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Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies
How enlightening it was to spend a portion of my 2020 lockdown reading four recent books that examine race, class, and social mobility in Lima. At the same time, reading the works during the pandemic-and in my case, from the United States-it was impossible not to contemplate ways that COVID-19's devastating impact on the coastal capital and throughout the country will shape scholarly understandings of Peru's early twenty-first-century development. Fresh and revealing analyses can feel 'historical' quicker than they usually do, however the aspirations, frustrations, and inequities that Peru specialists have richly documented over the past 15 years or soanalyzing topics like national branding initiatives, transnational migration, extractivism, and the gastronomic boom-seem to impress a new kind of force on the present. Ludwig Huber and Leonor Lamas's Deconstruyendo el rombo intervenes in what will be an evolving conversation about twenty-first-century middle classes in the country. Whereas shortly after the turn of the century scholars could still debate whether or not a Peruvian middle class existed in a meaningful way, developments of the past two decades fundamentally altered the discussion. These changes include, perhaps most obviously, the sustained economic growth Peru experienced and resulting shifts in socioeconomic status and class identification. At least in pre-pandemic times, approximately seven in 10 Peruvians could be categorized as either middle-class or 'emergent' middle class. Yet Huber and Lamas also encourage readers to consider how talking about the 'new middle class' in the Andean nation is not easily disentangled from defending the effects of neoliberal models that politicians, business elites, and news pundits have consistently endorsed since the 1990s. The book's title, a reference to the notion that Peru's recent growth transformed the country's social structure from a 'triangle' to a socioeconomically diverse and less hierarchical 'diamond' (rombo) nicely communicates this point. (For many readers, 'triangle' is likely to evoke Julio Cotler's influential 'triangle without a base' model for understanding elite-subaltern relations [e.g. Cotler 1969]though Huber and Lamas do not seek to revive that specific framework-while the 'diamond' metaphor is most closely associated with the work of marketing specialist Rolando Arellano.
2010
Much of the recent ethnographic production on the Andes region of South America tends, not surprisingly, to privilege the current dynamics of indigenous political activism and the ever-changing nature of indigeneity. Indigenous movements, as varied as they are in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru, have pushed reconfigurations of questions regarding not only race and ethnicity, but also citizenship, state relations, and globalization. In this context, Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard's ethnography, Mobility, Markets and Indigenous Socialities, is a welcome addition to the mix, a work itself concerned with Peru's indigenous peoples yet attuned to issues that once dominated the ethnographic landscape but have been recently put to the side. These issues include urbanization, squatter settlement development, informal economy, reciprocity and exchange, complementarity, and ritual kinship. In short, this work returns to many of the classic themes that shaped Andean anthropology in the second half of the twentieth century. Although classic in themes, the location is one that has produced surprisingly little ethnographic research in Andean studies. While most treatments of urban life and migration in Peru center around the sprawling metropolis of Lima, Ødegaard's work is situated in the southern city of Arequipa, Peru's second-largest city, which has 1.1 million inhabitants and a migrant population estimated at around 25 percent. Ødegaard draws on an impressive 10 years of intermittent research in the city, a period of time that courses through significant years in Peru's post-civil war development, from the irresolute peace that came with President Fujimori's suspension of democracy in the name of a state emergency to the neo-liberal yoking of the state with the return of former leader Alan García in 2006. The book centers primarily on the lives of newly arrived migrants to Arequipa from the various parts of the southern Andean highlands who have settled in one of the city's relatively oldest neighborhoods. Like many neighborhoods in Peru, Jeruselén began its life as a pueblo jóven (a peri-urban shantytown), founded in the 1960s by squatters who, over time, won title, recognition, and basic services infrastructure. The community is still poor, and, in one sense, Ødegaard's work stands as an ethnographic accounting of how people make ends meet through engagements with different forms of sociality, family and fictive kin, the market, NGOs, and the landscape itself.
