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Introduction / 3 1 Introduction Making the Nation on the Margins Andrew Canessa In his oft-cited work on nationalism , Benedict Anderson writes that “in the modern world everyone can, should, will, ‘have’ a nationality, as he or she ‘has’ a gender” (1983:5). Possessing a national identity can be seen as being as natural as having a gender. Except that, of course, there is nothing “natural” about gender, as several decades of feminist and gender studies have shown. Similarly, there is nothing “natural” about having a national identity, as Anderson himself so clearly demonstrates. Gender and a national identity, and indeed race, may be naturalized but they are not “natural.” It is not simply that gender and national identity do not exist sui generis but that the fundamental conceptual distinction Anderson implies is seriously overdrawn. Insofar as everyone can have a nationality, this nationality is differentially assumed according to one’s gender, race, and ethnicity: not all nationals are as national as others. Conversely, gender and ethnic/racial identities are constructed and lived through national ones. This volume examines the ways in which identities—racial, generational , ethnic, regional, national, gender, and sexual—are mutually informing , even as they may be contradictory, among subaltern people of the Andes, where national sensibilities are not only strong but multiplying . Indigenous people are more likely now to claim an allegiance to a, say, Cumbe nation (Rappaport 1993) or an Aymara nation (Albó 1996) than ever before. Much has changed since the publication of Urban and Scherzer’s influential volume, Nation-States and Indians in Latin America (1992); indians1 are less likely to be confronted with crude assimilationist policies. It is nevertheless still the case that they face daily racism and discrimination, and struggle to assert an identity that is something more than a mere refraction of the dominant discourse. Despite the language of multiculturalism in many nations and even constitutional reform (van Cott 2000) any assertion of indian identity is likely to be resisted by at least some of the political and social elite. 4 / Andrew Canessa If indigenous people struggle to assert and celebrate their identity, it is also the case that dominant national imaginings may include much that is indigenous. This inclusion of indian imagery in national ideology is, however, often at a far remove from the cultural practices of contemporary indians; it tends to be on the level of the folkloric rather than a lived culture. The relationship between indians and others is not simply one of local or even national concern, since by the beginning of the new millennium “The Indian” has become an international commodity, and indians are widely recognized around the globe for their “traditional” lifestyles and as guardians of the natural environment. Anthropologists may be irritated by this notion of the “hyperreal indian” (Ramos 1994) and its lack of correspondence with the lives of real people; but these images are used strategically by many activists and it becomes a practical issue for groups that deal with international tourism directly, as Elayne Zorn’s essay in this volume shows. The globalization and commodification of an image of indianness and its attraction to tourists as well as NGOs (which, in recent years, have been specifically targeting “indigenous communities”), impacts on metropolitan discourses: they co-opt indigenous cultures as exhibiting qualities that underline the uniqueness of the national culture. At the most trivial level, tourists can buy indigenous handicrafts as souvenirs in every Andean international airport as “typical” and “authentic” national souvenirs. The particularity of indigenous culture and language can be presented as marking the genuinely national even as it serves as the iconic marker of social and racial inferiority. In Bolivia today the ability to speak an indigenous language is highly valued among educated urban people as it is a useful passport to a job with an NGO; speaking an indigenous language as a rural and uneducated person serves as a marker of one’s inferior social status. Chewing coca in rural areas is similarly a marker of inferior indianness, but when it is done in jazz bars in La Paz it is “cool.” Such images of indigeneity, colorful and exotic, bear little resemblance to the lives of real people; moreover, they can serve to dictate to indians the parameters of their own identity by defining what is “properly” indian or indigenous. They are, furthermore, often at sharp variance with political indigenous groups such as the EZLN in Mexico, the Movimiento Maya in Guatemala...

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