Restless Ecologies in the Andean Highlands by Allison Enfield Caine A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) in The University of Michigan 2019 Doctoral Committee: Professor Bruce Mannheim, Chair Professor Stuart Kirsch Professor Joyce Marcus Professor Benjamin Orlove, Columbia University Professor Robin Queen Associate Professor Elizabeth Roberts Allison Caine [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0003-2054-4729 © Allison Caine 2019 DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to Señora Concepción, and it is in memory of my grandmother, Peggy Gene Michie. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research would not have been possible without a vast network of people and places that supported and nurtured me in innumerous ways over the past years. Above all, I am grateful to the community of Chillca. To the people of Chillca for welcoming me and sharing their homes, food, and lives with such generosity and patience; and to the places of Chillca, for sustaining me, calling me sharply into the present, and providing endless wonder and inspiration for the thinking, daydreaming, and scribbling that would become these chapters. I am especially grateful to the Rojo family1 and to the glacial valleys of Antapata and Uqi Kancha. The city of Cusco became my second home long before this research began. I come back each time to the welcoming arms and generous plates of the Huaman Escalante family: my compadres Janet and Ernesto, and my ahijados Leslie, Illapa, and Wayra. I am grateful for Jean- Jacques Decoster and the staff at Centro Tinku, my first landing spot in Cusco and a place to which I always return. Regina Tupacyupanqui Arredondo provided language instruction, translation support, and warm company during fieldwork. In 2015, I also benefited from the company of a robust research community, and I am especially grateful for my colleagues in the Cordillera Vilcanota. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Kelsey Reider for introducing me to the people of Chillca, and for continuing to be a deeply insightful intellectual partner. I am grateful for the support and enthusiasm of Baker Perry and Anton Seimon, as well as the other 1 Per the regulations of the University of Michigan’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), I am unable to identify participants in this research by name. iii members of the Sibinaqocha Watershed Initiative and the Cordillera Vilcanota Research and Conservation Initiative: Kate Doyle, Giovanni Estrada, Dina Farfán and Jan Baiker, Julio Postigo, Charles Rodda, Preston Sowell, Alfredo Tupayachi, Gustavo Valdivia, and Karina Yager. My deepest gratitude extends to the Crispin family of Pukarumi, especially Felipe, Juliana, Wilian, Verónica, and Miriam. I am also immensely thankful for the friends and colleagues in Cusco that provided support and sustenance each time I returned from the field: Génesis Abreu, Céline de Visser, Devin Grammon, and Yésica Pacheco, and I thank Julia McHugh in particular for her continued friendship. Steffi Schien, although not based in Cusco, provided invaluable support from afar. Bruce Mannheim has my utmost gratitude for being an endlessly encouraging and insightful mentor from the very beginning, and a bridge between the worlds of Peru and Michigan. I am thankful for my committee members: Stuart Kirsch, for bringing the larger threads of my research into sharper relief and for being a consistently uplifting voice; Elizabeth Roberts for always catching my blind-spots and encouraging me to dive into the murky depths; and Robin Queen, for sharpening my attention to animal physiology and behavior, and not letting me short-shrift the sheep. Special thanks go to Joyce Marcus for her generous and discerning eye, and to Benjamin Orlove, whose enthusiasm and encouragement brought a welcome gust of energy to the final uphill climb, and whose breadth of knowledge on global climate change and the Andes is truly inspiring. At the University of Michigan, Adela Carlos Rios skillfully assisted in the translation of Quechua, Bilal Butt provided comparative perspectives and literature recommendations on global pastoralism, and Krisztina Fehervary was a thoughtful and generous source of advice and guidance in the final years of the doctoral program. My undergraduate iv mentor at Bates College, Loring Danforth, also provided support and encouragement throughout my graduate career. My research benefited from many scholars outside my committee, especially my colleagues and friends in the anthropology department at the University of Michigan. I was lucky to have landed in a supportive, tight-knit cohort of brilliant minds and quirky dispositions, and I am endlessly thankful for both. Over the years, fellow graduate students have been generous in both their readings of draft materials and their care of my mind/body/spirit: Anna Antoniou, Yeon-ju Bae, Courtney Cottrell, Anne Marie Creighton, Jordan Dalton, Adrian Deoanca, Bree Doering, John Doering-White, Nick Emlen, Georgia Ennis, Chelsea Fisher, Hayeon Lee, Maire Malone, Prash Naidu, Sandhya Narayanan, Mike