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Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)

Race in the Andes: Global Movements and Popular OntologiesAuthor(s): Mary Weismantel and Stephen F. EisenmanReviewed work(s):Source: Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 17, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 121-142Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3339225 .

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Bull.

Latin

m.

Res..

Vol.

17,

No.

2,

pp.

121-142,

998

?

1998

ociety

or

LatinAmerican

tudies.

ublished

y

Elsevier

cience td

p

All

rights

eserved.rintedn Great ritain

rergamon

0261-3050/98

19.00

0.00

PII:

S0261-3050(97)00084-3

Race in the Andes: Global Movements and

Popular

Ontologies

MARY

WEISMANTEL and

STEPHEN

F.

EISENMAN

Northwestem

University,

Evanston,

IL

60208-2211,

USA

Abstract

?

Race,

long

discounted

in

Andean

ethnography

as

relatively unimportant,

is

a social

fact of

great

salience

in the Andes.

This

essay

introduces the

articles in the

special

issue on race in the Andes with an overview ofthe interrelated intellectual histories of racism

in

the

Andes,

Europe

and North

America,

from colonial

proto-racism,

to

the

totalising

theories of the

19th

century,

to

the

heterogeneous

'neo-racism'

found

in

the

Andes

today,

in

which both these

earlier ideas

and

contemporary

cultural racisms

are at

home.

It

concludes

with a

discussion of an

oppositional ideology

found

in some

indigenous

communities,

in

which race is

somatic

but

not

biological

in

origin.

?

1998

Society

for Latin

American

Studies.

Published

by

Elsevier

Science Ltd. All

rights

reserved

Key

words

?

race,

Andes,

neo-racism,

body,

history,

materialism

RACE AS A

SOCIAL

FACT

'The

problems

of

"race"

...

are

of

only

peripheral significance

in

Spanish

America',

wrote

Pierre

van den

Berghe

and

George

Primov on

the first

page

of

their

1977

book

Inequality

in

the

Peruvian

Andes. Few social

scientists

writing

about

the

Andes

in

the last

quarter

century

have

disagreed.

The

articles in this

special

issue

re-open

a

closed

discussion:1

we

argue

that

race has

been a

social

fact of

great

salience

throughout

much

of

Andean

history,

and

that

until

recently,

the

impoverished

quality

of

anthropological

theory

on

race has

precluded

productive

work

on this

topic.

As

long

as

any

mention

of

race was

understood to be an

appeal

to

biological

essentialism and

thus

itself an

expression

of

racism,

scholars

felt

compelled

to

ignore

or

minimize the

importance

of

racial

politics

in the

communities

where

they worked,

even in

the

face of

compelling

evidence to

the

contrary.

In their

haste to

disassociate

themselves from

the

racist

past

ofthe

social

sciences,

anthropologists forgot

the

Durkheimian

mandate to

treat

social facts

as real.

Equating

race

with

genetic

difference,

and

racism with

theories

of

biological

inferiority,

anthropologists

have

failed

to

recognize

the

existence of

powerful

systems

of

race

and

racism

in the

Andes.

But

despite

the

absence

of

strict

phenotypical segregation

or

narrowly

color-based

hierarchies,

the

Andean

region

is

host to

not one

but a

multiplicity

of

racisms.

The racist

ideologies

exposed

in

these

papers

make use

of

signifiers

as

various

as

hygiene,

clothing,

and

folkloric

dances;

even

male

heterosexuality

emerges

as a

potent

marker

of

whiteness. In

1993,

Vargas

Llosa

wrote

of a

Peruvian

racial

sensibility

imbibed in

the

mother's

milk

(Ellis);

a

few

years

earlier,

Cuzqueno judges

at

a

folklore

competition

expressed

a

preference

for

indigenous

dancers

who

adopted

a

properly

'authentic'

pos-

ture,

stooped

low to

the

ground

(Mendoza).

Mestizos on

the

altiplano

told

Ben

Orlove

in

1983 that

Indians

'live like

animals',

while

upwardly

mobile

Otavalenos

spoke

to


3/23

122

Mary

Weismantel and

Stephen

F.

Eisenman

Colloredo-Mansfeld in

1994 of

having

achieved

'a

clean

life'. The

concept

of

'ethnicity'

?

the

dominant

term in

discussions of

Andean

inequality today

?

is

inadequate

in

the face

ofthe

barriers between

Indians,

mestizos,

and

white

illuminated

by

these

rhetorics.

In

their

varied references to the

consumption

of

generational

memory,

to

bodily

comportment,

to

bestiality

and to

purity,

each of

these

statements evoke

fields of reference too

powerfully

physical,

essential,

and

inherently degrading

to

be called

anything

other than

racial;

yet

none of

them make

reference to

either

genotypic

or

phenotypic

differences.

We need

to

re-consider race

in

the

Andes,

the

papers

in this

collection

argue,

not

in

order

to

return to

biologistic

thinking,

nor to

negate

the

importance

of

class,

sex and

gender

as

bases for

domination,

but to

acknowledge

a

wide-spread,

pervasive

and

relatively

auton?

omous

instrument of

social

organization

and control.

Closely

linked to class

oppression

and

to

misogyny,

racism

nevertheless

operates

within its own

system;

it

is,

as Sartre wrote of

anti-Semitism,

'a

comprehensive

attitude

...

a

passion

and

a

conception

of the

world

[which] precedes the facts that are supposed to call it forth' (1948: 17).

'Ethnicity'

not

only

fails to

capture

the

physicality

and

comprehensiveness

of

'race';

it is

unable

to

expose

the latter's

historical

origins

and false

claims

to

universality.

Unlike

'race',

with

its unavoidable

associations with

slavery

and

colonialism,

'ethnicity'

works to remove

from view

the historical

specificity

of

oppression.

Conventional

contemporary analyses

argue

that

ethnicity

is

the bedrock

upon

which the

superstructure

of racism

is

erected:

pre-existing

cultural

differences

('ethnicities'),

visible

to

any

observer,

give

rise to a universal

reaction of

prejudice ('racism').2 According

to this liberal

paradigm,

a

given

society may,

or

may

not,

choose to erect

systems

of

dominance

and

subordination

using existing

psychoso-

cial

prejudices

as a

foundation. Racism is thus a rational

?

albeit

regrettable

?

response

to

the inescapable fact of human difference.

The

fundamental error

here,

as Butler

(1990)

observed

about

the

sex/gender

paradigm

and

Strathern

(1992,1988)

about the

nature/culture

dyad,

is that

race did

not

and does not

arise from the

innocent

perception

of

pre-existing

difference;

as Sartre

observed,

the

ideology

presupposes

the

'facts' marshaled to

support

it,

despite

pretenses

to

the

contrary.

Peter Wade has made

this

argument

quite

forcefully

in his

critique

of the 'race relations'

literature of the

1960s, 70s,

and 80s. He

writes

that

phenotypical

variation

poses

'as

an

obvious

objective biological

fact

when

in fact it is a

highly socially

constructed one

...

that

[has]

become salient in

long

term colonial encounters'

(1993: 21).

