Full Description
Drawing on extended ethnographic research conducted over the course of more than two decades, Andrew Canessa explores the multiple identities of a community of people in the Bolivian highlands through their own lived experiences and voices. He examines how gender, race, and ethnic identities manifest themselves in everyday interactions in the Aymara village. Canessa shows that indigeneity is highly contingent; thoroughly imbricated with gendered, racial, and linguistic identities; and informed by a historical consciousness. Addressing how whiteness and indianness are reproduced as hegemonic structures in the village, how masculinities develop as men go to the mines and army, and how memories of a violent past are used to construct a present sense of community, Canessa raises important questions about indigenous politics and the very nature of indigenous identity.
Contents
About the Series ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. A Wila Kjarka Kaleidoscope 34
2. Intimate Histories 63
3. The Jankho Kjarka War 90
4. From Fetuses to Mountain Ancestors 119
5. Fantasies of Fear 166
6. Progress Is a Metal Flagpole 184
7. Intimate Citizens 216
8. Sex and the Citizen 244
Postscript. We Will Be People No More 281
Notes 293
References 303
Index 321
