Assessment 3

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 1 7 . D u k e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s B o o k s . A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via AN: 1614675 ; Macarena Gmez-Barris.; The Extractive Zone : Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives Account: s2951849

T H E E X T R A C T I V E Z O N E

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

��������� ����

A series edited by Macarena Gómez- Barris and Diana Taylor

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

T H E E X T R A C T I V E

Z O N E

Social Ecologies and

Decolonial Perspectives

�������� �����- ������

���� ���������� ����� Durham and London

2017

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

' 2017 Duke University Press All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper � Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan

Typeset in Minion Pro by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Gómez- Barris, Macarena, [date] author.

Title: The extractive zone : social ecologies and decolonial perspectives / Macarena Gómez- Barris.

Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2017. | Series: Dissident acts | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identi�ers: ���� 2017016488 (print) ���� 2017022944 (ebook)

���� 9780822372561 (ebook) ���� 9780822368755 (hardcover : alk. paper)

���� 9780822368977 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: ����: South America�Civilization�21st century. | Imperialism. | Postcolonialism�South America. | Economic

development�Environmental Aspects�South America. | Human ecology�South America. | Indians of South America.

Classi�cation: ��� 2210 (ebook) | ��� 2210 .�66 2017 (print) | �� � 980.04�dc23

�� record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016488

Cover art: Carolina Caycedo, Yuma Estancada (detail), 2015. Courtesy of the artist.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A M ˝ M A M A , V I V I A N N E R E N E E D U F O U R ,

Q U E M E H A D A D O TA N T O.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

This page intentionally left blank

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

CO N T E N T S

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S �ix

P R E F A C E

Below the Surface�xiii

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Submerged Perspectives�1

1�The Intangibility of the Yasuní�17

2�Andean Phenomenology and New Age Settler Colonialism�39

3�An Archive for the Future: Seeing through Occupation�66

4�A Fish- Eye Episteme: Seeing Below the River�s Colonization�91

5�Decolonial Gestures: Anarcho- Feminist Indigenous Critique�110

CO N C L U S I O N

The View from Below�133

N OT E S �139

B I B L I O G R A P H Y �165

I N D E X �179

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

This page intentionally left blank

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

This project has been shaped by the many conversations and experiences I have had over the past several years. My view has been altered by my fortu- nate engagement with the AmØricas peoples and geographies I write about, but also by dialoguing with scholars, artists, and activists in Beirut, Europe, and South Africa. This work considers how to think comparatively, and about the important, if vexed, role of site work, perspective, and experi- ence in decolonial knowledge production. It is also about how to survive and make anew within zones of extractive capitalism.

My research has developed in sustained dialogue with the Indigenous and Decolonization Research Cluster (����) at University of Southern California, a group of faculty members and graduate students whom I have worked with through the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity since 2011. These include Crystal Baik, Jih- Fei Cheng, Athia Choudhury, Rebekah Fong, Sarah Fong, Rebekah Garrison, Floridalma Boj Lopez, Ho�esta Mo�hahne, Chris Finley, John Carlos Rowe, and Alex Young. In the ���� , we formed critical bonds and intellectual a nities that I am grateful for. I also want to thank my graduate student seminar on social and cul- tural theory in fall 2016 for wonderful conversations, including Sarah Fong, Rebekah Park, Nicole Richards, Emmett Drager, Alexis Montes, Cristina Faiver, Athia Choudhury, Daniel Alonso, Sophia Serrano, Huan Hsing, Racquel Bernard, and Rosanne Sia. I want to especially thank Crystal Baik and Sophia Li for research and image support.

I have valued the friendship and example of so many, including Emma PØrez, Nicole Hayward, Paul Amar, Jose Quiroga, Jody Vallejo, Mel Chen, Julia Bryan Wilson, Kara Keeling, Gil Hochberg, Keri Kanetsky, Maria Elena Martinez, Ira Livingston, Iona Man- Cheong, Gabriela Fischer, Sarah Gualtieri, Licia Fiol- Matta, Lena Burgos- Lafuente, Neetu Khanna, Ana Paulina Lee, Ondine Chavoya, Joseph Pierce, Josh Kun, Ceci Bastida, Chan- dan Reddy, Lisa Lowe, Gayatri Gopinath, Rod Ferguson, Juan de Lara,

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

x A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

Wendy Chen, Michelle Rahejas, Sarita See, Kandice Chuh, Jodi Byrd, Jill Lane, Josie Saldaæa- Portillo, Dean Saranillo, Mike Messner, Lanita Jacobs, Leland Saito, Shana Redmond, Chris Finley, Judith Jackson Fossett, Edwin Hill, Manuel Pastor, Ruthie Gilmore, George Sanchez, Fred Moten, Laura Harris, Jane Iwamura, Janelle Wong, Ricardo Ramirez, Lupe Ramirez, Roberto Lint- Sagrena, Alexandra and Jason Marchetsky, Policarpo Chaj, Sarah Banet- Weiser, Dorinne Kondo, Mishuana Goeman, Panivong No- rinder, Viet Nguyen.

New colleagues at Pratt Institute and the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies have generously welcomed me. Andrew Barnes has been an exceptional mentor and friend. Sincere Brooks and Sophia Babb make daily life better. Thank you Eric Godoy, Maya Seetharam, Zhivka Va- liavicharska, Francis Bradley, Lisabeth During, Ann Holder, Uzma Rizvi, Liz Knauer, Caitlin Cahill, May Joseph, Carl Zimring, Sameetah Agha, Luka Lucic, Jennifer Telesca, IvÆn Zatz- Diaz, Ric Brown, Kumru Toktamis, Josiah Brownell, Darini Nicholas, Jennifer Pipitone, Svetlana Jovic, Hannes Charen, Kathleen Campbell Kelley, Michelle Standley, Jonathan Beller, Rachel Levitsky, Ellery Washington and so many others. My co- teacher Erum Naqui for �The Art o� Protest� has been an invaluable resource and dedicated colleague during troubled times. I have treasured conversations amongst colleagues at our newly formed Global South Center.

Special thanks to friends and allies John Carlos Rowe, Avery Gordon, Lisa Du�an, Pierrette Hondagneu- Sotelo, Herman Gray, Rosa Linda Fre- goso, David Lloyd, Marcial Godoy- Anativia, Nayan Shah, Jayna Brown, Amelia Jones, Sonia Rodriguez, Kitty Lai, Jujuana Preston, and Tim Biblarz for supporting my intellectual and personal growth from the incipient idea to the publication of this project. Cathy Davidson has many superpowers, and I am grateful she has shared them with me. Laura Pulido has been an extraordinary friend, mentor, sister, and ally. Nicole Hayward traveled with me to Bolivia during an intense and memorable research experience.

At Duke University Press, Ken Wissoker has been unwavering in his support and mentorship, and has expertly guided me. Sara Leone went far beyond the call of duty. Maryam Arain and Olivia Polk were invaluable comrades at key stages toward completion. I would also like to give much appreciation to J. K�haulani Kauanui and Nelson Maldonado- Torres for carefully reading the manuscript, and for superb su�estions that deep- ened my approach to the extractive zone, though I fully accept responsi-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S xi

bilities for any errors. Thank you also to Diana Taylor as my co- editor of �Dissident Acts.�

A group o� brilliant scholars and friends sustained me intellectually dur- ing a period of intense writing and research in Ecuador in 2015, including Diana Coryat, Amanda Concha, Christian León, Claudia Sophia Garrigas Lopez, Maria Amelia Viteri, and Santiago Castellanos. Funding for the site- based research parts of this volume came from the Fulbright Research Fel- lowship, Facultad Latinoamericanos Ciencias Sociales, ����� - Ecuador, Department of Sociology and Gender Studies. Susana Wappenstein and Sara Hidalgo were especially supportive, and I thank all of the participants of a workshop and lecture there. David Harvey�s think tank ������� pro- vided an additional forum for parts of this book. I presented an early chap- ter at the University of Zurich, and I thank Jens Anderson and the memory studies scholars for their engagement with it. I want to also thank the Radi- cal Americas group at the University College London, where discussion on feminist anarchist history in the Global South helped me sharpen chap- ter 5. I also appreciate the insights from discussions with a group of schol- ars at American University in Beirut on the concept of decolonial gesture, including Anjali Nath, Manu Vimalassery, Kency Cornejo, Kuan- Hsing Chen, Anaheed Al- Hardan, Samhita Sunya, Adam Waterman, and Samer Frangie. Chapter 2 owes much to conversations with Juana and Francisco that helped me perceive anew. This project would not have understood per- ception otherwise if not for the future oriented vision, grounded artistic production, and friendship o� Francisco Huichaqueo Perez and Carolina Caycedo. Thanks also goes to the University of Arizona Institute for ���� Studies, and especially Adela Licona for hosting me for the Miranda Joseph Endowed Lecture precisely as new extractivisms have led to greater forms of intersectional pressure and oppression, but also to intense and hope �lled activisms. Paul Amar and Jesilyn Faust�s invitation to keynote on the �Rise of the Global Right� at the University of California, Santa Barbara came at the end o� writing this book and allowed me to �ne tune its con- cepts. I have been honored to share work at the University o� Redmond with the Latino and Latin American Studies faculty and especially thank Mariela Mendez de Coudriet for hosting me. Thank you also to Chandan Reddy and Sebastian López Vergara for in�uencing this project through sustained dialogue at the University o� Washington.

My mother, Vivianne Renee Dufour, is an incredible gi�, interlocuter,

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

xii A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

and closest friend. Thank you, mamÆ, for all your generosity and love. As a single immigrant mother raising Lorena and me in the belly of the beast you displayed utter grace and dignity. I am truly honored to dedicate this book to you. To my honorary step- father Arnold Bauer, may you rest in peace. You gave me so much at a crucial time. Thank you to my sister, in human form and spirit, Lorena Gómez- Barris for your unwavering witness to the ebbs and �ow of academic life. You make it all seem possible. Thank you too, Eric and Ethan Rocher and Roberto Leni for your solid support. Ixchel and Renato, you are amazing, �exible, and patient, especially while we were in Quito. I sincerely hope that the hours clocked on Minecra� will somehow be outweighed by the time we spent together in the biosphere. Thank you to the incredible generosity and inspired fox that is my lovely partner, Jack Halberstam�a model of public intellectual work and politi- cal commitment. Finally, gracias pachita mamita. Sín tí no hay vida.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

P R E F A C E

Below the Surface

Through a fortuitous set of events about ten years ago, I spent a semes- ter at the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts in California. I met May Stevens there, a socialist and landscape painter important within the 1960s American experimental movement, and someone I can only describe as a visual poet. In the decade before I met her, May made a series o� blue- green oil paintings whose subject matter focused on the rivers and lakes of North America. The Confluence of Two Rivers (2002�3) depicts the merger of dark matter into gooey �ows, cracked open by threads of earth. During her three- week residency at the Headlands, May painted the Paci�c Ocean, swirling silvery words into the contoured waves on the canvas. Though this book is not about Northern California per se, and instead focuses on South America and how we perceive its social ecologies, artists such as May have allowed me to better see what lies below the surface o� liquid, beyond nor- mative modes of apprehending landscape, and toward a perception of the complexity within smaller scales o� being and imagining.

As we walked together in the nearby hills, May turned to me, un- prompted, and o�fered something I still ponder regarding the realm of per- ception. She had recently visited Sausalito and had found hersel� lingering over the yellowish green- brown muck that gathered within the ocean at the wooden base of the city�s piers. For her, the biomatter that accumu- lated around the piers represented the �origin stu�f � of creativity. This pri- mal mix demanded a di�ferent form of attention and care, one that blends the way that each of us perceive ourselves with how we perceive the natu- ral world, a cognitive and embodied mode of seeing. Incorporating that muck�s color palette in her art led her back to what she called her original creative impulse, forcing her to reckon with a viewpoint that came from within�rather than from above, in relation to, or near�the thick water, and from within that �origin stu�f.� May referred to this as her �caca� story of creative origins.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

xiv P R E F A C E

Since that walk with May, I have thought a lot about a submerged viewpoint, about ways to see what lies within the ecologies all around us, and about how to perceive those things that are not usually available to the naked eye. A�er our conversation, I turned my attention to microbe worlds, to imagine the tadpoles and the amoebas that have swum within murky waters for millennia, to ponder what it means to see from below, to become mindful o� what Maurice Merleau- Ponty refers to as �the space of vision that both surrounds us and passes through us.�� Through subse- quent walks and conversations, May continued to impart the importance of perceiving the natural elements as a source of unfolding�to expand per- ception by looking at the water, at muck, and at the submerged environ- ment around me, the intermixing of caca as glistening life within the grasp of perception.

Recently, inspired muck came up again, this time in a conversation with Mapuche �lmmaker Francisco Huichaqueo whose experimental �lms about the Chilean monocultural forest plantations I explore in chap- ter 3. Through spending time with Huichaqueo, another visual and sen- sual thinker, I began to understand his modes of perceiving, particularly in terms of seeing to the other side of colonial occupation. Mapuche peoples, he told me, place great importance on the dream world, including exchang- ing their content with each other each morning. Over the previous decade his own objective had been to embed his art with that long- standing prac- tice, an e�fort to see within and beyond the world of materiality to the par- allel dream world of ancestors. This is the realm that the Mapundungun language describes as the perrimunton. Francisco has intimated how, as a director of experimental �lms that visually communicate other ways of see- ing and sensing the world, he plays with perception by dipping his camera below the water�s surface, documenting the submerged worlds of South- ern Chile�s rivers as they wind through Mapuche territories, making visible air bubbles, bits o� wood, and the greenish- brown moss of the riverbank�s �oor. Like the dreamscape he travels through to blend old and new view- points, his camera views the liquid planet in microform.

Such tangible artistic e�forts to shi� how we see, speci�cally by reckon- ing with the thick opacity o� what lies below the water�s surface, have been essential to cra�ing this book and its decolonial methodology.� In my re- search across �ve regions within South America, these artists have prodded

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

P R E F A C E xv

me to see di�ferently and to question what lies beneath the visible world of the extractive zone and to seek out less perceivable worlds, life forms, and the organization of relations within them, while creating new methods that allow for this tracking.

My objective in The Extractive Zone is to document geographies where coordinated forms of capitalist power advance, while also analyzing the complexity of social ecologies and material alternatives proposed and pro- liferated by artists, activists, movements, submerged theorists, and cultural producers. Second, I explicitly challenge the frames of disciplinary knowl- edge that would bury the subtlety and complexity of the life force of the worlds that lie within the extractive zone. I address the importance of epis- temological autonomy and embodied knowledge as necessary to pushing away from a paradigm of mere resistance into the more layered terrain of potential, moving within and beyond the extractive zone. Through detailed

Francisco Huichaqueo, Kalül Trawün�Reunión del Cuerpo, video still, 2012. Image courtesy o� Francisco Huichaqueo.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

xvi P R E F A C E

studies o� local spaces, Indigenous worlds, and natural ecologies in peril, I work to better conceptualize histories of conquest and dissent, especially those emergent in South America�s resource- rich Indigenous territories.

Throughout this book, I deploy a decolonial femme methodology, or a mode of porous and undisciplined analysis shaped by the perspectives and critical genealogies that emerge within these spaces as a mode of doing research. My engagement with Andean phenomenology and the intersec- tionality o� Indigenous anarcho- feminist critique, as queer decolonial op- tions that lead us out of the deadening impasse that is extractive capitalism, is not bound to the disciplinary drive to claim or master the images or for- mations I study.� These submerged perspectives are anchored within social ecologies that reorganize and refute the monocultural imperative, as do I in my encounter with these other worlds. Submerged modes �urry in their activity, random, complex, and coordinated systems that are o�en illegible to those with state and �nancial power that assume simplicity where com- plexity actually dwells.

Here, I must explain how concept work allows me to simultaneously at- tend to the life- and- death dialectics that are operative within these geogra- phies: by using the term extractive zone I refer to the colonial paradigm, worldview, and technologies that mark out regions o� �high biodiversity� in order to reduce life to capitalist resource conversion. My book examines social ecologies, or networked potential, within the extractive global econ- omy, the system that was installed by colonial capitalism in the 1500s and that converted natural resources such as silver, water, timber, rubber, and petroleum into global commodities. In its longue durØe, extractivism refer- ences colonial capitalism and its a�erlives: extending from its sixteenth- century emergence until the present day, and including the recent forty- year neoliberal privatization and deregulation process, as well as the rise and fall of the progressive states called the Pink Tide in Latin American nations.� This also refers to the global intensi�cation of new forms of ex- tractivism, or what Saskia Sassen describes as the expulsion by advanced political economies which accumulates wealth o�f of resource rich territo- ries for a few, while permanently squeezing the many.�

In other words, we might think of a successive march of colonial and neocolonial actors operating in relation to South America as if it were an extractible continent; Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano long ago named

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

P R E F A C E xvii

this process �the open veins o� Latin America,� as these territories continue to provide sustenance for the global economy.�

Extractivismo, as extractive capitalism is known in the AmØricas, indi- cates an economic system that engages in the�s, borrowings, and forced removals, violently reorganizing social life as well as the land by thieving resources from Indigenous and Afro- descendent territories. As I attend to in the introduction, a burgeoning literature on extractivismo has emerged in South America that describes the claim to resources by global capital in the face of increased protests about the importance o� local resource sov- ereignty. Since dense genetic plant life and natural resource regions o�en overlap with Indigenous territories, then we must work to analyze how Na- tive peoples are both constructed by the state and corporate entities as ob- structions to the expansion of extractive capitalism and literally block its reach. The Sioux and trans- confederation stru�le contesting the Dakota pipeline is only one example of continual Indigenous land defense in the AmØricas. Therefore, throughout this book I show how the embodied ac- tivities that reject colonialism continue to alter and expand how we see and what we know about Indigenous spaces especially within the extrac- tive zone.

While racial capitalism refers to the processes that historically subor- dinated African and Indigenous populations, extractivism references the dramatic material change to social and ecological life that underpin this ar- rangement.  Furthermore, the racial logics of South American states are ex- panded through new forms of extractive capitalism.› Even as new progres- sive states such as those in Ecuador and Bolivia propose policies to legalize Native peoples� rights, they enable and normalize resource exploitation that ends up perpetuating anti- Indigenous and anti- Black racism. Further, as The Feminist Constitution that I examine in chapter �ve makes apparent, redistributive states that do not broadly consider intersectional histories fail to address the needs and perspectives of female, gender- nonconforming, working class, and �cuir� populations even despite new legislative gains.� I address how extractive capitalism dramatically divides nature and culture through new forms of race, gender, and sexual exclusions.��

One of today�s central modes of perpetuating racial capitalism in the Global South, in addition to expanding prisons and security regimes, is in fact mega- extractive projects, such as large dams and mines, which re-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

xviii P R E F A C E

quire huge technological and resource feats as well as what Enrique Dus- sel refers to as the �developmentalist fallacy,� or the imposition of moder- nity as a universalized mode of governance.�� State and corporate- designed mega- development projects operate through an economic rationale with- out calibrating for the life forms that exist beneath the gaze of such grand schemes. Extractivism functions within what Anibal Quijano �rst coined as the colonial matrix of power,�� where corporate entities and states are indis- tinguishable in their economic interests and activities; states act on behalf of corporations, and corporate entities hire security forces to control and suppress anti- extractivist organizing.

Extractive capitalism, then, violently reorganizes territories as well as continually perpetuates dramatic social and economic inequalities that de- limit Indigenous sovereignty and national autonomy. As the Uruguayan economist and executive secretary of the Latin American Center for Social Ecology, Eduardo Gudynas, explains, �Under neo- extractivism, the ob- jective of national development, as �endogenous development,� is lost; au- tonomy in relation to global markets vanishes. National industries do not recover, in some cases they are reduced.��� Gudynas rightly identi�es how developmentalism continues to set the agenda and structure conditions of South America�s place within a colonial world system, further diminishing the possibility of state independence in relation to the global economy. Yet we must also critique the world system that reproduces nationalism at the expense of the sovereignty o� Indigenous territories.

Genealogies of critical theories from the South (including dependency theory and decolonial theory) have importantly attended to the persistence of this colonial condition that produces regional asymmetries and an un- even distribution of resource control. My project builds on these insights to unpack a dual analysis of power: I analyze extractive capitalism�s tech- niques of domination, showing how it expands through a series o� legal, rhetorical, economic, and political contortions that both draw from and erase Indigenous peoples in their territories. The material and a�fective production of extractive capitalism crushes vernacular life and its embodi- ment, enclosing it within the leveling technologies of globalization. In re- lation to schemes of mega- development, large- scale extractivism assaults peripheral spaces, in�icting uneven pain upon regions where Indigenous majority communities continue to organize life and proliferate it, even in sites of extreme pressure and violence. This book li�s and names these sub-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

P R E F A C E xix

merged social ecologies. And the �extractive zone� names the violence that capitalism does to reduce, constrain, and convert life into commodities, as well as the epistemological violence of training our academic vision to re- duce life to systems.

Nonindigenous scholars have cautioned against �romanticizing native peoples,��� however, some of that work does not centrally engage with the current dangers in the reduction o� biodiversity and the genocidal prac- tices that Native peoples face. In the case studies that I elaborate upon, all take place in the so- called peripheries o� late capitalist activity, and Indige- nous peoples are directly a�fected by neoliberal, economic, and cultural conditions that predetermine these spaces as colonial contact zones.�� It is o�en in the heart of resource- rich territories that Indigenous peoples exist in complex tension with extractive capitalism and land defense. In these geographies, Indigenous peoples o�en multiply rather than reduce life possibilities, protecting land and each other at o�en extremely high personal and communal cost. For instance, a global map of recent ecocides, or the murder o� land defenders, shows an acute rise in Latin America and the Asian Paci�c, geographies that overlap with new social movements that organize against extractive encroachment.�� The organization Global Wit- ness documents a three hundred percent increase in the murders of ordi- nary people defending natural resources from mining, hydroelectric dams, conservation, and pollution.

