9 Lauramarca has more than its share. Cuzco is one o the few parts o Peru 10 where Communists have real power—all brands o Communists, from intel- 11 lectuals who have spent years in Russia to illiterate workmen. . . . is di- 12 verse group dominates the regional Workers Federation o Cuzco, the body 13 coordinating the labor unions o Cuzco. . . . e same group organized a 14 campesino union in Lauramarca by indoctrinating Indian leaders, who are 15 persons without political experience and the willing agents o any group op- 16 posed to the hacienda- owners and to the local government. e ÜÙÝ gained 17 control o the Indians’ relations with the outside by using its own lawyers to 18 represent the community. ese attorneys, Laura Caller and Carlos Valer, are 19 both active followers o the Communist Party line, and without them the 20 colonos o Lauramarca would be helpless—until they discover that others 21 are willing to help them” (Patch 1958, 6). 22 23 24 25 26 both political activity and the their monopoly on wool and meat markets 27 across the territory they claimed as hacienda Lauramarca. 28 Local and foreign intellectuals were aware o the intimate connections 29 between the state and local landed power. Even i Patch did not necessarily 30 approve o it—and perhaps even critiqued it as a feature o gamonalismo— 31 the presence o police o· cers in the hacienda may not have surprised him. 32 e administrator o Lauramarca was aware o runakuna activities against 33 the hacienda, and with images o “ferocious indigenous atavism” lurking in 34 his mind (de la Cadena 2000, 120), he must have feared for his life and his 35 family’s. e Civil Guard seemingly guarded the hacienda, and its interests, 36 against the Indians. Yet there is more than one story, and Patch would have 37 been surprised to hear how those “silent Indians” circumvented police en-
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1 2 AND RICHARD PATCH’S NARRATION CONTINUES . . . 3 CIVIL GUARDS PROTECT LAURAMARCA 4 5 Patch narrates: “Arriving in the district capital o Ocongate, we dined on a 6 soup made o three potatoes and a plate o rice mixed with bones and shreds 7 o some unrecognizable meat. News o our coming had preceded us. At 8 the rapid conclusion o the meal, the administrator o Lauramarca and an 9 o· cer o the Civil Guard appeared in the doorway o the one-room, dirt- 10 ´ oored public house. Sr. Calderón, a serious- looking young man o twenty- 11 six, gravely welcomed us and asked when he might talk with the commission. 12 We intended to drive to Mallma, the farthest ayllu which can be reached by 13 road, before nightfall, but I promised to meet the administrator that night 14 at the casa hacienda. He drove o± in an automobile with three Civil Guards. 15 When we departed from Ocongate we le© behind an hacienda truck loaded 16 with police which a red- faced o· cer was unable to start. e Civil Guard 17 post near the entrance to the hacienda took down its chain and allowed us to 18 pass without di· culty” (1958, 9). 19 A© er Patch’s return from Mallma, about his conversation with the ha- 20 cienda administrator, he wrote, “Sr. Calderón was waiting at the guard post 21 which controls the entrance to the casa hacienda. He was seated in his auto- 22 mobile, the alférez o the police on his right, and two other police in the rear. 23 . . . When we reached the casa [house] it appeared more an armed camp than 24 a residence. Fourteen Civil Guards were stationed in an outlying building, 25 which had been converted into a kitchen and dormitory. Saddled horses were 26 within easy reach” (1958, 10). 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 croachment. Mariano recalled: ¡Carajo! I could not get to Sicuani to go to the 2 judge—they were spying on me, they could trap me. I did not go by Urcos [the 3 shortest route], I used a horse and took the high path. e people who could not 4 pay their quotas [to sustain the expenses incurred by the struggle] came with me. 5 I could not go by myself. ey brought the horses back. We went by Chilca, and 6 then they would return. I took a train to Cuzco [using] a diª erent name. I I 7 took the bus they would capture me—they knew my face. But the train did not 8 stop, they did not get me, ¹carajo! I got to the Federación directly. I knew how to 9 fool them. 10 But Mariano also made alliances with the policemen, particularly two who 11 were in Lauramarca against their will: At night, I would go and give a sheep 12 to those two policemen—I would go only at night. ey would give me a piece 13 o bread and tea—sometimes we would drink together. Ha, ha, ha! We never 14 talked during the daytime, they would see us talking. I would also send potatoes 15 with the runakuna who would not talk, those I could trust. And the policemen 16 would say: “God will pay you for this, you care about us, we are also sick o the 17 hacendado—fuck him! ¡Carajo! We will leave him on his own.” And those two 18 policemen did leave the police station in Tinki—they went to Cuzco. And when 19 they went, one o them told me, “I you ever come to Cuzco, you will come to my 20 house, I can hide you and you will bring a sheep or two.” And I did go to that 21 house. ey fed me, and treated me very well, but I also fed them—I took with 22 me moraya, chuño, and meat.Ê 23 e police station Mariano mentions was the same one that guarded the 24 house o Abel Calderón, the administrator in Patch’s story. Policemen in 25 Lauramarca negotiated multiple wills; this was also a feature o gamonalismo, 26 that ambiguous condition o rule inhabited by both the state and its unlawful 27 excess. And thus, even from the weaker side (which confronted the “owner 28 o the will”), runakuna leaders navigated the ambiguity o gamonal state rule 29 to their own ends. Sometimes, even to his own surprise, Mariano managed to 30 turn the law in runakuna’s favor: I denounced him [the hacienda manager] in 31 the judge’s o© ce. “ is is what he is doing to me, this is how they are going a er 32 me.” I made those policemen leave the area. I went to Cuzco and I said, “Why 33 has he put policemen in the apacheta [the highest passes in the roads where check- 34 points were located]? Carajo, they want to kill us runakuna, that is why they are 35 there.” And then just as I was saying that, the highest o© cer om the »¼» [the 36 Policía de Investigaciones del Perú, the Peruvian Investigation Police] came. 37 He knew me, he was a gentleman, and he was the boss. And he asked [the judges
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and the other police o© cers]: “Is it true that the hacendado has put spies in the 1 apachetas?” “Yes, he has sent policemen there,” they answered. And he sent a tele- 2 gram right then saying, “You cannot use the policemen to guard your pastures.” 3 e confrontation with the hacienda peaked in 1957, a© er a general strike 4 led by the Sindicato Campesino de Lauramarca (the Peasant Union o Lau- 5 ramarca) and all its a· liated ayllus. According to the oral record, this strike 6 provoked several investigative commissions (one o which was led by Patch) 7 to visit. In Pacchanta, older runakuna remember that during this period 8 large meetings frequently took place, attended by all families from all ayllus 9 that had organized the grievance against Lauramarca. People from neigh- 10 boring haciendas—even from neighboring provinces—are said to have at- 11 tended the meetings. Benito, Mariano’s son, recalled that in these gatherings 12 Mariano “taught them,” and that well-known le© ist politicians from Cuzco 13 were listening to him: “they talked about Cuba” and “how it was defeating 14 the United States.” At times the police or armed hacienda men menacingly 15 intervened in these meetings. To avoid confrontations, most meetings were 16 clandestine and happened in caves, away from the eyes and ears o those who 17 sided with the hacienda (the hacienda runa), who were a numerous, always 18 shi© ing group, and who even included people from Mariano’s extended 19 family, as he bitterly recalled: at Lunasco Turpo, he was my family and he 20 wanted to kill me. Before, he even wanted me to turn against the ayllu. “You are 21 not going to win,” he told me. “ e hacendado will kill you, at night he can kill 22 you, even during the daytime he can kill you. Nothing will happen to him, even 23 i you say he has shot you, he can buy anybody with money, he will go to the law- 24 yers and buy them. Where are you going to hide? You cannot hide om him. You 25 are stupid, carajo! Come to the hacienda, you will have a good life, eat well.” I 26 told him, “He can kill me, he can do whatever he wants to me, but I will not die 27 for money, but for the ayllu. I will µ ght with my life. Fuck you! ¡Carajo!” 28 Even more than the rather adventurous visits to Lima or Cuzco, living in 29 Lauramarca was extremely dangerous for Mariano. As Lunasco Turpo had 30 told him, he could be killed and nobody would even know. Mariano lived in 31 caves and in hiding for long periods o time. His wife and other women sent 32 food with young shepherds who were grazing their sheep, llamas, and alpacas 33 in the nearby pastures. His words: I hid in that mountain—in Chaupi Urqu, 34 the one in the middle. ey could not µ nd me. ey said, “Mariano is sure to be 35 in the pampa where he lives, he could not have gone anywhere.” I could not go to 36 my house or anything, only stayed inside Chaupi Urqu. I escaped to those moun- 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Lisuyuq Machay, cave with insolence, could make people sick. 19 Mariano knew how to be with it. August 2005. 20 21 22 tains to live inside Yana Machay [Black Cave]. I did not come to my house to eat 23 or anything. In that corner there are huge caves, many caves, in one or another 24 cave I slept. ey sent me soup there. Yes, they did . . . warm soup. My wife was 25 alive then, my sister and my wife—they both brought my food, they took turns; 26 they also sent it with a boy because they were watching the adults. I they saw a 27 man going to the mountains they would tell the overseers, and i they knew I was 28 in the caves they would look for me in the caves. But before they came, during the 29 night, I disappeared without sleeping. 30 Benito, who accompanied Mariano more than once, remembered: He 31 lived up there. ere is a big cave; he lived there during the day. He would come 32 down only at nights when he had to. When the dogs barked, it meant they [the 33 hacienda runa] were coming, and he ran away. As soon as the dog barked he 34 escaped, sometimes nobody was coming; he had escaped in vain. Benito took 35 me to one o the caves where Mariano had hidden. It was only four miles 36 away, but the climb from Pacchanta was steep, and it took me a little over 37 three hours to get there. O course, I was the last one to arrive; Benito and
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Aquiles (Mariano’s grandson) got there in an hour. When they le© , they told 1 me to follow the path, which I did. e cave was nothing more than a big 2 hole that grew wider as it went deeper into the mountain. It was frigid, but it 3 certainly provided shelter from hail, rain, and wind; a ¨ re could be lit inside 4 for warmth, and there were rocks, long and high o± the ground. Benito and 5 Aquiles mentioned that these could have been used as tables or, covered with 6 sheepskin, even as a bed. 7 It was in one o those caves that the hacienda runa caught him—someone 8 betrayed him and guided them to Mariano’s hideout. ey dra ed him to 9 the house, where his wife and children were. Benito told me: at night they 10 caught my father, they tied his hands with a rope, tightly so that he would not es- 11 cape, and with the µ rst light o the day they took him away. My mamita clung to 12 him with all her strength, but they whacked her down and she had to let go. en 13 they tied my father to the horse, and with the µ rst light many men on horseback 14 le with him. ere was a lot o blood in the house—whose blood it was, I do 15 not know. Mariano was imprisoned in the hacienda, where he was tortured— 16 although torture as a notion seems out o conceptual place given the im- 17 punity provided by gamonalismo in the region. When I asked about it (“Did 18 they hit you?”) Mariano laughed at me and answered angrily, highlighting 19 how the di± erence between us had brutally motivated my question: I wanted 20 his response for our story, but the question was redundant. His answer: I 21 am telling you, my hands were tied with rope, and my feet were chained. I told 22 you already yesterday. Mmmm, do you think they are going to take you just for 23 the sake o it? He [Calderón, the hacienda manager] asked, “Who encouraged 24 you, who advised you?” And as he asks this with a whip he hits you, carajo! He 25 kicks you, he slaps you on the face. ey did not even let me eat. “ ey can poi- 26 son you, and they are going to blame me,” the guard told me. When I needed to 27 shit I had to move around jumping, they would not, even then, take the shackles 28 away. e people om the ayllu, my family, they went to the Federación and told 29 them, “ is and that is what they are doing to Mariano.” And the Federación 30 and my lawyers forced the hacendado to send me to Cuzco: “You cannot have a 31 jail in your hacienda, it is illegal,” they told him, and they transferred me to jail 32 in Cuzco. is was another one o those moments that Mariano could not 33 believe: the will o the hacendado was momentarily suspended and Mariano 34 was taken away from his torturer, i only to be interrogated in the prefectura 35 in Cuzco, and then sent to jail where he was interrogated yet again. 36 Mariano felt lucky to have been transported from the hacienda jail to 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Mariano Chillihuani’s wife and son pointing at the place occupied by the jail 19 in the hacienda Lauramarca. It is currently a house in the main square 20 of Tinki, formerly the hacienda’s administrative center and now a town 21 and an important market. August 2005. 22 23 24 prison in Cuzco, for i he had stayed he would have been killed—or so he 25 heard. He remembered someone telling him: I they do not take you to Cuzco, 26 here they are going to cut your throat without even caring, they are going to 27 punish you and then they are going to hang you. ree months or so later, 28 Mariano was set free a© er his lawyer paid (possibly a bribe, but it could have 29 also been bail, with the ayllu’s money) to expedite his release. is legal— 30 or illegal—procedure could have been, once again, one o those rare occa- 31 sions when gamonalismo mutated from representing only the hacendado’s 32 will into an alliance that connected an important state agency in Cuzco— 33 the prefectura—with the lawyers a· liated with the Communist Party. is 34 was not improbable at all; ideological di± erences did not necessarily prevent 35 Mariano’s urban allies from accessing some level o judiciary power through 36 the very same networks o favors, bribes, and kinship or friendship that com- 37 posed gamonalismo, which in fact did not have an ideological essence. While
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the gamonal side o the state might have been more di· cult for runakuna 1 to maneuver, it was not for the exclusive use o the powerful, and on occa- 2 sion it could deliver the results that runakuna were working for. Mariano 3 spoke o this as the moment when law had ‘turned’ to his side—an impor- 4 tant commentary on the ambiguity o gamonal rule o law, and crucially o 5 the state—even i most o the time the law seemed to be entirely determined 6 by the hacendado. 7 e stru le ended suddenly. Mariano and many others (perhaps even 8 the ÜÙÝ) were taken by surprise by the 1968 coup d’état led by le© ist mili- 9 tary leaders, who almost immediately decreed the agrarian reform that dis- 10 solved the hacienda system. On the day it came to an end—December 6, 11 1969 (D. Gow 1976, 139)—and Mariano was summoned to receive the land 12 in the name o the ayllus from Lauramarca, he thought it was a joke. e 13 hacienda runa were laughing; they could not believe it was happening either. 14 at laughter made Mariano suspicious. Maybe it was not true, he thought: 15 Because they were all laughing, I thought in my heart: “ ey are making a joke 16 o me, they want to see i I pick up the land, that is what they are doing,” I said. 17 en it started to rain. One hacienda runa came and told me, “ is is a joke, 18 one who wears ojotas, a naked- kneed Indian will never win.” ose hacienda 19 runa, they did not believe, as I did not. But then when [they realized] it was 20 true, they approached me and asked, “Papacito [dear father], you won, what are 21 you going to do with us?” Mariano wished he could have done something with 22 them—like not give them land—but he could not. e agrarian reform de- 23 clared all runakuna to be peasants, including those who had sided with the 24 hacendado, so all were included in the structural land- ownership changes. 25 Expropriated from the landowner, Lauramarca became an agrarian coopera- 26 tive. And as Mariano said, From that moment on, the runakuna all organized 27 in Lauramarca. We went to graze the alpacas, to work the chacras. With the re- 28 forma [agrarian reform] the cooperative came in, and we then started working 29 for the cooperative. We handled the seed, the pastures, everything. ey gave us 30 the barbed wire, the sheep, everything came back to us. 31 Mariano never reached a position o power in the cooperative. It seems 32 that he rejected that possibility, but his reputation as a leader in the stru le 33 against the former landowner may have led to the cooperative administra- 34 tion’s rejection o him. It was publicly known in the region that he had advo- 35 cated for the direct possession o Lauramarca by runakuna—or campesinos, 36 as the agrarian reform labeled them—with no intermediaries. Rosalind Gow 37
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1 recounts that at this juncture many people in the region expected Mariano to 2 become the president o the cooperative, but that “he was clearly unpopular 3 with many o the government- appointed technicians, promoters and veteri- 4 narians in Lauramarca who preferred a more amenable youth for the posi- 5 tion” (1981, 190–91). In any case, Mariano could not read or write ´ uidly, and 6 he might not have been able to handle the lettered bureaucracy that the co- 7 operative, as state property, required. Expectedly perhaps, the state represen- 8 tatives who arrived to administer it, swi© ly absorbed the local practices o ga- 9 monalismo and mishandled money and assets. Eventually, their relationships 10 with runakuna soured, and in the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, when 11 Nazario Turpo was the representative o the campesino members o the co- 12 operative, the property was dismantled. e administrators’ corruption had 13 reached its limit, and—with the support o urban le© ist politicians—a new 14 peasant movement managed to bring an end to the cooperative. Mariano and 15 Nazario may have had some responsibility for dismantling it—at least that 16 was the rumor. 17 is series o converging events, in which he was a crucial actor, eventu- 18 ally made Mariano thinkable as a political leader. e thought may have sur- 19 prised the prominent group o intellectuals that had denied the possibility 20 o indigenous leadership in 1965. ey must have been even more surprised 21 when, starting in the mid- 1970s, a strong nationwide alliance o peasant or- 22 ganizations in which runakuna were crucial and public, gradually dismantled 23 the 1969 agrarian reform and brought about land redistribution through 24 the whole country. Starting in the 1980s and going on for more than a de- 25 cade, a brutal civil war between the Shining Path and the Peruvian armed 26 forces swept the country. In the most violent highland areas (Ayacucho and 27 Puno—to the north and south o Cuzco, respectively), runakuna organized 28 into rondas campesinas were once again important political actors defeat- 29 ing the Shining Path. Parallel to these events in Peru, in neighboring Bolivia 30 and Ecuador strong social movements emerged and claimed ethnic identity. 31 eir leaders were known as indigenous intellectuals, a label that would have 32 sounded oxymoronic to the intellectuals gathered at the think tank in Lima 33 years earlier. Breaking into the political scene o Andean countries, the new 34 indigenous intelligentsia dismantled traditional identity categories and pro- 35 posed new ones that allowed for indigenous politicians, but with a condition: 36 their practice o politics had to be modern, at least publicly. 37 e public presence o indigenous intellectuals was among the ¨ rst im-
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portant signs o profound transformations in the racial- ethnic composition 1 o the modern political sphere in Andean countries. Perhaps the most strik- 2 ing among such transformations was the 2006 election o Evo Morales—a 3 union leader, who identi¨ es himsel as Aymara—as Bolivia’s president. Other 4 processes—di± erent in geographical scope and ideological bent—have con- 5 tributed to such transformations. Neoliberal multiculturalism, the collapse 6 o the Soviet Union, the incompetence o right- wing governments in Bolivia 7 and Ecuador in negotiating their internal crises, the successful 1990 “Indige- 8 nous Uprising” in Ecuador, the growth o El Alto as the largest Aymara city 9 in Bolivia, the emergence o the Shining Path (intertwined with both, the 10 violent ineptitude o the Peruvian military in confronting it, and the con- 11 trasting decisive participation o rondas campesinas in the defeat o the ter- 12 rorist group)—all o these have stretched the public imagination about who 13 can participate in politics and what can be considered a political issue. Never- 14 theless, the ontological division between humans and nature that constitutes 15 the modern world (Latour 1993) continues to set limits to this imagination. 16 Accordingly, while indigenous individuals can now be politicians or even 17 president o a country, the presence o earth- beings in the political sphere 18 is inconceivable and always extremely controversial. Rather obviously, the 19 public presence o earth- beings in politics is ontologically unconstitutional 20 in states ordered by biopolitical practices that conceive human life as discon- 21 tinuous from (what those same practices call) nature. Not even i he wanted 22 to, could President Morales lend support to such a presence without risking 23 his credibility as a legitimate politician. us, while the story o Mariano’s 24 activism that I have narrated here would be accepted and even admired today, 25 the events and practices that I narrate in the next two stories continue to 26 challenge modern politics and its theories. 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Mariano, intense narrator. August 2003. Photograph by Thomas Müller. 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 STORY 3 MARIANO’S COSMOPOLITICS 9 10 BETWEEN LAWYERS AND AUSANGATE 11 12 13 We Western liberal intellectuals should accept the fact that we 14 have to start from where we are, and that this means that there are lots 15 o views, which we simply cannot take seriously. 16 RICHARD RORTY Objectivity, Relativism and Truth 17 18 Politics exists through the fact o a magnitude that escapes 19 ordinary measurement, this part o those who have 20 no part that are nothing and everything. 21 22 JACQUES RANCIÈRE Disagreement 23 24 25 e “Mesa Redonda sobre Todas las sangres” has remained memorable be- 26 cause o the heated discussion between le© - leaning intellectuals, who were 27 denying the existence o indigenous politicians in 1960s Peru, and José María 28 Arguedas, the author o Todas las sangres. Mariano, as I said in the previous 29 story, was one o those politicians who the intellectuals thought were im- 30 possible. ey might have been caught in what, many years a© er the Mesa 31 Redonda, Aníbal Quijano (then one o the most articulate opponents o the 32 notion o indigenous politicians) called the “coloniality o power” (2000)— 33 a concept that, as I have said, may express an important self- critique o his 34 earlier position. 35 In this story I tell about the participation o earth- beings in the confron- 36 tation against the hacendado and his practices against runakuna. My con- 37
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1 ceptualization builds on Bruno Latour’s notion o the Modern Constitu- 2 tion (1993b), which I place in conversation with Quijano’s coloniality o 3 power. I argue that this feature o power, its coloniality, was an invention 4 enabled by and enabling another invention: that o the New World divided 5 into humanity and nature, both under the rule o the Christian God—that 6 is, in the dominant image o the Old World. Initially authorized by faith and 7 then by reason, the division between nature and humanity upon which the 8 coloniality o power rested also became the foundation o modern politics; 9 it inscribed its conception (its being and practice) regardless o ideological 10 bent. Accordingly, the coloniality o modern politics conditions both the dis- 11 tribution o inequality and its denunciation; they both inhabit the histori- 12 cally changing notion o what politics is. Coloniality both enables the search 13 for equality itself, its generative potential, and sets the limits beyond which 14 this search appears in modern politics as sheer degeneration. 15 16 17 18 THE AGREEMENT THAT MAKES THE 19 COLONIALITY OF POLITICS 20 21 Years ago, in the now-classic We Have Never Been Modern, Latour (1993b) 22 wrote a chapter titled “Constitution.” Building on the work of the historians of 23 science Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer (1985) about the debate between 24 Robert Boyles and Thomas Hobbes, Latour wrote that these two men not only 25 dissented; rather, they were “like a pair of Founding Fathers, acting in concert 26 to promote one and the same innovation in political theory: the representa- 27 tion of nonhumans belongs to science, but science is not allowed to appeal 28 to politics; the representation of citizens belongs to politics, but politics is 29 not allowed to have any relation to the nonhumans produced and mobilized 30 by science and technology” (1993b, 28). This, Latour proposed, inaugurated 31 what he called the “modern constitution”: the invention of the ontological dis- 32 tinction between humans and nonhumans, and the practices that allowed for 33 both their mixture and their separation. Enabled by (and enabling) the Euro- 34 pean expansion, the modern constitution was at the heart of the invention 35 of both modern experimental science (and its objects) and the coloniality of 36 modern politics. The modern constitution was foundational to the agreement 37 that founded the world as we know it, and that set the confines within which
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disagreements could be effected without undoing modern politics. Thus, not- 1 withstanding the differences that sparked liberalism and socialism in the nine- 2 teenth century, both groups (in all their variants) continue to converge on the 3 ontological distinction between humanity and nature that was foundational to 4 the birth of the modern political field. 5 Modern politics required more than divisions among humans—for example, 6 friends and enemies, according to Carl Schmitt (1996), or adversaries if we 7 follow Mouffe (2000). It also required the partition of the sensible (see Ran- 8 cière 1999) into humanity and nature, and its hierarchical distribution: those 9 who had more of the first counted more, those who had more of the second 10 counted less. Together, these divides—between humanity and nature, and be- 11 tween allegedly superior and inferior humans—organized the agreement ac- 12 cording to which worlds that do not abide by the divide are not. They do not 13 even “count as not counting,” pace Rancière (1999, 6–7, 125); not participating 14 in the partition from which the principle of the count derives they cannot not 15 count.¼ Thus, as Richard Rorty proposes in the quote above, they cannot “be 16 taken seriously” (1991, 29). In that quote Rorty represents a “we” that speaks 17 from the divide between nature and humanity, and expresses the will to en- 18 force its principle of reality. The disagreement opposing this principle would 19 be ontological, and so would the politics emerging from it. 20 21 22 23 Tirakuna: A Presence in the Land Struggle 24 25 In addition to talking to lawyers and judges, bribing policemen, organizing 26 unions and strikes, speaking in front o crowds on Peruvian Labor Day, and 27 indeed confronting the hacendado in the courts, Mariano Turpo emerged as 28 personero with earth- beings, inherently related to them. eir presence was 29 part o the political process, for they were also the place that runakuna were 30 and fought for: Walking the complaint, I sent my breath [pukuy] to the earth- 31 beings saying, “Pukara, you are my place, so that the authorities will listen to me, 32 I am asking you”—and [explaining his actions to me] saying their name, you 33 breathe [sutinmanta pukunki]. And then truly they have received my word— 34 i not, where would I have gotten the words to speak? Nowhere [things] went 35 wrong. I was never in jail for too long. I said “so that the authorities will receive 36 us, so that the prefectura will listen to us” . . . even the minister o economy in 37
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1 Lima paid attention to us. To these pukaras you just blow on the k’intu [chayqa 2 chay pukarakunallamanya pukurikuni k’inturukuni]. Catherine Allen has 3 described the k’intu as “a presentation o coca leaves, o© en three in number, 4 with the leaves carefully placed one on top o the other and o± ered with the 5 right hand” (2002, 274). Pukuy is blowing human breath (sami) onto the 6 k’intu and toward the earth- beings, thus being with them in the event that 7 requires their presence—there is no k’intu without puku. A k’intu is also pre- 8 sented when entering a foreign place; blowing a person’s breath via the coca 9 leaves to the unfamiliar earth- beings is done by way o introduction, the be- 10 ginning o a place- making relationship. Accordingly, when Mariano traveled 11 he did this, even at the Presidential Palace in Lima when nobody was watch- 12 ing except for runakuna from other regions o the country who were also 13 attending the presidential audience. K’intu was important. In the surround- 14 ings o the palace, close to the Plaza de Armas, they all sat and blew to their 15 respective earth- beings and to the one behind the Governmental Palace (the 16 Palacio de Gobierno, the seat o the state): ey say that tirakuna is Cerro San 17 Cristóbal. I was not the only one doing the k’intu in Lima; many others were 18 doing it too. us, when runakuna from di± erent parts o the country visited 19 the Governmental Palace, two ceremonies that were incommensurable with 20 each other took place simultaneously: one o them happened between the 21 president o Peru and personeros indígenas who were also aylluruna, people 22 o di± erent ayllus. Respectfully communing with earth- beings and conjuring 23 them to the presidential meeting was the other ceremony; it took place, even 24 i state representatives ignored it. 25 Back at home, and especially when hiding from the hacienda people, 26 Mariano’s communing with earth- beings was also important, and not only 27 because they helped him. Caves were good to hide in, but some could be 28 mean—like Lisuyuq Machay (literally, cave with insolence), so named be- 29 cause it made people sick. Mariano used to avoid that cave, but when he could 30 not, he knew how to blow a k’intu or burn the right despacho to prevent the 31 cave from grabbing him. A despacho is a bundle o assorted dry foodstu± , a 32 llama fetus, and ´ owers all wrapped together in white paper; runakuna burn 33 a despacho to give it to an important earth- being and, in so doing, intensify or 34 improve their being together with it. I mentioned despachos brie´ y in story 1 35 and will discuss their use in detail in story 6. Here I only mention some o 36 their features. ese bundles come in di± erent sizes and qualities—some are 37 more expensive than others—and can be bought in marketplaces in Cuzco
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or big rural towns. e person who burns the bundle can be called a despa- 1 chante, a chamán, or sometimes—and with reservations—a paqu. Given the 2 long relationship between runakuna and Christianity, there are similarities 3 between the movements o a priest saying a Catholic mass and those o the 4 despachante o the bundle. Perhaps drawing on this similitude, the Andean 5 ethnographic record has usually in´ ected despachos with religious connota- 6 tions, for example calling them “o± erings” in English (Abercrombie 1998, 96; 7 Allen 2002, 22; Gose 1994, 208) and o e n d a s in Spanish (Flores Ochoa 1977; 8 Ricard 2007). And certainly despachos and Christian practices (like praying 9 or burning candles to saints) have overlapping features. But the overlap is not 10 only such; there are also di± erences. Taking into account these di± erences 11 may require slowing down the translation o runakuna practices with earth- 12 beings into religion, even in its version as “a syncretic practice o Andean 13 Christianity” as it is usually represented in the Andean ethnographic record. 14 Mariano explained an intriguing di± erence that, according to him, sets 15 apart Ausangate and Jesus Christ, as well as the despacho and a Catholic 16 o± ering: the response o the earth- being depends on the quality o the des- 17 pacho, and this, in turn, depends on the quality o the food burned and o 18 the expertise o the person sending the bundle. Competition among despa- 19 chantes may exist, each wanting to turn the earth- being in their favor and 20 against their rival. When both sides are equally skillful, the con´ icts are not 21 solved and the sides continue the ¨ ght; otherwise, the more adroit despa- 22 chante wins the earth- being’s favor. Apparently the pursuit o liberal justice 23 is not the end o the despacho, nor is it the necessary will o the earth- beings. 24 It is also unlikely that something akin to Christian faith mobilizes the despa- 25 cho. Instead a despacho may involve relations o obligation, o paying back; 26 remarkably, it is also called pago, the Spanish word for payment. Moreover, 27 my friends’ narratives (and their practices) su ested to me that a despacho 28 could be attuned with relationships o the type that characterize gamona- 29 lismo. On occasions, the purposes o a despacho echoed the practice o brib- 30 ing judges to direct the complaint in the desired direction and disregard- 31 ing justice or the rule o law. But there are also di± erences between both 32 types o payments, which Mariano explained. e translation that follows 33 (not only into English, but also into writing) may simplify his explanation, 34 which articulates more than one relational regime—one in which people 35 emerge together with earth- beings in- ayllu and another that perhaps ¨ ts with 36 notions like religion or magic. 37
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1 Mariano’s words, my translation: Ausangate listens i you have more money 2 for a better despacho or i you do the despacho more times. e Señor [Jesus] does 3 not listen to more money. e hacendados had their money. ey could buy the 4 judges; they also paid the runakuna so that they would be with the hacienda. 5 ey also paid them to make despachos for the hacendado. He bought despachos, 6 he bought the lawyers. He made people make despachos so that he would win 7 the trial. When the hacendado hired paqus to destroy Mariano, they could 8 not kill him because Mariano counteracted them with the help o the Señor, 9 Jesus Christ, who does listen to the side that seeks justice. And Mariano knew 10 when the hacendado had ordered despachos against him, because he had a 11 system o spies that would tell him o the landowner’s activities: You ask the 12 people o the hacienda, those who have turned to your side, and they tell you what 13 the hacendado is going to do, saying “make a despacho to stop what he is doing.” 14 ey look in the coca, what they want to do is to grab your health—they destroy 15 your body, ¹carajo! So that your despacho does not go anywhere, they make it 16 against you. Or there are some women that are paqu, they approach smoothly 17 [and say], “My brother, why don’t you talk to me anymore . . . come, let’s drink 18 together,” and they want to give you a drink. ere they have already put in 19 their concoction, and they blow it to you. [I would say,] “No, I cannot, I am 20 sick and the doctor has given me an injection with antibiotics, I cannot drink.” 21 I you drink then your capacity abandons you, you do not have words anymore 22 . . . the [earth- beings] do not receive your words anymore, or you abandon the 23 queja and go out with women instead. Once, only once, those dogs [the hacienda 24 witches] hit me. By noon I was already in bed, my head hurt, my eyes were not 25 seeing anymore, my stomach hurt. You cannot doubt one thing—as soon as you 26 doubt, they can hit you. And then you cannot do things anymore. at is how 27 I struggled against them [kaynatan paykunawan lucharani]. e hacendado 28 gave them money so that they would do it [hacendado chay ruwachinasunku- 29 paq qulqeta qun]. You also need to buy concoctions against theirs, and you spend 30 a lot o money. My wife used to get very mad at me about all the money I used. 31 “You use our money to travel, you use your money in those remedies against the 32 layqa [witch],” she used to tell me. 33 During the time o the grievance, Ausangate—the presiding earth- being, 34 whom local people remembered acting “like a lawyer,” or “like the presi- 35 dent” (cf. Abercrombie 1998; Earls 1969)—considered despachos from both 36 sides: the ayllu and the hacendado. eir purpose was the same: to prevent 37 the other side from winning the court hearings. Mariano and the ayllu en-
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gaged in a stru le with the hacendado in the courts and recruited the help 1 o earth- beings; the lawyers’ work would not have enough force without 2 the latter, and the earth-beings needed the lawyers as well. As Mariano ex- 3 plained, Ausangate was ayllu; the hacendado was not. e earth- being was 4 not the hacienda, which was the hacendado, therefore the earth- being was 5 not with him either: it was not part o the hacendado. Ausangate had en- 6 gaged in similar confrontations twice before, ¨ rst when he fought against the 7 Spaniards to gain independence for all Peruvians, and later on when he ex- 8 pelled the Chileans—who, years later, wanted to invade the country. Didn’t 9 I know? at was why Ausangate was also known as Guerra Ganar (literally, 10 Win the War). e hacendado (particularly the last one) was a foreigner— 11 he had come from Argentina—and, Mariano said, he could make alliances 12 with the United States, who would then take the ayllu over to build factories 13 and mills, and the place they were (their place- being) would be destroyed. 14 “Would he be an ally o the United States, or would be against him?” I asked. 15 Mariano’s response: e hacendado? O course he would not µ ght against the 16 United States! Instead he would tell them: “Come! Build your factories in my 17 land.” ey would have brought water all over the place with tubes, they would 18 have brought cattle. And us? ey would have thrown us away. Where, where 19 could we go then? Do you think we do not understand what those factories mean? 20 We consulted Ausangate with the coca; he explained, “ at is what the United 21 States is going to do.” We do not read or write, but we understand. And we could 22 not give up; the ayllu is this place we are. 23 Evicting runakuna would mean the destruction o their in- ayllu being 24 with tirakuna, plants, and animals. What the intellectuals at the “Mesa Re- 25 donda sobre Todas las sangres” did was to deny the political possibility o an 26 indigenous stru le for land. And in so doing, they were (although unknow- 27 ingly) partially right (or not completely wrong), because Mariano’s stru le 28 was not only for land. Land was both the ground where politicians (includ- 29 ing the state) and Mariano’s ayllu met and the site where they came apart. All 30 parties met around land as a resource that could be owned. But additionally, 31 in- ayllu land was mountains, rivers, and lakes—the tirakuna that together 32 with animals, plants, and runakuna composed the place that they all were 33 and still are. 34 Almost sixty years a© er the “Mesa Redonda,” the grip o the coloniality 35 o politics has not loosened, even as indigenous social movements have 36 emerged as actors in the public sphere. e modern constitution that divides 37
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1 the dominant world into nature and humanity has not changed; it has wel- 2 comed new features—such as gender and ethnicity—which have to abide by 3 the divide. Hence, while Mariano’s success in bringing the hacienda system to 4 an end may mean that he is recognized as a politician today (now that indige- 5 nous social movements have, as noted above, emerged as important political 6 actors), the practices that made his leadership possible would continue to re- 7 move him from the sphere o politics proper. When I tell my friends about 8 Mariano’s activism they are in awe—until I tell them about his practices: for 9 example, that he consulted with coca leaves searching for clues about how to 10 relate to state authorities, like the president o the country. ose practices, 11 my friends say, are superstition—why care about them? Like Rorty, above, 12 they “simply cannot take seriously” those “lots o visions” that will inevitably 13 disappear as their vision o history tells them; that some consider themselves 14 le© ists and others rightists does not make a di± erence. eir agreement is 15 fundamental: nature is universal. e rhetoric o earth- beings in politics re- 16 sists historical analysis, its capacity “to re´ ect actual existing ethnicities is 17 scant.”½ To think otherwise is irresponsible political discourse; it prevents 18 any serious analysis that could lead to action promoting development and 19 economic growth (Stefanoni 2010a and 2010c). is script is not new, and 20 Mariano was familiar with a very similar one. He recognized that the con- 21 nection with his le© ist allies was partial and asymmetric at that, for while 22 they ignored his terms, he was familiar with theirs and even deployed some. 23 e public script o the events that became known as peasant movements, 24 politically momentous as they were during the 1960s and 1970s, did not in- 25 clude the in- ayllu terms o runakuna leaders like Mariano. In the eyes o the 26 properly political, those terms were delusions—false consciousness in Marx- 27 ist rhetoric; as remnants o the past, they were irrelevant. 28 29 30 31 HISTORICISM AND REPRESENTATION 32 Also sustaining the coloniality of politics is what Dipesh Chakrabarty identi- 33 fies as historicism: the epistemic maneuver that “posited historical time as 34 a measure of cultural distance that was assumed to exist between the West 35 and the non-West” (2000, 7). Organized through this notion of historicism, 36 the nature-humanity divide rendered universal history and, within it, Europe, 37
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as the highest stage of humanity: the cradle of civilization, the secular state, 1 and science—and, indeed, the most distant from nature. Academics are by 2 now familiar with this critique and, to the credit of postcolonial scholarship, 3 we accept it. We are also critical of the supremacy of Western science as 4 the path to knowledge; this, we argue, also results from Eurocentric histori- 5 cism’s distributing nature-humanity hierarchies around the world. Thus, avoid- 6 ing Eurocentrism, we recognize other knowledges, such as Chinese medicine 7 and non-Western forms of art: Euro-Americans seek acupuncture, and Aus- 8 tralian aboriginal paintings have found a collectors. However, these critical 9 comments may still be within the limits of the coloniality of politics if repre- 10 sentation, the epistemic method indispensable to the modern constitution, 11 continues to be uncritically used as their tool.¾ Representation can make the 12 world legible as one and diverse at the same time by translating nature (out 13 there everywhere) into the perspectives of science (the universal translation) 14 and culture (the subjective translation). Thriving on cosmopolitanism, repre- 15 sentation uses the abstract language and the local practices of academic 16 disciplines, politics, and religion; implementing the coloniality of the modern 17 constitution, representation may trump practices that do not abide by the 18 nature-humanity divide and are not at home in the world that it (representa- 19 tion) makes legible as one. 20 Conjuring earth-beings up into politics—as Mariano did—may indicate that 21 nature is not only such, that what we know as nature can be society. This 22 condition confuses the division that representation requires and, just as im- 23 portant, the subject position from where it is effected. To be able to think 24 “earth-beings,” the world that underwrites the distinction between nature and 25 humanity requires a translation in which earth-beings become cultural belief: 26 a representation of nature that can be tolerated (or not) as the politicization of 27 indigenous religion. This translation moves earth-beings to a realm where they 28 are not (in inherent relation) with runakuna, and ultimately cancels the reality- 29 making capacity of the practices that such connection enables. Yet exceed- 30 ing the translation, these practices continue to make local worlds, frequently 31 in interaction and complex cohabitation with representational practices. For 32 example, I have said that as personero Mariano was in-ayllu and therefore he 33 spoke from it, not for it; nevertheless, state authorities and modern politicians 34 interacted with him as a representative of runakuna. As such, during the in- 35 auguration of the cooperative, a state official gave him a handful of soil that 36 37
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1 was supposed to represent the former hacienda. In Mariano’s hands the same 2 soil was also santa tira, and this was the earth-being, not its representation. 3 Discussing Inka practices, Carolyn Dean suggests that “representation is a 4 misleading term with regard to many different types of Inka numinous rocks, 5 for these rocks are not substitutes for that which they are identified, but are, 6 in fact, those very things themselves” (2010, 26). Of course I am far from sug- 7 gesting that tirakuna or the nonrepresentational relation through which they 8 emerge have not changed since Inka times. What I am suggesting is that along 9 with historical changes, the practices that enact tirakuna and runakuna as in- 10 herently related to each other continue to make local worlds in the Andes. And 11 thus, connected to modernity but uncontained by representational epistemic 12 requirements, these practices exceed history or politics. Runakuna are famil- 13 iar with both modes, representational and nonrepresentational. The geome- 14 try articulating them is fractal: broken up and continuously intertwined, the 15 modes are distinct from each other and intra-related, their emergence always 16 manifesting fractions of each other and aspects that the other does not con- 17 tain. And this fractality is not without the coloniality of politics or exclusive to 18 runakuna worlds. Emerging from it, a historically shaped “self” can ignore, 19 disavow, or translate “others” to its own possibilities, canceling the public 20 emergence of earth-beings in nonrepresentational terms. “Difference” thus 21 becomes what the “self” can recognize (usually though culture) as its “other.” 22 Difference that is radical—or what the “self” cannot recognize or know without 23 serious runakuna intermediation, earth-beings (as not only nature)—is lost. 24 25 26 27 Tirakuna and Runakuna In- Ayllu Are Place 28 29 To explain what he calls a “sense o place” Keith Basso’s philosophical and 30 ethnographic discussion o place turns to Heide er’s notion o dwelling 31 (1996). Basso writes: “As places animate the ideas and feelings o persons 32 who attend to them, these same ideas and feelings animate the places on 33 which attention has been bestowed. . . . is process o inter- animation is 34 related directly to the fact that familiar places are experienced as inherently 35 meaningful, their signi¨ cance and value being found to reside in (and, it may 36 seem, to emanate from) the form and arrangement o their observable char- 37 acteristics” (1996, 55). A phenomenological event, a “sense o place” results
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from a relationship between humans and places. e relationship accrues in 1 generationally transmitted stories, which in turn animate human lives and 2 places. ings were di± erent in Mariano’s life (and the lives o those around 3 him, young and old). In- ayllu, place is not one o the terms o the relation- 4 ship, with the other being humans. Rather, place is the event o in- ayllu rela- 5 tionality from which tirakuna and runakuna also emerge—there is no sepa- 6 ration between runakuna and tirakuna, or between both and place. ey are 7 all in- ayllu, the relation from where they emerge being.Á 8 In-ayllu—judging from the practices that I witnessed, and the stories I 9 heard in Pacchanta (and as the reader may have already concluded)—there is 10 no necessary di± erence between humans as subjects o awareness and places 11 as objects o awareness, for many o the “places” that Mariano and Nazario 12 “sensed” (in Basso’s terms) were also “sentient” (I add quotes because I use 13 the term here only as it ¨ ts the context o my conversation with Basso). In 14 fact, in Cuzco—in both cities and the countryside—these places are also 15 known as ruwal, a Quechua transformation o the Spanish luwar or lugar, 16 meaning place in English.Ç I could say that a ruwal is a place whose name, 17 uttered by runakuna, conjures it up; thus, it is not just any place, for its nam- 18 ing is speci¨ c to a particular in-ayllu relationality. Ruwalkuna, the Quechua 19 plural, are also known in Pacchanta (and other places, see Allen 2002) as 20 tirakuna, which I have chosen to translate as earth- beings. In addition to 21 being almost literal, I have chosen this translation, also because it evokes the 22 grounded (or earthed) in- ayllu relational being o tirakuna and runakuna.È 23 e term ayllu is frequent both among political le© ists and anthropolo- 24 gists. e ¨ rst group is interested in the collective property o land that the 25 ayllu allegedly manifests;É the second tends to focus on the kinship relations 26 among the humans who inhabit that land. Both notions follow habitual 27 distinctions between humanity and nature and de¨ ne ayllu as a group o 28 humans who inhabit a territory and are connected through relations that 29 can be economic or ritual (for example, among the latter: human o± erings to 30 tirakuna, conceptualized as mountain spirits). is is not wrong, o course. 31 However, as I already mentioned in interlude 1, Justo Oxa enabled a di± er- 32 ent concept o ayllu through the image o a weaving: the entities (runakuna, 33 tirakuna, plants, and animals) that compose it are like the threads o the 34 weaving; they are part o it as much as the weaving is part o them. In this 35 conceptualization, in- ayllu humans and other- than- humans are inherently 36 connected and compose the ayllu—a relation o which they are part and that 37
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1 is part o them. Accordingly, being-in- ayllu is not an institution that presup- 2 poses humans on the one hand, and a territory on the other. Neither is ex- 3 ternal to the ayllu—I heeded Oxa’s insistence: “being in- ayllu” means that 4 runakuna and tirakuna emerge within ayllu as relationship, and from this 5 condition they, literally, take- place. 6 Close to the above interpretation, Allen writes for the Andean ethno- 7 graphic record: “Places alone do not make an ayllu; neither does a group 8 o people. . . . e essence o ayllu rises from the ¨ lial- type bond between a 9 people and the territory which in their words ‘is our nurturer’ (uywaqniyku)” 10 (1984, 153).Ê In a later work she notes: “An ayllu exists through the personal 11 and intimate relationship that bonds the people and the place into a single 12 unit. Only when runakuna establish a relationship with place by building 13 houses out o its soil, by living there and by giving it o± erings o coca and 14 alcohol is an ayllu established” (2002, 84). Oxa similarly writes: “ e com- 15 munity, the ayllu, is not only a territory where a group o people lives; it is 16 more than that. It is a dynamic space where the whole community o beings 17 that exist in the world lives; this includes humans, plants, animals, the moun- 18 tains, the rivers, the rain, etc. All are related like a family.” And he adds: “It 19 is important to remember that this place is not where we are from, it is who 20 we are. For example, I am not o m Huantura, I am Huantura” (2004, 239).Î 21 Mariano’s description o his origins was quite similar: I am Pacchanta [Pac- 22 chanta kani], ever since my old grandparents I am this place. 23 Being in- ayllu, persons are not from a place; they are the place that rela- 24 tionally emerges through them, the runakuna and other- than- humans that 25 make the place. Rather than being instilled in the individual subject, the sub- 26 stance o the runakuna and other- than- humans that make an ayllu is the co- 27 emergence o each with the others—and this includes land, or what Mariano 28 called “santa tira” in the o· cial ceremony that dissolved the hacienda. Sin- 29 gular beings (both runakuna and other- than- human) cannot sever the in- 30 herent relationship that binds them to one another, without a± ecting their 31 individuality—even transforming it into a di± erent one. e relational mode 32 o ayllu parallels what Karen Barad has called intra- action, or “the mutual 33 constitution o entangled agencies” (2007, 33). Somewhat similarly, Marilyn 34 Strathern (2005, 63) distinguishes relations between entities (where entities 35 appear to pre- exist the relation) and those that bring entities into existence 36 (where entities are through the relation). Like Strathern’s second notion o 37 relation, intra- action does not assume the existence o distinct individual
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agencies preceding the relationship—this would be interaction. In- ayllu the 1 practice o intra- action is named uyway, a Quechua word that dictionaries 2 usually translate as “to raise, to nurture” or “to rear” (a child, for example). 3 Conceived o as intra- action, uyway is the always- mutual care (the intracare) 4 from which beings (runakuna, tirakuna, plants, animals) grow within the 5 place-taking networks that compose the ayllu. Oxa discusses uyway practices 6 as follows: “Respect and care are a fundamental part o life in the Andes; 7 they are not a concept or an explanation. To care and be respectful means to 8 want to be reared and rear [an]other, and this implies not only humans but 9 all world beings . . . rearing or uyway colors all o Andean life. Pachamama 10 rears us, the Apus rear us, they care for us. We rear our kids and they rear us. 11 . . . We rear the seeds, the animals and plants, and they also rear us” (2004, 12 239). As intra- relations, rearing practices are thoroughly co- constitutive— 13 “reciprocal” is how they have been described in the Andean ethnographic 14 record. For example, Allen completes her thought above this way: “ e re- 15 lationship is reciprocal, for the runakuna’s indications o care and respect are 16 returned by the place’s guardianship” (2002, 84). A caveat: as intra-action, 17 reciprocity is not a relationship between entities as usually understood in the 18 Andean ethnographic record; it is a relationship from where entities emerge, 19 it makes them, they grow from it. 20 is connection between being and place may sound similar to the Hei- 21 de erian notion o dwelling that Tim Ingold (2000) made popular among 22 anthropologists. Similarities may also exist between the concept o uyway 23 and Heide er’s idea o dwelling as “being in place,” which he explains 24 through the etymology o “building” (bauen), which “also means at the same 25 time to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for, speci¨ cally to till the 26 soil, to cultivate the vine” (Heide er 2001, 145; emphasis in the original). 27 e di± erence, however, is as important as the similarity: instead o the indi- 28 vidual (or collective) care o the soil (or o one another) that Heide er and 29 Ingold may have had in mind (implying a subject and object preexisting the 30 relation), Oxa proposes intra- actions o care or uyway from where entities 31 emerge and take- place. Although some may read egalitarianism—or even 32 romanticism—in uyway, there is nothing that makes it necessarily egalitar- 33 ian. Quite to the contrary, intra- caring follows a hierarchical socionatural 34 order; failure to act in accordance with in- ayllu hierarchies o respect and 35 care has consequences. Seen as uyway, it was not a sense o altruism (as I was 36 at ¨ rst disposed to think) that made Mariano assume his position as perso- 37
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1 nero (with all its possible consequences, including his death). Rather, it was 2 to ful¨ ll his being in-ayllu: being Pacchanta, Mariano was with kin, animals, 3 and earth- beings from which he could not sever himsel without transform- 4 ing his own being—it would imply removing himsel from the ties that made 5 the place he, along with the others, was. Being place, he was obligated by it. 6 7 8 9 TIRAKUNA AND THE GODS 10 In his now-classic study of the Santal rebellions in nineteenth-century India, 11 Ranajit Guha discusses a historiographic record that interpreted the partici- 12 pation of gods and spirits in the movement as an invention of the leaders to 13 secure peasant followers; the conclusion that the record offers is that the 14 political insurgency was a secular movement. Guha opts instead for granting 15 agency to the gods and spirits, thus interpreting the Santal rebellion as having 16 been religiously motivated (1988, 83). Years later, Dipesh Chakrabarty takes 17 his cue from Guha, his mentor—who, he recognizes, opened up the field of the 18 political beyond the limit of secularity imposed by European thought—and, 19 like Guha, discusses an Indian peasant political sphere that “was not bereft 20 of the agency of the gods, spirits, and other supernatural beings” (2000, 12). 21 Gods and the spirits are not social facts, he says, the social does not precede 22 them; they are coeval with human society. Additionally, and pushing beyond 23 the limits that restricts legitimate politics to the secular, Chakrabarty con- 24 siders that the presence of spirits and gods in politics reflects the heteroge- 25 neity of historical time, which in turn also reflects the ontological heterogeneity 26 of humanity. I find the work of both Chakrabarty and Guha inspiring and path 27 breaking indeed. I also agree with Chakrabarty’s critique of historicism and the 28 deep ties that bind it to the conceptualization of modern politics. All the same, 29 I have differences with both thinkers, which may derive from my academic 30 upbringing in Latin America. Our archives are regionally different; I must start 31 thinking about modern politics in the sixteenth century, when politics was not 32 secular. Rather, Christianity and faith were important enablers of the Spanish 33 colonial domination in the Americas. 34 In fact, in the Andes, it was not “homogenous empty time” (Benjamin 1968) 35 but faith—the time and space of the Christian God—that, in antagonistic en- 36 counter with diverse local worldings—demonized certain places and sacral- 37
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ized others (Gose 2008). This not only resulted in a hierarchized geography, but 1 it also bequeathed to posterity the legacy of God and religion as a language 2 of translation: using it early missionaries interpreted some mountains (called 3 guacas in the sixteenth century) as “shrines” inhabited by “evil spirits” (usually 4 demons) and “worshipped by Indians” (Dean 2010; Gose 2008; MacCormack 5 1991).¼Ï Colonialist hierarchies in the Andes did not necessarily require the 6 emptying of time from place and the creation of homogeneous space that 7 secular politics requires. Rather, colonialist political hierarchies were estab- 8 lished between “good” and “bad” knowers and practitioners: the former knew 9 through God and practiced the Christian faith, and the latter knew through the 10 devil that their practices were heretical. The differentiation of humanity through 11 the juxtaposition of temporal and geographical distance that created hierar- 12 chical cultural differences—or what Chakrabarty calls historicism—required 13 the separation of time and space, the creation of the discipline of universal 14 history, and the notion of nature (also universal and crafted in abstract space). 15 Science became the privileged way to gain knowledge. All these important 16 historical inventions were also consequential in the Andes, yet they did not 17 eradicate the way Christian faith had shaped the coloniality of politics in the 18 region. Rather, and perhaps paradoxically, they complemented each other by 19 precluding the reality of earth-beings in the terms of ayllu relationality, while at 20 the same time continuing the earlier practice, this time benevolently, of trans- 21 lating them through the idioms of religion that allows tirakuna to coexist with 22 the God of Christianity and sometimes even emerge together (manifesting 23 fractions of each other and aspects that the other does not contain). However, 24 this does not make them the same—or at least not only the same. 25 Religion, or the agency of the gods as the historical event that Guha and 26 Chakrabarty bring into their analyses of peasant rebellions, desecularizes 27 modern politics in India. Thus, these authors open up political agency beyond 28 the human sphere and push the limits imposed by European thought to the 29 analysis of modern politics. Nevertheless, unlike Guha and Chakrabarty and 30 the situation in India, I do not translate earth-beings as spirits or gods, nor am 31 I saying that the peasant struggle for land was motivated by nonsecular, or 32 religious, modes of conscience. My reasons in so doing are grounded on the 33 history of Latin America. Indeed, moving earth-beings into the sphere of reli- 34 gion displaces the earlier colonial idea that assigned their agency to the devil; 35 yet it may also represent the continuation of the distinction between nature 36 and humanity that Christian faith inaugurated as it created the New World. 37
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1 Moreover, the translation of earth-beings into religion proposes a relation—for 2 example, worship—that connects an object and a subject. This may obscure 3 the in-ayllu condition from which tirakuna and runakuna take-place and which 4 is central to the stories I tell here. 5 6 7 8 Being In- Ayllu and with the Agrarian Reform 9 10 Searching the coca leaves, Mariano consulted with Ausangate about his ac- 11 tivities against the hacendado and about his political allies. And the earth- 12 being came through; his su estions worked: the hacendado le© in 1969, 13 almost thirty years a© er Mariano became personero. Lauramarca was one o 14 the ¨ rst haciendas that the state expropriated and transformed into a state- 15 managed agrarian cooperative. Listening carefully to Mariano’s explanation 16 o the inauguration o the agrarian reform in Cuzco, it became clear to me 17 that ayllu worlding practices were, unbeknown to state representatives, part 18 o the o· cial ceremony, which was then more than a modern state ritual to 19 transfer the land to peasants. I present again a scene that the reader already 20 knows: And then it all ended. e jatun juez [provincial judge] came, the sub- 21 prefect came, all came to the bridge in Tinki. ey said it is all done; now the 22 land o the hacienda you have been able to get, you forced the hacienda to let go o 23 it. e land is really in your hands. Now Turpo, li that soil and kiss it (kay all- 24 pata huqariy, much’ayuy), he said. And I said [as I kissed the soil]: now blessed 25 earth [kunanqa santa tira] now pukara you are going to nurture me, [kunanqa 26 puqara nuqata uywawanki] now the hacendado’s word has come to an end, it 27 has disappeared [yasta pampachakapunña]. Kissing the land, the people forgave 28 that soil. “Now it is ours, now pukara you are going to nurture us,” they all said. 29 at is how the land is in our hands, in the hands o all runakuna: the hacienda 30 came to an end. 31 e inauguration o the agrarian reform enacted practices that communed 32 with earth- beings, the tirakuna, but this was not part o the public script, and 33 state o· cials must have been oblivious to their invocation by Mariano and 34 other runakuna. Practices o the state emerged in- ayllu—and vice versa, o 35 course, even i that emergence went unseen in this direction. Benito’s and 36 Nazario’s memories o the moment recalled practices that, while performed 37 in front o them, the o· cial authorities might not have seen; those prac-
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Mariano’s place—his pukara? Perhaps, for it is my translation. April 2005. 19 20 tices su est that earth- beings were participants in the momentous event: 21 Yes, those engineers gave my father the pukara. And at night we made a ch’uyay 22 [ceremony] to the inqaychu that Ausangate had made my father µ nd. We 23 danced and drank all night. e Andean ethnographic record has translated 24 inqaychu as a small stone in the shape o an animal or plant that earth- beings 25 give some individuals (by making them ¨ nd it); it is the animu (or essence) 26 o that animal or plant, and nurturing it is good for the health o the herd 27 or the crop that the inqaychu is (see Allen 2002; Flores Ochoa 1977; Ricard 28 2007). With the help o my friends, I learned that the inqaychu is the earth- 29 being itself—a piece o it, which is also all o it—but shaped in a speci¨ c form 30 o a plant, animal, or person. Mariano owned an alpaca inqaychu—his alpaca 31 herds were relatively good compared to those o other people; and it was this 32 inqaychu that participated in the ceremony. Libations o liquor were poured 33 on it (the ch’uyay) so that Ausangate—in its being as the place o alpacas— 34 would come to inhabit the newly established cooperative alpaca herd. 35 Crucially, what had been recovered was not only land. It was pukara, santa 36 tira, also locally and publicly known (for example, in the tourist world and 37
