I thought I would start my final reflection by returning to my first introduction blog post for this class. Here are some things I wrote back in January:

• “I am excited to learn about indigenous peoples of Latin America in relation to concepts like sovereignty, political systems, and governance.”
• “I am also looking forward to analyzing the means of communication and literature that we will be examining, and how different modes of transmitting stories, history, and information can themselves carry certain values and biases.”

The second bullet point here was definitely something I learned a lot about this term. One thing that I didn’t realize going into this class was that so many important texts about Indigenous peoples in Latin America have such complicated relationships surrounding voice, authorship, language, and legitimacy. While I figured we would discuss these topics, I didn’t anticipate how important they would be in analyzing every text we read. Looking back, it makes a lot of sense: all of the texts we read were written on paper, and in English, which necessitates some kind of intermediary process. One significant thing I learned in relation to how communication types can carry values and biases was about how people and texts are so intertwined. When I wrote that question originally, I was thinking about oral storytelling compared to writing, or videos and poetry, that kind of thing. What I wasn’t necessarily thinking about was how certain groups of people have stronger ties to some of these modes than others. Our most recent text illustrated this point, with all of Kopenawa’s discussions of white people writing on paper skins, and the permanency of the written word compared to the dynamic nature of oral communication.

The first bullet point is also something I learned a lot about, but in a very different way than I expected. One thing we talked a lot about in this class that I appreciated was how studying Indigeneity and Indigenous peoples in the context of colonization is very different from looking at Indigenous peoples in their own right, rather than in a comparison. As an International Relations student, I think I was thinking about Indigenous peoples in a very colonial context when I wrote that. Sovereignty and political systems are all concepts that often tie back to colonization, and are primarily used to frame Indigenous ways of governing and maintaining community through a lens of how it is done in Western systems. While we did talk about legal elements somewhat in the novels that discussed stealing land, like Yawar Fiesta or Guaman Poma’s text, we also discussed how this framing is itself problematic in some ways. For example, Guamon Poma’s legal framing kind of required him to speak in a narrative that was similar to what you would expect from a colonizer.

One thing that I found interesting from the second half of this book was how the concept of merchandise relates to other Yanomami values. For example, one in particular that I am curious about is how merchandise relates to Yanomami conceptions of death. In the merchandise chapter, it is explained how white people are greedy, and they find a need to create endless products that will outlast them. This resonates with a typical anti-capitalist narrative you might hear today, especially relating to overconsumption. After reading this, I was expecting the following sections to discuss long lasting goods, building them to get a full use out of them rather than to sell them, or some other lesson about the longevity and purpose of products apart from being bought and sold. I was surprised, then, when reading the part about death. The first part made sense to me, when they talk about how they value the dead, and must respect their bones. I was surprised, however, by the bit about burning all of their possessions. To me this seems wasteful, as then you need to create new products for every living person even though, as was mentioned in the novel, most of the products will last longer than humans live. I was surprised about this from a consumption standpoint, but also about how they honor the dead. The book discusses how seeing the possessions of the dead distresses their families after they die. This was surprising to me because I feel like for most people I know, keeping possessions of the dead is an important way to honor and remember them. Some of the surprise on my part I think might come from some existing biases I have about what the Yanomami “should” believe in, but other parts of it are merely tied back to what we have learned about them from this book already.

Another thing that I am curious about is the choice of the word “merchandise.” While I know that this is partially the result of translations, I am also curious what led to that choice over another term. In a lot of anti-capitalist discussions or writings that I am familiar with, it is more common to refer to property, ownership, or words of that type. I suppose merchandise places the emphasis on the act of buying and selling, which is key here, but the notion of ownership still seems important to me. Regardless, I wonder what led to that word being chosen, even if it was via translation.

I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of the parts of the introduction (or rather, postscript?) this week. I like how Albert talked about how his ideas changed over time, and acknowledged some of his previous assumptions that were harmful. To me this made his writing feel more authentic. It’s one thing to acknowledge the shortcomings of your perspective from the place you are now, but I think it shows more self awareness about your place in the issues you are writing about to talk about your journey to where you are now.