Throughout the world, Indigenous peoples are also o�en at the fore- front of defending lands in regions that are continually extracted for their biodiversity.�  In the AmØricas, we see the complicity among state, police, and corporate actors in their attempts to violently shut down these land defenders, such as the case of attack dogs and pepper spray used against Indigenous protestors and their allies as they blocked the Dakota oil pipe. In resource- rich Ecuador, anti- extractive activists report that their emails are regularly hacked, that they are followed and intimidated, and, most notably, that the police and military rove Indigenous territories, facilitat- ing the work of national and multinational capitalist enterprises.�› Lenca activist Berta CÆceres, who was murdered in 2014, founded the Council of Indigenous peoples in part to oppose mega- projects and resource extrac- tion in Honduras.��

As critical Indigenous studies have shown, colonial capitalism o�en expands its control over Native territories by legitimizing the neoliberal

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

xx P R E F A C E

multicultural state.�� And it is here that the exercise of autonomy matters. In each chapter, I ask, how can we di�ferently apprehend not only the ex- perience of and resistance to extractive colonialism, but also its generative capacity to see and activate beyond the colonial divide? As I elaborate, In- digenous territories o�en overlap with the geographies that constitute the Earth�s highest biodiversity, and which extractive capitalism continually earmarks and occupies for commodity conversion, mapped through in- creasingly �ne- tuned technologies.

In zones of continual extractivism, what responses, engagements, and viewpoints emerge that do not exhaust di�ference but instead proliferate it?�� How do Native and African- descendent populations have perspectives on the natural world that engage it, rather than just take from it? And, to reach further into the work of decolonization, can feminist and queer inter- ventions pose a challenge to patriarchal logics, monoculture, and extrac- tive capitalism? Can we di�ferently attend to Andean, Amazonian, Native life and the complex of senses never fully subsumed within the European colonial order? What cultural and intellectual production makes us see, hear, and intimate the land di�ferently? What do we really know about the invisible, the inanimate, and the nonhuman forms that creatively reside as a�erlives of the colonial encounter?

The map I produce is not connected through linear histories or Euro- centric expeditions, nor do I enter the colonial archive to read alongside it, even while I have learned much from some of these methodologies.�� Instead, the map I draw is one o� Indigenous and Afro- Indigenous spaces across the Andes, Southern Chile, and into the Andean Amazonia as con- tinually occupied, either by colonists, settlers, or multinational corpora- tions, where histories of decolonization arise within the violent condition of extractive capitalism. A disciplinary rationale inevitably fails for all the sites, texts, and geographies that I transverse with epistemological excess. In other words, rather than pursue one disciplinary frame, I engage stand- point and decolonial theory, regional histories, and relational critique to attend to several scenes of extractivism within South America. A decolonial entry into the extractive zone, then, reveals a di�ferently perceivable world, an intangible space of emergence, where rivers converge into the �ow and the muck o� life otherwise.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Submerged Perspectives

Let us never forget: that the poem was entombed in a collapse of the

earth. By habit, rather than commodity, the singularity and multi-

plicity of things were presented as divided couples and dualities,

before the genres and species were discovered. This cadence allowed

for a better distinction between things (we still think and react in this

dual manner, and often take surprising pleasure from it). But we�re

also waiting for the renewed perception of di�erences to reveal them-

selves as such, and for the poem to reemerge once more.

Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation

The Extractive Zone attends to the regions of extractive capitalism by fore- grounding submerged perspectives; it also engages the possibility of re- newed perception. Throughout, I ask us to consider realms of di�ferently organized reality that are linked to, yet move outside of, colonial bound- aries. Unlike the extractive view, I li� submerged perspectives that per- ceive local terrains as sources o� knowledge, vitality, and livability. My work is situated in �ve speci�c spatial geographies of study within South America�the Bío Bío in Chile, the Sacred Valley in Peru, Potosí (and La Paz) in Bolivia, Eastern Ecuador, and Southwestern Colombia. These areas represent �other AmØricas,� or regions whose marginal status remains cen- tral to the global economy and gives us clues as to how we might under- stand a range of decolonizing e�forts in the hemisphere.�

In this study, I am attentive to shi�ing borderlands, queer and non- reproductive worlds o� horizontal and anarcho a liation, experimental

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

2 I N T R O D U C T I O N

�lm and vernacular performances as sites of potential, not only through social movements, but also through modes of seeing, living, and �nding sources of exchange as alternatives to the destructive path that is extractive capitalism.� The Extractive Zone works across spaces that might not other- wise be organized together in one study, delinking from the naturalization of national histories and from the heteronormativity of the nation-state. Instead, I uncover what is submerged within local geographies that have been traversed by colonialism and extractive capitalism to show the on- going force of the colonial encounter. This book also analyzes and engages majority Indigenous territories o�en constituted as terra nullius, despite palimpsest histories of social life that do not divide nature from culture, land into private property, or ecology from the vernacular.

Édouard Glissant�s theory of relationality has become one touchstone for perceiving the modes of di�ference that emerge within the spaces of potential of other AmØricas, where a certain sensibility and attention to the oceanic is embedded in Glissant�s poetics.� In the epigraph, Édouard Glissant refers to the �renewed perception of di�ferences to reveal themselves as such, and for the poem to reemerge once more.� The poem in Glissant�s elegant line is a metaphor for seeing beyond the colonial divide, into �a relation between di�ferent people, places, animate and inanimate objects, visible and invisible forces, the air, the water, the �re, the vegetation, animals and humans.�� To name the visible and invisible forces between the human and nonhuman, between animate and inanimate life, is to perceive a too- o�en- ignored net- work of relationality, or social ecologies, as I term them throughout.

In Poetics of Relation, Glissant makes reference to the rhizomatic net- works that operate as the hidden worlds of opacity, where renewed percep- tion takes refuge from enclosure and containment.� Similarly, to be able to see beyond the capitalist divide, renewed perception does not simply represent a structure of visibility. It instead refers to an enlivened sense of the relationships that inhabit autonomous and uncharted spaces within capitalism and those that exist between the tracking of colonial and dis- ciplinary power.� By making visible microspaces of interaction and en- counter within geographies where coloniality has le� and continues to leave a deep imprint, I show how renewed perception o�fers a method for decolonized study.

I� we take as our starting point that many spaces within the AmØri- cas have never been fully inserted into Western capitalism, then we might

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

I N T R O D U C T I O N 3

also consider vernacular colonialities as the site of renewed perception.  These are sites of di�ferentiated and inexhaustible potential, complex Afro- Indigenous spaces of coexistence with the nonhuman world that have been formed in relation to the colonial Encounter.› In terms of perceiving other- wise, Indigenous perspectives have long apprehended what Eduardo Vi- veiros de Castro refers to as �reality from distinct points of view.�� In study- ing Amazonian worldviews and creating a new Brazilian Anthropology, Viveiros de Castro illustrates how an Indigenous perception of nature does not divide itself from other realms of reality; instead, it apprehends from �an original state of undi�ferentiation.�

Decolonial thinkers put into motion a range of methods and episte- mologies that give primacy to renewed perception. Walter Mignolo de- scribes how decoloniality delinks from the Western project of civilization where being and language have been inscribed through the structures of coloniality.�� Furthermore, decoloniality moves away from singularity and the reduction imposed by the European gaze toward the proliferation of epistemological possibility. Rather than presenting one mode of see- ing otherwise, a range of generative authors that include Sylvia Wynter, Enrique Dussel, and Lewis Gordon o�fer us diasporic knowledge forma- tions that name and theorize the e�fects o� heterogeneous colonial histo- ries. Key architects of decolonial scholarship such as Walter Mignolo, Maria Lugones, Emma PØrez, Nelson Maldonado- Torres, Laura PØrez, Chela San- doval, Catherine Walsh, Arturo Escobar, Sylvia Rivera- Cusicanqui, and Ramón Grosfoguel attend to the weight of the European continental tradi- tion, while sorting through hemispheric sites of enunciation that renarrate colonial histories from the position of subjugated knowledges.��

Decolonial theorizations allow me to identify how new/old forms of colonialism, such as extractive capitalism, the digital surveillance of ter- ritories, the criminalization o� Indigenous peoples as a weapon of neolib- eral expansion, and the extraction o� Native and Afro- descendent knowl- edges, all depend on prior civilizational projects, in which the Global South has long been constructed as a region of plunder, discovery, raw resources, taming, classi�cation, and racist adventure.�� However, i� we only track the purview of power�s destruction and death force, we are forever analytically imprisoned to reproducing a totalizing viewpoint that ignores life that is unbridled and �nds forms of resisting and living alternatively. Therefore, I seek new approaches by analyzing submerged and emergent perspectives

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

4 I N T R O D U C T I O N

within the extractive zone, or the potential for forms o� life that cannot be easily reduced, divided, or representationally conquered or evacuated.

Like any system of domination, extractive capitalism is not totalizing in its destructive e�fects. The term �Anthropocene,� which has been used by Western geologists and climatologists to term the period o� human inter- vention from 1610 forward, now popularly identi�es the crisis of future life on the planet. Scientists and scholars in the last ten years have written their visions of a planet in crisis, a spate o� literature that addresses a �no future� paradigm and how life on the planet will soon be destroyed.�� The broad adoption of the term �Anthropocene� is a key shi� in our willingness to ac- knowledge the impact the human has had on the planet. Yet we use the term too generally, addressing �humanity� as a whole without understanding histories of racial thought and settler colonialism that are imposed upon categorizations o� biodiversity, spaces where the biotechnologies of capi- talism accelerate.

In reality, the problem is far more speci�c: colonial capitalism has been the main catastrophic event that has gobbled up the planet�s resources, dis- cursively constructing racialized bodies within geographies of di�ference, systematically destroying through dispossession, enslavement, and then producing the planet as a corporate bio- territory. The Anthropocene, like the militarized production of the extractive zone, demarcates the tempo- ralities and spatial catastrophe of the planetary through a universalizing idiom and viewpoint that hides the political geographies embedded within the conversion of complex life. Thus, naming the Anthropocene as such without grounding its impact is what Vandana Shiva refers to as a mono- culture of the mind.��

My objective is to decolonize the Anthropocene by cataloguing life otherwise, or the emergent and heterogeneous forms o� living that are not about destruction or mere survival within the extractive zone, but about the creation of emergent alternatives. Unlike these doomsday approaches that play with destruction scenarios on the scale of the planetary, I study at the level of submerged life worlds within Indigenous territories, while pointing to African- descendent territories and ontologies, modes o� living that, even if not o�en perceivable, exist alongside extractive capitalism. For the spaces, movements, artwork, and intellectual and activist genealogies I study, the paradigm o� �no future� has already taken place and we are now on the other side of colonial catastrophe.��

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

I N T R O D U C T I O N 5

Within wide- ranging, critical, and interlinked social ecologies lies the potential for what Anibal Quijano cites as �liberation from all power or- ganized as inequality, discrimination, exploitation, and domination.��� When coupled with Laura Perez�s important caution that decolonization must necessarily be anchored within feminist- of- color queer thought and praxis,�  we begin to enter into the terrains of emergent potential at the center of my study. As I detail in chapter 1, Andean and Amazonian spaces that contain what is o�en dubbed the highest biodiversity on the planet cannot be managed under the management state�s incorporative logic of el buen vivir, or good living practices, that have become the institutional re- duction o� Indigenous knowledge formations. The locales and visual texts I examine in this book, therefore, proliferate with di�ference as alternatives, through strategies that inverse, reverse, or stretch the gaze; they elongate time, linger within third spaces, imagine ecologies of rupture, and see with a �sh�s eye into the �ow of the river and away from the dam�s blockage.

In my study, attention to the dynamics and operations of race and racisms, feminist critique, queer potential, and anticapitalist stru�le or- ganizes the chapters that follow. Shi�ing entry points into the microspaces of the local, experimental, and phenomenological allows for attention to the embodied and vernacular experience o� what is contained within the extractive zone. My �rst objective, then, is to move decolonial theory into further engagement with scholarship on race, sexuality, and Indigenous studies, providing methods to see the encounter of coloniality through these multiple frames of analysis.

The Extractive View

Before the colonial project could prosper, it had to render territories and peoples extractible, and it did so through a matrix of symbolic, physical, and representational violence.�› Therefore, the extractive view sees territo- ries as commodities, rendering land as for the taking, while also devalor- izing the hidden worlds that form the nexus o� human and nonhuman multiplicity. This viewpoint, similar to the colonial gaze, facilitates the re- organization of territories, populations, and plant and animal life into ex- tractible data and natural resources for material and immaterial accumu- lation.

The power of the visual has been explored by theorists in great detail

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

6 I N T R O D U C T I O N

over the last half century. But these mostly Eurocentric visual theories ignore the weight of colonial seeing, neglecting its earlier forms of power. For instance, Michel Foucault�s panopticon stands in for the state�s ever- watchful eye,�� a theory of power that is formulated with modernity rather than with colonialism in mind. Gilles Deleuze in his short but in�uential essay �Postscript on Societies of Control� picks up on Foucault�s theory of modern visual power by naming and, to a certain extent, predicting a new con�guration that he called the �control society.��� While these theories are o�en cited as classic sources of visual studies, by starting with moder- nity they render invisible the enclosure, the plantation, the ship, and the reservation, quintessential colonial spaces where power was consolidated through visual regimes.

In particular, what forms of power can be located by naming the extrac- tive view? How might a focus on extractive capitalism and its vertical model of seeing change how we understand the history of visuality and the way we name forms of power in the past and in the present? What i� we, alongside Nicholas Mirzoe�f �s concept of countervisuality, consider a longer arc of visual regimes and disobediences that situated colonial rule over territories and the countervisual resistances of racialized populations?��

Historically, the extractive view rendered Native populations invisible, which legally rendered the settlement of foreign populations onto com- munal properties, and facilitated the taking of those territories� resources. European colonization throughout the world cast nature as the other and, through the gaze of terra nullius, represented Indigenous peoples as non- existent. If settler colonialism and extractive capitalism reorganized space and time, then vertical seeing normalized violent removal. By continuing to rupture Indigenous cosmological relationships to land, the state and corporations expand their control and purview over nature in new forms of settler colonialism. While none of this is particularly news, my point is to emphasize that colonial visual regimes normalized an extractive plane- tary view that continues to facilitate capitalist expansion, especially upon resource- rich Indigenous territories.

In widening a discussion o� how we might think about visuality in the regions I study, extractive capitalism literally �sees like the state,� the term James C. Scott deploys to describe high modernist developmental visions that require great scienti�c and administrative feats.�� With speci�c rele- vance to the AmØricas, Scott connects the application o� high modernist de-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

I N T R O D U C T I O N 7

signs to the history and rise of authoritarianism. Indeed, colonial and state violence historically facilitated territorial oversight, where seeing like the state meant violently asserting its rule over human and nonhuman popula- tions. Applying this to the speci�c condition of South American occupation, during the Jesuit restructuring o� land in Paraguay throughout the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries, Guarani dwellings were organized to keep maximum control over the forcibly settled population, as well as expand monocultural production. These reducciones, or land enclosures, represent some of the earliest forms of extractive reorganization in the AmØricas.

If colonial seeing �rst appeared as administrative rule over peoples and land, then in the digital phase, extractive states currently dispossess through new technologies. Modernized states coordinate with multinational cor- porations, using reconnaissance systems to collect large data sets, acquire surface readings of the Earth, and produce high- resolution maps that are deployed to build extractive infrastructure on the ground. Since the US- led global war on terror, �Five Eyes� states (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand) have increasingly invested in satel- lite technologies that support the planet�s mapping for military and surveil- lance purposes, as well as for the conversion of natural resources into com- modities. For instance, the US government has spent billions of dollars to fund the Center for the Study o� National Reconnaissance, contracting with specialized tech �rms to develop high- resolution resource maps and pro- duce military intelligence used by shadow states to expand global control.

Based on Eurocentric theories of the visual a growing �eld of new media studies describes electronic colonialism theory, the concept of digital colo- nialism, and technological colonialism, warning about an increasing plane- tary system of control. Yet, many of these approaches continue to devalue the di�ferential ways that this power is experienced, in particular global re- gions and upon certain bodies, as a digital colony.

In the new digital era, surveillance, data mining, and the mapping of resource- rich territories work together as complexly interlinked, rather than discrete, manifestations o� hegemony that extinguish Indigenous and rural communities, such as in the regions in South America that I study. These highly coordinated forms of dominance function by mapping resource- rich areas of the world (in Afghanistan, Iraq, South America, and so forth), and serve as visual gateways for multinational and international state investment in extractive industries.�� Lisa Parks�s research is exem-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

8 I N T R O D U C T I O N

plary in this regard in that it shows how mapping territories for resources does not function by remote means only but is instead intimately linked to capitalism, military technologies, and the parallel expansion of dispos- session on the ground.�� Digital technologies contribute to the diminish- ment of regional national sovereignty over natural resources by enabling a grand- scale view from above; satellites photograph large areas of the planet to convert them into commodities for utilitarian market ends. Remote sensing and satellite operating systems chart and quantify the amount of raw materials contained within a given territory, making predictions about the pro�t margins that can be actualized within areas with abundant re- sources.��

In extractive sites, we must pay close attention to the material changes born from late capitalism�s digital frameworks, which proliferate new forms of colonial the�. For instance, information, con�dentiality, and corporate oversight function in ways that occlude, turning nonrenewable natural resources into opaque nodes of digital information that are hidden away from public debate. In contrast to Glissant�s de�nition o� �opacity,� in which di�ference proliferates in a positive form, this oblique apparatus of extractivism renders invisible the activities of the corporate state. At the same time, geospatial technology requires the opposite form of visu- ality, rendering natural deposits o� human and nonhuman life transparent, mapping to accumulate, convert, and expand the global economy.

In terms of shi�ing the gaze of this planetary scale, we might return to the importance of perceiving otherwise that engages citations and re- search produced out of observations grounded in the experience of South America.�� Three decades ago, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela theorized alternative modes o� human and biological perception. Their interdisciplinary collaborative work, El Ærbol del conocimiento (�The Tree o� Knowledge�) �rst published in 1984, deals complexly with the human and nonhuman predicament o� �no future� presented to us by extractive capitalism. Maturana and Varela�s study subtly originates and learns from the forests of the Bío Bío; where the ancient pehuen tree, sacred to the Ma- puche, serves as a model for how they map human hermeneutics and per- ception. Of many aspects of this work that could be highlighted here, a signature insight is the concern for all organisms as constitutively and au- tonomously reproducing circuits o� living systems, where there is a cog- nitive blurring between perception and actual experience. By focusing on

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

I N T R O D U C T I O N 9

perception as the crucial nexus point, the work o�fers �an invitation to re- �ection by opening a space of awareness.�� 

Decolonial Queer Epistemes

In the chapters that follow, to understand ways of perceiving otherwise, I engage what I refer to throughout the book as a decolonial queer and femme episteme and methodology.�› My perceptual method is indebted to women of color feminisms, and speci�cally Chicana feminisms and Native feminist scholarship, and also builds from the insights of queer of color cri- tique.�� Like women of color feminisms that analyze through a relational �eld of multiplicity, I situate the theory and praxis of de- linking from the colonial as refusing to see from a singular frame of analysis, standpoint, in- terpretation, or experience. What I am calling a �decolonial queer femme� method valorizes nonnormative embodied femininity as sources o� know- ing and perceiving.

A decolonial queer femme method perceives otherwise by attend- ing to the resonances o� lived embodiment as world- shaping activities.�� In this I draw from the work of Jacqueline M. Martinez, who proposes a phenomenology of Chicana experience and identity as an orientation that both ruptures the distinction between self and other and also methodologi- cally o�fers embodied knowing as a research technology. Martinez argues for a mode of perception that is an �open- ended inquiry that interrogates both its theoretical and its experiential conditions of possibility.� Based upon models created by Richard Lanigan (1988), Martinez engages Chi- cana feminisms as a means of reorienting perception away from the static �object of study� toward a deep �engagement with it,� where lesbian iden- tity o�fers a generative nexus of insight. In this phenomenology, Martinez takes seriously daily life, and believes that conscious experience becomes the foundation for personal and social transformation.�� Such transforma- tive readings that allow for subject position in relation �to the �eld� allow me to deepen my analysis and interpretations o� what resides within the ex- tractive zone in South America, especially through a nonnormative femme position that allows the �eld and cultural texts I engage to make its impres- sions upon and through me.

Emma PØrez�s concept of the decolonial as a temporal imaginary also helps me perceive in these directions. To pursue the dynamism of think-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

10 I N T R O D U C T I O N

ing within interstitial spaces, PØrez turns to the poetics of seeing, where the decolonial imaginary �acts much like a shadow in the dark. The �gure be- tween the subject and the object on which it is cast.� The shadow is a space in which the visible and invisible mix together, where potential exists in a decolonial imaginary that is not rendered through transparent language or representations. Queer decolonial methods and epistemes bring together nonnormative modes of engaging the social world as submerged and emer- gent perspectives.