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1 the newest Ecuadoran constitution) as Pachamama. e reader may remem- 2 ber from story 1 what Nazario told me: pukara is pukara. He added that 3 whatever I wrote on my paper, it was not going to be pukara, it was going to 4 be something else. us acknowledging that my translation leaves pukara be- 5 hind and moves it to my epistemic mode, I understand this entity as a source 6 o life, a condition for the relational entanglement that is the world o ayllu. 7 Dictionaries translate it as “fortress.” I have translated it here for heuristic 8 reasons, temporarily only, in an attempt to disclose the view o the partial 9 connections between in- ayllu personeros and state o· cials during the cere- 10 mony that in 1969 inaugurated the agrarian reform in Cuzco. Pronounced by 11 Mariano at the ceremony, pukara might have included the soil where plants 12 grow and herds o wool- bearing animals graze, as well as Ausangate—who, I 13 surmise, presided over the ceremony. e newspapers may have read the cere- 14 mony through nation- state symbolism: the performing o the national an- 15 them, the presence o the minister o agriculture (or a substitute), the signa- 16 ture o a property title, the delivery o the land to peasants—once again, this 17 is not wrong. However, rereading the same ceremony through the presence 18 o pukara and the inqaychu—enacted through practices in which runakuna 19 also emerged with them—exposes an event that occupied more than one 20 and less than many worlds. State o· cials were inaugurating a new agrarian 21 institution, and the le© ist leaders (Mariano’s allies) might have interpreted 22 the moment as the establishment o new economic process, with new social 23 relations o production. Mariano and the runakuna participated in these in- 24 terpretations. But for them, the moment also meant a turning o times—the 25 beginning o a new time, di± erent from the hacienda time and one in which 26 good relationships would ¨ nally organize life in- ayllu. is certainly included 27 the earth- beings—all o them were the place that had been hacienda and was 28 not anymore. 29 is had been the objective that Mariano’s ayllu had agreed on. And to 30 achieve it, they had made alliances with le© ist activists whose objective was 31 to “recover land for the peasants.” Mariano’s goal for the runakuna “to com- 32 mand themselves” was included in both the ayllu’s and the le© ists’ agendas. 33 Remembering his alliance, he considered that recovering hacienda land—his 34 allies’ stated objective—had also liberated the ayllu as a whole: I took them 35 all out to liberty. To a good life, to a good day. When the hacienda was perse- 36 cuting us, I made us all ee. When I asked what it meant to be free, he said: 37 To go wherever we wanted, to be okay, so that we would be paid attention to, so
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that they would talk nicely to us . . . like the condor is walking ee, just like that, 1 like the eagle is ee, without sorrows, her heart is light. [I fought] so that our 2 word would be heard in the prefectura, in the subprefectura, in the local police 3 o© ce, to [make us] be recognized. He used the word recognized in Quechua- 4 ized Spanish: rikunusisqa kachun. But this demand for freedom (he had said 5 free in Spanish) did not coincide with liberal or socialist philosophies, and 6 recovering land was not motivated by economic reasons only. Runakuna’s 7 political goals and their activities revealed (at least partially) the complexity 8 o the relationship between the ayllu world and the nation- state. ey de- 9 manded “state recognition o the ayllu collective” in those terms, which they 10 considered to be the terms o the state. ose would su· ce to free runakuna 11 from the hacendado. Once free, the runakuna’s activities would exceed the 12 state’s terms anyway, and from this excess a radically di± erent demand would 13 be possible: to be like the condor, to live their lives as runakuna, respect- 14 ing earth- beings and being cared for by them. is demand—to de¨ ne the 15 world also (not only) in runakuna terms—had been included, i silently, in 16 the many o· cial petitions they had made to the liberal nation- state, in terms 17 it could understand, since the beginning o the twentieth century. But not 18 even those demands (let alone the silent ones) were heard—the hacienda 19 regime had simply ignored them. When by the end o the 1960s, the un- 20 imaginable happened, and the state ¨ nally heard runakuna and decreed the 21 transformation o the land tenure system, it also identi¨ ed them as peasants. 22 Runakuna both met this novel economic and political relationship and were 23 in- ayllu, thus continuing to exceed the terms o the state. I resume this dis- 24 cussion in story 7. 25 According to the le© ist scholarly script (which in the 1960s, I should re- 26 mind the reader, had no room for indigenous political leaders) the agrarian 27 reform was (and continues to be) the result o an urban- led movement sup- 28 ported by a relatively small group o literate (and thus nonindigenous) peas- 29 ants. is movement, the script continues, provoked nationwide social unrest 30 that resulted in a military coup—extraordinary because, led by le© - inclined 31 generals, it decreed the most radical (at the time) agrarian reform in Latin 32 America. I agree with this appraisal: the urban- led movement was certainly 33 important. Yet there was more to the movement than its visible and liter- 34 ate leaders. Individuals like Mariano were numerous; active organizers, they 35 composed a broad and dispersed leadership and—anticipating Raúl Zibe- 36 chi’s phrase—were “a collective in movement” (2010, 72). It was the alliance 37
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1 between these two forms o leadership—one with visible heads, the other 2 dispersed, multiple, and invisible at the broader national level—that enabled 3 what came to be known as a “historical peasant movement.” Its goal, accord- 4 ing to the same scholarly and political script, was to recover “the land that 5 hacendados had usurped” and transfer it to its “rightful owners,” the popular 6 “peasant communities”—these were the phrases through which the script 7 circulated, verbally or in writing. But the word land (tierra) identi¨ ed some- 8 thing that belonged to di± erent worlds. In our world, land is an extension 9 o productive soil, translatable into property. In runakuna’s world, tierra (or 10 the plural tierras) is also tirakuna: the word is the same, but what it is (Ausan- 11 gate and its kin, santa tira, pukara) is not the same as tierra in the hacienda. 12 In the historical episode that led to the agrarian reform, land was an 13 “equivocation,” in Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s term; this, as I have explained 14 earlier in this book, does not mean a simple failure to understand. Rather it is 15 “a failure to understand that understandings are necessarily not the same, and 16 that they are not related to imaginary ways o ‘seeing the world’ but to the real 17 worlds that are being seen” (Viveiros de Castro 2004b, 11; emphasis added). 18 As a mode o communication, equivocations emerge when di± erent perspec- 19 tival positions—views o m di± erent worlds, rather than perspectives about 20 the same world—use the same word to refer to things that are not the same.¼¼ 21 In the story I am telling, land was “not only” the agricultural ground from 22 where peasants earned a living—it was also the place that tirakuna with ru- 23 nakuna were (as I have repeatedly said). As the convergence o both, land was 24 the term that allowed the alliance between radically di± erent and partially 25 connected worlds. e world inhabited by le© ist politicians was public; the 26 world o the ayllu, composed o humans and other- than- human beings, was 27 not—or was only public in translation. As a union organizer also occupying 28 himsel with le© ist practices—celebrating May 1 (Labor Day in Peru), col- 29 lecting union dues from other peasants and calling them compañeros (part- 30 ners in stru le), attending demonstrations in the Plaza de Armas in Cuzco 31 and even speaking in those events—Mariano wanted “to recover land.” But 32 to him this did not only mean what it meant for the earnest le© ist politi- 33 cians with whom he allied himself. His partially connected worlds jointly 34 fought for the same territory, and the feat became publicly known as the end 35 o the hacienda system and the beginning o the agrarian reform. at the 36 in- ayllu world had recovered place—in its relational signi¨ cance among all 37 beings that inhabit it—remained unknown, in the shadows from where in-
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ayllu e± orts had made the historical event possible. e agrarian reform was 1 the culmination o more than forty years o legal actions that runakuna had 2 engaged in to recover in- ayllu freedom; these activities le© an archive, an his- 3 torical object that exceeded history. is is the topic o the next story. 4 Speaking o equivocations, I do not want to be misunderstood. Mine is 5 not another idyllic interpretation o life in the Andes. I am a constant witness 6 to its hardships, inequalities, and violence. As early as 1991, in an article titled 7 “Las mujeres son más indias” (Women are more Indian), I analyzed the gen- 8 dered hierarchies that are e± ected through the partial connections between 9 the literate and a- literate worlds that inhabit the Andes. In these hierarchies, 10 the literate were superior—and most o them were men. I have not changed 11 my mind, and my writing about in- ayllu inherent relationality does not ideal- 12 ize life in the Andes. Reconciliation with santa tira did not make women less 13 Indian, and while it did grant Mariano local prestige among runakuna, he 14 became subordinate to younger and literate runakuna, and his in- ayllu com- 15 mand never amounted to recognition from the state. Identi¨ ed as “peasants” 16 a© er the agrarian reform runakuna continued to participate in the uyway 17 order o things, and they also participated in modern relations; many, espe- 18 cially the younger ones, preferred the latter and explicitly derided in- ayllu 19 rules. Shortly a© er the inauguration o the agrarian reform, they even denied 20 Mariano recognition as a leader. In fact, as I have explained, he agreed to 21 co- labor with me on this book precisely because, as an artifact o writing, it 22 was a means o getting recognition from those who, according to hegemonic 23 hierarchies, literacy had made superior and therefore entitled to ignore him. 24 So I am not “missing the revolution,” to paraphrase Orin Starn’s (1991) in- 25 dictment o Andeanist anthropology, which I partially agree with. I say par- 26 tially, because while Starn criticized those who privileged ritual and missed 27 politics, I think his criticism privileged politics and missed ritual.¼½ Following 28 the revolution, many o us missed the political continuity between, for ex- 29 ample, Ausangate—not nature, but an earth- being—and the lawyers, a con- 30 tinuity that organized the world that Mariano, the hacienda, and even many 31 Cuzqueño landowners shared. We missed the ontological complexity o the 32 confrontation, for there was more than one stru le going on—and it was 33 also less than many. On the one hand, the stru le was political in the usual 34 terms: peasants were in alliance with progressive groups against conserva- 35 tive hacendados. On the other hand, the confrontation did not neatly follow 36 these ideological lines for there was also an onto- epistemic con´ ict going on. 37
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1 And in that con´ ict, runakuna might have had less in common with the le© - 2 ist politicians who might have been contemptuous o “beliefs in Ausangate” 3 that the hacendado and runakuna might have shared. Albeit unacknowl- 4 edged publicly, a confrontation took place between our world (the world 5 that separates nature from humans, grants historicity to the latter only, and 6 requires political and scienti¨ c representation to mediate between people 7 and things) and the world where earth- beings, plants, animals, and humans 8 are integrally related. In that confrontation, our scholarly interpretations 9 were steeped in an ontological politics (Blaser 2009a, 2009b), whereby only 10 the world o modern representational politics is possible. 11 12 13 A Methodological and Conceptual Caveat: 14 When Words Are Earth-Beings 15 16 Many places—in the ayllu sense o the word—in the region were involved 17 in the confrontation against Lauramarca; the leaders were, in most cases, 18 yachaq like Mariano.¼¾ is does not seem to be unusual, for several schol- 19 arly studies mention that peasant leaders have frequently been yachaqkuna 20 (R. Gow 1981; Kapsoli 1977; Valderrama and Escalante 1981). In Cuzco, I 21 have heard similar statements numerous times, speci¨ cally about the indige- 22 nous political leaders o the 1960s. Intriguingly this has never been asserted 23 as a fact, for there is no evidence to back up such claims. Walter Benjamin’s 24 interpretation seems appropriate here: such stories cannot become history 25 because they are not told with information. Since they cannot be veri¨ ed, 26 they are implausible to historically trained ears. Instead, they sound as i they 27 were coming from afar: from a cultural belie belonging to a di± erent time. 28 I these stories are known, it is by word o mouth and from experience, the 29 narrator’s own or that reported by others, which, the narrator, in turn, makes 30 the experience o her listeners (Benjamin 1968, 87). e narrative about Gue- 31 rra Ganar that I present below is one o those stories narrated throughout 32 the region that is under Ausangate’s tutelage (for a similar story, see Gow and 33 Condori 1981; Ricard 2007). As I explain below, along with the similarities 34 there are also di± erences between a Benjaminian notion o storytelling and 35 the Andean practice o storytelling. 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Ausangate, also Guerra Ganar. 23 24 25 26 AUSANGATE WINS THE WAR 27 This is Mariano’s version of the story about how Ausangate defeated the 28 Spaniards: The people that Ausangate killed are there; they say it happened in 29 the time before [us]. “Now they are going to come from Spain to take every- 30 thing away from you [qankuna ch’utiq ], to kill you,” he said. “You only have to 31 call. And I am going to come on a white horse. They will arrive at noon. You 32 will hide in those holes, and put llamas instead of you, and then they are going 33 to shoot them,” he said. “I am from you, ¡carajo!! I am from the Inkas, from 34 the people,” he said [qankunamanta kani caraju, inkamantaqa, runamantaqa 35 kani nispa]. And then he gave the people [runakuna] big sticks with stones like 36 heads to defend themselves. When [the Spaniards] came, runakuna came out 37
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1 from the holes and started hitting the Spanish troops, and Ausangate came in 2 a flash, in a white horse with a white poncho covering one of his sides. Lots 3 of troops from Spain had come—now there is Yanaqucha [Black Lake] behind 4 us; they say Yanaqucha was not there before—and because the llamas were 5 there they shot them, ¡carajo! And the llamas . . . khar, kahr, khar [sounds of 6 llamas’ hoofs], they escaped. Ausangate in his white horse sent hail that fell 7 on the troops and he pushed them inside Yanaqucha with big sticks; they are 8 still there. Now the sticks are there, they are big stones, you can see them. The 9 lake was opened there, all by itself when it started hailing; it is really black, it 10 is called Yanaqucha, it is the blood of the troops, and their weapons are also 11 there—there stayed those that came for the war. You can also still see the holes 12 where the people were hiding. “They are not going to defeat me,” he said. 13 “I am going to wait for them here . . . and if they escape, I will get them in that 14 plain where the grass [ichu] grows.” That is why there is that plain with grass 15 there. There he killed two [Spaniards] who had escaped [who had not fallen in 16 the lake]. That was before [antestaraq ], in the time of the old people [machula 17 tiempupi]. This is what they told me, that is why I tell you [anchhaynatan willa- 18 waranku, chaymi qanman willayki]. 19 That is the war that was won. That is why people say, “Ausangate and 20 Kayangate [an earth-being kindred to Ausangate] they are Win the War [Guerra 21 Ganar].” They say that they had spoken through the Altomisayuq and had said, 22 “Let them come if they want. I am going to win the war.” That is why Ausan- 23 gate is Win the War. Didn’t he win the war? Ausangate fought for us, in place 24 of us [nuqayku rantiykupi] so that we would be free. That is why we are free, 25 that is why all of Peru is free. That is what they have told me; that is why I am 26 telling you [nuqapas chay niwasqallankutan nuqapas willasayki]. Ausangate 27 is more than our father, more than our mother, more than anyone [maske tay- 28 tayku maske mamayku, maske nayku Ausagateqa kashan]. 29 30 31 32 In the Andean region where I worked, by repeatedly narrating events in 33 which a particular earth-being participated, storytelling creates the jurisdic- 34 tion o the earth- beings whose story is being told—in the case above, Ausan- 35 gate, Guerra Ganar. e jurisdiction, usually expressed through in- ayllu re- 36 lations with the earth- being protagonist o the story, includes those places 37 where beings (runakuna and tirakuna) are familiar with the topographic
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marks o the event because they have heard narratives about it, and at times 1 also visited the site. e story brings listener and teller into companionship 2 with each other and connects them to generations o tellers and listeners, 3 through the place- creating marks that the event le© . Curiously (or not, once 4 we realize that there is no separation between signi¨ er and signi¨ ed), lis- 5 teners and tellers witness the event as they witness the mark—and this wit- 6 nessing can be e± ected through the story itself. When he told me the story 7 about Ausangate winning the war against the Spaniards, Mariano said, at 8 is what they have told me; that is why I am telling you [nuqapas chay niwas- 9 qallankutan nuqapas willasayki]. Mariano had not seen the event, it was a 10 willakuy, an event that had happened. It was not kwintu (from the Spanish 11 cuento, or tale), which is a narrative that is not necessarily about true events; 12 I mentioned the distinction between these two kinds o story in story 1. e 13 event- willakuy in which Ausangate won the war happened. It is inscribed in 14 Yanaqucha; the site where the confrontation (or the place it had taken) re- 15 vealed its occurrence. e big stones are the sticks that Guerra Ganar used 16 against the enemies, their blood made the lagoon black (Yanaqucha means 17 black lagoon), and the holes where runakuna hid are still there. ese were 18 signatures (not signs or symbols; see Foucault 1994) o the war; the event had 19 happened not only in time: it had literally taken place. 20 Stories are told orally, says Benjamin, and the ones circulating in Pacchanta 21 do not seem to contradict this appraisal; while anthropologists have written 22 them, they are not necessarily read locally, and stories tend to have more lis- 23 teners than readers. However, this orality is o a speci¨ c nature. According to 24 Foucault, “it is not possible to act upon those marks without at the same time 25 operating upon that which is secretly hidden in them” (1994, 32–33; see also 26 Abercrombie 1998, 74). Similarly, the name o the earth- being and the willa- 27 kuy that narrates them, also brings about the events it mentions. us, for 28 example, when I asked (almost rhetorically), “Why is Ausangate called Gue- 29 rra Ganar?” Mariano responded impatiently: Am I not telling you? Ausangate, 30 Kayangate, they are Guerra Ganar! ey won the war in our place [for us]! Al- 31 though my question did not expect the answer that I got— because I do sepa- 32 rate words from things and events from the names o those who made them 33 happen—I got Mariano’s point: Ausangate is not called Win the War, it is Win 34 the War—and the prose that tells the story is the event; its signature is (what 35 we call) the marks on (what we call) the landscape. In the prose o the in- ayllu 36 world, the names o earth- beings and the practices humans use to commune 37
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1 with them “have been set down in the world and form part o it both because 2 things themselves hide and manifest their own enigma . . . and because words 3 o± er themselves to men as things to be deciphered” (Foucault 1994, 35). 4 In this speci¨ c case, things (mountains, soil, water, and rocks) are not only 5 things; they are earth- beings, and their names speak what they are. Ausangate 6 is its name; they do not have names [just] for the sake o it [manan yanqa qa- 7 sechu sutiyuq kanku], I was told. Further translating Ausangate (for example, 8 into a mountain- spirit or a supernatural force) would move it from the world 9 o the ayllu to our world, where it could be represented through the symbolic 10 interpretation o our choice—for example, religion as I said earlier in this 11 story. is translation is not wrong, but it risks an equivocation that leaves the 12 earth- being behind—and with it, the in- ayllu world where telling the story 13 makes the event happen. Instead, controlling the equivocation (which does 14 not mean correcting a misunderstanding) may prove a more complex ana- 15 lytical stance. Controlling the equivocation means probing the translation 16 process itsel to make its onto- epistemic terms explicit, inquiring into how 17 the requirements o these terms may leave behind that which the terms can- 18 not contain, that which does not meet those requirements or exceeds them. 19 More prosaically, controlling the equivocation may produce awareness that 20 something is lost in translation and will not be recovered because its terms are 21 not those o the translation. In the case that concerns this story, controlling 22 the equivocation might allow the emergence o Ausangate as an entity that is 23 multiple: an earth- being, and a mountain- spirit. As the latter, a cultural be- 24 lie about something that is also nature—all entities in conversation, and per- 25 haps a con´ ict- laden one, across the partial connections between the worlds 26 whose practices bring about Ausangate’s being multiple. And just to clarify, 27 I am not talking about di± erent cultural perspectives on the same entity, but 28 about di± erent entities emerging in more than one and less than many worlds 29 and their practices that, as the case o the ceremony at the inauguration o the 30 agrarian reform illustrates, can overlap each other and remain distinct at the 31 same time. Ausangate- Guerra Ganar was a presence in this ceremony and in 32 the process that ended with the eviction o the landowner. e story narrates 33 an event that does not meet the requirements o history: there is no evidence 34 that it happened. Yet in the prose o the in- ayllu world, where there is no 35 separation between the event and its narration, eventfulness can be ahistori- 36 cal. Far from the events not having happened, this means that events are not 37 contained by evidence as requirement. is is the matter o story 4.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 STORY 4 MARIANO’S ARCHIVE 9 10 THE EVENTFULNESS OF THE AHISTORICAL 11 12 13 e term “archives” ¨ rst refers to a building, a symbol o a 14 public institution, which is one o the organs o a constituted state. 15 However, by “archives” is also understood a collection o documents— 16 normally written documents kept in this building. ere cannot, 17 therefore, be a de¨ nition o “archives” that does not encompass 18 both the building itsel and the documents stored there. 19 ACHILLE MBEMBE “ e Power o the Archive and Its Limits” 20 21 22 A box containing more than four hundred documents was the origin o my 23 relationship with Mariano Turpo. e documents were diverse in shape, con- 24 tent, and writing technique. ey included very formal, typewritten o· cial 25 communications; scraps o paper with handwritten personal messages be- 26 tween wife and husband, lawyer and client, or landlord and servant; school 27 copybooks; pieces o paper on which Mariano practiced his signature; hotel 28 receipts from his sojourns in Lima; minutes o peasant union meetings; 29 newspaper clippings; and le© ist pamphlets. e documents seemed to have 30 been collected between the 1920s and the 1970s. omas Müller—the pho- 31 tographer whose pictures adorn this book—found them when Nazario was 32 about to use some o the paper in the box to light the ¨ replace and boil 33 water for both o them to have tea. Apparently, the documents were not im- 34 portant to Nazario, so omas asked i he could take the box. He then gave 35 it to my sister and brother-in- law, who were the keepers o what I will call 36 “Mariano’s archive.” When I brought the box to Pacchanta, Nazario laughed 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 A box with documents—an archive? August 2002. 26 27 28 as he remembered omas’s interest in the documents, and by extension, at 29 my keenness about them as well. 30 Originally, I had thought that by working through the papers in Mariano’s 31 archive, I could expound the history o a group o peasants and their allies as 32 they fought against the abuses o the consecutive landowners o the hacienda 33 Lauramarca. e documents were, I thought, su· cient to tell the story.¼ 34 However, Mariano disagreed. As I mentioned earlier, a© er a few sessions o 35 my reading and his commenting on documents, Mariano decided that we 36 would not do any more o that. e documents were insu· cient—there was 37 more to the story o the queja than what was written on the papers in the box.
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He would rather tell me that story, he said. e documents we were reading 1 had been necessary during the queja, but many o them— particularly the 2 documents about the agreements with the landowner—had been a waste o 3 time: those had been “in vain” (por gusto/yanqapuni kashan), they had not 4 made anything happen. e landowner never obeyed the law, and in any case, 5 the queja was more than what the documents described. Following Mariano’s 6 su estion, we began to talk without the written script that the documents 7 provided. 8 Mariano’s rejection o the documents was meaningful. His explicit denial 9 o their usefulness to recount his past activities against the landowner made 10 me reconsider, to say the least, the capacity—the analytical reach—o the 11 concepts I had worked with so far. For example, rereading historical docu- 12 ments to make “peasants the subject o their history,” as Ranajit Guha pro- 13 posed (1992, 3), did not make the sense it had made before (de la Cadena 14 2000). Mariano’s insistence on moving away from the documents seemed to 15 indicate that the history I could bring to the fore through the documents was 16 not the one that Mariano wanted to be the subject of. And I could not for- 17 get that Nazario was using what to us were documents—even an archive—as 18 fuel for his ¨ re. Taking this fact seriously seemed to indicate that, in Nazario 19 and Mariano’s house, the box and the papers it contained were not what I 20 thought they were—they could be burned. Could it be that the box and the 21 papers it contained were also not an archive or documents? And i they were 22 not, why had they been collected and kept? Apparently, their import, and in 23 that sense their existence, was over—but what had it been? And, o course, 24 why had they lost value? 25 I could not ¨ nd the answers to these questions in the documents them- 26 selves; rather those pertained to the possessors o the papers—the indigenous 27 archivists, a concept that su ests the paradoxical condition o their practice. 28 In addition to existing in relation to the state, an archive requires literacy. e 29 indigenous archivists were mostly illiterate, which in Peru meant that they 30 lacked legal citizenship throughout the period when the documents were 31 collected.½ e sense o paradox increases i we consider the contrast between 32 the conditions o Mariano’s archive and the comments by Achille Mbembe 33 at the opening o this story. Mariano’s archive was kept in a building. But 34 this building was a rural home—some would consider it a hut—and at some 35 point, the documents had even been forgotten; when omas found them, 36 they were stored in an unremarkable box amid sacks o potato seed, sacs o 37
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1 manure to be used as fertilizer, and agricultural tools that were kept in the 2 same building. As I write these lines, most o the documents are not public, 3 and it is uncertain i they ever will be. It would seem that the collection o 4 papers I worked with does not meet the conditions o an archive. Addition- 5 ally, i we consider that, as Mbembe adds, “the archive has neither status nor 6 power without an architectural dimension” (2002, 19), doubts about how to 7 conceptualize the documents increase. At least at the moment o their ¨ nd- 8 ing, the box containing what to me was valuable did not have any status or 9 power—its architectural dimension was unusually vulnerable for an archive, 10 to say the least. Yet the documents do meet one crucial feature o Mbembe’s 11 conceptualization. e archive, he says, manifests a paradox: it is necessary 12 to the existence o the state, but in its capacity to record and therefore re- 13 mind the state o misdeeds that it would rather forget, the archive also poses 14 a threat to the state. He concludes: “More than on its ability to recall, the 15 power o the state rests on its ability . . . to abolish the archive and anaesthe- 16 tize the past” (23). 17 e documents in Mariano’s archive seemingly acknowledge this power; 18 they could have functioned as a stubborn recalling o the state’s overwhelm- 19 ing debts to runakuna. Starting in the 1920s and ending in the 1970s, most 20 o the documents contained in the box denounce the transgressions o state 21 rules by local and regional representatives o the state. Suppressing the ar- 22 chive was one way gamonalismo made itsel immune to the rule o law. Main- 23 taining a log o gamonalismo abuses against runakuna therefore became the 24 task o those I am calling indigenous archivists. In addition to keeping the 25 documents, they also had to oversee the lawfulness o their production—an 26 activity that, as mentioned in story 2, Mariano and others referred to as queja 27 purichiy or “walking the grievance,” in the sense o making it go somewhere 28 or making it work.¾ Yet walking is a rather apt verb to describe this activity, 29 for indigenous archivists had to travel long distances—from the region o 30 Lauramarca to Cuzco and Lima—to discuss their complaint with lawyers, 31 judges, police o· cers, and congressmen, those state representatives who, i 32 located far enough beyond the reach o local gamonales, might listen to in- 33 digenous reason. ese conversations yielded the plethora o documents that 34 I am calling Mariano’s archive. 35 e indigenous archivists would agree with a frequently quoted phrase by 36 Jacques Derrida: “ ere is no political power without control o the archive, 37 i not o memory” (1995, 4). Despite their humble housing, these documents
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Nazario Chillihuani, keeper of the archive, and the building 26 where it was kept. July 2004. 27 28 had formed a collection o sorts, an archive in its own right. ey are intrigu- 29 ing to the historically minded individual for they reveal runakuna’s determi- 30 nation to remember, and their will to counter gamonalismo. But this asser- 31 tion needs explanation in accordance with the complex object it refers to. In 32 this story, I discuss the ontological intricacy o the papers omas Müller 33 found in Nazario’s house, the composite—partially connected—practices 34 through which they came to exist. In fact, the moment when the papers were 35 saved from the ¨ re e± ected an unexpected epistemic translation, for it was 36 at this point that Mariano’s archive emerged only as such and acquired the 37
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1 (incomplete) public life that allows me to write about it. e assortment o 2 written documents collected by illiterate individuals was situated at the epi- 3 stemic margins o the state and o history. Not by coincidence, it was also 4 geographically located in a remote corner o the country. Our presence there 5 touched the nerves o those margins, as did Mariano’s assertion o the docu- 6 ments’ insu· ciency to tell his story. ere was more to how things had hap- 7 pened than the documents contained (in fact, could contain) which was cru- 8 cial to the being and reason o documents themselves. 9 e origins o this archive were located where di± erences between indige- 10 nous archivists and the state included some converging concerns. Runakuna’s 11 interest in denouncing the landlord’s abuses was not the same as the liberal 12 state’s obligation to defend those it referred to as “the inferior indigenous 13 race,” but the overlap was enough to elicit the documents that resulted in 14 Mariano’s archive. When the landowner was evicted and the hacienda dis- 15 solved in 1969, the converging interests that composed this archive ceased. 16 At that point, the documents also lost the purpose that had motivated their 17 being with runakuna; they became paper—good for kindling a ¨ re. Located 18 at the onto- epistemic border between the state and runakuna, this archive 19 was also the place where history and ahistorical worlding practices became 20 part o each other composing the partial connection that characterizes the 21 life o indigenous and nonindigenous residents o many Andean regions. 22 “Boundary object” is a good notion to use in beginning to conceptualize 23 Mariano’s archive. Boundary objects inhabit heterogeneous communities o 24 practice and satisfy the requirements o each, but they do not require the 25 communities to agree on what the object is (Star and Griesemer 1989). In 26 the case o Mariano’s archive, the communities whose practices had com- 27 posed it were those o the state and the ayllu. ese communities used the 28 same words, ink, and paper, yet they did not necessarily share the conceptual 29 raw materials used to fabricate these documents. is does not mean that 30 they were at odds with each other; rather, crucial to the making o the ar- 31 chive were the interests that these communities had in common. Neverthe- 32 less, many o the practices that each o them used in the collaborative making 33 and preserving o the documents were incommensurable with each other. In 34 addition, their collaboration was asymmetric: the lettered world (o the state 35 and the le© ist politicians) had the power to disavow the a- lettered practices 36 that runakuna brought into the making o legal documents, the inevitable 37 lettered objects in runakuna’s activities against the landowner. e type o
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boundary that Mariano’s archive inhabited—its ontological complexity— 1 demands acknowledgment. A historical object to record the misdeeds o the 2 owner o the will, and hence a tool to obligate the state to acknowledge its 3 debt to runakuna, this archive was made possible through ahistorical ayllu 4 practices. At some point it became a bundle o kindling and eventually ac- 5 quired (or perhaps recovered) its historicity when it reached our hands. What 6 status would this not- quite- public archive hold vis- à- vis the writing o his- 7 tory—even an alternative history? How, given its uncertain housing, would 8 a historian—even an alternative historian—document the evidence that it 9 presumably holds? What would that historian need to do to transform these 10 not- quite- public documents into evidence? How would she cite them given 11 that they are not o· cially catalogued?Á Answers to these questions could re- 12 veal the power o the state to control records o its deeds: the erratic life o 13 the documents in Mariano’s archive—the uno· cial technologies through 14 which it was preserved—may have canceled its historical possibilities. 15 It is another well- known Derridean notion (1995) that archival technolo- 16 gies, such as writing and preserving, not only determine the moment or place 17 o the conservational recording; more importantly, they determine the ar- 18 chivable event itself. e archival technologies that made Mariano’s archive 19 (including writing) transpired also through ayllu practices. us, as in pre- 20 vious stories, here too ayllu (or being in- ayllu) is a key concept: its practices 21 housed Mariano’s archive. In so doing, it provided the architectural dimen- 22 sion that Mbembe identi¨ es as necessary for an archive, which was, however, 23 composed by the radical di± erence that the documents could not record for 24 it exceeded history. Ontologically complex, this archive included events, the 25 evidence o which could be recorded in writing, along with events that le© 26 no evidence and the writing o which would have been insu· cient to prove 27 their existence anyway, for they would have been reduced to beliefs. 28 In the rest o this story I present an ethnographic account o Mariano’s ar- 29 chive. I do not answer the questions that a historian would, and I do not use 30 the documents as information to analyze the historical event o a “peasant 31 social movement to recover land”—a notion that could also be apposite to 32 think through the activities to evict the landowner o Lauramarca. Rather, 33 I use the documents in conversation with Mariano’s stories, through which 34 I learned about that which le© no evidence and in many cases exceeded his- 35 tory, but which was crucial to the making o the archive. I conceptualize this 36 excess as ahistorical to stress its connection with the historical, for without 37
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1 the latter the excess would not have been such, nor would it have enacted 2 Mariano’s archive—an object o history that was not only such. 3 A caveat: while this story is mainly concerned with the ahistorical excess 4 that was integral to the making o Mariano’s archive, it is not my attempt to 5 dismiss its historical import. I could not do that epistemically or politically 6 for, signi¨ cantly, at the origins o the queja was an event that met the require- 7 ments o history; it is still memorable in the region as “the abduction o runa- 8 kuna leaders to Qosñipata.” e documents that runakuna and their lettered 9 allies wrote to denounce the incident were the starting point o Mariano’s 10 archive. What follows are excerpts from those documents; I o± er them to 11 describe the event and to present the texture o the documents contained in 12 this peculiar archive. e repeated denunciation o the abduction o the local 13 leadership to Qosñipata, as well as the care o the documents by generations 14 o runakuna leaders, illustrate an interest in conserving memories o their 15 relationship with the landowner and o± ering them to the memory o the 16 state. Undeniably the documents stress the historical relevance o Mariano’s 17 archive, which I insist, was not only history cra© ed. 18 19 20 21 THE INDIGENOUS ARCHIVE AGAINST STATE OBLIVION 22 23 The event that originated the queja, and thus the indigenous archive, was the 24 abduction in 1926 of runakuna leaders who opposed the landowners—at that 25 point, the Saldívar family. As noted in story 2, one of the brothers was a rep- 26 resentative to the National Congress, another was a high-ranking judge in the 27 highest court of Justice in Cuzco, and a third was married to the daughter 28 of the president of Peru. The leaders of the movement were sent to Qosñi- 29 pata, a district in the eastern lowlands, where they disappeared. Generations 30 of runakuna leaders denounced this event for more than twenty years, and 31 other complaints accrued around it. Much of this story has entered the histori- 32 cal record (García Sayán 1982; Kapsoli 1977; Reátegui 1977). One of the first 33 documents in this archive to narrate the episode dates from 1927, and it reads: 34 When we [the personeros] come to this city to plead for justice from all 35 the powers and institutions of the state, wretched that we are, we find 36 but the most bitter of disappointments. And thus it has happened with 37
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those that came before us last month, for they were made prisoners, 1 jailed in the dungeons of the Intendencia, for several days, and finally 2 they were sent to Urcos, at the request of the Diputado Nacional, Ernesto 3 Saldívar. And what was the result? That the miserable [individuals] who 4 came [to Cuzco, the city,] hoping to find justice, to have their voices 5 heard by those who administer it, were confined, sent under the orders of 6 the Sub-prefect Erasmo Fernández, and he then proceeded after having 7 them locked up for several days to send them to the valley of Ccosñi- 8 pata under the same conditions of the previous men—these are: Mariano 9 Choqque, Marcos Cuntu, and Agustin Echegaray, who are confined in 10 the mentioned valleys and about whom we know nothing. The indige- 11 nous individuals [that were abducted] are: Martin Huisa, Domingo Leqqe, 12 Antonio Quispe, Francisco Chillihuani, Juan Merma, Mariano Yana, Casi- 13 miro Mamani, Mariano Ccolqque, Patricio Mayo, Cayetano Yupa, Manuel 14 Luna, Domingo y Narciso Echegaray. (CD 1927, doc. 127–28) 15 16 The personeros who signed the document I transcribe here must have been 17 appointed to replace the missing ones. They explained that in traveling to the 18 city of Cuzco they had risked being captured by the subprefect, because he 19 had imprisoned Choqque, Cuntu, and Echegaray—those who came immedi- 20 ately before them—as soon as he learned that they had officially protested the 21 abduction of the thirteen individuals who had been sent to Qosñipata. Then 22 they went on to ask, “where is justice when the subprefect serves a congres- 23 sional representative for Cuzco (Ernesto Saldívar), who is also one of the three 24 owners of the hacienda that abused them?” The landowners controlled the 25 state, and runakuna knew it. The judiciary courts were flawed, and the per- 26 soneros must have wanted to document that fact: among the papers in the 27 archive is an official communication in which Maximiliano Saldívar (one of the 28 owners and the above-mentioned judge at the Corte Superior del Cuzco) re- 29 cuses himself from signing an accusation because “it involves my brothers” 30 (CD 1932, doc. 104). This apparently ethical abstention, given his conflict of 31 interest, might have also identified those interests as rightfully legal. Such was 32 gamonalismo; it included gentlemen’s sometimes subtle practices. 33 As the abuses continued, and against the power of the state to cancel 34 the archive (in Mbembe’s sense), runakuna insisted on recording the land- 35 owners’ exploits. Five years after their leaders were abducted to Qosñipata, in 36 1931, runakuna once again denounced the event: “The Saldívars are respon- 37
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1 sible for the death of a large number of Indians who were exacted from their 2 homes, accused of disobedience; . . . in August 1926, eighteen Indians were 3 kidnapped and sold to the hacienda Villa Carmen . . . only ten returned, and 4 they died later as a consequence of the mistreatment they had received and 5 of the diseases of mountainous tropical regions.” The personeros who signed 6 the document were Manuel Mandura and Mariano Mamani; they presented 7 their claim in Lima, where they had traveled also to denounce the adminis- 8 trator of Lauramarca for confiscating “ten thousand alpacas, five thousand 9 sheep, one hundred cows, eighty horses, and five hundred llamas” and burn- 10 ing their “wretched huts.” They also requested that an “official commission” 11 be sent to Lauramarca to confirm the truthfulness of their declarations (CD 12 1931, doc. 163). 13 Runakuna’s efforts to document abuses were relentless. Again in 1933, 14 the same Mariano Mamani and a new leader, Manuel Quispe, denounced the 15 Qosñipata event and added another accusation: “During this year of 1933, in 16 the months of January, February, and March [there was] another assault . . . by 17 armed militias backed by fifteen civil guards [who were] accompanied by the 18 governor of Ocongate along with the lieutenant governors responding to Sal- 19 dívar’s commands . . . they [say] they had orders of the Supreme Government, 20 this time they killed two Indians and wounded three . . . the detainees were 21 taken to Cuzco, wounded by bullets” (CD 1926–1933, doc. 84). To present the 22 complaint, they traveled to Lima because “legal justice does not exist in these 23 unpopulated places, [although] definitive laws exist in the country, we the illit- 24 erate Indians continue to be the victims” (CD 1926–1933, doc. 84). 25 Circumventing the local power of the state was important. In 1938, these 26 two personeros traveled to Lima again. They were summoned, along with the 27 hacendado, to attend a comparendo, a face-to- face confrontation among the 28 parties in conflict. The hacendado did not show up. Stranded in Lima, the per- 29 soneros wrote the president of Peru asking for “two tickets from Callao to the 30 Province of Quispicanchis, because . . . we have run out of resources while 31 waiting for the conciliatory comparendo that had been scheduled and which 32 has not taken place because the Saldívar [brothers] failed to comply” (CD 33 1938, doc. 93). Again they requested a commission to verify the abject condi- 34 tions of their life at the hands of the landowner. 35 Their travels to Lima had some positive effects. For example, responding to 36 the runakuna’s requests in August 1933, the director general de fomento [the 37 director general of development] sent an official communication to the pre-
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fect of Cuzco—the representative of the president in the region—complaining 1 about the inaction and inefficiency of his office in response to orders to protect 2 the indigenous claimants from the hacendado’s exactions. This communica- 3 tion also urged the prefect to protect Mamani and Quispe in particular from 4 possible retaliation by the landowner (CD 1933, doc. 25s). In 1936, as a result 5 of a pro-indigenous, modernizing tide in the government, a supreme resolu- 6 tion was issued that abolished unpaid labor in Lauramarca. 7 The landowner continued to ignore central orders. And while Mamani dis- 8 appeared from the documents, probably due to old age, Quispe continued 9 his efforts on behalf of the grievance and went to jail several times for doing 10 so. In 1937 he was accused of “disrupting public order” and imprisoned. He 11 denied the charge, appealing to his “condition of illiterate Indian, semicivi- 12 lized and depressed by servility and the place where I inhabit” (CD 1937, doc. 13 158s). Years later, unable to capture Quispe, the landowner took his mother 14 hostage; she was freed after Quispe’s father offered himself in exchange for 15 her (CD 1945, doc. 121). Quispe walked the queja for a long time. During one 16 Christmas season in the 1950s, he was still active and imprisoned once more; 17 he sent a letter from the Cuzco jail, which was signed by him and Joaquin Ca- 18 rrasco, then a new leader and the man who years later would give the queja 19 to Mariano Turpo. 20 21 22 23 In- Ayllu the Queja Is Also Here and Now 24 25 In Pacchanta stories o the abduction o the leaders who were sent to Qosñi- 26 pata are told to this day. Here is one o them: 27 28 ose soldiers . . . they say a lot o them came, who knows how many came! 29 e soldiers and the landowners took the runakuna to the hacienda. When 30 we complained about that, they killed the people ¨ ring at them. Others, the 31 leaders, were sold to Qosñipata . . . that was in front o me, before me. I did not 32 see it [ñaupaq antestaraq, manaña rikuninachu]. I remember what they told me 33 [willasqallataña chayta yuyashani]; probably I was very small then. My father 34 talked about that, it must have been the way it was. at was what he told. e 35 one who was called Juan Merma, that Francisco Chillihuani, those were sold 36 to Qosñipata; they have not come back since. Where can they be? I remember 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 A cropped section of the first document I transcribed here (CD 1927, doc. 20 127–28)—one of the many that mention the names of the leaders sent to 21 Ccosñipata. Courtesy of Mariano Turpo. 22 23 Francisco Chillihuani because he was the brother o my father [chay Francisco 24 Ch´illiwanillata nuqa yuyashani, taytaypa hermanumi chay karan]. 25 26 is story was told to me by Nazario Chillihuani, the nephew o Fran- 27 cisco Chillihuani, apparently the head o those sent to Qosñipata; historians 28 have written about his leadership.Ç He may have been the ¨ rst one in a long 29 list o men that local people recall as leaders in the stru le against the ha- 30 cienda Lauramarca. Other leaders that came a© er Francisco Chillihuani were 31 Mariano Mamani, Manuel Chuqque, Manuel Quispe, and Joaquín Carrasco, 32 and the list ends with Mariano Turpo. e list has several distinctive aspects. 33 One is that while it can be chronologically organized from past to present 34 (as was presented to me in a communal assembly, and as I have presented it 35 here), it can also be told from what we call present to what we call past, which 36 is how Mariano narrated it to me, starting with himsel and ending with 37 Francisco Chillihuani: Manuel Quispe came in ont o me [Manuel Quispe
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hamusqa ñawpaqniytaraq]—he was in hiding, but they looked for him—and 1 Joaquín Carrasco. ose have chosen me. When they could not go to Cuzco [any- 2 more] I went [chaykuna mana atiqninin, nuqata Qusquta kaykurani]. But 3 in ont o them was [ichaqa ñawpaqtaqa karan] Manuel Chuqque—he was 4 killed, they threw him in the river, they peeled his face so that no one would 5 recognize him. In ont o Chuqque was Francisco Quispe [Chuqque ñawpaq- 6 nintaqa kaan Francisco Quispe], in ont o him Mariano Mamani, in ont 7 o him [ñawpaqraqa] Manuel Mandura—he escaped to live in the mountains, 8 like me, he lived in hiding. at is why he was not sold to Qosñipata. at Fran- 9 cisco Chillihuani, he came in ont o all [Chay Francisco Chilihuaniqa, lla- 10 pyku ñawpaqentan hamuran]. ey say he began the grievance, he did not re- 11 turn om the jungle. Like they had walked in ont o me, I had to walk too. 12 Andeanist anthropology is familiar with two Quechua words that we 13 translate as past and future. e ¨ rst is ñawpaq; it derives from ñawi (eyes), 14 with the su· xes pa and q. Literally, it translates as “that which is to the 15 eyes”—in front of, or before, one’s eyes. is is the word that Mariano used 16 when narrating his list. In this expression, runakuna face that which is or 17 has been, something that is known, and that—in our terms—may belong to 18 the past or present. is distinction does not need to be made with the verb 19 tense, for being in front o one’s eyes, past and present are not necessarily two 20 distinct temporalities; they can fold into one another and be permanent now 21 and here, always in front o observers while not necessarily co- temporary 22 with them. e second Quechua expression familiar to Andean ethnogra- 23 phy (which Mariano did not mention in his story about the queja) is qhipaq. 24 It means behind and refers to something that is on or at our back, that can- 25 not be seen and is therefore unknown; speakers o Quechua explain its use 26 as “a© er” (or what comes a© er). Quechua linguists have translated ñawpaq as 27 past and qhipaq as future; again, this is not wrong. However, what interests 28 me about this translation is what we Andeanists usually disregard: ¨ rst, ñaw- 29 paq does not make the distinction between past and present that modern his- 30 tory requires; and second, these notions do not follow modern directionality. 31 Rather than a succession from past to present to future, these terms house a 32 distinction between the known and the unknown,È and the known does not 33 prevail over the unknown or vice versa. Finally, apprehended through some- 34 one’s eyes, ears, or hands, ñawpaq (that which is in front and known)—as 35 much as qhipaq (that which is behind and ignored)—presuppose local em- 36 bodiment. us these conditions do not denote detached information about 37
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1 the past or an abstract future; rather, the known and the unknown are made 2 available, usually as stories, through tangible entities, human and other- than- 3 human, that take place in-ayllu. We may translate ñawpaq as past, but its 4 stories emerge embodied—in front o eyes—in the here- and- now o ayllu 5 relatedness. 6 “ e tradition o all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the 7 brain o the living,” Marx famously wrote in “ e Eighteenth Brumaire o 8 Louis Bonaparte” (1978, 595), critically commenting on those who, not being 9 able to get rid o their past, had made possible the reign o Louis Bonaparte. 10 Runakuna would also have disappointed Marx; Mariano’s dead generations 11 might have weighed like a nightmare on living runakuna, but they did not 12 belong to a past that could be le© behind. Rather than turning their backs 13 to them, every new generation faced the preceding dead leaders and walked 14 the complaint gazing at them: including the abducted leaders who had died 15 far away in Ccosñipata, the dead generations were in- ayllu, always in front 16 o the new leadership. e idea that the deceased are in- ayllu is not foreign 17 to the Andean ethnographic record. Catherine Allen is once again an im- 18 portant source. She explains: “Ayllu members include not only living runa- 19 kuna but their ancestors as well. As generations o runakuna pass into the 20 territory o Sonqo they remain there, as ancestral Machula Aulanchis—old 21 abuelos/grandparents, repositories o vitality and well- being” (2002, 86; see 22 also Abercrombie 1998; Gose 2008; Ricard 2007). If, as I have said in earlier 23 stories, being in- ayllu collapses time and space as it takes place, the presence 24 o the dead in- ayllu folds what we call past and present into each other to 25 compose ñawpa—that temporality that we can call past but that is also here, 26 in front o us. 27 Certainly, runakuna participate in Western forms o temporality—but 28 in- ayllu other forms are also important. e temporality o Mariano’s ar- 29 chive was enacted through more than one community o practices. One o 30 these was the state, the law, and citizenship; within this community, as a re- 31 minder o transgressions against the rights that even Indians had, the docu- 32 ments were about the historical past. But the ñawpaq o the archive also 33 emerged in- ayllu, bringing about the dead leaders and demanding that runa- 34 kuna leadership continue to walk the documents and the events recorded, in 35 them. ese were “to their eyes,” in front o them: here and now connected 36 to the bodies o runakuna and other- than- humans that were in- ayllu. When 37 I asked about forgetting, Mariano’s answer was: How could I forget what was
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before me? What is in ont o you is there until it leaves you. en it is hard to 1 remember, nobody remembers.É 2 us seen, what Mariano’s generation received were not only historical 3 documents handed down as information or evidence that proved that past 4 events had happened. ey also received a permanent in- ayllu event, the 5 queja itsel accrued through generations, which the documents did not only 6 represent. On those papers, written in the language o the state, were the 7 transgressions o the rule o law that runakuna experienced; and those trans- 8 gressions were also the substance o the relations that made runakuna and 9 tirakuna in- ayllu. is included what was before, and from which the docu- 10 ments were, for it was from those relations that they emerged. Describing an 11 analogous situation in Bolivia, Olivia Harris writes: “Documents not only 12 represent the crystallization o knowledge through writing, but also some- 13 thing far more immediate: a direct communication from the ancestors who 14 ¨ rst obtained them, and who entrusted them to their descendants” (1995, 15 118). Mariano’s explanation was similar: the documents and the queja were 16 not detached from each other, and also attached to them were the entities 17 intrarelated in ayllu. It was from those documents, the site that the ayllu and 18 the state shared (albeit each in their own way), that every new generation o 19 leaders received the command to walk the queja and continue the legal con- 20 frontation with the hacendado. 21 Archiving the documents—caring for them through generations, for it 22 was from these generations that they emerged—was also done in- ayllu. Some 23 o these activities were regular archival practices; others were idiosyncratic 24 to this archive. For example, documents had to be protected as they jour- 25 neyed back and forth between the city and the countryside, most particularly 26 through the territory controlled by the hacendado. I do not know how these 27 papers were kept before Mariano received them, but I did meet Nazario Chi- 28 llihuani, the main archivist when Mariano walked the complaint. He was the 29 nephew o Francisco Chillihuani (the 1920s initiator o the grievance who 30 died in exile in Qosñipata) and the husband o Mariano’s sister, Justa Turpo. 31 Nazario Chillihuani’s kinship relationship to the queja moved the ayllu to 32 choose him as Mariano’s guard. He explained: “Since I live with his sister, 33 I was placed to walk with him, ‘because you are his family, you are going to 34 worry for him,’ all o them told me, ‘like your uncle, he is going to be . . . , per- 35 haps he will die.’ I could not let go o him, [i I did,] he could go to jail [and 36 we would not have known].” 37
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1 e ayllu command, as in Mariano’s case was inevitable; Nazario Chilli- 2 huani had no way out o it and no matter what dangers he faced, he had to 3 be Mariano’s shadow. Following in-ayllu ties (and not only united in a po- 4 litical cause, as an analysis o peasant movements would have it), Mariano 5 Turpo and Nazario Chillihuani moved together across the territory o the 6 hacienda, always avoiding the landowner’s checkpoints. e two men usually 7 parted from each other when they arrived in Urcos—a good eight hours on 8 foot from Lauramarca—the point at which Mariano would take a bus or the 9 train to Cuzco, or to Arequipa i he was on his way to Lima. And inevitably, 10 the attachment to Mariano also meant that Nazario Chillihuani guarded the 11 papers: “I had the paper, our paper that we had presented to the doctors [law- 12 yers]. at is why they were a© er me, i they ¨ nd me with it, they would kill 13 me—in there with Mariano’s pukara the papers were hiding. . . . e pukara 14 made the paper disappear. at was how the paper hid. ey never found it 15 there.” Only special people like Mariano have pukara, an earth- being. e 16 reader may recall Nazario’s warning to me: I could not know pukara. Ac- 17 knowledging this limitation, I think about Mariano’s pukara as an earth- 18 being animating his life. A frequent Quechua- Spanish dictionary translation 19 o pukara is fortaleza (or fortress) and perhaps this is appropriate: housed 20 in Mariano’s pukara, the documents were protected from potential human 21 predators. 22 e papers that Nazario Turpo, Mariano’s son, was using to ignite his ¨ re 23 had once been important. Participating in- ayllu through generations and 24 guarded by runakuna with kinship ties to the leaders o the queja, the docu- 25 ments were housed in atypical conditions for an archive: inside Mariano’s 26 pukara (and perhaps other earth- beings), the huts where runakuna lived, 27 or even hidden within a pile o ichu (the grass that grows in high altitudes 28 and is used to feed alpaca, llama, and sheep). us protected, the documents 29 were able to escape the hacendado’s view, at the same time composing the 30 collection I am calling Mariano’s archive. It was clandestine as it was being 31 made and, ironically, it emerged as an archive for the (relatively) public use 32 o others when the papers had already lost the ayllu relations they once held. 33 Otherwise, we never would have been able to have them. When runakuna 34 walked the queja, the papers were with the collective they existed for; as such, 35 they were undetachable from it. When the socionatural collective was no 36 longer threatened—when the hacienda Lauramarca became a cooperative, 37 and the hacendado was forced to leave—the documents’ ties to the ayllu
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were loosened, their purpose came to an end. ey became paper that Naza- 1 rio could use to kindle his ¨ re. At this point, they could also move into our 2 hands—¨ rst omas Müller’s, then my brother- in- law’s, and then mine tem- 3 porarily. rough our disciplinary practices, the composition o the docu- 4 ments changed, and even as they remained physically the same (in terms o 5 the paper, ink, and the container that held them) they acquired a di± erent 6 valence and became only a historical archive, documents about a distant past 7 to be interpreted in the present and serve a purpose other than what they 8 were created for. 9 But when tied in- ayllu, the documents were always more than one, as their 10 contents and the queja itsel occupied boundaries and were composed with 11 partially connected distinct concepts. is is what I explain next. 12 13 14 Ayllu and Property: 15 The Ahistorical- Historical at Once Again 16 17 Lauramarca was connected to its inhabitants through two relational regimes: 18 in one o them, known as a hacienda, Lauramarca was a territorial unit, a 19 stretch o land. Owned by successive groups o individuals, it was property. 20 e other regime was that o ayllu—there were several local ayllu within the 21 territory occupied by Lauramarca, and each o them was nested within a 22 larger ayllu until they reached the jurisdiction o Ausangate—the largest 23 ayllu and a conglomeration o smaller ones—which did not coincide with 24 any state demarcation, for rather than territorial, the boundaries o ayllu 25 were marked by ties among runakuna and tirakuna.Ê 26 In previous stories I have explained that in- ayllu, beings and place are not 27 distinct from each other. Rather, as beings emerge through in- ayllu relations 28 they take- place; their relational being in time is also their emplacement. 29 rough in- ayllu practices, runakuna and tirakuna take- place: I have already 30 used this phrase to stress the collapse o time and space enacted in- ayllu Con- 31 sequently, when the practice is that o ayllu relationality, the notion o ter- 32 ritory does not exist by itself. Instead, territory—or, more properly, place— 33 emerges with the relations that bring together human and other- than- human 34 beings; it cannot be severed from them. 35 Normally hacienda and ayllu are compared to each other through the dis- 36 tinction between individual and collective property, which is not altogether 37
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1 wrong. Indeed, the ayllu cannot be individually owned, and the hacienda 2 can. However, this distinction ignores that property and ayllu are conceived 3 through di± erent relational regimes. While property as relation is a con- 4 nection between entities that, apparently, exist outside the relation—for ex- 5 ample, a territory and someone to own it—runakuna and tirakuna exist in 6 ayllu; they are within ayllu as relationship. Another important di± erence re- 7 sults from this distinction. Ayllu relations cannot be represented; the sepa- 8 ration that this requires (between subject and object, signi¨ er and signi¨ ed) 9 severs the inherently relational character o beings in- ayllu. As Roy Wagner 10 writes, “when relational points are treated as representational . . . integral re- 11 lationship is denied and distorted” (1991, 165). In contrast, one o the quali- 12 ties o property is that it can be represented. 13 Given that representation is essential in legal dynamics, the queja was 14 phrased in terms o property. And through representation as a tool o under- 15 standing (epistemically, that is), the legal documents translated ayllu into an 16 institution in which humans collectively possessed the territory where they 17 produced their livelihood. is transformation implied a movement across 18 relational regimes (from ayllu to property) that e± ected intertwined onto- 19 logical translations: earth- beings became geographic features—mountains, 20 rivers, lakes, lagoons, paths, boulders, and caves: markers o a territory, the 21 inhabitants o which were indigenous peasants, the sole members o ayllu. 22 e separation between runakuna and tirakuna as well as their translation 23 into humans and territory allowed ‘land’ to emerge as a central legal con- 24 cern o both, indigenous colonos and the landowner. e actors (human and 25 other- than- human) inscribed in the legal documents were devoid o inher- 26 ent relations, emptied from the time and space in which ayllu relations tran- 27 spire. ey became freestanding entities and hence able to participate in the 28 relational regime o property.Î Yet being in- ayllu did not disappear from the 29 documents, for it was their condition, a relationship from which the legal 30 manifestation o runakuna’s queja also emerged. Made by both regimes, 31 documents were the conduit through which the lettered legal world and the 32 a- lettered world o ayllu could over´ ow into each other. us, when a docu- 33 ment included the names o places in dispute, the understanding may have 34 been double: both the relational ayllu, including the place as being, and an 35 extension o land in dispute between two groups o people. But over´ ow 36 between worlds was asymmetric, as was their relationship. us, while runa- 37 kuna may have been able to write and read both ayllu and property into the
