Author Archives: aredfo01

The Pun is Already There. I’m Not Gonna Say It

Posted on by under Uncategorized

What did I learn? That you’re actually supposed to like the courses you take in your degree.

Taking Indigenous Studies as your major, while a fantastic way to deconstruct the colonial world around you, does focus very much on the world around you. Conversations about Indigenous groups in other parts of the world as not nearly as prominent, and I think that was the main reason I took this class. I wanted to hear Indigenous in a context outside of the land now called Canada. Well. I’m glad I did.

I think that I learned so much about Latin American culture, especially in and around the treatment of Indigenous peoples, but also how to link together domestic conversations of Indigeneity and international conversations of Indigeneity. What is Indigeneity? The ultimate question. This course did leave me with a lot more questions than answers, but I think that’s what a good Arts course is meant to do. If I was leaving CHEM 101 with questions, I’d be pissed. But I’m not! So… Yahoo! Anyway, a course like this is meant to make you think, to discuss and I think the format of this class worked well for this reason too. I enjoyed squinting at the board to make out words that are indecipherable in the middle of those beautiful mind maps.

I learned so much about voice. More specifically, the possibilities that voice holds. It exists outside of the idea of orality, and out of individuality. Voice can last years, and it can reflect upon person and person, and it can represent in a way that we may not picture a tangible voice doing. Voice carries agency, and identity, and personality. How do we find a way to healthily and ethically create a voice-partnership like Burgos and Menchu, or Marcos and the community? I’m not saying those are healthy or ethical, I’m also not saying they aren’t…. No comment. Anyway.

I genuinely just really enjoyed this class. I learned how to be brave and talk in discussions, and that not all blog posts need to be formal. I kind of learned how to form my own voice and not use cuss words in blog posts too. Apropos. I also learned that I may have a knack for really stupid blog post titles, and I should look into that. I don’t know how many jobs there are in that department now that ChatGPT exists, but anyway. I’ve really enjoyed this course, and I’m really glad I took it. Congrats to those graduating 🙂 and I hope I see the rest of you around!

Reject Modernity, Embrace Xapiri

Posted on by under Yanomami

What a great critique of the Western way of living. Kopenawa proceeds to spend the latter half of this book criticizing the modern day way of consuming and trying to make every product last forever, hoping to extend lifespans and human existence. This is a mindset that is grounded in wanting to hold power and privilege forever, the same way clout-chasing youtubers will use clickbait to keep getting their views. All this lifestyle wants is more to obsess over, in order to feed the need for modernization and industrialization. We want to become one with concrete skyscrapers: tall, indestructible, taking up space with our thousands of things forever.

Why do we aim for this when our life started with such natural existence? As Kopenawa explains, nothing in the forest lasts forever. There is a strange sense of peace intertwined with knowing our existences end, and that nothing can live infinitely except the metaphysical, like the xapiri. Hence, living as a Yanomami is to reject the white idea that items must possess immortality, and instead find the things that exist now to find harmony with them.

Something I found really interesting with the last portion of the book was how he chooses to differentiate the Yanomami, pushing inward, away from the white ideas towards what he knows as true. He explains that he tried to acclimate, to both the foods and the ways of living, but they only harmed him. It is as though he is of a completely different breed, and the white ways of living are offensive to his health. It is also a comment on how white people have managed to spread such epidemics of disease throughout Indigenous populations, including the ones that killed both of Kopenawa’s parents. This, to me, is a reflection of the idea that in wanting to last forever, white people decimate the populations that do not feel significant to them.

I really like how straight-up Kopenawa is. He refuses to sacrifice his experience and life for a subdued political view. He is not afraid to diss white people, and I do absolutely love the idea of Albert reading it and being like “hmm. so true”. As an ethnographer, I wonder where Albert draws his line of observing and holding opinions that agree or disagree with Kopenawa. Me personally? I’m not an ethnographer. So I don’t know. But as there are many many ethics involved in anthropology, I imagine ethnography is an even deeper iceberg. I suppose I have much to learn.