If Martinez and PØrez o�fer language for seeing that a rms queer epis- temes and embodiment as a source of theorizing power from submerged perspectives, then Linda Tuhiwai Smith o�fers a model for the stakes of my research. Within US Native studies, Tuhiwai Smith identi�es the need for decolonizing academic research about Indigenous communities, whom she frames as the most studied population in the world.�� Tuhiwai Smith emphasizes the importance of an ethical perspective that mutually respects and engages Indigenous knowledge without extracting from these commu- nities, but rather carefully attends to the construction of otherness, espe- cially given the overdetermination of categories such as observer and ob- served, civilized and savage, anthropologist and Indigenous other. Smith�s focus on knowledge formations and ethicality is essential to a decolonized academy, as is the consideration o� Native worldviews that meaningfully shi� the terrain of encounter, interpretation, and analysis to decenter the colonizing power of disciplinary knowledge.

Furthermore, Smith�s work reminds us that extraction operates through material and immaterial forms of converting Indigeneity into exchange value, where intellectual and spiritual resources are taken to produce new forms of colonial currency. I take these insights with me into the extractive zone as an important methodological and epistemological baseline o� what I am calling a �decolonial femme method��the nexus where experience, per- ception, and decolonization meet. This is the space for much of the analysis of the extractive zone that aims to explode unilinear and unilateral proce- dures by transiting in the murky epistemic and sensuous space of uncer- tainty. Situated and a�fective forms o� knowledge production can provide new ways to analyze the colonial trace in ways that hopefully do not repro- duce, tame, or obfuscate an intimate and intricate web of power relations.��

Decolonial queer epistemes, analyses, or methods also work in opposi- tion to conventional training on how to understand the lushness of social

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

I N T R O D U C T I O N 11

life rather than seeing through any single frame. Furthermore, in a refusal to address the partiality o� knowledge, normative methodologies o�en reproduce an episteme and representation of marginality.�� My method abandons the epistemology of measure for something much more tenuous, reaching toward addressing the complexity and entanglements of poten- tial within extractive zones of institutional knowledge. A queer decolonial femme method recognizes a plurality of meaning systems, interpretations, and selections to reconsider what we thought we had known by challenging its disciplinary foundation.�� Untraining the social by engaging decolonial theory and an analysis of colonialism allows for histories of dispossession, enslavement, and appropriation to be put at the center of social theory, emphasizing submerged perspectives as those that must be learned from rather than suppressed.��

For US academics, South America in particular has been the object of scrutiny under what Ricardo D. Salvatore addresses as �disciplinary con- quest.� Making reliable visibility out of the peripheries was essential to how South America has been positioned in the US university since the nine- teenth century.�  I� knowledge is a site of conquest, and therefore the ex- tension of coloniality, a decolonial femme modus challenges a normative �American� disciplinary vision. It also challenges an area studies approach, or the subsuming of global processes under the category of the European modern.�› A decolonial femme standpoint does not universalize or dehis- toricize the speci�city of global spaces or material formations, but instead o�fers micro and submerged entry points into spaces saturated in colo- niality. Decolonial thought in�ected by critical race, feminist, and queer scholarship, then, allows me to show the making of extractive zones as a dominant objective of the colonial condition.

Submerged Perspectives

Central to how I analyze colonial capitalism and the possibilities of the future is the critical task of perceiving life otherwise, or what I refer to as �submerged perspectives� that allow us to see local knowledge that re- sides within what power has constituted as extractive zones. In each of these places, submerged perspectives pierce through the entanglements of power to di�ferently organize the meanings of social and political life. In other words, the possibility of decolonization moves within the landscape

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

12 I N T R O D U C T I O N

of multiplicity that is submerged perspectives. Extractive zones contain within them the submerged perspectives that challenge obliteration. I de- scribe these transitional and intangible spaces as geographies that cannot be fully contained by the ethnocentricism of speciesism, scienti�c objec- ti�cation, or by extractive technocracies that advance oil �elds, construct pipelines, divert and diminish rivers, or cave- in mountains through min- ing. Seeing and listening to these worlds present nonpath dependent alter- natives to capitalist and extractive valuation.

Studying multiply to decenter a singular eye has long been a modality of decolonial perception, both as observation and as critique.�� W. E. B. Du Bois�s episteme of double consciousness, for instance, is multivalent, rather than solely Marxist, pushing against the grain of canonical knowledge and threatening always to disturb its carefully concealed boundaries. The ir- ruptive potential of the terrain of multiplicity is enlivened in Du Bois�s method that analyzes the Fugitive Slave Act of 1865 against the Eurocentric and normative subjects of sociology and its complicity with the postslav- ery racial state. Decolonial hemispheric studies can learn from Du Bois�s form of multidirectional critique that both undoes and reworks unilinear historical narratives that erase its subjects. Further, we might consider how Du Bois�s sociological imagination raised the submerged perspectives of Black social and economic life, rather than subsume them into existing dis- ciplinary epistemes. Part of my work in this book, then, is to bring into con- versation a variety of radical traditions in the AmØricas.

By raising submerged perspectives, I am o�en blurring the boundaries of the nation- state and Area Studies, reconsidering the operations of the disciplinary, conversing and dialoguing in scholarly and regional idioms that are my own and not my own, and stepping into the multiply de�ned and o�en overdetermined territory of the other�s other. How can we con- fuse the normative boundaries of academic study by wading into what lies below the surface o� late capitalism?

Chapters

This book connects the destructive force of capitalism in extractive zones to expressive and emergent alternatives; as these forms emerge, we �nd lesser- known, but powerful genealogies of thought, praxis, and connec-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

I N T R O D U C T I O N 13

tion. In each chapter, I read the speci�city and unpredictability of the de- colonial gesture, or the smaller spaces and moments of decolonization, in relation to racial and settler colonial projects.�� In the chapters that follow, I consider regions that have all experienced massive transformation and upheaval under colonialism; in each of these places, neoliberal extractive capitalism has only accelerated these consequences.

Chapter 1, �The Intangibility of the Yasuní,� analyzes the �most bio- diverse region on the planet� in an area o� Eastern Ecuador where oil drill- ing has threatened the delicate ecologies o� Indigenous territories. Since 1998, when the Yasuní- ��� treaty was �rst proposed, the Yasuní region o�fered the tangible possibility for radical conservation protection. Today, that project has been endangered by the expansion of the oil industry and the forces of multinational capital that fold Ecuador into the matrix of petro dependency. I meditate on the term intangibility as a decolonial con- cept of multiplicity, since the region is referred to as �the intangible zone� for Western science�s incapacity to fully catalogue the plethora o� life that exists even within one square mile of a 933- mile Amazonian territory.

While the Ecuadoran state promotes el buen vivir, or the idea o� �good living� according to sustainable ecological principles, it continues to facili- tate oil extraction in the region as a violent act against Indigenous sover- eignty. The intangible zones, according to the Ecuadoran Law, are �pro- tected spaces of great cultural and biological importance in which no extractive activity can occur because of the region�s high value for the Ama- zon, Ecuador, the world, and present and future generations.���

However, despite the constant rehearsal of the phrase �protected spaces� within the new Ecuadoran Constitution and the legislation of el buen vivir as protection of the Yasuní, the politics of greed continues to en- danger the Eastern Ecuadoran Indigenous peoples, their territories, and the complex systems o� land management, resistance, and alternative anti- capitalist economies found there. I analyze alternative renderings that are the social ecologies o� Indigenous communities, especially the Quichua within the Yasuní region, as another possibility for imagining the social from within and beyond the intangible zone. However, I situate such alter- natives as accompanied by the constant and necessary political pressure exerted by YASunidos, a cross- generational, urban and rural, transborder, queer, feminist, Afro- Indigenous coalition that works solidly to defend the

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

14 I N T R O D U C T I O N

Yasuní region. Spontaneously formed in 2013 to confront the pressures of exogenous petro development, this multidirectional coalition proliferates alternatives to the �no future� model of the extractive zone.

Chapter 2, �Andean Phenomenology and New Age Settler Colonialism,� considers a less obvious but equally perilous form of extractive capitalism by thinking about spiritual tourism as an extractive zone. By working through histories o� �spiritual� taking, such as the colonial church and its control over Indigenous girls� bodies, and later the new age tra c of Andean cul- tural formats, particularly in relation to Q�ero peoples, I attend to the prob- lem of the colonial divide through ongoing forms of settler colonialism that justify occupation and the speculation of sacred territories through new age rhetoric. I show how neoliberal tourist economies expand the paradigm o� �playing Indian,��� especially in a transnational setting where Andean masculinity is commodi�ed by sex and spiritual tourist economies. I also draw upon an important literature within US Native studies to show the commonality of extracting from Indigenous embodiment and worldviews throughout the hemisphere. Rather than foreclose upon the possibility of decolonization in this space, I engage local knowledge production, such as Andean phenomenology, as an experience o� land and territoriality that does not pass through neoliberalism or its colonial projections.

Moreover, I navigate sticky realities through a decolonial queer femme method that is open to the less tangible perspectives, sounds, and experi- ences that are available by moving beyond the colonial divide. In other words, despite the raucous noise of neoliberal commodi�cation and ap- propriation, what are the more silent spaces that refuse these terms and instead allow for a less determined set of interactions and pedagogies be- tween Native peoples and nonnative foreigners?

Chapter 3, �An Archive for the Future,� analyzes settler colonialism in Mapuche, Pehuenche, and Huilliche territories within Southern Chile, demonstrating the ongoing colonial state e�fort to �eliminate the Native.��� Like the Chiapas con�ict over Mayan territories, the ongoing violence and dispossession of Mapuche territories only increased with neoliberal gov- ernmentality in the 1990s. The resulting and very current crisis has terror- ized thousands o� Indigenous people through the massive deployment of the police state in the Bío- Bío region. Resistance through hunger strikes and political imprisonment, poignantly by Indigenous women, has been an important and highly visible mode of embodying dissent within the ex-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

I N T R O D U C T I O N 15

tractive zone.�� Mapuche �lmmaker Francisco Huichaqueo produces an archive of the future about the present- day violence of pine and eucalyptus export production, monoculture development that has displaced and re- duced daily life for Native peoples within the Bio- Bio regions of the South- ern Wallmapu territories.

In highly symbolic renderings of occupation, Huichaqueo refuses to follow documentary conventions. He also decenters representations of the human �gure, instead making nature�particularly the omnipresent pine tree, the ancestral pehuen, and the giant native Auracaria trees�the narra- tive center o� his �lms. With the director, the viewer laments the extinction of the sacred pehuen seeing beyond colonial occupation into the invisible Mapuche worlds he visualizes. Moreover, Huichaqueo incorporates experi- mental �lmmaking language as a way out of constrained developmental visions. Through his use of opacity, namely as an obscuring perspective, we �nd a complex aesthetic challenge to the normative settler colonial gaze that renders territories as landscape and Indigenous bodies as criminal.

Having moved through the extractive scenes of spiritual tourism and forest and petroleum extraction, I turn to chapter 4, �A Fish- Eye Episteme,� a title that refers to a submerged perspective that I discuss in the chapter. In particular, I address the commodi�cation o� water, where I analyze hydro- electricity as submerging lives and perspectives that waterpower attempts to drown. Attending to a body o� work by Colombian mestiza artist Caro- lina Caycedo, I examine how an inverted view o�fers us a di�ferent order of perception than the empirical sight lines that peer below, above, and through the extractive divide. The ��sh- eye episteme� that I refer to dis- places the ocular centricity o� human development and instead reveals a submerged, below- the- surface, blurry countervisuality.

Documenting the ontologies and textures of rural life in her video- making, Caycedo shows how the Spanish company Endesa�s land invasion upon biodiverse territories produces a virtual catastrophe for local river communities in the Cauca Valley of southwestern Colombia. In a long still take of the lush and verdant river, Caycedo inverts the camera so that the Magdalena �ows at the top of the frame. This inverted view estranges and detaches from the colonial extractive gaze by seeing the river as a place of subtle yet sta�ering social and ecological sustenance rather than merely as moving water to be harnessed for electricity. I elaborate how Caycedo�s aesthetic praxis also inverts the normative model of colonial development

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

16 I N T R O D U C T I O N

and its extractive technologies by resignifying satellite and drone technolo- gies to instead represent local sources o� knowledge and trans- generational communal relations.

In chapter 5, �Decolonial Gestures,� I propose that Indigenous feminist anarchist critique o�fers another submerged perspective from within the extractive zone. Anarcho- feminist critique o�fers an important set o� his- torical examples and modes of refusing global capitalism that range from intellectual and cultural production to embodied activities of dissent. For instance, Indigenous Aymara female hunger strikers, slag- pile workers, and chola market women share a history of an anticapitalist ethics that dis- mantle and remake the condition of possibility outside of mining that has determined Bolivia�s position within the global economy since the ��eenth century.

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui�s decolonizing theories emerge from her �eld- work within the cultural modes o� Bolivian anarchic- feminist history and help outline this chapter�s theoretical work, which threads a genealogy of female �gures that are o�en hidden by Le� radical history. Furthermore, I address the decolonizing imaginaries of Mujeres Creando artists, per- formers, and activists, whose split into two organizations, Mujeres Creando and Mujeres Creando Comunidad, with two distinct visions, only multi- plies the potentiality of its critical perspective. This chapter brings gender and sexuality to the foreground to address the utopic potential that has been enlivened within Andean politics and cultural spheres, especially over the past decade.��

Through �ve extractive scenes in South America, I return to and con- clude with the submerged perspectives of social movements, artistic e�forts, and intellectual formations that challenge the monocultural view of de- velopmentalism and colonial capitalism. Whether through shadow play, by seeing from below, or listening to the water, these porous modalities ex- pand the condition of possibility against Eurocentric, high modernist, and totalizing visions of di�ferentiated planetary life.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

C H A P T E R �

The Intangibility of the Yasuní

In Eastern Ecuador�s Intangible Zone, the Napo River headwater tributary blends with the aguas negras, a small river that �ows away from the apoca- lyptic movement of extractive capitalism. Where the vegetation thickens and the temperature of the water cools, the humming of the oil barges and motorized canoes ceases. Along the ��y- kilometer stretch of river from the oil boomtown Coca en route to the Yasuní, one transits on the Napo through intense industrial activity. Bright orange �ames from oil re�neries spike above the horizon; a myriad of �oating riverboats that house petro- leum company workers sit empty along the riverbank, while barges travel up and down the river carrying petroleum. Though invisible from the river, dozens of oil workers hack through long swaths of rain forest with mache- tes to make way for petroleum extraction.

Ten miles past the houseboats, the river divides again. Turning toward los ríos negros, or �the black waters,� and away from the Napo River, the ac- celerated pace of extractivism disappears into protected Indigenous Shuar, Huaronani, Quichua, Tagaeri and Taromame territories marked only by a tiny sign that reads �Yasuní National Park.� Unlike the raucous commotion that moves oil up and down the main part of the Napo River, on this smaller artery a single leaf falling into the water from the canopy above becomes a major event. Here, perception slows down where the frenetic timescape of extraction is not the sole temporality, and where the elongated sense of geological time enables a di�ferent perception to the intricate unfolding of the natural world. In the two meters of murky water that lap against our motored canoe, a million years of evolution is contained. As we sit silently

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

18 C H A P T E R O N E

in the boat, someone spots a river caiman, an animal that glides e�fortlessly through the water. The caiman is a useful guide for the multiplicity of see- ing that we need in such a space: with its eyes positioned just above the line o� water, its sight hovers above as easily as it dips below the shadowy, fer- tile waters.

In 1998, ������ declared the Yasuní region, located between the Napo and Curacay rivers in the southern provinces o� Napo and Pastaza and en- compassing 982,000 total hectares, a world heritage site worthy of inter- national patrimony. Long considered the most bio- diverse region in the world, Yasuní National Park harbors millions of insect species, hundreds of bird species, and the greatest variety of tree species anywhere on the planet. Spaces o� high biodiversity such as the Yasuní swirl away from full cap- ture, despite the fact that teams o� Western and Ecuadoran scientists con- stantly enter the forest to classify its plant and animal species and Indige- nous populations.� Given the contrast between the expanding extractive activity I describe above and the patches of forest that contain immense biodiversity, is it possible to imagine an alternative future to the elimina- tion of planetary biodiversity? If the extractive matrix engulfs resource- rich spaces into global capitalism, what exists beyond the reduction of heterogeneity into sheer destruction? I follow biologist William Sacher to ask �what life forms will exist in the future i� we continue to devalue and eliminate?�� As the visible �ames of oil toxicity burn outside its perimeter, what alternatives support another relation to the multiplicity o� life that re- sides within the territories of the Yasuní?

To pursue these questions, and against late capitalism�s absorption of language, intangibility names for me the capacity o� life otherwise to reroute commodi�cation and scienti�c classi�cation. The intangibility of the forest metabolizes, grows, multiplies, and escapes the condition of monoculture, whose complexity forces consideration, as Eduardo Kohn asks, can forests think?� What do they remember? And, as Deleuze and Guattari explore in A Thousand Plateaus, engagement with molecular biology allows for a model of radical ecological agency that describes the coproduction o� living sys- tems with adaptive potential.� Their idea of novel becomings is another way to conceptualize emergence. Indeed, Deleuze and Guattari�s ecophilosophy builds upon Southern theorists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela�s notion o� �autopoesis,� or the ability of a biological system to sustain and re- produce itself.� In line with these concepts, intangibility reaches beyond re-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

T H E I N TA N G I B I L I T Y O F T H E YA S U N ˝ 19

ductionist models of representation toward enlivened social ecologies that shi�, adapt, and extend normative categories o� biological life.

In this chapter, I attend to intangible and autonomous life through an analysis of the Andean- Amazonian geography, its representation, and the modes o� land and water defense that take place in relation to the Yasuní region o� Eastern Ecuador. Speci�cally, I address the Yasuní- ��� Treaty, the radical conservation plan for the biosphere known as the Yasuní Ishpingo- Tambococha- Tiputini (���), as an important and profound, if contradic- tory, alternative to the exigencies of extractive capitalism. Like other alter- native forms of representing the forest and land that emerge from within the Yasuní, the treaty contains within it the surprising acknowledgment of Indigenous sovereignty, the imperative to reverse the extractive view, and the practice of el buen vivir that gives primacy to Afro- based and Indige- nous worldviews. Even as the Yasuní- ��� Treaty has recently come under grave threat by national and multinational oil companies, Indigenous, Afro- Ecuadoran, ����, eco- feminist, and labor union assemblages chal- lenge its dissolution by enacting social ecologies that live beyond the colo- nial divide.

Intangibility counters the representational apparatus of the Yasuní as a pure Amazonian space, a territory of undi�ferentiated wildness, vastness, and untameability. In a surreal portrayal of colonial adventure, German director Werner Herzog�s �lm Fitzcarraldo (1982) epitomizes this view of the Amazonian basin, where nature and �untamable� Natives are danger- ous and threaten Man�s domination of them. In a well- known monologue in Burden of Dreams (1982), the extraordinary documentary by Les Blank that chronicles the making of Fitzcarraldo, Herzog describes his frustra- tion with the jungle, and su�ests that the Amazon is a place of menace; a savage, fecund space where God has punished its inhabitants: �Of course we are challenging nature itself. . . . I see it full of obscenity, the nature here is violent, base. I wouldn�t see anything erotical here, I would see fornica- tion and asphyxiation, and choking, and �ghting for survival, and growing and just dropping away. Of course there is a lot of misery, but it is the same misery that is all around us, the trees here are in misery and the birds are in misery. I don�t think they sing, they just screech in pain.��

Herzog�s rhetorical �air here, and the cinematic spectacle of the failure of modern utopian development, reproduces the colonial tropes of eigh- teenth- and nineteenth- century European travel writing that rehearses the

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

20 C H A P T E R O N E

language of Spanish discovery chronicles. The Amazon has a long repre- sentation as a chaotic landscape that is constantly under threat by civili- zational impulses, a central tenet of the colonial paradigm.  A focus on the dangers of nature, its violence, and its presumed obscenity situates In- digenous territories in racialized and species- centric terms that imagines progress as its own end game.

In contrast to this spectacular and extractive view of the forest, a range of relational forms live with rather than �objectively� observe the Ama- zon. The Yasuní is not a pure space of untamed wildness, as Herzog would have it, but has maintained its biodiversity precisely because of the inge- nuity o� Indigenous seed selection, interplanting, and the meticulous cul- tivation and maintenance o� biodiversity over a thousand years of system- atic care; forest dwellers that live in the region, including the Huaorani, Kichwa, Shuar, and �no contact� populations, have carefully protected and cultivated plant life in ways that support its proliferation.› Intangible geographies function as entropic spaces that cannot be contained by the extractive view, Western science, the commodity logic o� late capitalism, or racial governmentality, but instead are managed by Indigenous peoples, cooperatives, and �no contact� populations to amplify the multiplicity of the forest�s life forms.

The Yasuní Treaty

Biodiversity is not all that is found within the Yasuní region; the territory is also cursed with an estimated 920 million barrels o� below- the- surface oil reserves, which represents twenty percent o� Ecuador�s total fossil fuel deposits. In 1967, Texaco discovered oil in the region, leading to the prac- tice of manos pintados, or painting one�s hands with oil from the open pits to celebrate the presumed riches that would come from its exploitation. By the lost decade of the 1980s, it was clear that Ecuador�s increasing foreign debt and overreliance upon a single commodity further subsumed the na- tion into the global economy of petroleum dependency.

