Cañaris: Etnografías y documentos de la Sierra Norte del Perú

Abstract

The contents of this important work focus on the Cañaris-Quechua cultural area of the department of Lambayeque in northwestern Peru, home to the pre-Hispanic polities of Chimú and Moche. Despite the political, historical, and geographical differences characterizing Incahuasi (also Inkawasi), Cañaris, and Penachí, the three are intimately linked while exhibiting different degrees of “Andeanness” (27).In a solid critical introduction, Juan Javier Rivera Andía characterizes the book as filling an unrecognized gap between two authorized poles of knowledge. The first concentrates on transcribed oral accounts, contributing to what Rivera considers the fetishization of culture. The intense work required to render an authentic text can lead to the erasure of the transcriber/translator, who poles across the river to arrive at theoretical space without knowledge of the documentary stepping stones of local knowledge production—“narraciones-otras,” or “impure” (18) knowledge located in the notebooks, files, lists, fliers, and mimeographed manuscripts that open the book.Part 1, “Unpublished Documents,” presents manuscripts penned by José Natividad Huamán Bernilla, Pedro Carlos Manayay, and Florentino Gaspar. These provide, respectively, accounts of the customs and culture of Inkawasi; a historical summary of Janque; and a notebook of songs, speeches, and liturgical instruction in Spanish and Quechua. Locally published works produced from 1989 to circa 2009 give readers the opportunity to experience local research agendas in action. The Cajo family-based publication Pachay examines Inkawasi artistic expressions. A publication by “San Pablo” de Inkawasi is an educationally focused compendium of local life. Other contributions include a journal of culture and society edited by Joaquín Huamán Rinza; a Quechua piece by Hipólito Cajo Leonardo; and an account of the restoration of the Incahuasi church of San Pablo.Three of the “Brief Ethnographies” of part 2 are written by local schoolteacher Alfredo Leandro Carrasco Lucero, one of the most knowledgeable scholars of northern Peruvian dance and musical instrumentation. Marieka Sax (in English) describes Cañarense protective rituals, including the hanging of the devil during Holy Week, while Tatiana Gossuin (in French) describes “fear ailments” emanating from water and other ancestral beings. Julio César Sevilla Exebio connects the origins of Inkawasi to cattle branding, gathered foods, ditch cleaning, haircutting, and observances for the Virgen de las Mercedes. Spirits such as the local Ačakay and Pachakamaq are situated in complex contexts by María Bernilla Pereyra, Aurora Santiago Bernilla, and Rivera Andía; further knowledge regarding the regionally unique Ashkay (Ačakay) emerges in a wonderful dialogical piece produced by Gerson Eduardo Linares Peña.In sum, although there are a few flaws (e.g., the absence of an index), I found this book inspirational and responsible in terms of the seriousness with which Rivera has taken collaborative and consultative ethnography, local historical production, and sociological theorization. The pieces confirm, for instance, not only that the study of “myth and ritual” is indeed alive and well in Andean worlds but that it can be contextualized within the asymmetrical relationships that threaten the northern Andes due to the two-headed beast of global extraction and national neglect. Rivera also interpolates a parallel gap in broader Americanist ethnology whereby the local Native and the global Indigene are separated from intervening persons, writings, and points of view. Regardless of ancestry, the authors and human foci of these studies are agents who produce critical intellectual work. This brings us to a final “good to think” conundrum: although many Cañarenses do not identify themselves as essentially “Indigenous,” Rivera expresses his hope that this rich book of writing, thinking, and remembering will instruct us to pay closer attention to the people of Cañaris in order to better grasp the realities of today’s Andean Indigenous world.