Asháninka Messianism

Abstract

As a set of explanatory notions, resistance and messianism have been important in anthropology, not least when applied to popular mobilization in colonial and postcolonial settings. The resistance perspective has been subjected to critique from within the field; messianism has remained curiously unchallenged. The notion of messianism evokes a certain understanding of actors motivations and perceptions and pretends to identify cultural crucibles at the heart of the conjuncture between cosmology and agency. For this reason, categorizing people, cultures, movements, or other phenomena as messianic has significant interpretive implications. In their reading of historical records and narratives, anthropologists have attributed a messianic proclivity to the Ashninka and other native populations in the Peruvian Amazon. Taking off from interpretations of the figure of Juan Santos Atahuallpa in the 1742 rebellion against the Franciscan mission, many anthropologists have depicted these Arawakans as highly receptive to messiah figures; more recent Ashninka movements have been seen as similarly motivated. It is argued here that the notion of Ashninka messianism derives its veracity more from its scholarly repetition than from grounded analysis; it has created a black hole in place of ethnography that an approach that takes heed of practices, narrative and structural, may begin to fill.