The Yasuní- ��� agreement, originally proposed in 1996, stated that the Ecuadoran state would refuse extractivist bidding to protect Indigenous territories and the �natural state� of nature for the relatively small sliver o� land that had not been divided up by the oil economy. During his cam- paign for presidency, Rafael Correa promised to protect the Rights o� Na-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

T H E I N TA N G I B I L I T Y O F T H E YA S U N ˝ 21

ture by diversifying the nation�s economic portfolio. In 2005, Correa raised the possibility that the Yasuní- ��� agreement would garner funds from global entities, a plan that was touted as central to Correa�s program for economic distribution. Newly sworn in president Correa asked the inter- national community to pay 350 million dollars over ten years to the Ecua- doran state to leave the underground oil reserves alone.

Correa positioned the Yasuní- ��� proposal as a Global North respon- sibility that would ameliorate Ecuador�s increasing position as resource and extractive dependent. The Treaty o�fered an opportunity from out- side o� Ecuador to prevent the exploitation of oil territories from within, a symbol o� how the wealthier nations could right their historical culpa- bility. However, by August 2013 Correa announced that the state�s e�fort to attract international funding for the Yasuní had come up short, and the treaty would be terminated, recusing the Ecuadoran government from any further responsibility as protectorate of the region. Given that the Yasuní is comprised of incalculable and intangible genetic and species variation upon Indigenous territories, such news illustrated the failure o� legal and political options to protect intangible zones from the calculations of global capitalism.

Though Rafael Correa was not the �rst president to defend the Yasuní region, the formalization of the 2008 Ecuadoran Constitution in Monte- cristi and the 2010 launch of the Yasuní- ��� proposal for protected terri- tories were both actualized under his watch. In a press release on April 1, 2007, the day the ��� agreement was adopted, President Rafael Correa�s Ministry o� Energy and Mines made the following statement:

Se aceptó como primera opción la de dejar el crudo represado en tierra, a �n de no afectar un area de extraordinaria biodiversided y no poner en riesgo la existencia de varios pueblos en aislamiento volun- tario o pueblos no contactados. Esta medida serÆ considerada siempre y cuando la comunidad internacional entregue al menos la mitad de los recursos que se generarían si se opta por la explotación del petroleo; re- cursos que require la economía ecuatoriana para su desarollo.

[The government] has agreed to the �rst option, which is to leave the oil reserves within the earth, a result that does not a�fect the extraordinary biodiversity and doesn�t put at risk the existence of various communi- ties that live in the region with no contact. This policy will be considered

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

22 C H A P T E R O N E

as long as the international community gives half of the resources that would have been generated had the option been for petroleum exploi- tation. The Ecuadoran economy requires these resources for its devel- opment.�

The �no contact� Indigenous peoples referred to here are the Tagaeri and Taromenane that live within the Yasuní region, who tellingly returned to the forest in the 1970s to avoid oil companies, the Ecuadoran state, mis- sionaries, and other agents of coloniality. As Esperanza Martínez writes of the particularly strange phrasing of Correa�s statement, �one can deduce from the declaration that from the President�s perspective there was always a second option: to extract oil.���

Correa�s petitioning of the ecological conscience of the world to make an investment in biodiversity o�fered a new alternative for Global South governments, resolving the burden of preservation costs by externalizing them to wealthier nations. Yet, the wording of the proposal obfuscates the fact that the surrounding territories had long been sold o�f to more than a dozen petroleum corporations. Maps show how the region had been carved up into �oil blocks� as early as 2009, and leaked documents reveal secret negotiations between the Ecuadoran state and Chinese petroleum compa- nies over �Bloque 31,� designating the territory o� Yasuní National Park for oil extraction.�� In other words, the state pursued an extractive agenda even while using the rhetoric of el buen vivir to promote international support for conservation e�forts.

In Correa�s statement above, the Yasuní is discursively positioned in a paternalistic fashion. The development fallacy embedded within Correa�s statement is conservation as a binary choice: either protect resource- rich territories, or give in to extractive capitalism as usual. Both formulations operate within the logics of colonial seeing that depict land and territory as an extractive zone: as if it is there for the taking, to be owned, and ulti- mately to be protected by the state with little understanding of the intan- gible complexity practiced by the vibrant social ecologies that reside within the forest.

Despite the obvious disjuncture between state rhetoric and action, pro- ponents continue to argue that the Ecuadoran Constitution of 2008 and the Yasuní- ��� Treaty of 2009 produced a giant leap forward as legal protec- tions for the natural world. Scholar Freddy Javier `lvarez Gonzalez shows

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

T H E I N TA N G I B I L I T Y O F T H E YA S U N ˝ 23

that the constitutional revisions were led by an important process that re- sulted in a wider social consensus, and made visible a new way to relate to the natural world.�� Another way to read these processes, in hindsight, is that the state management o� Indigenous concepts such as land protection and el buen vivir, a term I elaborate upon below, has worked to facilitate the expansion of extractive capitalism. Can the law, the very instrument of colonization, actually guide us about how to protect biodiversity in In- digenous territories? What are the alternatives to using the master�s tools?

El Buen Vivir

At its most fundamental level, el buen vivir refers to the organization of so- cial and ecological life based on Afro- Indigenous principles and the trans- mission of vernacular practices that maintain a deep and respectful rela- tionship to land, place, and the natural world.

La idea del �buen vivir� se estÆ difundiendo en toda AmØrica Latina. Es un concepto en construcción que aspira ir mÆs allÆ del desarrollo con- vencional, y se basa en una sociedad donde conviven los seres humanos entre sí y con la naturaleza. Se nutre desde Æmbitos muy diversos, desde la re�exión intelectual a las prÆcticas ciudadanas, desde las tradiciones indígenas a la academia alternativa.��

The idea o� �good living� is being di�fused throughout Latin America. It�s a concept that is under creation and that aspires beyond conven- tional development, while based within a society where human beings live well among themselves and with nature. It is nourished by very di- verse sectors, from spaces of intellectual re�ection to citizenship prac- tices, and from indigenous traditions to the alternative academy.

The idea of el buen vivir, translated as good living, decenters the impor- tance o� �the human� by focusing instead upon how the natural world pos- sesses its own sets of rights, logics, and capacities that cannot be solely ap- prehended, managed, or narrated through human language or scienti�c technique.�� Rather than assume knowledge over, or exert a hierarchical re- lationship to, nature, el buen vivir pursues what Atawallpa Oviedo Freire terms �dynamic equilibrium� and �harmony with reciprocity� as ways of relating to the vast planetary life all around us.�� As an active consciousness,

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

24 C H A P T E R O N E

el buen vivir surpasses the con�ned vision of the developmental paradigm toward an integrated form o� living in the forest.

As Alfredo PØrez Bermœdez beautifully writes in the introduction to the volume Bifurcación del buen vivir y el Sumak Kawasay (edited by Atawallpa Oviedo Freire), good living is not a zero- sum game about material progress or �the American way o� life,� but instead incorporates the potential to live in consonance with the Earth.�� This is set in sharp contrast to the individu- alizing logic of the American dream that is a resource- intensive enterprise. In other words, �good living� o�fers a di�ferent paradigm from the materi- alist impulse of the neoliberal discourse o� �the good life� (vivir bien) that imagines endless personal expansion, a view in which the comforts of mod- ern capitalist development ful�lls one�s individual material expansion.

Amid the failures of neoliberalism over the last forty years, the in- creased visibility o� Indigenous peoples and ecological governance prom- ised new formal political spaces for the protection o� Indigenous territories in the AmØricas. The greatest hope for change came within the processes of social consultation that culminated in regime transition in both Ecua- dor and Bolivia. A�er Rafael Correa was elected president o� Ecuador through a broad- based Indigenous confederation that passed through a process of constituent assemblies, in 2006 Evo Morales was elected presi- dent in Bolivia, an event that represented the apex o� Indigenous visibility and the culmination of progressive social movements. Both presidents pro- moted Indigenous agendas and arrived at the presidential o ce by consul- tative and participatory means. They also both revisited and rewrote legal mandates, most notably by revising their respective national constitutions through consultative processes that visibly incorporated democratic par- ticipation. In the formal political sphere, constituent assemblies produced new con�gurations that broke with elite politics as usual.�  Such broad- based incorporation of el buen vivir policies also created ruptures, or so it appeared, with the legacies of colonial racism that had long favored Euro- pean modes of political, economic, and social organization.

Yet, two forms of el buen vivir have become increasingly confused. The �rst form refers to the sustainability o� heterogeneous life forms based on Afro- centered and Indigenous �cosmo- visions,� and the second is con- cerned with the rhetorical and instrumental use of el buen vivir as a form of governmentality, or what Michel Foucault de�ned as the organized prac-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

T H E I N TA N G I B I L I T Y O F T H E YA S U N ˝ 25

tice of state rationality.�› In the new extractive capitalism, the state�s policies o� hegemony over nature convert territories into extractible commodities by using the rhetorical cover of el buen vivir. As we shall see, however sug- gestive the concept of el buen vivir may be, it has increasingly become the rhetorical justi�cation of a state that prioritizes capitalist agendas while di- minishing the reach of actual decolonization.

Distorting Vitality

El buen vivir is increasingly compromised by Andean socialism, or the new Ecuadoran state that continues to invest in extractive capitalist advance- ment even a�er the end of the Washington Consensus. Contrary to most predictions, over the last ten years progressive Latin American states ex- panded rather than reduced their ecological predicament and dependent global relations. At the January 2015 Caribbean and Community Summit meeting in Beijing, for instance, the Chinese government proposed $500 billion in trade, and $250 billion in investment, marking new con�gura- tions of geopolitical power within the region. In this new global economy that extends coloniality, Ecuador has acquired loans at cumulatively higher interest rates that make the prior system o� World Bank lending and US- led development policies look relatively mild.

As Yasuní lawyer Pablo Piedra conveyed to me, �Some of us look nostal- gically back at the earlier Washington Consensus model where you at least had a system of checks and balances in place. At that time, you could go to the International Monetary Fund overseer and �le petitions against the ex- cesses and terms of extractivist contracts.��� The kinds of checks and bal- ances that existed in the earlier paradigm, such as oversight commissions where advocates could petition for rights, are virtually nonexistent today. Perhaps more damaging, at a time of a precipitous drop in global market oil prices, the Ecuadoran government has increasingly become entangled within a matrix o� high- interest loans, further indebting itself to foreign powers through the payment of nonrenewable natural resources. Such pay- ment in arrears threatens regions and unique conservation initiatives such as the Yasuní- ��� Treaty.

To meet the logic of debt while expanding its authoritarian reach, the Ecuadoran state has either reissued or granted new contracts for devel-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

26 C H A P T E R O N E

opment projects throughout the nation�s �ve ecosystems. Thus, mining, hydroelectricity, industrial �shing, and oil drilling have become regions of intense extractive activities and areas of acute resistance over territory and resources. For instance, the communities of the northern Intag region o� Imbabura Province have contended with mining extractivism through high- stakes tactics, violent face- o�fs between communities and the military that have only intensi�ed with new megamining projects. By extracting re- sources from Indigenous territories while contradicting the foundational precepts of el buen vivir, the state seems ultimately unable to arbitrate, pro- tect, or uphold the rights of nature, as I discuss below.

President Rafael Correa�s three- year plan, �El Buen Vivir: Plan Nacional, 2013�2017,� illustrates the distance between rhetoric and the implementa- tion of state social and economic policy that protects the �rights of nature.� In the document, the commitment to pursue el buen vivir serves as a mea- sure against �in�nite development and expansion� and takes economic redistribution into consideration while also extending third- generation social, economic, cultural, and environmental rights.�� Even though Ob- jective 11 of the state plan argues that Ecuador should consider converting its economic and industrial sectors to align with el buen vivir approaches, subsequent parts of the document detail how the model would be incom- plete without increasing the capacity for resource extraction. As the plan makes transparent:

El Ecuador tiene una oportunidad histórica para ejercer soberanamente la gestión económica, industrial y cienti�ca, de sus sectores estratØgicos. Esto permitirÆ generar riqueza y elevar en forma general el nivel de visa de nuestra población. Para el Gobierno de la Revolución Ciudadana, convertir la gestión de los sectores estratØgicos en la punta de lanza de la transformación tecnológica e industrial del país, constituye un ele- mento central de ruptura con el pasado.��

Ecuador has the historic opportunity to exercise sovereignty in the eco- nomic, industrial, and scienti�c development of its most strategic sec- tors. This permits the generation o� wealth and an elevation o� wealth for the general population. For the government of the Citizen�s Revo- lution, converting the management of strategic sectors is the point of technological and industrial transformation. This is central to ruptur- ing with the past.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

T H E I N TA N G I B I L I T Y O F T H E YA S U N ˝ 27

While parts of this document are infused with the will to protect nature, namely the need to rupture with dependent sectors of the economy through promotion o� what Correa�s administration has referred to as the �Citizen�s Revolution,� the real emphasis in these passages is on the �technological and industrial transformation of the country� that has paved the way for extractive expansion. Furthermore, there is little indication regarding how the state would accomplish the gigantic task of decolonization, and still less analysis about what sovereignty for Ecuador means given shi�ing geo- political con�gurations.

Extractive corporate concessions have increasingly been granted to multinational companies, leading to the expansion of coloniality. Beyond the economic and social implications, there are severe environmental con- sequences as well: state and national companies are some of the worst of- fenders of polluting industries.�� Given these material contradictions, the rhetoric of good living has not found a way out of the bind of developmen- talism. More succinctly, �good living� has provided rhetorical cover for ex- tractive ends. The distance between the Indigenous Amazonian- Andean principle of el buen vivir and the expansion of extractivist governance throughout the continent increases with every concession granted to a for- eign state or company.

Ecology and the Law

As a reaction against the extreme ecological and social devastation brought on by the hegemony of the neoliberal model, over the latter part of the twentieth century South American states increasingly incorporated envi- ronmental rights into processes of constitutional change. The Ecuadoran Constitution�s originality was its ability to go beyond the 1980s and 1990s legal frameworks that had already been altered with the propulsion of third- generation rights, or protection of cultural, economic, and human rights in South American nations, especially following Colombia (1991) and Brazil (1998), that granted rights to future generations based on the conservation of nature preserves over the past several decades. Ecuador su�fered considerable environmental degradation and persistent economic dependency, which emboldened social movements to intertwine a grow- ing awareness of environmental rights with the ongoing quest for justice. At the same time, global climate change captured world attention that led,

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

28 C H A P T E R O N E

in 1996, to the inauguration of the Ministry of Global Climate Change in Ecuador. This ministry was charged with securing the future o� biodiver- sity within the nation, a laudable objective that has been backtracked upon over the last �ve years.

From the opening article, the language of the Ecuadoran Constitution makes important overtures about the connection between national sover- eignty and the rights of the natural world:

Article 1. Ecuador is a Constitutional State of rights and justice, a so- cial, democratic, sovereign, independent, unitary, intercultural, multi- national and secular State. It is organized as a republic and is governed using a decentralized approach.

Sovereignty lies with the people, whose will is the basis of all authority, and it is exercised through public bodies using direct participatory forms of government as provided for by the Constitution. Nonrenew- able natural resources of the State�s territory belong to its inalienable and absolute assets, which are not subject to a statute o� limitations.��

While the language of sovereignty describes the protections by the law, it does not prevent extractive corporations from entering into protected ter- rains. Even though Laws 71 through 74 of the Constitution were dra�ed to prohibit the extraction of resources, loopholes have allowed corporate incursion into the areas de�ned as conservation zones. Thus, given that �nonhuman life� cannot speak for itself and has to pass through human advocacy and juridical representation, the law is perhaps wrongly assumed to be the appropriate site for the natural world�s liberation from human au- thority.

In this sense, the 2008 Ecuadoran Constitution seemingly shi�ed the potential of the law, creating an apparatus for nature�s representation. For instance, Article 71, called the �Rights o� Nature� in Chapter 7 of the Constitution, considers the degree to which Pachamama �reproduces and makes life possible�:

La naturaleza o Pacha Mama, donde se reproduce y realiza la vida, tiene derecho a que se respete integralmente su existencia y el mante- nimiento y regeneración de sus ciclos vitales, estructura, funciones y procesos evolutivos. Toda persona, comunidad, pueblo o nacionalidad podrÆ exigir a la autoridad pœblica el cumplimiento de los derechos de

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

T H E I N TA N G I B I L I T Y O F T H E YA S U N ˝ 29

la naturaleza. Para aplicar e interpretar estos derechos se observaran los principios establecidos en la Constitución, en lo que proceda. El Estado incentivarÆ a las personas naturales y jurídicas, y a los colectivos, para que protejan la naturaleza, y promoverÆ el respeto a todos los elementos que forman un ecosistema.��

Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and made possible, has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles, struc- ture, functions, and evolutionary processes. Every person, people, com- munity, or nationality will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public authority. The application and interpreta- tion of these rights will follow the related principles that are established in the Constitution. The State will incentivize natural rights and per- sonal rights as well as collective rights to protect nature; it will promote respect toward the elements that form an ecosystem.

Pachamama�s right to exist and thrive is at the center o� Indigenous cos- mologies within the Andean- Amazonian region, and a view of a positive relation to the natural world that must be considered with more depth. This form of recognition is not about a liberal appeal to the juridical appa- ratus or the state, but about an integrated and multidimensional recogni- tion for the rights of nature or Pachamama.�� I� we place emphasis on the pervasiveness of this cosmological principle for Indigenous worldviews, then the crisis and reductive viewpoint o� European juridical law becomes strikingly apparent. Within a Southern episteme, the colonial legal struc- tures facilitate and accelerate the conversion of planetary geomatter into a capitalist catastrophe. Correa�s governmental corporate concessions ex- pose this contradiction.

Extractive governmentality shows that an ecological imaginary can never be fully actualized through the law. Even while legal channels can o�f- set the plundering of the planet�s resources, the Yasuní case serves as a cau- tionary tale that it cannot be the only route for conservation. Ultimately, the law is embedded within a global political economic and interstate sys- tem that does not serve as a steward to the natural world but sells it to the highest commodity market. In this sense, el buen vivir has become a tool of extractive states that reproduces the logics of neoliberal advancement. Ultimately, we need other modes of representation and action that exceed and surpass the legal systems that feed back into the matrix of coloniality.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

30 C H A P T E R O N E

Yasuní Transitionality: YASunidos

Though its 2008 constitution mandated protection for environmental rights, Indigenous rights, and respect for biodiversity against �human- centric� development, the Ecuadoran plurinational state ultimately was not able to protect the intangible territories.

When in August 2013, Correa announced that the Yasuní- ��� treaty would not be upheld, activists expressed outrage at how Yasuní had been converted into an oil block tracked for petroleum extraction. In the days that followed, hundreds of people across the nation gathered in vigils, shat- tered by the announcement of this repeal. As Diana Coryat describes, such gatherings spawned the YASunidos movement, led by urban and rural youth who had come out o� Indigenous social movements, ecological ac- tivisms, media collectives, and horizontal organizations that rejected the extractive model.�� The spontaneous movement that began with Correa�s announcement of the end of the Yasuní- ��� Treaty represents a cross- sectional coalition that has spawned a range of important challenges to the extractive zone.

YASunidos is a coalition composed of artists, Indigenous activists, jour- nalists, middle- class ecologists, and land defenders. It draws upon the af- fective solidarity among activists who name the extractive complex, and who perceive the Yasuní as a powerful collective symbol of the global de- valuing o� Indigenous territories and biodiverse ecologies. For ecologi- cally minded youth o� Ecuador, the Yasuní region represents a psychologi- cal space of respite from a world increasingly de�ned by climate change, a place where �no contact� Indigenous populations reject colonization, and a region where biodiversity thrives amid the growing dystopia of mega- development projects. Thus, when a road was constructed as an extractive corridor through the Yasuní- ��� zone, the subsequent shock of �nding out that Correa had ruptured the agreement produced an infuriated response by the YASunidos coalition, with e�fects that continue to reverberate.

In the following statement by YASunidos, worth quoting at length, we see how an alternative multidirectional vision organizes the coalition through a call that also speci�es central principles of el buen vivir. YASunidos states:

For us, the initiative to leave the oil underground inde�nitely should not respond to the whims of the international community or those of a

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

T H E I N TA N G I B I L I T Y O F T H E YA S U N ˝ 31

government that has failed us by unidirectionally discarding the possi- bility of a serious public debate about alternatives for the conservation of the ���.

We, YASunidos, demand respect for the human rights of the uncon- tacted peoples as guaranteed by Article 57 of the constitution. We de- mand that our ancestral, natural heritage not be sacri�ced and opt for post- oil alternatives. We urge a truthful and transparent debate about our economic model and our energy base. Also, we demand that the government let us show our disagreement through the legitimate exer- cise of protest without repression or criminalization.

For us, the goal o� leaving the ��� oil underground is more alive than ever, which is evident through the creativity and commitment demon- strated in the streets by citizens asking for their voices to be heard. We hope that the topic will be widely discussed and that various arguments will come forth rather than confusing information along with delegiti- mizing governmental propaganda.

It is essential to end poverty and improve education, but we do not believe that the exploitation o� Yasuní is the way to do so. There are plenty of riches in our country, but they are poorly distributed, which is emphasized by the fact that the economic groups earning the most have increased their pro�ts in recent years while at the same time there has been a decrease in the taxes that they must pay on their sales. I� we increase the tax on their pro�ts by 1.5 percent, we would get more than ��y billion dollars during the same period of twenty- two years that is being proposed for the exploitation of the ���.