Additionally, apart from Albert’s own thoughts about his place and perspective as they relate to this book, there were some objective facts that Albert pointed out in this section that gave me a bit more trust in the narrative of the book. For example, the fact that Davi Kopenawa was the one who proposed the book, is listed as first writer (relevant to our discussions a few weeks ago about Burgos and Menchú) and asked Albert if he would write it. I also appreciated the discussion of the transparency of the editor-author relationship. Previously I hadn’t thought much about the importance of defining this, but after reading Albert’s thoughts I see why it is important to do so.

One specific thing that Albert said in the chapter about writing the book that stood out to me was about how he essentially had to come up with the narrative of the book before he wrote any of it because of the type of translating he was doing. This definitely seems like it would pose a challenge to Albert in producing an authentic text. It kind of reminds me of when you are writing a paper at the last minute and don’t really have time to undergo a proper thorough research process, so you decide on your argument and then look only for sources that support what you want to say. I think in Albert’s case it is different, because he did the ‘research’ ahead of time in compiling the interviews and recordings, but it still begs the question of how to properly determine what narrative the story will follow, and how to disclose the process of determining that in an authentic way to the readers (if at all).

One last thing that struck me was Albert’s frequent usage of the terms “ethnographic” and “ethnography.” I’m sure these are common terms in the field of anthropology, but without knowing a formal definition myself I have to wonder what he means when he uses these.

I really enjoyed the later sections of this book. I found some of the sections in the first half very wordy and theoretical, which was difficult to read at times, but the mainly first person approach in a lot of the second half was easier to read which made it more enjoyable. I liked having insight into Marcos’s personal life, and feeling like I was on the journey with him. For example, in the part when he talks about intending to quit the guerilla army but accidentally walks down the wrong side of the hill, I felt like I got the benefit of the perspective of someone’s experience with the guerilla forces. I think it was more impactful than a blanket statement about how some fighters had doubts would have been, because I felt connected to Marcos’s journey. The sensory descriptions in this part also made it feel very real.

One part I found particularly interesting this week was the first story with Durito, where Marcos meets the beetle. I could be reading into this interaction, and am also probably a bit biased because I’ve been thinking a lot about this in my history courses recently, but I thought the part where the beetle tells Marcos that he is studying neoliberalism and domination in Latin America was significant. When you hear a beetle talk about something so academic and theoretical, it seems a bit absurd (hence Marcos’s response, “and what good is that to a beetle?”). And yet, the beetle is revered as a hero and symbol of hope, so maybe this story is meant to emphasize the value of such academic pursuits. Durito’s character is really interesting, because he represents so many things. He is a manifestation of hope for humanity, and of childlike innocence, but he also represents sophistication and useful analyses of the situation in Mexico. Sometimes he is giving commentary on the political atmosphere, while other times he is playing piano for a ballerina, or giving confident orders. I am very curious about Marcos’s choices when writing these stories involving Durito. What purpose does the magical element of the stories serve, and why did he choose a beetle? Does Durito directly symbolize something from Marcos’s life or experiences, is he a combination of people and ideas, or is he entirely made up? I am also curious about the source of Durito’s authority. He has lots of strong ideas that he asserts loudly, but he’s not all talk; people also respect him and listen to him. I am curious about how that came to be.

I really enjoyed the first parts of this book. The writing style is engaging and easy to understand, and feels very conversational. There are a lot of questions asked to communicate information, and the writing is clear without being overly filled with jargon or too academic. I also appreciated how this tone was taken in different sections with different audiences, because I felt like it painted a broader picture by including those perspectives. I thought the sections written in the second person were especially interesting, where the author walks you through Chiapas and other areas of Southeastern Mexico as if you are there to try to illustrate the poor living conditions there. This is also an impactful section given its placement directly after the one that details how imperialism and capitalism suck all the resources out of Mexico by force, because it gives the reader a sense of the irony and injustice that results from these resources being extracted and exploited. The goods and materials that Chiapas loses would greatly enhance the quality of life within the area itself, but because of systems set up by neoliberalism, capitalism, and imperialism, these materials and resources are exported at extremely high percentages.

