Intimate Indigeneities: Race, Sex and History in the Small Spaces of Andean Life by Andrew Canessa (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Intimate Indigeneities: Race, Sex and History in the Small Spaces of Andean Life by Andrew Canessa Joseph L. Scarpaci Intimate Indigeneities: Race, Sex and History in the Small Spaces of Andean Life. Andrew Canessa. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012. xxvi and 325 pp. diagrs., notes, appendices, and index. $29.95 paper (ISBN 978-0-8223-5267-9). The clash of modernity and its whiteness has frequently been violent and polemical in the Americas, particularly in the Andean indigenous regions of the continent. Violence and traditional portrayals of femininity and masculinity are powerful vehicles for studying the cultural clashes that modernity invokes in indigenous communities. Anthropologist Andrew Canessa enlists decades of ethnographic fieldwork in his examination of indigenous communities in highland Bolivia. The foci are squarely how the confluence of ethnic identify, race and gender surface in an Aymara village, Wila Kjarka. At the heart of these forces is the historical weight of how indianess is modified mainly by Aymara men laboring in highland mines or enlisting in the army. The book --divided into eight chapters (half of which appeared as earlier versions in other publications), an introduction, and a postscript - is part of the series, Narrating Native Histories. The goal of the series, among several, is to present research that “decolonize[s] the relationship between orality and textuality” and draws on “alternative knowledge producers” (ix). Some of the most engaging reading is the discussion of foreign portrayals and representations of Bolivian identity in the form of Miss Bolivia (“invariably white”, p. 249) and a photograph of President Evo Morales surrounded by young Bolivian women. One learns that the exposure of the breast in indigenous villages is largely uneroticized which conflicts with the contemporary modern world’s fetishization of the body part. The sketch titled, “World of Mountain Ancestors and Telluric Spirits,” is particularly geographical as it shows the merger of various physical landscapes in Bolivia and how they symbolize the delivery of different material and non-material elements in Aymara village life (p. 160). Also useful is the figure titled “The Life Cycle in Pocobaya” (p. 158) which depicts the view of a wet, wild, untamed, and unsocialized youth, and the evolution towards a dry, human, cultured and socialized end of life experience. [End Page 266] One readily appreciates the detailed fieldwork that went into this book, as well as the painstaking translations that must have been involved in translating from Aymara to Spanish and then to English. At least one place-location map would have been useful to orient the reader to the places mentioned in the text. I was particularly intrigued with Chapter 5, Fantasies of Fear, where the author develops the local notion of kharisiris, or ‘fat stealers.’ Canessa traces the history of this myth, which begins with Spanish friars, who allegedly used dead Indians’ body fat to heal their wounds. Yet the theft of body fat instead of blood raises many questions. I was surprised that there was such a rich literature on this topic, and its manifest causes. One of the key conclusions of the book is how ritual and tradition become increasingly reinterpreted as cities draw rural dwellers in growing numbers: “This new indigeneity invokes an often romanticized past and speaks most clearly to the urban populations, which are now the majority of Aymara speakers whose primary focus is not agriculture but city life” (282). The writing style is lively and informative and makes judicious use of verbatim informant remarks that are sandwiched by the author’s contextualization of the subject at hand. Indeed, the chapter sub-headings are a useful guide to the topical content of the book than are the chapter titles. Many of the key informants in Canessa’s study appear in photographs throughout the book, and no pseudonyms are used. I found the subject index rather thin for a tome of this length. Intimate Indigeneities is less about the “sex” noted in the book’s subtitle than it is about the quotidian small spaces of highland Bolivia, and how market capitalism disrupts culture in both subtle and drastic ways. The sexual mores, infidelities, displays of sexual prowess, and gendered identities of these Aymara villagers share many...