Just like the Yasuní- ��� Initiative, we propose a search for alter- natives; we propose breaking away from the schemes with courage; in short, we propose a social revolution that challenges the values of energy consumption and that prioritizes the common good, defending the idea of the �good living.�

We are aware that more than one person has attempted to use our platform to their own advantage, which is why it is necessary to clarify that we �ght for life and an alternative to the extractivist model. We are citizens, not only urban citizens, and we are aware of the disasters that oil extraction generates for nature, humanity, and the economy. With a strong belief that this is the moment to take the debate to the streets, with the participation of everyone, we hope to overcome the oil depen-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

32 C H A P T E R O N E

dency imposed on us, which, moreover, further a�ravates global warm- ing and environmental destruction, puts the lives of peoples in volun- tary isolation at risk, and threatens not only the future o� Ecuadorians but also that o� humanity.� 

The awareness of corruption and assimilation of coalitional principles are mentioned in passing here, but they are a constant referent in YASunidos� written materials, perhaps because of the loss of faith in formal politics that the breach with the Yasuní Treaty represents. More important is the expression o� YASunidos� search for alternatives that break �away from the schemes with courage� and propose �a social revolution that challenges the values of energy consumption, and that prioritizes the common good, defending the idea o� �good living,� � principles that are at the core of the YASunidos movement and its search for ecological justice and futures. This impassioned statement by this coalition directly confronts how the petro- leum dependency not only hyperexploits and toxi�es the land and local peoples but also further entangles the Earth�s inhabitants within a matrix of petro- coloniality that endangers the future of an inhabitable planet. Such multidirectional analysis and political action draw from the energies of assemblages with deep roots and experience within radical formations that include Indigenous activisms, ecofeminisms, transfeminist organiz- ing and anarchic media and cultural production that searches for complex renderings of territories and viable alternatives to extractive thinking and its economies.�›

At the end of the statement, YASunidos issues an invitation to all those �who love the country and who want to collaborate and contribute, to join the movement and walk with us in order to build a better future; as Ecua- dorans we say, �We can!� � While the appeal to nationalism is strong in this closing statement, the fusing of ecological living with postdevelopmental thinking as el buen vivir becomes the central tenet of a radical challenge to the assumed unquestionable logics that expand global extractive capi- talism.

Threatened by YASunidos� energetic force and public rise to visibility, Correa�s government initiated a strong- arm apparatus that criminalized ecological activists that defended Indigenous and protected territories, and anyone it deemed to be too critical of the state�s policies.�� With the rhetoric of democracy and the importance of the constituent assemblies

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

T H E I N TA N G I B I L I T Y O F T H E YA S U N ˝ 33

as backdrop, Correa�s government began deploying plainclothes police to constrain the activities o� YASunidos.

YASunidos represents the �emergence� of the South American sub- merged perspectives that I theorized in the opening pages of this book. Its activities range from artistic expressions that emphasize the biodiver- sity of the Yasuní region to massive street protests aimed at denouncing Correa�s breaking of the treaty. When the emergent becomes visible, then it must somehow be repressed. In weekly radio broadcasts, as Diana Coryat documents, President Correa began to methodically criminalize YASuni- dos� activities. Coryat writes, �As for members o� YASunidos, Correa char- acterized them in di�ferent ways. They were either manipulated by politi- cians, �the same stone- throwers as always� (associating them with a radical le� political party that was frequently a subject of scorn on the Enlaces) or middle- class urbanites with full bellies that had never been to the Ama- zon, nor knew what it meant to live without basic services.��� As the careful journalism of the bulletin �Plan V� carefully documented, Correa�s trivial- izing of ecological activism and the accompanying criminalization and re- pression occurred precisely during the period when megaproject contracts in hydroelectric dams and mining expanded. The combination of an anti- extractive crackdown by Correa, and the rise of megadevelopment through concessions with Ecuadoran and Chinese companies in hydropower and water throughout the nation, made visible how extractive capitalism had always underpinned the promise of a �new� progressive state.

In fact, some believe the Yasuní- ��� agreement was tainted and con- strained by extractive interests from the beginning. According to Acción Ecológica (Ecological Action), a radical independent environmental orga- nization in Ecuador, the design of the ���� was organized in �complicity with the big transnationals that have oil concessions in the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve. These companies have provided maps, information and infra- structure, as well as exerted considerable pressure.��� That multinational and state interests emerged so forcefully to defend the treaty�s rupture lends credence to the idea that the Yasuní ��� agreement was always bound to the model of economic dependency that has entangled the Ecuadoran nation in the global petro complex. In this gloomy scenario, what appeared to be broad- based, national, and democratic constituent processes that had given primacy to Indigenous politics actually functioned to expand the ex-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

34 C H A P T E R O N E

tractive state and its surveillance apparatus. In other words, rather than protecting biodiverse geographies, Correa�s government has actually pro- moted and expanded extractive capitalism.

The coalitional e�forts of the YASunidos movement, including direct action, grassroots media, and forms of autonomous participation, imag- ine biodiversity not as a rhetorical device but as a right. YASunidos con- tinually �nds new avenues to address the global con�gurations of extrac- tive capitalism. For instance, by petitioning the case to the Inter- American Court o� Human Rights, the movement aims to prosecute the government for breaking the protections that were written into the new Constitution and the Yasuní- ��� Treaty. One could argue that the global economy simi- larly taints the feasibility of the Inter- American Court. However, the real political gain o� YASunidos is its ongoing demand for institutions of power to respond to ecological justice. This demand, whether heard or ignored, widens the space for a potential future alternative, away from the �no future� model that is extractive capitalism.

YASunidos has spawned new activist organizations that cannot be cap- tured by the extractive view. Several smaller o�fshoots o� YASunidos use both media and technology to turn the gaze of surveillance back onto the corporate state. For instance, the independent group GeoYasuni uses the technologies of surveillance and tracking to expose the new territories of extractivism. Rather than merely reject forms of digital mapping, such or- ganizations expose power to better defend territories from oil interests. Counter- mapping technologies such as GeoYasuni reveal the extractive gaze for what it is, the new colonial mirror.

Sustainable Futures?

In May 2015, I visited the Yasuní region, traveling from Quito to the east- ern oil town of Coca through the Napo River and then up a small canal formed by the black waters I described earlier, before �nally arriving at the Napo Wildlife Center. In the stretch from Eastern Ecuador�s Coca, the once- booming oil town that overlooks the Tena tributary, ��y kilometers upriver to the Napo Wildlife Center, 22,000 hectares are collectively man- aged by Qichua communities whose canals and deep blue lagoons are ac- cessible only by paddle canoe. Despite having been to Eastern Ecuador on prior occasions, which had already dispelled many of the myths that

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

T H E I N TA N G I B I L I T Y O F T H E YA S U N ˝ 35

popular culture and European �lms had burnished into my mind about the Amazonian basin, I was still ill- prepared for how my preconceptions would be dramatically shi�ed along this route. In contrast to other Amazonian ecolodges along the Napo River that are foreign rather than Indigenous- owned, the Napo Wildlife Center addresses how to protect land while also producing alternative sources o� wealth that bene�t rather than extract from Indigenous communities.

The Napo Wildlife Center is a refuge and ecotourist destination, located in the middle of a pristine lagoon within legally protected territories o� Ya- suní National Park; motorized boats are not allowed into the area, and new construction and �shing are strictly regulated. The center is run by the local Qichua community, an Indigenous group that reconstituted in the Ama- zon a�er �eeing from highland colonial terror in the sixteenth century. Some thirty families share ownership of the center, and manage hundreds o� hectares of ecotourism. Each new child born into these families becomes the co- owners of an ecologically and socially minded model.

Ecotourism can be a passive enterprise, as Qichua guides �oat foreign visitors around on wooden- planked canoes to experience the sinuous turns of the rivers and the proli�c life that resides within Amazonian black- water canals. Furthermore, my feeling about being �oated around this pristine space was con�icted, as our guides were trained to help visitors see the action within the forest in order to photograph hard- to- spot animals. Yet Native guides also took care with the pedagogy o� how to take in the mul- tiple sensual worlds and layers that existed in the forest. Traveling up these overgrown spaces where the forest turns into the lakes and rivers, with eco- tones living in the micro- and macrospaces of intertwined life forms, I can spot animal life only by following the green laser that Qichua guides point at the camou�aging branches. Whether distinguishing one of thirty tangier, one of three monkey species, one of �ve parrot varieties, the river otter, or the three- toed sloth, without Indigenous guides it is literally impossible to see the forest�s multiplicity or understand the layered life worlds it con- tains. Could that small hairy ball really be a sloth? As I heard our guides say countless times throughout that trip, �We know how to see the forest. Do you see any Indigenous people here with eyeglasses?� While the scholar might react that this is a shallow and essentializing way to understand the di�ferences in the contact zone between tourists and Indigenous peoples, this statement was repeatedly iterated by Qichua mediators to communi-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

36 C H A P T E R O N E

cate the meaning of perception that operates within autonomous and co- extensive life systems.

Whether on night walks or on a path through the thirty- foot canopy �lled with plant, insect, and animal life, a visitor, even an experienced bota- nist, cannot access the codes of the forest, neither in terms of its wildlife nor the kinds of creative capacities that emerge from the forest and the Qichua imagination within it. Walking under the canopy and hovering in a thirty- meter ceiba tree, for instance, our guides showed us how to play games with the �bers of palm trees, how to corral wild pigs, the importance of squint- ing to see animal life, and the thickness of insect life below the detritus of the forest.

One of the Quichua guides, Felipe, told our group about the sacred ceiba tree that o�en grows a 150- foot- tall canopy. When cut down, according to Quichua beliefs, the ceiba requires not only the physical labor of four large men, as he put it, but also several rituals to ask the tree�s forest spirit for permission. The powerful ceiba has its own complex system of intelligi- bility. It sees above the other trees not to survey them, as in the extractive view, but as an enlivened force, an inhabited energy, as a being that can be perceived and felt as an iman, or magnetic center, of the forest�s intangible vitality. Like the spiritual tourism I describe in the next chapter, media- tion through Indigenous knowledge and an understanding of the forest enlist the deepening of one�s attention, turning away from colonized vision toward a complex sensibility within the natural world, where the narration of cosmologies through story become the communicative texture of per- ception.

In the Yasuní, the focus on the rain forest and the ecological and redis- tributive material imaginaries of the Qichua is a refreshing counterpoint to the colonial logic of unrestrained dangers. As my guide at Napo Wildlife Center said, �The only way to protect such territories is through ecotour- ism. Nothing else will speak for the forest like our own communities, and those that travel here from other places learn from and engage the wildlife that can grow and evolve here.�

Though ecological tourist sites such as the Napo Wildlife Center can be deemed as liberal e�forts that work in tandem with state interests to assuage the monumentality of the capitalist assault on nature, a�er immersion and research into the site, I am persuaded by the statement that �nothing else can protect this forest� except those that know and live among its com-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

T H E I N TA N G I B I L I T Y O F T H E YA S U N ˝ 37

plexity�those who o�fer this mode of perceiving otherwise to curious and a�uent ecologically minded foreigners. This form o� Indigenous critique of coloniality and ecological praxis works within fractures of the extrac- tive divide, seeks to defend through other routes that imagine alternative futures. Despite the fact that this model represents its own dynamics of coloniality, within the petro industry that surrounds the Yasuní, it may pro- vide one of few remaining options for a present- future of ecological via- bility, especially for the intangible zone.

Toward a Conclusion

To think about biodiverse futures, and in this geography in particular, it is impossible to ignore how, amid ecological destruction, Quichua and Shuar peoples and �no contact� populations mediate intangible geographies in close proximity to the global economy. The �ght for the Yasuní illustrates many important operations about the extractive era, situated at the cross- roads of ecological futures. More than a symbol, the Yasuní is a complex Amazonian basin system made up of multiplicity o� life forms that consti- tute what is o�en described as the �lungs of the world.� At the same time, the breaking of the Yasuní- ��� agreement is a very di�ferent, and unfortu- nate, event: a symbol of the desire for unquenchable revenue, and an em- blem of national failure, especially in terms of economic and institutional arrangements that have reproduced old petro- dependent relations.

The intangible geographies of the Yasuní transforms themselves through the laws of entropy, as the random order of nature cannot be captured by the empirical imperative or by conventional scienti�c inquiry. As Western science concedes, it is literally impossible to catalogue the immense biodi- versity of the forest and its constant change. Furthermore, the Yasuní rep- resents fragile ecologies in need of conservation and a melancholic plea to the world about biodiversity, interculturality, and the potential planetary gains of radical ecological defense.

The work o� YASunidos and other anti-extractive activisms, such as the geospatial mapping project, on the one hand, and direct contact with the forest through Indigenous- led ecotourism, on the other, provide new path- ways to counteract the neocolonial condition. We might take a page from the �no contact� Indigenous groups that reject integration into colonial neoliberalism. The Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples have literally refused

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

38 C H A P T E R O N E

the extractive zone altogether by going back into the forest to live outside of the colonial divide. Though some may su�est that the centering of for- est dwellers as romantic to planetary visions of the future, another way to frame the importance of this analysis is to consider the complex web of petroleum complicity that di�ferentially toxi�es racialized and gendered bodies of most of the world�s geographies. The planetary extractive zone that is the petroleum matrix leaves few options for the future, even as com- plex and counter- intuitive refusals, creative extensions, and social ecolo- gies continue to unravel its totalizing reach.

In terms of protecting �biodiversity,� a nomenclature that could be ap- plied to all social ecologies, the Quichua and Shuar present a second set of alternatives by operating at the edges of the extractive zones of the global economy, sometimes teaching foreigners how to see di�ferently and to catalogue wildlife while also inviting a perception that sees the living world against reductionist viewing. Indigenous knowledge and cosmologies live alongside and within intangible geographies by cultivating rather than do- mesticating them. Such proposals o�fer a viable future for interacting with the natural world rather than merely ransacking it.

Ultimately, as I have argued throughout this chapter, the Yasuní cannot be apprehended through any instrument of the state or through the ex- tractive gaze. Intangibility instead describes Amazonian life as evolution- ary entropy and patterned complexity, where hard science and ecological rhetoric dissolve. In this landscape that escapes cataloguing, future alterna- tives show up as a radical coalition of transfeminists, ecologically minded, and urban dwellers that recognize how their activities function in concert with Afro and Indigenous peoples to defend and provide alternatives from within and beyond the extractive zone.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

C H A P T E R �

Andean Phenomenology

and New Age Settler Colonialism

In the hour a�er sunset and before moonrise there is very light in the Sacred Valley o� Peru. Walking from the little town o� Pisac a few miles back to where I was staying, I had no �ashlight and only the night sounds as my guide. The sky hung in a shadowy thick black, pricked only by a dim arc of stars, making the path between danger and safety a narrow one, both physically and existentially. I� I stepped to my right, I could have fallen into the muddy waters of the Urubamba River, disappearing without a trace into the tumbling currents brought on by the rainy season. To my le�, wire fences demarcated the edges of �elds that had been put up by a �urry of foreigners in a pattern that resembles rural gentri�cation. As I walked, I remembered that local cattle were occasionally mangled by the sharp barb- wire, a thought that made me shudder as I imagined my own �esh torn like that of those massive animals. As I picked up my step, a sensation of utter powerlessness and intense solitude swept over me.

A�er a few minutes of total panic that le� me breathless, I remembered the words o� Don Francisco, a Q�ero highland elder, words that he had shared during a long workshop on Andean phenomenology earlier that day about the animation of the natural world. Locating the source of my embodied reaction as the fear of the unknown expanse, I forced myself to slow my steps and to breathe in the night air, clear and vast and moist because of the riverbed below. I became present to the surrounding four tall mountains, the rough rushing of the Urubamba River, and what in an Andean worldview is known as Pachamama, the Earth Being. Despite the unknown landscape, I was able to release the overwhelming sense of fear

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

40 C H A P T E R T W O

that had captured me. A�er several minutes, I made my way carefully, but more easily, on the last stretch of road, back to my little room in the Cen- tro Paz y Luz, one center of Cuzco�s spiritual tourism. Once there, lying on a small bed, I tried to come to terms with the feeling of falling apart I ex- perienced on the dark road back. That overwhelming sensation, and my reckoning with it, has resulted in an exploration in this chapter of the sub- merged perception of Andean phenomenology.

The worldview of Andean phenomenology is, as I analyze in this chap- ter, always mediated and historically entangled through a colonial matrix. Therefore, the reader will note my cautious undertaking of Andean phe- nomenology through an analytical register that situates critical proximity with decolonial critique. For instance, narrating my overwhelming fear in this unknown setting is hopefully not to overindulge in anecdote but in- stead to work through a decolonial method that centers my own perception and embodied experience to perceive anew the complexity of the histories, entanglements, and colonial a�erlives within the landscapes that I traverse. What I experienced alongside the Urubamba River and in relation to the road with so little light and my breaking apart in front of the unknown o�fers the possibility of a decolonized shi� in the a�fective structure at the core of the late liberal self even as it could just as easily repel it. Losing con- trol over my surroundings that night, unable to see two feet in front of me, I lost my composure and thus spun into an uncontrollable state of disori- entation. This discomposure, I realized later, disturbed me profoundly, a lack of control that as a subject of US Empire I have come to instinctively, and deeply, avoid. But as I learned through my interactions with Q�ero elders, there was another possible path that transformed fragmentation, disorientation, and fear by instead dissolving into the surround. In other words, I had access to another way to experience, one in which dissolution of the sel� was distinct from and an alternative to the Western de�nition of psychological fragmentation.

I� Kantian philosophy is built upon a discrete conception of the self, where the individual human mind structures experience and perception, and Freudian individuation places emphasis on developmental separation, then much o� Western liberal society is built from the crucible of these two concepts of the self. As a Southern mode of thinking, being and living, Andean phenomenology, by contrast, starts from another vantage point: it locates the subject in multirelational terms and blurs the binary distinc-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 41

tions between the human and biomatter into porous interactivity. The self is not bifurcated between an inside and outside, and thus there is no simple divide into distinct formulations of the external other; instead, the self embraces (and is embraced by) a sensual and integrated relationality with the natural elements and everything that surrounds us. Unlike vital- ism, Andean phenomenology is yet another iteration o� land- based Indige- nous ontologies, a way o� being that disentangles from the discreteness of the �Global North� psyche and also from the arti�cial separation o� life into organic, inorganic, mobile, immobile, animate and inanimate matter. While this unboundedness o� being was not completely unfamiliar to me, because of my queer femininity and perhaps also because of my propensity to reach beyond the limits imposed by masculine, Western, and reason- oriented subjectivity, the reorientation of my encounter with existential fear made me realize the extent to which such an a�fective state is also a colonial and consumer capitalist imposition. It was only through the real- ization of an externally imposed relation to fear that I could usher in a dif- ferent sensibility, one that extended into the unseen and unknown without the interruptions of the logics of separateness. As I describe in this chapter, Andean phenomenology, a perspective buried within the new age spiritual tourist economy, o�fers another way o� knowing and feeling, one that alters and even shatters the self as a discrete entity that is transacted upon.

To understand this concept of the self, we must consider the Andean Indigenous relationality that Marisol de la Cadena has importantly writ- ten about in Earth Beings.� This is a relation to land, place, mountains, and the elements that assumes a profound sacred orientation and understand- ing of it that moves in registers that are not easily catalogued by the colo- nial project. For de la Cadena, the experience of interaction and friendship with the Q�ero elder Nazario Turpio and Mariano Turpio over many years allowed her to mediate between her world and knowledge base, and an Andean- centered belief system. De la Cadena presents how these inter- actions shi�ed her ways o� knowing as mediated through these relations and Quechua speaking peoples� communication as Indigenous political strategies. On a few of my many site visits to the Sacred Valley, I too had the opportunity to meet Nazario and experience his despacho ceremony that he conducted to pay respects to Pachamama through ritualized o�ferings.

However, as I outline throughout this chapter, the spaces of mediation between Indigenous ways o� knowing and outsider knowledge, within the

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

42 C H A P T E R T W O

region of the Sacred Valley, are o�en not organized by long encounters, strong friendships with Native peoples, or an intimate understanding of place. Instead, such interactions are fundamentally organized through asymmetrical power relations as they operate within the easy transactions of a commodi�ed global tourist economy, where �Native- made� souve- nirs are o�en imported to denote authenticity.� There are few spaces of en- gagement with Indigenous peoples, knowledge, and geographies that are not undone and remade through the vestiges o� historical overdetermina- tion. New age colonial fantasies are premised upon knowability, yet I show how there is nothing pure, unmixed, or directly accessible about Indige- nous knowledge and technologies in the extractive zone. If the Sacred Val- ley geography and its inhabitants are constructed through taxonomies that racialize di�ference, then neoliberal extractivism comes with intense cul- tural and economic contradictions, which are the inevitable consequence of the vastly asymmetrical and historically mediated relations between In- digenous and non- Indigenous subjects.

Lisa Aldred addresses how white American consumption emerges from the loss of authenticity, a deep dissatisfaction and alienation, whereby the marketplace structures identities through Native appropriation. With her useful and expansive term �plastic shamans,� Aldred takes up the con- sumer aspect of new age countercultural identi�cation. She identi�es the terrain of the new age as a wide assortment of practices that include �shamanism, goddess workshop, Eastern religions, crystals, pagan ritu- als, extraterrestrials and channeling spirit beings,�� estimating that any- where between �ve and twenty million people could be considered new age spirituality practitioners. This astonishing prevalence o� Native appro- priation forces us to consider how US consumers are overwhelmingly com- plicit in appropriation with little economic payo�f for Indigenous peoples. As I illustrate throughout this chapter, �plastic shamanism� and �playing Indian� perform empire in the international sphere, where mostly white and, to a much less degree, Black and Brown people of color transfer these structures of inequality from the United States and Europe to elsewhere, whether in the AmØricas or beyond.