The attribution

of

meaning

to

physical

differences

between humans is

always

contingent

and

variable,

as even

a superficial survey of the bodily expressions of race will attest. Pigmentation, often

assumed

by

modern

observers to

be

the most

intransigent

of

racial

indices,

has

not

uniformly

been accorded

primary importance.

Hatred of blackness

has translated into

an

obsession with the

shape

of

lips,

or an anxious need to iron

the

nappiness

out of one's

hair,

while

anti-Semitism selected the

nose

for

stigmatisation

or

surgical

correction.

In

Cotopaxi,

masculine fears of

being

thought

Indian

are

assuaged

by

the

ability

to

sport

a

moustache,

while

Colloredo-Mansfeld found

shortness

to

be

so

strongly

associated

with

being

Indian in

Imbabura that

a

new

generation

of tall

indigenous youth

constitutes

a

palpable

challenge

to

received racial

categories.

The

origins

of

race,

then,

lie in

history

and

not in

biology.

There

is, therefore,

as Paul

Gilroy

has

observed,

no one

racism

and

so

no

one

theory

of race. Race

comes

into

being

in

order

to

systematically

displace

the causes

of

oppression

onto

?

or into

?

their victims

(1993);

each

system

of

race is novel

to

the

degree

that

it

must meet

new

circumstances,

yet

all

are

shaped

by

this shared raison

d'etre.

Although

they

draw

upon

different

metaphors,


4/23

Race in the

Andes

123

each of the

Andean

racisms

listed above

agree

that the

fundamental

problem

in

the

Andes

lies

in the

inability

(or

stubborn

refusal)

ofthe Indian

to

become

white

?

or white

enough.

This failure

to achieve

whiteness

may

be

attributed

to

genetic

incapacity,

malnutrition,

pathological childrearing, poor education or lax morals; but however strenuous the effort to

displace

the

ultimate site of non-whiteness

away

from

biology,

ideologies

of

inequality

that

hold

up

whiteness as the

explicit

or

implicit

norm are

ideologies

of

race,

even

when cloaked

in

the

language

of

ethnicity.

Every

generation produces

its own

racism,

which

in

turn

gives

rise to new

counter-ideologies.

Old

racisms,

it

seems, however,

never

die;

they simply

enter

the

storehouse of

oppression,

calling

forth ever more resourceful

resistance

which will in

turn

generate

new racisms in

response.

Indeed,

the

very

decision to

replace

'race' with 'culture' or

'ethnicity'

?

or with 'class'

?

should be seen less

as

a

liberating

break from earlier

racisms,

than as

a

moment

in the

ongoing

evolution of a neo-racism

in

which overt

biologism

becomes

cloaked

in what de la

Cadena calls 'cultural fundamentalism'. The shift in Peruvian academic attention from

biology

to culture and

class,

documented

by

de la

Cadena,

occurred

in

response

to

contemporaneous European

and American

postwar

efforts,

within both

Marxist

and

liberal

traditions,

to

disavow

a

scientific

eugenics

identified with Nazism.

Racism

in

the

Andes

is

a

palimpsest

of ideas and

images

whose

origins

are

global

and

local,

ancient

and

modern;

we

can

read

in their

overlapping,

fragmentary

and often

contradictory

claims

a

history

of the

relationship

between

this

region

and the

rest of the world. Generations

of

South

American

writers

and

politicians

have found in race

not

only

a

useful

tool with

which to

manage

the

frightening

and

unruly

masses of

their own

nations,

but

also

a means

to

participate

in

international

scholarly

and cultural

life.

In

making

European

ideas their

own,

Andean

elites

bolstered

their

claim to the

legacy

of

the

conquerors,

and so

?

within

the

ideologies

of

modern racism

?

to

membership

in

the

superordinate

race.

As de

la

Cadena

argues,

even

anti-racist movements within

Peru,

such as

indigenismo

and

neo-indigenismo,

are

caught

in

a

tangled

desire to use the

rejection

of

race to

gain

access

to forms

of

privilege

that

are

themselves

racial.

The virulent neo-racisms

operative

in the

region today,

too,

continue

the

long

engagement

ofthe Andes

with

European

and North

American

thought,

and

reproduce

within the

region

the

same

profound

inequalities

that

operate

on a

global

scale to

relegate

the

Andes to a

perennial

and

seemingly

inescapable

marginality.

Yet the

Andes have

never been

merely passive

receptacles

of

foreign

ideas;

Andean

intellectuals

?

and

foreign

visitors

such as

Von Humboldt

?

have been

interlocutors,

critics

and innovators

as

well. But

it

is

at the hands

of those

stigmatised

as

non-white,

that

imposed

ideologies

have

undergone

their most

profound

transformations

in

the Andes.

Some of the case studies

presented

here reveal the outlines of

a

popular

?

and

potentially

critical

?

Andean

understanding

of

race

unlike

dominant

Euro-American

theorising

on

the

subject,

and

better able

to

grasp

the

relationship

between

physical

difference

and social

inequality.

If

hegemonic

racism teaches

people

to

systematically perceive

superficial

physical

differ?

ences as

profoundly

meaningful,

its effects

?

as traduced

communities

know

too

well

?

can

create actual

physical

differences between

members of the

putative

races

it

has so

pains-

takingly

constructed

in

theory.

Work

and

leisure,

health

and

well-being,

diet

and

shelter,

suffering

and

pleasure

are

unequally

available

and

differentially experienced

by

opposed

nations,

communities,

and

classes;

the

result,

as some of these

papers

evocatively

describe,

is

bodies that

really

do differ

profoundly

according

to

ascribed

race. The

popular

Andean

discourses about race that

emerge

from

these

pages,

with

their references

to

movements,


5/23

124

Mary

Weismantel and

Stephen

F.

Eisenman

odours,

and

textures,

offer

an

understanding

of

race

that is

neither

biological

and

essential,

nor

epiphenomenal

and

performative.

The

difference

is in

fact actual and

constructed,

material and

fully

social at the

same

time.

But

before

we

can further

address

this subaltern

discourse of Andean race, we must first more fully outline the dominant racisms from which

it

draws and

against

which it

maps

its terrain.

COLONIAL AND

MODERN

RACISM

Racism

is an

ideology

which asserts that

prescribed

classes,

or

'races' of

people

have

invariant

and

irredueible

characteristics that

determine

their social

evolution. Racists

generally

assert,

by

word

or

deed,

that

non-white,

non-European,

non-Christian,

or

non-

civilised

cultures

are

inferior

to

white,

European,

Christian and

civilised ones.

Racism is

thus a

sectarian

faith

?

claiming

the

unique

superiority

of

white

over non-white

peoples

and cultures. Yet racism is also

non-sectarian,

asserting

that Western

bodies,

religion,

politics

and

economies are

natural

and

universal,

and

represent

the

only

viable models for

the

rest

of the

world.

The

ideological

crux of

racism lies in

this

contradiction

between

the

first

claim,

that

characters

and cultures are

fixed and

timeless,

and the

second,

that Western

people

and

society

represent

a

universally

adoptable

template

for all

non-white or

non-

capitalist

peoples

and

cultures.

