A RETURN TO THE VILLAGE Community ethnographies and the study of Andean culture in retrospective edited by Francisco Ferreira with Billie Jean Isbell A Return to the Village: Community Ethnographies and the Study of Andean Culture in Retrospective edited by Francisco Ferreira with Billie Jean Isbell © Institute of Latin American Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2016 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-908857-24-8 (paperback) ISBN: 978-1-908857-84-2 (PDF) Institute of Latin American Studies School of Advanced Study University of London Senate House London WC1E 7HU Telephone: 020 7862 8844 Email: [email protected] Web: http://ilas.sas.ac.uk Contents List of illustrations v List of acronyms and abbreviations ix Notes on contributors xi Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: Community ethnographies and the study of Andean culture 1 Francisco Ferreira 1. Reflections on fieldwork in Chuschi 45 Billie Jean Isbell (in collaboration with Marino Barrios Micuylla) 2. Losing my heart 69 Catherine J. Allen 3. Deadly waters, decades later 93 Peter Gose 4. Yanque Urinsaya: ethnography of an Andean community (a tribute to Billie Jean Isbell) 125 Carmen Escalante and Ricardo Valderrama 5. Recordkeeping: ethnography and the uncertainty of contemporary community studies 149 Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld 6. Long lines of continuity: field ethnohistory and customary conservation in the Sierra de Lima 169 Frank Salomon 7. Avoiding ‘community studies’: the historical turn in Bolivian and South Andean anthropology 199 Tristan Platt 8. In love with comunidades 233 Enrique Mayer References 265 Index 295 List of illustrations Figure 0.1 The peasant community of Taulli (Ayacucho, Peru). Photo: F. Ferreira. 2 0.2 Taulli’s central village. Photo: F. Ferreira 2 0.3 A communal assembly at Taulli’s central village, 2008. Photo: F. Ferreira. 10 0.4 Meeting at Taulli’s medical centre, built in the 1990s. Photo: F. Ferreira. 11 0.5 Taulli’s Carnival celebrations in the central village, March 2008. Photo: F. Ferreira. 12 2.1 Sectorial fallowing in Sonqo. Created by C.J. Allen. 83 6.1 In Tupicocha, newly invested presidents of parcialidades (ayllus) visit the community office in 2010 to form the new directorate. Photo: F. Salomon. 176 6.2 Tupicocha comuneros examining the author’s work table. Photo: F. Salomon. 179 6.3 One stress factor that causes damage to the Tupicocha quipocamayos is the practice of twisting them into a single cable prior to transport and display. Photo: F. Salomon. 181 6.4 The ‘simulacrum’ or replacement quipocamayo displayed by parcialidad Centro Guangre in Tupicocha, 2007. Photo: F. Salomon. 181 6.5 In 2016, a display case inside the community meeting hall held a quipocamayo of ayllu Segunda Allauca. Photo: F. Salomon. 184 6.6 In Rapaz, the late Moisés Flores attends night-time balternos ceremonial inside Kaha Wayi, and in the presence of suspended khipu collection, New Year, 2004. He wears the formal dress of a balterno. Photo: F. Salomon. 189 6.7 Museologist Renata Peters (right, seated) in a 2005 working meeting inside the precinct with some balterno officers. Photo: F. Salomon. 190 vi RETURN TO THE VILLAGE 6.8 Vendelhombre [ceremonialist] Melecio Montes (left) lifts the upper altar-cloth of Kaha Wayi’s mountain altar, revealing a lower altar-cloth severely damaged by fungus. The lower cloth remains were repaired in 2005 by interweaving them with a fungus-proof synthetic fibre. Photo: F. Salomon. 190 6.9 Vice-president and Kamachikuq Víctor Gallardo examines khipu cords during conservation work inside the temporary site lab. Photo: F. Salomon. 194 6.10 Comunidad Rapaz allows visits inside Kaha Wayi in the daytime, but on rare occasions crowding can be a problem. This mass visit was organised by an NGO in 2005. Photo: F. Salomon. 194 7.1 San Marcos, 1970. Photo: T. Platt. 205 7.2 The alferez [ritual sponsors] and company coming up to San Marcos for Corpus Christi, 1971. Photo: T. Platt. 207 7.3 Tinku in San Marcos for Corpus Christi, 1971. Photo: T. Platt. 208 7.4 Liconi Pampa, 2013. Photo: Fortunato Laura. 210 7.5 Carbajal patriclan members, 1971: Curaca Agustín Carbajal (extreme right), Gregorio and Santiago Carbajal (at centre, seated). Photo: T. Platt. 211 7.6 Map of the great ayllus of Northern Potosí. Drawn by Esteban Renzo Aruquipa Merino (after Mendoza and Patzi, 1997; Harris and Platt, 1978). 214 7.7 Map of Macha territory, with moieties and cabildos (Mendoza and Patzi, 1997). 229 8.1 Tangor carguyoj with his servant and friends carrying chicha to the plaza for distribution to the whole comuna, 1969. Photo: E. Mayer. 239 8.2 Map of Cañete Valley (Lima, Peru) agricultural zones (Mayer and Fonseca, 1979; 1988, no page number) 242 8.3 Diagram of land management by production zones, Cañete Valley (Mayer, 1985; 2002, p. 389). 