Whereas in the last chapter I argued that thoughtfully conceived and Indigenous led ecotourism could be one of a range of solutions from the South for radical conservation, in this chapter I chart spiritual tourism as an o�en- unbalanced system that extracts from Indigenous bodies and

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 43

knowledge with little positive result for local communities. In the Sacred Valley, the privileges of mobility and land ownership�what Cheryl Harris has referred to as �whiteness as property���structures the land into di�fer- entiated regions of gentri�cation and land dispossession that push Indige- nous peoples even further up into the highlands. I examine how di�ferential access to land becomes the basis for the expansion of new age spirituality, an expansion that promotes a racialized idea of individual human poten- tial and expression while ignoring the historical debt of colonial dispos- sessions.

Furthermore, the spiritual tourist industry can easily fall prey to what I call Andeanism, whereby the region becomes a projection of romantic spatial imaginaries, an idyllic escape from the toxicities of the overdevel- oped United States and Europe. Here, I reference Edward Said�s concept of Orientalism as unidirectional representational hegemony over the object and subject o� Western fascination.� I also refer to Mel Chen�s invocation of the intimate relationship between the construction of racial di�ference, embodiment, and toxic environments within a di�ferentiated global order.� The Andes has been reductively constructed, a place where the fantasy of leaving behind the stress, consumption, �eco- depression,� and generalized dissatisfactions o� late capitalism ends up exonerating the foreigner from local injustices and playing into new age settler colonialism. Against this overdetermined backdrop, can Andean phenomenology puncture these historical constructs toward producing another kind of relation? Even amid the fundamental asymmetries of colonial tourism, how do Indige- nous technologies, instead of feeding racial extractivism, provide alterna- tive forms o� knowing, relations, and communication?

In this chapter, Andean phenomenology represents a submerged per- spective, one that is di cult to access because of the fatal impact of reli- gious colonial histories and extractive capitalism. Even so, it represents a way to diminish the fear and individuation that advance neoliberal capital- ism, and o�fers another path on the road to a more integrated approxima- tion to one another and to the nonhuman other. I explore this particular extractive zone to understand the potential that lies within it by �rst situat- ing the rise of foreigner presence in a new age tourist economy. Given that spiritual tourism aims to interpret but cannot account for Q�ero knowl- edge, I analyze how Indigenous social ecologies such as Andean phenome- nology o�en exceed the extractive zone, moving beyond capitalism�s inevi-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

44 C H A P T E R T W O

table commodi�cation, and beyond neoliberal noise, toward a sensibility of undivided states o� being.

Over the course of six research trips between 2008 and 2013, I inter- viewed over sixty informants that were both Indigenous and non- Indigenous, accessed the materials o� both the Cuzco municipal archive, and the library of Cuzco University, and spent countless hours within the spiritual tourist economy. In the Sacred Valley, I also visited a series o� In- can religious sites, many o� which are administered by the Peruvian Min- istry of Culture, and other unmapped sites that are �o�f the national tourist grid.� Part of the lure of spiritual tourism is to gain access to this set of interconnected geographies o� Indigenous pasts that�invisible to the ex- tractive gaze�con�gure an intricate sacred landscape for Q�ero peoples. Yet, the �spiritual gaze� has its own complicities and sets of problems that inhibit decolonial perspectives.

Spiritual Enclosures

There were, of course, historical resonances that framed my experience on the road back from Pisac that night. My discomfort, disorientation, and existential fear carried a deeper register in a landscape shot through with the legacies of colonial fear that from the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro�s 1533 capture o� Incan King Athualpa onward has been used to subjugate Native peoples and territories in the region. What was at �rst a relatively small army of Spanish soldiers used the combination of Christian religion and colonial violence to thoroughly dismantle the Incan Empire over the course of a few short decades. By transferring a durable racial order from peninsular monarchies to Nueva Espaæa, Spanish rulers worked to sediment Enlightenment worldviews on newly settled territories.  Nelson Maldonado- Torres describes how religious- ethical justi�cations were cen- tral to how Spanish colonialism was installed in the New World, with the consequence of subjugating Native and African peoples to a new order of being.› Furthermore, colonial capitalism gained traction through religious ideologies and hierarchies that depended on organizing and proliferating a racialized matrix of violence. In the face of the thriving Incan economies that took root in the Sacred Valley of Cuzco, which the colonial archive calls el Valle de Yucay, fear o� how conquest might proceed must have been the colonizers� dominant a�fective response.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 45

During the pre- Hispanic era, the Incan Empire centralized its gover- nance, ruling throughout the Cuzco and Urubamba regions in part by con- solidating religious traditions, and the notion of the sacred, over several centuries. The hierarchical Incan royal society organized the social, politi- cal, and economic dimensions o� Incan life that included a highly devel- oped agricultural economy and an extensive built environment. This sys- tem subsumed the heterogeneity o� Indigenous groups within it, even prior to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. Many of these pre- colonial re- sentments continue to inform the sense that Q�ero peoples, as the �direct inheritors o� Incans,� are disproportionately privileged within the tourist economy.�

In 1542, Cuzco became the site of the Spanish viceroyalty and an epi- center of franchise colonialism in the New World. Here and throughout the Andes, Catholicism, alongside the Spanish crown and its military, played a powerful role in establishing a new social order against, but also syncretized with, the Incan sacred. As has been widely documented, the inheritance of limpieza de sangre (blood purity) ideologies brought from the Iberian Peninsula and imposed during the colonial period created a system of radical inequality for Indigenous peoples with taxonomies that represented a color/class/gender order.�� More speci�c to Cuzco and the surrounding region, the religious order and colonial system of privilege formed the basis of the new land tenure system that granted land rights and legal titles to those with Spanish inheritance, dispossessing or leaving in limbo Indigenous landholdings.�� The institutions of the Catholic reli- gion, Spanish colonialism, and the military worked in concert to �nance the landed criollo (Peruvian- born Spanish elite) and develop a regional economy through a complex tax and tributary system, all the while sub- jecting Indigenous peoples to debt peonage on latifundio properties where land holdings represented a structure of racial capitalism.

To emphasize the degree to which colonial religion has in�uenced the Cuzco region, one only has to note how the �rst South American con- vent was founded there in 1556. In Colonial Habits, a case study of three convents in Cuzco (Santa Clara, Santa Carolina, Santa Teresa), Kathryn Burns details the complex spiritual economy put into motion during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This spiritual order extended into the republican and nation- building era wherein convents reshaped and newly de�ned the meaning of the colonial system.�� Speci�cally, nuns legislated

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

46 C H A P T E R T W O

new forms of social exclusion by disciplining �unruly� Indigenous girls and educating them in Christian values. As nuns socialized young women into vows of poverty, they simultaneously grew to be one of the wealthiest sec- tors of the burgeoning colonial population, maintaining economic inter- ests by acquiring property throughout the region, and becoming a major lender to local businesses and to the city government. As Burns�s research evidences, spiritual interests and economic pro�t have been inextricably linked in Cuzco and the surrounding region since the colonial regime, o�en reproducing an extractive race, gender, and class economy that sub- jugated Native autonomy to expand the �nancial holdings of the Catholic Church.

Early forms of extractive capitalism also entangled religious and dis- ciplinary violence against Indigenous peoples to consolidate the colonial order o� being. Michael Taussig describes the colonial Andes as a space that was dialectically organized through a particular set of colonial nar- ratives that insisted upon shamanistic magic as the site o� Indigenous be- liefs and that organized colonial fantasy production. From a European per- spective, that Native peoples used magic provided evidence of their state of nature and incapacity for scienti�c reason, even while some forms of sha- manism could not be read separately from technologies of resistance to the matrix of violence of the colonial order.��

As the extractive rubber economy in the south o� Peru became insa- tiable during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, South American In- digenous peoples were increasingly represented as rebellious, untamable, animalistic, and irrational. Where violence was the main technique o� labor coercion, magic di�ferentiated the savage from the civilized, and was used to justify the torture and terrorization o� Native peoples throughout the continent. Even though the rubber boom took place in a southern region of Peru, the e�fect o� historical overdetermination was that colonial violence was installed through the production of fantasies about Andean Indige- neity that persist today. In particular, the �wild man� that Taussig describes is the shaman �gure that served a number of colonial fantasies about tam- ing native peoples while also extracting healing power from them. As Taus- sig writes, �Going to the Indians for their healing power and killing them for their wildness is not so far apart.���

While I would not want to claim that the current forms of neoliberal new age tourist economy form a straight pathway from these colonial

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 47

tropes, I would su�est that we cannot understand the recent growth in a spiritual global economy without also attending to the fascination with and colonial investment in the Andean shaman. We must also look histori- cally to understand the in�uence of the convent system in the region and the �retraining� and Christianizing o� Indigenous girls and women on the part of the Catholic Church as a colonizing move to spiritually rule Native peoples. Furthermore, to truly undertake an analysis o� what I discuss as the extractive zone in the region, namely the spiritual tourist economy, we must also consider the long production of fantasies about the other in re- lation to the colonial violence of extractive capitalism. Therefore, the lega- cies of the spiritual �wild man� are palpable and integral to the production of colonial fantasies about Andean shamans and their magical abilities to change the Western character.

A recent spate of cultural production, such as the video documentary Q�ero Mystics of Peru (2014) directed by Seti Gershberg, or literature that pokes fun at the tourist economy, rehearses some of these colonial tropes about the magical prowess of the Andean shaman.�� In these representa- tions, the Andean shaman is shrouded in the language o� hyperbole, cast as either saving the planet from the e�fects of the Anthropocene or as a willing participant in commodifying the image of shamanistic magic. Attending to the histories of Spanish colonialism in this new era of tourist neocolonial- ism, perhaps we should reconsider how the colonial mirror reveals more about the observer than about the subject under observation. In relation to the fascination with the other�s spirituality, Taussig concludes that i� you seek hell, you should try looking inside.��

Andean Phenomenology

Like African diasporic belief systems, in which ancestors (orishas), and ani- mal spirits exert in�uence over the earthly realms, Andean cosmologies �nd their expression in the transitions between worlds and levels of experi- ence that are not perceivable to the transparency of the extractive view. In Q�ero cosmologies, other forms of perception are available by attending to the invisible worlds that live within three overlapping planes: the upper sky realm (called Hanan Pacha); the middle, inner Earth realm (Uku Pacha); and the lower and outer Earth realm, which is the realm o� human exis- tence (Cay Pacha). Andean peoples call upon the apus (sacred mountains),

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

48 C H A P T E R T W O

the rivers, the rocks, the animal spirits, and the lineages of ancestors in all three realms to support ordinary activities and the business o� healing humans. Furthermore, these invisible realms are vibrant with life to such a degree that the fear, anxiety, and melancholy o� �loneliness� that describes the subjecti�cation o� living within advanced capitalism, is, according to Andean phenomenology, a �gurative impossibility.

Jose� Estermann calls the ecological potential of Andean philosophy �la Ecosofía Andina,� an Andean ecophilosophy.�  He describes a mestizx and Indigenous set o� beliefs and practices based on ecological principles that rethink the catastrophe o� late capitalism toward planetary rehabilitation. La vida plena Andina, the Andean notion o� �full life,� forms the basis of an intricate ecological worldview that does not disa�regate the material world from religious- spiritual dimensions. Furthermore, it considers the link between the two as a utopic imaginary based in the presence of the aliveness o� being.�› As I discussed earlier, this is not an anthropocentric or even an androcentric viewpoint, since the hierarchies o� Western philoso- phy and its chain o� being disappear into the �interconnected everything.� Sustainability is, moreover, not a limited concept that leaves the structures of extractive capitalism intact but conceives of transgenerational steward- ship that requires sustained attention in all human activities. The Earth�s water, minerals, land, soil, and air are not thingi�ed, or turned into com- modities, but rather given due respect as part of an integral totality that must be taken care o� by the human species, ideas that echo with Indige- nous ontologies across the planet.

While constructivist theories emanating from Europe and the United Sates address the ecological predicament by pointing out dualisms be- tween body and mind, and between matter and thought, much of this work ignores Indigenous perspectives, worldviews, and the concrete material stru�les o� land and water defense as historically antithetical to capital- ism.�� Furthermore, while new materialist theories o�en privilege techno- logical innovation and scienti�c advancement, they o�en do so without consideration over the colonial condition and its consequences, even as they point to the vibrancy of material life.�� Andean ecological notions of fuller life make animacy explicit as a set o� Indigenous imaginaries that have long di�ferently sensed and formed in connection to the natural world.

Andean phenomenology, as I use it here, describes the human relation

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 49

to the natural world�s sensual, intimate, and embodied dimensions that interlink the aliveness of material and immaterial realms. Though certain strains of feminist theory and praxis also consider embodied knowledge as co- extensive, new feminist materialisms tends to be contained by Western- only and Anglo- based discussions regarding the discreteness of the body and nature/culture binaries. For instance, Rosi Braidotti�s nomadic phi- losophy argues for an embedded vision of embodied subjectivity that encompasses the body at all levels, especially, the biological body, refer- encing a Deleuzian philosophy of radical immanence.�� Andean phenome- nology, despite its mediation by coloniality, o�en places less emphasis on the making of individual subjectivity, since embodiment is de�ned as thor- oughly sensitive, and as being in haptic touch with the surround. Di�fer- ent from feminist new materialisms, Andean phenomenology delinks from the individual biological body to reach out toward the body of mountains, rivers, stones, and the Earth body o� Pachamama.

Re�ecting again on the opening anecdote, my perceptual shi� in rela- tion to my experience on the road from Pisac that night occurred precisely by pulling away from the training of coloniality even if this occurred sub- consciously and against my disciplinary training. Perhaps spirituality, nar- rowly de�ned, is too bound up with the religious colonial order to o�fer an alternate imagination of the world? Decolonial literature has raised this question for some time, particularly Enrique Dussel in his work on libera- tion ethics,�� and Walter Mignolo�s working through of Gloria Anzaldœa�s border gnosis.�� And Chicana and women of color feminisms have histori- cally contended with precisely how to think beyond the colonial divide and place embodied knowledge as the source of a future- oriented imaginary of the planetary. Yet more work is needed to think through paradigms that elaborate worldviews that extend beyond the paradigm of the self, and that perceive Earth and the cosmos, through the means of perception o�fered through Andean phenomenology. How can we decolonize relations and the Anthropocene toward a nonextractive and anti- capitalist future? By thinking with Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang�s important call that decolo- nization is not a metaphor, to answer this question we must also prioritize an understanding o� Indigenous land dispossession, contending directly with settler dynamics and responsibility.��

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

50 C H A P T E R T W O

Owning the Sacred

Blue- green mountains surround the fertile landscape of the Sacred Val- ley, which is crossed through by the serpentine Urubamba River. Formed by the Urubamba River, the Sacred Valley is situated in the geographies between Calca and Cuzco, Piquillaqta and Ollantaytambo. Dotted with sacred Incan sites to recall the epicenter of preconquest Incan culture, the Sacred Valley has increasingly become a tourist destination, either as a stop en route to Machu Picchu or as the main destination. The river valley is fre- quented each year by tens of thousands of national and international visi- tors. A popular destination for spiritual tourism is Diane Dunn�s Centro Paz y Luz, located between four sacred mountains that surround her prop- erty, and built in the shape of a chakana (Incan cross).

As the founder of Centro Paz y Luz, a center through which much of the Valley�s spiritual tourist tra c passes, Dunn is a key �gure in the region. As a white American �ex- patriot� who lived in Johannesburg and New York be- fore moving near to the town o� Pisac ��een years ago, her story represents the larger phenomenon of new migrations from the United States to the Andes in search of a way out of the overdevelopment, consumption, stress, and alienation of everyday life.�� However, unlike Cotacachi, Cuenca, and Villcabamba, where thousands of retired white Americans have relocated over the last decade, the Sacred Valley attracts younger tourists whose pur- ported objective is to expand their spiritual consciousness, o�en through the programs that Dunn organizes. The center also attracts tourism based on ayahuasca, the Amazon hallucinogenic plant that is now circulated widely in the Sacred Valley and transits extensively within US cosmopolitan centers. In a period of three years, according to some estimates, ayahuasca tourism in the Sacred Valley spiked by 500 percent. Even though ayahuasca spiritual tourism originates in the Peruvian Amazon, it circulates with in- creasing frequency in the Sacred Valley, where travelers seek out a shi� in perception, through hallucinogenic plants o�fered, sometimes by European �playing Indian� facilitators, as part of a spiritual tourist experience.

Dunn�s notoriety increased a�er she published two locally best- selling memoirs about her experience in Cuzco. In Cusco: The Gateway to Inner Wisdom: A Journey to the Energetic Center of the World, Dunn describes how �visitors from all over the world now converge on Peru to take in its spiri-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 51

tual energy and learn the secrets of the Andean path.��� In it, she details a life in the United States that, while creative, was �lled with anxiety and a feeling of insu ciency. Her sense of absence led her on a search for some- thing more meaningful, which brought her to what she describes as �the Andean path.� As Dunn writes: �Still there was something missing, some- thing pulling, something prodding. It always seemed to be just around the corner. I� I could only get there I knew I would be happy. What was it, that illusive something? Was it a big theatrical hit? Was it fame and fortune? Was it a man to love me? Or something more?��  In the aspiration for something more, Dunn reveals an a�fective angst about her condition o� belonging, an anxiety that opened the door to a spiritual search. The search for one�s higher self, described as an arduous process that ultimately leads to more purposeful living, is a familiar trope of new age literature. While the trope of spiritual journeys promises ful�llment through a detachment from the ego that unveils universal connection,�› Dunn�s story o�fers a means to a di�ferent end. Namely, the journey�s narrative permits her to establish her- self as divinely preordained to build a healing center upon Andean sacred lands. The problem with this unexamined assumption is that it rehearses Christian settler colonial narratives that justify the taking o� Indigenous territory for the expansion of a religious belief system.

A�er the 2006 publication of Cusco, many travelers began arriving on Dunn�s doorstep, and the center became a well- known destination for those seeking mystical adventures in the region. Once she was attracting consistent numbers, Dunn began o�fering workshops to foreigners seeking training �along the Andean spiritual path.� In this new workshop format, she included the participation o� Native Q�ero elders, who taught a version o� �ancient healing rites,� called the Munay- ki rites.��

As a North American with Christian theological training, Dunn plays a central, if contentious, role within the Sacred Valley. Despite questions about Dunn�s commitment to local land politics, and whether her interpre- tation o� Native beliefs is readymade for foreign consumption, many of my informants credited her book, and her building of the center, as the single most important factor for increased tourism to the Pisac region, which they saw as having a central role in stimulating the local economy. In Dunn�s ac- count, she states very speci�c reasons for bringing international travelers to the Sacred Valley:

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

52 C H A P T E R T W O

In the secret recesses of my being I knew, or rather had been reminded, that I had chosen (and been chosen) to be a healer and transformer at this wonderful time in history, to help bring about the taripay pacha described in the Inka prophecies . . . the vision Regis had was to create a large center where people from all over the world, from all di�ferent religions and faith traditions, could gather together for spiritual prac- tice and social service. The Sacred Valley near Cuzco was an ideal loca- tion because of the strong energy vortex there, which would naturally attract people and assist in our e�forts for unity and transformation. . . . Intention is everything, I reminded myself. I �gured i� I was being led to Peru to help develop the Centro Espiritual, then the ways and means would be provided.��

The Taripay Pacha that Dunn refers to is the future return to �meet our- selves again,� or the suture back to wholeness a�er the colonial catastro- phe. In Dunn�s imaginary, the new age spiritual practice that she refers to in this passage requires her participation toward this wholeness, or Taripay Pacha, the Q�ero vision of a time of peace. Even while Dunn makes refer- ence to Andean belief systems, the tropes that she uses are not removed from the assumptions made within the discourse of manifest destiny that allows settlers to ful�ll their destined role, producing a settler worldview predicated upon erasing Native standpoints.

In earlier segments o� her written narrative, Dunn had already posi- tioned herself as someone who had found herself in the right place at the right time. For instance, in post- apartheid South Africa she worked as a spiritual counselor to a�rieved populations during the a�ermath of the Truth Commission.�� However, her potentially troubling position as a white North American within the transitional racial regime in South Africa was mentioned without comment or re�ection, foreshadowing the binary split between spirituality and racial politics that undergirds much of the story o� white and European settlement within the Indigenous Andes. More im- portantly, Dunn, both on paper and in interviews, eschews the question of historical land inequality or working to change the structures of colonial- ism for the betterment of Andean Native peoples, an issue broached by Andean intellectuals and activists throughout the postcolonial period. It is nearly impossible not to interpolate Dunn within the broader matrix that is new age settler colonialism.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 53

I� we consider Lorenzo Veracini�s by now- familiar formulation of a global settler pattern that did not end with the colonial period but rather continues to expand into Indigenous territories, then we must also take seriously his theoretical framework that shows how migrants, arrivants, and settlers are all placed in relation to each other and against Indigenous peoples in a hierarchical stratum of territorial occupation.�� New age settler colonialism is an even more pernicious formulation, as it describes a stark condition produced out of the interaction between foreign visitors and In- digenous peoples that reproduces the colonial condition in which the sha- man is extracted from in order for subjects o� late capitalism to become �whole again,� remade away from consumer capitalism and its alienating force. However, the central concerns of occupation, gentri�cation, and ap- propriation remain completely absented from the consequences of new age settler colonialism.