Unlike

simple

ethnocentrism,

which

has

probably always

existed,

this

uniquely paradoxical

ideology

could

only

come

into

being

after

the Renais?

sance,

that

is,

since

the

beginning

of

the

period

in

which

European

merchant-capitalists

began

to

colonise,

explore,

exploit

and

refashion

the

world. Its

history may roughly

be

divided

into

three

historical

periods:

colonial

racism,

modern

racism and neo-racism

(Balibar and Wallerstein, 1991: 19-28).

Colonial

racism,

which

extended

from the

15th to the

19th

centuries,

is the

product

of two

simultaneously

occurring

world

historical

processes:

the

formation ofa

capitalist

culture in

Europe,

and

the

conquest

of

the

non-European

world. The

relation

between these

two

forces is

dialectical,

as the

economist

Samir Amin

points

out,

and

any

effort to

separate

them,

or

privilege

one

over

the other

is bound to

misrepresent

historical

complexity

and

causation.

Amin

writes:

If

the

period

ofthe

Renaissance

marks a

qualitative

break

in the

history

of

humanity,

it is

precisely

because,

from that time

on,

Europeans

become

conscious

of

the idea that

conquest of the world by their civilization is henceforth a possible objective. They

therefore

develop

a sense

of

absolute

superiority,

even

if the

actual

submission

of

other

peoples

to

Europe

has

not

yet

taken

place. (1989:

72-73)

Colonial

racism

was characterised

by

ethnocentrisms

derived from

the

antique

and

medieval

past

and

by

quasi-biologicaJ

essentialisms that

anticipated

future

ideologies.

Indeed,

as

Peter

Gose

(1996)

has

found,

premonitions

of

modern

racism

may

be

found

among Spanish

ideologues

of

the

reconquista,

as

well

as

Spanish

and Latin American

Inquisitorial

interrogations

into

limpieza

de

sangre

[purity

of

blood],

long

before

the

more

totalising,

or

biologistic

19th-century

formulations that are the

hallmark of

fully

evolved

modern

racism.3

Like

modern

racism

too,

the

limpieza

movement

was,

in

part,

an

expression

of

petty

bourgeois

resentment,

in which

'social

mobility

could

be

achieved

by impugning

the

religious

virtue of

those with

privilege.

This same

plebeian

search for

mobility

and

equality


6/23


7/23

126

Mary

Weismantel and

Stephen

F.

Eisenman

that would

prevail

in

the

modern

period. Systematic

or

scientific

racism in

the late

18th and

19th

centuries,

in

fact,

was

precisely

a

matter

of

combining

old faith

and

modern

reason,

Enlightenment theory

and

capitalist practice,

intellectual

dispassion

and

economic

expedi-

ency. Indeed, no crystal clear division can be drawn between the older racism comprised of

caste

prejudice (justified

in

part by

reference to the doctrine

of the

Great

Chain of

Being)

and

notions ofthe

heretability

of

grace,

and

the

new

somatic and

scientific

regimes

marked

by

hyper-exploitation

and

apartheid.

A

preponderance

of

evidence,

however,

points

to

the

later 18th

and

early

19th centuries

as

periods

of accelerated

ideological,

political

and

economic

transformation

in

the

relation of

masters to

slaves,

elites to

masses and

metropoli?

tan

to

colonial

subjects.4

Modern

racism

expressed

the

ideological

needs of the

plantation

system,

rendering

white

slaveholders citizens

of the

polis,

and black

slaves,

as

Orlando

Patterson

writes,

socially

dead

(Patterson,

1982; Mintz,

1974).

In the

early

colonial

period,

slaves

might

be

expected

to

owe allegiance to their colonial masters and overseers, in conformity both with feudal

ideology

and the

older

Augustinian

theory

that the slave

?

ipsojure

?

was a

sinner;

but

as

modern

capitalist

slavery

matured,

slaves became

simply

subhuman

chattel,

forms of

mobile

and

self-regenerating

private property (Blackburn,

1997).

Natural

or racial difference

offered

not

only

an

apologetic

for

slavery,

but a

needed

explanation

for the

stubborn

persistence

of class

division.

Modern

racism thus

offered

a

solution

to

the

fundamental

contradiction

between

Enlightenment

universalism

and

capitalist particularism

for societies

on both sides

of

the

Atlantic,

which

prized

equality

and

yet

upheld

private

property:

'The

social

constraints

on

equality',

writes

Kenan

Malik,

began

to

appear

as natural

ones.

In

this

process

the ideas

of natural

difference which

held

sway

in

the pre-Enlightenment world were recast into a 'scientific discourse of biological essence

and

cultural

degeneration'

(1996:

70).5

This

simultaneous

embrace of

political

equality

and 'natural'

inequality,

and the

appeal

to

the

science

of race

to resolve the

contradiction,

is central

to modern

South American

political thought,

beginning

with the

foundational

writings

and

speeches

of Simon

Bolivar.

In an

address

to

the

Second National

Congress

of Venezuela in

1819,

Bolivar uses

the

language

of scientific

racism,

although

like

many

a racial

theorist after

him he finds

South

American

reality

recalcitrant

to

exact

analyis.

The

people

of the

Andes,

he

states,

are

neither

European

nor North

American; rather,

they

are a

mixture

of

African and the

Americans

who originated in Europe ... It is impossible to determine with any degree of

accuracy

where

we

belong

in

the

human

family

...

But like

Alexander

Hamilton and the Federalists in the

United

States,

or

Georges

Danton

and the

Girondins

in

France,

Bolivar believed

that

natural

inequality

could

be

overcome to

a

considerable extent

by

republican

institutions. In the same

speech,

he

asserted

firmly

that,

'Under

the

Constitution,

which

interprets

the laws

of

Nature,

all

citizens of Venezuela

enjoy

complete

political equality'

(1951:181).

Yet

for

Bolivar,

the

principle

of

political equality

must be

tempered by

the

reality

of

physical

and

moral

inequality.

Nature

endows

men with different

amounts of

intelligence,

temperament, strength

and character

(181).

It

therefore

follows that

popular sovreignty

must ever

be checked

by

an

hereditary

senate;

the

underlying

capitalist

particularism

of his

thought

can be

seen in the

assumption

that

this

senate

will

consist of

wealthy

and

well-educated

men.


8/23

Race

in

the Andes

127

In later

years,

Bolivar

increasingly

feared that

'persons

of

colour',

as

he wrote in a

letter

to

General

Paez

from

1826,

represented

'a

great

volcano that lies at

our

feet'

(1951: 628).

Certainly

the

resistance

of

Bolivian

Aymara

that

year,

to the

imposition

of

new

land taxes

and other tributes was a clear expression of racial antagonisms in the new nation (Platt,

1987:

285-287).

Fear

and

loathing

of

that

coloured and

laboring

mass

would

only

grow

during

the

foilowing

decades

in both

Europe

and

the

Americas.

Indeed,

Bolivar's anxieties

about the

racial

heterogeneity

of the

Andean

nations,

were matched

by

those of

European

men

of

letters

?

such

as Edmund

Burke,

Augustin

Thierry

and Walter

Bagehot

?

about

their

own

populations.