Another thing I found interesting was the sentiment in the first few chapters about the individual and the collective. I was intrigued by the idea of names and anonymity. This is a theme that has come up a lot in previous texts, with names being a very important sign of respect and recognition, so I thought it was interesting that a lot of the Zapatistas were referred to as nameless in the revolution. This made a bit more sense to me with the quote “everything for everyone, nothing for ourselves.” I interpreted this idea as a nod to the importance of the collective over the individual. Each person is nameless, but the revolution as a whole movement has its own identity. This seems reminiscent of schools of thought like Marxism, and also definitely anti-capitalistic. While the text explicitly mentions anticapitalist sentiments several times, this idea in the quote also contributes to that notion. It denies the foundation of property ownership and entitlement that capitalism rests upon, and also demonstrates the dream of a society where people have not just a fair or equal amount of resources, but enough to sustain the collective society. Everyone has enough, and everything goes to everyone, where everyone is the people of Mexico rather than multinational corporations that currently control a lot of the exports and raw materials.

One of the most interesting things from the reading this week for me was the chapter about all of the lessons Rigoberta had learned form her mother. Particularly, I was really interested in the intersection between gender, family, and revolution, and how Rigoberta and her mother each thought about these issues. In one of my other classes, I wrote a paper on gender and revolution during the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, and I am interested in the connections and differences between that movement and this one. In both cases, it seems that the revolutionary philosophy tends to emphasize the differences between the roles of women and men, but this is seen predominantly as a strength rather than a weakness. There is some nuance here, however, as Rigoberta’s mother talks about how her own mother saw no differences between the men’s and women’s struggles. Despite this, she writes about the importance of continuing to “feel a woman.” This reminds me of Nicaragua, where poor women were often brought into the struggle first for class struggle, while rich women came from more of a perspective of feminism first and developed a sense of class struggle later. I wonder if this dynamic played out similarly in Guatemala, or if things unfolded differently. Also on that note, I found the bit about Rigoberta’s mom treating children of her fellow guerillas like her own children to be very reminiscent of the Cuban revolutionary movement.

Rigoberta’s motivations for revolutionary action do prove to be a main theme in the second half of the book. She talks with her sister about using the pain to motivate action, but Rigoberta doesn’t seem totally convinced, and has a hard time dealing with suffering. On the same theme as my above writing, as a follow up to the relationship between gender and class struggle in revolutions, I also wonder about the relationship between Christianity and Marxist revolutionaries. Rigoberta speaks to this a bit in the last chapter, but I am curious to know more about how the history of Christianity in Guatemala influences how religion plays a role in uniting revolutionaries.

I also wonder about the relationship between Rigoberta’s mother’s opinion that she “didn’t belong to any specific organization. She said what was important was doing something for our people,” and Rigoberta’s own views on this book as a project. As we talked about last class, Rigoberta was sent to represent all poor Guatemalans by a specific organization, but this fact isn’t mentioned much in the introduction. Whether this choice is more of a reflection of the translator or of Rigoberta’s views I am not sure, but this quote did get me thinking about how Rigoberta might see herself and her own role in the revolutionary struggle.

There were a lot of interesting bits in this week’s reading that stood out to me. Conceptually, I thought that one of the most intriguing parts at the beginning was the bit about how land was stolen “officially.” The importance of the land was talked about a lot at the beginning, in relation to the animals and the landscape as well as the people. This made it all the more impactful reading about how the land was stolen. As the land was mostly stolen little by little, in ever-decreasing sections, along the way there seemed to be an integration of the indigenous into the colonizer’s systems and ways of living. This reminded me of the idea of double consciousness that we talked about last week, especially in the section about how they were able to work within the system to earn money as maids and hands, turning into “town dwelling community members.” Meanwhile, however, they also developed a political consciousness from living close together in the same place as others with similar experiences, and developed a collective expression of hatred for the colonizers who had taken their land. These notions together with the ways of life that they had before their land was stolen seem to make up a double consciousness.

Another thing that I enjoyed about this book was how it told a story with a specific vision. The bullfight and the telling of it provided the novel with a nice structure and plot that stood out to me. I liked how the book did not try to do it all, or tell us everything about these people which is impossible, but rather focused on one specific aspect and used that to illuminate what life was like for different social classes in Peru. I felt that this topic gave it a tone that was less looking down upon Indigenous peoples or trying to explain the entire world. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with stories that explain the origins of a worldview, and I think those can be valuable too, but I liked how this story showed us that not every book about Indigineity has to be that way.

The third thing that I found interesting was the title of the book. The significance of the languages used for each word did not really strike me until after reading the first bit of the book. Especially because this translation is written in neither Quechua nor Spanish, the titular words stand out. Yawar in Quechua, because it is the blood of their people that is being celebrated, and Fiesta in Spanish because they are doing the celebrating. The context within which these parties were described highlights the violence even more by contrasting the actions of stripping people of the things that mean the most to them and their children, like the bulls, and then talking about happy music, wine, and dancing.