In other chapters of this book, I describe the expansionist practices of states and corporations as a means of racial capitalism. In Peru, the extrac- tive work of new age settler colonialism is actually much more straightfor- ward. Given the histories of dispossessions in the Sacred Valley, in which Native peoples were increasingly pushed into the highlands during Spanish colonization, the territories that foreigners occupy for new age tourism re- produces the colonial dynamic of settler expansionism. Alongside Indige- nous people�s a�fective and physical labor, the land provides an extractible resource for the expansion of spiritual tourism, where the conversion of Indigenous territories to private property to farmland to new age retreats is embedded within the industry in the same way land occupation is essen- tial to more conventional forms of extractive capitalism.

Private property forms the foundation for tourist infrastructure: whether for �ve- star hotels, ayahuasca huts, residenciales, or workshops, spiritual tourism depends on access to land ownership. In the Sacred Val- ley, this has meant that the extractive economy is not organized around dis- crete products, such as the oil within the Yasuní, or the pine, eucalyptus, oil, or copper that I discuss in later chapters. Instead, in a feedback loop, new age settler colonialism extracts from Indigenous bodies and lands to quell the anxieties and accelerated demands of consumer capitalism. As Joanna Drzewieniecki contends, Andean property structures changed with the ar- rival o� European colonialism that inaugurated land privatization during the sixteenth century.�� Indeed, the concentration o� land access and tenure

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

54 C H A P T E R T W O

through the hacienda system has been a primary way that privatization has ruptured Andean systems of communal and customary law.

In his classic text The Formation of a National Indo- American Culture, JosØ María Arguedas describes the irreconcilable di�ference between eco- nomic systems that are based, on the one hand, on a Western property ownership model, and, on the other, on an intimate sacred relationship to land and work that organized Andean life prior to Spanish colonialism.�� During the 1920s and 1930s, an era o� heightened modernization rhetoric, rural peasant unions and federations led Indigenous peoples to maneuver a radically strati�ed court system, with mixed legal results. As with other Latin American nations, the Peruvian agrarian reform process (1969�95) lasted for more than two decades during the crucial period of rural rights� recognition. More recently, neoliberalization has e�fectively led to the re- cent real estate system of speculation that dominates the Urubamba Val- ley today�led by new age settler colonialism, in which rural gentri�cation continuously dispossesses Native populations.

The land for Dunn�s healing center was bought around 2000, at a time when Alberto Fujimori�s neoliberal administration privileged the purchase o� land by individuals and multinational corporations. Dunn built a home on a small piece of former farmland. While visiting a local restaurant fre- quented by foreign residents, Urika�s Place, Dunn responded to an inquiry by a female travel writer from the Lonely Planet about possible new guide- book destinations in the surrounding area. Despite the fact that she had only one room to o�fer at the time, Dunn asked the Lonely Planet writer to visit the property. When the updated version of the guidebook came out, it included one line about Dunn and the center, referring to a �special place� run by a North American who conducted spiritual tours.

Using capital from a personal loan from her parents, Dunn�s original land purchase near Pisac later doubled, and then tripled, over a few years.�� Just as important, since Dunn bought the original property, a dozen or more European and North American new age entrepreneurs have followed her example, acquiring land in the area and settling there. Even a group of urban mestizxs that I encountered �returned to the land� and bought property elsewhere in the valley, and while they were more politically astute about the displacing e�fects upon Indigenous and local peoples in the re- gion, they also contributed equally to increases in real estate prices. This form of settler colonialism imbricates with capitalist speculation to push

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 55

Indigenous peoples to the margin of the global economy. Even Dunn her- sel� has had a hard time keeping up with the area�s ever- rising property costs as she continually seeks to expand her center�s infrastructure.

Dunn positions herself in her books and gatherings as an initiated Andean priestess, mediator o� Indigenous knowledge, and teacher of ener- getic rites to a global audience. At the same time, she remains untroubled by her position as landowner in a region where the colonial construction o� Indigenous di�ference historically permeates all social and economic relations. In a near self- critique, Dunn discussed how �a local taxi driver asked me to do a despacho in her house, but I felt awkward dressed up in my poncho and chuyo. There was something a little amiss here. When I started working on my own instead of me making the despachos I have the Q�ero come to make it, because I don�t think it�s appropriate for me to do it.��� The appropriation of dress, embodied practices, and rituals by Dunn and others rehearses a form of Andeanism that extracts culture from Indigenous peoples while also occupying lands in ways that contrib- ute to a racially strati�ed global economy. Michael Hill describes how reli- gious seeking at the core of appropriating Indigenous cultural technologies is actually quintessentially about how neoliberalism produces new social identities.�  These new social identities emerge as a new age �wild man� economy, which Taussig perhaps unwittingly also contributed to.�›

Indeed, the �gure of the Q�ero shaman is central to the appropriations and confusions that take place within the complex circuits of racialized globalization. When coupled with the patterns of rural gentri�cation as a technique of new age settler colonialism, there are few circumventions pos- sible against the speculative �ctions placed upon Indigenous bodies, land, and a�fective and material labor. Such conditions are subverted through a pedagogy of direct contact, by engaging within the tourist economy, and by passing along modes of perceiving that escape the logic of new age settler dynamics.

Decolonizing the New Age

Anthropological narratives, the tourist industry, and non- Indigenous spiri- tual entrepreneurs all maintain a primary narrative about Q�ero peoples: namely, that they possess the unique distinction o� being the direct in- heritors of the Incan spiritual tradition. This lineage�s �purity� attributes

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

56 C H A P T E R T W O

to Q�ero peoples a distinguished position within the local economy, which relies upon authenticity as the value added within extractive capitalism.

Talking to Pisac shopkeepers, townsfolk, and non- Q�ero Indigenous women across the valley, I learned that the problem with this dominant narrative is that it occludes the complexity o� Native histories in Peru. �A�er all,� said Julia, a Moche woman in the main plaza, �The Incan Em- pire absorbed dozens of previously autonomous native groups. We don�t trust how dominant histories represent us.� Julia described her own situa- tion as highly precarious, working for a mestizx shop owner within Pisac selling crystals and peace pipes to tourists. �He is a bad man,� she said of the shop owner, �and pretends to be spiritual when all he is interested in is commerce.� Thus, the retelling of Q�ero purity within the tourist economy, combined with the consumer�s eagerness to purchase authenticity, repro- duces Andeanism, obscuring overlapping histories of empire as well as the production of commodi�ed fantasies.

In fact, I would argue that fabulation, as in the colonial period, con- tinues to form a central axis of exchange within neoliberal Peru, especially between foreign tourist and Indigenous peoples within neoliberal market structures. While fabulation in the Andes is nothing new, it does have con- temporary valences and local speci�cities. Such a naming of the current condition resonates with critical Native studies in the United States, namely the notion that Indigenous communities have long been on the receiving end o� white obsession.�� As Phil Deloria demonstrates, in a historical mo- ment of colonial complicity, and during dramatic urban and postindustrial transformations in the United States, playing Indian stabilized the meaning of Americanness. Deloria de�nes �white desire� as a particular version of Indianness that historically structures and formulates national identity as the a�fective project of American belonging. New age countercultures, he states, provide a coherent narrative to �Americans lost in a (post)modern free fall.���

One way to understand the troubled racial dynamics at play here is through the use of Jodi Byrd�s concept of cacophony. By �cacophony� Byrd refers to a competitive racial paradigm that frames the �desire and fear of the colonizer who needs to continually and repeatedly articulate �true� and �real� representations.� As Byrd states, settler societies �exist rela- tionally and in collusion with the processes of racial, gendered, and sexual otherings that seek to make contesting histories and experiences resonate

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 57

authochthonously through the lingering touch of the real.��� The �linger- ing touch of the real� is an apt descriptive phrase for how spiritual tourists as non- Indigenous subjects desire personal transformation through con- tact with �authentic native spirituality.� The spiritual tourist industry oper- ates by transferring the cacophony of the US racial order to the site of em- pire. What emerges transnationally is the interaction o� white foreigners, to a lesser extent foreigners of color, and national mestizxs all colluding to reach out to touch the authenticity of the Native shaman.

In contrast to some of the ecological tourist possibilities I discuss in chapter one, which are enlivened in places such as Ecuador, spiritual tour- ism in the Andes can be a highly mediated spectacle, where the violence of colonialism, the legacies of nation building, and neoliberal civil wars have led to increased Indigenous visibility routed through national mar- kets that celebrate and potentially ossify Incan histories. The height of such events is perhaps the annual Inti- Raymi festival, a nine- day festival that worships the Incan sun god through costume, ritual, music, and banquets, a spectacle loosely based on the writings of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Written during the indigenismo period that made Indigenous and mestizx subjects and cultural forms central to the building of national narratives, Inca- Raymi su�fers from both the neoliberal tendencies of regional displays o� �authenticity,� or what might be termed neo- Incan cultural expression. How do submerged perspectives negotiate such overdetermined terrains?

Andean Translations

In August 2008, a weeklong workshop gathered a group of thirty partici- pants at the Centro Paz y Luz to learn from Q�ero shamans; the participants were mostly from the United States and Europe, and were mostly white, except for two Black women from the United States, and one mestizx each from Chile and Peru. The workshop was organized around nine Munay- ki healing rites, drawing on what was described by Diane Dunn as �ancient traditions of Q�ero healing.� Opening the workshop, Dunn explained how former anthropologist turned spiritual guru Alberto Viollda, as a student of Andean cosmologies ��rst downloaded the rites from the universe.� As Dunn put it, �Viollda was able to receive this information and share it with the world.��� As I later found out, Four Winds, a new age company owned by white North American Alberto Viollda and based in Palo Alto, Califor-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

58 C H A P T E R T W O

nia, had circulated a pamphlet based on Munay- ki rites. As the workshop unfolded, through the narration o� Diane Dunn it became increasingly ap- parent that the Munay- ki rites represented a new age version of Q�ero mys- ticism. Indeed, from the �rst day onward, it was di cult to understand exactly the relationship between Q�ero philosophies and the Munay- ki rites; however, it is important to note that Viollda was given primary credit for disseminating the rites, even as two Q�ero shamans stood behind Dunn during those same early remarks.

Francisco and Juanita, the two shamans, were present throughout the eight- day workshop and also played an important role in facilitating cere- monies, creating spaces for meditation, and contributing to the sense that we were learning something valuable. When given a chance on day two, Francisco told us that the rites were based on a lineage of Q�ero knowledge passed in a patrilineal fashion from father to son until he, in an unusual break with tradition, initiated Juana. The couple were presented to the group as shamans, healers, and the keepers of ancient traditions, though Dunn never told us exactly what highlands community they were from. Don Francisco and Doæa Juana later told me that they came from one of the eight Q�ero ayullus in the Andean highlands, with about one thousand community members who lived at a fourteen- thousand- foot altitude in the Paucartambo region, a twelve- hour journey by foot to the Sacred Valley. Many Q�eros have integrated into Cuzco�s capitalist tourist economy, or travel between the city, the upper highlands, and the Sacred Valley, work- ing as weavers in the artisanal markets or in the spiritual tourist industry as guides and as shamans conducting rituals for foreigners and Peruvian visitors.

At Paz y Luz, Juana spoke only Quechua, while Francisco spoke Spanish and Quechua; neither spoke English. The obstacles to linguistic translation between workshop facilitators and its participants added to the complexity of cultural mediation, as well as to the inability to access a fuller rendi- tion o� Francisco and Juanita�s lives in what otherwise appeared as decon- textualized spiritual pedagogy. In fact, several times during the course of the week, I thought about the di�ferences in context between the workshop and the book Andean Lives, the classic oral history of another Quechua- speaking, albeit Aymara, couple, Gregorio Condori Mamani and Asunta Quispe HuamÆn.�� As a powerful testimony taken by Peruvian anthropolo- gists Ricardo Valderrama FernÆndez and Carmen Escalante GutiØrrez dur-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 59

ing the 1970s, Andean Lives relays the exploitative conditions of Quechua- speaking peoples in the highlands, where Gregorio worked as a strapper (a human mover of materials) and an agricultural worker on a latifundio, while Asunta worked as a domestic servant, experiencing high degrees of physical and verbal abuse from her employer. The oral history details the colonial domination and ongoing violence embedded within the inter- actions between indigenous peoples and misti (white) landowners, priests, and state authorities, and inadvertently contextualized for me the experi- ences o� Francisco and Juana, prodding me to ask more about their lives in side conversations, or during the times they were selling artisanal cra�s from cooperatives to the workshop participants.

As translators, Paul H. Gelles and Gabriela Martinez Escobar sug- gest of Andean Lives, �The narratives vividly illustrate the discrimination and exploitation in which runas [Quechua] are subjected by local power holders.��� Gelles and Martinez Escobar translated the original oral his- tory multiple times, from Quechua into Spanish and then into English. Throughout, they insisted on linguistic and conceptual precision. Indeed, in one of many examples of their attention to detail, they point out the di culty of translation by discussing how Quechua, unlike Spanish or Eng lish, attaches su xes at the end of a sentence to clarify whether the information conveyed was learned �through direct experience or through hearsay.��� Even while the book contains a detailed glossary that allows for an expanded translation of Quechua grammar, the subtlety of the position of speaker, participant, and witness within any sentence underscores what can be lost in the act of translation. Moreover, this example about posi- tionality in relation to the experiential dimension o� language shows the degree to which Quechua allows for multiple subject positions in relation to any given event.

I bring up this classic text to su�est how our six days together were shadowed by the complexity o� language and cultural mediation. While most of the twenty workshop participants were monolingual English speakers, a few spoke German or French as well as English. They under- stood little, if any, Spanish, so the participants were o�en confused by the presentations or group activities. Furthermore, because of the lack of trans- lation for the Quechua language, it was ultimately rendered as a mystical idiom rather than the representation of ordinary life that contains within it relational elements as well as the colonial a�erlives as everyday oppression.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

60 C H A P T E R T W O

These many linguistic and epistemological problems of incommensurable communication added to the macronarrative of Andeanism; the retreat was yet another instance of a voyeuristic perception o� Indigeneity�the extractive gaze in action. Neocolonial structures framed the experience of language, interactions, and property, and the mediations of empire hung in the shadowy background of these new age exchanges.

Even though these encounters between �foreigners� and Indigenous Q�ero elders were overdetermined by layers of coloniality, another form of perception emerged for me during my time in the Andes and with Juana and Francisco. In much the same way as I experienced through May Stevens, Francisco Huichaqueo, and Carolina Caycedo, as I describe in the introduction and in other chapters of the book, Don Francisco and Doæa Juana�s creative praxis facilitated access to other sensibilities. One morning, we woke early and walked down to the Urubamba River with the directive to simply slow down one�s observation of the natural world. Our require- ment was to spend two hours doing nothing but listening to how the water rushed over the pebbles, mapping its pathways, collecting bits of moss and bark. Over long days of engagement with the natural elements, without ac- cess to Internet and without the bombardment of catastrophic news from the outside world, participants reported perceptual shi�s, including a sense of time that was not constantly interrupted by media or the incessant chat- ter of consumer capitalism. My own search to deepen my relation away from binary separation to a perception of more thorough- going relation- ality turned this simple exercise into a profound landscape of sensibilities.

By orienting toward the sonic landscape and the spatial surround that became available through Juana�s and Francisco�s directions, I turned away from the more unidimensional perception of the Western gaze and the ex- perience of melancholic individuality. Even though I carried my earlier critical resonances with me, something else was made possible through sonic spatiality. In the rituals that Q�ero elders o�fered, Francisco and Juana o�en used the condition of silence, meaningful gestures, and small instru- ments, all while invoking Quechua as a symbolic ceremonial language to engage a sensorium of experience. Whether imbuing the surroundings with bells, or chanting words over and over again, the landscape �lled with the reverberations of their sonic intimations.

While English and Spanish had dominated in the controlled space of Diane Dunn�s center, in the sacred sites that we visited�by the Urubamba

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 61

River, near Machu Picchu, at the temple of Ollantaytambo, and at dawn in the Pisca ruins�Quechua was the only audible language, with little or no translation. These ceremonial experiences called forth the sacred elements of �re, water, earth, and air, and engaged the senses both prediscursively and, more importantly in terms o� breaking down the Western perspec- tive, in the space where language failed in translation. In such moments, the sensibility to Andean phenomenology opened a space for perception that perforated the colonial divide. In other words, indigenous landscapes that were not fully colonized by new age tourism, like the �owing river itself, al- lowed for a more direct experience of Andean phenomenology with Fran- cisco and Juana�s guidance.

Re�ecting again on the opening anecdote, my own perceptual shi� oc- curred precisely by pulling away from the symbolic and material weight of coloniality, even if this took place through a di�ferent order of understand- ing, and, again, against my sociological disciplinary training. Questions about my own political longings kept echoing during the experience with Francisco and Juana: Was it possible to decolonize the violence of colonial ideologies through an Andean ecological phenomenology? Or is spiritu- ality too bound up with the religious colonial order to imagine an outside? Decolonial thinkers have addressed this second question (Maldonado- Torres, Dussel, and Mignolo, for instance), yet the need persists to �nd paradigms that acknowledge colonial legacies, elaborate upon contempo- rary notions of power, and insist on other realms of experience beyond the material.�� I� we understand the current economic rationale that reduces relationality to the legacies of colonialism, and that permeates the a�fective and relational de�cit of the current period�what we can call the �melan- cholies o� late capitalism��then we might be able to move toward a more complex sense o� what decolonized spirituality looks and feels like.

In contrast to the mass market of tourism in the region, whether amid a remote landscape, beside a waterfall, or within rock formations, Juana and Francisco o�fered an intimate space of exchange. While mediated, this space of interaction moved toward the transmission of Andean phe- nomenology and away from spectacularized Andeanism. Like the melting of fear that I described earlier, my faculties had been conditioned to be hyper- reactive, but in each of the rites that included being by the river, par- ticipating in despachos, and climbing sacred mountains, I found instead that I was perforated by sensations and possibilities. Other participants I

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

62 C H A P T E R T W O

spoke to described a similar melting away of their mistrust. These micro- encounters were ultimately unnameable to me in their a�fective density, yet something took �ight and escaped the logic of capitalism, and could not be reduced to a remunerated exchange. Perhaps only these situated aporias, in which other kinds o� knowledge were not touristically �on display� and instead occurred through interactions, could provide a way through the reductive spaces of overcommodi�cation and new age settlement o� In- digenous spaces in the Andes. The future on the other side of catastrophe was presented and perceived as unmediated relationality with the natural world, a sensual spatiality organized by Juana and Francisco that created the possibility for the unnameable to emerge. To my surprise, Juana rang bells around my ears and splashed me with the sacred water of the Uru- bamba until the encounter became a stirring �ow with all that mediated it.

On the last day of the workshop, in a rare moment of direct address, Francisco spoke intently to the group, telling us how the knowledge he had transmitted to us had come directly from his Q�ero elders in the lineage from father to son. This paternal inheritance had been broken by Juana�s training as a Q�ero shaman, indicating both a break in Andean patriarchy and in the reign of male Indigenous �gures within the spiritual realm. Juana�s inclu- sion in the lineage, like the dissemination of Q�ero principles more broadly at the Centro Paz y Luz, represented a time of opening, he said. As Fran- cisco su�ests, in the period of increased environmental degradation to the Earth, the elders had decided that it was time to �unlock these secret tra- ditions and pass them on far beyond his own local communities.��  Fran- cisco�s direct hailing of the changing practices of gender, and the initiation of female �gures into the work of the tourist economy, can be read both as a decolonial gesture and as a way to secure more opportunities for Indige- nous women within an uncertain and segmented global economy.

Don Francisco went on to discuss the evidence of environmental de- struction in highland communities; for instance, they watched as water tables receded, observed changes in local climates, and mourned the fact that many from their own communities were leaving for the cities. For Francisco, all of these were signs of imminent catastrophic events. These signs, however, were not limited to the imminent future but also repre- sented the legacies o� Incan histories in relation to colonialism. Finally, the transfer o� knowledge from Indigenous to non- Indigenous peoples that Francisco spoke of on our �nal day in the group laid the groundwork for

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 63

situating Q�ero beliefs as one important solution to the pressing situation of the world�s ills. Francisco su�ested that the time had come to spread global awareness and increase consciousness about Pachamama through an ethics of care for the planet. Unlike the liberal environmental version of this call, however, Francisco�s invocation of Andean phenomenology, in which Indigenous peoples were central, o�fers a multidimensional way of relating to the land that works to decolonize the Anthropocene by creating another relation to the planetary.

As a female entity that regulates the three levels of cosmological rela- tionality, Pachamama is one way to think through a queer femme and de- colonial episteme to the experiences that I have described. While queer methods are not new, the legacies of extractivism and racial capitalism as products of the colonial experience have o�en been underdeveloped. By decolonial queer episteme here I refer to allowing the �eld to speak rather than foreclosing on the conditions of possibility, or presuming that a dis- ciplinary frame of analysis will unlock and straighten out the complexities of the colonial condition. The Andean landscape and those who have mil- lennial relations to it cannot be straightened out. Furthermore, phenome- nological mediations that imagine space, time, and cosmological being as interconnected realms o� knowledge counter the reductive perspective of new age thinking, which primarily commodi�es, usurps, and bends the Other into its own rendition of that which is either invisible or unknown. Juana and Francisco directed me to an experiential relationality to the natural world, which is governed through its own logic that pulses outside of catalogues of social and historical injustices and their colonial legacies. A decolonial queer femme positionality based in Southern knowledge al- lowed me to be open to the forms of relationality that unfolded before me.