The

Comte

de

Gobineau,

notorious for his

organisation

of

the

world

into

white,

yellow

and

black

races,

extended the

same

principle

into

his

analysis

of

individual

societies,

including

those of

Europe. Every

social

order,

he

wrote,

is

founded

upon

three

original

classes,

each of

which

represents

a racial

variety:

the

nobility,

a

more

or less accurate

reflection

of

the

conquering

race;

the

bourgeoisie

composed

of mixed

stock

coming

close to the chief

race;

and the

common

people

who

live

in

servitude,

or at

least in

a

very depressed

position.

The

'lower race'

of

European

commoners 'came

about

in

the south

through

miscegenation

with

the

negroes

and

in the

north with

Finns'.6

The

racism

that

flourished in

South America and the

Andes

in the

19th

century,

then,

was

a

regional

expression

ofthe

global

rationalisation of

bourgeois

class

domination,

given

new

impetus

by

the

ever-expanding

racial discourses of

the

sciences. In

Europe,

the natural

sciences,

especially

biology

and

geology,

but also

the

social

sciences,

politics

and

economics,

had

already

been

marshalled for the

hermeneutic task

(Gould,

1981);

the

incorporation

of

American racial typologies offered exciting new opportunities in this direction. Peruvian

physician

Hipolito

Unanue

published

such

a

scheme

in

1805

(Saco,

1938 cited

in

Rout,

1976:

128-129);

some

decades

later,

in

his Account

of

Travels in

Peru,

During

the Years

1838-1842

...,

the

influential

German

geographer

J.

J.

von

Tschudi

published

a

more

elaborate

version,

describing

no

less than

twenty-two

racial

castes

in

Lima,

ranging

from

mulato

(White

father and

Negro mother)

to

Zambo

claro

(Indian

father and Zamba

mother)

to

Indio

(Indian

father and

China-Chola

mother) (1847:

114).

Each caste

in

turn,

according

to

von

Tschudi,

delines

itself

in

opposition

to

its nearest

neighbour.

He

writes,

'The

Mulatto

fancies

himself next

to the

European,

and

thinks that the little

tinge

of black

in

his skin

does not

justify

his

being

ranked lower than the

Mestizo,

who

is after

all

only

an

Indio

bruto9

(116).

But the

South

American

explorer

Alexander von

Humboldt,

whose

writings

about his

travels

in the

Andes

were

far more

influential than

Von

Tschudi's,

reached

quite

different

conclusions

about

Andean

somatic

diversity.

Anticipating

Franz

Boas,

von Humboldt

reasoned

that

the

almost infinite

gradations

in

skin color

and skull

shape

between humans

of

geographically proximate

regions,

must

doom

any

attempt

to

group

the

genus

homo into

distinct

races. In

contrast to the

profound

racism of Von

Tschudi,

who not

only

argued

that

the

negro

skull

and

brain

more

closely

resembled that of

monkeys

than of

Europeans,

but

also

called

the

movement to free

black

slaves

in Peru

'a

plague

to

society',

Von Humboldt

wholly

rejected

what he

called 'the

depressing

assumption

of

superior

and inferior

races

of

man'.7

At

the

end of

his

life,

he claimed that all

humans

formed a

single community,

and

all

had

a

right

to freedom

and

respect

(1850: 351).

Despite

Von

Humboldt's

international

reputation,

however,

there

was little

audience for

these ideas at

midcentury,

a time

when

the

word

race had

attained

encylopaedic

breadth.


9/23

128

Mary

Weismantel

and

Stephen

F. Eisenman

'All

is

race,

there

is

no other truth' wrote

the

novelist

and future British Prime Minister

Benjamin

Disraeli

in

1847,

on

the eve

of the

great

year

of

revolution

(1927:153).

Race was

the fundamental determinant

of

history,

he

believed,

and

every

nation

and

people

were

peculiarly

fated

by

dint of

blood. Disraeli's

views' were shared

by many, perhaps

even most

educated

Europeans

and

Americans

in the middle and

later

19th

century,

during

what

Stocking

has

called,

'the dark

ages

...

of

anthropological

ideas'

(1974:413).

In the

writings

of Gobineau

and

Gustave Le

Bon

in

France,

Mathew Arnold

and

Cecil Rhodes in

Britain,

and S. G.

Morton

and

Josiah Nott in the

United

States,

race was treated as the

encapsula-

tion of

history,

religion,

commerce,

language,

labour

and

physical being.

The

trouble

with

Ecuadorians,

wrote

the

French

geographer

Elisee

Reclus,

is

that

they

are

mostly

mestisses,

with

only

a weak

infusion of

Spanish

blood

(1895: 446).

Race

predetermined

a

nation's

economic,

intellectual

and

military vitality;

it

predicted

as

well

a

colonised

people's propen?

sity

to

civilisation and

a

colonising

nation's likelihood of

achieving

imperial

mastery.

'The

more

perfected

a

race',

wrote

the fin-de-siecle

French colonialist

J. M. A. de

Lanessan,

'the

more

it tends to

spread;

the

more inferior a

race,

the

more

it

remains

sedentary'.

In the

Andes,

these theories were

applied

to the

bipartite

division of Peruvian

popula?

tions

into limeno and

serrano,

or the

tripartite seperation

of Ecuadorians into white

(coastal),

cftoZo-Indians

(highland),

and

savages (rainforest)

When the British

explorer

C.

Reginald

Enoch wrote his

several studies

of the Andean

region

at the end of the

19th

century,

he

was

absolutely

confident that each

population

was

utterly

separate

from the

other,

and that each was

the

autochthonous result

of

land,

wind and rain. Their distinct

religions,

diets,

habitations,

and

modes of labour and leisure

shaped

their limbs

and

coloured their faces.

'Whilst

in

general

terminology',

Enoch

writes,

The

Quechuas

and

Aymaras

are called

Indians,

they

must not

be confounded

with the

savage

tribes

of the

forest,

from which

they

are distinct

in

every

respect.

They

are,

in

addition,

generally

known

as

Cholos,

or

Cholo-Indians.

They

have,

of

course,

absolutely

nothing

in common with

the

imported

negros

of the

coast,

and are

not

necessarily

dark-skinned

?

their

complexions

sometimes

being

relatively

light

?

although they

are

beardless.

They

are

strong

and

hardy

in

constitution,

and

are much

sought

after

as

mining

labourers,

having

a

natural

aptitude

for

this work.

(1908:

143-144)

Enoch's ideas

about

race admit

multiple

causalities.

If

each

of

these

peoples

had

experienced

different

degrees

of wealth or

poverty, power

or

servitude,

these fates seemed determined as

much

by

the vicissitudes of

history

as

by geography.

The

highland

cholos,

for

example,

had

been

oppressed

by

the

Spaniards,

and

'this has

induced

a

feeling

of

despair,

which is

imprinted

on their

melancholy

countenances,

and

in

the

passive

resistance

which

has

become their

habitual attitude toward

progress

and the

administration

of

the

republic'

(144).

(In

Bolivia,

at

least,

the

Indians were

anything

but

passive

in

their resistance. In

1899,

they

rose

up

in

violent rebellion

against

white and mestizo

encroachments

upon

lands

possessed

by,

as

the leader

of

one

ayllu

wrote,

'the Indian race'

[Platt,

1987:

280].)

