Canessa, Andrew (2012) Intimate Indigeneities: Race, Sex, and History in the Small Spaces of Andean Life, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), xi + 325 pp. £74.00 hbk., £18.99 hbk. Andrew Canessa's book is built on the basis of extensive ethnographic fieldwork and continued visits over twenty years to Wila Kjarka (a pseudonym), a rural Aymara community in the Bolivian highlands. Some of the chapters composing this book draw on previously published articles and, as such, are revised versions of Canessa's previous work. The book is well written, with sensitive descriptions of events and practices that are the fabric of Wila Kjarka's social life; through it, we find empathetic portraits of contemporary Aymara people, such as the centennial shaman Teodosio Condori, to whose humanity one can relate. The book shows clearly how a village such as Wila Kjarka, easily imagined as isolated from the broader society, is actually deeply related to it in many ways, partaking in, reacting to and in permanent dialogue with the broader social world of Bolivia and beyond. While most of the book is located in Wila Kjarka, the last chapters in fact engage with debates about citizenship, indigeneity, sex and gender in the national panorama. The long-term fieldwork is crucial for the insights that the author articulates regarding the intimate spaces of life. The first important discussion that is presented is what it is to be jaqi (Aymara for human being), Indian and indigenous in an Aymara community such as Wila Kjarka. All these terms are carefully analysed in the context of the long history of oppression and discrimination against indigenous peoples in the region. After reading this text, it is clear how these three terms carry very different meanings, even though they can refer to the very same person. Canessa explains clearly how these racial–ethnic labels, as well as that of q'ara (those who are not jaqi), are strongly related to the context where they are claimed, imposed or contested; he manages an outstanding explanation of how malleable, shifting, contextual and contested is the condition of being indigenous in the Andean region. Beyond this treatment of indigeneity, which permeates the whole book, one of its contributions is analysing and reflecting on how people remember the not-so-distant past in ways which strongly depart from the dominant historical narratives. This is achieved through paying attention to contemporary oral narratives of local violent conflicts related to land rights that took place in the context of the 1952 Revolution, and contrasting them with the available written archives. While this contrast is one between two emancipatory narratives, the local oral accounts are grounded in Wila Kjarkeños' own agency in their struggles against landlords, which are crucial for their present understandings of who they are. Another theme that constitutes an outstanding contribution of this book, and of Canessa's previous work, is to show clearly how to construct, negotiate or impose racial–ethnic notions, boundaries or identities which cannot be disentangled from ideologies of gender and sex. The author elaborates on how this is the case, from the quotidian interactions in Wila Kjarka to the national sphere of, for example, televised beauty contests, and the ways in which President Morales relates publicly with indigenous and non-indigenous women. Hence, sex and gender are not only co-present in the ways that racial–ethnic categories are reproduced in practice, but also in the notions of who is and who is not a citizen. The chapter related to ethnicity and primary school teachers gives more nuance to what is already known about other areas of the Andes regarding the ways in which formal education is deeply ingrained in reproducing and legitimating racial–ethnic hierarchies. This is an excellent book for anyone interested in the complexities of the politics of indigeneity in daily life, beyond the impressive protests and the incursion of indigenous peoples in formal politics in Bolivia. If I might criticise one aspect, I would signal the tone of nostalgia at the end of the book in which the author sees that the current transformations taking place in Bolivia and the strength of the indigenous movement are coupled with a vanishing of the jaqi ways of life. To some extent this interpretation is reproducing a teleology of modernity in which all jaqi values and notions seem to fade away when Aymara people become urban, organise themselves politically and challenge the hegemonic order. Future fruitful research might be to pay a similar attention to daily practices in indigenous urban contexts. There might be new and urban ways to be jaqi in Bolivian cities, departing not only from being jaqi in places such as Wila Kjarka but also from dominant notions of indigeneity as well as the stereotypes of being Indian.
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Oct 28, 2024
Valeria Mardoñez-Balderrama + 18
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