Polifonía, 2017
This article examines the transformations of socio-economic and cultural spaces in Peru’s capital that followed the migration of the indigenous Andean population during the insurgency by the Shining Path. The Spanish Conquest divided Peru into two different national realities: the official Peru represented by the state, the institutions of power, and the powerful elite; and the Other Peru, the one of the indigent, dark-skinned masses of the sierra. This project follows the physical and cultural trajectory of the female protagonists of Alonso Cueto’s novel La hora azul and Claudia Llosa’s film La teta asustada. Both characters are forced to flee from rural war zones to the capital. There they must learn to navigate the social landscape of the metropolis while imprinting their own indigenous culture in the capital’s imaginary. In this article I juxtapose the migration, the sexual relationships, and the exploitation of the female protagonists during Fujimori’s neoliberal dictatorship with the cultural displacement, rape, and abuse of the indigenous population during the Spanish conquest. Drawing upon indigenous cultural values that emphasize the importance of community, Miriam and Fausta forge spaces of autonomy and agency for the indigenous female. Collectively the works in this study articulate an alternative Peruvian identity through the integration of the indigenous culture into the national project.
Latin American Perspectives, 2004
2013
The story of Peru presents a continuous trajectory of sociocultural transformation where one civilization appropriates, borrows, and builds on the accomplishments of the previous often creating something new and unique. During the Year of Peru program KSU's facu lty and students had the opportunity to learn in depth about Peru's rich history, culture, and modern society. They learned about a country rich in archeological discovery and human history, a story that does not simply begin with the Inca Empire, as the Inca were just one in a long line of powerful ancient civilizations (Chavin, Wari, Nazca, Moche, etc.) that previously ruled the Andean and coastal regions of where modern Peru lies. The Inca ruled over a vast territory and the empire comprised numerous ethnic groups who had been subjugated by either treaty or war. The Year of Peru went far beyond the sensational story of the Conquest when Pizarro and his brothers invaded Peru in 1532, took the Inca ruler Atahualpa hostage and held his empire ransom, forcing his followers to fill a room full of gold and then ki ll ing the ruler anyway (Thomson, 2001, p. 13). Ortega's opening presentation for the lecture series highlighted the challenges and failures of intercultural communication that characterized this epoch encounter. As noted. earlier, much about Inca society and culture was purposely destroyed, removed, or stolen during the Spanish Conquest. In particular, the gold and silver treasures of the empire were collected, melted, and converted into bars, and sent back to increase the treasury in Spain. In the words of Jose Carlos Mariategui (1894-1930), "The Conquest most clearly appears as a break in continuity. Until the conquest, an economy developed in Peru that sprang spontaneously and freely from the Peruvian soil and people .. .. All historical evidence agrees that the Inca people-industrious, disciplined, pantheist, and simple-lived in material comfort" (Mariategui• 1971 , p. J). Throughout the Year of Peru, those attending the events and presentations learned about the devastating effects of not only disease (especially smallpox and measles) and exp loitation that accompanied colonial rule but also the more complicated story of cultural loss and the often prejudiced hybrid mestizo identity of the Hispanic and Indian. Again, as Mariategui (1971, p. 37) argues, "the Spanish established a system of forced labor and uprooted the Indian from his soil and his customs." Indigenous values were lost, denigrated, or appropriated. Only recently indigenous traditions have begun to be reclaimed, especially in terms of understanding the deep cultural, spiritual and natural values, connections, and reciprocity that humans have with the earth. Peru's human ecology is only recently being reinterpreted in light of threats to the biodiversity of the region.
2018
In Peruvian Lives across Borders, M. Cristina Alcalde examines the evolution of belonging and the making of home among middle- and upper-class Peruvians in Peru, the United States, Canada, and Germany. Alcalde draws on interviews, surveys, participant observation, and textual analysis to argue that to belong is to exclude. To that end, transnational Peruvians engage in both subtle and direct policing along the borders of belonging. These acts allow them to claim and maintain the social status they enjoyed in their homeland even as they profess their openness and tolerance. Alcalde details these processes and their origins in Peru's gender, racial, and class hierarchies. As she shows, the idea of return--whether desired or rejected, imagined or physical--spurs constructions of Peruvianness, belonging, and home. Deeply researched and theoretically daring, Peruvian Lives across Borders answers fascinating questions about an understudied group of migrants.