In

general,

however,

most

writers

in

the fin-de-siecle

rejected

cultural

for

biological

arguments;

their

proposals

for

the amelioration

of

inequality

were thus not

political,

but

eugenic.

At the Second

International

Congress

of

Eugenics

held in

New

York in

1921,

the

aged French librarian and anatomist Georges Vacher de Lapouge summarised the thought

of

the

previous

two

generations

by

insisting

that the word

race

possessed

a

'zoological

aspect,

on

the same

order

as

[the term]

species,

but

just

slightly

inferior'

(1923: 1).

Earlier

admired

in

Europe

by

Kaiser Wilhelm

II,

and

later

in the

Americas

by

the Brazilian


10/23

Race

in the

Andes

129

eugenicist

F.

J. de

Oliveira

Vianna,

de

Lapouge

proposed

various extreme measures for

whitening,

or

Aryanising

'mixed'

populations, including

'telegenesis',

that

is,

insemination at

a

distance

by

artificial means

(Schneider, 1990:62).

His ideas remained

influential,

especially

in Latin America, well past his death in 1936.9

Retreat

from

this

modern,

totalising

racism

was

slow and

gradual,

but occurred in the

Andes,

North

America

and

Europe

nearly simultaneously.

In

the

United

States,

Boas and

his

students

at

Columbia,

including

A. L.

Kroeber,

for the first time

clearly

exposed

the

scientific

fiction of fixed racial

categories,

and

placed

culture

at

the

center

of

anthropolologi-

cal

investigation.

In

Chicago

and

London,

the functionalists

Malinowski

and

Radcliffe-

Brown

followed

a

path

earlier trodden

by

Emile

Durkheim

in

rejecting

racial determinism

and

trumpeting

cultural

holism.

For

them,

anthropological

observation

and

interrogation

was

not

a

means

for

establishing

a

global

hierarchy

of

nations or

races,

even less a

basis for

whitening

otherwise

dark,

degenerate

races,

but

simply

of

understanding

the internal

logic

of diverse cultural systems.

In

Peru,

Jose

Carlos

Mariategui

was

similarly

convinced,

in

1928,

that what he called

'the

problem

ofthe

Indian' was

sociological,

not

racial. He

had

no

sympathy

for the

eugenicists

who,

as

Nancy

Stepan

(1991)

has

shown,

were then

at the

peak

of

their

influence in Latin

America.

According

to

Mariategui,

'The

ethnic

[i.e.

racial]

problem

that has

occupied

the

attention

of

untrained

sociologists

and

ignorant

analysts

is

altogether

fictitious ...

In the

simplistic judgment

of those

who

advise

that

the

Indian be

regenerated by

cross-breeding,

the

intellectual

and

technical

skills,

the

creative

drive,

and the moral

discipline

ofthe white

race are

reduced

to

mere

zoological

conditions'

(1988:

25).

Elsewhere,

he stated

that,

'The

concept

of inferior

races

was useful

to the white

man's

West

for

purposes

of

expansion

and

conquest' (1988: 281). Yet Mariategui was not wholly free ofthe racism he purported to

condemn.

Influenced

by

the French

sociologists

Durkheim,

Georges

Sorel,

and

Gustav Le

Bon

and

the

Italian

theorist Vilfredo

Pareto,

as much as

by

Karl

Marx,

Mariategui

believed

that

populations

were ruled

by

an

ineffable

yet permanent

collective

consciousness that

was

only

partly

coincident with social

class.10 'The

Indian

has a social

existence',

he

writes,

'that

preserves

his

customs,

his

understanding

of

life,

his

attitude toward the universe.

The

'residuaf

feelings

and

derivations

described

to

us

in

the

sociology

of

Pareto,

which continue

to

operate

in

him,

are

those of

his

own

history.

Indian life

has

a

style'

(1988:

281).

For

Mariategui,

as for

the

anti-Marxist

Pareto,

it

was

collisions between the

'residuaF,

unvarying

or

autonomous cultural

traditions

of

classes

and

communities that

would

determine the future shape of social totality. Pareto maintained that, 'The form ofa society

is

determined

by

all

the elements

which

act on

it

...

[including]

race, residues,

or

the

sentiments

manifested

by

them,

tendencies,

interests,

aptitudes

for

reason,

the

state

of

knowledge,

etc'

(1917:

Vol.

II,

see.

2060,

p.

1306

[our

trans.]).

Thus,

while

Mariategui

displaces

race

with

culture in

his

analysis,

the latter remains

?

as

it

had

been for

Pareto

?

as

essential and

deterministic as the former. The

admixture of

cultures,

according

to

Mariategui

?

which he

labels

mestizaje

?

'manifests itself in a

sordid

and

unhealthy

stagnation'.

In

terms

that

may

have

been derived

from

the

anti-miscegenist

Gustave Le

Bon

and

the

degenerist

Max

Nordau,

he

continues: 'Neither

European

nor

Indian is

perpetuated

in

the

mestizo;

they

sterilize each other'

(1988: 282).

Given

Mariategui's 'initial frontal rejection of the notion of race, his scorn toward mestizaje may

seem a

contradiction',

de

la Cadena

writes,

'but

it

was not. What

Mariategui

rejected

was

the

terminal

influence of

biology

in

race,

which

represented

at the time a

progressive

position'

(this

vol).


11/23

130

Mary

Weismantel

and

Stephen

F.

Eisenman

De

la Cadena

may

be

correct that 'the absolute

conceptual

dismissal of "race"

was

not

historically

possible

during

[Mariategui's]

life

period',

but

neither is

it not

entirely

clear

what was

gained

when he and

subsequent

authors

displaced

one form of

essentialism

for

another. Both biological and cultural racism are examples, to recall Sartre, of'comprehens?

ive

attitude[s]

which

precede

the facts

they

are

supposed

to call forth'. Both are

at

once,

as

we have

seen,

sectarian and

non-sectarian,

exclusionary

and

prescriptive.

The

geographical

stereotypes

recorded

by

Enoch,

which

concern

at once

bodies, cultures,

minds and

souls,

are

operative

in the

writings

of

Mariategui

and

remain

salient

today;

they

have been

combined

with

still other

prejudices

?

especially

concerning

sex and

gender

?

to

form

a

new,

historically composite

neo-racism

that

combines

features

from each of the racisms outlined

above.

They

have,

however,

also

been

joined by popular

conceptions

of race that are

both

corporeal

and,

at

times,

oppositional.

ANDEAN NEO-RACISM

AT THE END

OF

THE

CENTURY

If the end of the

19th

century

saw

the

triumph

of race as

a

global

ideology,

the end of the

20th

century

marks

the

widespread

disavowal of

race

in

the Andes

and

elsewhere

?

but

not

the

end

of

racism.

Nineteenth-century

high

capitalism

carried the

flag

of

imperialism

with

pride,

but

late

capitalism

drapes

itself in cultural

pluralism

?

a

garment,

however,

of shreds

and

patches

that

fails

to

cloak a racist

body politic.