244 8.4 Maize terraces in Laraos (Lima, Peru). Photo: E. Mayer. 245 List of acronyms and abbreviations AAA American Anthropological Association AFASEP Association of Families of the Assassinated, Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared (in Ayacucho) AI Amnesty International ANASEP National Organisation of Kidnapped and Disappeared Persons APRODEH Asociación pro Derechos Humanos (the Peruvian human rights organisation) CCP Confederación Campesina del Perú CCPC Closed Corporate Peasant Community CIP Centro Internacional de la Papa (International Potato Center) CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique CONIAE Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador CORA Chilean Agrarian Reform COSUDE Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation DESCO Centro de Estudios de Promoción y Desarrollo (Promotion and Development Study Centre) EC European Commission ESRC Economic and Social Research Council FADA Federación Agraria Departamental de Ayacucho (Agrarian Federation of Ayacucho) FAO Food and Agriculture Organization (of the UN) FICI Federación Indígenas y Campesina de Imbabura (major peasant organisation in Ecuador’s Ariasucu province) FLACSO Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales FUNHABIT Fundación Ecuatoriana del Hábitat GIZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (German Corporation for International Cooperation) IEP Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (Lima) IMA Instituto de Manejo de Agua y Medio-Ambiente (Institute for Water and Environmental Management) viii RETURN TO THE VILLAGE INEI Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática (Peru’s Institute of Statistics and Information) IPTK Tomas Katari Polytechnic Institute LSE London School of Economics MAS Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement for Socialism) MBL Movimiento Bolivia Libre (Free Bolivia Movement) MIR Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left Movement) MNR Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Revolutionary Nationalist Movement) MUSEF Museum of Ethnography and Folklore (La Paz) NGO non-governmental organisation NSF National Science Foundation ONERN Oficina Nacional de Evaluación de Recursos Naturales (Office of Natural Resource Management) PETT Programa Especial para la Titulación de Tierras PRATEC Proyecto Andino de Tecnologías Campesinas (an NGO) PRODERM Proyecto de Desarrollo Rural en Microregiones (Project for Rural Development in Microregions) PUCP Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru) SAIS Sociedades Agrarias de Interés Social SANBASUR Saneamiento Ambiental Básico en la Sierra Sur (Basic Environmental Sanitation in the Southern Highlands) SEPIA Seminario Permanente de Investigación Agrarian SERPAJ El Servicio de Paz y Justicia (the Catholic Church’s Peace and Justice System) Sendero Luminoso Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path (more commonly known as Shining Path) SINAMOS El Sistema Nacional de Apoyo a la Movilización (National Social Mobilisation Support System) SSRC Social Science Research Council UCLA University of California, Los Angeles UNAIMCO La Union de Artesanos Indigenas del Mercado Centenario-Otavalo (Union of Indigenous Artisans for the Centenario Market of Otavalo) VRAEM Valley of the Rivers Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro (Peruvian coca-growing area located between the highland regions of Ayacucho and Cuzco) Notes on contributors Catherine J. Allen is a cultural anthropologist with an abiding interest in the connections (and disconnections) between the Andean present and the pre-Columbian past. She is professor emerita of anthropology at George Washington University where, from 1978 to 2012, she taught courses on South American cultures, the anthropology of art, symbolic anthropology and anthropological theory. Allen holds a BA (1969) in liberal arts from St John’s College, and an MA (1972) and PhD (1978) in anthropology from the University of Illinois in Urbana, where she studied under the direction of R. Tom Zuidema. Among her academic awards are research fellowships with the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright Specialist Program, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Dumbarton Oaks, and the National Gallery’s Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts in Washington DC. She is the author of The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community (Smithsonian Press, 1988; expanded 2nd edn., 2002), based on her fieldwork in a Peruvian highland community. Her commitment to humanistic writing led to an ethnographic drama, co-authored with Nathan Garner, Condor Qatay: Anthropology in Performance (Waveland Press, 1996). Her most recent book is Foxboy: Intimacy and Aesthetics in Andean Stories (University of Texas Press, 2011). She