Indigenous Appropriations and Boundary Crossings: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Indigenous Cultures and Politics in the Andes

Amid resurgent scholarly interest in indigenous cultures and politics, three recent books on Andean indigenous peoples transcend epochal, disciplinary, and geographic boundaries in insightful ways that help rearticulate and reimagine this evolving field. Along the way, they contribute to ongoing debates about indigenous representation and essentialism. Denise Arnold and Christine Hastorf’s Heads of State: Icons, Power, and Politics in the Ancient and Modern Andes, Jorge Coronado’s The Andes Imagined: Indigenismo, Society, and Modernity, and José Antonio Lucero’s Struggles of Voice: The Politics of Indigenous Representation in the Andes all look at indigenous cultures, indigenous politics, and in Coronado’s case the political and cultural uses of indigeneity, from a historical perspective. Arnold and Hastorf present data on heads as symbols of political power and the rituals and cults associated with them from pre-Hispanic times (approximately 2000 BC) to the present. Although Coronado focuses on the period from 1920 to 1940 to explore indigenista (i.e., policies and cultural products that take the Indian as their focus) and indigenous representations, he connects these works and debates with larger trends that extend from the mid-nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Lucero goes back to the mid-nineteenth century to better understand the roots of twentieth- and twenty-first-century indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador. Historical depth and richness of detail help these three volumes better ground the debates on indigenous and indigenista culture and politics.

The three volumes have an interdisciplinary reach. Heads of State is the result of collaboration between Arnold, a sociocultural anthropologist, and Hastorf, an archaeologist. Coronado writes from the field of literary and cultural studies but also uses the insights of anthropology, history, and other disciplines. Lucero takes pride in being a political scientist who also applies anthropological methods, and his work engages in debates with anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and other social scientists.

As their titles indicate, the three books seek an Andean scope, but geographically, the volumes cover ample territory. Arnold and Hastorf study mostly what are today Bolivia and Peru but also make reference to the northern Andes as well as the Amazon. Coronado centers on Peru but often refers to indigenismo in Ecuador and other Latin American countries as a point of contrast. Lucero compares Bolivia and Ecuador, with frequent allusions to Peru. There is a tendency throughout Arnold and Hastorf’s volume to assume that the ethnographic findings in an area of Bolivia apply to the whole Andean region, and they do not always provide specific evidence from other areas to prove their point. By contrast, when Lucero and Coronado suggest larger regional trends, it is based on an exposition of evidence from a variety of countries and regions.

Another geographical boundary that these books trespass to good effect is that between the highlands and the lowlands. Very often, anthropologists study the Andes and the Amazon as separate culture areas, and the scholarship in one of those areas tends to ignore research on the other. Even in contemporary contexts in which the nation-state is sometimes cast as an important interlocutor of indigenous movements, scholars have tended to be either Andes centered or Amazon focused. However, as archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and ethnographers have argued for some time, the connections between the Andes and the Amazon have been many from pre-Hispanic times to the present, and the works reviewed here show cognizance of that fact.

Arnold and Hastorf help us understand the head as a symbol of political...