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documents, for the rest—allies and foes alike—the language o property was 1 what mattered. Apparently, then, the con´ ict inscribed in the documents 2 was not only about land. Rather, the fact that we interpret it that way is part 3 o the onto- epistemic politics that required the translation o being in- ayllu 4 (and the inherent relationality among runakuna and tirakuna that prevented 5 “place” as distinct object) into “social relations o property” (connecting be- 6 tween entities outside the relation: an owner with a territory). Within this 7 translation the queja has been narrated and analyzed as a “peasant stru le 8 for land,” which it was, but not only. 9 In 1982 Eric Wol wrote a book that extended European history to peoples 10 that nineteenth- century thinkers—including those as central as Hegel and 11 Marx—had deemed without history. In the emerging postcolonial tone o 12 the times, Wol wrote: “Perhaps ‘ethnohistory’ has been so called to separate 13 it from ‘real’ history, the study o the supposedly civilized. Yet what is clear 14 from the study o ethnohistory is that the subjects o the two kinds o his- 15 tory are the same. e more ethnohistory we know, the more clearly ‘their’ 16 history and ‘our’ history emerge as the same history” (1997, 19). Indeed, read- 17 ing Mariano’s archive through the notion o property—a concept essential 18 to the self- understanding o European forms o rule and crucial to the mod- 19 ern state (Verdery and Humphrey 2004)—runakuna’s history appears as our 20 history and con¨ rms the relevance o Wolf’s proposition. Yet crucial to this 21 history were the ahistorical practices that made Mariano’s archive possible. 22 Mariano’s energetic rejection o the documents as I was trying to study 23 them with him seemed to go against propositions like Wolf’s, and it discon- 24 certed me. It went against the grain o my disposition—broadly aligned with 25 the postcolonial anthropology that Wol and others (such as Fabian 1983; 26 Price 1983; Rosaldo 1980; Sahlins 1985) advocated—to “historicize” events, 27 practices, institutions, relations, and subjectivities and thus avoid essential- 28 ism, one o anthropology’s major ghosts. My disconcertment at Mariano’s 29 rejection was an important ethnographic moment. It was also coherent with 30 the moment when the documents were found: Nazario had been about to 31 burn them. Using both moments as potential conceptual openings, I grasped 32 that there was more to Mariano’s archive than the national or political eco- 33 nomic history that he and I shared. O course, that sharing was important. 34 Yet something that “our history” (also in Wolf’s terms) could not acknowl- 35 edge had both made Mariano’s archive possible and had also rendered it in- 36 su· cient: the documents in the box that omas found were incapable o 37
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1 containing earth- beings. How could historical documents register pukara— 2 the earth- being Nazario said I could not know? Here was the conundrum: 3 writing was important to inscribe the hacendado’s abuses against runakuna, 4 but it was useless to summon Mariano’s pukara, the earth- being that safe- 5 guarded the written records. I could not dismiss either o these practices; 6 intertwined, they made this archive, rendering it both necessary and insu· - 7 cient to narrate its story. e documents were historical objects—yet as such, 8 they were also boundary objects collaboratively made by partially connected 9 communities o practice that were each unaware o much o the other’s prac- 10 tices. What was necessary was a historical reading symmetrically interested 11 in what I conceptualize as the eventfulness o ahistorical practices. I cannot 12 prove through historical methods that Mariano’s pukara guarded the docu- 13 ments. Pukara’s practices are ahistorical, but this does not make them a non- 14 event. Denying their eventfulness would require removing Nazario Chilli- 15 huani’s practices from the world o ayllu and earth- beings and translating 16 them into the world o nature and humanity, where the epistemic regime 17 o history requires evidence to certify reality. Once in this circuit, rather 18 than provoking disconcertment, Mariano’s rejection o the documents as 19 the source o his story, as well as Nazario Turpo’s kindling a ¨ re with them, 20 would “make sense” as the result o runakuna’s incompleteness, their lack o 21 historical sense— something yet to be achieved. us simpli¨ ed, our narra- 22 tive would be back on historical track, and the radical di± erence o practices 23 that participated in the making o the archive would be rendered “cultur- 24 ally meaningful,” and the reality they summoned canceled. Mariano’s pukara 25 guarding the documents would be translated as belief: my disconcertment 26 would thus come to an end, and so would the symmetry among narratives. 27 Taking Nazario Chillihuani’s story seriously—considering his words liter- 28 ally, rather than symbolically—required considering the eventfulness o 29 Mariano’s pukara guarding the documents possible. is archive had come 30 to fruition through partial connections across historical and ahistorical prac- 31 tices that implied, among other conditions, the collaboration o regimes o 32 property and ayllu. It was not about one or the other: contradicting either- or 33 logics, both were inscribed in the documents, even i through worlding prac- 34 tices that were only partially common to all those who took property and 35 ayllu into the documents. 36 37
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Tseng Proof • 2015.06.18 09:12 9781 Cadena • Earth Beings • Sheet 164 of 343 Tseng Proof • 2015.06.18 09:12 9781 Cadena • Earth Beings • Sheet 165 of 343 PROOF PROOF In- Ayllu Efforts to Buy Land: Partially Connected 1 Practices Make Partially Connected Documents 2 3 In a document dating from 1925, directed to President Augusto Leguía and 4 written before the Qosñipata event, runakuna argue the legitimacy o their 5 possession based on the fact that they had not bought the land. It has been 6 theirs since the times o the Incas, their ancestors, and they use it for their 7 subsistence—not to sell their produce. Only old titles—desde antigua—could 8 con¨ rm the hacendado’s equivalently legitimate possession. Lauramarca 9 was o· cially registered under the Saldívar brothers’ names starting in 1904 10 (Reátegui 1977), which runakuna might have deemed recent compared to 11 their ancient possession o the land. e language o property is not clear in 12 this document, in which the notion o possession is more strongly phrased. 13 Following are excerpts from the document: 14 15 Earths o ancient [times] is not sold/ it is community proper o the indige- 16 nous from Ancient [times]/ proper from the Incas grandparents o us this/ all 17 citizens o Colcca we live from earths possessed in the punas/ we sustain with 18 the animals/ the animals are for our sustenance only. . . . Señor President o the 19 Republic o Peru/ we ask possession [to] you Señor President o the Republic 20 o Peru/ we reclaim puna lands from the landlord/ we ask [for his] titles from 21 Ancient [times]/ i he has titles he should present [them im]mediately/ three 22 years have passed he is too late/ we wait already much. (Ýß 1925, doc. 295) 23 e tension between ancestral ayllu possession and property regimes appears 24 more clearly in later documents. In 1930, addressing President Luis Miguel 25 Sánchez Cerro (the military leader o the coup that ousted Leguía), runakuna 26 wrote: “We have had the misfortune that some gentlemen favored by for- 27 tune, Ismael Ruibal and Ernesto Saldívar, have bought some properties and 28 have included within their borders the ayllus we represent and titling them- 29 selves owners they have taken away our animals and plots and have thrown 30 us away from our dwellings, houses that we have possessed since our ances- 31 trals [sic], dispossessing us from everything we had had and used since [the 32 times of] our ancestors, having forced some o us to escape to places where 33 only hunger, misery and death await us.” e explicit mention o ayllu (or 34 ayllus in this speci¨ c case) could summon into the document humans, ani- 35 mals, plants, and tirakuna (including what we call soil or land)—all integrally 36 related through place- making bonds. And I want to propose that even in the 37
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1 cases when “ayllu” was not explicitly written into the documents I read, it 2 could have been implied when the notion o ancestral belonging to place was 3 stated (thus also including, i silently, all beings that composed the place).¼Ï 4 Nevertheless, along with the language o “ancestral possession” runa- 5 kuna also deployed the language o property. In 1933, a© er a representative 6 o Congress su ested the possibility o “expropriating the hacienda” to sell 7 the property to “its indigenous inhabitants,” runakuna persistently pursued 8 the possibility o buying Lauramarca (Ýß 1950, doc. 42). Stepping into a 9 relation that the state could recognize seemed like their ticket to freedom 10 from the landowner. Buying Lauramarca seemed like a dream, but it also rep- 11 resented the end o unpaid labor and o the obligation to sell their wool to 12 the hacienda. is was the apparent reasoning in 1945, when Manuel Quispe 13 was personero (and Mariano Turpo was his young assistant). In a document 14 to the Inspector Regional de Asuntos Indígenas en el Sur del Perú (the in- 15 spector general o indigenous a± airs in southern Peru), Quispe explains that 16 given the proposal o expropriation, they wanted to know the price o the ha- 17 cienda because they would like to buy it: “We do not want to cause any dam- 18 age . . . and [you should] understanding [sic] that we are obliged to live with 19 our numerous families and our small animal herds, considering the damage 20 it would in´ ict on us by disconnecting us from our ancestral possessions o 21 antique customs that we have had with the estate in question.” Purchasing 22 the hacienda meant acquiring legal rights to the “land,” and this would allow 23 runakuna to stay where they had always been, “to confront the situation for 24 [sic] legally acquire from their respective owners, [runakuna would do] any- 25 thing to solve the condition o not being able to leave their plots that my rep- 26 resented [people] ¨ nd themselves in because it has been their custom since 27 the primitive times” (Ýß 1945, doc. 31). A few months later, with no response 28 from the authorities and a© er hearing rumors that Lauramarca had been 29 sold, “we do not know to whom,” Manuel Quispe made the same request 30 again: runakuna wanted to buy the earths. He wrote: “We cannot abandon 31 these earths that have always been and are in our possession in our condition 32 as colonos and . . . we have numerous families to whom we owe attention and 33 care necessary for their subsistence” (Ýß 1945, doc. 309). 34 Buying would decidedly change socioeconomic relations in Lauramarca; 35 indeed, it could be read as a modernizing peasant project. But there is one 36 caveat: it was not intended to replace being in- ayllu—it did not have to. Writ- 37 ing in Spanish in the last document above, runakuna mention they wanted to
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 From Mariano’s archive: “a sheep for the lawyer.” 29 Courtesy of Mariano Turpo. 30 31 buy tierras (earths), and while this could stand for agricultural land, it could 32 also be translated as tirakuna, places that “have been and will continue to be 33 forever in our possession . . . which we use for the care for our large families.” 34 It would not be far-fetched to think the last phrase above could have entailed 35 practices o nurturing intra- ayllu relations as well as an economy o subsis- 36 tence production, even i the legal script could only read the latter. 37
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1 Runakuna’s e± orts to purchase the hacienda increased between the late 2 1950s and early 1960s—the period o Mariano’s most intense activity. Buy- 3 ing was his ¨ rst and foremost goal, he told me, and several other runakuna 4 con¨ rmed his e± orts. Also during this period the alliance between runa- 5 kuna and their le© ist advocates became stronger. e joint project was to 6 buy the tierras—and this yielded an intriguing set o documents, in which 7 the language o property, class, and ayllu all appear. Among them is a letter 8 by Emiliano Huamantica, secretary general o the Federación de Trabajado- 9 res del Cuzco (ÜÙÝ; the Cuzco Workers Federation), and a legendary mem- 10 ber o the Communist Party. Writing in February 1958, he tells the colonos 11 that Laura Caller, “vuestra abogada” (your lawyer) had two requests. First, she 12 needed three thousand soles (then approximately $700 dollars) “to continue 13 working on your issue,” since that work entailed expenses. Second, Caller 14 wanted Huamantica to convey the point that runakuna needed to collect 15 among themselves one million soles, to be used toward the “expropriation” 16 o the hacienda—expropriation actually meant that runakuna would be au- 17 thorized to buy the hacienda. e ÜÙÝ that Huamatica represented recom- 18 mended that runakuna follow Caller’s su estions: “I you do not collect 19 that amount . . . the expropriation is going to be di· cult, but it is the Peas- 20 ants’ only hope o achieving calm and independence from gamonalismo ex- 21 ploitation . . . you should sacri¨ ce anything to collect the amount o money 22 indicated.” In closing, he expressed “our class solidarity” (Ýß 1958, doc. 240). 23 Only three months a© er that letter, Mariano Turpo’s walking companion, 24 Mariano Chillihuani, was in Lima—possibly to work with Caller, probably 25 a© er having paid her what she requested. He wrote in good Spanish a letter 26 that was also sprinkled with the language o class (perhaps with someone’s 27 help): “I communicate to you that Dr. Coello has made the Senate approve a 28 law to devote seven million soles annually toward the expropriation o lands 29 in the Sierra. us the expropriation o the hacienda Lauramarca is going to 30 be possible and the peasants all united will be able to be owners o our land 31 returning the price o the hacienda to the hacendados. Everything depends 32 on the unity o all peasants o the hacienda and o the help that the Workers 33 Federation o Cuzco can lend us” (Ýß 1958, doc. 282). His tasks as perso- 34 nero, which he had assumed as part o being in- ayllu, in turn obliged the ayllu 35 to care for his family; therefore, in the same letter he asked runakuna to help 36 his wife with the animals, his decaying house, and the harvest. 37
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Mariano Chillihuani’s letter traveled relatively quickly from Lima to 1 the region o Ausangate. On May 29, three weeks a© er the letter was sent, 2 Mariano Turpo responded with a letter from Cuzco—where he must have 3 been walking the queja as well. e letter was addressed to runakuna in the 4 villages; he gave them orders to assemble “on Saturday” to talk about money. 5 He also conveyed that Chillihuani and Caller, la troctora—the local rendi- 6 tion o the Spanish doctora—needed money for legal expenses. Furthermore, 7 the Senate had approved the expenditure o seven million soles for the ex- 8 propriation o Lauramarca; that helped, but it was not enough, he wrote. 9 To match the selling price o the hacienda, Turpo told runakuna to organize 10 and collect money among themselves: “each one should help with thirty soles 11 until [we] buy the hacienda Lauramarca completely” (ayudar cada uno 30 12 soles asta compobada [sic] hacienda de Lauramarca de echo [sic]”). Addition- 13 ally, showing cariño (care) to the doctor in Cuzco (a di± erent lawyer) was 14 necessary; they, runakuna, should send him a sheep or money. It had been a 15 while since they had done that, he said: “We need [to send] care for the doc- 16 tor, because it has been a while that you have not thought o even one sheep, 17 or one coin” (para cariño nicitan el troctor porque hasta tinpo no pinsas ne un 18 oveja ni un plata) (Ýß 1958, doc. 239). 19 e e± orts to collect money must have continued throughout that year; 20 seemingly, Turpo and Chillihuani traveled frequently and sent letters be- 21 tween their villages, the city o Cuzco and Lima. On September 21, 1958, 22 Mariano Chillihuani sent a letter from Cuzco to Mariano Turpo who was 23 then in his village. e letter was handwritten, probably by one o the lawyers, 24 as the Spanish has no hints o Quechua. ings were not going well. e state 25 (through its Board o Indigenous A± airs) had ruled in favor o the hacen- 26 dado, but the runakuna had to persevere. As part o their e± ort to buy the 27 hacienda, the letter su ested organizing the collection o alpaca and sheep 28 wool among runakuna. Selling together would be better because to “obtain 29 high prices, o course the weight has to be exact to the quantity or weight o 30 the products each person contributes, and also annotate the quality or class 31 o product and o course the name and the ayllu to which the person belongs, 32 trying that everyone has faith and trusts you, and [has] the certainty that no- 33 body will cheat them or rob them.” Chillihuani reminded Turpo, once again, 34 to send a sheep to the lawyer, and ¨ nished by saying: “I you come, bring 35 money to buy a cheap photographic camera, it would cost 200 soles more or 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Mariano’s archive cropped section of a document: “bring money to buy a 19 camera to take pictures of the abuses.” Courtesy of Mariano Turpo. 20 21 less, so that the Dr. [the lawyer] can teach us to take [pictures] and then when 22 there is an abuse we can take the picture and send it to Lima” (Ýß 1958, doc. 23 285). An excerpt o the text (in Spanish) can be read in ¨ gure 4.5. 24 Runakuna wanted to own the property—their terms were modern. To that 25 end, they collected wool among themselves and sought to sell it at the highest 26 market prices; they also lobbied senators and thought about buying a camera 27 to document the hacendado’s abuses. But to the same end, practices were also 28 performed in the mode o ayllu relationality: runakuna were expected to help 29 the families o personeros while they were away working on behal o the 30 ayllu; Nazario Chillihuani’s kinship ties to the queja obliged him to Mariano 31 Turpo and to the documents; along with him, Mariano’s pukara protected 32 “the papers” from the hacendado; and generations o dead leaders who had 33 initiated the queja continued to participate in the process and had ties to the 34 historical archive, which thus was also in- ayllu. Clearly, the documents were 35 not only motivated by modern notions o property; making them possible 36 were the inherent relations among its members, runakuna and other- than- 37 human, that made the ayllu—the place inscribed in the archive and from
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where the archive emerged. It was not only land that runakuna were defend- 1 ing; they were defending what they called uywaqninchis (our nurturer; what 2 makes us) (see also Allen 2002, 84–85). Runakuna could not abandon the 3 tierras or tirakuna, the earths or land that had been forever in their posses- 4 sion. ose were their families’ nurturers, those were the place they were; 5 and vice versa, the earths were ayllu, too. At the same time, Mariano Turpo 6 and his cohort o leaders, like the generations that were in front o them, 7 shared the time o the nation- state—as did their project. ey were defend- 8 ing themselves from generations o landowners who had enslaved them. ey 9 wanted freedom, perhaps a modern project, for which they fought in- ayllu, 10 inherently related to the earths and to one another, being the place they all 11 made and that made them. Achieved through in- ayllu obligatory practices, 12 political alliances with the le© , and legal interactions with the state to pur- 13 chase Lauramarca, the project for freedom that Mariano and others narrated 14 might have coincided with a liberal or socialist project. But it also exceeded 15 both projects, in a way that, I venture, was analogous to the way Mariano’s 16 archive exceeded history: freedom was conceived in- ayllu; it was runakuna 17 and tirakuna’s freedom. I resume this comment, a© er a short discussion o 18 the question below. 19 20 21 A Lurking Question: 22 How Did “Illiterate” Runakuna Write? 23 24 Writing and reading were practices that runakuna sought to master, relent- 25 lessly demanding literacy campaigns and even hiring teachers who were ruth- 26 lessly chastised by the landowner. As stubbornly as their demands for literacy, 27 and against the hacendado’s will, Mariano’s archive got written.¼¼ 28 As a technology speci¨ c to Mariano’s archive, writing (and, by extension, 29 literacy) was not an individual act but an embodied, shared practice; a re- 30 lationship between people who knew each other. In this relationship, talking 31 was as important as writing. According to Nazario Chillihuani (the keeper 32 o the archive during Mariano’s leadership period): “ ose documents, the 33 doctor always made them talking with Mariano; [together] they made them” 34 (Chay papeltaqa ducturpuniya ruwarqan Mariano Turpowan parlaspaya/ri- 35 maspaya chaytaqa ruwanku). e lawyers alone could not have composed the 36 written records; they required the oral text for the documents to become 37
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1 such. erefore, rimay (the oral word) was as important to these documents 2 as writing was—in fact, it was also writing. 3 Sometimes writing was a paid activity—in Mariano’s archive there are sev- 4 eral receipts that illustrate this. One o them reads: “for typing services in the 5 making o a letter to the manager o Lauramarca from the Andamayo sec- 6 tion” (Ýß 1960, doc. 58). But writing partners could also be a group o neigh- 7 bors, people living in nearby rural towns or commercial posts. An example 8 o this is a missive signed by “Alicia.” On a plain piece o paper she wrote 9 her father telling him that runakuna were waiting for him (another writing 10 ally) to write the “memorial,” an o· cial document to be sent to the courts: 11 “I you cannot [come this Saturday to write it], let us know when [you can 12 come] so we can have the beasts [mules or horses] waiting for you in Ttinqui” 13 (Ýß 1958[1], doc. 252). Alicia ran the Rosas family’s small shop, which still 14 existed during the ¨ rst stint o my ¨ eldwork, located halfway between Pac- 15 chanta (where Mariano lived) and Ocongate (the district capital, where her 16 father, Camilo Rosas, lived). He was a member o the Communist Party, and 17 as Mariano recalled for me, someone who frequently typed and gave advice 18 about the contents o the legal documents that runakuna needed. A messen- 19 ger must have taken the note on foot (a journey o perhaps two hours), carry- 20 ing it from the writer to its destination. 21 Co- writers like Alicia Rosas’s father usually saw themselves as political 22 allies, serving the ‘indigenous cause.’ Helping runakuna, they co- wrote o· - 23 cial documents and also personal letters, which were necessary to commu- 24 nicate as runakuna walked the queja and spent time away from home. An 25 example here is the letter Mariano sent from Lima to Modesta Condori, his 26 wife. In it, he told her there was no reason to be sad; on the contrary. She 27 should be happy for “here [in Lima] we enjoy . . . the esteem and sympathy 28 o the workers and friends that always help us . . . take care o our little ani- 29 mals and our children.” Mariano promised to return by mid- November, a© er 30 the comparendo—his court appearance. He signed the letter on October 31 21, 1957, in his handwriting (Ýß 1957[2], doc. 289). Written in urban Span- 32 ish and with a more educated handwriting, this letter was penned by Laura 33 Caller, one o runakuna’s lawyer. 34 An intriguing feature resulting from this collaboration, the documents 35 express heterogeneous writing styles and techniques. Some are typewritten 36 in plain Spanish, but with no accents (perhaps an artifact o the typewriter 37 used?), while others are handwritten in very good Spanish, with accents
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and well- punctuated, beautiful script. Others, whether in gawky calligra- 1 phy or beautiful handwriting, are textured by the presence o Spanish and 2 Quechua—syntax and vocabularies—in each other. e mixtures include the 3 oral and the written, which (like Quechua and Spanish) combine in many 4 o the documents to the point where they cannot be pulled apart, thus com- 5 plicating simple notions o boundaries separating literacy and illiteracy or 6 Quechua and Spanish. 7 Intricate hybrids, the documents occupied an expansive interface in- 8 habited by runakuna and the legal world, constantly mixing and exceeding 9 each other. Adding to its complexity, Mariano’s archive reveals a partially 10 connected ¨ eld inhabited by the lettered city and the a- lettered vicinity o 11 Ausangate. e latter is where runakuna dwell; in my interpretation, it is the 12 place that becomes in- ayllu. But this place is also populated by the lettered 13 practices o lawyers, politicians, the police, teachers, university students, an- 14 thropologists, and other assorted characters. Similarly, a- lettered practices 15 also emerge in a lawyer’s o· ce, universities, urban restaurants, hotels, tram- 16 ways, roads, marketplaces, and even the National Congress. For all these are 17 sites o constant conversation between lettered and a- lettered worlds, which 18 a regulatory nation- state continuously works to separate into discrete liter- 19 ate and illiterate units. 20 21 22 23 POSTCOLONIAL HISTORIES AND THE 24 25 EVENTFULNESS OF THE AHISTORICAL 26 What we properly understand by Africa, is the Unhistorical, 27 Undeveloped Spirit, still involved in the conditions o mere nature, 28 and which had to be presented here only as on the threshold o 29 the World’s History.—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 30 “Lectures on the Philosophy o World History” 31 32 In story 2, following Michel Trouillot (1995), I made an analogy between Haitian 33 revolutionaries and Peruvian indigenous leaders inasmuch modern intellectu- 34 als (in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively) had denied their 35 reality—even their possibility. Notwithstanding the many distances (tempo- 36 ral, spatial, ideological, and others that escape me) in both cases, the denial 37
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1 was underpinned by onto-epistemic practices that—as illustrated by Hegel’s 2 quote, above—classified these groups in the lower echelons of humanity due 3 to their alleged distance from historical consciousness, which in turn resulted 4 from their proximity to nature. Intertwined with such classification was the 5 practice that granted history (and the peoples within its borders) the power to 6 discern between the possible and the impossible. Its consequences were big: 7 it canceled the world-making potential of practices that escaped the nature- 8 humanity divide, and it created an archive from which marginalized groups 9 were (and continue to be) excluded. 10 Postcolonial scholars—both anthropologists and historians—have gone a 11 long way in challenging this archive. Wolf—who I quote in this story—was 12 among the first of these scholars. Talal Asad joined the conversation, asking— 13 in a reversal of Wolf’s title—“are there histories of people without Europe?” His 14 main contention was that the history Wolf had written—that of Western capi- 15 talism as it incorporated other peoples in it—was not the only one. There were 16 local histories, the writing of which had their own cultural logics and could not 17 “be reduced to ways of generating surplus, or of conquering and ruling others” 18 (1987, 604). Similarly, Ranajit Guha (1988) offered methods for alternative read- 19 ings of historical Indian archives. So did Marshal Sahlins (1985), if from a differ- 20 ent theoretical perspective. Trouillot’s work that I quoted in story 2 specifically 21 questioned the methods of historical power that silenced the past. A few years 22 later, Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000) concerned himself with subaltern pasts and 23 minorities’ histories—or perhaps minor histories—contending that, while in- 24 dispensable, Western political concepts are also inadequate to think realities 25 where, among other things, gods and spirits are not preceded by the social. 26 Extending Western history to “peoples without” it as well as acknowledg- 27 ing the heterogeneity of local histories has been a postcolonial achievement; 28 trumping the hierarchical classification of humanity, it included marginalized 29 humans as thinkers, as makers of history and of the world. This academic 30 process was paralleled in Latin America by the forceful emergence of “indige- 31 nous intellectuals” claiming a place as politicians and recovering memories 32 that elite archives had completely neglected or even cancelled.¼½ The determi- 33 nation of these processes inspired intellectuals like Aníbal Quijano to rewrite 34 their own scripts (see stories 2 and 3) and contribute to weaken the regional 35 biopolitical mestizo nation-building projects whereby indigeneity was to dis- 36 appear. There is no denying that the postcolonial academic revision of history 37
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and the indigenous intellectual proposals and activism that paralleled it in 1 Latin America were politically and epistemically important. Yet they continued 2 to transpire within the “one nature and many cultures” vision of the world that 3 had sustained Universal History. The corollary is not insignificant: in failing to 4 provincialize the division between nature and humanity as specific to the Euro- 5 pean civilizational project, postcolonial history, like its predecessor, potentially 6 maintains the power of this separation to deny (and thus colonize) regimes 7 of reality that transgress the divide and, hence, escape modernity. Although 8 Marx turned Hegel upside down, they both agreed on certain points: nature 9 is unhistorical; the makers of history are human beings and, resulting from the 10 capacity to reason, some humans are more historical than others. Reason also 11 separates humas as subject, from nature as object and thus articulates the 12 possibility of a central technology of history: evidence, or the reasonable com- 13 position of facts as signs of events (Daston 1991; Poovey 1998). 14 Rooted in the epistemic strictures of reason (or reason-ability) evidence 15 legitimizes the power of modern history—in its academic, legal and every- 16 day incarnation—to discriminate between the real and the unreal. This power 17 of history survived the postcolonial critique: accordingly, the social entity (or 18 event) which does not provide reasonable evidence is unreal. Anthropology 19 may call it a cultural belief and to avoid naturalizing it, we anthropologists 20 historicize it. Thus we may explain how the composition of the cultural belief 21 (including its reasons!) changed through historical time—culture is historical, 22 and this includes beliefs, which nevertheless continue to be such: unreal. With 23 the caveat that Mariano’s stories were not about the supernatural, my argu- 24 ment finds echo in the following quote from Chakrabarty: “Historians will grant 25 the supernatural a place in somebody’s belief system or ritual practices, but 26 to ascribe to it any real agency in historical events will be [to] go against the 27 rules of evidence that gives [sic] historical discourse procedures for settling 28 disputes about the past” (2000, 104). 29 An important disclaimer, although it may sound redundant to some readers: 30 my commentary is not aimed at canceling the historicization of culture. More 31 that a goal, my critique is motivated by the concern that the rich postcolo- 32 nial revision of history that so inspired anthropology may still be contained 33 within, and even contribute to, the coloniality of History. Spelling out my con- 34 cern: the postcolonial critique that extended history to those that Hegel con- 35 ceived without it had an ironic twist: it also extended to those peoples and 36 37
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1 their worlds the requirement of history’s regime of reality—and it did so even 2 as it recognized the heterogeneity of . . . history. Undoing this coloniality may, 3 in turn, require eventalizing the power granted to history to certify the real by 4 (paradoxically!) historicizing it (Foucault 1991): localizing it in place and time 5 thus signaling the limits beyond which its unquestionable reality-discerning 6 capacity becomes, well, questionable (see Guha 2002). Without those limits 7 events may emerge that cannot be known historically for, enacted with prac- 8 tices that ignore the modern commandment to separate nature and humans, 9 they do not exist historically. Yet, this does not mean such events are not; fol- 10 lowing the critique of the coloniality of history, the hegemony of its regime of 11 reality becomes a political question after which ahistorical events are possible. 12 Opening up this possibility may also require considering that what we know as 13 “nature” may be not only such, and that “belief” is not the only option left as a 14 relation with what which emerges when nature is not such (and therefore, the 15 supernatural is not an option either). Undoing the coloniality of history would 16 require recalling both history as a generalized ontological regime and “cultural 17 belief” as mediating the possibility of that which cannot provide evidence. Fol- 18 lowing these recalls, events may not need to be either historical or beliefs to 19 be possible. In other words, the ahistorical may be eventful without translation 20 into a cultural perspective (a belief) on otherwise inanimate things. 21 22 23 24 Thinking with Mariano’s Archive: Eventfulness Otherwise 25 26 Certainly, both the nature and humanity divide and the restriction o agency 27 to humans have been challenged. Some versions o actor- network theory 28 concerned with the asymmetry between subjects and objects (overlapping 29 with the division between humanity and nature) have included nonhumans 30 as agents o scienti¨ c practices, particularly experiments that can, in turn, be 31 de¨ ned as historical events. Take this quote by Bruno Latour as an example: 32 “De¨ ning the experiment as an event has consequences for the historicity o all 33 the ingredients, including nonhumans, that are the circumstances o that ex- 34 periment” (1999, 306; emphasis added). is assertion has similarities—even 35 some continuities—with postcolonial historiography: i the latter extended 36 history to those humans who (allegedly or not) did not have it, considering 37
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things as actors, Latour extends history to what is otherwise deemed inani- 1 mate (and therefore outside o history.) But my quandary remains: this new 2 imagination, which grants history to the nonhuman, thus canceling an im- 3 portant aspect o the divide between humanity and nature, continues to re- 4 strict the eventful to the historical. An event (to be considered such) has to 5 inhabit chronological time and be recognized as unfolding in it. What is in- 6 capable o revealing itself—to produce self- evidence—in chronological time 7 is ahistorical, and it remains non- eventful and thus unreal. 8 Within this framework, the postcolonial mission continues to be to his- 9 toricize, to expand the already existing archives so as to include the voices 10 o the subaltern in it. But this archive, whose principle remains unaltered, 11 would continue to have the power to exclude, or gauge as less real, that which 12 does not meet the requirements o history. Mariano’s archive met those re- 13 quirements, o course—but the practices that made it possible did not. (And 14 just to be very clear, although it may be unnecessary: I cannot use Latour’s 15 maneuver and extend history to the other- than- humans that were part o 16 Mariano’s story, because those are not things—they are beings in a regime o 17 reality that is di± erent from that o Latour’s laboratories and their actants). 18 Su esting the historicity o earth- beings would be out o place, literally; 19 they have no home in the regime o history, for they are ahistorical entities. 20 Mariano’s refusal to consider the documents as a su· cient source o his story 21 presented me with an intriguing conundrum: ahistorical practices and actors 22 had made possible a historical object, his archive, and a momentous historical 23 process, the agrarian reform. 24 Expanding the postcolonial archive (without altering its historical prin- 25 ciple) would not succeed in including the ahistorical practices that converged 26 in Mariano’s archive. e evidence that Ausangate (Guerra Ganar) has le© o 27 his winning the war against the Spaniards (the holes around Yanacocha, the 28 lagoon where Ausangate led the conquerors to be drowned) is not historical. 29 I cannot prove that Ausangate participated in the queja against the hacen- 30 dado either—and o course that is not my intention. Rather, my intention is 31 for an alter- notion o archive—one that, rather than liberal inclusion, would 32 house a vocation for partial connection with that which it cannot incorpo- 33 rate, but also makes it possible. My proposal is akin to Elizabeth Povinelli’s 34 below, for which she draws from her aborigine friends in Australia, as well as 35 from Derrida and Foucault. She writes: 36 37
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1 I “archive” is the name we give to the power to make and command what 2 took place here or there, in this or that place, and thus what has an authori- 3 tative place in the contemporary organization o social life, the postcolonial 4 new media archive [a project that she and her indigenous Australian friends 5 collaborate in] cannot be merely a collection o digital artifacts re´ ecting a 6 di± erent, subjugated history. Instead, the postcolonial archive must directly 7 address the problem o the endurance o the otherwise within—or distinct om— 8 this form o power. In other words, the task o the postcolonial archivist is not 9 merely to collect subaltern histories. It is also to investigate the compositional 10 logics o the archive as such: the material conditions that allow something to 11 be archived and archivable. (2011, 153; emphasis added) 12 Imagining Mariano’s archive as a boundary object, made by socio- natural 13 collectives that shared some interests against the landlord, whose world- 14 and making practices (including some o the practices that made the archive) 15 were also radically di± erent, o± ers the potential to open the historical archive 16 to the otherwise; that is, to the ahistorical in- ayllu practices that contributed 17 to the making o this archive—a historical object—that, recursively, con- 18 tributed to the endurance o in- ayllu practices. I have conceptualized these 19 practices as ahistorical to highlight the way they bring together di± erent 20 onto- epistemic worlds. e stories that I heard narrated in- ayllu practices 21 and events that were without the requirements o history, while nevertheless 22 coming together with history—le© ist politics and the law, for example— 23 to make things happen. as concept stresses the partial connec- 24 Ahistorical tion with history—the way they are together and remain di± erent. e 25 also notion o event that I use has some similarity with Latour’s notion that I 26 paraphrased above. As in his laboratory stories, I see the event emerging in 27 the relation between other- than- humans and humans. e di± erence is that 28 rather than extending historicity to include nonhumans in events, follow- 29 ing Mariano’s stories, I extend eventfulness to earth- beings—entities whose 30 regimes o reality, and the practices that bring them about, unlike history or 31 science, do not require proo to a· rm their actuality. Certainly they cannot 32 persuade us that they exist; nevertheless, our incapacity to be persuaded o 33 their participation in making Mariano’s archive does not authorize the de- 34 nial o their being. Emerging from in- ayllu and state practices, Mariano’s 35 archive was ontologically complex—a historical object that would not have 36 existed without the ahistorical. And this complexity may su est that while 37
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runakuna shared our history, their lives also exceeded it. is excess was also 1 an event, albeit an ahistorical one. Mariano’s archive presses us to recognize 2 the eventfulness o the ahistorical; it also presses us beyond the archival time 3 and space o the modern state, including the postcolonial state i one were 4 to exist. 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Nazario Turpo, 2007. Trekking Ausangate and blowing k’intu. 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 INTERLUDE TWO NAZARIO TURPO 9 10 “THE ALTOMISAYOQ WHO TOUCHED HEAVEN” 11 12 13 I he had not walked the complaint against the hacienda, 14 he would have worked the chacra [plot]; i he had cared about the 15 herds, he could have had more to sell. He should not have wasted his 16 money ¨ ghting the hacendado. He walked in vain, when people did 17 not give him their quotas [to support his walks]; he killed his animals, 18 he sold his wool. He had to use his money for the trial, he had to pay 19 for his trips. I he had not fought the hacendado, he could have bought 20 land in the city—that was what my mother wanted. 21 NAZARIO TURPO December 2006 22 23 24 Mariano Turpo had four sons—no daughters. Nazario was the oldest and must 25 have been seven when his father began to walk the complaint. His memo- 26 ries o his father’s political activities start when he was a child: “[ e police] 27 always would come and search our house any time, always, always” (siempre 28 wasiykuman, ima ratupas chayamullaqpuni). Mariano, we already know, o© en 29 had to live in hiding. To the caves and inside the cracks in huge mountains that 30 were his father’s hiding places, Nazario took food—cooked potatoes almost 31 always, and soup at times—that his mother had prepared for his father. And 32 he also remembered that people organized their political meetings in those 33 same places to avoid the police and other hacienda people. “[Runakuna] also 34 made [their] assembly there; hiding at dark they all got together” (anchillapi 35 asanbleata ruyaq; pakallapi tuta unchay aqnallapi huñukunko). 36 Yet, unsettling my liberal desire for indigenous heroism, Nazario wished 37
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1 that Mariano had not walked the ayllu grievance. What did he do it for? e 2 landowner had le© , yet nothing else had changed. ey continued to be poor 3 and sonsos (stupid) runakuna, whom nobody respected. ey could not read 4 or write. ey could not ¨ nd jobs; selling wool from their herds never pro- 5 vided enough money for them to live on. ey had to work in the most ex- 6 treme conditions: the coldest temperatures in the snow- covered peaks where 7 they kept their animals, the hottest temperatures in the jungle where they 8 worked panning for gold, the dirtiest and hungriest conditions in the city 9 where they built houses or worked as servants and slept like animals—or 10 even worse. 11 Abandonment. is is the condition that best described my dear friend 12 Nazario’s life—even in his happiness. Yes, he was happy; his new job in tour- 13 ism as “Andean shaman” made him extraordinary among runakuna. But, as 14 Nazario knew, being lucky in his village did not protect him from occupy- 15 ing the space o evolutionary (in)existence implicitly reserved by the nation- 16 state for runakuna in Andean Peru. eir projected disappearance, and thus 17 their legal inclusion only through their exclusion, resulted from a state rule 18 composed o a sense o benevolence and inevitability. Countless times I have 19 been told, “We are doing our best, what else can be done with these people.” 20 Runakuna’s evolutionary (in)existence is normalized as a problem (in this 21 statement and similar ones) by two intertwined biopolitical assumptions 22 with ethical contours. One is the hegemonic perception o runakuna as in- 23 ferior, and therefore in dire need o assimilation—and help, o course (i we 24 are talking to good liberal citizens). e other is central politicians’ anxious 25 realization that this assimilation is tough, i not impossible. e anxiety is 26 at times soothed by le© ist political stru les for change in which runakuna 27 are imagined as followers, never as leaders. Mariano was a key participant in 28 one o those—yet only runakuna and the few mistis who came into direct 29 contact with him understood his centrality. Nazario was aware o all o this. 30 Yet his search for in- ayllulife also agreed with le© ist proposals; he was moti- 31 vated to attend their public demonstrations in the city o Cuzco, as well as 32 the inter- Andean indigenous meetings in Quito, La Paz, and Lima that have 33 become frequent in the regions since the late 1980s. But Nazario was not en- 34 gaged in modern le© ist politics the way his father had been. His skepticism 35 about organized politics had roots in his family story; in this respect he was 36 not unlike the sons and daughters o the generation o urban le© ist ¨ ghters 37 to which Mariano belonged.
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When Mariano walked the grievance, building a school was one o the 1 most important points in the ayllu agenda. Against the hacendado’s ¨ erce 2 opposition—he had even burned several huts that runakuna had set up to 3 function as classrooms—and under Mariano’s leadership, the ayllu managed 4 to exact an o· cial resolution that required the presence o an elementary 5 school teacher who would serve, among others, the village where the Turpos 6 lived. Ironically, but not surprisingly, Nazario could not attend classes: Dur- 7 ing the time o the hacienda, there was no time. We had to do the chacras, we 8 had to herd the animals. My father did not live here—[he traveled to] Cuzco, 9 Lima, Sicuani. 10 Nazario did read and write, but in a way that he quali¨ ed as “only a little 11 bit.” When the two o us were in the city o Cuzco together (and there were 12 plenty o those occasions), we would usually stop and read commercial signs; 13 some o them were in Spanish, and others were in Quechua. When we read 14 the ¨ rst, I would correct him; with the second, he would correct me. So he 15 could manage; he could also count in Spanish, sign his name, and take pre- 16 scriptions to the pharmacy and request the right drug. Still, it made him sad 17 that he had not gone to school, and he resented Mariano for it: He was use- 18 less for us; for the people he was useful, not for us. And Nazario went on to re- 19 member a discussion between his parents. His mother wanted Mariano to 20 sever his ayllu relationship, to sell what animals they had—it was not a small 21 herd at the time, Nazario recalled—and with the money move to the city o 22 Cuzco, buy a lot there (land was not expensive back then), and start a new 23 life. I already recounted Mariano’s version o this same story: when the ayllu 24 requested that he walk the grievance, Modesta, his wife, pleaded with him 25 not to accept and proposed that they leave. Mariano responded that they had 26 nowhere to go, that the ayllu o other places would not accept them. Modesta 27 was right, Nazario thought, as did his brother Benito; they had gained noth- 28 ing in ¨ ghting the hacendado. 29 Not even the ayllu had gained; the governments had never cared for runa- 30 kuna. e agrarian reform was proo o that. In Nazario’s view, Juan Velasco 31 satisµ ed us a bit, he was with us. Velasco was the president who declared the 32 agrarian reform, a moment when, according to Nazario, runakuna could stop 33 walking at night as i it were daytime. e cooperative was a dream come 34 true; but it went sour very quickly: At that point we runakuna organized our- 35 selves. e cooperative came in . . . we managed the seeds, the pastures, the oats. 36 e barbed wire [used to keep runakuna o± hacienda land], the irrigation 37
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1 canals, the sheep. ey gave us all that, it came into our hands. But the Ministry 2 o Agriculture also learned [the hacendado’s ways]. ey arrived and stole the 3 sheep, they also sold the moraya and chuño. We made cheese to sell, but they came 4 and took it away. ey would say: we are supervising you, taking care o you, we 5 manage everything, we are on your side. e mistikuna became the owners o the 6 cooperative. ey got drunk, they sold the sheep and cattle without our authori- 7 zation. at is how everything became neglected. 8 Because it was a cooperative, runakuna were part o the directiva (board 9 o directors). In 1980 Nazario became president o the board, and simulta- 10 neously runakuna advocated for the distribution o the property among all 11 the ayllus that the agrarian reform had transformed into members o the co- 12 operative and o· cially named Peasant Communities.¼ Nazario remembered 13 that runakuna members o the cooperative put me up [for president] because 14 my father had fought for the land. ey charged him with the daunting task o 15 legally undoing the cooperative to enable the distribution o land, animals, 16 and assets among its members—the ayllus, under their o· cial designation 17 as Peasant Communities. is involved paperwork and negotiations with 18 regional state authorities. Not surprisingly, the state bureaucracy strongly 19 opposed runakuna’s project, and on several occasions o· cials attempted to 20 bribe Nazario to turn against the ayllu mandate to dismantle the cooperative. 21 Under pressure from both sides, Nazario resigned his position as president o 22 the board. He attributed his political failure to his lack o literacy: I could not 23 read; they read for me. I I could have read, maybe I could have fought better. A 24 few years later, joining a strong anti- cooperative regional movement, runa- 25 kuna managed to distribute among themselves everything that had once be- 26 longed to the hacienda. All the land was distributed to each ayllu (or, rather, 27 Peasant Community) according to the number o families that composed 28 it. In the years that followed, the land was further divided as the number o 29 families grew. Now there is no more land to distribute. Our children, they also 30 want land, but there is no land for the ones that are coming a er. 31 32 33 “We Have So Many Problems That We Would Die 34 before We Finish Talking about Them” 35 36 Criticism o his father did not mean that Nazario was indi± erent to the 37 misery o runakuna life. He was known for being liso like his father: relent-
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Some members of Nazario’s family, preparing food for tirakuna and runakuna. 21 The adults are, from left to right, Rufino (Nazario’s oldest son), Nélida 22 (Rufino’s wife), Vicky (one of Nazario’s daughters), Liberata (Nazario’s wife), 23 Benito (Nazario’s brother), and Nazario. The children are Rufino’s and 24 Nélida’s: José Hernán, Nazario’s oldest and beloved grandchild; 25 and Marcela, then two years old. August 2005. 26 27 lessly bold when confronting local state representatives and denouncing their 28 abuses. On one occasion he and some relatives spent several weeks ¨ ghting 29 the posta médica (the public health local clinic), the police station, and the 30 justice o the peace—all o them at once. ey had all colluded to acquit a 31 murderer in a con´ ict among runakuna. e medics at the station signed an 32 autopsy declaring the death to be “natural,” the police pretended not to have 33 seen the dead body that had been wounded with an ax, and the judge agreed 34 with them all. Yes, local representatives were the cause o major local misfor- 35 tunes, but the blame was widely distributed; it went far beyond the local state 36 because, in Nazario’s view, there is no law, never ever, for us anywhere. Runa- 37
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1 kuna’s living conditions were extreme in Nazario’s analysis, and the reason 2 was that the state had abandoned them: Here the people and everything else is 3 forgotten, le alone. Our animals die because there is no pasture, our herds can- 4 not grow. We live sad lives, we eat very little, we live in µ lth. ere is no water, 5 the water that we have is dirty. at dirty water is not good for us or for the ani- 6 mals, we drink that water and we all get sick. 7 And, o course, Nazario wanted what the state includes in its notion o 8 development: a real road instead o the dirt path that gets washed away every 9 rainy season, irrigation for dry pastures, a school building with real windows 10 and desks where children could actually learn. And he wanted these things 11 for all those who live in the alturas (the heights)—all runakuna, not only 12 himsel or those in Pacchanta (mana chay Phacchantallapichu, pasaq alturan- 13 piqa). In my words: Nazario’s profound desire was to replace the biopolitics 14 o abandonment with one that, rather than letting runakuna die (and slowly 15 at that, almost as i through biological extinction), would acknowledge that 16 their lives mattered, even i the acknowledgement was only in economic 17 terms. e immediate concern was material survival: winters were too cold 18 and droughts were an impending threat every year. To be recognized in the 19 terms o the nation- state, which were and continue to be those o benevo- 20 lent social inclusion, was better than to die ignored—better than to bear the 21 abandonment imposed on them by the state. 22 O course, the terms that the state could use to o± er runakuna some in- 23 clusion actually ignored their world (for example, the ayllu as relational exis- 24 tence o runakuna and those other- than- human entities, the all- important 25 earth- beings). But this was a di± erent concern—one that in 2004, when we 26 were having this conversation, was not as urgent as the materiality o below- 27 zero temperatures and droughts that starved the soil and with it humans, 28 animals, and plants. Runakuna could survive without state recognition o 29 their world. Had they not done so for many years? Nazario convinced me 30 then that Ausangate, Wayna Ausangate, Sacsayhuaman are not going to die 31 i the government does not greet them. [But] Runakuna are going to die i the 32 government does not help us with water for the plants and animals and medi- 33 cines. But two years later, when a mining corporation expressed its interest in 34 prospecting for gold in the mountain chain that Ausangate presides over, we 35 both learned that the o· cial disregard o earth- beings had become a matter 36 o concern—they were not safe from the consequences o the state politics 37 o abandonment (see de la Cadena 2010).
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Runakuna had conversed with the colonial state—early modern and mod- 1 ern—for centuries. roughout the twentieth century, the Peruvian state 2 had recognized the indigenous inhabitants o the nation as collective, rural, 3 and illiterate Peruvians; we may think o those as the state’s terms. e early 4 constitutions o 1920 and 1933 recognized Andean indigenous rights to col- 5 lective agricultural property. e agrarian reform in 1969 and its slogan o 6 “Peasant, the patrón will not eat o± o your poverty any more!” culminated 7 this process, which also changed the terms o recognition from “indigenous” 8 to “peasant.” In 1979 a constitutional decree extended the right to the illiter- 9 ate population to elect national o· cials, which meant that many runakuna 10 could now vote. is recognition signi¨ cantly changed runakuna participa- 11 tion in o· cial political life, and the change was felt both regionally and na- 12 tionally. Before it was the mistikuna only who elected presidents, only they had a 13 libreta electoral [national identiµ cation card]. Now we also vote, we are more, 14 we are the majority. Now we peasants have a will [or have power] even i we 15 are sonso and illiterate; we are now the ones who can elect, we have libreta. Li- 16 breta: Nazario used the word in Spanish. Signi¨ cantly, there is no equivalent 17 in Quechua for this word which refers to the national identi¨ cation card, a 18 document that indicates full citizenship and the right to participate in elec- 19 tions at the national, regional, and local levels. 20 Nazario Turpo had participated in several national elections, but when I 21 met him in 2002, he was very hopeful about the opportunities that the newly 22 elected president potentially o± ered. Alejandro Toledo had come to power in 23 2001, and according to electoral propaganda he was runakuna- hina (like ru- 24 nakuna), and an obvious local choice for president. In Pacchanta, Nazario or- 25 ganized meetings to discuss the opportunity o electing someone who might 26 ¨ nally listen to runakuna claims. But a few years later, he was concerned that 27 things would go awry: We did not give him our vote so that he could abandon 28 us like the [other presidents] did; we have elected him so that he would look a er 29 us. I he is going to change all he said, i he is not going to follow what he said he 30 would do, i he is going to deny the peasants [kampesinuta niganqa], we will 31 not elect him again. 32 In fact, the disappointment was deep because the hopes had been unusu- 33 ally high. Peru joined the neoliberal worldwide trend in the 1990s. In 1993 a 34 new constitution demarcated family possessions within collective properties 35 and opened the possibility o the privatization o communally owned land. 36 At the same time, it extended “ethnic rights” to citizens marked as others; 37
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1 accordingly, those that were “culturally di± erent” had the right to their cul- 2 ture and to their di± erence (within the limits o what the state could recog- 3 nize as culture and as di± erent, o course). Toledo’s election represented a 4 potential renewal o the policies o multiculturalism, which could also mean 5 the novel possibility o using the idea o “ethnic rights” to counter abandon- 6 ment policies. For some Peruvians (including Nazario and me), this could be 7 a mighty historical national moment. When Alejandro Toledo was inaugu- 8 rated, the Comunidad Andina de Naciones (the Community o Andean Na- 9 tions) issued the Declaration o Machu Picchu about Democracy, Indige- 10 nous Peoples’ Rights, and the Stru le against Poverty that was signed by the 11 presidents o all member countries. at same day Toledo presided over an 12 extraordinary event in Machu Picchu, the Incan citadel. (Nazario attended 13 the event and I will say much more about it in the next story.) But it soon 14 became clear that the new president’s a· nity with runakuna was only physi- 15 cal; ultimately, he did not address their abandonment. e state continued 16 to “deny peasants” (kampesinuta niganqa), as Nazario put it in a phrase in 17 which he used Spanish words (campesino, or peasant, and negar, or deny) 18 with Quechua su· xes. e phrase does not need explanation; Nazario made 19 it clear to me that he was talking about the denial o peasants’ recognition 20 in terms o their obvious rights as humans—terms that the state should be 21 able to recognize. He was not even talking about “ethnic rights,” which, while 22 recognizable by the state, can also manifest a contention. us, it would have 23 been politically foolish to think that the state would recognize the terms o 24 ayllu. He ¨ gured that I probably did not agree, but he (and the runakuna) 25 were so convinced that, i I had a di± erent opinion, I should not insist; and 26 that, to my embarrassment, was end o conversation. 27 Furthermore, Nazario engaged the state in its own terms because those 28 terms, insu· cient and inadequate as they were to discern the radically dif- 29 ferent in- ayllu world, were also runakuna’s terms. In fact, using those terms 30 runakuna had achieved certain demands through political stru les: for lit- 31 eracy, land, paid labor, and direct access to the wool market. Mariano’s life 32 had been about that; he had engaged the state to change its terms, and nec- 33 essarily, within the state’s ontological and epistemic possibilities. But runa- 34 kuna were also aware that their life, the world their practices enact, fell be- 35 yond the terms o the state—they exceeded those terms at all times. And 36 during the ¨ rst decade o the twenty- ¨ rst century, challenging those terms 37 was becoming historically urgent, to the point where the challenge could be-
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come evident to non- runakuna. It was also evident that the political stamina 1 and the conceptual material for such challenge could come only from runa- 2 kuna’s world, and more precisely from that excess that the modern state is, 3 by de¨ nition (that is, resulting from its historical ontology), incapable o ac- 4 knowledging. Runakuna are certainly familiar with the imponderability o 5 the limits between them and the state; their incommensurability is obvious 6 to runakuna, and until recently they did not even bother to pursue recogni- 7 tion in anything but the state’s terms. at this form o recognition amounts 8 to the denial (or trivialization in the best o cases) o the practices that make 9 the runakuna’s world is clear in Pacchanta; it is also a source o rage and o 10 feelings o inferiority. Nazario tirelessly repeated that runakuna were sonsos 11 and illiterate, and he used these adjectives to describe himself. is inferiority 12 is an irrefutable feeling; yet it is only relative to the terms o the state, which 13 while dominant does not occupy all o runakuna’s existence: ose who read 14 and write own the will with their knowledge. We, the peasants are also taking 15 care o the animals, working the plots, making the k’intuyuq for the Apukuna, 16 making our clothing—we are, we have knowledges. We are equal [igual kashan- 17 chis]. We do not have many words, we do not have much instrucción [school- 18 ing], but within the peasants there are other knowledges. ey [nonrunakuna] 19 do not have our things. We are equal. 20 And I was included in this condition, one in which di± erent skills made 21 us even, or equal, as Nazario said: You do not know how to read coca; we do not 22 know how to read books. We are equal. He used the Spanish word for equal, 23 igual, as i to counter the state’s terms—those that make runakuna inferior, 24 and o which literacy and a university degree is a part. All o this is obvious: 25 the state recognizes reading books and disregards reading coca leaves (or con- 26 siders the practice folklore). And Nazario was also aware o the historical 27 powers that organized this asymmetry o course. 28 A reminder: As I explained in story 1, Cuzco is an indigenous- mestizo 29 geopolitical and socionatural region. Rather than a “mixture o two cultures 30 yielding a third one” (indigenous and Spanish resulting in mestizo), indige- 31 nous and nonindigenous are integral parts o each other; they emerge in each 32 other. Yet this does not cancel the daily practices that distinguish one from 33 the other through hierarchies that coincide with a racial- cultural taxonomy 34 according to which, mistis are superior to runakuna. e latter appear in the 35 regional structure o feelings (Williams 1977) as “Indians” the embodiment 36 o wretchedness. e feeling o being less vis- à-vis non- Indians was intrinsic 37
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1 to Nazario’s life. His experience o relative equality when he le© Peru was a 2 surprise to him. He felt it during his ¨ rst trip to Washington, D.C., when he 3 was going to join the curatorial team for the Quechua Community exhibit 4 at the National Museum o the American Indian. In the airplane, they al- 5 lowed me to sit like everybody else, they gave me the same food they gave every- 6 body, and, as he said, his life changed from that point on. is change meant 7 the possibility o earning a salary to a± ord medicines and notebooks for his 8 grandchildren, to be able to buy fruit from the lowlands for his family—but 9 not much more. 10 11 12 Neoliberal Multiculturalism: 13 The Market Recognizes Andean Culture 14 15 In December 2011—four years a© er Nazario died—I searched for his name 16 on the Internet. More than ¨ © y entries appeared. Some included his picture, 17 others sold it. Some gave accurate details about his life, others invented titles 18 for him, like “Keeper o the Sacred Waters o the Holy Mountain, Asangate 19 [sic], and member o a Smithsonian Indigenous Peruvian Delegation visit- 20 ing Washington DC” (Sanda n.d.). Others warmly re´ ect on his friendship 21 and teachings (Kaye n.d.). I have included some quotes from these web pages 22 here. ere was no doubt that my friend was at the epicenter o a tourist 23 boom that marketed “indigenous Cuzqueño culture” more successfully than 24 ever before. Considered the cradle o the Inca Empire, “precolonial Cuzco” 25 has been a tourist attraction and a source o urban income in the region since 26 the mid- twentieth century; nevertheless, investing in and marketing present- 27 day “Andean culture” became a pro¨ table venture only in post– Shining Path 28 Peru.½ Although perhaps counterintuitive, the commoditization o things 29 deemed ethnic should not surprise anybody; it is only in step with the times. 30 I in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the civilizing mission o liber- 31 alism required cultural sameness and proposed creating citizens and assimi- 32 lating lesser populations via education, in the twenty- ¨ rst century neoliber- 33 alism continues the proposal for assimilation but no longer requires cultural 34 sameness. Accordingly, education has ceased to be the all- important path 35 to citizenship that it once was. e expansion o civilization, some say, cur- 36 rently depends on the expansion o property rights and access to capitalist 37 ¨ nancial markets.¾ Cultural di± erence is no longer a biopolitical hindrance.
