Acting Inca: National Belonging in Early Twentieth-Century Bolivia

4. New Stages in Defining Indian Identity: The Ethnic Politics of Caracollo’s Contemporary Inca Play

121 4 new stages in defining indian identity The Ethnic Politics of Caracollo’s Contemporary Inca Play Elite residents of Caracollo acted Inca in the early twentieth century to seek resonance within the liberal nation-building project and to avoid the stigma of being Aymara; in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, however, folkloric performers have created new images of highland Indian identity. The Inca theater group still performs in the Fiesta del Rosario in contemporary Caracollo, but its current actors’ own memories and tradition inform the historical and contemporary significance of performing the Inca play. Where the documentary trail falters in the relatively unwritten history of Caracollo, the actors’ memories and understandings help inform a historical narrative. This dialogue between written and remembered history, textual analysis and historical context, connects local performance to national history. The contemporary Caracollo Inca theater actors not only enact historical theater but are historical agents in their own rights. Given the changes this Inca group has experienced, their memories and interpretations of the past can help us understand the significance of “acting Inca.” The memories in question speak to historical images of cultural, political , and regional legitimacy now hotly contested in Bolivia. By focusing on both past and present manifestations of the Inca play, we can see the changes and challenges in this process, in which alternative and preferred symbols of Aymara identity have emerged as more “authentic” representations of highland indigenous culture and Bolivian national identity. The increasingly 122 | new stages in defining indian identity numerous folkloric groups in festival parades that represent aspects of highland Aymara life reflect changes within national politics that emerged from the leadership of La Paz-based Aymara organizations in the last third of the twentieth century, entities such as CONAMAQ (El Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas de Qollasuyu, or the National Council of Indigenous Communities and Towns of Kollasuyu, 1997 to present) and Taller de Historia Oral Andina (THOA, or the Andean Workshop of Oral History, 1984 to present), which seek to recover an Aymara past that has been marginalized by the Bolivian state. These organizations have sponsored research projects to document the Aymara past and popularized Aymara heroes via radio broadcasts in Aymara and Spanish that reached a broad listening audience. Political parties such as the MITKA (Movimiento Indígena Tupac Katari, 1978 to present) and MRTKA (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Katari, 1978 to present) named themselves after a famous Aymara leader of the 1780s and developed political platforms that reached out to the Aymara voting population. Although the more recent “authentic” folkloric representations of Ay­ mara life now challenge Inca theater actors’ popularity, as do the previously mentioned organizations, these new groups constitute a twenty-first-century manifestation of the process of constructing and defining “preferred” Indian identities, of which the Inca play in Caracollo is an early example. Whereas Incas were important to the national narrative in 1900, today’s political and cultural movements in highland Bolivia are intent on recovering and promoting the Aymaras. The contemporary ethnographic accounts I present in this chapter also speak to questions of “authenticity” and popularity in folkloric parades during the festival of the Virgin of the Rosary in Caracollo as well as activities in nearby Oruro during that city’s much larger and world-renowned Carnival celebration. The close of the early twentieth-century tin boom left the Department of Oruro, which comprises Caracollo, struggling economically. The city of Oruro is that department’s main urban center. Much of contemporary Oruro is characterized by poverty, unemployment, environmental devastation resulting from mining operations, and depopulation caused by the collapse of the mining industry, which led many residents to migrate to Bolivia’s larger cities. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) interest in Oruro’s Carnival celebration, however, has generated renewed economic and cultural interest within the region. Carnival there includes a weeklong program of activities taking place in February or March (directly before Lent) and honoring the Virgin of the Mineshaft; the highlight of the festivities is a forty-eight-hour parade with new stages in defining indian identity | 123 dancers dressed mainly as Indians interspersed with devils and Afro-Bolivians. In 2001 UNESCO bestowed the prestigious title of Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity on Oruro’s Carnival celebration. Bolivian and international tourists flock to watch or participate in the parade, filling Oruro’s hotels, which...