Prentice, Guillermo Salas Carreño, Kimberly Sanchez, Joshua Shapero, Jennifer Sierra, Alex Sklyar, Howard Tsai, Jennifer Tucker, Cheryl Yin, and Magdalena Zegarra. Special mention goes to Drew Haxby and Brenna Murphy for keeping me sharp as well as sane; Christine Sargent for her encouragement, humor, and friendship; and Jessica, Adam, and Maddie Lowen for making Ann Arbor feel like home. Generous research and writing support was provided by the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Program and the Foreign Language & Area Studies Fellowship of the U.S. Department of Education, as well as the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the Center for the Education of Women. It goes without saying that none of this would have been possible without the unwavering support of my family: especially my parents, Pam and Brian, to whom I credit my fondness of trudging up mountains, and my in-laws, Monika and Philip, for indulging my love of listening to long stories over hot coffee. I am grateful for my home, Mount Desert Island and Acadia v National Park, for always filling me back up when I’m running low. Finally, to my Sweet boys: Nik, my partner in all things and a profound source of wisdom and patience, and our son Rowan, whose birth during the final months of writing brought both firm deadlines and immense rewards. Given the topic of this dissertation, I should probably thank at least one animal, so, thanks to Cricket the cat for being a constant (if highly-critical) writing companion. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii LIST OF FIGURES x NOTE ON ORTHOGRAPHY AND TRANSLATION xii ABSTRACT xiii CHAPTER I. Introduction: Pastoralism and Socioecological Change in Chillca 1 Overview of Study 1 The Andes Mountains and Global Climate Change 10 Talking and Not Talking About Climate Change 15 Methodological and Ethical Articulations: Bottom-Up Approaches 22 Restless Ecologies: Theoretical Clarifications Amongst Unruly Entanglements 26 Summary of Chapters and Organization of the Dissertation 30 Chillca, Por el Q’inqu Mayu 35 The Herd-Household: Human and Animal Collectives 43 Consuelo and her Uywakuna 48 II. Entanglements of Expertise and Exchange: Becoming a Herder in Chillca 57 vii Michiqkuna: Women’s Work in Chillca 60 Gendered Histories of Pastoralism 63 Enacting Pastoralist Expertise 72 Becoming Michiq: The Making of Herds and Humans 81 Becoming Valikuq: Exchanging Animal Labor 89 Becoming Warmi: From Daughter-in-Law to Good Herder 94 Conclusion: Making Alpaqueras 99 III. Multispecies Modes of Evaluation: Climate Change and Human-Animal Communication 102 Human and Animal Interaction as Knowledge Production 108 The Day Begins: The Cooperative Work of “Driving” the Herd 114 Human-Animal Communication: Whistling, Vocalizations, and Theory of Mind 123 Tracing Disruption and Reading Animals 131 The Process of Sut’i: Scanning the Herd 134 Conclusion: K’ita as Ecological Knowledge 147 Post-Script: Bringing the Animals Home 149 IV. Substance, Absence, Presence: Shifting Landscapes of People and Place in Andean Ontologies 152 Quechua Ontologies: People and Place as Mutually Emergent 157 Practices of Commensality and Communication: Dispachu, Phukuy, Q’apachiy 168 Wikch’usqalla: Shifts in Communicative Practice and Conversion to Evangelicalism 175 Ontological Disruption: Substance and Absence 187 viii Conclusion: Who (or What) Emerges? 193 V. Moving the Herd: Adaptive Decision-Making in an Era of Uncertainty 195 Mobility as Adaptive Strategy in Pastoralist Systems 200 Overview of Pastoralist Mobility in Chillca 202 Flexible Mobility: Adaptive Decision-Making in Uncertain Conditions 212 A Year of Migrations in Chillcantin 219 Migration Summary and Comparison Across Sectors 229 Conclusion: Mobilities in Question 234 VI. Mejoramiento as Aspirational Imaginary: Land Tenure Change and “Better” Futures 236 Improving the Land, Improving the Self: Land Tenure and Parcelización 240 Aspirational Imaginaries: Better Futures through Mejoramiento 251 Bonitos Animales: Practices of Cultivating Ideal Animal Bodies 256 “They will be better than us”: Childhood Education and Profesionales 268 Improving Land, People, and Animals: Mejoramiento and Racial Imaginaries 274 The End of Chillca? Reproducing Animals, Reproducing the Community 277 Conclusion: Fragmented Futures 283 VII. Conclusion: “Will the Bells of Chillca Toll for Me?” 288 APPENDIX 299 BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 ix LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1. Map of study area 1 2. A young herder playing in a bofedal 14 3. Selected descriptions of changes in sun intensity 16 4. Selected descriptions of changes in precipitation intensity 16 5. Selected descriptions of deviations in seasonal weather patterns 17 6. The road to Chillca 36 7. The centro poblado of Chillca 38 8. Map of Chillca, with approximate boundaries 39 9. A cluster of herd-households in the sector of Chimpa Chillca 44 10. A herd of alpacas in an enclosure, freshly marked with taku for easy identification 46 11. Llamas carrying their cargo of wanu to take to the potato farms in Chillca 47 12.