A small river provides a significant amount of Lima´s electrical power and drinking water. The interdependence of the lifestyles of rural dwellers in the river basin and LIma´s millions of urban inhabitants is becoming increasingly evident, and improved governance is necessary in order to avoid increased tensions and conflict, as in other river basins throughout Peru.
1. Diversidad cultural y globalización Basta prender la radio_ mirar la televisión o pararse frente a un kiosko de revistas y periódicos para darse cuenta de la multitud de conflictos religiosos, lingüísticos, raciales o nacionales que conmocionan amplias zonas del planeta. En otras palabras, conflictos en los cuales la cultura (lengua, religión, modos de vida) y la historia (tradiciones nacionales o étnicas) juegan un papel fundamental. Estos conflictos tienen lugar en países que nos suenan lejanos como Afganistán, Rwanda o Somalía, pero también otros ubicados en pleno corazón de Europa como Rusia, la ex-Yugoeslavia e incluso España, donde los extremistas vascos de la ETA continúan ensangrentando el país, o hasta hace muy poco Irlanda del Norte, parte de la muy civilizada Gran Bretaña. Por eso, si durante buena parte del S.XX, el mundo se vio envuelto en sangrientos conflictos ideológicos que pusieron alguna vez al planeta al borde de su destrucción atómica, algunos anuncian que el S.XXI estará marcado por conflictos culturales, por lo que, Huntington llama "el choque de las civilizaciones", y cuando dice civilizaciones, podemos entender culturas(1). Sin embargo, es posible que Huntington exagere pues no todo es negativo. Basta también prender la radio, mirar la televisión o pararse frente a un kiosko de revistas y periódicos para ver, por ejemplo, al presidente Fujimori frotándose las narices con un jefe maorí en Nueva Zelanda. Vimos esa imagen hacia mediados de 1999, en una reunión de presidentes de los países de la cuenca del Pacífico, que se perfila como el principal escenario económico del S.XXI. Hasta hace algunas décadas, pocos sabían donde quedaba Nueva Zelanda y casi nadie había oído hablar de los maoríes, y menos aún sabía que se saludaban frotándose las narices. Además, hasta hace algunas décadas se creía que país desarrollado era sinónimo de país occidental y cristiano; que para desarrollarse los pueblos tenían que olvidar sus tradiciones y volverse modernos. Tradición y modernidad se entendían como dos polos excluyentes; y el desarrollo como un proceso de modernización homogenizadora. Conservadores, nacionalistas y revolucionarios compartían el mismo criterio, aunque para cada uno de ellos el final de la película fuera diferente. Para unos, al final todos compartiríamos el "modo de vida americano". Para los nacionalistas y populistas, al final todos seríamos uniformemente mestizos y castellanohablantes. Para los revolucionarios, todos pasaríamos por un proceso de proletarización para llegar a alcanzar el ideal del hombre nuevo proletario. Hoy, por el contrario, se reconoce: 1. Que hay diversos caminos a la modernidad y al desarrollo, que el proceso no es necesariamente único, lineal, ni conduce necesariamente a la uniformización. 2. Que no hay oposición tajante y excluyente entre tradición y modernidad. Mas bien las tradiciones, o al menos algunas, pueden ser útiles para el desarrollo, pueden constituir un activo y no un pasivo en los esfuerzos por incorporarse ventajosamente en el mundo global. A partir de estos dos primeros puntos, se reconoce también: 3. Que el desarrollo no se mide sólo por indicadores macroeconómicos como producto bruto interno (PBI) o ingreso per cápita, sino que implica también factores de calidad de vida, sociales y culturales. Comienza a reconocerse, por tanto, el papel de las diferentes culturas en el desarrollo. Más aún, la necesidad de imaginar un desarrollo que posibilite el florecimiento de la diversidad cultural, como afirma un reciente informe de la UNESCO, titulado Nuestra diversidad creativa.
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