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1 2 DON NAZARIO TURPO CONDORI 3 4 “Don Nazario Turpo Condori was the son o the known and respected Alto 5 Misayoq [sic] Don Mariano Turpo, from the great Mount Ausangate in 6 southern Peru. ey both worked dedicated [sic] to share the wisdom o the 7 Andean tradition, both in Peru and travelling abroad. Don Nazario carried 8 the heart and wisdom o this magical place on Mother Earth, where condors 9 ´ y and the contact between heaven and earth are so close, that lightning 10 strike [sic] from the holy Lake Azul Cocha (4,700 meters) into the skies 11 above.”Á 12 13 14 15 16 Rather, it is both a political asset (which states ´ aunt as proo o the up- to- 17 dateness o their representative democracies) and an economic asset—for 18 “ethnic groups,” the state, corporations, and individuals as well. Freeing citi- 19 zenship from the requirement o cultural sameness—and relieving the state 20 o its obligation to educate its populations—was an important condition for 21 a market expansion o which neoliberal multiculturalism was both an instru- 22 ment and a consequence. 23 Nazario’s tourism business was a result o multiculturalism, but his en- 24 gagement with the market was not new. When he was younger, Nazario sold 25 wool to help the income o his parental household. At that time, runakuna’s 26 herds were larger, there was more pasture for grazing, and they had more 27 wool to sell; this was not insigni¨ cant, as prices for wool were higher. Now 28 herds and pasture have shrunk, probably due to droughts and population 29 growth, and tourism has replaced the former ubiquitous wool merchants; in 30 their stead, hundreds o travelers from di± erent parts o the world reach re- 31 mote corners o the Andes and the Amazon—places like Pacchanta—to con- 32 sume what they see as indigenous culture. Due to Mariano’s reputation as a 33 yachaq, his household (as the web pages comment) occupies a prime place in 34 a tourist circuit that considers them heirs o a unique shamanic legacy. e 35 Turpos are among the lucky ones, though; uniqueness is what the tourist 36 market buys, and most runakuna are perceived as ordinary. Nazario was able 37
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1 2 3 NAZARIO TURPO, PERUVIAN PAQO (SHAMAN) [SIC] 4 5 “A paqo [sic] is the person who has learned how to converse with the apus, 6 the forces stirring in the mountains and valleys, dominating everyday life. 7 Nazario could read the sacred geography that is always impinging decisively 8 on the familiar human landscape. Being a paqo is a gi© , a calling that very few 9 receive. Nazario was slow in taking to his father’s path as a paqo. It happened 10 only a© er he had turned forty, when a bolt o lightning le© him unconscious 11 on an Andean trail. Such an extraordinary event is interpreted as a favorable 12 sign from the apus, and Nazario’s life changed. His father, Mariano, took him 13 high in the mountains for a week a© er that and began the rituals o puri¨ - 14 cation and training that would gradually transform Nazario into a paqo.”Ç 15 16 17 18 19 to recognize his good fortune: Since I went to Washington I am like this, by 20 which he meant happier. His new career was a good surprise. It placed him in 21 a better position to endure the long-standing policies o state abandonment 22 that even his father’s tenacity had failed to abate. 23 Apparently, the market rather than the state is currently in charge o rec- 24 ognizing di± erence—or the state has delegated the task to the market, pro- 25 moting the exchange o money for cultural objects and practices. While I was 26 in Pacchanta, I used to talk about this with a dear friend that the Turpos and 27 I had in common and who is a Jesuit priest, Padre Antonio. We both disliked 28 this market arrangement, but for di± erent reasons. He thought that mar- 29 ket exchanges would deauthenticate indigenous practices. “Mariano would 30 not have done what Nazario is doing,” he used to tell me. “When people do 31 it for the money, it is not real anymore.” Yes, it was obvious that Nazario 32 needed the money, but I disagreed: Mariano would have done what Naza- 33 rio was doing. In fact, he did do it, i not with the frequency Nazario’s job 34 demanded, but this did not make Mariano’s practice inauthentic. is is im- 35 possible: when someone with suerte—like Nazario or Mariano—engages in 36 practices with earth- beings, these practices are always consequential in many 37 ways, with or without the mediation o money. Earth- beings do not require
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“authenticity” or human beliefs to establish their reality: they are in relations 1 with runakuna, and anything runakuna do and say in their respect is con- 2 sequential—it makes the rapport and brings all its components into being. 3 is Padre Antonio doubted, probably a© er his training in modern the- 4 ology or as a practitioner o Catholicism. He argued that those practices were 5 spurious; they did not derive from a true belie in earth- beings. “ ey do it for 6 money, it’s not real,” he repeated stubbornly. But for Nazario, beliefs are a re- 7 quirement with Jesus and the Virgin. ey are part o faith, or iñi, a Quechua 8 word (and a sixteenth- century neologism).È Faith, he explained, is not neces- 9 sary with earth- beings; they require despachos, coca leaves, and words and are 10 present when respectfully invited to participate in runakuna lives—always. 11 ey are di± erent, always there and acting with plants, water, animals. eir 12 being does not need to be mediated by faith, but Jesus’s does. And just as 13 Padre Antonio and I talked about Nazario, Nazario and I commented about 14 how our dear Padre thought practices with earth- beings were like religion, 15 like belie or kriyihina—another combination o a Spanish verb (kriyi is the 16 Quechua form o the Spanish creer, to believe) and a Quechua su· x (hina, 17 or like) used to express a condition that Quechua alone cannot convey. Na- 18 zario thought earth- beings and Jesus were di± erent, but he was not sure that 19 Antonio was wrong: could they be the same? And ¨ nally, neither Nazario 20 nor I were sure that Padre Antonio’s relationship with earth- beings was only 21 like his relationship with Jesus. We speculated that having been in the re- 22 gion for so long, and having been a close friend o Mariano, Padre Antonio 23 must have learned from Mariano’s relations with earth- beings. I still think so; 24 Padre Antonio is a complex religious man, and so are the other Jesuits who 25 live in the region. Some o their Catholic practices may have become partially 26 connected with despachos, and thus less than many and still di± erent. I liked, 27 and still do like, having these priests as friends. 28 One thing the three o us agreed on was that practices with earth- beings 29 have changed signi¨ cantly due to tourism and its material- semiotic power in 30 the region, as well as its in´ uence over the runakuna world. Interacting with 31 earth- beings through the tourist market has added unexpected scenarios 32 and actors that altered long- standing regional socio- natural landscapes and 33 assumptions. Signi¨ cant among these are the now ubiquitous visibility o 34 interactions with earth- beings and coca readings and the notable heteroge- 35 neity o its practitioners. Currently in Cuzco, individuals who identify them- 36 selves as mestizo or white have (thanks to tourism) shed the shame associated 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Padre Antonio with Mariano, Nazario, and Luz Marina (Nazario’s granddaughter) 19 blowing k’intu, November 2003. 20 21 22 with addressing earth- beings and now openly engage in despachos. I have 23 already mentioned this practice, but a quick reminder may be in order. Des- 24 pacho is an indigenous practice through which humans send goods (money, 25 food, seeds, ´ owers, animals, medicine) to earth-beings. (I explain more 26 about despachos in story 6, but sending is an appropriate word to describe 27 the practice; in fact, that is what the Spanish verb despachar means.) Naza- 28 rio had met many o these individuals and had even taught some o them 29 what the despacho and proper relations with earth- beings entailed. Some 30 o the authors o the web pages I quote here started their relationship with 31 earth- beings as tourists. ey translate interactions with earth- beings from 32 the various local grammars and materialities where they learned about them 33 into their own local grammars and material worlds. And I would venture a 34 guess that i a despacho is enacted in translation, what results is a partial con- 35 nection: not the same practice, but also not an altogether di± erent one. Na- 36 zario was critical o a few o these non-runakuna practitioners. ey were not 37 learning well, they only became activosos, he said, inventing a word in Span-
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1 2 “During my travels, I met and bonded with an Illa Paccu, or spiritual guide, 3 named Nazario Turpo, a wise, humble farmer and community leader. He 4 has since made his transition, but I continue to experience his guidance and 5 loving hand in my life. He taught me many things: to see the internal, not 6 the external; to witness what is communicated through spirit; to watch from 7 my heart, not with my eyes; to let go o attachments; to let the wyra (wind) 8 blow through me; to follow my calling, even i I don’t feel prepared; that I 9 have everything I need to make a di± erence; to be my own teacher; to listen 10 to my instincts; and that I already have the answers.”Ê 11 12 13 14 15 ish that could mean something like “needlessly active” in English. I think he 16 meant that they were trying too hard, doing too many useless things, saying 17 too many words, or adding ine± ective ingredients to the despacho. At other 18 times he was concerned that they would not know how to properly send a 19 despacho, or that they would lie and say they could do things that they could 20 not. What concerned him in these cases was that mistakes or lies could a± ect 21 the senders’ relations with earth- beings. But the notion o an “inauthentic” 22 despacho, implying a deviation from an original in such a way that made a 23 despacho inconsequential (which was a concern o tourists, travel agents, and 24 some Cuzco urbanites), was not something I heard from him. ere were 25 good despachos and bad despachos—and the latter could have bad conse- 26 quences. ere were also ine± ective despachos—a© er they were sent, noth- 27 ing good or bad happened as a consequence. But in no case did I hear him 28 critique a despacho as lacking authenticity.É 29 What do I think? I follow Nazario but only to an extent, because my own 30 relationship with earth- beings, albeit mediated by his friendship, is di± er- 31 ent from his. I do not have the means to access them like he did; I do not 32 know tirakuna, and cannot enact them. Instead I know—and can enact— 33 mountains, rivers, lakes, or lagoons. But I can also acknowledge the com- 34 plexity o these entities as earth- beings/nature (at once di± erent from each 35 other and the same as each other) that straddle the world o runakuna and 36 the world I am most familiar with. Earth- beings/nature have become con- 37
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1 spicuously public in the Andes as a result o their participation in economic, 2 political, and cultural events in the region and in the country. Tourism is one 3 o these events, especially prominent in Cuzco; a few others are corporate 4 mining, indigenous social movements, the election o Evo Morales as presi- 5 dent o Bolivia, and global warming. In all o these circuits, practices with 6 earth- beings/nature are a myriad and heterogeneous—they can be mediated 7 by despachos or not, and the despachos may be o all sorts. And these prac- 8 tices, as well as the earth- beings/nature are also o© en coordinated (many 9 times controversially) into a complex singularity where what is not the same 10 (that is, what diverges from sameness) is explained as belief—relevant or ir- 11 relevant, but subordinate to the reality o nature. is singularization is ef- 12 fected through heterogeneous interactions and techniques: regional word 13 o mouth, cultural institutions, the tourist market, anthropology, web pages 14 and other media, political discussions, and so on. is list may be endless, and 15 it is diverse in purpose and technique.Î Earth- beings/nature equally mobi- 16 lized the former president o Peru, Alan García, to deny their reality in 2011, 17 and the authors o the web pages that I quote here to assert their presence, 18 but usually as spiritual entities. 19 In their disparity, both positions engage and produce the complexity o 20 earth- beings/nature. ese entities forced the former president (against his 21 will) to slow down the development o corporate mining in Peru—even i 22 ephemerally, his relation with earth- beings/nature was consequential. O 23 course, circuits that translate practices with these entities can also take them 24 somewhere else, detach them from their in- ayllu coordination, and trans- 25 form them into a di± erent event—a practice that, with followers in its own 26 right, could be an invention capable o consequences. But in either case— 27 either via a president’s attempts to coordinate earth- beings into the singu- 28 larity o universal nature, or translated into a di± erent practice—the reality 29 that may result from relations with earth- beings/nature does not require the 30 assertion o belief. Ironically, García’s incredulity, simultaneously powerful 31 and ine· cacious, is exemplary in this respect: the former president’s irate dis- 32 belie added to the assemblage that makes the complex entity earth- beings/ 33 nature, and public at that. I have not talked to Padre Antonio since García’s 34 infamous remark, but perhaps I would have convinced him that, when it 35 comes to earth- beings, believing is not the only thing that matters, for dis- 36 belie is also consequential—two sides o the same coin. Notwithstanding 37 our di± erences, Padre Antonio and I share feelings about the super¨ cial rec-
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1 2 EDUCATION AGAINST SUPERSTITION, 3 A PRESIDENTIAL PROPOSAL 4 5 Extremely irritated by the public presence o earth-beings, Alan García 6 (president o Peru, 2006–11) sentenced: “[What we need to do is to] defeat 7 those absurd and pantheistic ideologies who believe the mountains are gods 8 and the wind is god. [ ese beliefs] mean a return to those primitive forms 9 o religiosity that say ‘do not touch that mountain because it is an Apu, be- 10 cause it is replete with millenarian spirit’ . . . and what have you. . . . Well, i 11 that is where we are, then let’s do nothing. Not even mining . . . we return 12 to primitive forms o animism. [To defeat that] we need more education.”¼Ï 13 14 15 16 17 ognition that runakuna get through market interactions. eir cultural arti- 18 facts and practices have a price, but their lives have no value; this certainty 19 was the subject o many intense conversations we had in the priest’s house 20 in Ocongate. e tourist market does not repair roads—let alone the roads 21 that runakuna use—or control the condition o the public transportation 22 vehicles that circulate on them. It does not increase teachers’ salaries, either. 23 e con´ uence o all these things—bad roads, badly maintained vehicles, 24 and a public teachers’ strike—resulted in the tra· c accident that killed Na- 25 zario. e tourist market ignores and thus continues the centuries- old state 26 policies o abandonment; neoliberal multiculturalism is not concerned with 27 those policies, either. e cultural recognition that the tourist market grants 28 is only a transaction, an ephemeral economic relationship that continues to 29 ignore runakuna existence, while consuming their practices for what tour- 30 ists is insigni¨ cant exchanges o money and perhaps some sincere emotion. 31 32 The End of Nazario’s Life 33 34 When Nazario died he was probably the only very well- known monolingual 35 Quechua runa in Peru—and he also had friends abroad. Newspapers and 36 glossy magazines—in Lima, as well as in Cuzco—published the news o his 37
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1 death. I reproduce a piece with the news in ¨ gure P.3 (p. xx); from it, I have 2 borrowed the title for this interlude. I did not have to wait for the published 3 news: several friends from Cuzco sent me messages as soon as they heard. 4 Padre Antonio sent me the message below—I may have lost the quality o his 5 stern warmth in this English translation, but he will forgive me. e subject 6 line read, “Greetings with sad news,” and the message continued: 7 8 9 10 GREETINGS WITH SAD NEWS . . . 11 Dear Marisol, 12 13 To begin with, a warm hello after such a long silence. I hope you and your 14 family are well. The reason for this message is to communicate sad news. 15 On Monday, close to 10 p.m., a bus from Ocongate had an accident, close 16 to Saylla, almost having arrived at Cuzco. Thirteen people died, and around 17 twenty-five were wounded. Nazario Turpo is among the dead. I do not give 18 you the other names because you may not know them. Today at noon there 19 were still five bodies waiting to be identified at the morgue—among them 20 Nazario’s. Rufino [Nazario’s oldest son] arrived a little before 1 p.m. with his 21 wife. Some relatives and people from Pacchanta were waiting there. There 22 were also people from Cuzco who wanted to take Nazario’s body to the Co- 23 legio Médico [the physicians’ professional association] to have a wake there. 24 They said that because many people knew him, they wanted to say farewell 25 to him. Tomorrow, they will take him all the way to Pacchanta. They would rent 26 a microbus for those from the community in Cuzco—I do not know what they 27 ended up deciding. I left. In addition to possible excess speed, the accident 28 happened because the bus hit some stones that had been left in the middle of 29 the road, as part of a blockade organized by the public school teachers’ strike. 30 This is what the driver’s assistant told me; he is injured and at the Hospital 31 Regional. The strike continues today, and everything suggests it will continue 32 tomorrow. Transportation is paralyzed; everybody, including the tourists who 33 have arrived at the airport, is traveling by foot, walking from place to place. 34 I hope that late this afternoon I will be able to drive to Urcos, so that tomor- 35 row, first thing in the morning, I can go up to Ocongate where we will have the 36 funeral and the burial. I ask you for a prayer for Nazario and the other dead, 37 and for the injured and all relatives. Yesterday, there were a lot of people at the
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morgue. Today as well—as I already mentioned. If there is anything else you 1 want to know, let me know—I am in a hurry now. 2 3 A warm hug, 4 Antonio 5 6 7 8 In April 2007—only three months before he died—I accompanied Naza- 9 rio on a trekking tour with North American travelers around Ausangate. 10 e tour was sprinkled with despachos, coca readings, and the translations 11 that articulate what I would call global South mysticism. On the ¨ rst day o 12 the trek, early in the morning, we arrived at what the itinerary described as 13 ‘Mariano Turpo’s altar’. I had been there before: it is a place o breathtaking 14 beauty—a small bit o ´ atness amid gigantic peaks, facing a small green- blue 15 glacial lake, located at more than 4,500 meters above sea level. (I chose a pic- 16 ture o the place for the frontispiece o this book—Nazario is looking at the 17 lake.) Before starting one o the ceremonies listed in the itinerary, Nazario 18 said to his boss, the owner o the tourist agency, who was also with us: Doc- 19 tor, Víctor Hugo, Ruµ no, Aquiles, they accompany me [when I work], thus they 20 learn what I do, how to make our requests to the earth- beings. ey learn how 21 to do it. I may get sick or can go on a trip, or I can be working with other groups. 22 Víctor Hugo knows and he can replace me. us our group will not be worried 23 . and Auqui [the tourist agency] will not be embarrassed 24 He went on to describe where we were—his father’s , the place from mesa 25 where Mariano preferred to send despachos to Ausangate—and how tourists 26 initially came to this remote corner, and how he learned from his father: Doc- 27 tor, this was my father’s mesa. I continue here. Many years ago big groups came 28 and my father hosted them, with Victor Nuñez del Prado and Américo Yábar, 29 they came. at was when I was young; I helped my father. I was like Aquiles 30 who is helping me now. When I was his helper I asked him: “What shall I do, 31 how much shall I do?” Now Aquiles is doing the same thing, he is accompany- 32 . ing me 33 Juan Víctor Nuñez del Prado is a very well known anthropologist; Amé- 34 rico Yábar is the son o a prominent landowner. Together they pioneered 35 the now- booming business o ) in Cuzco, and turismo místico (mystic tourism 36 visiting Mariano is how they started—I tell more about this in the story 5. 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 What I would call the big rock described for trekkers 20 as “Mariano’s altar.” April 2005. 21 22 23 But in any event, this conversation was premonitory. At Nazario’s death, 24 both his household and Auqui Mountain Spirit—the agency for which he 25 worked—needed a successor: the household had to replace Nazario’s income, 26 and the agency needed to continue attracting tourists. At the time o his 27 speech Nazario’s concern was, pragmatically, one o income: his sons could 28 bene¨ t from a salary for each o their households. For this to happen, he 29 needed to convince both his employer and his would- be successors. Auqui’s 30 owner had to be persuaded that Nazario’s sons—including his son- in- law— 31 could do the work. And Nazario had to convince Víctor Hugo, Ru¨ no, and 32 Aquiles that working as Andean shamans was di· cult, but the risk it im- 33 plied could be controlled; it was a matter o doing things properly vis- à- vis 34 both tourists and earth-beings. Víctor Hugo, Ru¨ no, and Aquiles needed to 35 come along and watch what he did and did not do; they had to learn how to 36 do things properly, like they did them at home, but also in accord with the 37 pace and aesthetics o tourism. At stake in the relationship with earth- beings
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Victor Hugo looking at his mesa. These objects—some of them earth-beings and 19 others presented to him by earth-beings—make possible both his despachos 20 and his job as an Andean shaman. September 2007. 21 22 was the well- being o their household: crops, animals, businesses, children, 23 and adults. e tourists also had to be on good terms with the earth- beings. 24 When Nazario died, the owner o the tourist agency complied with Naza- 25 rio’s request to hire his relatives, both because he was—and still is—a savvy 26 and dynamic entrepreneur who understood the aura that circumstances had 27 created around Nazario, and also because as a Cuzqueño brought up in the 28 countryside (like many current urbanites) he too participated in the relation- 29 ship with earth-beings, even i he would mention it only in the intimacy o 30 friendship. 31 Convincing his relatives was not easy, though. When I ¨ rst met Nazario 32 in 2002, Víctor Hugo, his son- in- law (a man from a neighboring village), 33 had already learned to send despachos from his own father, but he did not 34 want to send them for tourists. Ru¨ no’s case was similar: he did not want to 35 work for tourists, although having watched Mariano and Nazario since he 36 was a child, he knew how to send despachos. Nazario told me: Ruµ no is not 37
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1 learning how to work with tourists. He gets scared. He never asks me about it. I 2 ask him: “Maybe you could do [despachos?]” [He says:] “No, Dad, you do them, 3 I will just be with you.” I think that i he does not want this thing, it is not his 4 luck. Not even my child will I force. Maybe there is another luck for him. Per- 5 haps his wife has a diª erent thought; perhaps my son has a diª erent thought. I 6 I force [him] it would not be good—even i I am wanting to . . . it may not be 7 good. Maybe later on things will not go well. Anything can go wrong when he 8 is working like me: maybe his animals will get sick, maybe his wife will get sick. 9 [Doing what I do] is not easy [anchay, manan facilchu]. I he would ask me I 10 would teach him gladly. 11 What his sons did was to accompany Nazario and learn from his conver- 12 sations with tourists. At times they would inform the tourists about their 13 agricultural and herding activities, and most o© en they answered questions 14 about their allegedly timeless customs: ey already know to tell about our 15 clothes, ruins, our plots. . . . We all work in the plots, so they know. But they did 16 not know how to send despachos or read coca leaves. Nevertheless, things 17 changed during the time we knew each other. Enticed by the prospect o 18 earning a salary, by December 2006 Víctor Hugo was already working with 19 tourists, reading coca leaves and sending despachos. Occasionally, depend- 20 ing on the demands o the tourist group, he and Nazario worked together. 21 Ru¨ no was consistent in his refusal, probably because having the economic 22 support o his father, to whose immediate family he belonged, he could af- 23 ford to do so. Nazario had helped him buy horses and mules (six animals 24 in all) that Ru¨ no rented to travel agencies when they brought tourists to 25 Ausangate; in addition, he earned a daily salary as a muleteer, guiding the ani- 26 mals that carried the tourists’ accoutrements. 27 Life seemed prosperous for Nazario’s family the year before he died. In the 28 high season o 2006—between the months o June and September—three 29 di± erent tourist groups arrived in Pacchanta, and their tour package included 30 spending one day (and a night or two) in Nazario’s house. One o the groups 31 had nine tourists; the second one, four; and the last one only two. ey paid 32 for the overnight stay and for Nazario’s activities as a chamán. Additionally, 33 during each o the tourist visits, the family sold weavings that they had pre- 34 pared for this purpose—and Nazario and Liberata (his wife) invited Benito 35 (Nazario’s brother) and Octavio Crispín (Nazario’s buddy) to sell their fami- 36 lies’ weavings too. e ¨ rst group paid 600 soles (almost $200) for the nine 37 o them to spend two nights with the Turpos, and this did not include the
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despachos Nazario sent or the income from the weaving sales. e amount 1 was certainly small by U.S. standards, but for a peasant economy that other- 2 wise counts $600 or less as its annual income, Nazario’s family felt like they 3 had been struck by lightning—they considered themselves very fortunate. 4 When I visited in late September o that same year, Nazario had decided 5 to build a small house to serve as a lodging for tourists. It had four bedrooms 6 with beds—all with commercially made mattresses, pillows, and blankets. 7 He knew that northerners, whether from Europe or North America, traveled 8 with sleeping bags, so he did not get sheets. A small patio at the center o the 9 compound, a faucet with running water, and a nearby outhouse completed 10 the accommodations. Everything was constructed very quickly, and Naza- 11 rio paid 5,000 soles to the master builder—around $1,700 at the exchange 12 rate then. He rented a truck and hired the driver to bring wooden poles and 13 stones from Cuzco to Pacchanta; it took three trips. e adobe was con- 14 tracted locally. He hired a mason because, although local families are famil- 15 iar with building, the house Nazario had projected was too big for anybody 16 in Pacchanta to attempt. When the house was ¨ nished, Nazario said that as 17 they were celebrating, laaaaaq [sound o house falling], the house turned upside 18 down, like in an earthquake [t´iqrakamun terremoto hina], laaaaaq it came 19 down. He lost $1,700—everything he had saved in four years working as an 20 “Andean shaman.” 21 Nazario’s newly found riches were not only small; they were also as pre- 22 carious as life in Pacchanta. Explanations o why the house fell down were 23 many. His own was that it was built too quickly: the mason, who had been 24 hired in Ocongate, did not have time to stay in Pacchanta—or did not want 25 to—and therefore he did not allow enough time for the adobe to settle ade- 26 quately. Octavio, his friend, argued that the house was too big and did not 27 have enough support—Liberata, Nazario’s wife agreed. My interpretation: 28 tourism in Pacchanta is a desperate attempt at surviving. e local landscape, 29 barren and incapable o sustaining peasant economies, has become a tourist 30 attraction, a potential source o income—its barrenness is attractive to those 31 who do not have to extract a living from the land, to those for which it is a 32 landscape. Nazario was individually lucky because he had ‘culture’ to sell. 33 But the ¨ asco with the house reminded him that no matter how enviable he 34 looked locally, he was still very poor. Tourism might have improved his life, 35 but it would not change it. 36 In July 2007, less than a year a© er the house fell down, Nazario died. To 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Liberata and Paulina inviting earth-beings during a visit to Nazario’s tomb— 19 to the left are the food and drinks he liked best. I took this picture in September 20 2007—we were still hurting deeply. 21 22 23 some in Cuzco and in Pacchanta, Nazario’s death con¨ rmed that his fate 24 had turned around; he was not lucky anymore. Ausangate had punished him. 25 “He had eaten him” were the exact words used: se lo comió el Apu. at could 26 happen. I had heard the expression before from Nazario himself: Ausan- 27 gate phiñakuqtinqa runatan mikhun [when Ausangate gets too mad, he eats 28 people]. 29 Could it have happened to him? His family rejected the possibility ada- 30 mantly, saying that people who would make those comments about Nazario 31 were jealous. Sad and indignantly they said, “envidiosos son.” His boss—the 32 owner o Auqui Mountain Spirit—was angry as well; some o those making 33 the comments would even show up in the agency trying to replace Nazario! 34 e agency would not work with anybody but Víctor Hugo and Ru¨ no; they 35 had accompanied Nazario and had learned from him. ey would take turns 36 with the groups—Ru¨ no going with one group, Víctor Hugo going with the 37 next one—Auqui Mountain Spirit owed that much to Nazario. We did not
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talk about Nazario’s premonitory words, nor did I mention his sons’ earlier 1 reluctance to work with tourists. It was apparent that they had overcome it. 2 Later that same year, a tourist I befriended in one o the trekking expeditions 3 told me she had returned to Cuzco a© er Nazario died and participated in a 4 despacho performed by Ru¨ no: he had invoked Ausangate, Picol, Sacsayhua- 5 man, and Salqantay (all earth- beings) and in his invocation he mentioned 6 his father as his predecessor. I accompanied Víctor Hugo when he was about 7 to join a group in Machu Picchu; I stayed in Cuzco, and a© er he returned 8 we went to eat pollo a la brasa (rotisserie chicken) in Nazario’s memory. He 9 used to love it. e exact cause o Nazario’s death continued to be debated, 10 with the majority defending him, saying that he feared tirakuna enough, he 11 respected Ausangate; it would not have killed him. Meanwhile Víctor Hugo 12 and Ru¨ no have taken Nazario’s place and follow his instructions to respect 13 the earth- beings and always say things as they are. I hope they will be luckier 14 than Nazario. 15 Working as chamanes is a dangerous job—and not only because o the ire 16 o earth- beings. Working with tourists requires being on those dangerous 17 roads very frequently, and this increases the probability o accidents, more 18 so with public transportation, which is precarious to an extreme. As said, 19 market recognition o “Andean culture” does not repair roads or cancel the 20 state’s abandonment o runakuna lives. It intensi¨ es that abandonment—yet 21 it does so nimbly, via benevolent practices that project the sentiment o egali- 22 tarianism and even democracy. Di± erent from earlier liberal forms o inclu- 23 sion via civilization—and its requirement o cultural-racial hierarchies—the 24 late liberal multicultural market (which can also be a political market) o± ers 25 runakuna appreciation o their “cultural diversity” and their “customs.” It 26 also gives tourists the feeling that they are improving indigenous conditions 27 with their presence and money. Yet the market is indi± erent to the precari- 28 ousness that conditions runakuna lives; I always felt it has to ignore them i 29 it wants to be “neoliberally free.” Multicultural recognition objecti¨ es what 30 it identi¨ es as indigenous and may promote its circulation via economic or 31 political transactions; eventually it enacts a di± erence that makes no di± er- 32 ence in the life o runakuna. 33 Multiculturalist policies in´ uenced the last years o Nazario’s life, as the 34 ¨ rst two stories describe: he became an “Andean shaman” and participated in 35 the curatorial team o the Andean Community exhibit at the National Mu- 36 seum o the American Indian in Washington, D.C. ese activities o± ered 37
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1 him a routine beyond herding and sowing and helped him provide for his 2 household with more money than ever. As I said earlier, this made Nazario 3 happy and gave him some peace o mind. Obviously the newfound oppor- 4 tunities did not cancel his awareness o the limits o state recognition o ru- 5 nakuna world. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 STORY 5 CHAMANISMO ANDINO 7 8 IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM 9 10 MULTICULTURALISM MEETS EARTH-BEINGS 11 12 13 When Alejandro Toledo was inaugurated as president o Peru in 2001, I was 14 in Cuzco preparing to start ¨ eldwork: upgrading my Quechua with private 15 lessons, contacting individuals in Mariano’s vast networks o friends and ac- 16 quaintances, and trying to get access to as much information as I could before 17 traveling to Pacchanta. In the thirty years that had passed since the agrarian 18 reform in 1969, important changes had occurred in Peru and internation- 19 ally. At the national level, in 1980 the Shining Path—a Maoist group, led by 20 a philosopher and expert on Kant—began a war that occupied the country 21 for more than a decade. e war took a particularly big toll in the country- 22 side, where both the military and the Shining Path ravaged peasant villages. 23 Parallel to the war, and as a consequence o it, the rest o the organized le© 24 (known as the “legal le© ”) became an electoral force with varying impacts. 25 A© er 1989, with Marxist class rhetoric receding around the world, neolib- 26 eral and le© ist multiculturalism came to occupy political discourse in Peru. 27 In keeping with the new rhetoric, and following the corrupt administration 28 o Alberto Fujimori, Alejandro Toledo, a man who ´ irted politically with his 29 potential indigenous ancestry, was elected president o the country. During 30 the electoral campaign, his wife—Eliane Karp, a Belgian citizen— addressed 31 the public in Quechua and donned Andean style clothes, thus adding a dis- 32 tinctive pro- indigenous quality to the moment. 33 Toledo was sworn in as president in the usual o· cial ceremony in Lima, 34 at the National Congress on July 28, 2001. Two days later another ceremony 35 was held in Machu Picchu—the icon o Peruvian tourism—where the new 36 president would usher in the new multicultural era. e ceremony was for 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
33 Nazario Turpo during the ceremony that inaugurated Alejandro Toledo 34 in Machu Picchu. Photograph from Caretas, issue 1739, 35 September 2001. Used by permission. 36 37
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1 2 THE WORLD OBSERVED THE POWERFUL 3 MAJESTY OF MACHU PICCHU 4 5 “ e history o a powerful people, Peru’s past and present, converged yester- 6 day in a transcendental Andean ceremony that showed the world the wealth 7 o our culture and the wonders o our land. e invocations to the Apus, the 8 divinities o the Andes, admired in this ritual were accepted according to 9 the experts, because they allowed the fog [to dissipate] and the rain to cease, 10 giving way to a radiant sun that contributed the appropriate context to the 11 unfolding o this act. 12 “Behind the Andean ceremony in which President Alejandro Toledo as- 13 sumed the supreme command, the Hatun Hayway [big serving] in the main 14 square o the Incan citadel o Machu Picchu provided an opportunity for the 15 eyes o the world to focus on an unprecedented act in the history o the re- 16 public. e ritual began before the arrival o the head o state, the First Lady, 17 and the retinue o dignitaries, which was announced with the sound o putu- 18 tos [indigenous conch trumpets]. 19 “Since early dawn, the altomisario [sic]¼ Aurelio Carmona, and the paq’o 20 [sic] Nazario Turpo Condori, Andean priests, prepared the religious cere- 21 mony to give thanks to pachamama (the earth) and the Apus (the mountain 22 gods), thanks to whom the soil provides food, shelter, and well- being to the 23 people. As they proceeded with the ritual, and placed the o± erings or tinka 24 [sic] on the ¨ re, the priests invoked the Apus for the success o the govern- 25 ment that begins in Peru.”½ 26 27 28 29 30 national and international o· cials, and despite many e± orts I could not get 31 mysel invited. I did not consider this a setback; my ¨ eldwork, I thought, 32 had nothing to do with Toledo or his wife. I had a hint o how wrong I was 33 when, hal an hour into the ceremony, I received a phone call from omas 34 Müller, the German photographer who had befriended Mariano back in the 35 1980s and who had found his archive. omas is also a journalist and had 36 become friends with the new presidential couple. His voice over the phone 37
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PQ: Spelled "Chamanismo" not "Chamanism" OK?
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1 sounded very excited: “Did you know that Nazario Turpo is going to perform 2 a despacho in Machu Picchu? He was contacted by Prom Perú [the o· cial 3 state institution for the promotion o exports and tourism]—somehow they 4 knew about him.” No, I did not know—and who is Nazario Turpo, anyway? 5 omas told me Nazario was Mariano’s eldest son—the one who worked for 6 Lauramarca, once it became a cooperative and before it was dismantled. “ e 7 ceremony is going to be televised—you may even get a glance o Nazario,” 8 he said, and we ¨ nished our conversation. I would meet Nazario for the ¨ rst 9 time six months later, in January 2002. 10 With the exception o the o· cial newspaper El Peruano (a quote from 11 its article appears above), the mainstream press scorned the event. It was 12 demagoguery, reporters wrote, using Indians and their ritual paraphernalia 13 to boost Toledo’s spurious claim to indigenous roots. I had my own criti- 14 cal interpretation, o course: the presidential couple was using a recycled 15 1920s indigenista rhetoric to promote tourism. is was not news in Cuzco, 16 where tourism ¨ rst peaked as a regional industry in the 1950s and acquired 17 expertise at deploying the Inkan past; I had written about this already (de la 18 Cadena 2000). is time, the di± erences accorded with the times. One was 19 the apparent neoliberal promotion o tourism: in the past it had been basi- 20 cally a regional e± ort, but now it seemed to be backed by the central state, 21 and it was more e· ciently global. Another di± erence was multiculturalism: 22 unlike previous revelries, Toledo’s inaugural celebration in Cuzco was not a 23 representation o Inkan nobility; instead, it featured contemporary indige- 24 nous practices, translated to a national audience as religious rituals. us the 25 ceremony was a “religious ceremony to give thanks” to the “pachamama” 26 translated as tierra (earth) and the Apus rendered as dioses de las montañas 27 (mountain gods). Curiously, the o· cial newspaper quoted above also men- 28 tioned that performing the ritual were the “altomisario” Aurelio Carmona 29 and the “paq’o” Nazario Turpo Condori, both “sacerdotes andinos” (Andean 30 priests). is was necessary, my criticism continued, to accord with the First 31 Lady’s words summoning the surrounding mountains, which according to a 32 glossy magazine were: “Yaqtayay [my people- place], apu Machu Picchu, apu 33 Huayna Picchu, apu Salcantay, apu Ausangate. . . . Today the circle is closing, 34 today the good times o good order will return” (quoted in “¡Apúrate!” 35 2001). Great demagoguery (or wishful thinking at best), I thought. To me, 36 this was her attempt to legitimate a development project described as a form 37
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o “capitalist modernization respectful o Andean roots,” while the pro¨ ts 1 from tourism, i any, would remain in the city.¾ e presidential couple’s neo- 2 liberal indigenismo gave me a feeling o déjà vu. 3 Although more nuanced, my interpretation o the story was not unlike the 4 one the newspapers published: the ceremony was a political maneuver that 5 used both Toledo’s indigenous looks and his neoliberal agenda to advance 6 his political appeal among the nonprivileged and to boost tourism to Cuzco 7 and the rest o the country. My understanding was similar to recent ethno- 8 graphic commentary about the packaging o “ethnicity” or “indigenous cul- 9 ture” for tourist consumption (see, for example, Babb 2011; Comaro± and 10 Comaro± 2009; Galinier and Molinié 2006). My critique was accurate but 11 insu· cient: neoliberal multiculturalism was perhaps the most powerful and 12 obvious aspect o the event, but there was more to the event than this aspect. 13 e practices that composed this “more” were performed and participated in 14 the political economy o tourism, and they were also enacted from a di± erent 15 (i partially connected) world. is story describes this complexity, which is 16 not unique to the inauguration o Toledo as president o Peru: a similar in- 17 tricacy underpins the practices known as “chamanismo Andino” that have 18 emerged in Cuzco, attracted by the convergence o global tourism, practices 19 with earth- beings, and the decay o the regional wool market. 20 ree years a© er the ceremony in Machu Picchu, Nazario Turpo described 21 his participation and the event as follows: Carmona sent a message through 22 Radio Santa Mónica; they said Toledo wanted to make a despacho, and I went 23 to Cuzco. When I arrived, they told us they did not need us anymore; then we 24 called the Museo Inka, and they said they wanted me only. But I had to work 25 with Carmona, so I told them he had to come. In Machu Picchu they told us that 26 we could not do the despacho, that the Q’eros were going to do it. We did a des- 27 pacho for the president’s foot—do you remember that [during the inauguration 28 day] he was limping? ey told us that we could not do the main despacho—but 29 we did one just the same. e Q’eros did not do a good one—they did not burn 30 their despacho, and they had brought very few things. Instead we had a lot o 31 things: sweets, and corn, bread—a lot o food. We also brought incense and chi- 32 cha [corn beer], and we burned the incense and sprinkled the chicha when the 33 people were still there—and then we did burn the despacho. at was the most 34 important thing that we did that the Q’eros did not do—they did not burn any- 35 thing. I told them, “Why aren’t you burning the despacho? is is not going to 36 37
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1 be useful i you do not burn it.” I warned them. But they were the ones who did 2 not burn it, and they were the ones who were chosen to make the despacho for the 3 president. It is not our fault; they did not let us make the despacho, we did a des- 4 pacho for Toledo’s leg and he healed. We did not do the despacho for his govern- 5 ment . . . probably that is why it is going so badly. ey did not burn anything, 6 so theirs [the Q’eros’ despacho] was not eª ective. 7 Nazario was invited to participate in the event in Machu Picchu through 8 the networks that Mariano Turpo, his father, had built. As the organizer o 9 the event, Prom Perú sought the advice o anthropologists to implement the 10 newly elected presidential couple’s request to stage a pago a la tierra—the 11 phrase used by tourist agencies to identify practices o despacho. A© er con- 12 tacting several other people, the o· cials in Prom Perú got in touch with 13 Carmona, one o the two anthropologists who had accompanied Nazario 14 to the National Museum o the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Car- 15 mona had worked in Lauramarca in 1970 (as a functionary o the agrarian 16 reform—I have more to say about him below) and learned to make despa- 17 chos from Mariano Turpo. Nazario considered that Carmona deµ nitely knew 18 (pay yachanpuni; the su· x puni indicates the certainty o what it quali¨ es, in 19 this case the verb yachay, to know) how to make despachos. A© er some nego- 20 tiation with Prom Perú o· cials—probably, I speculate, about the criterion 21 o “authenticity” that Carmona (an urbanite who does not “look Indian”) 22 did not meet—both were invited to the ceremony. Together, they made a 23 very good despacho (one with the best supplies that could be found locally) 24 and burned it. ey requested health for the president, and according to Na- 25 zario, they did a very good job—unlike the other group o indigenous spe- 26 cialists, who hailed from the Q’ero ayllu. eir invitation to the ceremony 27 must have followed a grapevine similar to Nazario’s, for anthropologists 28 have made them well known in Cuzco as “the last Inka Ayllu” (Flores Ochoa 29 1984). Disputing their aura o authenticity—which may have been the rea- 30 son the Q’ero were chosen as the main ritual specialists in the presidential 31 ceremony— Nazario criticized their practice because they had failed to burn 32 the despacho, thus disrespecting the surrounding earth- beings. At the time 33 o our conversation in 2004, things were not going well for Toledo’s govern- 34 ment, and Nazario speculated that the Q’ero’s despacho might have some- 35 thing to do with that. 36 Nazario’s narration o the ceremony revealed a facet o the event that the 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Aurelio Carmona and Nazario Turpo, Plaza de Armas, 34 in Cuzco. Photograph from Caretas, issue 1739, 35 September 2001. Used by permission. 36 37
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1 critics—including myself—had ignored even though it had been performed 2 in front o our eyes. Nazario described his relation with earth-beings and how 3 the president ¨ gured in it. e pundits and I had seen a neoliberal president, 4 along with the appropriate institutions, bringing indigenous cultural mani- 5 festations to a modern ritual o the state to promote tourism. Following the 6 epistemic grain o the state, I had missed what its modern archive was unable 7 to grasp: an occasion when earth- beings and the state shared the same public 8 stage. Such moments—more than one world and their stories, composing the 9 same complex event—are not infrequent, but it is usually the story the state 10 is able to tell that matters; the other is either ignored or disavowed as belie 11 or ritual—a cultural issue that does not really matter. is may be a recurrent 12 condition when it comes to the interaction between runakuna and the state 13 in the Andes. e inauguration o the agrarian reform in Lauramarca was 14 an analogous event: state o· cials representing the Peruvian president gave 15 Mariano a handful o soil representing the land that the peasants had fought 16 for. Mariano—and through him his ayllu—received pukara, the earth- being 17 with whom a process o reconciliation would then begin. e dominant pub- 18 lic narrative in both cases was a biopolitical account o economic progress, 19 through agriculture and tourism, respectively. Also in both cases, the indige- 20 nous narrative brought earth-beings into the events. More than one and less 21 than many, these events are inscribed in history—they even make it, and they 22 also exceed it. Mariano’s archive, discussed in story 4, illustrates this process. 23 What was speci¨ c to the inauguration o Toledo in Machu Picchu was that 24 the event was broadcast on television throughout the country; it attracted 25 a heterogeneous audience. As the event unfolded, some people might have 26 been paying attention to despachos and the earth- beings summoned to the 27 presidential stage, as well as to the potential economic consequences for the 28 region o a revamped tourism industry. Political economy and state rituals 29 need not occlude earth- beings, for when the audience is more than one, the 30 event may be such as well. 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 CUZCO, “WHERE THE GODS BECAME MOUNTAINS”: 3 EARTH- BEINGS AS SACRED MOUNTAINS 4 Well, I grew up looking at Ausangate throughout my childhood, 5 knowing that it is the most important peak that all the people watch 6 for signs to ¨ nd out what is going on. Is the snow too deep? Is the snow 7 too low? We observe the relationship o the sun’s direction in speci¨ c 8 times o the year, like this. But most important it is the Apu o the 9 Cuzco region, and the owner o this entire region. . . . 10 11 I’d like to mention the belie o the herders om the highlands known 12 as the puna. For them Ausangate is the owner o the alpaca and llama 13 herds. He is the one who controls the herds.—Jorge Flores Ochoa, 14 in , a documentary (emphasis added) Ausangate 15 16 As I explained in story 1, in Cuzco—and perhaps in other Andean regions— 17 the indigenous and nonindigenous, city and countryside, Quechua and Span- 18 ish emerge in each other forming a complex hybridity in which the different 19 elements composing it cannot be pulled apart for they are both distinct and 20 part of each other. More specifically, in Cuzco, people socially classified as Á 21 indigenous and non-indigenous share ways of being and they also mark differ- 22 ences between themselves—almost in the same breath. In the quotes above, 23 all produced for a documentary film, Jorge Flores Ochoa (the anthropologist 24 who—along with Carmona—went with Nazario to the National Museum of the 25 American Indian in Washington, D.C.) embraces Ausangate as “the Apu of the 26 Cuzco region, and the owner of this entire region.” At the same time he dis- 27 tances himself from “herders”—runakuna like Mariano and Nazario, the so- 28 cially quintessential Indians, and lowest in the social hierarchy of the region— 29 by referring to their “belief” that Ausangate is the owner of their herds. Nazario 30 would not use the word belief to explain his own relationship with Ausangate, 31 yet he would perhaps acknowledge that urbanites like Flores Ochoa relate to 32 Ausangante’s ownership of herds as a belief. I never asked Nazario specifically 33 about the quotes I am using; I am speculating from Nazario’s response when 34 I asked him to explain his relationship to Ausangate; he said that it could be 35 “like belief” (kriyihina) was to me but that it was not belief, for Ausangate was 36 there—couldn’t I see it? 37
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1 In Cuzco, “belief”—as relationship with earth-beings—might both couch 2 the difference and make possible the convergence between those like Flores 3 Ochoa and Nazario, literate urbanites and runakuna. Through this difference 4 that allows for convergence, Cuzqueños of all paths are able to recognize 5 leading earth-beings in the region—what to me are majestic mountains. Con- 6 ceptually, it is not far-fetched to say that Nazario and Flores Ochoa partici- 7 pate in each other’s worlds, and that they are acquainted with the differences 8 between them. Tweaking the well-known phrase by Bruno Latour (1993b), one 9 has never been indigenous, and the other has never been non-indigenous. 10 Rather, they emerge as such from a boundary-making practice whereby what 11 they have in common becomes difference through practices of translation 12 that I see working like Bertolt Brecht’s “distancing effects” (1964). Producing 13 something like an identity standstill, Flores Ochoa uses the word belief, with 14 which he takes a distance from “them, the puna herders” (who these days also 15 have jobs as chamanes Andinos—like Nazario), while at the same time being 16 with earth-beings and the practices that enact them. Cuzco is an indigenous 17 and non-indigenous aggregate—a circuit of connections that does not form a 18 homogeneous unit, but where the fragments that compose it appear in each 19 other, even though they are also different (Green 2005; Wagner 1991). Accord- 20 ingly, in Cuzco the distinction between “colonial self” and “colonized other” 21 does not cancel out their similarities, even if the distinction is replete with 22 power differences and violent social hierarchies. 23 “Where the gods become mountains” was a ubiquitous slogan introduced 24 in 2009 by the Peruvian tourism industry. I thought it was clever. Seemingly 25 suggesting the impossible, the phrase conveyed a message that packaged 26 Cuzco as a tourist attraction: Cuzco’s mountains are a wonder, ambiguously 27 straddling the natural and the supernatural. Thus located—via a commercial 28 translation that can allow for natural and spiritual bewilderment—mountains 29 have become popular tourist destinations, and they have acquired a poten- 30 tially profitable personality. As important (and perhaps less obvious), their 31 being more than nature has become public in the region, encouraging Cuz- 32 queños in all walks of life to openly share their complex sameness (and dif- 33 ference). Once a shameful “cultural intimacy” (Herzfeld 2005) because of in- 34 digenous connotations, interactions with earth-beings/mountain spirits—by 35 way of despachos or coca leaf readings—are currently publicly performed 36 by Cuzqueños regardless of their background. This is far from irrelevant. It 37 suggests the possibility for intriguing changes in the regional cultural politics
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for indigeneity could emerge as an inclusive trait of the region, stretching to 1 urbanites who call themselves mestizos and even those who identify them- 2 selves as white. This complexity—the public collaboration among indigenous 3 and non-indigenous Cuzqueños, their sharing that which makes the “other” 4 such (which therefore, makes them all the “same”)—underpins thriving forms 5 of tourism, particularly those in mystic or ecological packaging. Rather than 6 sheer imposition, domination, and exploitation, the successful commoditiza- 7 tion of “indigenous culture” in Cuzco results from the encounter of the global 8 tourist industry (neoliberal and capitalist, to be sure) multiculturalist policies, 9 and a decaying regional agricultural economy. In this encounter, practices 10 with earth-beings—which runakuna and non-runakuna Cuzqueños share— 11 provide an organic template to organize the networks of collaboration that ar- 12 ticulate the proliferation of what is currently known as “chamanismo Andino,” 13 or Andean shamanism. 14 15 16 17 Unexpected Collaborations: From Haciendas to Andean 18 Shamanism (through Local Anthropology) 19 20 Before becoming a political organizer, Mariano was well known as a yachaq; 21 I have explained that Cuzqueño urbanites usually translate this word as 22 “knower.” Traveling across the countryside over which Ausangate presides, 23 he cured relations between earth- beings and humans, animals, water, and 24 crops and was paid for it, but not much. e little he earned he spent on 25 liquor, as drinking was indispensable in the procedures he performed. As 26 Nazario put it, working for runakuna, he earned one or two soles, working for 27 them is not for money. And when he went to work for runakuna he had to drink. 28 Some o the character o this activity in the Turpo household would change 29 in the 1990s, and the change would arrive through Mariano’s connections 30 with urban intellectuals, including several anthropologists. 31 In the 1970s—a© er the agrarian reform, when Lauramarca was already a 32 cooperative—a man arrived in the Turpos’ village. e reader has already met 33 him: his name was Aurelio Carmona. Although back then he was a state em- 34 ployee, he turned out to be the ¨ rst in the long line o anthropologists that 35 the Turpos met. Nazario recalled: Initially Doctor Carmona was a merchant; 36 that was during the time o the agrarian reform. en he used to come distribut- 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 “Calls to Peru and the rest of the world”—an Internet cabin 27 in Ocongate offers services to locals and tourists. August 2008. 28 29 30 ing money, lending money to runakuna so that they would weave ponchos. . . . 31 [He would say,] “Here [take this money] so that you weave a poncho. You will 32 make it for next week, it will wait for me, and then I will complete your money.” 33 en he became an anthropologist, and began working at the university. He 34 begged my father: “Teach me,” he said. And because my father was his iend, he 35 taught him everything. Now he is a professor at the university; he became a doc- 36 tor because he learned om my father. So Doctor Carmona became an anthro- 37 pologist [because] my father taught him.