Bruce Albert is Not Like the Other Girls

Posted on by under Yanomami

This book has taken us in an interesting turn, and I see why it’s last on the syllabus. It parallels almost every. other text in a very intriguing way, opposing Guaman Poma and mirroring Rigoberta Menchu. What is most interesting to me, though, is the conversation about translation. Specifically, how Bruce Albert wrote the book by listening to Kopenawa and translating all of it into French. As my late French immersion didn’t do me much good, I read the book in English, and hence lies another layer of translation. In this way, I’m reminded of the Popol Vuh, and questions are raised about the complete authenticity and accuracy of the writing. Based on how blatantly anti-white people it is, there is a sense of the faithful meanings and proper translation being done. As well, it is reminiscent of Yawar Fiesta in its use of words in their original language to convey their exact meaning.

Another thing to consider in this book is how Albert’s background as an anthropologist influences his research. There is a deep-rooted history of anthropology looking at Indigenous people as damaged individuals to solve and document, ignoring their own agency. The ‘story of Indigenous deficiency’, as Daniel Heath Justice calls it, implies that Indigenous people’s beliefs and traditions have led them to a state of moral lacking, and that is what causes all of their distress. This ignores, oh I don’t know, colonizers colonizing. Often anthropologists come at oppressed cultures with a damage-based research lens. What’s interesting here is how Albert learns to use a desire-based research lens, documenting what Kopenawa wants to pass on to the white world. He even goes so far as to adamantly distance himself from other anthropologists, claiming this is no longer his work but really his way of life. He is not like the other anthropologists, he’s so different.

This ties into something Kopenawa talks about, which is how white people need their knowledge written to be passed down and remembered. This contrasts greatly with Yanomami culture, where their knowledge is ingrained in their thoughts and their speeches. This means that Albert is then coming in as a knowledge translator, taking the white man role to write down his white man words. As much as this accomplishes Kopenawa’s goal of spreading knowledge, how effectively does this contribute to the continuation of needing to—for lack of a better term—Westernize Yanomami life and Indigenous knowledge in general?

I Want to Sue Subcomandante Marcos for Emotional Damages

Posted on by under Uncategorized

In the second half, Marcos becomes a storyteller. Don’t get me wrong, he was one before, but the tone turns more conversational for a while and we hear a metaphorical laughter through stories like his tales of sleepless solitude. It’s an interesting change, and I liked getting to hear more personal details about Marcos. Did it also shatter my heart? Completely.

In the letter to Eduardo Galeano, Marcos writes about his time on Children’s Day, and how the children chose to spend their time in the midst of all of the conflict. It makes you empathize with Marcos in a completely new way (as if I didn’t already). Maybe I’m just not immune to propaganda, but it’s truly deeply touching.

In portions 47 and 48, he is vulnerable, his personal information and experience with death spread out on a table. For me, this book becomes something that only further cements, in a scripted way, Marcos’ legacy as an essential character in the rebellion.

I think that the storytelling is such an interesting turn for him to make, mostly because they are written as they were most likely told to children, and so much humanity and personality is read through it.

It genuinely hurts my heart. Does this become no longer a conversation of Indigenous voice, but instead of Marcos’ personal life? For me, I’m finding it hard to bring my head out of the specificity of his stories and life back to our general class discussion. This is, weirdly, the first book that has done so. Interesting, because Marcos, in his anaphora and his references to the Popol Vuh, is trying to always bring the reader back to the main idea. He talks of his own life, and he turns to his audience and he says we don’t have to choose this. The government is lying when they say we have to live in this pain.

I think that the format of this book—that is, that it isn’t completely chronological—contributes to this mountain of heartbreak that I’m feeling. He talks of his hike up a steep hill, stars rejuvenating him. This is in 1999, but later comes the story of the interrogation of Subcomandante Marcos, though it is from 1995, it hurts all the more to know that “since having been born, he has conspired against the shadows that darken the Mexican sky” (p. 233). In complete truth, it’s a brilliantly written and arranged piece, and I’m really appreciating that we got to read it.

Pro Ventriloquist Marcos Reveals His Secrets

Posted on by under Our Word is Our Weapon

Through Subcomandante Marcos’ voice speaks the voice of the Zapatista National Liberation Army. This is a sentiment repeated time and time again throughout chapters, and it harkens back to a conversation we had at the beginning of the year that relates to the dead and the weak talking through someone else. Marcos himself is an anonymous figure, one with only a name as a public figure. In this way, he can be compared to Votán Zapata, the one for who the Zapatista National Liberation Army is named after, who “took a name in [their] being nameless, [and] took a face in [their] being faceless”. Zapata is considered everything and nothing, the guardian and heart of the people, and Marcos conducts himself in a way that reflects his want to continue this sort of leadership and legacy.

