The Andes Imagined: Indigenismo, Society, and Modernity

Conclusion: Reading Indigenismo, Writing the Indio

163 A reCenT ArTICle on the current dynamics of indigenous political representation in Ecuador and Bolivia resonates deeply, in my view, withthecircumstancesIhavecommentedoninthisbook.Inthetext in question, the political scientist José Antonio Lucero recounts how two indigenous organizations, the FEINE (Ecuadorian Evangelical Indigenous Federation) and the CONAMAQ (National Council of Ayllus and Markas of the Qullasuyo), have augmented their abilities to represent indigenous peoples by carefully maneuvering notions of Indian ethnicity that have international purchase (52). In so doing, these social organs have effectively traded on, with varying degrees of success, notions of indigeneity in order to access resources and advantage. Lucero details how indigenous peasants in Bolivia have seized the opportunity created by new legislation revitalizing the ayllu in order to claim land and other rights. In turn, they have been assisted by international actors such as NGOs that, since the 1990s, have taken an interest in reconstituting traditional indigenous forms like the ayllu that they perceive to be key features of indigeneity. Indeed, Lucero makes a point of signaling how economic and administrative support READING INDIGENISMO, WRITING THE INDIO ConClusIon 164 ≈ reAdIng IndIgenIsmo, wrITIng The IndIo for traditional forms of social organization is actually enticing indigenous peasants to relearn ayllu traditions that had been lost (47–48). In the upsurge of indigenous empowerment that has undoubtedly taken place in the Andes in the last few years, Lucero’s study presents a caution. He relays two critiques commonly made in Bolivia concerning CONAMAQ, which organizes the revitalized ayllus: “it is a new set of elites and not representatives,” and “it is a new elite that, like the old elite, just wants to get money” (48). In other words, and citing the Aymara sociologist Esteban Ticona: “It is clear that the new indigenous representation makes possible the birth of a new elite that in theory is traditional, but in practice reproduces external elements” (cited in Lucero 48). In this context, the act of representing carries with it the implicit threat of not representing faithfully. Rather than lament this circumstance in the case of early twentieth-century indigenistas, or for that matter in the case of indigenistas of more recent vintage, I have taken Lucero’s procedure as instructive. What matters here is the internal logic—political and cultural—of such representations and what it allows us to understand not about indigenous peoples, but rather about the lettered and, indeed, the dynamics of representativity in Latin America. Two notions have generally been used to frame lettered indigenismo to date. The first, from the perspective of literary studies, is the idea that indigenismo as a discursive practice can be found primarily, or is best illustrated , in high literary representations, including, of course, the novel, but also the short story and the poem. In contrast, I interpret indigenismo through a more ample, more fluid range of lettered practices, not in order to deny the importance of high literary genres, but rather to contextualize these forms in a continuous field of deeply related practices such as those established in journalism, the essay, legal doctrine, popular representations, and so forth. The list of potentially relevant fields is almost limitless. Exposing the relationship between literature and broader lettered production allows us to better grasp the cultural logic of lettered interventions within the particular parameters of Andean societies and to better situate these efforts within their complete ideological contexts. As such, and through analyzing journalism, social criticism, and editorial policy alongside readings of poetry and short stories, we must understand indigenismo in the diversity of its expanded field. I have chosen not to follow Mirko Lauer’s helpful division of indigenismo into two wide areas of practice, which he terms indigenismo sociopolítico and indigenismo-2, in order to differentiate political works from aesthetic practices (Andes imagi- reAdIng IndIgenIsmo, wrITIng The IndIo ≈ 165 narios 33–37). This book does not distinguish between the two, not because they cannot be distinguished, but rather because I am suspicious that the commonalities that bring these discursive formations together at the conceptual level are greater than the differences that marked them as separate in the moment of their historical deployment. Lettered culture elaborated indigeneity in the service of progress, and divisions of indigenismo into political and aesthetic practices tend to obfuscate significant continuities across those arenas. My sense is that viewed accordingly, the archive of indigenismo will prove itself still insufficiently explored, and a great wealth of material from the movement...