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When I talked to Carmona, he laughed at the idea that Mariano taught 1 him anthropology, but he remembered their relationship fondly. e ¨ rst 2 time Mariano saw him, says Carmona, he told him, “You are with estrella” 3 (istrillayuqmi kanki)—which, as I have explained, means that he could be- 4 come a yachaq. ey developed a friendship. Mariano taught Carmona what 5 he knew, and they became a partners in their relationship with earth- beings: 6 Carmona was lluq’i and Mariano was paña—or le© and right, lower and 7 higher, silver and gold, underground water and river water, respectively. Both 8 Nazario and Carmona concur that this partnership was e± ectively powerful. 9 Years later, when Carmona began a career teaching anthropology at the main 10 university in the region—the Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del 11 Cuzco—he took his students on ¨ eld trips to Ausangate, where they met and 12 worked with Mariano. 13 When Mariano was too old to work with Carmona’s students and per- 14 form as Carmona’s partner in practices with earth- beings, Nazario replaced 15 him: My father visited the university because o Dr. Carmona. My father was 16 his teacher, his instructor. at is why Dr. Aurelio always invited him to the uni- 17 versity, saying, “You, dear Mariano, you are my teacher. You know much more 18 than I do.” at is why they knew my father at the university, because Aurelio 19 came here to Ausangate every month o August. Later on he would also call me, 20 saying, “Come, I will introduce you to my iends.” Back then, I did not know 21 the university; I only went to Dr. Aurelio’s house. en he took me to the univer- 22 sity himsel and introduced me to all his iends: “ is is Turpo’s son; he is the 23 son o my teacher. He also lives in Ausangate” [Paymi Turpuq wawan. Paymi 24 prufesurniypa wawan. Paymi Awsangatepi tiyallantaq]. And then one day he 25 said to me, “Your father knows about remedies, you surely know as well.” at is 26 how I became known at the university. at is why I thought, “Dr. Aurelio is the 27 reason that I know these things, that I can know these things.” 28 rough Carmona and the Turpos, the circuit o earth- practices reached 29 the teaching o anthropology courses at the local university. Mariano taught 30 Carmona and Carmona taught a course he called “Andean Ritual,” which re- 31 quired that students travel to Pacchanta and interact with Ausangate. Doctor 32 Carmona became an anthropologist [because] my father taught him, Nazario 33 said, and this is not far from right. Taught as an academic discipline, Cuz- 34 queño anthropology is a hybrid o Euro-American structuralism, Marxism, 35 and the regional legacy o indigenista liberalism; but it also connects anthro- 36 pologists with knowers like Mariano and with earth- beings, which then, in- 37
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1 triguingly, become part o the discipline’s curriculum. Cuzqueño anthro- 2 pology is a multifaceted practice: while for some anthropologists, it is an 3 academic discipline, for others, it is their way o making sense o their world, 4 and still others combine both forms o practice: they make a living explain- 5 ing the regional “others,” which they also are. 6 Carmona was not the only local anthropologist to arrive in Pacchanta and 7 learn about and from Mariano’s relations with Ausangate. Juan Víctor Núñez 8 del Prado, a Cuzqueño anthropologist, also did. Núñez del Prado has used 9 his personal intimacy with indigeneity, his ethnographic ¨ eldwork with the 10 Q’ero villages, and his conversations with yachaqkuna (including Mariano 11 and Nazario) to create a ¨ eld he calls “Andean Mystic tradition” composed o 12 practices that he has labeled “Andean priesthood” (sacerdocio andino), which 13 include a sophisticated and ever- increasing New Age– compatible local vo- 14 cabulary (Núñez del Prado 1991, 136).Ç Around this ¨ eld he has built a suc- 15 cessful tourism business contributing to the expansion o turismo místico, or 16 mystic tourism, in Cuzco.È Juan Víctor—named a© er the famous Andean 17 ethnologist John Victor Murra—is the son o Oscar Núñez del Prado, an 18 active ¨ gure in Cuzqueño anthropology in the 1950s and 1960s. e father 19 was known for his ethnographic work with the Q’eros, the ayllu from which 20 the tourist industry currently draws most o the runakuna who work as cha- 21 manes Andinos. 22 Núñez del Prado and Américo Yábar (a member o a former landowning 23 family from Paucartambo, the region where the Q’eros live) were the ¨ rst to 24 introduce the Turpo family to tourists. is must have been during the mid- 25 1990s, when calm had returned to the countryside a© er the civil war between 26 the Shining Path and the military. In those years Flores Ochoa, Carmona, 27 and Núñez del Prado all worked in the Anthropology Department at the 28 Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco and this may have been 29 where they shared the ideas that led to the current practice o Andean sha- 30 manism. But these ideas could just as well have been developed on the rural 31 paths connecting Paucartambo and Ausangate, which Yábar used to hike in 32 his youth, accompanied by runakuna who worked on his family’s property.É 33 When the ¨ rst tourist groups arrived to visit Mariano and possibly learn from 34 him, Mariano could still work grazing sheep and alpacas in Alqaqucha— 35 a remote site where pastures are richer, it was also one o Mariano’s favorite 36 places to send despachos. Nazario remembered: He worked with them, and 37 they paid my father a little money. e tourists paid, but my father did not ask
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for money; out o their will they gave him something, twenty or thirty soles, they 1 paid—it was something then. But [my father] did not go to Cuzco, he did not 2 go anywhere like I go; only here [in Pacchanta] he worked with the tourists. I 3 my father would have been like me, my age, my father would have gone on that 4 µ rst trip to Washington—both o us would have gone. But when they saw my 5 father was so old and he could not do things well . . . he did not go, only I went. 6 at is how I went. 7 e partnership between runakuna (like Mariano) and former land- 8 owner’s o± spring (like Yábar) might have seemed impossible during hacienda 9 timpu, the time o the hacienda. Yet it is a currently frequent association in 10 the tourist industry—the owner o Auqui Mountain Spirit, the agency that 11 hired Nazario as its Andean shaman, was also the son o the owner o a large 12 hacienda. e agrarian reform took over the property a© er bitter confronta- 13 tions with runakuna. I used to muse about this: the son o a landowner and 14 the son o one o the most combative leaders o the opposition to haciendas 15 working together to produce chamanismo Andino! Nobody would have pre- 16 dicted this partnership at the time o the agrarian reform, let alone before. 17 Ironic, indeed, but it also made sense. e state evicted hacendados in the 18 1970s, and in the 1980s runakuna organized into peasant movements to force 19 the transformation o agrarian cooperatives into communal property, which 20 was then divided into peasant family plots. Land scarcity—due to popula- 21 tion growth—and low prices for agricultural products are forcing people to 22 go to work in the city o Cuzco as masons, servants, and street vendors; the 23 most unfortunate, carry loads in the market (for ten cents o one sol—or two 24 U.S. cents in 2006—per load). ey also spend stints in the eastern lowlands, 25 where men pan for gold and women work as cooks—and this only in the 26 best o cases. Large landholdings disappeared, and runakuna acquired direct 27 access to their family plots, but these did not generate enough monetary in- 28 come which then had to be sought working in non- agricultural activities. 29 Important changes in the region’s political economy made possible the 30 previously unfathomable business partnership between former landowners 31 and runakuna. When runakuna “walked the queja” during the 1950s and 32 1960s, wool was the main commodity, and land ownership was an impor- 33 tant source o power and prestige. Today, land has lost its grip on power, 34 and alpaca wool from the southern Andes is not the internationally coveted 35 commodity it used to be back then. Instead, the successors o the former 36 landed class have turned to tourism—a pro¨ table industry for some—and 37
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1 2 3 Nazario Turpo’s family was no exception to the economic rule. Before tour- 4 ism knocked on his door, Nazario’s oldest sons migrated to the eastern low- 5 lands or el valle (the valley) and to the city to make money. (An older son died 6 from an undiagnosed disease a© er a sojourn panning for gold.) e food they 7 grew was always for their own consumption; they used potatoes to barter for 8 corn, but there was nothing to sell. e family has one o the largest exten- 9 sions o agricultural land in Pacchanta: ¨ ve masas, possibly eight hectares o 10 unirrigated land.Ê is is insu· cient to sustain them for a whole year; they 11 have to buy potatoes, corn, and basic staples (noodles, sugar, rice, and even 12 fruit, onions, and carrots in times o abundance, and limited to candles and 13 matches in times o duress). ey also have a mixed herd o alpaca and sheep, 14 and wool is another source o money, but income from that is meager. For 15 example, in December 2006, Nazario and his eldest son Ru¨ no (who has his 16 own herd) sold their herds’ wool together. Between them, they collected 130 17 pounds o alpaca ¨ ber; at ten soles per pound, they got 1,300 soles—roughly 18 $400 at that time. December, the rainy season, is when wool prices reach 19 their peak for the year; they can be as low as two soles per pound in the dry 20 season (May through November). In contrast, during the high tourist sea- 21 son Nazario could make $400 in one month working for the tourist agency. 22 Luckily for the family, the high tourist season was July through September— 23 when prices for wool were low. 24 25 26 27 28 have made “Andean culture” an important regional commodity. Rather than 29 being ready- made for the consumption o tourists, this “culture” is produced 30 through the power- laden, yet still collaborative e± ort between runakuna 31 (especially those who continue to live in remote rural areas) and members 32 o the former landed elite, currently urban intellectuals who are also tourism 33 operators (like Núñez del Prado, Yábar, and the owner o Auqui Mountain 34 Spirit). eir collaboration draws from the regional indigenous practices that 35 urban gentlemen and runakuna share and that is also is replete with sharp 36 distinctions between them. One main distinction, which has withstood the 37 shi© from wool to chamanismo Andino, is that although the descendants o
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the former landed elite need (and even depend on) runakuna to sell “Andean 1 culture,” they still own the economic and social capital to organize the busi- 2 ness. Runakuna continue to be their subordinates. 3 4 Nazario: From Yachaq to Chamán 5 6 In his famous treatise about shamanism in southern Siberia, Mircea Eliade 7 wrote that “the gods choose the future shaman by striking him with light- 8 ning or showing him their will through stones fallen from the sky” (1964, 9 19). He would be glad to learn that being struck by lightning is also how ya- 10 chaqkuna (the plural o yachaq) are revealed in the Andes. Yet considering 11 his interpretation o shamanism as an “archaic” religion, Eliade might also 12 be disappointed to learn that the interaction between a decaying agricultural 13 economy and a dynamic global tourist industry ¨ gures prominently among 14 the conditions for the proliferation o current chamanes Andinos.Î Accord- 15 ing to Nazario, because they can earn money, young people are now more inter- 16 ested in despachos. Now that they can work as chamanes many young people are 17 interested in learning . . . “teach, teach me” they say. Eliade mentions another 18 that the word shaman traveled from place to place with voyagers—merchants 19 or scholars—who adopted it to name those whom they saw as “individu- 20 als possessing magic-religious powers” (1964, 3). Today the word also travels 21 from place to place, but it does so with tourists and their socially hetero- 22 geneous local guides. ey transport a notion o “shaman” across large dis- 23 tances, and, as in the olden days, they apply the term to individuals whose 24 practices are opaque to modern ways. In many parts o Latin America the 25 translation is generally e± ected through the combined languages o anthro- 26 pology, New Age spirituality, indigenous cultural activism, and non- Western 27 healing practices (Caluby, Labate, and Clancy 2014). In Cuzco a similar 28 translation is additionally nourished as it circulates in the complex circuit o 29 regional indigeneity, which includes urban intellectuals turned into tourism 30 entrepreneurs; in addition to economic resources, they deploy both their aca- 31 demic credentials and their indigenous know- how to endorse the packages o 32 “Andean culture” they o± er for tourist consumption. 33 While shamanic practices are widespread in the Amazonian lowlands and 34 anthropologists have written about them (see Rubenstein 2002; Salomon 35 1983; Taussig 1987; Whitehead 2002; Whitehead and Wright 2004), in the 36 neighboring Andean highlands the word “shaman” owes its popularity to 37
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1 tourism. In fact, the term chamán was foreign to Nazario even as late as 2002, 2 when I ¨ rst met him. en he was only beginning his work with tourists, and 3 he preferred to be called a yachaq runa, a person who knows, like his father. 4 In addition to reading human urine and veins (he was not as good as Mariano 5 in these practices, he said) people hired him to look into coca leaves, and to 6 send despachos to earth- beings to propitiate the happiness o animals, crops, 7 and homes; in return, he received a small amount o money. Because o his 8 expertise, he was also known as a healer: curandero in Spanish, and hampiq 9 in Quechua. 10 Becoming a chamán andino—which to Nazario meant being paid to per- 11 form despachos and read coca leaves for tourists—came as a surprise for him. 12 He had not expected that his practices as yachaq or hampiq would be useful 13 to anyone other than runakuna. It all happened when he returned from the 14 United States, a© er his ¨ rst trip to the National Museum o the American 15 Indian. e travel agency that had managed the details o his trip had been 16 contacted by the museum through the same network o anthropologists that 17 had invited Nazario to be a cocurator at the ÃÄÅÆ. e agency bought his 18 airplane ticket and handled the paperwork necessary for his U.S. visa; the 19 agency owner found a place for Nazario to stay in Lima while he was in tran- 20 sit to Washington and gave him basic information about the di± erences be- 21 tween the US dollar and the Peruvian sol. is man also invited Nazario to 22 spend the night before his departure (from Cuzco to Lima) at the agency. 23 When Nazario returned to Cuzco from the United States, he spent the night 24 at the agency once again. e owner asked him about his trip: what had he 25 done, who had he met, what had he learned? Not much transpired, and 26 Nazario returned to Pacchanta. Several months later, Nazario returned to 27 Cuzco on a routine trip to buy provisions for his household. He also wanted 28 to see his son, Florencio (who was working as a mason in the city), and ask 29 him for a loan. Florencio had no money to lend, so Nazario went to the 30 agency to spend the night but also to see i he could earn a little cash clean- 31 ing the place, and perhaps ¨ nd temporary employment as an arriero (a mule- 32 teer), driving horses and mules for the visitors who ventured onto the trek- 33 king paths in the foothills o Ausangate. He had seen many o those groups, 34 and people from Pacchanta were already working for them; thinking that 35 this agency also worked with travelers, he planned to ask them to hire him 36 for this kind o work. 37 ings went better than he had hoped. On the night he spent at the agency
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before leaving for Washington, Nazario had read the coca leaves for two o 1 the workers there, a man and a woman. He had told the man that he would 2 buy a lot to build his house, and the woman that she would have a child. Both 3 events were coming true. Having con¨ rmed that Nazario was a good coca 4 reader, the man and woman asked him i he could do despachos, and a© er 5 he said yes, they insisted that he talk to their boss, the owner o the agency. 6 He could hire him as the agency’s chamán, they said, and o course they had 7 to explain to Nazario what that meant. So he told the owner that he could 8 do despachos, and the owner asked Nazario to do one for him. A Cuzqueño 9 worth his salt, the owner o the agency could distinguish good despachos 10 from worthless ones. He was testing me [chaykunapi pruebasta ruwawaran], 11 remembered Nazario. He passed the test, and was hired. e ¨ rst time he 12 worked for the agency as a shaman, the owner and Nazario both spent two 13 days with a small group o tourists at a nearby lagoon. Nazario remembered 14 receiving 300 soles ($100 in 2002) for reading coca and sending a despacho 15 to Ausangate: at was my µ rst work, in Wakarpay [the name o the lagoon]— 16 that is where I made my µ rst despacho for tourists; I was there only two days, 17 he paid me 300 soles, [and for] my ticket as well—I returned happy. at was 18 my µ rst work with gringos. When he died in 2007, Nazario had been work- 19 ing with the agency for ¨ ve years; he would travel from Pacchanta to Cuzco 20 when tourists requested a shaman. Both the owner o the tourist agency and 21 Nazario were content with the relationship, and Nazario was glad to be the 22 only runakuna hampiq working for them: At the agency, I am the only one 23 they call chamán, there is no other chamán. I am the only person that does the 24 ceremony o the pago. 25 Nazario could become a chamán Andino because he convincingly met 26 the requirements o “close distance” that Walter Benjamin identi¨ ed with 27 what he called an “aura o authenticity” (1968, 220–21)—in this case, an “in- 28 digenous aura” o course. Nazario was a± able and approachable to travelers, 29 yet middle- class Euro- Americans (and also upper- class Limeños) could easily 30 recognize him as “other” to them: he lived in a remote enough place, spoke 31 only Quechua, and lived o± o agriculture and raising llamas and alpacas. 32 Being el chamán de la agencia—the tourist agency’s shaman—was something 33 that Cuzqueño urbanites, no matter how versed in things indigenous, could 34 not perform; their indigeneity lacked the aura o authenticity that foreigners 35 saw in people like Nazario. Tourist entrepreneurs inevitably needed runa- 36 kuna who, in turn, could not be chamanes on their own: they lacked the 37
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1 money, the connections, and the Western languages necessary to enter the 2 world o tourism independently. Nazario knew this o course: ose people 3 that work with tourism know how to do everything [I do] but they call runa- 4 kuna; we are the ones that tourists want. 5 Nazario was intrigued by the questions tourists posed, and how they 6 granted him the ability to correctly answer every one o them. Perhaps, Na- 7 zario said, tourists thought he just remembered everything om the Inkas and 8 the Spanish times. And I think that at least some questions were inspired 9 from what tourists perceived as Nazario’s timelessness—how he, according 10 to tourists, inhabited a “close distance” between past and present, Inkas and 11 Cuzco: ey call me because they want to know about the works o our Inkas, 12 that is why they call me. ey ask me: “How were the Inkas before you? Who 13 made these ruins? Do you know—or do you not know? Was it the Inkas, the 14 Spaniards? Or people like you did that? Or the mistis might have built it? Or 15 perhaps those ruins, those temples, the walls just appeared by themselves?” I say, 16 “ e Spaniards have not made that. It was only our Inkas, the ones that built 17 everything: the pueblos, the houses, the temples, the streets. It was not us nor 18 the Spaniards,” saying this I answer [nispa chhaynata cuntestakuni]. And o 19 course there were those tourists who asked about runakuna life as peasants, 20 which they sometimes imagined to be as unchanged as (they also imagined) 21 the ancient buildings that welcomed them: Some o them want to [know] 22 about the clothing, who made it, how was it made. Who has taught your wife 23 [how to weave], and your wife’s mother, and her father, her grandfather, who 24 taught them? How have they taught them, doing what? Or is it drawing or only 25 thinking that they have made them? All those things they want to know. 26 Perhaps tourists would have been disappointed to learn that some o Na- 27 zario’s practices as chamán were developed in conversation with the owner 28 o the travel agency, his boss. For example, he asked Nazario to change his 29 usual clothes—pants, long-sleeved shirt, and V- neck sweater, all made o 30 polyester—to create instead an image that would match his clients’ expec- 31 tations o what a “Cuzco Indian” would look like: a pink or green vest beau- 32 tifully embroidered with buttons, his chullo, and knee- length black pants, 33 woven o wool from local sheep—“authentic runakuna clothes” that can be 34 bought in the nearby marketplace. In contrast to the aura that this image 35 might project, he never pretended to have timeless knowledge in response to 36 the questions tourists asked: I tell them what I remember—what I have been 37 told, or what I have heard. He did not he feel that his contemporariness af-
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fected what tourists might have thought about his authenticity. In fact, he 1 never su ested to me a notion that I could translate into “authentic,” and 2 he was certainly not concerned about transgressing any market/non- market 3 boundaries or “mixing” categories; a© er all, what we deem to be mixtures was 4 the stu± that his life was made of. However, he was concerned—very con- 5 cerned—with enacting practices respectfully and using the right words to 6 name things: I speak things as they are. is was a requirement o the utmost 7 importance, since his “speaking things” summoned them into his life and the 8 lives o tourists. His job as a shaman required Nazario to navigate his way 9 between the obligations incurred toward earth- beings and the demands that 10 tourism— regulated by the state, the market, and the subjectivities o its con- 11 sumers—imposed on him. 12 13 14 15 PERFORMING DESPACHOS IN MACHU PICCHU: 16 17 SATISFYING EARTH- BEINGS AND TOURISTS 18 Performing a despacho in Machu Picchu is the practice that best exempli- 19 fies Nazario’s response to the challenge of satisfying both earth-beings and 20 tourists. A lay observer would translate the despacho as a packet contain- 21 ing dry food, seeds, flowers, and kind words that runakuna burn it so that it 22 reaches the mountains. On a closer ethnographic look—although of course 23 still a translation—the despacho brings about a specific condition between 24 humans and the earth-beings summoned into it; its medium is the smoke of 25 the burned despacho. Thus the burning of the despacho is key to enabling 26 the process. Furthermore, the place where the packet is burned becomes 27 part of the relation, and thus it is carefully chosen and subsequently cared 28 for. To prevent transgressions, it is hidden from view. When Nazario and Car- 29 mona performed the presidential despacho in Machu Picchu they burned the 30 packet; but in so doing they transgressed local regulations that (not surpris- 31 ingly) forbid making a fire in the ancient citadel. On that occasion, Nazario and 32 Carmona got away with it; it was part of the presidential ceremony and an ex- 33 ception could be made. On a tour, a despacho cannot be burned in Machu 34 Picchu. To follow regulations, chamanes and tourist operators have agreed to 35 make despachos en crudo (raw despachos), meaning not burned or cooked. 36 Raw despachos satisfy tourists; they get to see the visually colorful display 37
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1 that the making of the bundle presents and to listen to the chamán’s Quechua 2 words (which someone else translates, usually into English) as he invites the 3 surrounding earth-beings to the ceremony. Tourist agents are proud of the 4 spectacle, particularly when performed under a full moon in the midst of one 5 of the “New 7 Wonders of the World.”¼Ï Nazario considered it a difficult and 6 risky performance: not burning the despacho leaves it incomplete. It means 7 summoning earth-beings and offering something that is not delivered. This 8 format was dangerous; it could cause him serious trouble. To avoid negative 9 consequences, he continued the ceremony somewhere else, usually by taking 10 the bundle to the small town of Aguas Calientes, at the foot of Machu Picchu, 11 where he spent the nights when working for the agency. Before going to bed, 12 he would burn the packet and asked Wayna-Picchu (the local earth-being) for 13 understanding. 14 15 16 17 The Politics of Chamanismo Andino: Negotiating Worlds 18 19 e emerging chamanismo Andino is an intricate condition. It is a job for 20 which there is a new market, and runakuna are frequently hired to perform 21 the work in exchange for a salary. Yet chamanismo andino is composed o 22 worlding practices that bring about the entities they enact (earth- beings, for 23 example) and which history cannot represent. In these practices, words have 24 to be spoken carefully because they count; they are consequential. Once, 25 as we were walking in the city o Cuzco, a mi± ed Nazario challenged my 26 questions about his activities as paqu, which I had translated from the word 27 chamán; I must have forgotten the lesson I had learned from my conversa- 28 tion with Mariano and Nazario’s brother, Benito. He said: And you, Marisol, 29 where have you learned that? Who has told you about paqu? Paqu is di© cult to 30 talk about, it is di© cult to understand. It is dangerous. It is not easy to be paqu 31 [Sasa rimay sasa entendiy. Peligru. Mana facillachu paqu kayqa]. Making 32 sure I would understand, he said dangerous in Spanish—peligru. And thus I 33 started calling him a chamán; runakuna were quickly adopting this word in- 34 stead o the local word paqu, for it lacked the power to bring about the condi- 35 tion that paqu (or the even more dangerous layqa) did. By identifying himsel 36 as a chamán—still a neologism in Pacchanta during the years o my ¨ eld- 37 work, and a word that Mariano would not have used to identify his own prac-
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Nazario and Aquiles burn a despacho in their backyard. Both wear jeans 19 and polyester sweaters—not their ñawpaq p’acha” or 20 “clothes from before.” August 2004. 21 22 tices—Nazario protected himsel from the potential dangers o the other 23 names that his practice could receive: Paqu, layqa, when they call you that, it 24 is dangerous. inking through this, I liked to speculate that maybe a similar 25 need to control the powers o local words (which were not only such!) was 26 how the word shaman came to be accepted around the world. Perhaps it trav- 27 eled around the world because once uprooted, this word lost the power it had 28 locally and, becoming innocuous, it allowed for conversations between trav- 29 elers (including anthropologists) and those they called shamans. Shamanism 30 and shamans, my speculation continues, may have safely translated practices 31 and practitioners naming which may have been otherwise dangerous. 32 Listening to Nazario, I learned that being an Andean shaman (as my trans- 33 lation o chamán Andino) and being a yachaq is not the same thing—but 34 these practices are not di± erent, either. Tourists access Andean shamans’ 35 words and movements through several layers o translation. e Cuzqueño 36 guide’s interpretation into English o practices performed in Quechua is fol- 37
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1 lowed by each tourist’s interpretation o both the chamán’s practice and the 2 guide’s interpretation. Mediated by this complex translation, tourists engage 3 in relations with tirakuna in that are obviously not runakuna’s. Yet the en- 4 gagement summons earth- beings, and this can be disquieting to them i done 5 for futile reasons, like tourism. us runakuna constantly worry about how 6 tourism might a± ect in-ayllu relationship in villages where chamanes hail 7 from. To avoid problems in Pacchanta, Nazario did not reveal much about his 8 job as an Andean shaman: Whether it is about coca, or a despacho that I make, 9 I do not want to talk about it in Pacchanta. With Auqui the agency, I have an 10 obligation, that is why [I send despachos]—but here I do not say anything; they 11 would get mad. Runakuna would get mad—so angry that they might blame 12 him for any local trouble: droughts; human, animal, and plant diseases; car 13 accidents; an increase in local crime—anything. ey could even accuse him 14 and report him to local state authorities—also participants in the circuit o 15 indigeneity and therefore suspicious o the consequences o Andean shamans 16 work with tourists. Even his closest friends, Benito and Octavio, were con- 17 cerned that Nazario was practicing chamanismo too frequently—it could be 18 bad for him. To assuage this perception, Nazario frequently used our conver- 19 sations to explain to them—when either one o them was present—that what 20 he did was not only despachos; he also talked about Inkas, agriculture, and 21 clothing—which was indeed the case: Brother Octavio, I have talked about 22 our customs in Washington. I have not only walked there to make healings. I 23 have not gone there to make despachos, but instead for a conversation, that is 24 what I was called to do. Here, my people om Pacchanta think I have only been 25 walking as a paqu, and that is not the way I walked there. 26 Being an Andean shaman has a protocol. In spite o its ´ exibility and re- 27 gardless o distinctions between the modern and the a- modern, the protocol 28 has to be followed at all times both in relation to humans and other- than- 29 humans. Our conversations had to follow the protocol indeed. Nazario in- 30 structed me on the appropriate circumstances in which to invoke the names o 31 earth- beings, and o course I could not respond to his instructions with secular 32 disbelief. Not only was it not into a sphere o belie or disbelief, let alone my 33 own, that earth- beings were summoned i I pronounced their names. Rather, 34 my invoking earth- beings would inevitably summon them into a powerful 35 earthly space composed o hierarchies that needed to be attended to and that 36 was completely independent o my command: We cannot just talk about the 37 earth- beings; to talk about them, we need coca, wine, alcohol, or cañazo [sugar-
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cane alcohol]. Only then can we ask for permission to talk about them; it is dan- 1 gerous. I pronounced or performed in these circumstances—which Nazario 2 identi¨ ed as doing things respectfully— despachos or coca- searching sessions 3 could be good (allinmi kashan, está bien). Following the protocol, Nazario’s 4 words and actions had to be precise; he had to carefully name the right word 5 and do the right action: I do always what I know how to do—I do not add what 6 I do not know. I can make mistakes. is, however, did not mean that practices 7 did not change; Nazario tried new things and experimented with new invo- 8 cations and new ingredients to improve his despachos and better please the 9 earth- beings: I ideas come by themselves, I add them. ere are always things 10 that can be added. I ask myself: Will they be useful? Or will they not? 11 While Nazario preferred to work with Ausangate (they were inherently re- 12 lated in- ayllu), as a good chamán andino he traveled all around Cuzco with 13 tourists to places he had not been before; thus he had to become acquainted 14 with the many earth-beings in the region and become known to them: It is 15 like when you come to Cuzco and want to know the people, and the people want 16 to know you. I also want to know tirakuna; they also want to know me. Tira- 17 kuna were (o course) persons; it was a matter o courtesy for him to intro- 18 duce himsel to those earth- beings that were not his original ayllu and ask 19 them i they would accept his becoming part o them: Traveling, going to 20 Cuzco, to the ruins, to Washington, I am speaking and learning, and I add [the 21 name of] that [place] where I am. With that I add [the earth-being] that is [the 22 place where I am]. Sometimes I think, “I am not going to send a despacho only 23 for Ausangate. Now I am [also] going to call Machu Picchu and Salccantay” 24 [because] that is respect that helps more. ose things also work; all µ ts together 25 [everything works] when I call them, the people I call start healing in Pacchanta 26 also when I call [those other local earth- beings]. Nazario’s job as an Andean 27 shaman was not only such; performed with respect, being a chamán was also 28 a source for innovations that he could bring home as a yachaq—or a paqu— 29 to cure his animals, plants, and family in Pacchanta. 30 In addition to resisting being called a paqu, Nazario never identi¨ ed 31 himsel as altumisayuq—the most powerful yachaq who can talk with 32 earth-beings and can listen to their words. According to him and his father 33 Mariano, these yachaqkuna had disappeared long ago; Jesus Christ punished 34 them because they had conversations with earth- beings. He tied their eyes, 35 ears, and mouth, and now nobody listens or talks to the earth- beings in the 36 way altumisayoq did. Doubting this fact, when Nazario’s mother was sick, 37
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1 both he and Mariano traveled to far- away places in search o an altumisa- 2 yuq, but they could not ¨ nd one. Ethnographic accounts contradict Naza- 3 rio’s conclusion about these practitioners. Xavier Ricard (2007), working in 4 a community that is also under the jurisdiction o Ausangate, has met indi- 5 viduals who identi¨ ed themselves as altumisayuq. And Tristan Platt (1997) 6 participated in an event in Oruro (in Bolivia) where the practitioner (who 7 Platt identi¨ ed as a yachaj [sic], not an altumisayuq) successfully interacted 8 with an earth- being; it made its appearance as a condor in the room where 9 the event took place. In Cuzco, tourism has stimulated the upsurge o these 10 practices among the local population as well. Cuzqueños from all walks o 11 life covet chamanes’ services, and those who identify themselves as altumisa- 12 yuq earn better salaries than plain pampamisayuq—those who, like Nazario, 13 can make good despachos but cannot talk or listen to earth-beings. I asked 14 him again and again, explaining that I had heard that altumisayuq existed, 15 but he held his ground: People just walk saying that I am altumisayuq. ey 16 also tell me “you are an altumisayuq om Lauramarca—you live in Ausangate, 17 you live in the corner that has an alto misa.” I say, “I am not altumisayuq.” It 18 would be a lie i I said I was altumisayuq. I am not going to lie, not even to the 19 mistis, even i I can charge them more. I say the truth; fearing the apukuna,I 20 talk legally. I I just do things for the sake o doing them, then something di© - 21 cult would happen, for the group, for the tourists. Also, something would happen 22 to me. Nazario could not lie without risking a bad relation with the earth- 23 beings, which would not only ruin his business, but could also a± ect his life. 24 Money was not worth it—he respected tirakuna. 25 26 27 28 TIRAKUNA OR SACRED MOUNTAINS 29 HAVE TO BE ERADICATED 30 31 It is impossible to take from them this superstition because the 32 destruction o these guacas would require more force than that o 33 all the people o Peru in order to move these stones and hills. 34 —Cristóbal de Albornoz, 1584 (emphasis added) 35 36 [We need to] defeat those absurd and pantheistic ideologies that believe that walls are gods . . . those primitive religious forms that say 37
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“do not touch that mountain because it is an Apu, because it is full 1 with the millenarian spirit o who knows what.” . . . Hey, the souls 2 o the ancestors are surely in paradise, not in mountains. 3 —Alan García (in Adrianzén 2011) 4 5 In the Andes the entities also known as mountains have been the site of con- 6 flict among worlds for centuries because they are not only mountains, and they 7 are important in all their beings. The above quotes illustrate such a conflict, 8 one between rulers and ruled. Notwithstanding the chronological distance, 9 the authors of the quotes (Cristóbal de Albornoz, an early colonial extirpator 10 of idolatries, and Alan García, a recent president of Peru) solve the conflict (or 11 attempt to do so) by deeming that the notion that mountains are not only such 12 is a belief—and a false one at that: inspired by the devil in de Albornoz’s opin- 13 ion, and possibly a remnant of the same belief in the view of the former presi- 14 dent. The translation of tirakuna as “spirits” is also underpinned by the notion 15 that mountains as something else are a belief, and—specifically in the case 16 of Cuzco—an indigenous belief. Usually effected by tourism, as in the catchy 17 phrase “where the gods become mountains” quoted above, these translations 18 by travelers and industries allocate such beliefs to the sphere of ‘indigenous 19 religion,’ of which Andean shamanism may be today’s best-known version. 20 But politicians may also effect the same conceptual move: García’s remarks 21 provoked antagonistic responses from leading leftists who defended the right 22 of indigenous peoples to what they called their spiritual beliefs and accused 23 the ex-president of evolutionary racism and religious intolerance (Adrianzén 24 2011). 25 Nazario’s job as an Andean shaman faced me with a paradox: while the 26 view of relations with earth-beings as religion was self-evident to travelers, it 27 was not self-evident to Nazario or his family. Thinking through this paradox 28 does not yield an answer like “yes, it is religion” or “no, it is not religion,” for 29 perhaps it can be both religion and not. An either-or answer may be unable 30 to consider that relations with earth-beings as religious practices where ef- 31 fected by processes of conversion first to Christianity (executed by the colo- 32 nial Church and its representatives) and later to secular modernity (executed 33 by the state and its representatives). Conversion implied translation (Rafael 34 1993), and exploring translation may reveal the ontological complexity of these 35 entities—tirakuna, mountains, sacred entities—and their participation in dif- 36 ferent, yet partially connected, socionatural formations, where they are more 37
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1 than one, but less than many: the distinctive entities named above complexly 2 appear in one another. Let me explain further. 3 In the Andes, from early colonial faith to today’s sacred mountains or moun- 4 tain spirits, the language of religion has acted as a powerful tool for a capa- 5 cious translation enabling cohabitation (however uncomfortable) among dif- 6 ferent worlds: worlds that make ontological distinctions between humans, 7 nonhumans, and gods as well as worlds that do not make such distinctions. 8 I speculate that what the Christians who arrived in the Andes encountered 9 was not necessarily what we know as “religion,” let alone what we might cur- 10 rently call “indigenous religion.” The ontological divisions between the devil 11 and God, humans and nature, and soul and body, that early modern practi- 12 tioners of Christianity used to translate the practices they encountered into 13 “idolatry” and “superstition” did not organize life in the precolonial Andes. 14 They came into existence in the Andes through processes of colonial transla- 15 tion (of words and practices) that acted as a genealogical foundation for the 16 later emergence of “indigenous religion” as practice and conceptual field— 17 perhaps in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, perhaps later. Translations 18 also converted other-than- human beings into nature, and. accordingly, the 19 practices that engaged them into practices with nature (beliefs animated by 20 the devil) or with supernature (beliefs about nature produced by culture). How- 21 ever, the translations did not cancel out the world where these entities (I call 22 them earth-beings here; de Albornoz called them guacas) escaped definition 23 as nature. The worlds where guacas or current-day tirakuna—which may not 24 be the same—are not beliefs continued to exist along with the beings’ trans- 25 lation into devil-inspired superstitions, mountain spirits, or indigenous religion. 26 Thus what in the world of travelers, anthropologists, politicians, and priests 27 may be “religion” is also not religion, but interactions with other-than- human 28 entities that are neither natural nor supernatural, but beings that are with ru- 29 nakuna in socio-natural collectives that do not abide by the divisions between 30 God, nature, and humanity. 31 Earth-beings in the Andes emerge not only from indigenous religious be- 32 liefs mixed with Catholic faith or from ancestral spirits that inhabit mountains. 33 Rather, tirakuna and runakuna also emerge inherently related in-ayllu. At the 34 risk of anachronism, I want to propose that along with the impossibility of re- 35 moving the idol because it was a huge mountain, it might have been in-ayllu 36 relationality that made colonial eradication of idolatries a daunting task. Un- 37 beknown to those in charge, their task required not only replacing spurious
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Nazario trekking with tourists through Ausangate—preparing to make a 18 despacho and having a good time. April 2007. 19 20 21 beliefs with legitimate ones. It would have also involved transforming the rela- 22 tional mode of the in-ayllu world, where earth-beings are not objects of human 23 subjects. Rather, they are together and as such are place. The form of the re- 24 lation in-ayllu is different from relations of worship or veneration that require 25 separation between humans and sacred mountains or spirits. De Albornoz 26 and others like him may have not been able to understand that, rather than 27 worship, what they saw was people with guacas (and vice versa) taking place 28 through such relation. Contemporary politicians like García and the leftists 29 who criticized his religious intolerance may have the same problem. 30 Moreover, most of us may find difficult to fathom runakuna and tirakuna 31 engaging in and emerging from both a relation of belief (or worship) that sepa- 32 rates humans and earth-beings and from in-ayllu relations in which earth- 33 beings (that are) with people take-place. Partially connected, both kinds of 34 relation may overlap and distinctly exceed each other. Practices with earth- 35 beings (including chamanismo Andino) can be identified as religious, but they 36 cannot be reduced to such, for the notion of religion may not contain all they 37
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1 are. This does not mean that the practices are not religious as well—which is 2 what thinking through units (and the either-or logic to which we are accus- 3 tomed) would lead us to conclude. Partial connections (and the fractal bodies 4 or fields that they articulate) instead allow a description that can be both reli- 5 gion and other than religion at the same time: a never eradicated earth-being 6 emerging in (usually Catholic) religious practices, and vice versa. The effec- 7 tiveness of both conversion and the opposition to conversion is perhaps best 8 viewed through the incompleteness of each of these processes. Considering 9 these practices as religious beliefs without considering what is not religious 10 beliefs that the practices also are simplifies this complexity. Enabled by a 11 historically powerful epistemic apparatus, such simplification is a political- 12 conceptual practice with the capacity to enact some realities and disavow 13 others. Nazario’s words were clear: Ausangate is not a spirit, can’t you see 14 it? It is there—not a spirit. Yet the tourist business for which he worked bore 15 the words mountain spirit in its name, and Padre Antonio earnestly welcomed 16 runakuna’s practices with earth-beings as indigenous religion. Similarly, as 17 I explain in the next story, the National Museum of the American Indian that 18 hosted Nazario as co-curator translated his practices as indigenous religiosity. 19 And yes, they are all of the above—but “not only.” 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 STORY 6 3 4 A COMEDY OF EQUIVOCATIONS 5 6 NAZARIO TURPO’S COLLABORATION 7 8 WITH THE NATIONAL MUSEUM 9 10 OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 11 12 13 Here I am dressed in our clothes from before 14 (Noqaq ñaupa vestidoy, ñaupa p’achakuy). 15 16 NAZARIO TURPO 2002 (looking at photographs from his ¨ rst visit to the National Museum o the American Indian) 17 18 Hopefully whatever I say will [make something] appear for the 19 peasant; hopefully, what I am saying in the Museum o the American 20 Inka [will] also appear—or is it in vain, so that it disappears, that 21 I have talked? at is what I ask myself. 22 23 NAZARIO TURPO 2004 24 25 Early in the Pacchanta morning, transistor radios are tuned in to one pre- 26 ferred station—Radio Santa Mónica—for all sorts o news. National and 27 regional political news and monthly or weekly information about patron 28 saints’ festivities ¨ ll the daybreak air in the village. News about relatives in 29 Lima, Arequipa, and Cuzco also travels quite e· ciently from origin to desti- 30 nation through the same medium, sometimes with a little help from village 31 gossip. It was through these radio programs that the tourist agency for which 32 he worked routinely informed Nazario o the groups o foreigners he would 33 have to work with. In 2002, when he told me how his visit to Washington 34 had changed his life, Nazario’s household had already been paying special at- 35 tention to these radio messages for three years. And it was through the same 36 radio program in 1999 that he was summoned to Cuzco to discuss the possi- 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Nazario looking at the display at the National Museum of the American Indian 26 that he helped produce, September 2004. 27 28 29 bility o traveling to Washington, D.C., to serve as a consultant to the cura- 30 tors in charge o the Quechua exhibit at the National Museum o the Ameri- 31 can Indian (ÃÄÅÆ). is was not the usual early morning news, and when I 32 met him, Nazario was still ¨ guring out what his role at the museum was. e 33 last o his two statements above, to which I will return, re´ ects both his dis- 34 orientation and his hope with respect to the museum—he was indeed very 35 grateful and happy about how he personally bene¨ ted from the relationship 36 (I will explain a bit more about this below), but being in- ayllu, he also hoped 37 that it would not just be to his own advantage. Otherwise, problems could
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emerge. He knew that he had been invited instead o his father, who was too 1 old and frail to travel. Mariano, Nazario said, had connections “with impor- 2 tant doctors.” ese ranged from the lawyers and politicians Mariano had 3 worked with during the period when he walked the complaint to an assort- 4 ment o anthropologists at the local university. ese anthropologists were 5 clearly discernible among Peruvian intellectuals for their passionate and ex- 6 clusive (at times exclusionary) interrogation o all things Cuzqueño, from re- 7 gional history—Inca and contemporary—to what is broadly labeled “Andean 8 thought,” an important ¨ eld o local anthropology. e ÃÄÅÆ’s contact with 9 Nazario went through this network o anthropology—it was a proli¨ c writer 10 o “Andean thought” who sent Nazario the radio message requesting him to 11 travel to the city o Cuzco in the next few days. 12 Nazario did not know how the message would alter his chances in life. 13 Until then, as with most indigenous peasants who speak only Quechua, his 14 travel experience was limited to the city o Cuzco: journeys to buy commer- 15 cially produced goods for household consumption, sell wool and meat with 16 his brother Benito, attend a relative’s wedding, and other such purposes. But 17 this travel was not a matter o journeying to a place where one does not be- 18 long; quite the contrary, it was part o his monthly routines. Nazario was 19 overwhelmed by the possibility o leaving Cuzco and going abroad. e very 20 ¨ rst contact between the Turpos and the ÃÄÅÆ, occurred when, inspired 21 by the idea o the repatriation o remains that is part o the relationship 22 between Native North Americans and the state in the United States, the 23 museum decided to return some human remains that were in its possession 24 and that were said to be o Cuzqueño origins. One o the experts working 25 in the ÃÄÅÆ’s Latin American section was a Peruvian archaeologist who was 26 acquainted with the group o anthropologists who were Mariano’s friends. 27 A© er the archaeologist had consulted with them, the museum decided to re- 28 patriate the remains in Pacchanta, Mariano’s village. It was the mid- 1990s, 29 and Mariano took part in the ceremony along with Nazario and Carmona. 30 (Recall that Carmona also participated with Nazario in Alejandro Toledo’s 31 2001 inauguration as president o Peru in Machu Picchu.) 32 While the repatriation o ancestral remains is a popular (i contentious) 33 issue among Native North Americans (Kakaliouras 2012), in the Andes 34 the idea o repatriation is foreign—or at least it was at the time the ÃÄÅÆ- 35 sponsored event happened. When Nazario and Mariano narrated this epi- 36 sode to me, they referred to the bones as suq’a and translated the “repatriation 37
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1 o ancestral remains” as “burying suq’a in Pacchanta.” Importantly though, 2 suq’a are not just bones, let alone bones o ancestors that need to be buried in 3 the rightful place, as is the case in North America. Rather, suq’a are remains 4 o beings from a di± erent era; popular wisdom in Cuzco has it that these 5 beings were burned by the sun, an episode that marks the separation between 6 our era and that o the suq’a. eir current contact with living beings (mostly 7 humans but perhaps also plants and animals) can cause diseases and even 8 bring death. Nazario remembered: e suq’a was with its body, with its bones; 9 it was in the museum, they brought it here. He was not too concerned, he said, 10 about this suq’a because he thought they had lost power: You know, Marisol, 11 there was nothing like petroleum [before], or gas, nor priests to say masses, or holy 12 water. at is why suq’akuna were bold. But now—I do not know i it is because 13 they have been blessed, or because o the gas—they have become tamed, they are 14 not that evil [anymore]. Coming from the United States, these suq’a must 15 have undoubtedly been weakened. Nevertheless, aware o the consequences 16 that the presence o suq’a (or “remains o the ancestors,” as the museum au- 17 thorities put it) could have in Pacchanta, the Turpos organized several impor- 18 tant despachos to prevent and curtail the possible negative e± ects o bringing 19 suq’a to the village. e ÃÄÅÆ o· cials who visited Pacchanta for the occasion 20 were thrilled to witness the ceremonies, which they saw as a celebration o 21 the repatriation o ancestors’ remains. e suq’akuna (as potentially danger- 22 ous entities) were lost in this translation o the event. is incident is one in 23 a long series o equivocations (Viveiros de Castro 2004b) that underpinned 24 the intriguing process o curatorial collaboration between Nazario and the 25 team o U.S.- based experts that resulted in the Quechua exhibit at the ÃÄÅÆ. 26 27 28 29 EQUIVOCATIONS ARE NOT MISTAKES 30 Equivocation, as I mentioned earlier in the book, is the term used by the Bra- 31 zilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2004b) to refer to the mis- 32 understandings that usually occur in communications across worlds. Equivo- 33 cations imply the use of the same word (or concept) to refer to things that are 34 not the same because they emerge from worlding practices connected to dif- 35 ferent natures. “Constant epistemology, variable ontology” is how Viveiros de 36 Castro describes the conditions for equivocation (6). He developed his ethno- 37
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graphic theory working with socionatural collectives in the Brazilian Amazon, 1 which inspired what he calls multinaturalism, or the theory that entities share 2 the same culture but inhabit different natures, which endow them with differ- 3 ent bodies that shape what (and how) they see. The nature the jaguar inhabits 4 is different from the nature the human inhabits, and both are different from the 5 one that parrots inhabit. Yet jaguars, people, and parrots all have humanity in 6 common. Interacting with each other safely requires learning that the same 7 concept may not have the same referent. Take Viveiros de Castro’s well-known 8 example contrasting the jaguar and the human: the concepts of beer and 9 blood exist in both their worlds, yet resulting from their bodily differences what 10 to the jaguar is corn beer, is blood to the human. It is the body that deter- 11 mines what is; the thing does not exist independently of the body that defines 12 the perspective. Conversations among different perspectival positions are in- 13 evitably equivocal, and understanding depends on controlling the equivoca- 14 tion; in other words, being explicit about which world we are translating to 15 and from “to avoid losing sight of the difference concealed within equivocal 16 ‘homonyms’—between our language and that of [others]—since we and they 17 are never talking about the same things” (7). Viveiros de Castro calls this “per- 18 spectivist translation,” a practice for which rather than summoning an object 19 (or world) to be known, the adept translator summons subjects that are like 20 the knower (Strathern 1999, 305). 21 In the conversations between Nazario and the curatorial team (or between 22 Nazario and me), equivocations did not emerge from a condition of shared 23 epistemologies and differentiated ontologies, as in Viveiros de Castro’s theory 24 of Amerindian perspectivism. Rather, the most obvious source of equivoca- 25 tions was that the “things” that were to occupy the exhibit were not only things 26 existing at a distance from the relating subject—they were also things and 27 entities that came into being through relations and with those that participated 28 in them. Equivocations, then, resulted from the different relational regimes that 29 were used in the conversation. The remaining of the chapter illustrates what 30 this means, but here I also provide a brief example. 31 Looking at the NMAI displays he had helped produce and remembering his 32 participation in each of them, Nazario told me how he had come to terms with 33 the exhibit. Two items in it, Ausangate and the despacho, “were not Ausangate 34 or despachos.” As I worked through this comment (through my own concep- 35 tual translations of despacho and Ausangate), I understood that the curatorial 36 37
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1 collaboration had produced something else—a representation, an epistemic 2 possibility absent from how the entities in question are in Pacchanta, where 3 they become through relations that do not separate between word and thing, 4 signifier and signified, and, at times, not even subject and object. At the mu- 5 seum the possibility of relations of this kind was truncated as Nazario’s words 6 became a description that later came to fruition as an accomplished object 7 placed behind a glass or on a wall in the exhibit. A usual museum thing that 8 was unusual for Nazario if crafted with his words. 9 By calling this story “A Comedy of Equivocations,” I want to highlight my 10 interpretation of the collaboration that installed the Andean Community ex- 11 hibit at the NMAI as a process of translation that was inevitably made with 12 misunderstandings—not unusual in conversations across worlds. Misunder- 13 standing is a problem when the intention is for the understanding to be one. 14 At the museum what transpired was translation itself: a movement between 15 partially connected worlds, each of which was a point of view that—while per- 16 haps uncommon to each other—came to be with the other through the con- 17 versation that composed the translation and organized the collaboration that 18 resulted in the exhibit. Yes, the process was laden with power, and the view- 19 point of one world prevailed, perhaps occluding the inevitability of misunder- 20 standing from its representation at the exhibit itself. And this was unfortunate, 21 also because representing how misunderstanding was part of the process, 22 rather than a defeat, would have been a feat of museum practice. 23 And speaking of equivocations: I am not claiming that this chapter repre- 24 sents Nazario’s ideas better than the NMAI curators could. I cannot (nor do 25 I want to) unmake equivocations: for example, the definition of suq’a is the 26 equivocation I inhabit; it is the epistemic tool I use to make sense of those 27 disease-producing bones. As Viveiros de Castro argues, “if the equivocation 28 is not an error . . . its opposite is not the truth but the univocal” (2004b, 12). 29 Avoiding the univocal, I want to make the equivocation obvious as an in- 30 evitable component of conversations as events through which worlds meet. 31 Controlling equivocations avoids solipsism and makes the conversation just 32 that—a conversation. It can also reveal the conversation’s comedic features 33 and, as was our case, potentially elicit laughter that can be both bonding and 34 differentiating at the same time. 35 36 37
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Misunderstandings went in both directions. Not limited to the museum’s 1 display o objects, they involved di± erent aspects o the encounter between 2 Nazario and his curatorial counterparts. For example, according to Naza- 3 rio, before the ÃÄÅÆ curators would hire him, they wanted to con¨ rm that 4 he was, in his terms, “a peasant who lived by Ausangate.” ey visited Pac- 5 chanta to witness that (again in his words) it “was true how I lived,” that he 6 and his family were who the curators thought they were. e visitors video- 7 taped some aspects o the encounter, and back in Washington, they showed 8 the tape to other ÃÄÅÆ employees. is, according to Nazario, certi¨ ed for 9 the rest o them that he lived in Ausangate and was familiar with earth prac- 10 tices—both agricultural and related to earth- beings (which in Pacchanta 11 are usually one, though for the curators they might have been two di± erent 12 things). 13 Nazario’s recollections: On January 25th, more or less, they arrived here. All 14 the way up to here they came, they saw it all—who we were, the things we have, 15 that my wife is the one who spins and weaves, that I am not lying. ey have 16 seen how it is true that I live in the corner o Ausangate, i the water I drink is 17 really dirty or not. All those things they saw. How I sleep, i I sleep like a peas- 18 ant. I my customs are like our Inkas, or i my life is like the Spaniards. About 19 all those things I spoke in Washington: in what way I cook, how I sleep, how I 20 live in the corner o Ausangate, how I am with runakuna like me. All o this I 21 have talked about [when] they came to investigate, to see everything. Twenty- µ ve 22 people came, a big group, in a bus. 23 Before [they came] we got together in Cuzco [and they said]: You have to re- 24 serve time [for us], all [that] you told [us] in Washington you are going to show 25 to us, your clothes, your food, your wife, your son, all your family, how you do 26 the animals’ celebration, everything. I sent [my family] a message: “Liberata, 27 Ruµ no, Victor, get our corral ready, make sure our house is also ready. Take our 28 animals to the corral, the museum group is going to arrive.” ey [the museum 29 group] told me, “We will sleep in the house, we will not bring tents; you have to 30 get the house ready, all the beds.” en my family was ready for us to arrive om 31 Cuzco. Now they believe that I am a peasant, that I celebrate the animals, all I 32 have said is true. 33 According to one o the curators, the purpose o the visit to Ausangate 34 was to document Nazario’s life and take the pictures they would use in the 35 exhibit. Nazario was right; they wanted to document his life. But he also was 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Collaborative equivocations at the National Museum of the American Indian: 19 earth-beings (my translation of tirakuna) become Apus, which—translated as 20 Lord (singular)—intimates Quechua religion, sacred mountains, indigenous 21 spirituality, or the theme of the exhibit, “Our Universes.” September 2004. 22 23 24 wrong about his visitors’ intentions. ey might not have needed to con¨ rm 25 who he was—or at least not in the way he thought they did. Translation went 26 both ways and was inevitably shot through with equivocations—some were 27 controlled, others were not. Nazario met Emil Her Many Horses—a former 28 Jesuit priest and an artist who belongs to the Oglala Lakota Nation—and the 29 two o them with some aides were in charge o putting the Quechua exhibit 30 together. Not surprisingly, neither their epistemic positions nor their inter- 31 ests in the museum were equivalent. ey were made temporarily equivalent 32 by a relationship o translation for which a theater o communication was 33 staged. In it, both sides—Nazario and Her Many Horses—acted to make the 34 participation and interests o each other possible. 35 36 37
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Collaboration at the National Museum 1 of the American Indian: “The Native 2 Curator Had the Last Word” 3 4 Established in 1989—with U.S. multiculturalism policies in place and the 5 hegemony o Orientalist representations under revision—the ÃÄÅÆ was 6 conceived with a postcolonial—even decolonizing—intention; it invited 7 nonexpert curators (selected from among the groups to be represented in 8 its exhibits) to collaborate with its own curators, who were mostly Native 9 North Americans. Seemingly, and in contrast to usual representations o 10 “others,” indigenous knowledge (rather than anthropology) was to mediate 11 the portrayal o Native Americans in the museum (Jacknis 2008, 28). e 12 ¨ rst web page o the museum, now deactivated, described its mission as fol- 13 lows: “ e museum works in collaboration with the Native peoples o the 14 Western Hemisphere to protect and foster their cultures by rea· rming tra- 15 ditions and beliefs, encouraging contemporary artistic expression, and em- 16 powering the Indian voice.”¼ ÃÄÅÆ e was not only curated and directed 17 by Native Americans, but the curatorial work was achieved in collaboration 18 with indigenous nonexpert curators. Yet, collaboration is not free o con´ ict. 19 e problems underpinning collaborative relationships, as well as the dif- 20 ferent notions o indigeneity that were brought to the museum, have been 21 overtly discussed in several venues by intellectuals, artists, and curators— 22 both Native Americans and others—who in one way or another have been 23 involved in the production o the ÃÄÅÆ (see Chaat Smith 2007; Lonetree 24 and Cobb 2008). In a similar vein, an edited volume titled Museum Fric- 25 tions discusses “the ongoing complex o social processes and transformations 26 that are generated by and based in museums, museological processes that 27 can be multi- sited and ramify far beyond museum settings” (Kratz and Karp 28 2006, 2). Recognition o the con´ icts that underpin museums seems to be 29 a current theme o public discussion, and at times even an integral aspect o 30 the curatorial process itself. Likewise, indigenous self- representation as well 31 as collaboration between experts and nonexperts in the curatorial process 32 have become frequent museum practices. 33 Friction—what Anna Tsing (2004) de¨ nes as, among other things, the 34 collaboration between disparate partners—underpins endeavors o this 35 kind. And what results from collaboration are matters o continuous nego- 36 37
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1 tiations that exceed intents, initial or outgoing; they branch out into a larger 2 process that includes agents far beyond immediate participants. us seen, 3 collaborations create unintended alliances and connections between dissimi- 4 lar peoples and worlds; they also produce transformations. In Tsing’s words, 5 they draw attention to the formation o new cultural and political con¨ gu- 6 rations that change, rather than repeat, old contests (2004, 161). is is in- 7 triguing. e collaboration that the ÃÄÅÆ curators initiated with their Cuz- 8 queño counterparts produced novel situations that related individuals and 9 institutions in Washington to Andean people and things, and that a± ected 10 Nazario’s life in many ways. His participation in the Quechua exhibit “made 11 things happen” that he did not expect. Similarly, the ÃÄÅÆ collaborated in 12 the production o his novel experiences in ways that the curators did not 13 expect, and perhaps did not like or would not recognize. One main result 14 was Nazario’s new job as Andean shaman—an ironic consequence, given 15 the portrayal o Andean shamanism as an ancient tradition at the Quechua 16 exhibit. 17 18 Frictions of Representation: 19 20 The “Quechua Community” at the NMAI 21 eÃÄÅÆ has three permanent exhibitions distributed across the third and 22 fourth levels o the building. e former houses the Our Lives exhibits, while 23 the latter displays the Our Universes and Our Peoples exhibits. Each had a dif- 24 ferent lead curator and di± erent assistants, all o whom worked with non- 25 expert curators from the communities, villages, or tribes represented in each 26 exhibition. e brochure that I collected the day o the inauguration de- 27 scribes Our Peoples as featuring “Native history” (ÃÄÅÆ 2004). On the mu- 28 seum’s website the curators described the installation as one in which “Native 29 Americans tell their own stories—their own histories—[and present] new 30 insights into, and di± erent perspectives on, history.”½ Our e Lives exhibit, 31 according to the brochure, is about “contemporary Native life.” Similarly, 32 the museum’s website explains that it “reveals how residents o eight Native 33 communities . . . live in the 21st century.”¾ And ¨ nally, Our Universes is de- 34 scribed in the brochure as representing Native American beliefs. is last 35 word—beliefs—surprised me: it enacts a di± erence with (and subordination 36 to) knowledge that is frequent in representations o indigeneity, but that I 37
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was not expecting to ¨ nd in this museum. Luckily, the wording was di± erent 1 at the actual exhibit, where a placard at the entrance described Our Universes 2 as housing representations o “traditional knowledge.” But a representational 3 friction still remained: “traditional knowledge” and “contemporary Native 4 American lives” were housed in two di± erent exhibits. I everything in a mu- 5 seum represents, then this separation su ested a distinction that, in a classic 6 denial o coevalness (see Fabian 1983), implicitly assigned “traditional knowl- 7 edge” to the past. Additionally, except for an indigenous group from Domi- 8 nica, Our Lives only represents North American indigenous collectives. Why 9 would the representation o contemporary indigenous life not include Cen- 10 tral and South America? Conversely (and surprisingly), groups from Cen- 11 tral and South America were featured in Our Universes—the exhibit that was 12 explicitly or implicitly assigned to represent the past. So not only was tradi- 13 tional knowledge a thing o the past, but the Southern hemisphere was not 14 included in representations o the indigenous present. I speculate that a fric- 15 tional collaboration among di± erent conceptualizations o indigeneity must 16 have permeated the ÃÄÅÆ’s internal processes. Assigning di± erent views 17 to di± erent exhibits might not have relieved the friction, but it made pos- 18 sible the representation o heterogeneous views o Native Americans. “Visi- 19 tors encounter a plethora o perspectives—even con´ icting voices from the 20 same tribe,” according to the press release for the opening o the ÃÄÅÆ.Á I 21 would add that this plethora o perspectives came from within the museum 22 itself; avoiding it might have implied imposing one vision, and the politics 23 o representation would have been solved in a di± erent way. So my commen- 24 tary here does not seek a di± erent solution. My purpose in observing that 25 diverse understandings o indigeneity also came from within the museum, 26 rather than through the invited collaborators alone, is to remark that the 27 process o collaboration between expert and nonexpert curators must have 28 also been di± erent depending on the lead curator. e choice o collabora- 29 tors, the selection o themes and objects, the language used to describe them, 30 and the display o the exhibits themselves—in all o these, the collaborative 31 relationship was not independent from the vision o indigeneity that each o 32 the main curators held. 33 Nazario collaborated on the Quechua Community exhibit—one o the 34 eight exhibits housed in Our Universes.Ç is is how Her Many Horses, the 35 leading curator, describes Our Universes in one o the signs at the exhibit: 36 37
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1 2 TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE SHAPES OUR WORLD 3 4 In this gallery you will discover how Native people understand their place in 5 the universe and order their daily lives. Our philosophies of life come from our 6 ancestors. They taught us to live in harmony with the animals, plants, spirit 7 world, and the people around us. In Our Universes you’ll encounter Native 8 people from the Western Hemisphere who continue to express this wisdom 9 in ceremonies, celebrations, languages, arts, religions, and daily life. It is our 10 duty to pass these teachings on to succeeding generations. For that is the 11 way to keep our traditions alive. Emil Her Many Horses, NMAI, 2003.È 12 13 14 15 Philosophies o life, languages, arts, religion: a modern classi¨ cation o knowl- 16 edge organizes the display o ancestral tradition (also a modern notion). Lin- 17 ear time (expressed by the continuity o knowledge from ancestors to future 18 generations) and the distinction between nature and culture, as well as the 19 privileging o the “spirit” world, complete the understanding o indigeneity 20 represented by Our Universes. e exhibition is mostly visual, although it in- 21 cludes some audio recordings; the lack o smells and tactile elements is im- 22 mediately obvious. 23 Conceived with great aesthetic taste, and underpinned by concepts drawn 24 from anthropology, history, and religion, this exhibit was perhaps the one at 25 the ÃÄÅÆ that least challenged U.S. popular images o Native Americans. In 26 addition to having heard Nazario’s comments, my visit to the Quechua ex- 27 hibit—and what I liked and disliked about it—was in´ uenced by my being 28 Peruvian and an ethnographer o Cuzco (see de la Cadena 2000). ese con- 29 ditions also colored my interpretations o the tensions o translation through 30 which the heterogeneity o the curatorial collaboration became a single, uni- 31 ¨ ed representation. 32 33 34 TRANSLATING INDIAN 35 36 The word Indian must have been a knot of translational tension. While the 37 term has acquired a positive valence in the United States, this is not the case
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in Latin America. In Cuzco, and I would say also in Peru as a whole, the word 1 “Indian” is an insult; it denotes a miserable social condition that those who 2 may fall into the category—like Mariano and Nazario—distance themselves 3 from. Thus, they call themselves runakuna or campesinos. Recognizing this 4 association, the Quechua exhibit does not use the word Indian, but that word 5 is in the name of the museum itself. Intriguingly, Nazario always called it el 6 Museo del Inka Americano, thus avoiding the negative connotation of Indian; 7 similarly, he applied the word runa to all indigenous individuals of the Ameri- 8 cas: We are all runakuna, we are like Inka here too [ Llipinchismi kanchis runa- 9 kuna, inkakunallataqmi kanchis nuqanchispas chaypipas], he explained the 10 day of the inauguration, when I asked how he would refer to all the indige- 11 nous visitors to the museum.É I quote it here to note Nazario’s translation of 12 Indian into Inka and to highlight his positioning of Inka as a current condition, 13 not a thing of the past (as was the interpretation of the NMAI curators of Our 14 Universes ). 15 16 17 18 In 2007, six months a© er Nazario’s death, I spoke to Her Many Horses. 19 He rea· rmed the collaborative philosophy o the ÃÄÅÆ. “In all circum- 20 stances,” he said, “the native curator had the ¨ nal word.” e situation might 21 have been more complex than that, and in any case, Her Many Horses had 22 the initial word. He designed the larger representational vision to which each 23 native curator then contributed. In the case o Nazario, this was a source o 24 collaborative friction: the larger design o Our Universe required the trans- 25 lation o Nazario’s relationality with earth- beings (he came into being with 26 them, and this was an earthly, daily life condition) into the semantic ¨ eld o 27 “spirituality,” through which the exhibition had chosen to display “Native 28 beliefs” or “Native traditional knowledge.” 29 In a placard placed on a wall near the entrance to the Quechua exhibit, 30 Her Many Horses describes the “Quechua People” as follows: 31 32 e Quechua People are the descendants o the Inkas, one o the most power- 33 ful empires o the Americas. Today, Quechua spiritual leaders and healers 34 known as paqus, continue to practice old Inka ways, high in the Peruvian 35 Andes. Every year thousands o Quechua people make a pilgrimage to Qoyllu 36 [sic] Rit’I, a sacred Inka site. 37
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1 e image o Nazario in the exhibit is juxtaposed with the above text. A large 2 photograph introduces him to the visitor along with his extended family 3 (and his best friend, Octavio Crispín), all o them dressed in what Nazario 4 called ñaupa p’acha, ñaupa vestido, or “the clothes from before.” An arrow 5 points at him and the corresponding caption reads: 6 Nazario Turpo Condori, a paqu—a spiritual leader or shaman. He lives in Paq- 7 chanta, near Ausangate, the tallest mountain or Apu in the central Andes. Fol- 8 lowing in his father’s footsteps, he is devoted to the spiritual practices o the 9 Quechua. (emphasis added) 10 11 Consequential in this collaboration, the ÃÄÅÆ Quechua exhibit portrayed 12 Nazario as a paqu and translated this position as “a spiritual leader or shaman 13 . . . devoted to the spiritual practices o the Quechua.” is translation was 14 speci¨ c to this exhibit—not necessarily to Andean anthropology. Shaman, 15 as I explained above, was a new word for a new condition: runakuna making 16 despachos and reading coca leaves for tourists in exchange for money. I have 17 also mentioned that in Pacchanta an individual does not easily or comfort- 18 ably identify himsel (or herself, unusually) as a paqu, nor does the word nec- 19 essarily have a ¨ xed meaning. Rather paqu is the word runakuna use to iden- 20 tify a “person who knows” (the yachaq) a© er the village’s evaluation (usually 21 performed through rumor) o the consequences attributed to that person’s 22 practices. At the ÃÄÅÆ, paqu acquired its meaning through a di± erent 23 chain o signi¨ cation: visitors were invited to recognize the word through 24 the lenses o religion and alternative forms o spirituality that emerge from 25 an allegedly close relationship with nature and therefore signify the past or, 26 more colorfully, unchanged tradition. Correspondingly, another text in the 27 exhibit transcribes Nazario’s words this way: “I, brothers and sisters, have 28 come to talk about everything concerning our life, the life o peasants since 29 the time o the Inkas.” Undoubtedly, the exhibition at the ÃÄÅÆ relates 30 Quechua spiritual tradition to the past, identi¨ es it with a precolonial heri- 31 tage, and de¨ nes it as Inka. Her Many Horses may have departed from the 32 views o his Cuzqueño collaborators, the anthropologists Flores Ochoa and 33 Carmona—or the latter may have changed their minds—for most Andean- 34 ist scholarship recognizes in “indigenous religiosity” (infrequently called “in- 35 digenous spirituality”) a combination o Christian and non- Christian prac- 36 tices.Ê An example o this combination is precisely the pilgrimage to Quyllur 37 Rit’i, which is arguably among the most signi¨ cant o annual regional events
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in the Southern Andes and one in which Christian and non- Christian prac- 1 tices emerge in each other and become inseparable, while at the same time 2 maintaining a distinctiveness that allows di± erent socionatural communities 3 o life to participate in a way that both distinguishes and connects them in 4 the composition o the event.Î is complexity was lost in the exhibit, puri- 5 ¨ ed as it was into a “spiritual” Inkan tradition. Intriguingly, while the exhibit 6 resulted from the collaboration among a heterogeneous “Quechua commu- 7 nity” o curators composed o two anthropologists, two politicians, and a 8 “shaman,” the translation o the practices o the latter into “Inka spirituality” 9 homogenized the same Quechua community and seemingly located its core 10 meaning—almost its essence—in such (allegedly) traditional practices. Dis- 11 tilling this tradition, the “shaman” speaks about it from afar. Temporality and 12 geography fold into each other in Nazario’s remoteness. And thus Nazario 13 is portrayed as saying: “ e Apus [Mountain Spirits] spoke to the altumisas 14 [high priests, sic] saying ‘I am a man and a woman. I am also paña and lloq’e.’ 15 Since then, the high priests know how to speak about paña and lloq’e, about 16 East and West” (emphasis added). is text accompanies a ´ oor- to- ceiling 17 picture o Ausangate on the wall that welcomes the visitor to the exhibit. 18 When I translated the caption for Nazario (from English to Quechua), 19 curious about his reaction to the equivalence made by the curators between 20 Apu and Mountain Spirit and between altumisa and high priests, I retrans- 21 lated the English words for these two entities literally. For the ¨ rst I said orqo 22 espiritun, and for the second I said hatun sacerdote. Orqo means mountain 23 and hatun means high. I used two Spanish words (espiritun for spirit, and 24 sacerdote for priest) because I could not ¨ nd a possible translation for them 25 in my relatively limited Quechua vocabulary. So we started talking about the 26 mountain as spirit, and Nazario said, spirit . . . it could have been before, I do 27 not know i it was before, now they are just Apu. Regarding the altumisas being 28 high priests, he had a good laugh and told me the translation—at least my 29 translation—would make Padre Antonio (our friend the Jesuit priest) angry. 30 Nazario explained: e altumisas could speak with the Apu—that is why they 31 were called altumisas, because they had the high misa. ey were insolent and 32 disobeyed Jesus’s orders to stop talking with the tirakuna—Jesus ordered them to 33 disappear. How could they be priests, like Padre Antonio? Jesus has priests, 34 not Ausangate. Really funny, he thought. Similarly, when I explained to him 35 that the Quechua exhibit represented him as following in his father’s foot- 36 steps, Nazario said he was not—he had no desire to. Unlike Mariano, he was 37
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1 not a yachaq for people in Pacchanta; he worked only for his family and more 2 recently for tourists. Similarly, although he participated in regional politics, 3 he did not want to walk politically in- ayllu as his father had. I did not like this 4 answer; it made me sad. Wanting to transform it into something else, and try- 5 ing to elicit a conversation in which he would position himsel di± erently, I 6 said, “Well . . . the times require a di± erent kind o political leader.” Nazario 7 did not respond; he looked at me, perhaps in agreement, but it could have 8 been that my statement did not suit him either. He might not have wanted 9 to be a local leader like his father, period. In any case, with this conversa- 10 tion I concluded that earth- beings were not spirits, and I told him that. Rep- 11 resenting him as a spiritual practitioner—let alone a leader—was assigning 12 him a position that he did not recognize. Nazario concluded that Her Many 13 Horses might have misunderstood him; a© er all, he was very busy. Or, he 14 speculated, the translation was wrong, that could have been the problem. Truth- 15 fully, the representation o his practices as “spiritual” bothered me more than 16 it bothered him, so we le© it at that and continued visiting the exhibit. 17 18 19 20 NAZARIO DESCRIBES HIS COLLABORATION, 21 AND I TRANSLATE 22 23 When I met Nazario in 2002, he had already visited Washington three times 24 and was a veteran at navigating airports and hotels. He laughed at memories 25 of his first time using a bathroom in airplanes (they are so small he was afraid 26 of being locked in) and of walking down a street in Washington having to hold 27 onto a wrapper from some chocolate candy; he could not just throw it on the 28 street for he had been instructed to find a garbage can. Receiving instructions 29 did not bother him—he welcomed them—just like when he taught people like 30 me how to walk in the mountains, jump over streams, and blow coca leaves 31 to tirakuna—wasn’t I glad to have someone guiding me in Pacchanta? So he 32 was happy to have people looking after him in Washington; it evened up the 33 relations, he thought. This horizontality was limited to prosaic interactions; 34 at the museum things changed, and Nazario was clearly a subordinate—or 35 so he felt: We are going to leave things well arranged so that they [the main 36 curators] do not get mad. Well organized we are going to leave [things]. Who 37 knows . . . maybe someday someone is going to tell them, “Those things are
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wrong.” [And then they would say,] “He [Nazario] was the one who knew how 1 [to do these things], he arranged things like that, we have called him to advise 2 us, and we have paid him [his plane ticket and lodging]. He has come three 3 times and he has left things without arranging them well.” The other person 4 they called would arrange things, [and I] would be left in shame. I committed 5 to doing it, and I am going to do it right. Seemingly, collaboration was con- 6 ceived hierarchically at the museum. Accordingly, Nazario was cocurator in a 7 chain of command where, all too naturally, the U.S. experts ranked highest, 8 followed by the Peruvian experts—all of them apparently ordered according 9 to their capacities. The exhibit that visitors currently see is the visual outcome 10 of this collaboration—not a simple sharing of information, but a translation ar- 11 ticulated by layers of subordination and its well-intended justification. 12 Nazario became part of a collaboration process that had two preconceived 13 roles for him. One of them was (with all due respect to the implementers of the 14 exhibit) as a Native American (or Indian) for whom a representational “spiritual” 15 slot had been crafted; the other role was more directly that of an informant em- 16 bodying the knowledge of Quechua Indians. In Nazario’s interpretation of his 17 participation at the NMAI, he had been invited to answer questions that would 18 help the curators learn about the Andes: They called me so that they would 19 know, because they wanted to know more. They asked and asked. They showed 20 him the objects in the collection—clothes, ropes, spinning wheels, musical in- 21 struments—to get his advice about their care and safekeeping: They unearthed 22 what they had had for a long time, [they asked] if those things could be washed 23 or not, how to clean them, how to store them—all that. They made me see the 24 things they had. Among those clothes I chose, looking several times and ask- 25 ing: Is it good or not? [I told them what] they had to throw away, what can be 26 replaced: “those are old, they are patched, let’s change them,” I said. What 27 was left had to be fixed, because it was not good. The ropes, the weavings, the 28 slingshots, the looms, the boxes, the pinkuyllus [flutes], those had to be fixed. 29 He even offered to fix the objects that he thought needed repair. I imag- 30 ine the curators diplomatically rejected his suggestion, for Nazario was con- 31 cerned that he had not fixed anything: I offered myself to fix all those things, 32 but time went by quickly and we did not finish. What we did was not ready, 33 but that is how it stayed in the Inka Museum in Washington. (I explained that 34 he could not have fixed the objects he helped classified—that museum col- 35 lections are set apart, the items in them are not really to be used, and broken 36 objects also carry value).¼Ï 37
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1 Nazario was also expected to choose things that could go in the exhibit, 2 yet the main principle according to which Nazario included some things and 3 excluded others had been conceived before his arrival: all that came from the 4 Spaniards was taken out [españulmanta tukuy chayta retirachipurayku], and 5 everything that was natural we have left [natural kaqtataq chaypi seguichipu- 6 rayku]. 7 My interpretation through Nazario’s words: Our Universes had the mis- 8 sion of representing Quechua tradition without mixtures, only runakuna things 9 could be present—a lofty project, and indeed hard to achieve for the Andes. 10 Given the colonial politics of Christian conversion, national biopolitics of me- 11 sizaje, and all sorts of economic and geographic processes over several hun- 12 dred years, the history of indigeneity in the Andes is one of fusions among dif- 13 ferent collectivities. Purifying indigeneity requires work—and, in this case, the 14 kind of work that the curators of the Quechua exhibit performed. 15 16 17 18 I am not advocating for a “more accurate representation o indigenous life.” 19 Rather, my comments speak to the use o translation in the construction o 20 the Quechua exhibit at the ÃÄÅÆ and its idiosyncratic view o Indianness. 21 e native curator’s words were included in the collaboration, but they were 22 not the last word, despite the main curator’s intentions. Actually, nobody 23 had the last word. Collaborations are compositions emerging from multiple 24 projects, and the coincidences do not cancel out the di± erences—certainly 25 not the historical di± erences—and geopolitical hierarchies. Years ago, o± er- 26 ing a view about how the production o knowledge was shaped by the di± er- 27 entiated power o languages. Talal Asad wrote, “Western languages produce 28 and deploy desired knowledge more readily than ird World languages do” 29 (1986: 162). ere is nothing I would dispute in that sentence; rather, I would 30 like to add that when it comes to processes o collaboration and translation, 31 the ¨ nal word may be elusive. Once started, the collaborative process takes on 32 a life o its own, summoning up new possibilities, each o which creates new 33 knots o translations—all with their collaborative frictions and concomitant 34 new productions. e ÃÄÅÆ’s translation o Nazario’s practices used a lexi- 35 con that distinguished the spiritual from the material, the sacred from the 36 profane. At home in Pacchanta, Nazario did not use these oppositions to 37 conceptualize his relations with the earth- beings, and we may even say that
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Her Many Horses “misrepresented” his collaborator’s practices. Yet not even 1 this simpli¨ ed evaluation o the process could imply that the collaboration 2 was unproductive. Expressed in a language that visitors to the museum could 3 recognize, the translation created a new public for Nazario. Its members pre- 4 sumably saw in him a shaman, a ¨ gure made popular through consumer cul- 5 tures and the commoditization o things Native American: arts, cra© s, and 6 indeed spiritualism, to which the travel industry and tourism added. Remark- 7 ably, even the Washington Post collaborated in the process that translated 8 Nazario into a shaman, the kind o spiritual leader that U.S. audiences could 9 recognize: an article titled “ e Invisible Man” was published in the news- 10 paper’s Sunday magazine (Krebs 2003). Written by a careful anthropologist, 11 the piece narrates aspects o the saga o this newly minted Andean shaman 12 as he gets a taste o North American audiences. 13 In a turn o events that the ÃÄÅÆ curators o the Quechua exhibition 14 might not have anticipated, their portrayal o Nazario helped create the 15 image o an Andean shaman, for which Nazario became famous in Peru and 16 abroad. e reader may remember that he obtained his job as an Andean sha- 17 man a© er his ¨ rst visit to Washington, where he had been to begin collabo- 18 ration with the ÃÄÅÆ. Contradicting the exhibit, then, Nazario’s persona 19 as a shaman was not only the result o the simple continuity o tradition; it 20 was also a new emergence, the result o the collaboration between museum 21 practices, anthropology, and heterogeneous global networks o spirituality 22 and tourism. Collaborations may create new interests and identities as well 23 as new cultural and political con¨ gurations that change the arena o con- 24 ´ ict, rather than just repeating old contests (Tsing 2005, 13, 161). Yet, as I 25 explained in the previous story, Nazario’s emergence at a novel junction did 26 not make him “less authentic” at what he did—which, as I said, he described 27 as being a yachaq. ough a© er his travels to Washington his practices had to 28 satisfy new circumstances, the changes were nurtured by his intimacy with 29 that eminent earth- being, Ausangate, the mountain that tourists wanted to 30 visit, learn about, and relate to. I his practices as a yachaq were about cu- 31 rating the relation between runakuna and Ausangate so that life would bear 32 the best fruit, as a chamán Andino he introduced trekkers to Ausangate, re- 33 spectfully opening for the former the territory guarded by the latter. Visiting 34 Washington, Nazario not only traveled a great distance; he also crossed sev- 35 eral epistemic zones. e ÃÄÅÆ curators did, too—but they did not expose 36 themselves to the di± erences traversed as much as Nazario did. Unlike the 37
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1 curators who easily exchanged the word “paqu [sic]” for “spiritual leader” 2 and “shaman,” Nazario did not substitute an expression he did not know for 3 one he did know; in his practice, shaman did not necessarily mean paqu (or 4 yachaq), while both ¨ elds o practice were connected and could even be the 5 same: Paqu is diª erent, shaman is diª erent, but I do the same things [Paqu 6 huqniray, chaman huqniray, ichaqa kaqllatataqya ruwani]. I explained why 7 this was the case in the previous story, but in a nutshell: while the audiences 8 were di± erent, the things he did always included earth- beings, and therefore 9 both the practices and their consequences demanded care. e ÃÄÅÆ cura- 10 tors ignored the consequences o being a paqu in the museum, where the 11 dominant language represented reality rather than enacting it as did Naza- 12 rio’s “shamanic practices.” (And this—the possibility that what he did, could 13 become—gave him pause.) 14 Nazario and the other guest curators from the Quechua community were 15 not the only ÃÄÅÆ collaborators. In fact the Quechua exhibit itsel partici- 16 pated in a vast network o collaboration integrated by U.S. consumer cul- 17 tures, practitioners o alternative medicines, and tourist industries, all inter- 18 ested in Andean shamanism. e curators o Our Universes helped make 19 public and accessible to audiences a new occupation for Nazario that he had 20 not even imagined existed and that helped him meet some o his ¨ nancial 21 needs. He liked meeting people and making new friends, and he knew he was 22 an important piece in the success o this new phase o Cuzqueño tourism. 23 Locals greeted him in the urban streets o Cuzco, and when we visited the 24 museum together during the inauguration, people he had met as tourists in 25 Ausangate or in Machu Picchu addressed him. He did not remember most o 26 them, but being identi¨ ed was comforting. Nazario was certainly aware that 27 he occupied the lower echelons in the economic chain o tourism in Cuzco. 28 Even as the tourists he befriended—benevolent, and also wealthy relative to 29 Nazario’s terms—o± ered him economic help, Nazario’s life continued to be 30 precarious in the most absolute meaning o the term. As I have said, he died 31 on his way to his job in one o the hundreds o tra· c accidents that happen 32 on the roads that tourists also travel, although in much safer conditions. A 33 tragic postscript to the ÃÄÅÆ o· cials’ ¨ rst visit to Pacchanta, this death was 34 not something that the curators would have ever imagined when they ¨ rst ar- 35 rived in the village. But retrospectively, which may be how his story emerged, 36 that visit was the beginning o Nazario’s career as an Andean shaman, per- 37 haps among the most internationally renowned ones or even the only one.
