Crítica de la razón andina ed. by Carlos Abreu Mendoza, y Denise Y. Arnold

Abstract

Reviewed by: Crítica de la razón andina ed. by Carlos Abreu Mendoza, y Denise Y. Arnold Anne Lambright Abreu Mendoza, Carlos, y Denise Y. Arnold, eds. Crítica de la razón andina. A contracorriente, 2018. 186 pp. The product of several years of cross-disciplinary dialogue, Crítica de la razón andina is a welcome and necessary addition to contemporary reflections on the meaning of "lo andino" and "Andeanism" in studies devoted to the region most commonly known as the Andes. Specifically, the introduction tells us, the volume seeks to question certain paradigms that have come to dominate Andean studies: a limiting insistence on the center/periphery and global/local binaries, the centrality of Peru, and unquestioned national metanarratives. In the introduction, co-editor Carlos Abreu Mendoza tells us, "nuestro enfoque propone examinar las distribuciones empíricas, estéticas, políticas y disciplinarias a las que se somete lo andino y que lo llevan a encarnarse en conceptos como andinismo y andinidad" (2). In the end, the essays in the volume demand that Andean studies abandon its dominant paradigms and embrace the translocal and transnational nature of lo andino, its debt to cultures beyond the highlands, and its fluid, mobile character. Abreu Mendoza's introduction is a valuable exploration of predominant tendencies in Andean studies, from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, that prepares the subsequent essays well by providing a succinct intellectual history of the major thinkers and currents in the field. For Abreu Mendoza, the goal, in his essay and through the larger volume, is to "construir una genealogía de los Andes como concepto regulatorio de los imaginarios sociales que han dado forma a los debates sobre lo andino" (2). The bibliography that informs Abreu Mendoza is impressively extensive, and Abreu Mendoza does an admirable job parsing out the complex nuances of disciplinary perspectives. As part of the volume's attempt to decentralize Andean studies through examining Andean spaces other than Peru, co-editor Denise Arnold's chapter, "Beyond 'lo andino': Rethinking Tiwanaku from the Amazonian Lowlands," deconstructs the importance of the archeological site of Tiwanaku in contemporary Bolivian political discourse and the nation's dominant Andean-centric cultural identity. By questioning the prevailing narrative regarding the Aymaran origins of Tiwanaku and instead highlighting the pluriethnic character of the site, this chapter contributes to the volume's questioning of the center/periphery binary and focuses on the fluidity of cultural exchange as a driver of lo andino. Ultimately, Arnold argues, "Thinking about the connections across Bolivia, instead of its internal divisions, would help us construct new models of productive, technological and ideological exchanges" (47). Caroline A. Garriott's chapter, "Carrying Water on Both Shoulders: Material Archives and Andean Ritual in Mid-Colonial Huamanga, Peru," provides a fascinating reading of an unedited 1684 colonial text that recounts evangelization efforts in seventeenth-century Huamanga and devotion to a particularly resilient Christ figure. Written by a Jesuit priest, Nicolás de Talavera, the text recounts local [End Page 283] devotion to a statue of the Crucified Christ, which had survived multiple assaults by idolaters; for Talavera, devotion to the statue signaled the successful indoctrination of the region. Garriott delivers an inspired subversive reading of Talavera's text, uncovering aspects of Andean spirituality in what purports to be an accounting of Christian domination by exposing and analyzing indigenous spiritual aspects in the work. Garriott offers this analysis as a model for approaching other historical texts, through ethnographic readings that "plac(e) equal analytical weight to both Andean cosmopraxis and Western Christianity" (81). Jorge Coronado's superb chapter, "Sobre la noción de lo andino: Ciencia, literatura y consumo," guides the reader through three diverging approaches to lo andino, from early developments in the field. Beginning with a discussion of three nineteenth-century texts published under the title Antigüedades peruanas, by Mariano Eduardo de Rivera y Ustariz, Coronado traces the development of a dominant conception of lo andino, rooted in an imperial past recalled in contemporary ruins and thus decidedly marked by archeology and anthropology. This first manifestation, lo andino científico, is further explored through Julio Tello's erroneous identification of the Chavín culture as...