Well that’s cool and all, great, he wants to lead the people to democracy and is doing so in a Batman vigilante secret hero way. Fantastic. What’s new?

In the prologue of Our Word is Our Weapon, writer Jose Saramago describes how when Marcos originally travelled to Chiapa, he had very little success communicating with the Indigenous people of the area because they did not understand him. He wanted to launch a proletariat revolution, but the Chiapanecans saw land not as property, but as the heart, and had a different opinion from him. Still Marcos, not Mayan himself, came to be the leader of the Mayan revolution, and it is said he “penetrated the mist, learned to listen, and was able to speak.”

This asks a plethora of questions about Indigenous voice, as these books always do, but I think that it’s especially interesting in comparison to our conversation in class last week, in which we theorized that maybe there is not such a thing as pure and impossibly perfect Indigenous voice, as our hearing it fundamentally guarantees its non-existence. Marcos, whether Indigenous or not, pioneered the Zapatista uprising in Southern Mexico, and while his identity remained masked (ha.ha.), it was more important to acknowledge that he had an entire community in support behind him, choosing him as their spokesperson.

Marcos himself has something to say about this, commenting on the struggle of the rebellion: “But the colour of the skin does not define the Indigenous person: dignity and the constant struggle to be better define him. Those who struggle together are brothers and sisters, regardless of the color of our skin or the language we learned as children.” Is this where he finds the reasoning behind using the “we” pronoun in his speeches?

If this is how Marcos sees himself, as a member of the constant struggle to be better, it would make sense that he steps into Zapata’s shoes and aims to be a speakerphone for the Zapatista National Liberation Army. Even if he admits he knows he “should not have been [there]”, but instead it should have been the Indigenous people who were oppressed, he wants to act as a mirror to look towards tomorrow.

Source: Confía en Mí

Posted on by under I, Rigoberta Menchú, Uncategorized

While reading the second half of I, Rigoberta Menchú was just as interesting as the first (and I’m not Andrew, so I mean that sincerely), what I am more interested in is how it pertains to wider conversations of the book’s commentary on Menchú’s agency in her testimonial. In class, we talked about whether or not Burgos’ introduction properly articulates the dynamic between herself and Menchú, and the possibility of Menchú’s playing up her Indigeneity for Burgos. Obviously, one way she does this is through her clothing, and it can be argued that it’s furthered in her keeping of certain secrets.

However, after watching the two lecture videos and learning more about Stoll’s criticism of I, Rigoberta Menchú, lots of more questions pop up. The first of which assumes sincerity on Menchú’s behalf. If truly, this was her story, and she kept out certain conversations for the peace of her community, that means that she held up her half of representing her community while not opening themselves to further hurt from colonial communities. If so, she must have expected the doubt that then followed (from scholars like Stoll), and may have been prepared to use Burgos as a patsy to place the blame on.

Conversely, if Stoll’s criticisms are perfectly valid, it is possible that Menchú was not entirely telling the truth, and that her agency was understated in the original brief look of the book. It opens up further questions: how much might she have fabricated that Stoll didn’t catch? What was the purpose of these fabrications?

When talking about secrets, she impresses that it is an effect of the community traditions and practices as well as experiences with colonial acts of theft. Not included in this is the conversation of trickster behaviour, which can be commonly found in many international Indigenous communities.
By keeping secrets, she may have found it more entertaining or amusing to then tell tall tales, unbeknownst to Burgos (who had very little knowledge of Guatemala). A question remains: how does this affect the general reader? The average reader is probably in a similar position to Burgos, and as Menchú was able to fool Burgos, it follows that it would then be assumed to be truthful testimonio.

There’s another nuance: where did Menchú draw the line between testimonio as truth and pseudo-testimonio (as John Beverly calls it)? These questions will probably forever go unanswered, but examining them helps us as an audience read more critically into the lines of Menchú/Burgos’ conversation.

Also apologies if the title is not actually grammatically correct, I took one term of SPAN 101 and did 200 days on Duolingo, so my credentials aren’t exactly buffed.