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1 2 “HERE I AM DRESSED IN OUR CLOTHES FROM BEFORE” 3 On September 20, 2004, I went to the airport in Washington, where Naza- 4 rio was arriving from Cuzco to participate in the inauguration of the NMAI. 5 His traveling companions—Flores-Ochoa and Carmona—had arrived earlier 6 that same day; Nazario had been stopped by immigration authorities due to 7 some visa problem that (we surmised) a museum call had solved, allowing 8 him to embark on the next plane. When he was in his village or in Cuzco doing 9 household errands—grocery shopping, buying medicine for animals or family 10 members, or visiting lawyers or friends—his clothes were nondescript: jeans, 11 shirt, and a sweater and cap of synthetic fiber. He also wore rubber sandals 12 (ojotas); closed shoes, even sneakers, made him very uncomfortable. When 13 I met him at his exit gate, Nazario was wearing his usual jeans and a pair of 14 hiking boots, which he complained about. Not surprisingly, he said they had 15 made him very uncomfortable during the flight. “Why did you wear them?” I 16 asked, and the response was obvious. (Why had I asked?) His usual rubber 17 sandals attracted people’s attention in Lima; they revealed the fact that he 18 was an Indian. But I insisted: “Are you going to wear those boots here? It is 19 too hot to wear boots.” Nazario responded that he would be hot anyway, but 20 not because of the boots—which he was going to change for the sandals— 21 but because of ñawpaq p’acha, the “clothes from before,” which he always 22 wore during his visits to Washington. Suitable for the Andes, those are made of 23 thick, hand-woven wool; he was told to always wear them when working with 24 the NMAI curators, even routinely and out of public sight. I never asked why, 25 but I speculate it might have been to visibly mark his role as the indigenous 26 collaborator; after all, vision as the staple sense in museum technology need 27 not be restricted to the public visiting its installations. Could it have been Na- 28 zario’s idea? A story he told me suggests that donning ñawpaq p’acha was a 29 collaborative idea: it had resulted from conversations with the NMAI curators. 30 So here is the story: After repatriating the suq’a, the curatorial team visited 31 Cuzco several times prior to the inauguration of the museum. They all worked 32 together: they asked Nazario questions, and he responded. Issues ranged 33 from the Inka past to popular Quechua myths, farming practices, and family 34 composition. In my interpretation of Nazario’s explanation, it was a classic 35 fieldwork visit to gather information for the exhibit. On one occasion, after 36 working long hours, Nazario got tired. He had been the only informant, and the 37
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1 team (Nazario included) decided to add another collaborator in subsequent 2 sessions: The people from the Inka Museum [told me to bring] an old man, 3 they only wanted runa from the countryside. They said, “Bring an old man, 4 someone who has fulfilled communal duties, but not one who wears Spanish 5 clothing.” When they said that, I took a runachata—Cirilo Ch’illiwani, I brought 6 him. In commissioning Nazario to bring someone who did not dress in Span- 7 ish clothes and who “had fulfilled communal duties,” the curatorial team was 8 making a very specific request. In Pacchanta, ñawpaq p’acha as everyday 9 clothing indicates extreme poverty, and is worn only when runakuna cannot 10 afford to buy jeans, shirts, and polyester sweaters, the clothing that Naario 11 called “Spanish clothes,” and what most runakuna wear. The Quechua word 12 runachata literally means “little man,” but “little” refers to poverty and isola- 13 tion, not to physical height. Nazario used it to describe the man he asked to 14 help him with the curators. Ch’illiwani suited the description required by the 15 curators, but he could not meet the job requirements. He was old, and he 16 might have done community duties, but he could not answer the questions 17 about ‘ritual practices’ the way they were posed to him: he needed more 18 translation, and Nazario provided it. In the end, Nazario decided to answer all 19 the questions by himself; after all, he was translating Ch’illiwani’s words, after 20 someone else’s words had been translated for him (Nazario) from English to 21 Quechua. The curators’ request had not made much sense to Nazario, which 22 was why he was narrating it to me. A runachata could not help him much at 23 all, as became clear. When he next had an opportunity to hire an assistant, 24 Nazario enlisted his best friend, Octavio Crispín, to work with him. Octavio 25 bought new ñawpaq clothes in the marketplace and happily collaborated with 26 Nazario; he earned money and enjoyed the process. This changing of clothes 27 was not deceitful, Octavio and Nazario explained, because they actually were 28 what the museum was looking for—and the museum had confirmed that Na- 29 zario was right for the job. 30 Continuing with the tradition set by the museum, whenever Nazario worked 31 with tourists in Cuzco he wore the ñawpaq p’acha (it was a requirement of the 32 travel agent he worked for). Collaboration went many ways: Nazario helped 33 the NMAI curators with the exhibit, and they helped create a new job and a 34 new image for him, even suggesting ideas for his self-representation when 35 working with tourists. The traditional clothes that he wore were emphatically 36 not those of a runachata. 37
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Ausangate and Despacho at the Museum 1 2 Staring at the ceiling- to- ´ oor photo o the snow- covered mountain peak that 3 greets the visitor at the entrance o the Quechua Community exhibit, I said 4 to Nazario, “Look there is Ausangate.” He clari¨ ed: at is a picture o Ausan- 5 gate, it is not Ausangate [chay futuqa Ausangatiqmi, manan Ausangatichu]. 6 Nazario had a camera, and he knew how to take pictures; this remark did not 7 indicate a lack o familiarity with photography. Instead, his comment about 8 the picture o Ausangate (rather than, for example, the photos o his family 9 that were also part o the exhibit) was speci¨ c to entities that could not be 10 brought into the museum—translated into it—without undergoing some 11 transformation. 12 To explain in more detail what I mean, let me go back and repeat the sec- 13 ond o Nazario’s statements in the opening o this episode. He asked him- 14 sel in Quechua what I have translated, quite literally, into English here as: 15 Hopefully whatever I say will [make something] appear for the peasant; hope- 16 fully, what I am saying in the Museum o the American Inka [will] also ap- 17 pear—or is it in vain, so that it disappears, that I have talked? at is what 18 I ask myself. A less literal but still accurate translation would ask: “Would 19 Nazario’s words—or his work with the ÃÄÅÆ—bene¨ t the people in Pac- 20 chanta at all? Perhaps his work would be inconsequential to his village, or 21 to his family.” e translations are similar—they are both possible and accu- 22 rate—but they are also di± erent, and as I move Nazario’s statement from 23 one to the other, I also move it across two epistemic regimes. In the ¨ rst one, 24 words and things are one and indivisible. Without distinction between signi- 25 ¨ er and signi¨ ed, words do not exist independently o the thing they name; 26 rather their utterance is the thing(s) they pronounce (Foucault 1994). Using 27 Nazario’s expression, things appear through the word (and this event can be 28 good or bad). In the second one, the connection between the word and the 29 thing—their relationship as signi¨ er and signi¨ ed—needs to be established 30 through representation (as practice and notion). And when it comes to prac- 31 tices with earth- beings, neither the separation between signi¨ er and signi¨ ed 32 nor the link between them that results in the possibility o representation 33 are an existing condition. erefore the picture o Ausangate is not Ausan- 34 gate; Ausangate and its representation are two distinct entities, even i they 35 are connected as well. Years later, Nazario would explain something similar 36 about the notion o pukara; I discussed this moment in story 1, and I will 37
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1 brie´ y recapitulate here. When I insisted on a de¨ nition o pukara, Nazario 2 refused to give me one. He said: Pukara is pukara. Whatever you write is not 3 going to be pukara—it is a diª erent way o talking. In my understanding, pu- 4 kara is a place with which people like Nazario have deep connections. But 5 this de¨ nition (like the picture o Ausangate) is a representation—it is not 6 pukara as in Nazario’s speech. Similarly, Ausangate is not to be de¨ ned, for 7 a de¨ nition would be a representation, and therefore something else (a rep- 8 resentation o Ausangate—and this was what Nazario was telling me). De¨ - 9 nitions or photos as representations translate—by which I also mean they 10 move— Ausangate to the epistemic regime where words and things are sepa- 11 rate from each other. is movement transforms Ausangate into—for ex- 12 ample, in my translation—an earth- being, an other- than- human person. In 13 my conversations with Nazario, Ausangate went through this translation 14 constantly: a movement across two epistemic regimes that, at times, can even 15 happen in the same utterance. 16 eÃÄÅÆ , as notion and institution, is a consummate modern tech- 17 nology o representation—there is no doubt about that. Museums organize 18 exhibits by carefully establishing relations o representation inside and out- 19 side their walls (when they have them). And while museums can decide not 20 to represent, such was not the case at the ÃÄÅÆ. Hence, the translations the 21 o· cial ÃÄÅÆ curators and their collaborators engaged in had a very speci¨ c 22 route: even i Nazario had had the last word, as Her Many Horses might 23 have wanted, all words, objects, and practices passed through the museum’s 24 regime o representation. At the ÃÄÅÆ, representation was what some schol- 25 ars have called an “obligatory passage point” (Callon 1999; Latour 1993a)— 26 the site or, in this case, the practice where the interests o all actors are made 27 to converge or to speak in unison (not withstanding their di± erences). is 28 obligatory passage point—representation, the practice that made possible 29 the exhibit called “Quechua Community”—was created through a series 30 o translations that displaced original interests, language, or intentions and 31 produced a shared goal across di± erences that were not canceled out in the 32 process. Moreover, the displacements that translations e± ected were o sev- 33 eral sorts: physical (from Cuzco to Washington), linguistic (from Quechua 34 to English, sometimes through Spanish), and epistemic (from a regime that 35 does not necessarily work through representation to one in which represen- 36 tation is the passage point).¼¼ Passing through representation, original enti- 37 ties were transformed—and, in a beautiful irony, they were also certi¨ ed as
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‘authentic’ by the conceptual- institutional leverage inscribed in the notion 1 o museum. 2 is notion was foreign to Nazario—not empirically, because he visited 3 museums in Cuzco—but as conceptual practice. He had to learn the idea o 4 a “collection”—which, in the case o the ÃÄÅÆ, was objects grouped accord- 5 ing to the historical events or cultural “beliefs” or “traditions” that the col- 6 lection should “represent.” And per our conversation in front o the photo o 7 Ausangate, the idea that earth- beings could be represented was something he 8 wanted to discuss. Unlike me, he thought it was necessary to clarify the dis- 9 tinction between Ausangate and its representation. Moreover, his response 10 made explicit that not everything composing his practices could be repre- 11 sented, thus highlighting the limits o representation. Perhaps through those 12 limits, one can more clearly signal the starting point o museum practice. As 13 with any translation, museum representations can leave the original entity 14 behind, partially present it, or transform it into something else—a signifying 15 unit in the chain o signi¨ cation that a collection may represent. O course 16 those “Andean things” composing a nonrepresentational regime (and I am 17 not saying “everything Andean,” o course) can also remain relatively stable 18 or not be signi¨ cantly a± ected when moving into a museum. e suq’akuna 19 housed at the Museo Inka in Cuzco are a case in point: they can be harmful. 20 Margaret Wiener (2007) makes a similar comment about Balinese da ers 21 housed in a Dutch museum: they maintain a harmful power that is only obvi- 22 ous to some visitors. Yet, as Nazario explained, some things in the ÃÄÅÆ were 23 deeply a± ected by translation and could not be what they were in Pacchanta 24 or do what they did there. 25 So a© er learning about Ausangate, I was curious about what else had been 26 ontologically transformed. e other major practice we identi¨ ed as having 27 become something else through museum practices was the despacho (hay- 28 wakuy is the Quechua word—and it was in the museum display). As already 29 mentioned in story 5, the despacho is a process: a bundle o food and objects 30 (petals, strings, conches, a very small llama fetus) wrapped in paper, which 31 people burn to transform into smoke and thus approach with it, o± er it, 32 or send it to the speci¨ c earth- being it is destined for. (In fact to approach, 33 to serve, or to o± er, is a translation o haywakuy; the Spanish word despa- 34 cho also means “that which is sent.”) e process o wrapping the objects 35 that will be burned to approach the earth- beings requires a protocol through 36 which these things are respectfully summoned to the practice. e protocol 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 A representation of the despacho (or, paraphrasing René Magritte, 13 “This is not a despacho”). September 2004. 14 15 includes making k’intu (an arrangement o three coca leaves that the partici- 16 pants o± er each other) and sharing both coca and alcohol with earth-beings; 17 the former is done by blowing one’s breath on the k’intu toward the earth- 18 being, the latter by pouring alcohol on the ground (which also earth- being). 19 All three—chewing and blowing on coca leaves, drinking and pouring alco- 20 hol, and burning the package—could not be done inside the museum with- 21 out breaking safety regulations. e limits to the process o despacho at the 22 museum were clear, and that was where its life as a representation began. e 23 bi est ontological- conceptual impasse that the despacho posed to the ÃÄÅÆ 24 was that (although a despacho is composed o things) it is a relational prac- 25 tice, an instance o runakuna and tirakuna becoming together or taking place 26 together (in the sense that I explained in earlier stories) in the act o despa- 27 cho/haywakuy. Severed from these connections and the practices that allow 28 them, the despacho is an object: a bundle o things that will be despacho/hay- 29 wakuy and that can be purchased in the marketplace in Cuzco. 30 e case that shows the despacho in the Quechua Community exhibit 31 occupies a prominent place at the center o the display. e label describing 32 it reads: “Haywakuy/ Despacho (o± ering). Made in Honor o Pachamama to 33 ensure balance and harmony (2000).” A© er translating from the labels (writ- 34 ten in English) for Nazario, I asked: “So is this a despacho for Pachamama?” 35 ere are di± erent types o despachos, and I was simply asking what kind this 36 one was. His explanation went further: I did it only for the museum because 37 they do not know [they are not acquainted with] Apus. We only did it inside the
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Burying the despacho outside the National Museum 19 of the American Indian. September 2004. 20 21 museum, but we did not do the ceremony—nobody wanted to. Having done it 22 “only for the museum,” “because they do not know” the apukuna, Nazario 23 made a representation o a “very good despacho,” but he also knew that it 24 was not a despacho. It would not be sent anywhere; it would not enact any 25 relation; it was “only for the museum.”¼½ And I ran into a rare (and funny) 26 coincidence when, in 2007 (four years a© er the inauguration and my visit 27 with Nazario), an employee o the ÃÄÅÆ told me that the despacho that is 28 housed behind this window “was not real.” However, what he said was not 29 what Nazario meant, for the museum employee was referring to the object 30 itself. It was a replica, he said: the organic elements (the llama fetuses, the 31 coca leaves, the seeds) that the despacho was made o were all plastic. O 32 course! How else would it be preserved? Nazario and I never talked about 33 this, which I am sure he knew because he arranged it. I assume it was not a 34 problem for him: not intended to be burned, the object behind the window 35 would not have been a despacho even i it had been assembled with organic 36 ingredients. e despacho as a process—a relation from which tirakuna and 37
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1 runakuna emerge—could not be accepted in the museum. And thus, faced 2 with the dilemma o not being able to burn the despacho inside, Nazario and 3 Carmona took the bundle o things outside the museum. ey gathered us in 4 the front yard, o± ered beer to us and to the earth, made kint’u with a small 5 amount o coca leaves that someone o± ered Nazario, and then, hidden from 6 o· cial view, they burned the despacho. While admitted as representation, 7 the practice o despacho was “other” to the museum—which to preserve its 8 own practices, had to stop the despacho at its door. 9 In an article about blindness and museums, Kevin Hetherington explains 10 that the historical identi¨ cation o the “scopic” with the “optic” has re- 11 sulted in privileging the sense o vision as a mechanism o access to museums 12 (2002). A nondeliberate but factual consequence is that the blind are “other” 13 to museum practices. While they cannot see, they can access the scopic (they 14 can look) through the haptic, the sense o touch. Yet touch is impossible 15 in most museums; it contradicts the function o collection conservation as- 16 signed to these institutions—perhaps with the exception o interactive sci- 17 ence museums. Hetherington writes: “No museum could fully respond to 18 such a challenge o associating the scopic with the haptic without itsel be- 19 coming other to the idea o what museumness is all about” (199). Granting 20 access through Braille labeling may include the blind in the de¨ nitional terms 21 o what a museum is, yet this practice o reading does not solve the challenge 22 that the blind pose to its entire practice. Museums in the current conceptu- 23 alization cannot accommodate any possible sense o the scopic that might 24 occur through touch instead o through the eyes. is signals the limits o 25 the prevalent de¨ nition o the museum itself.¼¾ 26 In addition to the obvious point that the “other” o museums is not only 27 the culturally di± erent, there are two points that I want to take from Hether- 28 ington’s discussion: the ¨ rst one is the point he himsel makes that the sen- 29 sory speci¨ city o blindness challenges the limits o what a museum is. e 30 second and interrelated point is that the vocation o a speci¨ c museum to 31 include or exclude “others” may be independent from the will o those who 32 sta± the institution. (Nazario was included in the curatorial work o Our 33 Universes; yet even i the team might have wanted to follow some o his sug- 34 gestions, they had to be translated to ¨ t the needs o the ÃÄÅÆ). e mu- 35 seum’s historical onto- epistemic conditions o possibility set the terms for 36 inclusion or exclusion. When practices that are “other” to such conditions 37
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enter the museum, they may interrupt what a museum is, perhaps trans- 1 late it into something else—or even a± ect the prevalent notion and practice 2 o “museum.” Alternatively, as what happened in the case o the despacho, 3 “other” practices may be stopped at the door—access denied, they are simply 4 not allowed in the museum: the practice preserves itself. 5 e museum’s conditions o access not only constrain people’s entrance, 6 they also impose those conditions on the things museums themselves invite 7 to join their exhibits. And in the case o the ÃÄÅÆ, in order for objects to ap- 8 pear in its displays they had to be susceptible to representation. Analogous to 9 the otherness o the haptic that Hetherington discusses, nonrepresentation 10 or unrepresentability was “other” to the ÃÄÅÆ’s Quechua exhibit. us when 11 the museum curators invited Ausangate and the despacho to the exhibit, they 12 unknowingly set an impossible task for themselves, for these entities were not 13 without the practices from which they emerged. Ausangate and the despacho 14 as representation were objects to be freely observed by subjects—a museum 15 practice, which allowed inside the building the picture o Ausangate and the 16 inorganic despacho as signi¨ ers o the “sacred mountain” and “the o± ering 17 to it”—the signi¨ ed(s) that also could not be such and thus, Ausangate and 18 despacho, stayed beyond the museum doors recalcitrant to representation. A 19 ¨ nal point to be clear: I am not saying that practicing representation “faked” 20 either Ausangate or the despacho—nor am I saying that their representa- 21 tions were meaningless. On the contrary, the ÃÄÅÆ representations o both 22 Ausangate and the despacho were consequential: they contributed to Na- 23 zario’s career as an Andean shaman and to the creation o what is known as 24 mystic tourism in the Andes. And as representations o Ausangate and the 25 despacho traveled the Americas and Europe—expanding the New Age cir- 26 cuit, where they joined and perhaps transformed other practices as well as 27 themselves. All o this was also partially connected, even i through di± erent 28 geopolitical and economic articulations, to earth- beings and the practices 29 through which they become with runakuna. e process coincided with the 30 politics o multiculturalism and may have been enhanced by it. Culture be- 31 came commodity, and the recognition granted to runakuna was frequently 32 mediated by tourism and its market. Nazario was among the handful o 33 Andean shamans well recognized by the multicultural tourist market; along 34 with his success he encountered sad moments o personal misrecognition. 35 Below is the story o one such misrecognition. 36 37
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1 2 NAZARIO TURPO MEETS ELIANE KARP, 3 4 FIRST LADY OF PERU 5 During Alejandro Toledo’s inauguration as president of Peru in Machu Picchu, 6 First Lady Eliane Karp made an invocation to the earth-beings in Quechua, a 7 language she had learned at the Hebrew University in Israel, where she got 8 a degree in Latin American studies. When I talked to her in 2004 she told me 9 she had received a master of arts in Latin American studies at Stanford Uni- 10 versity. She had a penchant for studying indigenous culture and life, she said. 11 And this was clear during her term as first lady, when she set up an official 12 bureau devoted to promoting neoliberal multicultural development. As part of 13 her agenda she traveled throughout the country, sprinkling the newspapers 14 with pictures of herself and an always-changing indigenous entourage. Naza- 15 rio was never part of her photo opportunities—except at a party at the Peru- 16 vian embassy on the occasion of the inauguration of the NMAI in Washington. 17 It was September 2004. The president of Peru and his wife were in atten- 18 dance. As cocurator of the Quechua exhibit, Nazario was a guest at the em- 19 bassy, and I managed to get an invitation as well. By the time the NMAI was 20 inaugurated, Nazario had already visited Washington several times, and he 21 decided to use this occasion to make a special request for Pacchanta. He 22 brought an official letter signed by the authorities of his ayllu, complete with 23 two seals and the identification numbers of all the signatories. The letter ex- 24 plained that a group of runakuna wanted to build an irrigation canal to serve 25 the pastures of several families during the dry season and provide clean drink- 26 ing water—they were all drinking water with puka kuru (red worms), which 27 was bad for humans and herds alike. A rudimentary sketch of the canal and 28 the zone it would irrigate completed the document. It was directed to Richard 29 West, the head of the NMAI, who politely declined to receive it. 30 As part of the inauguration events, indigenous guests at the museum were 31 invited to a function at the World Bank—and Nazario decided to try his luck 32 with some of the officials he would meet there. He was unsuccessful once 33 again. At the Peruvian embassy party he still had the document with him— 34 the World Bank event had been the same day. Therefore, Nazario decided to 35 approach the first lady with it, and he introduced himself to her in Quechua. 36 Someone translated and told her that he had been at the ceremony in Machu 37
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Picchu. She remembered him, the first lady said, and the conversation un- 1 folded. I was with Nazario at the moment he gave her the document. She ac- 2 knowledged receiving it, told her secretary to keep the document, and said 3 she would make sure to visit Pacchanta. Nazario was both doubtful and hope- 4 ful. It was really important that his visits to Washington resulted in something 5 more than just fun paid trips for him—he was concerned that so far they 6 had not. 7 Coincidentally, before becoming an official figure, Karp had spent a brief 8 period in Ocongate, the small but dynamically commercial town a few hours 9 away from Pacchanta. Although people do not recall what she was doing, or 10 where or how long she stayed then, during her tenure as first lady she visited 11 the town several times. On one of her visits, Nazario was invited to stand by 12 her side; he thought that it had to do with the document she had received from 13 him at the Peruvian embassy. He was disappointed to learn that he had been 14 called because of his relations with earth-beings, which had also garnered 15 him the invitation to the ceremony where the president was inaugurated. The 16 first lady did not acknowledge meeting him at the embassy in Washington, let 17 alone receiving any document from him—maybe she had forgotten him? Here 18 is Nazario: I had seen her twice since she came to Ocongate, I was in Cuzco at 19 a peasant meeting. She did not recognize me. I said, “I think you know me, my 20 name is Nazario Turpo from the community of Pacchanta, district of Ocongate 21 [ Yaqa riqsiwan, nuqa suti Nasariyu Turpu Kunduri, kumunidas Phaphchanta, 22 distritu Uqungati].” She did not remember him, or did not have time to ac- 23 knowledge that she did. Nazario was sure she thought he was Q’ero, the ayllu 24 that multicultural tourism has made famous as the home of “Andean mysti- 25 cism” and of the newly minted Andean shamans. Though Nazario counted as 26 a shaman, he was not from Q’ero. She thinks all runakuna that make despa- 27 chos are Q’ero, he remarked sadly. And if she thinks I am Q’ero, she does not 28 know who I am. He had met her at the embassy, just as I had. Did she remem- 29 ber me? he asked. My reply: “I do not think so.” And we commented that she 30 would not care to have her picture taken with me either. Unlike Nazario and all 31 runakuna, I am not a symbol of the multicultural state project she was inter- 32 ested in. They thus offered a good photo opportunity for her to further her 33 agenda for multicultural recognition. The deeply revealing irony, however, is 34 that she could not recognize Nazario in an ordinary, everyday manner. What 35 Nazario lamented the most about the first lady’s bad memory was that the ani- 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 With then President Alejandro Toledo at the Peruvian Embassy 27 in Washington, D.C., celebrating the inauguration of the National Museum 28 of the American Indian. September 2004. 29 30 mals in his ayllu would continue to drink water contaminated with puka kuru. It 31 was not the business of multicultural recognition to know or care about them. 32 And yet things may have been more complex than Karp’s bad memory. 33 Perhaps she remembered him and cared about him. When I was browsing the 34 Internet to find links to Nazario’s name, I ran into a brand-new book, launched 35 on the occasion of the 2010 national elections in Peru; the title is Toledo 36 Vuelve. One of its passages describes a nostalgic former president, looking 37 at a photograph of the ceremony in Machu Picchu where one of the people
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was “Nazario Turpo, legendario altomisayoq de la comunidad de Q’uero” (Na- 1 zario Turpo, legendary altomisayoq [sic] of the Q’uero community” (Guima- 2 ray Molina 2010, 47). It also describes the former first lady’s sadness at the 3 news of Nazario’s death. She had met him, the book says, “in the heights of 4 Salccantay” (49), and whenever she was in Cuzco, “the first thing” the first 5 lady did was to ask “her good friends at the Peasants’ Federation of Cuzco” 6 about Nazario’s whereabouts (50). Perhaps Nazario was right too: Karp re- 7 membered his name because he had led the president’s inaugural ceremony 8 in Machu Picchu back in 2001, but she did not know who he was. 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 The ronda campesina assembled and the Peruvian flag. April 2006. 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 STORY 7 MUNAYNIYUQ 7 8 THE OWNER OF THE WILL 9 10 (AND HOW TO CONTROL IT) 11 12 13 Apu Ausangate is más poderoso [most powerful]. Apu Ausangate is 14 munayniyuq [the owner o the will]. He orders the other Apus. He is 15 kamachikuq [literally, the one with the orders; the chief]; Salqantay 16 comes a© er. ose are it. Salqantay, Ausangate, those are the two 17 bi est Apus. ey are atiniyuq [with the capacity to do, or the capacity 18 to do things lies within them]. ey are the ones that put the potato 19 and make it grow. We extend despachos to them; with despacho it does 20 not hail, and the potatoes grow beautifully. Since they are with the 21 capacity to do it, [with despachos] they do not unleash [bad things.] 22 MARIANO AND NAZARIO TURPO 2003, Pacchanta 23 24 25 Munayniyuq is a notion that Mariano and Nazario used to qualify persons 26 endowed with the capacity to decide runakuna lives. I mentioned the word 27 earlier, in story 2, when I narrated Mariano’s conversations with urban po- 28 litical leaders, the state, and its representatives. is Quechua word has two 29 main parts: muna, a verbal root that translates as will or desire or love; and 30 yuq, a su· x that indicates possession, or the place where something origi- 31 nates (Cusihamán [1976] 2001, 216–17). Cesar Itier—the French linguist 32 and Quechua specialist, whom I have cited several times above—lists the 33 word in his dictionary as meaning “powerful, person who gives orders” (un- 34 published ms.). Discussing a translation (from Quechua to Spanish and 35 then to English) that would also capture the thrust o the word, Nazario 36 and I agreed on the Spanish phrase dueño de la voluntad (owner o the will); 37
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1 here, will refers to a life- commanding capacity that, not surprisingly, can be 2 violent. 3 In the opening o this story, Nazario and his father explain that Ausangate 4 is the highest ranking earth- being; as the most powerful, it is munayniyuq, 5 the owner o the will, endowed with the attribute o commanding (he is ka- 6 machikuq) the rest o the earth-beings—and runakuna, o course. Being mu- 7 nayniyuq, earth-beings can send or prevent thunder and hail, thus hindering 8 or favoring the lives o crops, animals, and humans. ey are atiyniyuq: they 9 have the capacity to do things. Similarly, as noted above, Mariano and Na- 10 zario—like most runakuna I spoke with—also referred to the hacendado as 11 munayniyuq. So that I would understand the dimension o the power o the 12 human owner o the will, Nazario explained: Gustunta ruwachisunki mu- 13 nayniyuq nisqa. Gustu comes from the Spanish gustar, to like. A translation 14 would be: “He who makes us do what he likes, we call him munayniyuq.” Ac- 15 cordingly, the hacendado punished runakuna physically when he wanted to; 16 could even kill them i he wanted to; ordered them to work when he wanted 17 to; and gave them only the amount o land that he wanted to. Moreover, no 18 one could contradict him; he took away the land o those who opposed him, 19 raped their wives, and burned their houses. e munayniyuq’s voice was an 20 order: “Anything, and that was it, everything he said had to be done—he 21 just ordered [Rimarinalla, simillamanta ima ruwanapas kamachinpas].” Not 22 everything about this voice was destructive: he bought tractors and animals, 23 good cows. He extended the wire fences (yaparan alambrekunata); he built 24 the silos; he could give runakuna these things, but he also could and did take 25 them away. 26 Conceptually translated (and not only linguistically), munay is a notion 27 runakuna use to name the will that has the capacity to shape their lives. e 28 entities where such a capacity originates are munayniyuq—the will resides 29 in them. In the above conversations, munayniyuqs (or munayniyuqkuna, 30 the Quechua plural) are inscribed in the socionatural landscape: the power 31 that shapes runakuna’s lives emerges from earth- beings and from the land- 32 owner—they rule. In 1969, an Australian anthropologist named John Earls, 33 who now lives and teaches in Peru, made a similar observation: “Both mistis 34 and Wa m a n i s ¼ are munayniyuq (Que[chua]—“the powerful ones”) to the 35 Quechua peasantry. Both have the power o life and death over the common 36 people” (1969, 67). (Here the word “mistis” referred both to the hacendado 37 and to the president and government.) Earls went on to explain: “It is not
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at all easy to disentangle the sheer physical and economic aspects o politi- 1 cal domination from those ¨ rmly embedded in the religious system o the 2 Quechua Indians” (71). I agree, with a caveat that draws from an explana- 3 tion I gave in story 5: runakuna may not enact earth- beings only as religious 4 entities. And then, elaborating on my agreement with Earls: munayniyoq is a 5 complex notion in which ontologically di± erent forms o will—or sources o 6 power—meet in ways that, to be analytically productive, may not bear unrav- 7 eling because, while exceeding each other, they owe their being powerful enti- 8 ties to their shared characteristics. Munayniyuq refers to those who repre- 9 sent the state, the hacendado and others; it also refers to the highest- ranking 10 earth- beings. Omnipotent and arbitrary will originates in all o them; in 11 some respects, there is no real way around them, only negotiation is possible. 12 And the practice o negotiation between runakuna and human and other- 13 than- human munayniyuq is also similar and di± erent—at the same time. 14 Ausangate and Salqantay, the highest earth- beings were commanding, I 15 had learned, because being in- ayllu they were place½ higher in authority than 16 the rest o the entities that made place with them. Why, I asked, was the ha- 17 cendado an owner o the will? e response was connected to place as well— 18 but in a di± erent relationship. Back then, Nazario and Mariano explained, 19 all o Peru was a hacienda. e hacendayuq [those with haciendas] were senators 20 and diputados, they were the owners o the will [senador, diputado kaspankuya 21 munaniyuq karqanku]. at is why they formed the law; therefore the law was 22 in their favor. e law was what the rich wanted [Qhapaqllapaq ley munasqa 23 karqan]. at is why they behaved following only their own will, which was 24 like the law [chayraykuwan munasqanta leyman hina]. What the hacenda- 25 dos wanted became law; there was no di± erence between their will and the 26 law, as the former transgressed the latter with impunity. Even the notion o 27 transgression was untenable, for the limit to human munayniyuq seemed to 28 reside in themselves—no power existed external to them. Locally, they in- 29 habited the state; they not only represented it, they were it—and “locally” 30 covered a huge territory. 31 In more than one sense, Pierre Bourdieu’s interpretation o “absolute 32 power”—a notion he uses to identify the power o the state over those it 33 de¨ nes as its subjects—is ¨ tting here. He describes it as “the power to make 34 onesel unpredictable and deny other people any reasonable anticipation, to 35 place them in total uncertainty by o± ering no scope for their capacity to pre- 36 dict” (2000, 228). Munayniyuq, both human and other- than- human beings, 37
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1 are also unpredictable, whimsical in how they a± ect events. Di± erent and 2 also inhabiting the same notion (where they both exceed each other, and 3 thus are mutually exclusive) earth- beings and human owners o the will share 4 some attributes, but not others. Among the shared features: munayniyuq are 5 enablers o life; in exchange, they demand things from runakuna. eir com- 6 mand is also inevitable and arbitrary; their munay obligates and obeys no 7 reason. e sources o the capricious will o humans and earth- beings, how- 8 ever, are di± erent. As place, earth- beings give themselves through water, soil, 9 and vitality, and they also demand in return what they enable: crops, animals, 10 food, and human breath. Runakuna can engage with this munay; they estab- 11 lish and maintain relations with it on a quotidian basis. On occasion they 12 may need specialists, those from among themselves with the ability to better 13 relate to earth- beings. Human munayniyuq are di± erent: they obligate runa- 14 kuna through the exercise o a whimsically personalized and thoroughly ex- 15 tractive rule o law; their will originates in the state. 16 Munayniyuq, when referring to humans, approximates what Peruvian 17 scholarship has known, probably since the 1920s, as gamonal, and the regime 18 o power called gamonalismo. Deborah Poole, long involved in the analysis 19 o gamonalismo, represents it as a “highly personalized form o local power 20 whose authority is grounded in nearly equal measure in his [the gamonal’s] 21 control o local economic resources, political access to the state, willingness 22 to use violence, and the symbolic capital provided by his association with 23 such important icons o masculinity as livestock, houses and a regional bohe- 24 mian aesthetic” (2004, 43). e gamonal, she explains, inhabits the slippery 25 boundary between privatized and state law, where the ideal separation o 26 functions between the two is cancelled. is ¨ gure, then, represents both 27 “the state and the principal forms o private, extrajudicial, and even criminal 28 power that the state purportedly seeks to displace through law, citizenship 29 and public administration” (45). e object o the critique o this conceptu- 30 alization o gamonal is the consistency o the nonseparation between private 31 and public power, legal and illegal practices, that the state exists to enact. is 32 separation is actually embodied; true and deceptive, its practice is both legiti- 33 mate and illegitimate, and in either case it is su± used with personal a± ect. 34 us the separation is also not one. 35 Runakuna’s notion o munayniyuq in my conceptual translation overlaps 36 with this critique: owners o the will embody a practice o the state that main- 37
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tains and transgresses the distinction between the legal and the illegal. Yet it 1 goes beyond the concept o gamonal as well, for the object o the critique 2 nested in my friends’ notion o munayniyuq (and very explicitly Nazario’s) 3 is the modern state itself, and most speci¨ cally its disavowal o runakuna as 4 political subjects in their own right. Originating in their o· cial classi¨ cation 5 as illiterate, and therefore outside o the logos o the modern state, this dis- 6 avowal is e± ected through biopolitical projects for runakuna improvement, 7 a quest for their translation into modern, literate subjects o the state. In an 8 intriguing paradox, the concept o munayniyoq that runakuna deploy to dis- 9 cuss the inevitable and thus irrational power o a- modern earth- beings is also 10 a critique o the modern state and its disavowal o runakuna’s world. And an 11 unsurprising statement unravels this paradox and transforms it into a matter 12 o fact: a modern state engaging in political conversation with worlds o will- 13 ful mountains would not be modern, nor would the conversation be a politi- 14 cal one. Yet the reader must be reminded that conversations take place across 15 these radically di± erent realities. ey are also part o each other—even i in 16 a disagreement so asymmetric that the state has the power to deny the reality 17 o the conversation, which thus can transpire without a modern public. 18 19 The Local Will of the Modern State 20 21 All the villagers know about writing, and make use o it i the need 22 arises, but they do so from the outside, as i it were a foreign mandatory 23 agent that they communicate with by oral methods. e scribe is rarely 24 a functionary or employee o the group: his knowledge is accompanied 25 by power, with the result that the same individual is o© en both scribe 26 and money- lender not just because he needs to be able to read and 27 write to carry on his business, but because he thus happens to be, 28 on two di± erent counts, someone who has a hold over others. 29 —Claude Lévi- Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (emphasis in the original) 30 31 e landowner le© in 1969. e agrarian reform replaced private with public 32 land ownership and hacendado administration with public employees who 33 managed the property. Years later, a renewed alliance between runakuna, 34 peasant politicians, and le© ist parties dismantled state ownership o land and 35 distributed it among runakuna families. ey were to individually have usu- 36 fruct rights to the plots, grazing pastures, and collectively owned territories 37
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1 that the agrarian reform had legally titled comunidades campesinas in 1969 2 (Mayer 2009). According to Nazario, this made runakuna libre (free): Land 3 is now ours, it is not in the hacendado’s hands anymore; we are not punished for 4 the sake o it anymore, we are not jailed when we complain anymore. Now we 5 have a president om within us [noqayku uhupi kan presidente], we have an 6 assembly, a directiva om within us. We, with our acuerdo [agreement], with 7 our assembly, we do our plots. We command ourselves. 8 Yet i landed property seemed to be the source o the hacendado’s munay, 9 it turned out not to be the ultimate origin o the will o the local state. Dis- 10 lodged from control o hacienda land, access to the state—or rather, “legal 11 access to the law,” as Nazario would say—continues to elude runakuna, even 12 though they now “command themselves” with respect to land. Human 13 owners o the will, new munayniyuq, currently inhabit local state institutions 14 and behave as the hacendado did in the past. My friend’s words: According 15 to their will they do the law [paykuna munasqankullamanya leyita ruwanku]. 16 Walter Benjamin (1978) famously stated that violence and state reason 17 share origins. Runakuna would agree, yet they might insist on translating 18 reason as munay. us, signaling its arbitrariness, they would emphasize that 19 this reason inevitably denies their world. Accepting the reason o the state— 20 for doing otherwise would be impossible—they proceed to try and turn the 21 local state in their favor with gi© s o sheep: Only when we give a sheep, our 22 documents are quickly decreed [expedited], we are listened to quickly. at is 23 what the sheep is useful for. e gi© o a sheep obtains legal services; runakuna 24 give sheep to gain “legal access to the law”—an exchange relationship that 25 at ¨ rst sight may be called corruption. Yet critically interpreting such trans- 26 actions as a form o transgression leaves the reason o local state munay in 27 place—o± Nazario’s critical hook. Annoyed and resigned, Nazario o© en re- 28 peated versions o the phrase: “ e law is not legal here” (kaypi leyqa manan 29 legalchu). And in his experience, this nonnegotiable illegality o the rule o 30 law originates in the disjuncture between the state’s foundational literacy and 31 the condition o runakuna as illiterate. With their ability to read and write, 32 local state representatives monopolize the ability to make the will o the state 33 locally legible—even when it appears illegible to local state representatives 34 themselves (which is not infrequently the case). Nazario’s words: the hacen- 35 dado leaves, and the authorities remain the same. . . . We are fooled, because we 36 are sonsos runakuna who do not read or write. e state is in the paperwork, 37
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the receipts, the state needs our signature, it wants us to sign. When we sign, be- 1 cause we cannot see [read] the authorities steal om us. . . . ere is no life for 2 us, we live in fear. We feat the juez, the gobernador. I we have a complaint, we 3 allow them to earn a little something. ey are munayniyuq, like the hacendado 4 they have become. e juez asks for a sheep, the gobernador asks for a sheep. Who 5 gives them sheep, who feeds them, who gives them alcohol to drink—that is the 6 person that they will listen to, nicely. At that point, things come [happen] legally 7 [legal hina hamun]. e authorities are like the tankayllu [a parasitic insect] 8 that sucks the blood o the runakuna. e state is not for us, we cannot read. 9 Runakuna’s conceptualization o the state as munayniyuq, as the source 10 o the arbitrary will that considers them sonsos (stupid or unintelligent), is a 11 comment on the conditions that enable the zone o indistinction between 12 the legal and the illegal that houses, all too normally, runakuna’s relations 13 with the state. e comment sheds light on the historical relationship be- 14 tween the modern nation- state and runakuna, and most speci¨ cally in the 15 former’s will to de¨ ne the latter’s world as counting only inasmuch as it is 16 destined to future improvement. Borrowing Jacques Rancière’s terms, by the 17 will o the modern state, runakuna have no logos, therefore they are not: 18 “Your misfortune is not to be, a patrician tells the plebs, and this misfor- 19 tune is inescapable” (1999, 26). In my story, think o the modern state as the 20 patrician talking to runakuna, the plebs. Or, rather, talking to the world o 21 the plebs, for here the relationship is not with individual subjects but with 22 worlding practices that assign mountains and human institutions similar 23 qualities. is a world, therefore, that the state cannot recognize without 24 translating it into its own terms, a process that includes the state’s duty to 25 modernize the countryside and thus undo what it cannot recognize, skip- 26 ping the step o acknowledging its existence. ese conditions compose the 27 state will, the arbitrary reason o the munayniyuq—the owner o will that 28 imposes conditions o existence on runakuna worlds that start with their de- 29 nial in the present and continue into the deferral to the future o their being 30 something else. e biopolitical mission o the munayniyuq state is to let ru- 31 nakuna die, so as to make them live as modern citizens. is will is incubated 32 (not only inscribed) in writing: it is the mandatory foreign agent that Lévi- 33 Strauss mentioned in the quote above, the inevitable moneylender who “has 34 a hold” over runakuna’s lives. 35 36 37
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1 2 THE WILL THAT MAKES RUNAKUNA WAIT 3 4 The reading of Kafka’s The Trial inspired Bourdieu’s notion of absolute power 5 as that which may free its possessor “from the experience of time as power- 6 lessness” while endowing him or her with the capacity to make others wait 7 arbitrarily and without prediction (2000, 228). The novel, he said, depicted 8 what could simply be “the limiting case of a number of ordinary states of the 9 ordinary social world or of particular situations within this world, such as that 10 of some stigmatized groups—Jews in the time and place of Kafka, blacks in 11 the American ghettos, or the most helpless immigrants in many countries” 12 (229). He could have included runakuna in his “minority” list. As in The Trial, in 13 the surroundings of Ausangate, state representatives most effectively mani- 14 fest their ownership of the will through their control of bureaucratic time: they 15 can make runakuna wait endlessly. 16 According to Nazario, the wait—and all that is transacted within it—occurs 17 because [runakuna are] silly people who do not read or write. Rather than 18 simply self-deprecating, this comment reflects on runakuna’s location out- 19 side of the lettered state. Becoming part of it—learning to read and write—is 20 the alternative the state proposes to people like Nazario, and this proposal 21 includes the cancelation of their world. The local bureaucratic wait that runa- 22 kuna experience can be conceptualized as included in the evolution (in time) 23 that the modern state expects from runakuna as they become part of a way of 24 life that can actually count as existing. The transformative technology is mod- 25 ern literacy, understood as a capacious biopolitical project for the evolution- 26 ary overhaul of those needing it—that is, those that have not caught up with 27 the present. Reading and writing are the cornerstone on which the modern 28 state builds what Dipesh Chakrabarty has called “the waiting room of history” 29 (2000, 8). The world of ayllu is invited to the room; runakuna may individually 30 leave it after meeting the requirements of the modern subject—namely, the 31 historical consciousness of secular individuals who can distinguish cultural 32 belief from rational knowledge. The meaning the modern state assigns to illit- 33 eracy goes beyond ignoring how to read and write. It includes collectivism, 34 paganism, the conflation of fact and myth, ahistoricism, and “consequently” 35 lack of synchronicity (and thus incompatibility) with modern politics. Runa- 36 kuna’s wait stops—and becomes that of the usual citizen—once they aban- 37 don the world of ayllu. Their gifts of sheep to local bureaucrats may accelerate
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the paperwork, but they do not cancel their biopolitical wait—rather, the gifts 1 that may diminish the wait are part of the trial of runakuna, the experience of 2 who they are per the will of the modern state. To runakuna their absolute dis- 3 possession of the time of the state and the time required for their improve- 4 ment are identical—the latter justifies the former, they emerge together from 5 the munay of the state. Runakuna’s biopolitical wait constitutes an impera- 6 tive voice, an “order-word” carrying “a little death sentence” with it (Deleuze 7 and Guattari 1987, 76). Pierre Clastres called this practice “ethnocide”—the 8 humanitarian annihilation of difference and optimistic construction of same- 9 ness, a process he conceptualizes as the “normal mode of existence of the 10 [civilized] State” (2010, 111). Inhabiting this normality, many of us are blind to 11 the process or shrug with analytical impotence at its appearance. 12 Runakuna both reject and accept the biopolitical command to wait; their re- 13 lations with the state is complex. Adding to the complexity, while a historicist 14 fiat makes the wait inevitable, the world of runakuna (and tirakuna) exceeds 15 the institutions that demand it. All these—rejection and acceptance, inevita- 16 bility and excess—are present in the everyday dynamics between the state 17 and runakuna. Rondas campesinas, the institutions through which runakuna 18 engage with the state, are composed of those dynamics. 19 20 21 22 Rondas Campesinas: Making the Law Legal 23 24 I was already a relatively familiar presence in Pacchanta when my request to 25 attend a meeting o the ronda campesina was accepted. Rondas are not con- 26 ¨ ned to the region where my friends live. Rather, they are controversial so- 27 cial institutions nationally known for their self- appointed task o controlling 28 local abuses, both big and small—ranging from marital in¨ delity to cattle 29 stealing and state corruption. Inaugurated in the northern coast and high- 30 lands o Peru, particularly in Piura and Cajamarca, rondas have spread widely 31 throughout the country since their beginnings in the 1970s (Degregori et al. 32 1996; Rojas 1990; Starn 1999; Yrigoyen 2002). Usually described as institu- 33 tions for the application o customary law, their legal history has meandered 34 quite a bit since their ¨ rst public emergence. But in 2003 their central role 35 in defeating the Shining Path and the political pressure they have exerted 36 resulted in what Peruvian lawyers, politicians, and pundits refer to as the 37
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1 “o· cial recognition o rondas campesinas.”¾ What this recognition means 2 in terms o the limits and possibilities o rondas is still unclear and it might 3 remain so. For more than a year, beginning in June 2012 and continuing as I 4 write this in March 2014, rondas in Cajamarca—their place o origin—have 5 been crucial in organizing protests against a mining corporation’s intention 6 to destroy several lagoons to extract gold. is political activity certainly goes 7 beyond the limits granted by the o· cial recognition o rondas and continues 8 to complicate their relationship with the state. 9 When I arrived in Pacchanta in January 2002, though it had not yet been 10 o· cially recognized, the ronda in the region o Lauramarca was ten years 11 old. Promoted by liberation theology priests (my friend Padre Antonio was 12 among the organizers), ÃÌÍs, and regional peasant organizations, in the 13 early 1990s the local ronda started conglomerating the peasant communities 14 (most o them also in- ayllu collectives) in the environs o the town o Ocon- 15 gate. An increasing number o stolen animals, related violence, and, quite sa- 16 liently, the impunity o local state representatives involved in crime and cor- 17 ruption motivated runakuna to create the local ronda. Not surprisingly, in 18 the early years o the organization, relationships between it and local authori- 19 ties were extremely tense and occasionally confrontational. Perhaps the most 20 memorable o these earlier con´ icts involved a relatively well-known o· cial 21 o the District o Lauramarca, whom the ronda assembly—the meeting o all 22 its members (one per household), which represents the ultimate authority o 23 the organization—charged with supporting a group o cattle rustlers. He was 24 whipped in punishment. e o· cial, a person who could read and write and 25 also had some uno· cial legal training, retaliated by denouncing the presi- 26 dent o the ronda to the local legal authorities. e case was legally solved and 27 the ronda president acquitted, but during the period I visited Pacchanta, re- 28 lations between the ronda and local state authorities remained tense. Rondas 29 not only interrupt the illegal complicity between human munayniyuq and 30 criminals, but they also interfere with the state’s claim to its monopoly on the 31 exercise o legitimate violence. us, on this count alone ronda practices— 32 which runakuna engaged in “to make the law legal” (to quote once again Na- 33 zario’s phrase)—were illegal because they usurped the sovereign authority o 34 the law. To prevent being denounced legally—and skirt local munayniyuq— 35 ronda assemblies were kept away from the purview o the state. During the 36 time I visited the area, massive meetings (attended by anywhere from one 37 thousand to four thousand individuals, depending on the agenda) gathered
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in places deemed remote even by local standards, out o the view o local 1 state o· cials. In fact, I was chased away from the ronda once, when I ¨ rst ar- 2 rived and attempted, quite ignorantly, to attend a meeting I had accidentally 3 happened across. I was thus surprised when I was later allowed to attend the 4 ronda assembly that I describe below. It consisted o a gathering o about 500 5 individuals—mostly men, though many women also attended. 6 7 8 9 A RONDA ASSEMBLY: PUNISHING A HORSE 10 11 THIEF AGAINST THE POLICE’S WILL 12 The meeting began. After singing the national anthem and raising the Peru- 13 vian flag, the agenda was discussed. The main issue for the assembly was to 14 punish a thief who had stolen horses. Members of the ronda had captured 15 him but, rather than demanding his freedom, the thief demanded that he be 16 surrendered to the police. He did not want to face communal justice; facing 17 it can be tough, the thief knew—deals with the local state were far easier.Á At 18 his request two policemen had come from Ocongate to take him into official 19 custody, and indeed protect him from judgment and punishment by the as- 20 sembly. As ronda members guarded the thief, the policemen asserted their 21 authority: “You do not have any right to have this man, you cannot punish 22 him. Only the police can punish. He could complain, he could accuse you to 23 the judge.” The assembly murmured loudly, and the president of the ronda re- 24 sponded: “You say it is not our right, but when he goes to the police station 25 you let him free, and he gives you something . . . you do not punish him. You 26 just want what he can give you. It’s the same with the judge . . . you side with 27 the thieves, and we, those who are interested [in stopping this], remain con- 28 cerned, worried.” The police insisted, but to no avail; the assembly shouted 29 angrily in support of the ronda president, and with this power, the ronda au- 30 thorities ordered the state authorities to leave. Once they had gone and the 31 assembly calmed down, the action proceeded. First, those ronda members 32 who had found the man described how and where that had happened; then 33 the owner of the stolen animals brought witnesses to certify that the horses 34 found in the possession of the alleged thief were his animals. The man con- 35 fessed and was obliged to pay for his wrong: he had to return the horses and 36 pay the owner (I cannot recall how much) to compensate for the days he had 37
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1 kept the horses and thus prevented the rightful owner from working them. He 2 also paid the costs of his pursuit and capture. Then the man received physical 3 punishment. He was ordered to take off his shirt and pants, was whipped, and 4 was forced to do a series of strenuous physical exercises—probably the kind 5 runakuna learn during their military service—and finally ordered to submerge 6 himself in the very cold lagoon waters. Once out, and still only in his under- 7 wear, the man promised not to steal again. I never heard about him again over 8 the years that I came and went from Pacchanta. 9 10 11 12 To get to the site o the assembly meeting, Nazario, his son Ru¨ no (also a 13 head o household), and I walked three hours uphill from Pacchanta. On 14 the way, they told me about something that had happened several years ago. 15 It was 1989, and Ru¨ no was nine or ten years old. His brother and sisters 16 were with Mariano in Pacchanta; Ru¨ no was with his parents, tending the 17 herds near their house in Alqacocha, which was higher than their main resi- 18 dence and also isolated from the rest o the village but had good pastures 19 for the alpaca (before the tourist boom, the family earned most o its in- 20 come from selling wool). It was the rainy season, which coincides with ele- 21 mentary school vacations in Peru; thus Ru¨ no, like other boys o his age, 22 was occupied as his family’s shepherd. Nazario was ¨ xing stone fences, and 23 Liberata was in the house. e sun was up; it was early in the day—probably 24 before noon—when a troupe o rustlers came. First they attacked Nazario, 25 tying his feet and hands with wire that they found in the house and stu± - 26 ing his mouth with pariation—the local word for parathion, an insecticide 27 poisonous to humans—so that he could not scream to warn the shepherd, 28 his son. en they went a© er Ru¨ no, tied him with a rope, and corralled the 29 animals that they would later take with them (thirty- two alpacas, six sheep, 30 and eight horses). en they proceeded into the house, where they raped 31 Liberata and gathered all the products the family had brought with them 32 from Pacchanta (dehydrated potatoes, potatoes, and sugar), their clothes, 33 and their beds (made o blankets and sheep skins) into a pile. Finally, before 34 leaving, they sprayed kerosene on the house and set it on ¨ re. It took Naza- 35 rio and Liberata a long while to free themselves and ¨ nd Ru¨ no. Once they 36 did, trembling with cold and fear, they walked to Pacchanta. I did not even 37 dare ask i they had gone to the authorities; as it turned out, they had, but