As

racism

adopted

the

language

of

culture,

it

inserted

itself

into

the most

improbable

discourses;

today

conversations

about

geography,

medicine,

or

styles

of

dance

may

act

to reinforce racial

stereotypes

even when

race itself remains occulted. Other discourses

?

especially

those of

class,

gender,

and sex

?

in turn borrow freely from the language of race; this process is captured perfectly in the

memorable

phrase

recorded

by

de la

Cadena,

'Women

are more Indian'

(1991).

These close

relationships

between

race,

economic

inequality,

and

gender

and

sex

oppression,

strengthen

racial

logic through

mutual

reinforcement.

As Orlove

cannily

notes,

even

the

supposed

innocence of

'campesino',

a term intended

to remove

all reference to

race,

nevertheless

carries

within its

syllables

an evocation of

dirt

and

earthiness

like that which

clings

to

images

of the Indian.

Colonial

and modern racisms rested

their claims

upon apparently

solid

foundations:

Scripture

or science.

In

contrast,

Andean

neo-racism

is

polymathic,

moving easily

from

the

residues of 19th

century geographical

theories

or

early

twentieth

century

eugenics,

to

the

latest biomedical

research;

it revels in contradictions.

As the

illogic

of

racism becomes

ever

more

visible,

its

flexibility grows.

Collapsing

continually

into

paradox,

the

contemporary

racist

simply

rebounds into a new

metaphoric

register.

As Orlove

points

out,

one man

might

index his whiteness

by

flaunting

his leather shoes.

'I am

whiter',

says

a

second,

'because I

am

richer;

but if

you

are

rich

too,

then I

am still

whiter,

because

I

am

more masculine'.

T am

white because

of

my

education',

a third

might

claim,

'and

my

professional

title'.

Crude

biological

racism, too,

though

no

longer

an official

public

discourse,

nevertheless

lives on in the coarse

humor heard in

offices

and

private

clubs.

In

Quito

in the

1980s,

we

heard

eugenic

solutions

to Ecuador's

economic

problems

laughingly proposed:

'let's

just

bring

in

boatloads

of nubile

Scandanavian

girls',

offered

the

wealthy young

men

in an

exclusive

salsateca,

'and

spray

the air with

aphrodisiacs'.

The

logical corollary

to

this

nocturnal

fantasy

?

the desire

to eliminate or sterilise

non-white

populations

?

was

expressed

during daylight

hours,

in

sternly

Social

Darwinist

expositions

upon

the

incom-

patibility

of

modernity

and the

Indian

(Weismantel,

1996:

308).


12/23

Race

in the

Andes

131

Despite

their

infamous

past,

hygenic

theories

of

race

retain their

popularity

as well. The

novelist and

essayist

Primo Levi

recalled that

in

Auschwitz,

the

prisoners

were

constantly

doused with

disinfectant: a

reminder

to

their

guards

that their

Jewishness

rendered them

untouchable. The body ofthe Jew was defined as an unclean substance, of which the Aryan

nation

must be

cleansed. Neo-Nazi writers

in

Europe today,

similarly, compare

the

intrusion of

foreigners

into their countries

as

the

spread

of a

dangerous

disease. In

the

Andes,

such

threatening

invasions

?

the infamous

'Indian stain'

['/a

mancha

india?~\

that

was

imagined

to

spread

across the center

ofPeru,

or the

'gigantic

belt

of

poverty

and

misery'

that,

according

to

Vargas

Llosa,

has

'squeezed

the

old

[i.e. white]

part

of Lima

more and

more

tightly' (Ellis,

this

vol.)

?

come

not

from without

but from within: the autochthonous

race of

the

continent

stubbornly preventing

the

members

of the modern

nation from

achieving

the

civilised

status of

Europeans.

As in

Europe,

the

racial

trepidations

of white South Americans

find

expression

in the

language of dirt and disease. Neptali Zuiiiga wrote in 1940 that Ecuador's Indians were

unhealthy,

disordered,

and

miserable,

a

'plane

of reduced life'

in which

'biological

develop?

ment'

is

'negatively

influenced

by

food,

the

environment,

the

hygiene'

...

(Colloredo-

Mansfeld,

this

vol).

Most

educated Andeans

would find this

prose

laughable

today,

but

the

underlying

anxiety

about

the contaminated

and

contaminating

Indian

body

remains. An

Ecuadorian

engineer

refused to

share a

collective

meal with Indian

workers

in

1991,

covering

his

elitism

by 'saying

something

about

the

dirty

ground

and

the

dangers

of cholera'

(Colloredo-Mansfeld,

this

vol.).

And when

Vargas

Llosa describes

an infuriated

crowd

who attacked the

grandstand

on which

he

stood,

he

seems less afraid

ofthe sticks

and stones

they

carried,

than

of

coming

into

contact

with

their 'half naked' bodies

and their

'pelos

y unas larguisimas* [extremely long hair and fingernails] (quoted in Ellis, this vol.).

Vargas

Llosa's

autobiography

traces his own

antipathy

towards

the bodies

of

impover-

ished

Peruvians

to the

teachings

of his

father,

who demonstrated his

willingness

to

literally

beat the lessons

of

white

masculine

privilege

into

his

son.

In another recent

Peruvian

literary

work

analysed

by

Ellis,

novelist

Jaime

Bayly

also

depicts

a

young

man

subjected

to

the

sometimes

violent

teachings

of his father

on

the nature of

race and sex.

Both men insist

that their

sons

should feel

an

innate

desire,

born of inherited

prerogative,

to dominate

women and

lesser men

around

them;

and both

desperately

fear that

their sons

might

lack

these violent

impulses,

and so fail to become true white men.

These

messages

reveal a fundamental contradiction which Ellis finds

at the heart

of white

masculine identity, but which parallels the defining contradiction of racism itself. These

fathers insist that

as

whites,

they

are

inherently

superior

to 'cholos\ Yet

this

superiority

cannot be taken

for

granted;

it must be

constantly

re-created

through

violent

actions

?

in

public

upon

the

bodies

of

Indians

and

cholos,

and

in

private upon

the bodies

of

white sons.

In these

books,

biological

essentialism becomes

a

realm of fluid

metaphor

in which racial

whiteness,

masculinity,

and

heterosexuality

each

stand

in for one another.

Within the

intimacy

of

the

white

homes

where

fathers

teach

their sons

to be

like

themselves,

race and

sex

collapse

into one

another. This form

of racism

rests more

upon

the

power

of

a

phallus

imagined

as

both

white

and

heterosexual,

than

upon any

firm belief in scientific

racism.

Less virulent

than

this

phallic

racism,

is

the

performative

racism outlined

by

Mendoza

in

her analysis of dance in Cuzco. Judith Butler's notion of gender as 'performative' (1991) is

readily applicable

to

ethnicity

in the

Andes,

where the

absence

of reliable

phenotypical

markers

places

special

emphasis

upon

clothing,

hairstyles, speech

and

body

language

to

determine

who is an

Indian and who

is

not.

