“Literate Indians like Miguel Quispe, whose demands were rational, were considered racial/cultural transvestites, ex-Indians who maintained the markers of their previous identity (like indigenous clothes) to manipulate actual (irrational) Indians.” (de la Cadena, p. 308)
In this passage, de la Cadena is describing how elite cuzquefios of the 1920s defined Indigeneity as necessarily illiterate and as helpless, “sad victims”. This definition was challenged by eloquent, articulate, politically active, self-identified Indigenous persons like Miguel Quispe, an Indigenous leader from the district of Colquepata. Rather than amending their conception of Indigeneity, the elites viewed these Indigenous persons as “astute liars” who posed a danger to the stability of the state because they are “tricking” both Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people alike. Literate Indigenous persons were then stuck in a limbo; supposedly, they could no longer be considered “Indigenous”, yet they maintained the racial/cultural markers of their Indigenous identity which prevented them from being considered rational citizens of the state. In this definition, a person cannot be simultaneously Indigenous and a citizen; these two identities were mutually exclusive and were pitted against each other as opposites.
The suspicion of identity in terms of literacy, which prevented Indigenous peoples from fully participating in public life, parallels the Catholic suspicion we discussed in a previous class regarding Silverblatt’s Modern Inquisitions. Similar to how Indigenous persons capable of literacy were still not considered full citizens, Indigenous persons converted to Catholicism were subject to intense scrutiny about whether or not they were “real” Catholics. In both cases, there is this problematic, lingering suspicion that the person’s “previous” identity — as Indigenous or pagan — has failed to be completely stamped out by the adoption of their new identity as a citizen or Catholic.
“These opinions implied that literacy transformed Indians into mestizos if they migrated to the cities or found a job away from agriculture.” (de la Cadena, p. 310)
First, this idea that an Indigenous person can discard their Indigeneity and become a new identity through literacy and an urban job breaks apart communities and severs lineages of intergenerational knowledge transfer. Second, as I discussed in a previous post, I have found that agriculture is often used as a mark of civilization — that a group of people are only considered civilized, or deserving of the title of an “ancient civilization”, if they practiced agriculture. So it is interesting that, according to de la Cadena’s description of the attitudes of Peruvian elites in the 1920s, having an agricultural job has since become the mark of a person supposedly “stuck in the past”/”incapable of adapting to modern life”. I think this attitude persists in many ways to this day, even beyond its association with Indigeneity (because Indigenous peoples do not have to be farmers, and farmers do not have to be Indigenous peoples). Yet, we forget that we still need food to eat. If all the farmers gave up farming to work in the city, who would produce our food? Could you successfully grow a field of corn and prepare it for consumption? I don’t think I could.
2 replies on “Reading blog 9”
“In this definition, a person cannot be simultaneously Indigenous and a citizen; these two identities were mutually exclusive and were pitted against each other as opposites.” These lines summarize for me the changes in the Nation project that occurred during the republican period in Peru. The Indigenous communities were that remnant that was not amalgamated in the plans of the elites at the same time that they were necessary for their accumulation of wealth. What I find most interesting about De la Cadena’s book is that she emphasizes how the elites, depending on their origins and economic projects, were more or less pessimistic, more or less paternalistic with those communities.
Hi Cissy,
I think the reemergence of “tricking” is interesting, because in each case it betrays the inadequacy of frameworks of identity which deny self identification. There almost has to be a conspiracy, to deny that these people are Indigenous or christian. I think there’s room for something like an immanent critique here, since these accounts are truly inadequate even by their own terms.
Gabo