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Ronda punishment. April 2006. 20 21 22 they knew that nothing would happen. A© er that event, and when they were 23 able to start a new herd, they did not take it to Alqaqucha, even though the 24 pasture was better there; they were too afraid to be alone in that remote spot. 25 Many other households were limited in this way—and those that had valu- 26 ables (radios, tape recorders, and gas stoves) took them to a relative’s house in 27 a nearby town, where robbers would have more di· culty stealing them. Con- 28 ditions are di± erent now: herds graze in remote places and people can keep 29 their valuables at home. e rondas have e± ectively curbed rustling. People 30 say the authorities are unhappy: now there are fewer thieves to bribe them— 31 or . . . Did the authorities bribe the thieves? at actually might have been 32 the case; as owners o the will, they could decide to send the cattle rustlers to 33 jail i they did not collaborate with them. is was the illegal way o the law 34 in the region. 35 With this event fresh in our minds, we arrived at the site o the gather- 36 ing, a lagoon that bordered several districts. Remote and high, it was selected 37
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1 precisely because it was di· cult to reach. My presence had been accepted, I 2 was told, because I was a trusted friend o the Turpos. Still, I had to swear in 3 front o the assembly that this would be the case. Nazario told them I had 4 a camera and tape recorder, and I had to o± er both to the president—they 5 did not want their actions recorded. All attendants were also participants, 6 responsible for anything that happened for good or ill, and so was I. Grateful 7 that they allowed me to participate, I accepted all conditions. When asked 8 about my purposes, I said the ronda was reminiscent o the collective in- ayllu 9 leadership that many years ago had “walked the complaint” with Mariano 10 Turpo and against the landowner, against the owner o the will. O course, 11 not many people heard me—the crowd was huge. But those who were near 12 me agreed somewhat, and they also corrected me: rondas were like the ayllu 13 that Mariano worked with in that they all took turns, they were all involved, 14 and they worked for everybody. But they were also di± erent. Land was not at 15 stake anymore; it was the legality o the law that was at stake. State authori- 16 ties did not like the ronda because they were against the law—they made the 17 law illegal. 18 Walking back to Pacchanta, as we talked about how the assembly had 19 forced the policemen to leave, Nazario and his best friend Octavio, explained 20 why runakuna supported the organization: rondas were controlling state au- 21 thorities, they were making the law legal. ey told me they story o how the 22 rondas were born, as they called it. 23 24 25 26 RUNAKUNA’S WILL TO CONTROL THE MUNAYNIYUQ: 27 HOW RONDAS WERE BORN 28 29 In those days the authorities sided with the thief; they did not want our orga- 30 nization. The judge did not want the organization. We invited him to the as- 31 sembly. “I am not coming,” [he said]. “It is not your right [mana qankunaqa di- 32 richuykichischus]. We invited the policemen; they came to the assembly. “We 33 are going to be with you, in this fair thing we are going to be together,” they 34 said. But then, in the end, the police did not [help us]; they had just talked for 35 the sake of talking. The police always, always listened to the thieves when they 36 went to their post. 37 The runakuna in the assembly approved: “When we go to the judge, we
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always need money, we need sheep; the complaint lasts too long, it takes way 1 too many days to be fixed. In the ronda we [will] not need sheep; people who 2 offend [will] pay a fine for their misdeed. The fine [will] be sixty soles.” The as- 3 sembly approved. So, saying this we sent oficios [official letters] to the authori- 4 ties to say: “You want sheep, money; therefore, you favor those that give you 5 money.” With this, we silenced the judge, the governor, and the police post; 6 they did not say anything against the ronda anymore. The judge, also a runa, 7 got mad at the ronda, he said: “You never obey what I order, so do whatever 8 you want, make your own laws.” Thus, with these things [the rondas] were born 9 [Chayqa aqnapi, chaykuna nasirqan]. 10 11 12 13 e rondas I came to know were not attempting to replace an absent state. 14 Rather, as in Nazario and Octavio’s story above, they were targeting a familiar 15 and very present state: the bureaucrats, local owners o the will—the munay- 16 niyuq—and their arbitrary demands to exchange law and development for 17 sheep and money: It is true, we have made rondas to stop µ ghts and robberies, 18 we want to have a peaceful life [thak kayman chayapuyta munaspa]. Other ru- 19 nakuna agreed with them: the state did not bring peace, but rondas had. And 20 the ronda not only organized on behal o runakuna; the organization also 21 bene¨ ted the mistikuna o the region: e thieves were not scared o the mistis; 22 they also robbed their cows, horses, their mules. at is why they [the mistis] re- 23 spect the rondas. Rondas also got the roads under their control so that people 24 could travel safely, protected not only against robbers, but also against the 25 state representatives who were their allies: Before the rondas, buses were am- 26 bushed, saying that they [the passengers] were terrorists, the thieves stopped 27 them—the authorities received money om them and they protected them. 28 ese, the rondas made disappear. And to my surprise, rondas did not punish 29 runakuna only; they could chastise non- runakuna in the region, too: We re - 30 spect the misti because they read and write, they are learned, but even i they are, 31 i they steal there has to be justice. ey should not lean on other doctors that are 32 more powerful. Even i the thie is a misti with a lot o money, we should not fear 33 him. We should be able to say, “Pay for it, recognize your misdeed.” We should 34 obligate him. While the ronda had not punished many non- runakuna, its de- 35 monstrable power made local munayniyuq unhappy: e Judge, the governor, 36 they are hating the ronda [ronda paykuna llakisqa karanku]. Rondas have had 37
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1 the ability to reject the local practice o the state and limit the munay that 2 obliges runakuna to make a gi© o sheep in exchange for making the law legal. 3 is possibility has a geographical condition: it works where ayllus take- place 4 and implement practices o their own—many o which complicate, and at 5 times exceed, state practices, including the demand for the exercise o politi- 6 cal representation. 7 8 The Power of the Ronda Is Not the Power to Represent 9 10 My conversation with Nazario and Octavio above happened shortly a© er the 11 state legalized the rondas campesinas, making them “legitimate interlocutors 12 o the State” with the capacity to “coordinate their actions with state rep- 13 resentatives” and to control “development projects within their communal 14 jurisdiction.”Ç Illustrative o this new and relatively agreeable relationship, in 15 2004 the justice o the peace o the district o Ocongate coordinated his ac- 16 tions with the ronda. As Nazario explained, the juez himself, he sent a man, 17 saying, “ is person is like this, we have µ xed it in the o© ce, now you within the 18 ronda give him a punishment.” 19 Seemingly, their o· cial recognition eased—at least nominally—the 20 rondas’ relationships with local state authorities. However, e± ected in the 21 state’s terms, this recognition did not unsettle the fundamental relationship 22 between state and runakuna, whereby the former denies the world o the 23 latter by demanding its transformation into, precisely, the terms o the state. 24 Recognition did not a± ect the ronda’s organization, either; it continued to 25 rest on in- ayllu relationality. Interestingly, as in- ayllu relational mode in´ ects 26 ronda dynamics, an intricate situation results in which the collaboration be- 27 tween state authorities and runakuna—which can even be read as the par- 28 ticipation o rondas in state activities—also transpires without the state, and 29 in many cases against its central practices as well. 30 As noted in earlier stories, beings in- ayllu—runakuna and tirakuna—are 31 entities with relations inherently implied. is means that such a being is not 32 an individual subject in relation to others. Rather, an individual in- ayllu is 33 analogous to a knot in a web: a con´ uence where connections to other knots 34 emerge and with which the individual is. Composed by heterogeneous con- 35 nections, a person in- ayllu appears (in di± erent and hierarchical positions) 36 always inherently related to others. One o the requirements for the exercise 37 o ronda leadership is to be aylluruna, and this is not only a way to exclude
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the more powerful townspeople (potential munyaniyuq) from ronda com- 1 mand. Just as important, being in- ayllu limits the way ronda leaders can prac- 2 tice authority, speci¨ cally when it comes to ‘representing’ their collective. Let 3 me explain why I use quotes here. 4 Representation—legal and political—is the expected relationship be- 5 tween the modern state and its citizens: a democratically chosen leader 6 stands for the electorate, and this is not an arbitrary condition. Rather, it 7 occurs as a result o a pact—o· cially called an election—that seals a relation- 8 ship between the chosen leader and those who chose her (or him). Accord- 9 ingly, the latter grant the former the power to speak for them. Ronda leaders 10 are also elected, but in- ayllu election does not result in representation; how- 11 ever, representation is not absent either. is is how Nazario explained ronda 12 authority: From among us we command ourselves [nuqayku pura kamachi- 13 nakuyku]. ose [who command] are with credentials [they are authorized by 14 the ronda assembly], they [their names] are in the actas [minutes]. Choosing 15 with our vote [vutuwan churayku aqllaswan], we position them. And then they 16 are for us to obey, they command [anchiman hina kasuyta, kamachikun]. [ e 17 president] o the directiva gives orders for one year. He relates to all [state] insti- 18 tutions; he has to go to talk about the road, the water, anything. We respect him, 19 we cannot argue when he gives us orders, and i we do not obey, they µ ne us. I 20 he is a drunk, or i he does not solve things properly, or i there is a problem, we 21 [the assembly] make him pay a µ ne [machasqa mana allintapas huq nata pru- 22 blemanta mana allinta alchawanku, payta multata pagachillaykutaq]. us we 23 respect the directiva, and they respect us [anchikunawan, directivata respetayku 24 y directivapas respetallawankutaq]. 25 e “us” that Nazario refers to is the assembly o all ayllus that compose 26 the ronda; this assembly inherently constitutes ronda authorities, who there- 27 fore are never without it. e ronda is individuals who are always already with 28 others, always “an assembly.” is includes authorities whose individual will 29 is restricted to the approval o the collective o m which—not for which— 30 ronderos (all those who form the ronda, including its authorities) act and 31 speak. Failure to not speak or not do o m the ronda not only results in re- 32 moval from the position o authority, it also implies punishment, which can 33 be a ¨ ne, physical chastisement, or the denial o access to collective land and 34 grazing rights; everyday shame; and social and economic ostracism. ere is 35 no outside o the assembly for any o its members to occupy, and therefore 36 the authorities’ practice o ronda representation is the collective will o all 37
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1 present in the assembly. Unlike liberal forms o representation, the signi¨ - 2 cance o ronda authorities—their power to signify—continues to rest in the 3 assembly. And thus, it is not di· cult to ¨ nd a parallel between the ronda 4 and the Zapatista requirement to “command obeying” (Comandanta Ester 5 2002, 186). Reversing the directionality o the authority contracted through 6 liberal democratic elections, ronda elections obligate the elected leaders from 7 the very instant when they are chosen to command. Nazario’s phrase was un- 8 ambiguous as he narrated his version o ronda success: We made Julián Rojo 9 return, we chose him for two more years. 10 Rojo was one o the founders o the ronda to which Pacchanta belonged. 11 He had done a good job, and there was nobody else like him. Although he did 12 not want to return, he had to, and his return was insisted upon through an as- 13 sembly election. is was, indeed, reminiscent o Mariano’s story: he too was 14 chosen to lead, he did not want to, but he had to. I told this story earlier, and 15 I had already heard it from Mariano himsel when Nazario and Octavio told 16 me about Rojo. e opposite o munayniyuq—because it is the will o the 17 assembly that articulates their authority rather than their own munay—both 18 Julián and Mariano also match what Clastres said about chiefs in societies 19 without a state: they are chiefs with no power, and rather than possessing 20 the power o their eloquent speech, they have to use such eloquence for the 21 collective (2007). 22 As it was with the runakuna leaders during Mariano’s heyday, the au- 23 thority that the ronda grants its heads emerges from in- ayllu relationships. 24 While based on these individuals’ abilities, it transforms their capacities into 25 their obligation toward the collective and inhibits their individual power— 26 without necessarily canceling it out. Unlike Mariano, Julián Rojo could read 27 and write—at least somewhat, probably like Mariano Chillihuani, Mariano 28 Turpo’s puriq masi, his partner in walking the complaint. But something 29 that Mariano Turpo and Julián Rojo did have in common was that they both 30 “knew how to speak.” Speech is a required quality in a leader—Clastres also 31 agreed; this seems to be a normal trait in politics, including modern liberal 32 politics. However, unlike liberal politicians whom the electorate grants the 33 power to speak on its behalf, ronda authorities (and Mariano, earlier) depend 34 on the collective for their speech. It is the assembly that decides what the au- 35 thority will say, without necessarily granting this person the power to repre- 36 sent them as a signi¨ er represents the signi¨ ed. ey are leaders without fol- 37 lowers, for the separation between these two that would be required to make
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them such (leaders and followers, distinct from each other) does not exist. 1 e assembly is never passive or silent; on the contrary, it is always speaking 2 and making its authorities speak. In turn, it is the task o the ronda o· cers, as 3 members obligated to the assembly, to coordinate the actions that will even- 4 tually result in their speech. In a similar vein, Mexican theorist and political 5 activist Raquel Gutiérrez (2014) su ests that in the case o the Bolivian col- 6 lectives she is familiar with, the limit o the activity o communal represen- 7 tatives is the collective will, formulated in mechanisms through which indi- 8 viduals negotiate an agreement among themselves, rather than giving over 9 their will—delegating it—in exchange for the management o the common 10 good. us when their leaders “represent” the ronda—for example, when 11 they engage state institutions, ÃÌÍs, or political parties—this relation is also 12 a non- representational practice: they are in- ayllu, never acting without the 13 collective, which is where their power rests. 14 is process is not free o con´ ict. e partial connection between rep- 15 resentation and non- representation is also a site where endless discussions 16 occur. ese can be violent, for while authorities do not represent the assem- 17 bly, there is a possibility o their doing so (and not only for collective bene¨ t, 18 but their own as well). For one thing, they can make the assembly speak what 19 they deem to be the most convenient words. is, however, is not as simple as 20 manipulation, for convincing a ronda assembly that emerges from in-ayllu re- 21 lations requires daily work and the command o long-lasting respect, which 22 can also occasion a clever strategy o alliances, bribery, and abusive power. 23 e leader that emerges in such conditions would be identi¨ ed as munay- 24 niyuq, with his authority in danger o being cut o± by the ronda assembly.È 25 Rondas are complex institutions. Concerned with “making the law legal,” 26 they incorporate the state in their dynamics. Yet the power that makes rondas 27 possible is di± erent from (sometimes even other to) the power o the state, 28 which runakuna like Nazario perceive as an inevitable owner o the will 29 and, in this inevitability, analogous to the power o earth- beings. Unlike the 30 latter, however, for runakuna the power o the state is separate from, and 31 frequently even antagonistic to, in- ayllu conditions. Instead, the power that 32 makes rondas possible is in- ayllu, inseparable from it; the power resides in the 33 collective, which cannot grant representative power (potentially equivalent 34 to individual will, or munay) to its leaders without undoing itsel as a collec- 35 tive. e emergence o a munayniyuq from within the ronda—which is quite 36 frequent—acts against this collective and results in violence. It is the kind o 37
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1 local power that obfuscates the obligatory relational ties that being in- ayllu 2 implies, and is debilitating both o ronda command and o the munayniyuq, 3 an unsettling local ¨ gure whose individual munay the ronda will work to 4 cancel, resorting to violence i necessary.É At other times, as in the case I dis- 5 cuss below, the violent will o an individual can be controlled by appealing to 6 the state—the same state that denies the in- ayllu way o life that sustains the 7 ronda, and that the ronda attempts to make legal. 8 9 Rondas against the Local State from within the State 10 11 During the years when I visited Pacchanta, only in- ayllu runakuna could be 12 elected as ronda authorities, but membership in the ronda was opened to 13 mistis—mostly town merchants—who also found recourse against delin- 14 quents and munayniyuq thanks to ronderos. e ronda had been a success 15 by local standards. Nazario was enthusiastic: Now there is less [fewer gi s] for 16 the lawyers, less for the police. e ronda is making court trials disappear. Law- 17 yers are sad; before they at least got sheep, the police also. We have made things 18 calm down; [with] the organization o the ronda there are no payments. e 19 ronda’s relative accomplishments in challenging the police and the local legal 20 system inspired discussions about extending ronda surveillance to state rep- 21 resentatives—all o them, not only the visibly corrupt ones. We would begin 22 in Ocongate—[the representative of] the Ministry o Agriculture is in Ocongate. 23 We would ask him: “How much money has arrived in the ministry for the dis- 24 trict? And how have you spent that money?” All those things would be declared, 25 they would have to say the truth. ere would be justice. Because we do not check 26 on them, there is no justice; i we did, there would be justice, any order they 27 would give us would be legal. With that, om the ronda, the decrees, all the state 28 documents, i they are ok, would be overseen om within us [the ronda]. From 29 within the ronda we would sanction [we would say]: “ ose persons that work in 30 that institution are okay,” or “ ey are not okay.” I they are not okay, we would 31 µ re them. at is how we would approve; we would supervise what they do. 32 Nazario proposed the ideas above in a small assembly in his village. He had 33 been most immediately motivated by the publicly known fact that the mayor 34 o Ocongate (a foreign to the district who had established residence in the 35 region as an elementary teacher) was stealing large amounts o money from 36 the budget allocated to the district municipality. A ronda member had been 37 killed a© er denouncing the mayor in an assembly; he was a suspect in the kill-
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ing, but who could condemn a local authority? e mayor had in¨ ltrated the 1 ronda, it was said, by bribing runakuna with salaried jobs in the municipality. 2 People murmured: the ronda had to be more careful about who attended as- 3 semblies, and only people well known as members should be admitted. Ac- 4 cording to Nazario, the ronda had proven its success—it had scared thieves 5 and had been able to control those who protected them—and it was time 6 to begin supervising all other state representatives, beginning with the mu- 7 nicipality. So he continued to address the small group o people who had 8 gathered: at Víctor Perez [the mayor] is stealing our town’s money. at is 9 why we are denouncing him. I we do not talk [publicly] about that robbery, 10 another mayor will be chosen next, and he too will steal. 11 I had learned from Mariano that taking on in- ayllu leadership was oner- 12 ous; it implied risking one’s life and getting nothing in return. And as I lis- 13 tened to the conversation in the village gathering, I realized that this had 14 not changed. Nazario continued: Some o us are silent; some o us speak and 15 µ ght with him, the mayor watches us, hates some o us. [But those who are silent 16 should realize that] the money that we are complaining about will not be for the 17 persons who are walking the complaint, it will be for everybody. We fear walking 18 in the streets; he is sending people to follow us. at person who died was not com- 19 plaining about the mayor because he had stolen his animals or his money. He 20 was complaining about the money that belonged to the town, and he was killed. 21 While some are happy, others µ nd death. Violence was escalating, and it seemed 22 like the only way to stop the mayor was to make his corruption known in 23 the broader regional political context—beyond the munay o the local state. 24 Gathered by the ronda and supported by my friend Padre Antonio (in his 25 role as párroco, leader o the local parish), a group o twenty ronderos took 26 shelter in the local church building and began a hunger strike. ey invited 27 representatives o the main regional news media and denounced the mayor 28 in a local press conference. A© er a short but violent political tug- of- war, the 29 ronda won: the mayor had to resign and went to prison. He remained there 30 for several months, perhaps years—he was never seen in the region again. 31 During my last visit in 2009, some people still feared retaliation. All actions 32 had been directed against the corrupt mayor; however, they could implicitly 33 reverberate against the regional authorities whose corruption was the norm 34 (and therefore not corruption!) e ronderos’ hunger strike was obviously 35 an action i not necessarily against the state, against its local practice for sure. 36 e victory against the rogue mayor also meant the defeat o a large net- 37
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1 work o his thugs, which included many runakuna who were willing to risk 2 their relations with the collective. is defeat rea· rmed in- ayllu possibilities 3 and emboldened rondas to expand their attempts to control local state au- 4 thorities—Nazario’s proposal above slowly came to fruition. e assembly 5 discussed whether it might even be better i they chose electoral candidates 6 for o· ce from within the collective. When the next municipal electoral sea- 7 son came, the ronda decided to walk inside the state, and occupy it with 8 ronda practices to vote in democratic elections, thus following state practices. 9 ey started by choosing candidates for mayor from “within themselves”— 10 [the candidates are] om within us, was how Nazario put it. It was decided in 11 a ronda assembly that each ayllu should choose two candidates; then “from 12 among them” the general assembly would choose one as the ronda candidate. 13 Participation in democratic elections was not new for runakuna. ey 14 had elected state representatives since 1979, when the new Peruvian consti- 15 tution—joining other multicultural policies across the continent—granted 16 “illiterate citizens” the right to vote in national and local elections. In the 17 1990s, policies to deepen neoliberalism—o which multiculturalism was 18 a part—implemented the so-called decentralization o the state admin- 19 istration. One o the measures put in place was that municipal authorities 20 (mayors and municipal councils) who had formerly been appointed by cen- 21 tral authorities were to be locally elected.Ê In many parts o the country, resi- 22 dents o towns and some runakuna rushed through the door opened by the 23 decentralizing call to participate in local state institutions. Yet once they got 24 past the threshold, “illiterate citizens” found the lettered practices o the 25 state pushing them back out. In Cuzco, a case that people o all walks o 26 life always mention is that o Zenón Mescco, a runakuna who was elected 27 mayor o a rural hamlet called Chinchaypuquio, three hours by car west o 28 the city o Cuzco (probably eight hours from Ocongate). He was accused o 29 fraud and put in jail. He was illiterate, he explained in a later interview: his 30 accountant had made him sign documents that he could not read. He was 31 found guilty and spent four years in prison; his ayllu was unable or unwilling 32 to defend him.Î 33 Runakuna in Ocongate are aware o Mescco’s case; they know that liter- 34 acy is a requirement when they think about viable candidates for municipal 35 elections. When we were talking about possible ronda candidates for mayor, 36 I asked Nazario about Rojo, the ronda organizer my friends admired—the 37 one they had made return as the ronda leader. How about him as candidate?
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Nazario was very quick to respond: No he cannot, he has little instruction. No 1 . . . he would not have support [Julian mana atinmanchu, pisi istrukshunin 2 mana . . . manan apuyankumanchu]. And he continued: In the end, there is 3 not one with high school [education] . . . there is none within the assembly o ru- 4 nakuna . . . om among us, there is no one. In fact, Perez, the corrupt mayor, 5 had been elected because he had a secondary education; while he was not a 6 candidate from “within the ronda” (ronda uhupi), by the time o his election 7 he had won the favor o the assembly because he had helped interpret the 8 legal documents about ronda organization that circulated prior to their o· - 9 cial recognition. Perhaps he had learned how to fool runakuna; he realized 10 he could tell them whatever he wanted, Nazario thought. 11 12 13 14 “ILLITERATE” CITIZENS OF A LETTERED STATE 15 16 In 1979, a constitutional decree formally lifted the ban on the participation of 17 the “illiterate population” in national and local elections. A couple of years 18 later, a myriad of municipalidades menores (smaller municipalities) were cre- 19 ated in peasant villages, thus potentially opening the doors for runakuna to 20 participate in the will of the state. However, literacy is still required to con- 21 duct the business of the local state. Who could imagine a late-liberal state 22 that does not place modern logos (history, science, and politics) at its cen- 23 ter? And if this question represents a challenge to hegemonic knowledge (the 24 sphere from which possible answers could emerge) the idea of a non-lettered 25 state is even worse; it is absurd. It expresses the unthinkable: that which 26 perverts all answers because it defies the terms under which the question is 27 phrased (Trouillot 1995, 82). And the flip side of the unthinkable is that which 28 does not even require thinking or saying—in this case, the requirement of lit- 29 eracy among elected state representatives even if they do not read and write. 30 This illogical imposition is not a problem in need of consideration because, 31 as the flip side of the unthinkable, it is “the way things should be.” In an era 32 when states may pride themselves on multiculturalism—if they achieve it— 33 modern literacy (and all that it encompasses in its semantic field) continues 34 to set the limits of acceptable difference, or tolerates it at its own risk and 35 until its expected failure. The “indio permitido” (quoted in Hale 2004), or the 36 Indian whose citizenship the state authorizes is the literate Indian as secular, 37
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1 individual subject. The other Indian (“illiterate” and in-ayllu) is not given direct 2 access to the state: she needs to wait, use intermediaries, or bear the conse- 3 quences like Mescco. There is no legal measure against this condition, for no 4 liberal right to illiteracy exists. 5 Nevertheless, alternative literacy projects inhabited by heterogeneous de- 6 colonial practices also exist. Close to home (or to one of this book’s homes), 7 the struggle for schools that Mariano’s generation of leaders engaged in em- 8 bodies one such effort; similar political projects exist today. Reading and writ- 9 ing in these projects empowers radical difference—it does not cancel it—even 10 if many times the reading and writing is practiced in Spanish only. 11 12 13 14 The Ronda Inhabits the State: 15 A Winning (Literate) Candidate 16 17 So the pool to choose the ronda candidates was restricted to its literate mem- 18 bers, who were usually not runakuna; counterintuively—to me at least—the 19 assembly decided to choose ronda candidates from among members who 20 lacked governing experience. Having been previously involved in govern- 21 ment, Nazario explained, could have instilled bad habits: We want someone 22 who is clean, someone who has not done any “cargos,” like working in [a state] 23 o© ce. People learn to steal; working as an o© cer [directivo], people may also 24 learn to steal. Some runa who is clean, with beautiful experience, someone like 25 that will look a er our place, so we say [Huq limphiw runaqa, sumaq ixpirin- 26 shawan runata, llaqtata qhawarinqa nispa]. 27 A© er several failed attempts in which the ronderos lost to other local can- 28 didates, the ronda candidate ¨ nally won in the municipal elections in 2008. 29 Graciano Mandura, born in Pacchanta, is the son o an in- ayllu household. 30 He not only reads and writes in Spanish, but he also has a degree in animal 31 husbandry and was working for a development ÃÌÍ when he was elected 32 mayor o Ocongate. An outsider would not see him as “an indigenous peas- 33 ant”—he was unlike most o those who had elected him. He did not ful¨ ll 34 any in- ayllu obligations in Pacchanta either; when he was old enough to join 35 the collective, he chose instead to move to Cuzco for his education. Cur- 36 rently, he does not have access to ayllu resources in Pacchanta, where he still 37 has family. When I met him, his wife was a teacher in the local high school;
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Graciano Mandura was the ronda candidate for mayor of Ocongate. The shovel 19 in the picture is the symbol of Acción Popular, a nationwide political party that 20 supported his candidacy. September 2007. 21 22 their children went to elementary school in San Jerónimo, an urban district 23 connected to the city o Cuzco by public transportation. (In fact, I met him 24 through his job; as a friend o Mariano and his family, he was very helpful 25 during my ¨ rst visits to Pacchanta, as was his wife.) Reading and writing, a 26 university degree, a house in Ocongate, and earning a salary from an ÃÌÍ: 27 all this would qualify Mandura as misti or a non- runa. But as Nazario and, 28 most emphatically Benito, his brother, also asserted: He is like us, runa class, 29 he has runa blood. Some runakuna, when they read and write do not want to 30 be seen like us, they want to be respected like the misti; they do not respect runa- 31 kuna. Graciano is not scared o the misti and he respects us, he is like us, he has 32 runa blood, runa clothes, runa class [runa yawar, runa p´achayuq, runa clase]. 33 Now, one om the runa class is mayor; the ronda won. 34 And this indeed was the case. Mandura was a ronda mayor, and thus his 35 performance was supervised by the ronda assembly. is is the way he ex- 36 plained it to me: I have to be careful, I do not ask all the time, but I have to be 37
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1 aware not to oª end anybody. I cannot get rich; that is the most important thing. 2 I have to serve; the ronda has to see I serve. Seemingly, then, not even as state 3 authorities are ronda members granted the power to undertake representa- 4 tion in liberal, democratic terms. Authority continues to rest in the organi- 5 zation. Literate ronda o· cials are not only the individual modern subjects 6 that the state can recognize as its representatives—subject to the collective, 7 their position as state representatives does not add up to one (but it is not 8 many, either). 9 Similarly complex, Mandura embodies an alternative, i implicit, project 10 for literacy. Perhaps it bears similarities with the one that Mariano proposed 11 in the 1950s and for which he walked the complaint from Pacchanta, to 12 Cuzco and Lima: a project that would allow runakuna to read and write with- 13 out shedding in- ayllu relational worlding that, along with others, make life 14 in the region o Ausangate. Gavina Córdoba, a native Quechua speaker who 15 also writes ´ uently in Spanish and works at an international ÃÌÍ located in 16 Lima, calls this process criar la escritura. Her Spanish phrase can be trans- 17 lated as “to nurture writing,” and the intention underpinning it is to counter 18 literacy as a national homogenizing project. “You make writing your own, or 19 make your own writing, you make it di± erent, like you, you do not allow it to 20 change you: you change it once it is your own” she explains.¼Ï In these alter- 21 native literacy projects, runakuna who read and write do not translate them- 22 selves into the representational literate regime o the lettered state—and thus 23 they challenge its status as the owner o the will, or munayniyuq. is chal- 24 lenge, however, is partial: modern practices o political representation (those 25 that belong to the sphere o the state) are hegemonically present, always im- 26 pinging on non- representational practices, which in the best o cases have to 27 negotiate with those modern practices implicitly or explicitly. For example, 28 and eloquently, Mandura was also the candidate o Acción Popular—it lit- 29 erally translates as Popular Action in English. A nationwide populist politi- 30 cal party that is moderately inclined to the right, Acción Popular sponsored 31 Graciano’s electoral campaign, whose monetary cost to the ronda therefore 32 was minimal. Unlike the ronda, this party granted its candidate—Graciano 33 Mandura (also the ronda candidate)—the power to represent it in the local 34 elections. For Acción Popular this meant the possibility o counting Ocon- 35 gate as a place where the party had in´ uence, and thus where it could imple- 36 ment (and, i successful, showcase) its “rural development” plans. But this 37
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in´ uence, which ´ owed through modern forms o political representation, 1 still had to be negotiated with the ronda: within it, Graciano was not free as 2 an individual to represent—and thus command—“his constituency” as Ac- 3 ción Popular would have expected. Moreover, the ronda collective was not 4 “a constituency” that was distinctively separated from Graciano; he was in- 5 herently part o it. 6 As in the case o Julán Rojo, Graciano Mandura’s circumstances reminded 7 me o stories that Mariano had told me—how his lawyers or le© ist allies 8 wanted him to sign papers, which he could not do before consulting with 9 the ayllu. Intriguingly, the local state includes many non- state ayllu or ronda 10 practices, and the collectives include state practices. e relation between 11 the two spheres is tense: the state can compel rondas and ayllus to abide 12 by rules o representative democracy even as it denies recognition to non- 13 representational practices—or precisely because it denies them recognition, 14 thus signaling limits to democracy that are unquestionabe and historically 15 legitimate (and thus not perceived as limits). 16 Rather than two disconnected logics, in Ocongate, where Graciano Man- 17 dura was mayor—and possibly in other places in the country—the ronda’s 18 participation in municipal elections (proposing their candidates and over- 19 seeing them) reveals a complex local state where the ayllu (or ronda) non- 20 representational regimes cohabit with modes o representation that are the 21 norm for the modern state. us, when it comes to political conversations 22 that include “the illiterate’s” notions o democracy, elections may become 23 sites o empirical and conceptual equivocation (Viveiros de Castro 2004b): 24 they may refer, simultaneously, to radically di± erent (representational/ 25 non- representational) practices, which, however, when enacted cannot be 26 distilled from one another. Challenging liberal thinkers who would deem 27 unthinkable the simultaneity o obligation to a collective and democracy, in 28 the rondas and in- ayllu the election o leaders can be both democratic and 29 an obligation—the result o partial connection between distinct forms o 30 authorizing the power o the leader. Perhaps this is how “to command obey- 31 ing” acquires meaning in the rondas and in- ayllu. As I said above, Rojo, the 32 aylluruna who successfully implemented the ronda in the early 2000s, had 33 to serve for two terms. I repeat Nazario’s words: We made Julián Rojo return, 34 we chose him for two more years. 35 e same could have happened to Graciano Mandura, but it did not. 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Mayor Graciano Mandura in his office at the municipality of Ocongate. 19 October 2009. 20 21 22 23 THE MAYOR WHO LEFT THE RONDA 24 25 Graciano was a popular district mayor; his term was a success. Among other 26 things, he supported a mobilization in defense of Ausangate, the major earth- 27 being in the region, against a possible mine that was projected to cut through 28 it. Participating in runakuna’s plight when he was still a candidate, he agreed 29 with many in the region that mining Ausangate would be equivalent to de- 30 stroying the earth-being, something that Ausangate itself would not tolerate. 31 When the news about the imminent prospecting for the mine spread, Mandura 32 was one of the leaders who opposed it; the municipality contributed money 33 to rent a bus and encouraged local people to travel to a demonstration in the 34 Plaza de Armas in the city of Cuzco. In a series of events that the neoliberal 35 decentralization of the state could not foresee, not only were ayllu and lib- 36 eral modes of representation complexly entangled with one another, but more 37 impressively, through the mayor of Ocongate, earth-beings had entered the
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logic of the local state, even if central representatives of the state ignored 1 or disavowed this event as indigenous superstition (de la Cadena 2010). The 2 complexity, however, does not stop here—nor does Graciano’s political story. 3 Being a district major elected by the ronda put him in an intricate position: he 4 was a state representative whose power was not his own for his authority de- 5 rived from obligation to the ronda assembly. Accordingly, his acts of municipal 6 government were not top-down; he owed himself to the ronda electorate. Yet 7 his position also led to political popularity beyond ronda and ayllu reach and 8 drew him away from his obligations to these institutions. In April 2010, Gra- 9 ciano was elected mayor of Quispicanchis, the province to which the district 10 of Ocongate and his village, Pacchanta, belongs. The jurisdiction of the ronda 11 that elected him is limited to Ocongate, and in representing Quispicanchis, 12 Graciano not only became a higher ranking mayor: as provincial mayor, and 13 thus outside of ronda jurisdiction, he was now free to abide only by the rules 14 of representative democracy. He no longer needed to obey the collective. Yet, 15 as a modern representative of his constituency, he followed practices that the 16 modern state has trouble recognizing—or does so only as folklore. 17 Built by the Brazilian corporartion Odebrecht, a mega-highway (known 18 as the Carretera Transoceánica because it connects the Pacific and Atlantic 19 Oceans) cuts through the province of Quispicanchis. Projects for local social 20 development are part of the construction of the road—perhaps in compliance 21 with policies of corporate social responsibility. A web page for the corpora- 22 tion shows a picture of Graciano at the inauguration of one of these projects. 23 Included in the inauguration ceremony, the page explains, was a “Pago a la 24 Tierra”—translated as “I Pay the Earth”—performed by “four religious leaders” 25 who requested the participation of the mayor of Quispicanchis. The web page 26 translates Graciano’s words at the inauguration into English: “Our traditional 27 customs cannot be forgotten and our traditions must be preserved. But we 28 need to be organized to transform what we are receiving into the development 29 of our community.”¼¼ 30 These sentences appear on the web page in English; the article mentions 31 Graciano spoke in Quechua. I do not know exactly what he said nor do I 32 know what he meant. I guess his statement invokes several partially con- 33 nected worlds, their practices, and their projects. When I read the web page, 34 the image that came to my mind was Graciano’s leadership in the campaign 35 against the mine and in defense of Ausangate. Extrapolating from this and 36 from my ethnographic experience, I guess that, most probably, the inaugu- 37
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1 ral ceremony that the web page refers to was a despacho to the earth-beings 2 that compose the place of which Quispicanchi is part. Like he did when he 3 was mayor of Ocongate, in Quispicanchis, Mayor Mandura engages in rela- 4 tionships with entities that are not necessarily recognizable by, or compatible 5 with, the liberal and decentralized democracy that the municipality, as a state 6 institution, also practices. 7 Of course, another interpretation is possible. For example, the mayor of 8 Quispicanchis Graciano Mandura may have simply enacted a folkloric ritual to 9 please the indigenous constituency that elected him. In this version, he is now 10 a modern provincial state authority and has left the a-modern behind. Both 11 interpretations are conceivable—and Graciano may have enacted either one, 12 but also more than one. In that case, his practices would have intermittently 13 interrupted each other, but neither would have invalidated the other. Partial 14 connections are, after all, what life is about in Cuzco; they also color the politi- 15 cal relationships among the worlds that these life projects enact. 16 Neither of the above interpretations denies that Mandura left the ronda 17 collective, lured by the promises of a better life offered by one of the worlds 18 that make up the Andes. And he left when he could, when he was guaran- 19 teed both a way out of Ocongate and a life in Urcos—the peri-urban town 20 that is the capital of Quispicanchis. He might have been driven by a choice 21 of an urban life for his children—and the choice was opened to him because 22 he could read and write. However, leaving Ocongate and the ronda and mov- 23 ing to Quispicanchis does not simplistically suggest that he left the runakuna 24 world behind. It may have been easier to leave the politics of the ronda be- 25 hind than to sever relations with earth-beings which are central to the making 26 of the runakuna world. 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 EPILOGUE ETHNOGRAPHIC 9 10 COSMOPOLITICS 11 12 13 It was August 2006, and I had just arrived in Cuzco for a two- or three- month 14 stay. Nazario called me to say that he could not come to the house where I 15 was staying; instead, could I go to the Plaza de Armas? It was going to be hard 16 to ¨ nd him because he was attending a demonstration—there were lots o 17 people there. But he would wait for me at El Ayllu, a restaurant frequented 18 by non- Cuzqueño Peruvian “le© ies”—the likes o me. I was curious about 19 the event that had congregated people in the Plaza de Armas, the site o all 20 political demonstrations in Cuzco. e people gathering on that day in the 21 main square o Cuzco had come from the region where Nazario’s village is 22 located. A mining corporation was prospecting Sinakara, an earth- being con- 23 nected to Ausangate, which was also an icon o regional Catholicism and a 24 mountain—and thus a potential reservoir o minerals, possibly gold. Such 25 complexity is not new in the Andes, where mining tunnels have cut across the 26 bowels o many important earth- beings since colonial times. So far, these enti- 27 ties have been capacious enough to allow mining machinery and despachos to 28 move through them with relative ease. However, prospecting for Andean gold 29 in the current millennium is di± erent, for new mining technology demands 30 the destruction o the mountain from which minerals are being extracted: 31 the mountain is transformed into tons o earth that needs to be washed with 32 chemicals dissolved in water in a process that separates useful from useless 33 minerals. Extremely productive in economic terms, this technology is also ex- 34 tremely polluting environmentally and represents the ultimate threat to earth- 35 beings: the mountain that they also are and exceed faces nothing less than 36 their destruction and so many the world where runakuna are with tirakuna. 37
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1 Two years earlier, in 2004, Nazario had argued that the state’s disavowal 2 o earth- beings did not really threaten them for they would not cease to be— 3 the reader may remember this from interlude 2. Back in 2004 Nazario’s had 4 focused on getting the state to replace its perennial policies o abandonment 5 o runakuna with development programs—at the very least, roads, potable 6 water, irrigation canals, schools, and public health services. Nazario’s demand 7 was for state recognition; the negotiation to achieve this goal could transpire 8 in political economic terms, and the state could deal in those terms. Now, in 9 2006, development in the form o large mining ventures was knocking on 10 the door o runakuna villages. But the terms o this development threatened 11 earth- beings with destruction—and the earth- beings would in turn destroy 12 the mining process and all those nearby, including runakuna o course. In 13 our earlier conversation, neither Nazario nor I had imagined that state aban- 14 donment could be replaced with corporate destruction o runakuna places. 15 ings were de¨ nitely getting worse. I previous policies o abandonment 16 were letting runakuna’s bodies slowly die—and I thought development (im- 17 plemented or not) was doing the same to runakuna’s practices, though Naza- 18 rio disagreed—this time we were both sure that the development brought by 19 mining would actively destroy the ayllu, the relational emplacement through 20 which runakuna are with earth- beings. e threat was more serious than ever 21 before; the hacienda property regime usurped lands and thus impoverished 22 runakuna’s bodies, in addition to torturing them. But it did not have the tech- 23 nological might to destroy the place that continues to emerge from ayllu re- 24 lationality. us, i during Mariano’s time runakuna had organized to defend 25 their being against the landowner, in Nazario’s time a discussion in the town 26 o Ocongate resulted in a coalition o people (runakuna and misti merchants, 27 teachers, and local authorities) who decided to safeguard the earth- being (and 28 mountain and Catholic shrine) from destruction by the mining corporation. 29 e demonstration in the Plaza de Armas was the public act that accompa- 30 nied a visit by a delegation o representatives o the coalition to the president 31 o the region. Ideally they would convince him and the rest o the authori- 32 ties that the mountain was not only a mountain, and thus was not summarily 33 translatable, via its destruction, into minerals. Ausangate, Sinakara, and all 34 the rest were tirakuna, earth- beings. But o course these terms were not easy 35 for the state authorities to accept (even i some could understand them); 36 heated debates had already taken place in Ocongate about how to best phrase 37 these demands. At the insistence o a local ÃÌÍ, the decision was to subordi-
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nate the defense o the earth- beings to the defense o the environment; this 1 cause the state could recognize, perhaps even accept as righteous. e vil- 2 lagers achieved their end; as o August 2014, there is no mine in Ausangate. 3 emountain won, the mining corporation lost; but to earn this victory, the 4 earth- being was made invisible, its political presence withdrawn by the alli- 5 ance that also defended it. In addition to the ¨ elds o ecology and political 6 economy, this contest also transpired in the ¨ eld o political ontology in two 7 intertwined senses o the concept: as the ¨ eld where practices, entities, and 8 concepts make each other be; and as the enactment within this ¨ eld o mod- 9 ern politics itself, obliging what is and what is not its matter. Yet political 10 ontology was a subdued partner in the arena o contention; as the question 11 o the destruction o Ausangate and Sinakara became a matter o public con- 12 cern, that these entities were also earth-beings—and not only mountains— 13 was gradually silenced. As actors in the ¨ eld o modern politics, tirakuna are 14 cultural beliefs and, as such, weak matters o political concern when con- 15 fronted to the facts o± ered by science, the economy, and nature. us, to save 16 the mountain from being swallowed up by the mining corporation, activists 17 themselves—runakuna included—withdrew tirakuna from the negotiation. 18 eir radical di± erence exceeded modern politics, which could not tolerate 19 their being anything other than a cultural belief. 20 21 22 23 RADICAL DIFFERENCE IS NOT SOMETHING 24 25 “INDIGENOUS PEOPLES HAVE” 26 Radical difference is not to be understood as a quality of isolated indigeneity, 27 for there is nothing as such: as historical formation, indigeneity exists with 28 Latin American nation-state institutions. Thus, rather than something that “in- 29 digenous peoples have,” radical difference is a relational condition emerging 30 when (or if) all or some of the parties involved in the enactment of a reality are 31 equivocal—in the sense of Viveiros de Castro’s notion of equivocation—about 32 what is being enacted. Not unusually in the Andes, radical difference emerges 33 as a relationship of excess with state institutions. I conceptualize excess as 34 that which is beyond ‘the limit’ or “the first thing outside which there is noth- 35 ing to be found and the first thing inside which everything is to be found” 36 (Guha 2002, 7). As presented through Mariano’s and Nazario’s stories, this 37
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1 nothing is in relation to what sees itself as everything, and thus exceeds it—it 2 is something, a real that is not-a- thing accessible through culture or knowl- 3 edge of nature (as usual). The “limit” is ontological, and establishing it can be 4 a political-epistemic practice with the power to cancel the reality of all that 5 (dis)appears beyond it. Earlier in this book I described a relation between 6 President Alan García of Peru and earth-beings that illustrates this power: 7 ignoring that he inhabited a circumstance in which a mountain was also an 8 earth-being he canceled out the existence of the second. Against radical dif- 9 ference (the earth-being) he vociferously demanded sameness: if it was not a 10 mountain it was superstition, that was all he could deal with—and he had no 11 tolerance for the latter. 12 As an antidote to practices of “same-ing,” Helen Verran proposes “culti- 13 vating epistemic disconcertment” (2012, 143). This disconcertment, she ex- 14 plains, is the feeling that assaults individuals—including their bodies—when 15 the categories that pertain to their world-making practices and institutions 16 are disrupted. Epistemic disconcertment, in the case that occupies me, could 17 correspond to Michel Rolph Trouillot’s (1995) unthinkable: that which breaks 18 the ontological order of what is (thinkable) through modern politics or science. 19 Thus, instead of recognition, epistemic disconcertment generates puzzlement 20 and has the potential to make us think challenging what and how we know. 21 Not infrequently, disconcertment is explained away; what provoked it is de- 22 nied, made banal, or tolerated as belief. And while these attitudes do not rep- 23 resent political conspiracy, they do express the ontological politics that define 24 the real (or the possible). 25 26 27 28 Politics as Ontological Disagreement 29 30 Enough is enough. is people are not a monarchy, they are not ¨ rst- 31 class citizens. Who are 400,000 natives to tell 28 million Peruvians 32 that you have no right to come here? is is a grave error, and whoever 33 thinks this way wants to lead us to irrationality and a retro- grade 34 primitivism.—Alan García, June 5, 2009 35 36 As it turned out, Ausangate and Sinakara were not the only earth- beings to 37 enter the political discussion at relatively the same time.¼ e expansion o
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mining concessions in previously uncharted territories, from 2 million hect- 1 ares in 1992 to 20 million in 2010 (Aste 2011), provoked protests that made 2 several other earth- beings public—not only what we know as mountains, but 3 also rivers and lagoons. President Alan García had to fend o± these protests 4 throughout his tenure. He went public several times—the ¨ rst time early 5 in 2007, and again in 2009, when he said what I quoted at the beginning o 6 this section. e comment was intended to quell a strike against his govern- 7 ment’s attempt to open up a vast region in the Amazon to oil exploitation. 8 e president was evading the regulation 169 o the ÆÖÍ (that requires the 9 consent o the inhabitants o those territories before mining can occur), the 10 leaders o the strike claimed—they also claimed the rivers (that would be pol- 11 luted by oil extraction) as their brothers.½ In 2011, as his term was coming to 12 an end, García went public for the third time, determined “to defeat those 13 absurd, pantheistic ideologies that say . . . do not touch that mountain be- 14 cause it is an Apu, because it is ¨ lled with millenarian spirit or what have 15 you.” e solution was “more education,” he said, because i the state were to 16 pay attention to those absurdities, it would say, “well . . . let’s not do anything, 17 not even mining” (quoted in Adrianzén 2011). e reader is already famil- 18 iar with this quote and might also recognize the presidential hope about the 19 bene¨ cial e± ects o the education imparted in the waiting room o history. 20 e inability o the president and many politicians to accept the discussion 21 in runakuna’s terms reveals the limits o recognition as a relationship that the 22 modern state, either liberal or socialist, extends to its “others.” Recognition is 23 an o± er for inclusion that—not surprisingly—can transpire only in the terms 24 o state cognition: it can be as long as it does not impinge on those terms— 25 namely, the modern agreement that “partitions the sensible” (Rancière 1999) 26 into a single nature and di± erentiated humans (Haraway 1991, Latour 1993b, 27 Strathern 1980). “Be other so that we do not ossify, but be in such a way that 28 we are not undone” (Povinelli 2001, 329) is the condition that the state ex- 29 tends to recognize its “others”—and not undoing the state requires follow- 30 ing the partition o the sensible that it recognizes. us we can understand 31 García’s tantrums: earth- beings made into public actors cannot be. ey are a 32 non- problem, politically speaking, and a modern political debate about their 33 existence is at least aporetic. From the point o view o both the le© and 34 the right, mountains are nature, and earth- beings—entities that exist ahis- 35 torically—are impossible as matters o political concern, unless they exist 36 through what is considered cultural practice. An illustration: on the occasion 37
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1 o García’s last comments, an earnest le© ist politician accused García o in- 2 tolerance to indigenous religion, a position that was anachronistic in the age 3 o multiculturalism (Adrianzén 2011). A controversy erupted as a result, and 4 García was ridiculed while environmentalists were empowered. But neither 5 the neoliberal intransigents nor the tolerant multiculturalists could consider 6 mountains as not only geology but also earth- beings. 7 An important concern that Mariano’s life highlighted is that modern poli- 8 tics is within a possible that can be recognized as historical. Hence the en- 9 actment o what cannot be historically veri¨ ed is not a subject or object o 10 politics, because its reality is doubtful—to say the least. is ontological bot- 11 tom line is not to be probed; the being historical o politics and the ques- 12 tion that this needed not to be a condition is not asked. It is the undisputed 13 (blind) spot from which a reality is enacted. Occupying that spot, the round- 14 table discussed in story 2 enacted a reality that, in turn, denied the reality o 15 in- ayllu political practices (which I described in story 3). “Unblinding” that 16 spot, opening it up to discussion, o± ers the possibility o questioning the 17 ontological composition o modern politics, thus calling o± its self- evident 18 quality and instead exploring the event that such composition as an event 19 that needed not be such—and perhaps is not only such.¾ I su est that the 20 requirement o modern politics to be historical upholds its coloniality and 21 its consequent partition o the sensible. Jacques Rancière uses the concept 22 to refer to the division o “the visible” into activities that are seen and those 23 that are not, and the division o “the sayable” into forms o speech that are 24 recognized as discourse and others that are discarded as noise (1999, 29). 25 Reading Rancière through Mariano and Nazario’s stories, the division be- 26 tween what is seen and heard in the sphere o politics (and what is not heard 27 or seen) corresponds to a division between the historical and the ahistorical 28 that also implies a distinction between what is and what is not, the possible 29 and the impossible. Partially connected with this partition, the disagreement 30 that Mariano’s and Nazario’s stories enact is ontological—it challenges the 31 inevitable historical requirements o politics. Seemingly, the proposal that re- 32 sults from those stories is impossible; yet the stories also narrate how modern 33 politics and even history are not without their proposal.Á 34 Politics, says Rancière, “exists through the fact o a magnitude that escapes 35 ordinary measurement” (1999, 15), and “it is the introduction o the incom- 36 mensurable at the heart o the distribution o speaking bodies” (19). Earth- 37 beings with runakuna introduce such an incommensurable—the heart that