Menchú’s Guide to Representation

Posted on by under Indigenous Voice, Rigoberta Menchú

In the book, I, Rigoberta Menchú, Menchú describes her life and experiences as a Quiché woman in an Indian community in Guatemala. Her co-author, Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, describes in the introduction how she aimed to listen and document all that Menchú talked about in order to help reflect the Indian experience in Latin America. She recounts that as Menchú told stories from her personal life, she became “self-assured and contented” (p. xvi), and that Menchú found relief in becoming a voice that had gone so long unheard. The beginning of the book immediately confirms this, Menchú stating that her testimony is “not only [her] life, it’s also the testimony of [her] people” (p. 1). This idea made me wonder: Where do we draw the line between experiencing something as an individual vs. as a community? What makes this line different for colonial peoples compared to Indigenous peoples?

“My personal experience is the reality of a whole people” (p. 1).

Menchú forms a collective Indigenous voice through only her own narration, as her experience comes from being so deep within her community and living life as an undeniably Quiché woman. This is interesting in comparison to authors like Guaman Poma, who in his mestizo status has to justify himself in describing the Indian experience. Menchú’s experience is different, she has learned from a lifetime as an Indigenous woman, and importantly, she “didn’t learn it alone” (p. 1). Many parts of the book are dedicated to her personal experiences, but they are entangled with her community.

I believe that a lot of the reason her story is so personal when it is meant to represent a community is because of how rightfully distrusting the Indigenous peoples are of the people outside of their community, being “very careful not to disclose any details of their communities” (p. 9). The colonizers have already taken so much that traditional knowledge and information must be held onto tightly, so Menchú works around this by telling her story in personal anecdotes.

There are portions within the novel—like that of the birth ceremonies chapter, the nahual, and the marriage ceremonies—that are kept objective, where Menchú acts as a narrator. In the nahual chapter, Menchú maintains her narration while reminding the reader of how personal these traditions are:

“We often find it hard to talk about ourselves because we know we must hide so much in order to preserve our Indian culture and prevent it from being taken away from us. So I can only tell you very general things about the nahual. I can;t tell you what my nahual is because that is one of our secrets.” (p. 22)

I believe Menchú finds a healthy balance in her objectivity and personal experience, but it does open further questions towards how Burgos-Debray contextualizes her own involvement and where she personally finds the line in being the pen for a community she is not a part of.

Arguedas and Cognitive Dissonance

Posted on by under Yawar Fiesta

José María Arguedas, author of Yawar Fiesta, was brought up a mestizo fluent in Quechua due to his living with Indigenous families while growing up. It is then not a surprise that he went on to use his place as an artist with Quechua perspective to write about Indigenous Andean culture. In Yawar Fiesta, this is exactly what he does, writing about the bullfight (turupukllay) that is a traditional custom of the Indigenous community in Peru. The novel is a reflection of the conflict between Indigenous peoples and the government of Peru, delving into the specificity of a subprefect who relays the information that the bullfight is no longer allowed by the ministry. Arguedas portrays the endless honor and power that the Indigenous peoples had in fighting for their tradition to be upheld.

Along with the story of a conflict, it is an observation of Peruvian Andean society, and he begins the novel by defining the five main characters of these big towns. One of these characters is that of the town mestizo. He describes this mestizo as a man who “does not know where he is going” (pp. xiii-xiv) and one that often follows in the government and lawmaker’s poor treatment of Indigenous people and attempts to simply blend into the crowd. This portrays mestizos of the time as people clinging to their colonial sides, moving into areas in the way that the colonial Spaniards were, as opposed to embracing their Indigenous heritage and living in traditional ways. This is an interesting choice as he himself is a mestizo. He goes on to describe in the first chapter how Puquio was itself an “Indian village” before the entrance of Spaniards and, later, mestizos. This implies in itself that he believes that the mestizos do not belong as Indigenous do. Does he consider himself different because of how he was embraced by Indigenous people for his childhood and upbringing?

In underlining how the Indigenous peoples preserved their cultural tradition and identity, it feels like he’s saying too, that it was a fight between Indigenous peoples and everyone else, i.e., the mistis and mestizos. I wonder how he personally differentiates himself, and if that is what caused the form in which he wrote the book, in Spanish with Quechua words, phrases, and inflections throughout. He does not see mestizos as one with the mistis, as they are differentiated in his cast of characters, but it is clear that they lean closer to the upper class of Puquio than it does the Indigenous people. What I’m asking, then, is where does José María Arguedas find himself in writing about the encroachment of mestizo people in Puquio?