The

notion of

performing

racial difference

is


13/23

132

Mary

Weismantel and

Stephen

F. Eisenman

especially apt

for Mendoza's

study

of forms of 'Indianness' and 'mestizo-ness'

that

are

literally

staged:

enacted

as

folkloric dances

with

accompanying

costumes

and

music,

and

sponsored

by

the venerable

Centro

Qosqo,

official

guardian

of

highland

Peruvian

tradition.

But despite its dependence upon costume and pretence, the Centro sponsors folkloric

performances

in order to reveal the

unchanging

inner

essences

of

the Peruvian

national

soul.

The

long-standing

state

approval

of this cultural mission is

exemplified

in

a 1928

speech

made

by

Peru's

President

Leguia

lauding

the Centro

(Mendoza,

this

vol.),

which

made florid

references to race as immanent within

the collective unconscious

ofthe

people.

Leguia

spoke

of

race as

a

natural,

spontaneous

outpouring

of

passion,

made

visible

in

folkloric

performances;

in

reality,

however,

there is little

spontaneity

in

the

practices

of

the

Centro. The institutionalisation

of

Cuzqueno

culture has

required

that folkloric

perfor?

mances be

carefully

constructed and delimited

so as to maintain the boundaries

between

the

'authentically' indigenous

and the

'typically'

mestizo. As Mendoza

recounts,

the Centro's

founders originally selected the markers of'natural' Indianness ? objects such as the kena,

the

charango,

the

spindle

and the

loom,

and

details of

performance

such as

a

breathy style

of

playing

or the

noisy deployment

of the

foot.

These choices are

today

enforced

through

various mechanisms.

Entrants

into folkloric

contests

must adhere to

explicit

rules demand-

ing

that

they perform

either as 'Indians'

or

'mestizos',

and

specifying

the

precise

differences

between

the two. The

judges

at

these

contests

often intervene at

the

request

of

the

performers, giving

advice

on

how to be

?

or

appear

?

true to the

chosen

category

of

Indian or mestizo.

Perhaps

most

telling

are

the

performances

of 'Indian'

dances

given

by

non-Indian

performers,

with their

exaggerated

visual references

to racial

stereotypes.

This

insistent

reiteration

ofa fabricated Indianness

brings

to

light

similarities

between

the

policing of race and that of sex. Those members of Cuzco society with the greatest claim to

non-Indian

status,

are most involved in

teaching

Indians how

to be

Indians,

whether

by

instructing

Indian

performers,

or

by

performing

an

exaggerated

Indianness themselves.

This

is

strikingly

reminiscent of certain

forms of

drag,

that

highly performative

mode

of

gender.

Whereas some

drag

performances

undermine

gender

stereotypes,

drag

can also

reinscribe

patriarchy

when male

performers

use

an

exaggerated

womanliness

to

show

women

how

to

be

truly

feminine.11 In the words of a

heterosexual

Brazilian man who

performs

drag

annually

for

Carnival,

the women of Brazil have

forgotten

how to be

real

women. We are

setting

ourselves

up

as

a

model

of how we want

women

to

behave.

We

want them all

to

be

...

like

us

?

sweet,

demure,

pleasing,

and

teasing.

Our

[performance]

is a kind of

school,

and

we,

the

dames,

are teachers.

(Scheper-Hughes,

1992:

494-495)

Mendoza's folkore

experts,

too,

have

set themselves

up

as teachers

who

demonstrate

to

Indians and

mestizos,

how

to enact more

perfect

and

complete

versions

of themselves.

Like

the

boundary

between

the

sexes,

race must be

carefully

policed

to

ensure

there are

no

cross-overs:

no

hybridity

in

dance

performances

in one

case,

no 'race traitors'

among

white

men in the other.

Indeed,

a

dangerous

obsession with

purity

is

apparent

throughout

Peruvian

intellectual

history,

according

to de

la

Cadena. Her

analyses

of

successive efforts

to rid elite

culture

of

its racism are scathing, revealing that revulsion toward the less-than-white has never

disappeared.

Even romantic

celebrations of

indigenous

culture often

reinscribed

racist

horror at

miscegenation,

displacing

earlier

loathing

for Indians

onto

the

supposedly

even

more

degraded

mestizo.

The

influential Peruvian

ethnologist

Luis

E.

Valcarcel,

for


14/23

Race

in the Andes 133

example, echoing

Mariategui,

espoused

a

doctrine of

geographical purity, maintaining

that

only

those Indians who remained in their 'natural'

rural environment

were

worthy

of

admiration.

Like the racist fantasies analysed by Ellis, these intellectual exercises too may spawn

actual

violence. When Valcarcel condemned

female

migrants,

whom he

imagined

to have

fled their rural communities

because

of sexual

'impurity',

with the

contemptuous phrase:

'Flesh of

the

whorehouse,

one

day

she

will

die

in

the

hospitaF

(de

la

Cadena,

this

vol),

he

exercised

a

merely

imaginary genocidal impulse.

But as

de la

Cadena reminds

us,

a

genera?

tion

later the

Senderistas found

in the

ideology

of

cultural

purity

a

mandate to kill.

Sendero's

isolationism was

opposed by

the assimilationist

ideology

of

the

state,

which

resents

its own

inability

to

draw the

highlands

securely

into

the orbit of the

capital

city.

In

the

eyes

of a

government

centred

in

urban,

coastal

Lima,

the

rural inhabitants of the Sierra

are

subversive almost

by

definition:

not

citizens in need of

protection,

but enemies of the

state. From the perspective of the peasantry, these ideological differences were often

immaterial: the

Peruvian

military

proved

itself

as

willing

as

the Senderistas

to kill

perceived

traitors,

and

far more

proficient

at it.

The wide

variety

of forms

taken

by

racist

ideologies

active in

the

Andes

today disguise

an

underlying singlemindedness.

Whether

it

is racial

purity

that

is

considered

a

virtue,

or

merely

whiteness;

whether

education,

environment,

geography,

genetics,

or ineffable essence

marks the

difference between

Indian and

white,

the

problem

?

in

white

eyes

?

lies with

those who

are

not white. And

it

is

the

indigenous

population,

too,

that

is

the

target

of

proposed

solutions.

Largely

absent from

any

of

these

rhetorics,

is

a critical

focus

on

white

cultural

practices

or

on

the social

nexus

between

white and

non-white.

The 'silent

racisms' of

an

earlier

generation

of Peruvian intellectuals anxious to

'unrace'

themselves,

detailed

by

de la

Cadena

here,

have

given

way

to the

even more

pernicious

'color

blindness' of

Vargas

Llosa,

who

affects

surprise

that he

should

be called 'white'

?

suggesting,

in

effect,

that he has no race

at

all,

or that whiteness

?

unlike

other racial

identities

?

does

not exist. His

anxiety

to avoid racial

identification

is itself characteristic

of

elites,

Ellis

points

out,

and so

underlines rather than

'whites out' his

privileged position.

For

as

Vargas

Llosa discovered

to his

dismay,

race,

once the

weapon

wielded

by

the dominant

class,

has

fallen into

the

hands of 'chinitos and cholitos'

(de

la

Cadena,

this

vol.)

to whom his

whiteness is both

obvious and

important.