The part that I found most interesting this week was part 8, the section on Andean society under Spanish rule. In this section especially, I found myself trying to form an opinion on what parts of his views I agreed with, and I struggled to do so. Eventually, the interpretation of this part that I settled on was that of an analogy to certain conversations about Indigenous politics today. In this part of the book, Guaman Poma talks at length about atrocities committed against Indigenous people in the Andes. Although he is defending Indigenous peoples and their right to act on their own without Spanish oversight, he does so with the reasoning that any good qualities they have are due to their Christianity. Even before Spanish colonization, he argues, societal law and order was due to Christian customs. This was a confusing claim to me; I was not sure if Guaman Poma was trying to argue that they had been Christian all along, which seems implausible, or that their values pre-colonization aligned with Christian ones. In any case, these previous good qualities being labeled as Christian ones is how Guaman Poma argues that self-rule is the right choice. He goes even further to say that the Spanish have been a bad influence, corrupting local populations with their greed and un-Christian-like values. The reason that Indigenous groups have any bad practices that they might have now is not because they are inherently inferior, but because they learned them from the Spanish.

Initially, I struggled to understand where Guaman Poma’s perspective might fall on a spectrum of genuine defense of Indigenous people and siding with the Spanish. The analogy that came to mind for me was the way that people often talk about Indigenous peoples today only in the context of colonization. I remember this bit being discussed in class a few weeks earlier, and it struck me as applicable. The way Guaman Poma always refers to the “poor Indians,” and talks about them as if they have no agency or are not on his level, to me seemed reminiscent of some discussions of Indigenous rights today. It made it clearer for me why this way of thinking can be so problematic. Although the issues that Guaman Poma is trying to fight for are intended to be in defense of Indigenous rights, his tactics ultimately tie back to a colonial framework and structure. Because of this, he seems to be reinforcing harmful stereotypes in many ways. While this book is perhaps a more extreme example than a lot of the political discussions we see today, the perspective still seemed applicable to me. When we talk about Indigenous groups only with respect to colonization and oppression, we miss so much about them, and also oftentimes end up enhancing the structures of control that we intend to break down.

Going into this reading, I knew to expect the perspective of a colonizer from the context we had about the book. The first few sentences, however, were more startling than I was expecting. The Incan people were referred to almost immediately in terms of their “idiolatries and errors,” and Guaman Poma made no effort to hide his motivations for writing this text. He wanted to be sure that it was known that Chistianity was at the core of his message. While some of this may be due to the Christian Spanish audience he was writing for (who he frequently addresses as his ‘Christian readers’), I was still surprised by the blatant admittance of this, since the goal of the text is supposed to be convincing the Spaniards about the rights and humanity of the Incas. Indigenous people only appear useful to Guaman Poma in their capacity to become Christians. This reminds me of the message of Bartolomé de las Casas, who also wrote in defense of the colonized, but justified it by the fact that they are capable of being reformed to Christianity.

In the story of the text itself, I noticed some parallels to the Popol Vuh. The idea that only God can know everything, and that humans are by definition lacking in certain areas of knowledge, was a similarity between both texts. The use of clay for humans was also an interesting connection between both that I did not expect. When God punishes humans with the flood, it does seem related to the idea of vengeance that came up so often in the Popol Vuh, but seemed a bit different to me. In the Popol Vuh, vengeance seemed to me to come up most often between people that were relatively on the same playing field, in terms of respect and power. Mistakes in humans were not necessarily taken out on the humans, but seen as mistakes by the beings that created humans. Here, however, humans are clearly taking the blame. The emphasis on names was another thing I noticed in this text, as well as the previous one. The popes were all listed with their full names, and the idea of a hierarchy of respect also seemed to come up. One last interesting parallel I noticed was in the creation of humans: “the custom of plowing the earth comes from the first people.” I found this quote intriguing because it relates to previous notions that land matters, and food and land and people are all intrinsically linked. In relation to the introduction, however, this bit can be contrasted with how the Incan people were forced off their land, which was especially problematic for their agricultural techniques that relied on land that spanned multiple microclimates brought on by elevation change.