Good, Bad, and Ugly Christians

Posted on by under First New Chronicle and Good Government

What is most interesting to me as we wrap up the entirety of “The First New Chronicle and Good Government” is the intended effect and audience of this piece of writing. While Don Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala addresses “Good Christians”, “Bad Christians”, and Christians of every other kind, his main audience is the Spanish King Philip III. While cognizant of this, it is also important to acknowledge the fact that the attitude and choice in wording towards the Christian citizens is sometimes a bit… aggressive, to say the least. This is an interesting choice on his behalf, as he is trying to balance pleasing Spanish royalty and also criticize the Spanish colonial society.

For example, corregidores were local administrative figures for the Spanish judicial system. These were colonial figures placed inside of the pueblos that many Indians were apart of. He immediately rips into these figures, calling them “absolute rulers with little fear of justice or God” (p. 167), however these figures are directly sat under the seat of the oh-so Holy King Philip III. In this way, it is impossible to imagine how his construction of the King as a mighty, holy figure can be separated from his disgust with Spanish colonial civilization at all.

However, I think that he attempts to diverge these two concepts in their relation to former Inca leadership. The Andean leader, Topa Inca Yupanqui, was the king throughout the natural kingdom of Indian and Inca country. Throughout the book, Guaman Poma is emphasizing this culture and hierarchy’s importance and significance, especially in respect to religion and government. It is then pertinent to note how Guaman Poma regards Topa Inca Yupanqui’s title as having passed on to “our lord, His Sacred Catholic Majesty king Don Philip III of Spain”. In this way, he is connecting Spanish Catholic royalty with Andean Inca royalty, without the crossing over of all the minor political details. This is the forethought with which Guaman Poma then goes on to absolutely roast the hell out of the rest of the governmental policies of colonial Spain enforced on ‘Latin America’.

So sure, he tried to tip toe and flatter his way into the king’s lap, so that they could gossip about all the king’s horses and men who sucked. Yet this does still leave a cognitively dissonant gap in the choices of tone between addressing “your sacred royal Catholic Majesty” (p. 3) and “heathen idolaters” (p. 291). What I wonder, in the midst of all of his political mind-mapping and manifesto making, was how he expected his voice to come off to the king? Was he aiming for confidence, with the regality of an Andean nobleman putting forth his ideas? If so, I’m not sure promising to kiss the hands and feet of the king was the most cocky move. Was he aiming for humility? Because he sure didn’t reach that either.

How to Catholicize the Already Catholic

Posted on by under First New Chronicle and Good Government

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala retells the history of Inca lifestyle and government in the context of its relation to Christianity in the first half of “The First New Chronicle and Good Government”. He comes from a background of both Indigenous ancestry and Catholicism, meaning that a lot of the information he provides is soaked in a Catholic lens. As much as he dives into the historical aspect of Inca life and government, it is overshadowed by a view of it as inherently religious in a Catholic way. For example, when he discusses Indigenous rulers of what is now Peru having descended from Adam, it is a comparison of the two ways that he knows, Indigenous and Catholic at the same time.

This is interesting as it is his conjoined view of Catholic and Indigenous history coexisting at the same time. In this way, he could be considered an unreliable narrator for this subject. At the same time, his two opposing backgrounds provide a book which has been studied dutifully for many centuries afterwards. It is noted by many who have studied it that a lot of the facts are not entirely accurate. For example, he writes of the conflict between Wascar Inca and Atawalpa Inca as lasting 36 years, when in fact it was less than five. Is this meant to portray the Inca as more combative, or is it simply a mistake of memory? These questions will perhaps always remain unanswerable, but in analyzing them we can ask how and why these mistakes were made, and how his cultural background may have influenced them.

Something else to keep in mind is the audience of the book, which he starts by addressing “Good Christians” and declaring that his writing is a service to his god. By addressing the Christians, the audience is set, and it influences a lot of the choices in length and form of description for Catholic circumstances—e.g., the first generation—and Indigenous circumstances, like the fifth age of Indians. What exactly is this book then? It may a tutorial manual for Christians, as well as a source of education, but it is a faulty one. The lessons are only partially formed, full of errors and biased opinions. How well does it really describe the Inca world in the so-called, “fifth age”?

What I suppose I’m asking, in a roundabout way, is how does this book function as a voice for Indigenous culture when the author is writing it with a skewed pen? While he is criticizing the Spanish colonial process, he is the number one advertisement for Catholic conversion. No matter how he believes he may be telling his truth, it does not translate to the unbiased, historical background that he may have intended.

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