POPULAR ONTOLOGIES OF RACE IN THE ANDES

Race is

not

the

exclusive

terrain

of

the

racist. Ecuadorians

of

all

classes

and

colors were

forced to

acknowledge

the

power

of

oppositional

race

during

the

nationwide

indigenous

demonstration of

1990,12

and

again

in

the late

summer of

1997.13

Behind these movements

lies

a

widespread

subaltern

response

to the

diffuse but

ubiquitous

nature of

late

20th

century

racism.14

Indians,

like

whites,

acknowledge clothing, hairstyles,

footwear,

language

and

gesture

as

aspects

of

race,

together

with

descent and

birthplace,

the

shape

and

size ofthe

body,

and

the

colour

and

texture

of

the

skin

and the

hair.

But the

Indian

system

of

race,

built

up

from these

characteristics,

is

subtly

but

profoundly

different from

the

essentialism

of

received

racism. Race

appears

in

popular indigenous ontology

as

a

form

of

knowing

that

is both

real

and

historical,

fixed

yet fully contingent

(Weismantel,

1997).

Above

all,

it is an

insistently

materialist

response

to the

slippery

neo-racist

posturing

of

Andean

elites;

as

such,

it

highhghts

the

oddly

disembodied

quality

of race

in

contemporary


15/23

134

Mary

Weismantel

and

Stephen

F.

Eisenman

theory.

Both

the

writers

who

argue

that

biological

race

exists,

and their social-constructivist

opponents,

share

a

curious reluctance to

engage

with

the

physicality

of that

body

which

is,

both would

agree,

the vehicle and locus of

racial

identity.

Anti-essentialism

easily

shades

into anti-materialism: anxious to

dispel

the

image

of race as a fixed

reality

independent

of

history,

writers

may

instead

make

of

it an

illusory

chimera

inscribed

upon

the

body

in

a

superficial

fashion.

Oddly enough,

however,

it

is

in

contemporary

biological

racism that

the

materiality

of

the

body

vanishes most

completely.

The

science of

genetics

disdains

the

natural

history

of the

human

body

after

conception:

its

daily

interactions

with

the world

and other

organisms

are

an

afterthought, unimportant

in

the face of

a

biological

destiny

predetermined by

a

genetic

code

that

is insubstantial and

invisible.

Our intellectual

heritage

condemns us to

perceive

race either

as immanent

nature

or

contingent

culture;

the

materiality

ofthe

world,

the

body

and

history

fall

between

the cracks

of this false

dichotomy.

But in the articles

presented

here,

we find the intimations ofa

theory

of Andean race more in

keeping

with indigenous

perceptions:

one in which race designates

a

social

history

and a

sense

of

being

that

is neither

'hard-wired' into the

body,

nor 'read'

from

it

as

though

from a

page.

Instead,

race accumulates

within

the

body,

in

its

extremities

and its

orifices,

its

organs

and

its

impulses,

as

a

result

of

a

life

lived within

a

particular

human

community

at

a

specific

moment

in time.

Both

Colloredo-Mansfeld and

Orlove

read

the

social fact of race in

the extremities

ofthe

body.

Colloredo-Mansfeld looks at

hands,

capturing

the

interaction between

Indian

and

white in the

moment

when an

indigenous

woman

'places

some

grubby

bills

in

the

soap

chaffed hand

of a

white-mestizo

shopkeeper'

who 'recoils' from her customer. Orlove

writes

about feet:

in the Lake Titicaca

region,

a

man

unwilling

to

get

mud between his

toes,

is

a man who has rejected his community ? an unsurprising conclusion to be reached by

a

people

whom

earlier census-takers

had

labelled

as 'Indian'

precisely

because

of the

absence of

shoes.

Gary

Urton,

commenting

upon

Orlove's

paper,

describes the world of feet

in

Paucar-

tambo

(a

community

near

Cuzco)

as

'tripartite':

mestizo feet

encased

within

shiny,

thin-

soled leather shoes

designed

for

interior

living;

Indian

feet in

their

open

shoes

or

ojotas,

exposed

to the

environment around

them;

and

gringo

feet,

clomping

about

in

big

heavy

hiking

boots

which

allow

the wearer

not to

experience

the

earth,

but to

conquer

it. When

Urton

adopted

the

ojota,

he

'discovered

the

value of

having dirty

feet. That

is,

when

wearing

ojotas, your

feet are warmer when

your

feet are

dirty (they're very

warm when

they

are

muddy )'15

These

hands and feet render

the

abstract

concept

of economic

class,

concrete

and

unmistakeable. Peasant feet look

like small

rhinoceri with their

splayed

toes,

horny

heels

and dense soles

like armor

plating.

In

contrast,

the

feet

of a

mestiza

shopgirl

who stands

up

all

day

in

narrow

high

heels,

are as

broken,

confined and

misshapen

as

though

she

were the

victim of

footbinding.16

But

race is

nevertheless both more

and

less than

class;

their

close intersection

does not

indicate

synonymity.

Poor white

peasants

and

rich

Indian

comerciantes do

exist,

although

within dominant

ideologies

the racial

identity

of the

former,

and the class affiliation

of the

latter,

are

frequently

called into

question.

Strong,

broad, brown,

bare

feet

inevitably

evoke

the image of the Indian in the Andes, even though such feet in fact can be found attached to

non-Indian bodies as well. Since

race colours class

in

the

Americas,

racial

imagery

will

almost

inevitably

be used

to

stigmatise

the owners of such

feet,

who resemble

Indians

even

though

they

claim

European

roots.

By

the same

token,

the

Otaveleno

who

shops

for his


16/23

Race in

the

Andes

135

shoes

abroad,

returning

home in Italian

loafers or

the

latest

Nikes,

encounters

among

envious

whites

not

only

the sense

that such

a

sight

is

shocking,

but the

suspicion

that it

is

somehow unnatural

and

immoral

?

even

criminal,

as

in

the

conversations

overheard

by

Colloredo-Mansfeld

(this vol.).

Among

Indians,

however,

the

suspicion

is

not that

the

shoes don't

belong

on the

body,

but

that

the

body

no

longer

belongs

to the race.

'Chasna

purina/layachu

karka9,

sing

the

people

of Colta

about their

upwardly

mobile sons:

'walking

around like

that/hasn't

he

become

a

white

man?'

(Harrison,

1989:23,

our

trans.).17

From the

indigenous

point

of

view,

it is

possible

to

become

what

one

was

not

at

birth:

born

Indian,

untold

numbers of

Andean

people

have

died as

mestizos. But

one

cannot

make

the

transformation

in

an instant.

To

change

race

is

more

than

adopting

a

new

set

of

clothes,

or

learning

to

speak Spanish

without

the

tell-tale

verbal habits

of the

Quichua-speaker.

It is not

merely

a

matter of

disguise,

of

pretence,

of

'passing

for'

what

one is

not;

it

is

instead

the

process

of

building

a different

body,

one

that

looks, sounds, feels,

and

even

smells

white.

Colloredo-Mansfeld

mentions

that the

issue

of

smelly

bodies contributed

to

confronta?

tions over the

treatment

of

Indians

on

buses;

we

learned in

Cotopaxi

province

race_in_the_andes_1998.pdf

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