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they disrupt is that o the ontological division between nature and humanity, 1 which also parts the ahistorical from the historical and grants power to the 2 latter to certify the real. Tirakuna with runakuna enact an impossible chal- 3 lenge to the historical ontology o the sensible: how can the ahistorical— 4 that which has no part within the sensible—re- partition the sensible itself? 5 Given this impossibility, in the speci¨ c case I witnessed, to protect Ausan- 6 gate (and in- ayllu relations with it) from destruction, the challenge that the 7 earth- being posed was withdrawn by those who proposed it, and they then 8 remade their claim, joining that which what modern politics could recog- 9 nize: the environment. 10 e becoming public o earth- beings is a disagreement with the prevalent 11 partition o the sensible; it provokes the “scandal in thinking” that, accord- 12 ing to Rancière, installs politics (1999, xii). e public intervention o ahis- 13 torical entities presents modern politics with that which is impossible under 14 its conditions. ey propose an alteration o those conditions, thus causing a 15 scandal and the subsequent trivialization both o the disagreement and o 16 the profound disruption o the partition o the sensible that the mere pub- 17 lic presence o those entities enacts. Immanent to moments like the dispute 18 o Ausangate against the proposed mine, ontological disagreement emerges 19 from practices that make worlds diverge even as they continue to make 20 themselves connected to one another. Composed with stu± that is barely 21 recognizable beyond the local, these moments travel with di· culty and are 22 hardly cosmopolitan. Instead, they compose cosmopolitical moments with a 23 capacity to irritate the universal and provincialize nature and culture, thus 24 potentially situating them in political symmetry with what is neither cul- 25 ture nor nature. Ethnographically inquiring both within the cosmos—the 26 unknown and what it can articulate (Stengers 2005a)—and within “politics 27 as usual” (de la Cadena 2010), we may speculate that these cosmopolitical 28 moments may propose an “alter- politics”Ç capable o being other than only 29 modern politics. An alter- politics would, for example, be capable o alliances 30 or adversarial relations with that which modern politics has evicted from its 31 ¨ eld. And this capacity would not require translating di± erence into same- 32 ness thus complicating the agreement that modern politics imposes on those 33 it admits. 34 35 36 37
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1 2 DIVERGENT WORLDS 3 4 Above I wrote: “ontological disagreement emerges from practices that make 5 worlds diverge even as they continue to make themselves connected to one 6 another.” The notion of divergence comes from Isabelle Stengers, who uses it 7 to conceptualize what she calls “ecology of practices” (2005b). She offers it as 8 a tool to think how practices that pertain to different fields of action—I would 9 say different worlds—connect among each other and maintain ties with what 10 makes them be. Different from contradiction, divergence does not presuppose 11 homogeneous terms—instead, divergence refers to the coming together of 12 heterogeneous practices that will become other than what they were, while 13 continuing the be the same—they become self-different. Thus conceptualized, 14 the site where heterogeneous practices connect is also the site of their diver- 15 gence, their becoming with what they are not without becoming what they are 16 not (Stengers 2005, 2011). 17 Divergent practices break with the obligation of sameness—however, such 18 break would not be such without connections to the institutions from which 19 the practices diverge (for example, the state and its related practices and 20 categories).È Perhaps because of these connections—even through them— 21 the practices that enact worlds in divergence with sameness propose a dis- 22 agreement that may have the capacity to affect the politics of modern politics 23 itself. 24 25 26 27 An Ethnographic Cosmopolitical Proposal 28 29 How can we present a proposal intended not to say what is, or what 30 ought to be, but to provoke thought, a proposal that requires no other 31 veri¨ cation than the way in which it is able to· “slow down” reasoning 32 and create an opportunity to arouse a slightly di± erent awareness o 33 the problems and situations mobilizing us?—Isabelle Stengers, 34 “A Cosmopolitical Proposal” 35 36 Isabelle Stengers’s phrase above and my conversations with Mariano and Na- 37 zario Turpo have inspired the proposal housed in this book. e proposal
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is ethnographic as my conceptualization weaves into it what I call the em- 1 pirical: the stu± that I encountered through my friends. Yet this empirical 2 is also speculative because it includes practices and relations that exist in a 3 way I do not know—for example, runakuna’s and earth- beings’ enactments 4 o each other, or the enactment o in- ayllu worldings and their partial con- 5 nections with other worldings, including my own. inking with Stengers’s 6 proposal and also tweaking it, I propose that by diverging from (or through 7 ontological disagreement with) the established partition o the sensible, ru- 8 nakuna practices propose a cosmopolitics: relations among divergent worlds 9 as a decolonial practice o politics with no other guarantee than the absence 10 o ontological sameness. 11 Stengers’s proposal is certainly not runakuna’s proposal. Yet, like runa- 12 kuna’s proposal, hers is di± erent from projects that know what they are and 13 what they want and therefore, more o© en than not, they command. Instead, 14 her cosmopolitical proposal wants to speak “in the presence of” those who 15 may ignore commanding words—those who “prefer not to,” for example, 16 have a political voice (Stengers, 2005, 996), and, I add, i that implies a com- 17 mand to be di± erent—to be other than what they are. Speaking “in the pres- 18 ence of ” su ests a speech that does not insist on what it is and instead is 19 capable o being a± ected by what it is not, without becoming it either. More- 20 over, speaking in the presence o that which insistently prefers not to (follow 21 the command) incites a di± erent practice o thought: one that does not insist 22 on explaining why the command is not followed but instead focuses on the 23 insistence to not follow it. In other words, what produces thought, or be- 24 comes important to it, is not only the refusal o the command (which would 25 actually imply mostly existing through it, to be able to reject it) but also the 26 positivity o being that ignores the command (even without explanation) or 27 perhaps follows it without becoming it—and in both cases presents a di± er- 28 ence that is not only within the command, because it also escapes it. 29 Runakuna in- ayllu practices ignored the command for a nature- humanity 30 divide, they also followed it, and, at times, overtly rejected it. Complexly, 31 neither action meant a cancellation o what was not being enacted, thus cre- 32 ating a condition that escaped the command and slowed down the principle 33 that partitions the sensible into humans and things. Including other- than- 34 humans in their interactions with modern institutions (the state, national 35 ÃÌÍs, and international foundations) runakuna practices enacted intrigu- 36 ing onto- epistemic ruptures with the world o those institutions extending 37
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1 to them a partial connection with what is other than the separation between 2 humans and things. (As examples o this complex relation, the reader might 3 recall that Mariano’s pukara was summoned to the inaugural ceremony o 4 the agrarian reform, or Nazario’s connection to Ausangate during his cura- 5 torial stint at the National Museum o the American Indian in Washing- 6 ton, D.C.) ese connections revealed divergence among worlds—runakuna 7 practices refused to convert to the hegemonic divide while nevertheless par- 8 ticipating in it. 9 Runakuna practices disrupt the composition through which the world as 10 we know it constantly makes itsel as homogeneous: they present it with 11 an excess that may challenge the capacity that makes modern politics what 12 it is, prying it open to ontological disagreement. At this point, when prac- 13 tices (with earth- beings, for example) present modern politics with ontologi- 14 cal disagreement, is where the proposal that emerges from my conversations 15 with Mariano and Nazario becomes ethnographically, rather than philo- 16 sophically, cosmopolitical. As in Stengers’s proposal, in our conversations 17 politics was not a universal anthropological category—but perhaps di± erent 18 from her assumptions, the politics that appeared through our conversations 19 did not bear only “our [Western] signature” (Stengers 2005, 996). e quali- 20 ¨ cation only is important here—for what i what I have been calling modern 21 politics was never only such—at least in the Andes? 22 While modern politics is a practice through which Europe made the world 23 as we know it (Chakrabarty 2000) and used it to manage those it considered 24 “others,” the latter contaminated politics with excesses that Europe could not 25 recognize as ¨ ttingly political. Not only did the modern constitution allow 26 for the puri¨ cation o what purported moderns hybridized through their sci- 27 enti¨ c practice (Latour 1993b); signi¨ cantly, considered as political practice, 28 the modern constitution itsel was never pure. In the Andes (and perhaps in 29 what would become Latin America), such constitution was very early popu- 30 lated both by historical words and practices and by ahistorical practices that 31 persistently occupied it, and even made possible objects o history, as in the 32 case o Mariano’s archive.É Modern politics was and continues to be a his- 33 torical event in a complex arena where the proposal to build one world via 34 “cultural assimilation” reached an agreement that was not only such: disagree- 35 ment, or the practices o the part that has no part (as Rancière [1999] would 36 say), continued to be with the agreement, yet exceeding it. Paradoxically, it is 37 through the coloniality o politics—its assimilationist resolve to force what it
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considers excesses to meet the principle o the count, (expressed as the com- 1 mand to ¨ t into the partition o the sensible or else cease being)—that those 2 same excesses inevitably contaminate (or, better, become in divergence with) 3 modern politics. Rejecting them (as García did) does not cancel the con- 4 tamination, nor does it protect those who perform the rejection from being 5 contaminated. e “other” is always part o them, as much as they are part 6 o it. is is the partial connection that neither modern politics nor indige- 7 neity escape: they are entangled in it, exceeding each other in mutual radical 8 di± erence, while at the same time participating in similarity—one that com- 9 plexly is not only such. 10 Inspired by Mariano and Nazario Turpo, the ethnography that is this 11 book has the intention to invite awareness to the ontological disagreement 12 in which modern politics already participates while ignoring such participa- 13 tion. In- ayllu worlding practices exceed modern politics and may be indis- 14 pensable to it. An illustration from everyday political life: runakuna practices 15 o political representation (vis- à- vis the state or ÃÌÍs, for example) are also 16 made with nonrepresentational practices. Another example the reader is very 17 familiar with: Mariano’s archive, a historical object, was composed also with 18 ahistorical practices. Runakuna world(s)-making practices—their cosmo- 19 politics—work through divergence with modern politics; its possibility is 20 not deterred by contradiction, which (as I said above) requires homogeneous 21 terms—a command that in- ayllu practices transgress. 22 23 Cosmovivir: Uncommons Ground a Commons 24 25 e creativity o divergence—connections among heterogeneities that re- 26 main such—enables analyses that complicate the separation between the 27 modern and the non- modern and at the same time are able to highlight radi- 28 cal di± erences: those that converge in a complex knot o disagreement and 29 agreement. Untying that knot, rather than agreement, may force the public 30 acknowledgement o ontological politics. 31 Such a knot (composed o radical di± erences, but not only) has recently 32 become public in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, i perhaps not as persistently in 33 the last country. Unexpectedly in the history o Andean nation- states, under 34 pressure from indigenous social movements and their allies, in 2008, a new 35 constitution in Ecuador included the “rights o nature or Pachamama” (Con- 36 stitución 2008), and in 2010 Bolivia decreed the “Law o Mother Earth” 37
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1 (Vidal 2011). Unleashing an extremely intricate and multifaceted con´ ict, 2 both documents represent a challenge to the modern constitution (and the 3 partition o the sensible it e± ected) and manifest the work o politics as 4 ontological disagreement. Particularly loudly in Bolivia, pundits and ana- 5 lysts complain about the incoherence between the government’s declared 6 adherence to the defense o Mother Earth or Pachamama and its choice o 7 development policies based on mega extractive projects (see Gutiérrez 2010). 8 Yet the conundrum that these laws and their implementation articulate goes 9 beyond governmental incoherence. It includes questions about what the 10 practices and the entities they engage with (either as allies or as opponents) 11 are and the way they might inconvenience the established sensible, threat- 12 ening to tear its fabric—for now, at least they poke it. Not surprisingly, the 13 discussion cannot reach an agreement: radical di± erences between nature 14 and Pachamama cannot be undone, and their being more than one and less 15 than many complicates the discussion. e quarrel that takes place in Bolivia 16 and Ecuador expresses an ontological disagreement that is currently being 17 publicly manifested in these countries. It cannot be “overcome,” because the 18 principle that partitions the sensible into nature and humanity (and divides 19 what counts as real from what does not) is not common to all parts. Nesting 20 the impossibility o community, the new laws in Bolivia and Ecuador have 21 provoked a “scandal in politics” that Rancière would have expected once dis- 22 agreement is made public. e scandal is persistently present, and even those 23 politicians and pundits who impatiently denounce it (in ´ ustered defenses 24 o the principle o the count) ¨ nd themselves caught in the ontological dis- 25 agreement that, albeit unevenly, has become a constitutive element o the 26 Andean political atmosphere. 27 Along with the rights o nature or Pachamama, the new laws in Ecuador 28 and Bolivia include the notion o sumak kausay (in Ecuadoran Quichua) 29 and sumaq qamaña (in Aymara), or buen vivir (in Spanish)—or Good Life.Ê 30 e result o implicit and explicit collaborative networks o indigenous and 31 non- indigenous intellectuals, the collective authorship o the proposal re- 32 mains amorphously anonymous. Yet in the a© ermath o its legal inscription, 33 its interpreters mushroomed both in Ecuador and Bolivia. e most popu- 34 lar le© - inclined interpretation has it that the project for a Good Life is an 35 alternative to capitalist and socialist development: rather than requiring eco- 36 nomic growth for people to live better, it proposes a management o the oikos 37
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that cares for nature and distributes incomes for the well- being o all (Acosta 1 2010, Gudynas 2014, Prada 2013, Schavelzon 2015). In the ¨ elds o politi- 2 cal ecology and economy, these interpretations are controversial—well- liked 3 and also unpopular. Ta ing along is another reading o Buen Vivir, less well 4 known and probably controversial as well. It is a proposal for cosmovivir (to 5 cosmo- live, or to have a cosmo-life) and Simón Yampara is one o its propo- 6 nents. He writes: “We want to co- live (convivir) with di± erent worlds, in- 7 cluding the worlds o people who are di± erent from us, including capitalism. 8 But we also want [these worlds] to respect our own world, our organization, 9 our economy and our way o being. In this sense we want to create mutual 10 respect among diverse worlds” (2011, 16). In this interpretation, sumaq qa- 11 maña is not only an economic and ecological alternative to development; it 12 also includes the proposal to open up life to a cosmos o worlds that would 13 be intra- connected through respect. 14 I want to speculate that what Yampara wants respect for is not “cul- 15 tural di± erence.” Nor does he want the respectful sacri¨ ce o di± erence in 16 the name o the common good. Either one would re´ ect a politics o toler- 17 ance moved by a will to avoid or solve con´ icts—a nicely adjourned liberal- 18 ism transpiring through politics as usual. Rather, my speculation continues, 19 Yampara proposes a politics o ontological disagreement across an ecology 20 o worlds whose common interest is their divergent forms o life (Stengers 21 2011). Mariano mentioned the phrase sumaq kawsay (a good life) only once, 22 during one o our earliest conversations; curiously, he also brought the word 23 respect into our exchange. It was mid- 2002; Alejandro Toledo, the indigenous 24 looking president o Peru, had taken o· ce not long before; runakuna were 25 still full o expectations about his presidency. Mariano and I were talking 26 about the laws that runakuna hoped to receive from Toledo, and the word 27 that circulated in Pacchanta was that “perhaps the law would turn around— 28 runakuna might be respected.” Mariano said: Why can’t there be a good life? 29 [Manachu sumaq kawsaylla kanman?]. I did not know what his question 30 meant, and therefore I asked him to explain. He responded: A good life . . . 31 to live without hatreds, to work happily; the animals would have food, the bad 32 words would not exist. Even i we do not read, they would respect us, the police 33 would respect us, they would listen to us, we would respect them—same with the 34 judges, with the president, with the lawyers. inking through these words, 35 but mostly through Mariano’s life as well as Nazario’s cosmovivir, may be 36 37
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1 a proposal for a partially connected commons achieved without canceling 2 out the uncommonalities among worlds because the latter are the condition 3 o the possibility o the former: a commons across worlds whose interest in 4 common is uncommon to each other. A cosmolife: this may be a proposal 5 for a politics that, rather than requiring sameness, would be underpinned by 6 divergence. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 11 12 13 Many people gave me the words for this book. Obviously, Mariano and Na- 14 zario lead the list: they were the words I wrote, and have been with me as I 15 wrote them even when they were gone. Elizabeth Mamani Kjuro comes im- 16 mediately next. She accompanied me to Pacchanta, came to Davis where we 17 read together the conversations she had transcribed, and patiently welcomed 18 my stubbornness to “not necessarily translate but get the concepts!” Liberata, 19 Nazario’s wife; Víctor Hugo, their son- in- law; and Ru¨ no, their son; gave 20 me words as coca leaves for Ausangate, and freshly earth- baked potatoes to 21 warm my hands and my stomach. José Hernán, Nazario’s grandchild, gave 22 me words involved in laughter, and Octavio Crispín expressed them with his 23 Andean ´ ute, his quena. My sister, Aroma de la Cadena, and her husband, 24 Eloy Neira, introduced me to Mariano and Nazario, the event that opened 25 me to them and their words. For that event my gratefulness will never be 26 enough. Aroma and Eloy also shared with me their friendship with Antonio 27 Guardamino, the Jesuit párroco o Ocongate at whose dining table I spent 28 hours learning about his despachos with Mariano, his participation in rondas 29 campesinas as part o his Catechism, the encroachment o mining corpora- 30 tions; Antonio likes words and generously o± ered them to me. At his house 31 I met strong and sweet Graciano Mandura who would later become mayor o 32 Ocongate (although we did not know that yet). In their own personal ways, 33 they all introduced me to Ausangate—the mountain—when I did not yet 34 know it was also an earth- being (and they did). 35 Cesar Itier’s help with words was as precious and subtle as his erudition 36 in Quechua. Bruce Mannheim, another Quechua erudite, also touched my 37
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1 work. Hugo Blanco opened up Quechua words for me too—a young ¨ ghter 2 when Mariano was also one, he appeared for this book (when I least ex- 3 pected him to) as Uru Blancu magista during my ¨ rst months in Pacchanta. 4 Margarita Huayhua, Gina Maldonado, and “la Gata” (a.k.a. Inés Callalli) 5 also helped me think through many Quechua words and practices. But it 6 was with Elizabeth Mamani Kjuro that words in Quechua ´ ourished. is 7 book would not have been possible without her. Anitra Grisales, touched my 8 words in English with her editorial magic. Catherine (Kitty) Allen read a ¨ rst 9 version; her encouragement gave me con¨ dence to continue. 10 Other colleague- friends also fed me words. Margaret Wiener became my 11 accomplice in thinking with Mariano and Nazario since my days at the Uni- 12 versity o North Carolina, Chapel Hill. So did Judy Farquhar who also read 13 the whole manuscript and touched it with her brilliance. Arturo Escobar’s 14 approval o the manuscript, which he read and marked from beginning to 15 end, was invaluable; he does not know how much he inspires my life. Mario 16 Blaser read the ¨ rst grant proposal I wrote to request funds to write this 17 book; his remarks have remained with me until I ¨ nished it. Arturo, Mario, 18 and I became co-thinkers several years ago—together we have “worded” pro- 19 posals, papers, and projects—always, we strongly hope, to make the world we 20 call ours converse with other worlds. 21 At äÝ Davis, Cristiana Giordano and Suzana Sawyer provided immense 22 amounts o intellectual inspiration, warmth, and strength; they also gave me 23 the words for many chapters, and were there to the last moment, even help- 24 ing with the title o the book. Joe Dumit and Alan Klima are inimitable, and 25 in such a way they were with me throughout the manuscript. Because Caren 26 Kaplan and Eric Smoodin are my neighbors they had to put up with my in- 27 truding their home at weird hours to consult about anything and everything 28 book- related. I have cra© ed many ideas with and thanks to them, many o 29 those times were around wonderful food. Tim Choy and Bettina N’gweno 30 share a subtle ethnographic knack that does not fail to inspire me; I always 31 try to imitate the way they think. 32 Old friends and colleagues that heard many retellings o Mariano and Na- 33 zario’s stories and su ested beautiful ideas are Penny Harvey, Julia Medina, 34 Hortensia Muñoz, and Sinclair omson. ey must be happy that the book 35 is ¨ nally out. Eduardo Restrepo will always be the interlocutor with whom I 36 can ¨ ght the most. It gives me great con¨ dence when he yields to my ideas. I 37
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also owe inspiring debates to Eduardo Gudynas, relentless reader and knower 1 o all things Latin American. 2 And then there are these three women: Marilyn Strathern and Donna 3 Haraway who read my manuscript and gave me encouragement and deep 4 thought, and Isabelle Stengers, who read some o my initial thoughts for 5 this book and inspired me to continue. eir brilliant-generous- bold- creative 6 scholarship—and more—is invaluable. 7 In 2011, it was my luck and honor to be invited to speak at the Lewis Henry 8 Morgan Lecture Series. Bob Foster, Tom Gibson, and Dan Reichman o± ered 9 hospitality full o ideas; María Lugones, Paul Nadasdy, Sinclair omson, 10 and Janet Berlo gave me the wonderful opportunity o their comments. In 11 2010, I published an article in Cultural Anthropology that, with some twists 12 and turns, would become the conceptual structure o this book—Kim and 13 Mike Fortun, then- editors o CA made my thoughts more complex. I am 14 especially thankful o their selection o the late Steven Rubenstein as one 15 o the reviewers; his comments were so great I requested Kim and Mike to 16 disclose the identity o its writer. And therea© er, my conversations with him 17 gave my work a depth it did not have before. I wish he were still with us to 18 read this book. 19 I have presented this work in several venues: Duke University; äÝ Santa 20 Cruz; äÝ Irvine; University o Michigan, Ann Arbor; New York University; 21 Memorial University, Saint John’s; University o North Carolina, Chapel 22 Hill; University o Manchester; University o Chicago (Beijing Center); 23 University o Cape Town; ÆÙ University in Copenhagen; University o Oslo; 24 Universidad de los Andes; and Universidad Javeriana. Presenting work in 25 progress is among the best academic gi© s one can get while working on the 26 manuscript; I want to thank the comments, emails and encouragement that 27 I received from all in attendance. I need to mention some names because that 28 they remained in my mind a© er so many years means their signi¨ cance: Barry 29 Andrews, Juan Ricardo Aparicio, Don Brenneis, Bruce Grant, Lesley Green, 30 Sarah Green, Anne Kakaliouras, John Law, Marianne Lien, Bruce Mann- 31 heim, Carlos Andrés Manrique, Mary Pratt, Diana Ojeda, Rachel O’toole, 32 Morten Pedersen, Laura Quintana, Justin Richland, Rafael Sánchez, Salva- 33 dor Shavelzon, Orin Starn, Helen Verran, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. 34 A cherished keepsake from those visits, the email the late Fernando Coronil 35 sent me a© er my visit to Ãåä in 2010 continues in my inbox. 36 37
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1 Jake Culbertson, Juan Camilo Cajigas, Nick D’Avella, Duskin Drum, 2 Jonathan Echeverri, Kre Hetherington, Chris Kortright, Ingrid Lagos, 3 Fabiana Li, Kristina Lyons, Laura Meek, Julia Morales, Rossio Motta, Diana 4 Pardo, Rima Praspaliuskena, Camilo Sanz, and Michelle Stewart were gradu- 5 ate students as I was cra© ing the manuscript; relentless critics, they have 6 always been among my most cherished colleagues. 7 People at Duke University Press have been encouraging and supportive. 8 Valerie Millholland believed in this book when it was a remote idea; Gisela 9 Fosado received it from Valerie’s hands with joy and energy; Lorien Olive 10 spent precious hours looking at pictures with me; and Danielle Szulczewski’s 11 creative patience was endless. 12 Steve Boucher and Manuela Boucher- de la Cadena, loves o my life, have 13 given me all that for which words are not enough. ey accompanied me to 14 Pacchanta. “ is is where I have seen you the happiest ever,” said Steve when 15 we were there. It was the summer o 2003, and we had recently moved to 16 Davis and Manuela was still in elementary school; she considered the pota- 17 toes she ate at Nazario’s house the best in the world. 18 Writing this book has taken a long time; I do not regret a second, and 19 thank the institutions whose funds released me from my teaching obliga- 20 tions, and gi© ed me with time to put together the words that Mariano and 21 Nazario Turpo had given me. ose institutions are the American Council o 22 Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Simon Gu en- 23 heim Foundation, and the Wenner Gren Foundation. e manuscript ¨ nally 24 came to a closure during a sabbatical year from äÝ Davis, for which I am 25 grateful. 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NOTES 11 12 13 Preface 14 15 1. A literal linguistic translation o tirakuna would be tierras or seres tierra, earths or earth- beings in English. e Andean ethnographic record has extensively docu- 16 mented earth-beings, also referred to as Apu or Apukuna (with the pluralizing 17 Quechua su· x). See Abercrombie 1998; Allen 2000; Dean 2010; Ricard 2007. 18 2. Runakuna (pl.) is what Quechua persons like my friends call themselves; the 19 singular is runa. Runakuna are pejoratively called Indian by non- runakuna. 20 21 Story 1. Agreeing to Remember, Translating, 22 and Carefully Co- laboring 23 24 1. ere is much to say about the museum’s representation o the curators, and the “behind the scenes” events and rationales that contributed to that representation. I 25 write about these events and rationales in story 6. Flores Ochoa’s words are mean- 26 ingful in many ways, which I will engage with later in this story. 27 2. Carmona is a relative o Flores Ochoa, one o the most reputed local contribu- 28 tors to what is known as Andean anthropology. us, behind the pictures there is a 29 long story o friendship, knowledge exchange, and complex hierarchies among Na- 30 zario, Carmona, and Flores Ochoa. 31 3. Other important collaborators in translation were Margarita Huayhua, Gina 32 Maldonado, and Eloy Neira. 4. Worlding is a notion that I borrow from both Haraway (2008) and Tsing 33 (2010), and that I think they composed in conversation. I use the concept to refer 34 to practices that create (forms of ) being with (and without) entities, as well as the 35 entities themselves. Worlding is the practice o creating relations o life in a place 36 and the place itself. 37
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1 5. is does not make for a socially homogeneous region; on the contrary, prac- 2 tices that re- mark di± erence and emphatically deny similarity (even through the act 3 o sharing) also enact the partial connection and give that relationship a hierarchical 4 texture that is speci¨ c to the region. 5 6. e landlord’s eviction was in part a result o Mariano’s activism, although the state- owned cooperative was not his goal. 6 7. Mistikuna is the plural o misti, a word that in Cuzco works both when speak- 7 ing Spanish or Quechua to indicate someone who can read and write and therefore, 8 given the social hierarchies in the region, may act superior to a runa, even i the misti 9 has runa origins. 10 8. Rosalind Gow (1981) lists Mariano Turpo as one o four prominent politi- 11 cians in the southern Andes, along with Pablo Zárate Willka, Rumi Maqui, and 12 Emiliano Huamantica. In the 1970s, Rosalind and David Gow (then husband and 13 wife) conducted dissertation ¨ eldwork in the neighboring community o Pinchi- muro and talked to Mariano Turpo on several occasions. Enrique Mayer generously 14 gave me his copy o Rosalind Gow’s dissertation, and David Gow sent me a hard 15 copy o his (1976). I learned quite a bit reading both works, for which I am very 16 grateful. 17 9. See Stoler (2009) for similar ethnographic work on the notion and practice o 18 archive. 19 10. For example, there is no written evidence that Ausangate had helped people 20 win a local battle for Peru in a war against neighboring Chile. Instead, evidence o 21 Ausangate’s decisive participation in the battle is inscribed in the landscape—in a lagoon and on rocks surrounding the area—and this does not count as historical 22 proof. Given Ausangate’s antecedents in the war with Chile, his participation was 23 summoned to in´ uence decisions during the political confrontation against the ha- 24 cendado (see story 3). 25 11. Historical Ontology is the title o a book by Ian Hacking (2002) and its ¨ rst 26 chapter. Both illustrate what I am calling the being historical o modern academic 27 knowledge. Hacking’s focus is the analysis o the historical emergence o objects, 28 concepts, and theories o Western knowledge. 29 12. It is unusual for women to be considered yachaq. 30 13. According to Viveiros de Castro the groups he calls Amerindian enact Ama- zonian worlds that are similar to ours in that they are inhabited by humans and ani- 31 mals (2004b). Unlike in our world, however, in all these worlds their inhabitants all 32 share culture and inhabit di± erent natures, and what is depends on their di± erent 33 bodies—their di± erent natures. Viveiros de Castro uses blood and beer as an ex- 34 ample: they are exchangeable notions that emerge in relation to a human or a jaguar, 35 and being one or the other depends on whose world (human or jaguar) the thing is 36 in. us, rather than belonging to the human or the jaguar, the point o view that 37
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makes the thing belongs to each o their worlds. Adapting the notion o equivoca- 1 tion to my purposes, I use it in story 6. 2 14. I thank Cesar Itier and Hugo Blanco who helped me think this distinction. 3 15. Cesar Itier, in his forthcoming Quechua- Spanish dictionary writes: “Pukara 4 (Inca): 1. Hole to burn o± erings, located in a corner o the corral covered with a 5 stone. 2. Mountain deity” (Itier forthcoming, 53; my translation from Spanish). 6 7 Interlude 1. Mariano Turpo 8 1. e term bare- kneed refers to the black woolen knee- length pants that identi- 9 ¨ ed runakuna and stigmatized them as Indian. Except for festivities, runakuna do 10 not wear those pants anymore. 11 2. e preposition is italicized to mark the important conceptual work it per- 12 forms in´ ecting the relation with ayllu speci¨ city. 13 3. In Andean ethnographies, the usual glossaries describe ayllu as a “local commu- 14 nity or kin group” (Sallnow 1987, 308); “a group o families” (Ricard 2007, 449); 15 a “polity self- formulated through ritual” (Abercrombie 1998, 516); an “indigenous community or other social group whose members share a common focus” (Allen 16 2002, 272); “distinguishable groups whose solidarity is formed by religious and ter- 17 ritorial ties” (Bastien 1978, 212); and a “kin group, lineage, or indigenous community 18 with a territorial land base and members who share a common focus” (Bolin 1998, 19 252). e list could go on. 20 4. Justo Oxa, personal communication, September 14, 2009. 21 5. Consulting coca and earth- beings was not uncommon when choosing leaders 22 to confront the hacendado. Rosalind Gow narrates a similar episode that occurred at 23 the beginning o the twentieth century, during a confrontation with the hacendado about moving the market to the town o Ocongate. A woman told Gow that a group 24 o townsmen (not Indians) came to her father and said, “Listen Don Bonifacio, It is 25 your destiny to ¨ ght for justice. We have asked the altomisa to tell your fortune . . . 26 you [will] go to Cuzco for us” (Gow 1981, 91). Don Bonifacio succeeded, and the 27 market was moved to Ocongate, where it remains today. 28 6. e personero was never a woman. e agrarian reform replaced the personero 29 with the Junta Comunal—the Community Group—which continues to operate like 30 the personero under the orders o the communal assembly. Women are rarely mem- 31 bers o the Junta Comunal. 7. e Andean ethnographic record, to which I do not necessarily subscribe, labels 32 the ¨ rst one a masculine element, the other a feminine element. 33 8. e words runa and runakuna that people use to identify themselves avoid this 34 stigma. 35 9. From the response to this question I also gathered that many times chikchi 36 37
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1 (hail) and qhaqya (lightning) are indistinguishable because they may bring one an- 2 other about; once again, a condition o more than one but less than many. Hail 3 and lightning are not necessarily units. Xavier Ricard (2007) considers chikchi and 4 qhaqya (which he translates as lightning and thunder) to be synonyms. 5 6 Story 2. Mariano Engages “the Land Struggle” 7 1. Todas las sangres is the title o a novel by José María Arguedas, a famous writer. 8 e novel proposed the possibility o indigenous political leadership, which became 9 the focus o the debate. 10 2. e “one indigenous leader” Quijano refers to may have been Saturnino Huillca, 11 also from Cuzco. A book about his life was published in 1975. Mariano knew him, 12 and they collaborated on several occasions. 13 3. e concept o “coloniality o power” denotes the global model o power that came into place with the conquest o America. Although the concept emphasizes the 14 hierarchical classi¨ cation o the world’s populations around the idea o race, its core 15 element is the identi¨ cation o Eurocentrism as the model’s speci¨ c rationality. Ac- 16 cording to Quijano, the modern world system is characterized by a “colonial matrix 17 o power,” namely, a heterogeneous and discontinuous socio- epistemic structure that 18 articulates together race as a modern category; capitalism as the structure o control 19 o labor and resources; speci¨ c geo- cultural identities and subjectivities, including 20 race and sex; and the production o knowledge, especially the suppression o the 21 knowledge and meanings o the colonized peoples. us, coloniality o power, capi- talism, and Eurocentrism are equally essential elements in Quijanos’s conceptual- 22 ization. Conversely, liberation and decolonization imply a radical redistribution o 23 power requiring the transformation o all o these three elements (Quijano 2000). 24 4. e ¨ ve names o parcialidades that my friends recalled were Tinki (which in- 25 cluded the ayllus Pampacancha, Marampaqui, Mawayani, and Mallma), Andamayo 26 (including Pacchanta, Upis, Chilcacocha, Andamayo, and Rodeana), Tayancani (in- 27 cluding Tayancani and Checaspampa), Icora, and Collca. Reátegui gives the same 28 names but calls them sectores and considers them divisions within the hacienda Lau- 29 ramarca, which they also were (1977, 3). 30 5. Among them were the U.S. anthropologist Richard Patch and the U.S. scholar Norman Gall. ey both worked as part o the American Universities ¨ eld sta± and 31 visited Lauramarca in the late 1950s and early 1960s, respectively. See Gall n.d.; Patch 32 1958. 33 6. I am grateful to Bruce Mannheim for conversations about and insights on this 34 phrase. 35 7. Pacchanta was part o a larger parcialidad called Andamayo until the 1960s, 36 both Andamayo and Pacchanta were also ayllus. 37 8. Moraya and chuño are dehydrated tubers.
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1 Story 3. Mariano’s Cosmopolitics 2 1. I tweak several o Rancière’s concepts to build my argument. us I am not 3 claiming that “the partition o the sensible” as I use it here is faithful to Rancière’s 4 concept. 5 2. Stefanoni 2010a. e complete sentence is: “Al ¨ nal de cuentas, como queda 6 cada vez más en evidencia, estamos en presencia de un discurso indígena (new age) global con escasa capacidad para re´ ejar las etnicidades realmente existentes.” 7 3. While most postcolonial commentary was a critique o the power to represent, 8 the implicit proposal it included was for alternative representations: for example, the 9 right o the subaltern to self- representation, both analytically and politically. is ex- 10 tremely valuable contribution, however, is part o the nature- humanity divide, since 11 representation requires the reality (out there) that nature signi¨ es, to signify it (in 12 here) as its scienti¨ c or cultural de¨ nition. I am not advocating from a retreat from 13 the critique o representation; instead, I su est that it can be strengthened by taking 14 into consideration the requirements and limits o the practice o representation, in- 15 cluding critical representation. is may renew analytical commentary on a variety o subjects, among them modern politics. 16 4. And, o course, they are in partial connection with what is not in- ayllu. Even i 17 that is another story, I do not want the reader to forget it. 18 5. Cesar Itier translates ruwal as “Espíritu del Cerro” (forthcoming). Xavier 19 Ricard proposes that it is synonymous with Apu, which he also translates as “espí- 20 ritu del cerro” or “mountain spirit” (2007, 463, 448). 21 6. Regional usage frequently translates earth- beings as or spirit. I do espíritu— 22 not do so mainly because the Turpos rejected it—“they are who they are, there is no 23 ispiritu.” My avoidance is also intended to slow down translations that would make practices with earth- beings and Catholicism equivalent. Mariano and Nazario fre- 24 quently made a distinction between the two while, nevertheless, constantly sum- 25 moning earth- beings and Christian entities (for example, Ausangate and Taytacha, 26 or Jesus Christ) in the same invocation and for the same purpose. 27 7. For example, while in exile a© er his insurgent activities, the legendary le© ist 28 leader Hugo Blanco (who has appeared several times above in Mariano’s stories) 29 wrote a book in which he described the ayllu as a communal land- holding system 30 that had deteriorated with the “advance o capitalism” but was potentially revolu- 31 tionary, given its “collective spirit” (1972, 28). 32 8. Later Allen translates “our nurturer” as uywaqninchis—the inclusive possessive form for the third person plural (2002, 85). 33 9. Itier, con¨ rmed in a personal communication that in Quechua “the place one is 34 native from and the place itsel assume the same verbal expression.” He also explained 35 that the term ayllu can be used for the whole and for its parts—it expresses a relation 36 among the beings that compose the ayllu, in which the part conjures up the whole. 37
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1 10. Guacas may have been the earlier word for what I heard named as tirakuna. 2 11. According to Viveiros de Castro, equivocations cannot be “corrected,” let 3 alone avoided; they can, however, be controlled. is requires paying attention to the 4 process o translation itself—the terms and the respective di± erences—“so that the 5 referential alterity between the [di± erent] positions is acknowledged and inserted into the conversation in such a way that, rather than di± erent views o a single world 6 (which would be the equivalent to cultural relativism), a view o diª erent worlds be- 7 comes apparent” (2004b, 5; emphases added). 8 12. Starn’s comments provoked a strong reaction from the Andeanists he criti- 9 cized. eir responses commented on his narrow understanding o the political rele- 10 vance o their work (see, for example, Mayer 1991). e discussion transpired within 11 a basic agreement: both the works Starn criticized and his critique worked within the 12 division between nature and humanity. Accordingly, earth- beings are cultural inter- 13 pretations o nature. Ausangate can only be a mountain—really. In 1991 both sides would have agreed on that point; they may do so today as well. 14 13. Mariano also mentioned consulting with yachaqkuna that did not live in Lau- 15 ramarca and were famous in the region—he did not remember his names (or might 16 not have wanted to mention them). 17 18 Story 4. Mariano’s Archive 19 20 1. is stru le between peasants and landowners has been historically docu- 21 mented. See, for example, Reátegui 1977. 2. e ¨ rst constitution o Peru that fully recognized the right o illiterates to par- 22 ticipate in the election processes was in 1979. 23 3. I thank Bruce Mannheim for this translation. For a wonderfully smart expla- 24 nation o the possible meanings o puriy and its relatedness with tiyay (to exist in a 25 location) and kay (to be), see Mannheim 1998. 26 4. When I received Mariano’s archive the documents had been numbered in the 27 order in which they were found in the box. I kept the original numbers and also re- 28 corded the documents in compact discs chronologically. I then labeled the Ýßs with 29 the year o the documents they contain. Following this self- catalogue, when I cite a 30 document in Mariano’s archive, I record the number the document had when I re- ceived the archive and the year that identi¨ es the Ýß where I recorded it. 31 5. For example, Reátegui writes: “Francisco Chillihuani is a relevant ¨ gure be- 32 ginning in 1922; he was the delegate o the villages o Lauramarca and traveled fre- 33 quently to Lima. He played an important role in the movements between 1922 and 34 1927. In 1927 he fell prey to the overseers o the hacienda and was con¨ ned to the 35 lowlands o Cosñipata, from where he did not return” (1977, 103). 36 6. I thank Cesar Itier for this idea. 37 7. For those who read Quechua, his answer is worth transcribing: “Imaynataq
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qunqayman ñawpaqniypi kaqta. Ñawpaqniypi kajqa, chayllapiyá qhepan. Manan 1 qunqawaqchu, saqenasuyki kama. Chayña mana yuyankichu.” 2 8. In Sonqo, where she worked, Allen describes the nested quality o ayllus: 3 “Lower- order ayllus [are] nested within ayllus o a higher order. Luis [a man from 4 Sonqo] explained that together the neighborhood ayllus make up Sonqo ayllu. Simi- 5 larly, Sonqo is grouped with other community- level ayllus to make up Colquepata 6 ayllu, the district; which in turn is part o Paucartambo, the province which in turn is part o Cuzco ayllu, the department, and so forth” (2002, 85). 7 9. John Law and Ruth Benschop explain: “To represent is to perform division. . . . 8 [I]t is to perform, or to refuse to perform, a world o spatial assumptions populated 9 by subjects and objects. To represent thus renders other possibilities impossible, un- 10 imaginable. It is in other words to perform a politics, a politics o ontology” (1997, 11 158). 12 10. I can speculate about who the scribes o the documents were and assign the 13 di± erences to their degree o literacy: the ¨ rst document seems to be written by a 14 less literate individual than the second and third. is, I could say, explains the dif- 15 ferences in the presence o ayllu in the documents, which I can also say, decreases as the language o property becomes prevalent in the country through processes o 16 modernization. To complete my interpretation, I could say that runakuna persisted 17 in claiming ayllu ancestral possession and arguing against property. However, this 18 linearity does not work in either direction for the notion o ayllu appears when the 19 scribe would be literate, and while it is used against the landowner, ayllu does not 20 appear against indigenous property. 21 11. Frank Salomon and Mercedes Niño Murcia (2011) have written a beautifully 22 documented book about peasants’ e± orts to appropriate literacy in the highlands 23 o Lima. 12. In 1983, Bolivia indigenous intellectuals funded the Taller de Historia Oral 24 Andina—a nongovernmental institution dedicated to the writing o indigenous oral 25 histories. 26 27 Interlude 2. Nazario Turpo 28 29 1. e word ayllu was deployed in a way that was similar to the way “ayllu” ap- 30 peared in the legal documents in Mariano’s archive. 31 2. e expansion o the tourist industry concerns anthropologists; many o us have discussed how it makes commodities out o almost everything. Memories o 32 the revolution are hot tourist buys in Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru (Babb 2011); in 33 South Africa wealthy chiefs promote the preservation o tradition as a future worth 34 investing in (Comaro± and Comaro± 2009); in Mexico and Peru, anthropologists, 35 New Agers, and local indigenous individuals together have invented a religion for 36 both the third millennium and its tourist market (see Galinier and Molinié 2006). 37
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1 3. An adamant disseminator o these ideas is Hernando de Soto (n.d.), a Peruvian 2 economist internationally renowned for his work with governments in developing 3 countries. 4 4. From Ayni Summit, “ e Paqo,” Alchemy o Peace, http://www.aynisummit 5 .com/?=content/paqos, accessed November 21, 2013. 5. From “Nazario Turpo, Peruvian Paqo (Shaman),” Prayer Vigil for the Earth, 6 http://oneprayer4.zenfolio.com/p16546111/h31474EA1#h31474ea1, accessed No- 7 vember 21, 2013. 8 6. Intriguingly, iñi is composed o two words: i, which was the way to say “yes” 9 in Quechua, and ñi, which meant “to say.” Iñi is thus “to say yes” to God. My source 10 for this information was Cesar Itier’s erudition in colonial Quechua. I thank him. 11 7. is term belongs to the epistemology o the state and its logic o recognition; 12 outside o this logic, authenticity is not necessarily an issue. 13 8. Heather Kaye, “Where I’ve Been: Peru,” http://invisionllc.com/whereivebeen .html, accessed November 21, 2013. 14 9. is process is similar to Annemarie Mol’s (2002) analysis o atherosclerosis: 15 a disease rendered multiple by the di± erent biomedical practices through which 16 it is enacted coordinated into singularity also by biomedicine and its institutions. 17 And there are also di± erences, o course: the requirements o the practices that co- 18 ordinate earth- beings into the singularity o nature transpire through the nature- 19 humanity divide; they thus diverge from the requirements o the practices that make 20 earth- beings which ignore such divide. 21 10. Diario La República, June 25, 2011. 22 23 Story 5. Chamanismo Andino in the Third Millennium 24 1. e Quechua word is altumisayuq. Nazario and Mariano explained that the al- 25 tumisayuq, which they both considered did not exist anymore, were individuals that 26 could communicate directly with earth- beings. Lower in hierarchy were the pampa- 27 misayuq, which both my friends considered themselves to be. 28 2. Carlos Castillo Cordero, “ e World Observed the Powerful Majesty o Machu 29 Picchu,” El Peruano, July 30, 2001, http://www.editoraperu.com.pe/edc/01/07/30 30 /inf.htm, accessed March 31, 2009. 3. e phrase circulated orally among politicians and intellectuals and was later 31 published in Karp 2002. 32 4. Risking theoretical heresy (which, however, I think Antonio Gramsci would 33 have understood), at times I even imagine the region as articulated by two hege- 34 monies: an obvious one, the hegemony o the nonindigenous—modern, Spanish- 35 speaking, urban, and literate; and a less visible, more intimate one, the hegemony o 36 the indigenous—a· rming regional pride vis- à- vis Lima, ´ uent in Quechua, claim- 37 ing Inka ancestry (and even origins), nimble in rural ways, and knowledgeable about
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earth- beings and their practices. And just to be clear: I am not saying that the second 1 one is counterhegemonic to the ¨ rst one. On the contrary, striking in the region is 2 the absence o “either non- indigenous or indigenous” political projects. 3 5. According to Núñez del Prado, Andean priesthood is comparable to the “great 4 mystic traditions,” among which he counts “shinto, yoga, meditations with madala, 5 and the practice o Tai Chi chuan” (Núñez del Prado 1991, 136). 6 6. Núñez del Prado takes his knowledge and business around the world. His ac- tivities are dynamically connected to what can be loosely identi¨ ed as New Age, a 7 movement whose members around the world read his works and some o whom visit 8 him in Peru. A search for his name on the Internet yields innumerable links. See, for 9 example, Blackburn 2010; Deems 2010; Victor 2010. 10 7. Américo Yábar, personal communication. 11 8. In Pacchanta the extension o a “masa” varies depending on the quality and in- 12 cline o the plot. 13 9. Archaic is so central a word in Eliade’s work that it even appears in the title o 14 his book Shamanism: Archaic Techniques o Ecstasy. 15 10. Machu Picchu is listed as one o the new seven wonders o the world at New 7 Wonders, http://www.new7wonders.com/, accessed August 6, 2014. 16 17 18 Story 6. A Comedy of Equivocations 19 1. National Museum o the American Indian, http://www.nmai.si.edu/subpage 20 .cfm?subpage=about, accessed November 9, 2010. 21 2. National Museum o the American Indian, Current Exhibitions, http://www 22 .nmai.si.edu/subpage.cfm?subpage=exhibitions&second=dc&third=current, ac- 23 cessed November 9, 2010. 3. National Museum o the American Indian, “Our Lives: Contemporary Life 24 and Identities,” http://nmai.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/item/?id=528, accessed 25 March 13, 2015. 26 4. ÃÄÅÆ O· ce o Public A± airs, “News,” September 2004. 27 5. In addition to the Quechua exhibit, Our Universes contains Pueblo o Santa 28 Clara (New Mexico), Anishinaabe (Canada), Lakota (South Dakota), Hupa (Cali- 29 fornia), Q’eq’chi’ [sic] (Maya), Mapuche (Chile), and Yup’ik (Alaska). 30 6. e website has made slight changes to the text. Under the heading “Our Uni- 31 verses: Traditional Knowledge Shapes Our World,” it reads: “Our Universes focuses on indigenous cosmologies—worldviews and philosophies related to the creation 32 and order o the universe—and the spiritual relationship between humankind and 33 the natural world. Organized around the solar year, the exhibition introduces visi- 34 tors to indigenous peoples from across the Western Hemisphere who continue to 35 express the wisdom o their ancestors in celebration, language, art, spirituality, and 36 daily life.” National Museum o the American Indian, “Current Exhibitions,” http:// 37
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1 www.nmai.si.edu/subpage.cfm?subpage=exhibitions&second=dc&third=current, 2 accessed May 22, 2009. 3 7. In related fashion, albeit not necessarily an insult, in Peru, indigenous is an iden- 4 tity reserved for monolingual and illiterate individuals. Although this meaning is 5 currently disputed, the challenge is still marginal. In fact, the prevalence o the de¨ - nition (along with Mariano’s reputation and the fact o the anthropologists’ long- 6 term acquaintance with him) might have prompted Carmona and Flores- Ochoa to 7 su est Mariano’s name when the ÃÄÅÆ approached them to request an “indigenous 8 consultant” for the exhibit. 9 8. Which, in my view, may be indigenous religion but “not only” as I explained in 10 the previous story. 11 9. For more about Quyllur Rit’i, see D. Gow 1976, Poole 1987, and Sallnow 1987. 12 10. Intriguingly, Her Many Horses thought he had followed Nazario’s su es- 13 tions. In a conversation about Nazario, Her Many Horses told me, “He thought the spinning wheel had to have wool to be what it was, and we did so.” 14 11. As a technology o translation the obligatory passage point works like what 15 Latour calls a stronghold. He writes, “whatever people do and wherever they go, they 16 have to pass through the contender’s position and to help him/her further his/her 17 own interests—it also has a linguistic sense, so that one version o the language game 18 translates all the others, replacing them with ‘whatever you wish. is is really what 19 you mean’” (1993a, 253). 20 12. ere is a similarity between this despacho and the ones Nazario makes for 21 tourists in Machu Picchu. As I explained above, burning is prohibited in the sanctu- ary, so he makes “raw despachos” that are not despachos until he burns them where 22 he is allowed to. 23 13. e solution that the British Museum has adopted—which is the theme that 24 provoked Hetherington’s discussion—is to allow access through Braille methods o 25 seeing. is replaces a form o seeing (with the eyes) with another form o seeing 26 (with the hand), but it does not allow for a haptic access to the scopic. rough these 27 methods a person is “given access to a text, not the objects represented by that text” 28 (Hetherington 2002, 202). 29 30 Story 7. Munayniyuq 31 1. Wamani is the most popular word for the commanding earth- beings in Ayacu- 32 cho, the region where Earls worked. It is equivalent to Apu in Cuzco, the region I 33 am familiar with. 34 2. As place, tirakuna are also referred to as ruwalkuna. is word is the plural o 35 ruwal, a phonetic transformation o lugar (or place), and it is used interchangeably 36 with tirakuna (which I translate as earth- beings). Cesar Itier (n.d.) lists it as “lugar, 37 luwar, ruwal” and translates it as espíritu del cerro.”
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3. Ley de Rondas Campesinas, Ley 27908, June 1, 2003. Possibly contributing to 1 the legalization o the rondas was their e· cacy in the organization o the resistance 2 against the Shining Path in 1992, as well as the numerous petitions that ronderos—as 3 ronda authorities are known—had made to state authorities. 4 4. For stories o ronda punishments that verge on meeting o· cial de¨ nitions o 5 torture, see Starn 1999. 6 5. Ley de Rondas Campesinas, June 1, 2003, art. 6, 7, and 8. 6. I am aware o the gendered pronoun I am using. It is not an accident: ronda 7 authorities are men, with women in subordinate positions, i at all. is, o course, 8 does not preclude decisive female participation in rondas. Yet such is not the topic I 9 have chosen to discuss here. 10 7. In her subtle ethnographic work on power, war, and secrecy in Sarhua, an 11 Andean village in Ayacucho—a department neighboring Cuzco—the anthropolo- 12 gist Olga González (2011, 111 and 198) discusses the case o a wealthy and powerful 13 communal authority, locally identi¨ ed as a munayniyuq, who was killed by a crowd 14 as a result o his abuses. e fact that speci¨ c assassins were never identi¨ ed may 15 speak also about the impossibility o individuating that emerges from in- ayllu rela- tionality. 16 8. As a relatively recent o± shoot o this measure, municipalidades menores (minor 17 municipalities) mushroomed in villages that were not the capital o their district (or 18 major municipalities) but that ful¨ lled the demographic requirement to exist as an 19 independently peri- urban administration. See Ricard et al. 2007. 20 9. Wilber Rozas, personal communication. For more on Zenón Mescco, see 21 Ricard et al. 2007. 22 10. Gavina Córdoba, personal communication. 23 11. Márcio Polidoro, “A Road and the Lives It Links,” Odebrecht, http://www .odebrechtonline.com.br/materias/01801- 01900/1803/, accessed June 27, 2011. 24 25 26 Epilogue 27 1. Alan García, “Los Indígenas peruanos no son Ciudadanos de Primera Clase,” 28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He41YLgm28k, accessed October 2, 2014. 29 Also quoted in Bebbington and Bebbington 2010. 30 2. e strike turned into a violent confrontation as the government ordered 31 troops in which were repelled by the local population. Los Sucesos de Bagua, http:// www.servindi.org/producciones/videos/13083, accessed June 20, 2009. 32 3. is would amount to what Michel Foucault would call eventalization—in 33 this case, the eventalization o modern politics. Inquiring into the “self- evidences 34 on which our knowledges, acquiescences, and practices rest” (Foucault 1991, 76) to 35 show that the way things happen was not a matter o course. 36 4. In introducing the notion o ontological disagreement, I am tweaking Ran- 37
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1 cière’s notion o disagreement. As he conceptualizes it, the disagreement that is poli- 2 tics emerges from a “wrong count o the parts o the whole” (1999, 10; emphasis 3 added). Instead, I propose that politics emerges when that which considers itsel the 4 whole denies existence to that which exceeds—or does not abide by—the principle 5 that allows “the whole” self- consideration as such. is denial is an ontological prac- tice and so is the politics that disagrees with it. A© er this proviso, Rancière’s terms 6 resonate with those in this epilogue. 7 5. I borrow the term alter- politics from Ghassan Hage (2015), although my con- 8 ceptualization may di± er from his. 9 6. e practices that make worlds in divergence exceed the analytic capacity o 10 race, ethnicity, or gender. ese categories identify di± erences that usually ¨ nd their 11 home in the sameness that the notion o humanity provides, and in its contrast with 12 nature—each as fundamental and hegemonic as their contrast with the other. 13 7. I am not talking about the modern constitution only ¨ guratively. e process that resulted in the recently issued Bolivian and Ecuadoran constitutions resulted 14 from overt disagreement with the terms o the modern politics; I discuss this point 15 below. 16 8. Buen vivir has also been included in state development programs in both Ecua- 17 dor and Bolivia; it is also used by ÃÌÍs to mean sustainable development (Schavel- 18 zon 2014). 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
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PQ: Renumbered last two notes, OK?
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