Translating Quechua Poetic Expression in the Andes: Literature, the Social Body, and Indigenous Movements by Maria Elizabeth

Translating Quechua Poetic Expression in the Andes: Literature, the Social Body, and Indigenous Movements by Maria Elizabeth Gonzalez A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Comparative Literature) in The University of Michigan 2010 Doctoral Committee: Professor Philip J. Deloria, Co-Chair Associate Professor Santiago Colas, Co-Chair Professor Bruce Mannheim Professor Javier Sanjines Associate Professor Gustavo Verdesio © Maria Elizabeth Gonzalez 2010 To my inspiration, my son, the shining and brilliant Miguel, to my best friend and mother, a shining star, Leonor, to the shining pillar of stalwart principle, my father Ignacio, to my brothers in every path, Gonzalo and Ricardo, always, to my criollo Conservative Colombian ruling class grandparents whose code of conduct and its core of kindness led my mother, and then me, down all the right paths, Carlos and Elvira the eternal lovers of more than sixty years, to Faustina, my grandmother who minced no words and to whom I gave the gift of lecto-scripted literacy when I was a girl, while she taught me how to know goodness when I see it without erring, sunqulla, and to all my polyglot kin, my allies and friends. ii Acknowledgments To María Eugenia Choque, Ramón Conde, and Carlos Mamani I owe my gratitude for sharing with me what it all meant to them, for inviting me to share in all their THOA activities during my fieldwork, their ground breaking meetings among Indigenous Peoples of the Andean region and beyond; to all the CONAMAQ Mallkus whose presence inspired, and to all the Quechua and Aymara women who shared with good humor sunqulla. I want to thank my friend Tirso Gonzales, for introducing me to PRATEC: Eduardo Grillo, Jorge Ichizawa, Grimaldo Rengifo, and Julio Valladolid who had the courage to stand up to translate what Quechua cultivators were saying in their fields, tuning in, who shared their work and their friendship with generosity. To all the Quechua and Aymara speakers with whom I worked, the PRATECOS, the THOA Ayllu Runa I offer my gratitude. To the generous women and men, young people and children of Titicachi, Quechua speakers, my heartfelt thanks. To all my Quechua teachers, and especially to Alfredo Quiroz, I express my thanks for permitting me to hear elegant urban ceremonial Quechua, constantly. To all the Andean people who received me with warmth and generosity, sunq’uwan. Many thanks to my friends in Lima and La Paz who accompanied and who cultivated with me. To Bruce a special thanks for all the opportunities, for that love of the Andes I could always count on; to Javier many thanks for years of political conversation and genuine friendship. To Gustavo, I offer many thanks. To Santiago, for his ability to read like no one else, I offer my appreciation. To Phil my gratitude: it all had a rich source and it channels toward a field that flourishes: allin kawsaypaq. Finally, I take full responsibility for my theorized translational and comparative practice. I take full responsibility for the poetically expressed translations; all the translations from the Spanish to the English inflected by Quechua in a way not explicitly aligned with the science of linguistics, I also assume full responsibility for. iii Table of Contents Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... iii Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 Part I. Reading Quechua from the Western field: delimiting the critical Western theoretical field comparatively and translationally: the pre-liminary problem of Quechua translation, Western colonial encounter, and the nature of things/the things of nature Chapter 1. Reading the translational and comparative intersession between a Quechua and a Western interdisciplinary intertextual field through Barthian “postmodernity” and westernized “postcoloniality”: “difference itself,” the aftermath and the body, poetic practice, and the colonial encounter .......................... 17 Chapter 2. Reading the intersession between a Quechua and a Western field through Foucauldian genealogy and archaeology: discontinuity, the event, and chance: the field in motion, the motion picture, social movement and the evasion of the colonial encounter ............................................................................ 63 Part II. Reading Quechua in the Western Field: the Problem of Quechua Translation Chapter 3. Translation in the Western field at the intercession with Quechua: the task of the comparatist and the question of poetic expression and colonial difference ........................................................................................................... 99 Chapter 4. Translation in the Western field at the intercession with Quechua: Comparative and Translational Practice and the question of reconnaissance and the au de-là ............................................................................................................. 147 Part III. Mestizo inscriptions translating Quechua & mestizo foundational fictions in the republican field Chapter 5. The Westernized mestizo state aesthetic order, Peruvian mestizo literary history, and two political mestizo republican state projects as mestizo literary inscription: Vallejo’s Paco Yunque and Arguedas’ Agua ............... 183 Chapter 6. Mestizo translations of the cultural figuration “Indio” at the site of colonial encounter in the field: the indigenous question or “el problema del “Indio”,” the 20th century republican national project and its “criollo” global designs .................................................................................... 225 iv Part IV. Quechua Intellectual Labor: Quechua encounters with the West Chapter 7. Quechua difference, Quechua poetic expression, and Quechua translations of and for the West: the colonial encounter reduced ............................ 282 Chapter 8. Indigenous decolonizing intellectual labor: two indigenous Quechua/Aymara social movements and how the West may constructively intercede: the indigenous social body in Bolivia and Peru ........................................ 332 Conclusion: “Iskay Yachay” ..................................................................................................... 387 Appendix A ................................................................................................................................ 403 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 415 v Introduction Epigraph: On the road to the Bolivian border, 110 kilometers from the city of Cusco, the Raqchi ruins alongside the community which today has the same name, but which, during the height of Inca civilization was called K'acha (meaning "light," imperial elegance, apogee of knowledge) arises on the border between two suyukuna1. The small agrarian community there has been able to transmit the history of the locality from generation to generation and the members of the community who hold this oral history in their memory still converse about its meaning and relevance for them. Travelling further and into Qolla Suyu, you encounter Puno, the nearest and largest city on the Lake Titicaca border with present day Bolivia, and after, Copacabana the first city one encounters crossing the border into present day Bolivian territory. This trajectory describes and spans only a portion of the expanse of the entire Inca Empire. Throughout this specific portion of Inca territory, centered on the "belly button" of the empire, the sacred city of Cusco, one can recognize the organizational schema and religious order of the Inca state. The Inca Empire was organized around military, economic, and religious imperatives maintained with impressive rationality, technology, and discipline. The much recognized and still enigmatic architectural accomplishments of this civilization are readily recognizable once you observe the ecological and geographic obstacles which the Inca peoples adapted to in order to establish Inca state enclaves throughout this expanse of their territory. At altitudes ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 meters above sea level, the organizational system devised to impose one order among varied ethnies becomes easily impressed upon the observer. Cusco, the Sacred Valley, Raqchi, Puno and Copacabana all demonstrate aspects of this economic, religious, and military rationale which marked these places with what may aptly be called Inca civilization. The phenomenon, which is observable, is the confluence of economic rationality and religious order, both indigenous and later Spanish, by invasion, conquest, and colonization. From Ollantaytambo, the Inca religious fortress which protected the entrance to the Sacred Valley and the capital city of Cusco and which marks the entrance to the more tropical expanse of the Empire, to Pisaq and the temple ruins found there, one finds foci where the Andean agricultural technology of terracing or “andenes” as well as ritual ceremonial temples are both present, not as two discrete realities, but as one. Cultivation of the sacred coca leaf is possible at both these sites, and it is said that the terraces at Ollantaytambo

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