Since Francisco had opened up these rites, a�er his pronouncement, I asked him about the role of Juana in this work and what spiritual role female counterparts had in Q�ero culture. Francisco su�ested that this was part of opening up the Q�ero tradition so that everyone could be more in- volved in the kinds of practices that would be what he called �preservation- ist.��› Unlike normative meanings o� �preservation,� Francisco�s idea was based on an Andean ecophilosophy of vernacular practice. In this book�s introduction, I claim that many constituencies�those with power, those without, Indigenous and non- Indigenous, the state, civil society, political parties, and state heads�all o�en resort to the rhetoric o� Pachamama.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

64 C H A P T E R T W O

But, beyond the discursive realm of formal politics, Andean phenome- nology incorporates a fundamental praxis that demonstrates, rather than discursively diminishes, the aliveness of the natural world. In this narra- tive, Don Francisco and Doæa Juana also demonstrate a kind of nonnorma- tive understanding of gender complementarity that shi�s and changes rather than assumes each member within the heterosexual couple as having separate spheres of in�uence. The decolonial queer femme sensibility I de- scribe was available through multiple encounters, either through Juana�s communication of the Q�ero sacred, or through a growing sensitivity to the surround, in relation to acknowledgment of microspaces of potential, and away from a unidimensional view of the spiritual tourist industry. This is an encounter with how to inhabit and be attuned to the multiplicity o� life as an antidote to Western fear and melancholia through sensuous knowl- edge about Pachamama.

The Not Yet Ending

In each of this chapter�s scenes, it should be clear that I remain wary about the possibility of intercultural dialogue within the colonial matrix of spiri- tual tourism. Despite all of this, as the opening story su�ests, the assump- tion that all exchange between the Global North and the Global South, between the Indigenous, mestizx and others must inevitably lead to asym- metrical power relations is not the takeaway here. Complex processes of cultural hegemony are ever present in what I have referred to in this chapter as a set of mediated relations between Q�ero shamans and non- Indigenous peoples. Land, and real estate speculation in rural places that are highly transited, is certainly one place where alliances toward decolonization might concentrate e�forts. Even as agrarian unions have been dismantled throughout the AmØricas, �nding ways to counter increasing rural gentri- �cation is essential to the project of decolonization.

Though Andean phenomenology cannot be read outside of its long en- gagement with colonial mediation, as a sequence of narrative dissonances that never �nds an origin, it is a mode of perception and embodied thought that cannot be fully subsumed into extractive capitalism. There is much to be learned from Andean Indigenous worldviews that infuse daily life with a planetary imaginary that animates rather than deadens. A decolonial queer

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N D E A N P H E N O M E N O LO G Y 65

episteme works to give porous attention to what Andean phenomenology sees, feels, touches, hears, and senses. If one can slow down and really listen to the bells, or the sound of the river, we might tread outside of the exigen- cies of colonial fear and the consumer logic of desire toward a more capa- cious sensitivity.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

C H A P T E R �

An Archive for the Future

Seeing through Occupation

In his thirty- two- minute independent �lm Mencer: Ni Pewma (2011), Ma- puche �lmmaker Francisco Huichaqueo draws attention to the current dystopic landscape of the southern territories in Chile.� This is a continu- ous nightmare that stretches back over �ve centuries, from the colonial endeavor to nation building through Pinochet�s neoliberal experiment and into the current period of the ongoing invasion of pine and eucalyp- tus plantations; a nightmare that takes place within the extractive zone of the Bío Bío region. In Mapudungun, the term æi pewma translates as �a bad dream,� and one interpretation o� Huichaqueo�s use of the term in the �lm�s title is that the Spanish colonial nightmare persists in the hands of the Chilean state. Mencer, on the other hand, is a word that �came to him in a dream� (and a term that we could not �nd a de�nition for), thereby adding to the nonlinear and experimental dimensions of its e�fect.

Unconcerned that his �lm has screened only once in public, Huicha- queo has deliberately created an archive �that will illuminate to Mapuche peoples living in the future the terrible conditions that we live through now.�� The exceptional quality of the �lm�s work, then, is to document the persistence of the colonial dystopic through experimental means: in the past three decades, Mapuche lands have been reduced to 510,000 hectares, or just 6.4 percent of their original territorial holdings.

As Huichaqueo says about his �lm, �I use the symbolic language of our ancestors to help us shape, live, and act in the world as if occupation did not ravage all of our existence.�� Like the genre o� Indigenous video art that has proliferated in the hemisphere, and the work o� Native visual media more

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N A R C H I V E F O R T H E F U T U R E 67

globally, Mencer: Ni Pewma documents the stru�le for Indigenous life as an ongoing con�ict between two fundamentally distinct epistemes.� In this chapter, I take the opportunity of this little known work to disentangle the layers of complexity within the extractive zone, analyzing the symbolic, representational, material, spatial, temporal, and epistemological dimen- sions of the permanent war against Indigenous peoples and their territories in the Southern hemisphere.

Since the sixteenth century the colonial occupation of the original ter- ritories known as Wallmapu that span the Andes from Southern Chile to Argentina is a permanent war against Indigenous populations. This war advances on material and representational fronts, ranging from genocidal atrocities, such as those that took place during the failed Spanish conquest of the region, to the expropriation during the �Reducciones� and enclosure period of the 1800s, to the neoliberal privatization o� Indigenous territories from 1973 forward, to the multicultural state�s project of incorporation and expulsion during the 1990s.

A �nancialized view that sees land as transparent exchange value is

Francisco Huichaqueo, Mencer: Ni Pewma, poster for Sala Juana Eugenua, 2011. Image courtesy o� Francisco Huichaqueo.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

68 C H A P T E R T H R E E

distinctly opposite from Huichaqueo�s viewpoint, whose opening scene is an opaque landscape with blurry boundaries between land, sky and trees, o�fering a mode of perceiving beyond the neat delineations of the extractive zone. Mapuche embodied thought systems see past monocul- tural transaction to address the perrimonton dreamscape as a parallel plane of existence. Mencer: Ni Pewma follows this cosmology by rendering and making audible the worlds of ancestors, the elements, and erased anticolo- nial histories, challenging the dominant discourses that decontextualize the present- day con�ict between Mapuche land and water defenders, on the one hand, and the colonial state and its military apparatus, on the other.

Rather than recur to the documentary paradigm of direct address and testimonials o�en used in human rights representation, or to a mode of cultural politics that appeals to the state as the main site of redress and recognition, Huichaqueo instead breaks open the matrix of representa- tional con�nement and evacuation.� And, unlike the sociological impulse of many other �lms in the documentary genre, in Huichaqueo�s monochro- matic palette and echo- chamber soundtrack, Mapuche worlds can be ac- cessed through visual and sound bridges that invoke the supernatural; it is also conjured through the use of the elements of �re, earth, air, and water, all o� which become the symbolic anchors for a visual imaginary that per- ceives life otherwise. As I address throughout the chapter, the cumulative e�fect of these experimental techniques is an assault upon colonial modes of representation. More speci�cally, Huichaqueo�s experimental �lm plays with conventions, incorporating elements, such as repeated motifs and echoes, non sequitur edits, long takes of performance art, literary and the- atrical references, and footage from other �lms, to make connections to similar landscapes of violent colonization throughout the AmØricas.

An experimental, and more radical proposition emerges in Huicha- queo�s work, one that challenges what it means to witness and live with devastation and genocide by shi�ing the viewer�s sense of time, space, and narrowly framed constructions of reality. In particular, Huichaqueo o�fers a fragmented, partial, and o�en confused view that disorients the viewer in order to insert Mapuche viewpoints into the frame. Thus, Mencer: Ni Pewma imagines the sensual and natural worlds not as fatally destroyed by colonial capitalism but as counternetworks of possibility enabled through dreamscapes and the invisible parallel worlds of cultural memory.

How does experimental �lm shi� normative imaginaries o� land and

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N A R C H I V E F O R T H E F U T U R E 69

landscape through visuality that documents the already arrived apoca- lypse toward life a�er extinction? Can experimental �lm sort through the memories o� Indigenous experience that work in opposition to the state, especially in the heightened con�ict within the southern territories o� Wall- mapu? By giving us a �lmic language based in Mapuche relations to the visible and invisible realms, how does Huichaqueo open up an aesthetic sensibility that perceives territory as a multidimensional space that curates an archive for the future? Can experimental �lm su�est what the land remembers?

Retakes on Occupation

Huichaqueo�s experimental �lm must be situated alongside a range of pro- ductions made by Indigenous �lmmakers about violence, contestation, and increased militarization of Mapuche territories.� For instance, Wall- mapu (2001), by Mapuche �lmmaker Jeanette PaillÆn, and the story o� Pe- huenche activist Berta, as told in El velo de Berta (Berta�s Veil, 2004), both begin from a Southern Indigenous point of view that documents how Ma- puche, Pehuenche, and Huilliche peoples are di�ferentially treated before the law through a developmentalist o�fensive upon territory and rural life. As we will see, such �lms carefully attend to the resource- dense Bío Bío re- gion, illustrating the degree to which communal lands have been increas- ingly legislated as zones of state terror, displacement, and bare life; yet at the same time, this geography has become fertile ground for submerged perspectives, where sources of creativity and collective resistance multiply. When placed within this �lmic genre, Huichaqueo�s �lm is unique in that it considers colonial representation in order to eventually destroy it, work- ing from the presumption that despite extinction, social ecologies continue to �ourish.

The �rst image in Mencer: Ni Pewma is a colonial portrait of a young, bare- chested Mapuche man gazing directly into the camera, recalling the famed warrior �gure Lautaro and the historical victory by Mapuche mili- tias against the Spanish Crown from the 1520s to the 1540s. Lautaro is a complex �gure for Mapuches and huincas (nonindigenous) alike, given that Republican literature recycles the undefeated warrior as a symbol of its national pride. In Pedro Subercaseaux�s nineteenth- century paintings, Lautaro was idealized as a hero o� war. He is also the protagonist of nation-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

70 C H A P T E R T H R E E

ally celebrated novelist Alberto Blest Gana�s MariluÆn (1859), as well as a genre of nationalist writings that formed Chilean literature.  In the colo- nial transition to nation- state formation, constraining images of Mapuche peoples served to construct the �appropriate� place of the Native in the nation. By opening the �lm with an image of Mapuche portraiture, Hui- chaqueo immediately registers the entanglements of the colonial referent with the national history o� European tropes o� Indigenous representation.

Writing speci�cally on the Mapuche context, Patricia Richards discusses how, �like their counterparts elsewhere, Chilean revolutionary patriots symbolically incorporated the Mapuche to justify their war for indepen- dence from Spain (1810�18). For the patriot leaders, the rebel Indian repre- sented love of the soil, of the fatherland and irrevocable liberty, high values that had impelled them to �ght victoriously during long centuries against the Hispanic conquistadors and against the royal army.�› As Richard care- fully points out, this rhetoric of revolutionary stru�le worked as nation- building discourse, and a way to celebrate the masculinity of the Native warrior �gure as proper to the anticolonial project of nation building. Against the Spanish colonial regime, the Republic used the rhetorics of patriotism and speci�c portrayals to construct a controlling image o� Na- tive rebellion. Throughout Mencer: Ni Pewma, Huichaqueo returns to the image of the anticolonial Indigenous leader Lautaro, precisely to empha- size the �gure that haunts the colonial imagination and who continues to be a�randized within the state�s modern media apparatus.

Huichaqueo�s �lm dramatizes these tropes about Indigenous revolu- tionary protagonists to point out contemporary historical and media dis- sonances. For example, midway through the video, Huichaqueo stages his own version of the �angry Indian�: we watch a bare- chested Mapuche teen- age boy, who �rst stares at the camera�reminiscent of the colonial portrait that opens the �lm�and then begins to yell at the camera. �A for Anarchy� is spray- painted on the wall behind the young man to exa�erate the nega- tive media stereotype of Mapuche masculinity, but also plausibly to make anarchist presence visible as an integral part of regional social movement histories.� During the course of this four- minute sequence, through a tight focus on the male Mapuche body, Huichaqueo visualizes how Indigenous anger and rebellion is portrayed across dominant media platforms as the de�ning trait of the Native.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N A R C H I V E F O R T H E F U T U R E 71

Such ossi�ed tropes of masculine rebellion give us an analytical register from which to understand the recent �fake news� videos that supposedly show Mapuches setting �res upon their own territories. Despite the fact that the footage was either staged or �lmed ten years prior, the short video circulated relentlessly within dominant media representations, resonating with a longer genealogy of criminalized images o� Indigenous masculinity. Joanna Crowe shows, for instance, how the conservative newspaper and state organ El Mercurio and other media sources have historically de�ned Mapuche peoples through discourses of marginality. Yet, she also tracks how this history rests upon criminalizing acts of self and collective land defense.��

As Indigenous media has documented, most headlines of the last twenty to thirty years describe Mapuche activism as terrorist activity while simul- taneously celebrating particular Native poets as exempt from such narra- tives. In other words, representations o� Indigenous masculine subjects oscillate between the criminalized Native and what Charles Hale calls the indio permitido, the civilized, whitened, and passable Indian who gains ex- ceptional acceptance within the nation, perpetuating stereotypes for the majority Native population.�� Mapuches sospechos (suspect Mapuches) and Mapuches terroristas are common terms that reveal how ancestral terri- torial land defense functions outside of the bounds of order, the law, and civility. These reiterative images use reductive understandings and mistake anticolonial rage, in Frantz Fanon�s sense, for individualized expressions of anger and resentment. By repeatedly returning to the scene of the state�s crimes, where communal lands are visualized as the backdrop for pine ex- pansion, Huichaqueo asks the viewer to reconsider the source of anticolo- nial rage and mourning for dispossessed Indigenous peoples.

In the legal war against Mapuches, Indigenous land and water defense has been constituted as a problem of national terrorism. For instance, in 1998, the Chilean government passed the Anti- Terrorist Law, which deemed land defenders criminals. This law worked to suture the negative histori- cal image of Mapuches in ways that have had devastating e�fects for those defending communal lands, as I discuss below. Furthermore, whereas Ma- puches have been constituted as foreign and alien to the nation, land has also been rendered as needing taming, �rst by the civilizational paradigm, and later by the neoliberal economy. During the expansion of extractive

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

72 C H A P T E R T H R E E

capitalism, this discourse was made possible by Augusto Pinochet�s legis- lation against political �subversives,� and the Chicago Boys� transforma- tion o� Indigenous territories into privatized and increasingly concentrated land holdings.

In an early black- and- white sequence, Huichaqueo visualizes long stretches of dimly lit radiata pine and eucalyptus plantations, not native to the region, and which conjure the vastness of monocultural forest planta- tions in Southern Chile�s Bío Bío. In a low pan, the camera tracks through row a�er row of foreign trees as a strange voice- over echoes in the back- ground, a scene that sonically and visually bridges the colonial period with the neocolonial present. What follows is a startling poem delivered in voice- over, rife with Mapuche symbolism and the director�s take on recent political events:

Y me barren mis hermanos, la cruz, esa maldición; El fuego que se alimenta de todas nuestras muertes; Tu tienes el miedo de mi morena conciencia porque tu riqueza es mi

muerte. Con pena del Ærbol secandose al sol nos a�ebramos en el pasado, Pasos marcados en las cenizas sobre las cenizas. Llora tu sangre sobre tu sangre. Los ancianos mueren solos. Roble huacho, laurel solitario. Pehuen extenguido. Pinos, pinos, pinos, pinos, pinos, pinos. Como llora el viento anacleto! Como cuentan sus millones! Pinos, pinos, pinos, pinos, pinos, pinos. (from Mencer: Ni Pewma)

And they imprison my brothers, the cross, that curse; The �re that feeds all of our dead; You have the fear that is my Brown conscience, because your richness is

my death. With the fear of the tree, drying in the sun, we are interwoven with the

past, Steps that are marked by the ash layered with ash. Your blood cries layered over blood, The elders die alone. Roble huacho, solitary laurel. Extinguished Pehuen. Pine, pine, pine, pine, pine, pine. How the burning plain wind cries! How they count their millions!

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N A R C H I V E F O R T H E F U T U R E 73

In these powerful stanzas, Huichaqueo conjures the histories of disputed territories, establishes the southern region as a frontier war zone, and hints at the long- term e�fects of the layered con�ict between Mapuche peoples and the Chilean state.

In the last lines, the poem references the Pehuen or Auracaria, what is called the Monkey Puzzle tree in English because of its tangled branches that wrap to its tree top. In Mapudungun, the Pehuen is known as the �an- cestor trees� as they can live more than two thousand years and are what botanists refer to as an archetypal tree whose ancestors date back 200 mil- lion years. Auracaria and Alerce trees comprise a unique southern temper- ate forest ecology that stretches from the central coast to the High Andes, even as the entire complex ecosystem has been endangered from Pedro de Valdivia�s 1540 colonization forward. The Pehuen�s decimation accelerated during the mid- 1800s because o� European settlement, and by the mid- 1900s when land was cleared for livestock grazing and agriculture more than ��y percent of the original forest had been disappeared. A�er Pino- chet�s privatization agenda in 1973, Chile�s forest industry was ultimately concentrated in the hands of a few large companies who continued the operations of extinction.��

Until the replacement by �commercially viable� tree monoculture, the Pehuen�s seeds were harvested by Mapuche peoples for �our, historically providing the main staple o� local diets. In the space of several frames, and through the metaphorical language of the poem, Huichaqueo condenses this history of colonial and modern occupation by focusing on the shadow presence of the aruacania ancestors, a ghostly presence only invisible through the omnipresence of pine and eucalyptus plantations.

In one particularly poignant line, we hear o� �the �re that feeds all of our dead,� which refers to �re�s capacity to both destroy and rejuvenate as a memory symbolic of a Mapuche worldview. But the connotation of �re has a more layered meaning that turns on the prior line, �and they imprison my brothers, the cross, that curse,� a reference not only to the advance- ment of the Catholic Church during colonialism, but also to antiterrorist legislation that has imprisoned Mapuche land defenders since the 1990s, accusing them of arson committed on state- owned and privatized lands. Currently, there are over 100 Mapuche political prisoners within Chilean jails, many o� whom are members of a Mapuche organization called the Arauco- Malleco Coordinator (���) the most politically militant of the

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

74 C H A P T E R T H R E E

spectrum of diverse Mapuche organizations.�� The line references the his- torical relationship between Eurocentric Chilean identity and the occupy- ing force of Catholicism, implying its complicity in �that curse� that has condemned Indigenous peoples to second- class citizenry. By suturing the temporalities of the colonial wars and Mapuche militias to the occupations of the modern period, the poem su�ests the ongoing criminalization and physical and symbolic imprisonment o� Indigenous land defenders in their stru�le against frontier colonialism.

Far from acceding to the accusation o� �arson� that is imposed upon Mapuche peoples, land and water defenders instead reveal the criminality embedded in the corporate repossession of Mapuche lands. Fire, Huicha- queo notes, feeds the ancestors and forms a bridge between the living and the human, animal and plant life that has perished in an ongoing frontier war to advance capital. By interpreting the line of the poem �and they im- prison my brothers, the cross, the curse� as the nexus of colonial occupa- tion, we traverse deeper into the genocidal operations of representational evacuation.

Representational Evacuation

Colonial capitalism�s territorial expansion in the AmØricas has historically operated through the appendages of state violence, especially through a biopolitical strategy that converts original territories into extractive zones. As Thomas Miller Klubock�s La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile�s Frontier Territory impressively charts, the recent con�ict over Ma- puche lands was born through technocratic designs that transformed the Bío Bío�s rain forest into a North American conifer forest.�� During the Paci�cation of the Auracania, Mapuche peoples� territories were reduced from 10 million hectares to 400,000 and 3,000 communal territories were legally given as �mercy titles.� However, during the Pinochet years forward, neoliberal expansion within the Bío Bío region occurred precisely through the process o� Indigenous land evictions that were codi�ed into new legis- lation by repealing rights to communal property.��

During the next decade, Mapuche �counterinvasions,� or a taking back of territories, heightened the material stru�le over ancestral lands that had been occupied by plantation economies. Such counterinvasions o�fered one strategy among a host of symbolic reoccupations, which together for-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N A R C H I V E F O R T H E F U T U R E 75

mulated a collective response to the territorial formula of the monocultural paradigm. Within the Mapuche- led organization Consejo de Todas las Tie- rras, particular groups chose to tactically commit arson against pine plan- tations as a means to resist corporate and state privatization o� Indigenous landholdings. These land burnings, or quemadas, as a strategy of reoccu- pation were aimed at symbolically refusing forest colonization rather than allow further expansion upon Indigenous territories.

In Francisco Huichaqueo�s archive of the future, �re and burning are key technologies of visible resistance to the Chilean state�s logics of ex- tinction. Given �re�s sensationalist potential and centrality in the �lm, pri- marily through interspersed scenes o� burning tires in the streets, it is im- portant to further explain the trope of �re. In particular, �re becomes a weapon against monocultural expansion. Under the legal architecture of Augusto Pinochet�s authoritarian regime, neoliberalism legitimated its re- duction of Mapuche territories that made Indigenous survivability impos- sible. The legal lynchpin o� land- reduction policies pivoted around the im- plementation of the Decree Law 2.568 of 1979. As Timothy Clark details, the law�s purpose was clearly spelled out in its name: �The Division and Liquidation of the Indigenous Community.� Through the law, the legal infrastructure allowed for the dividing of territories through the �request by only one occupant, who need not be either indigenous nor a landowner in the community.���

In 1993, the post- Pinochet government rati�ed the Indigenous law, and then established the Corporación Nacional de Desarrollo Indígena, National Corporation for Indigenous Development (������), the state arm that oversaw a massive transference o� legal titles from Indigenous landholders to private corporations. In sum, a long and painful process of national and multinational property expropriation displaced thousands of Mapuches from their original communal territories, reducing livability in the region to bare life. As I discuss elsewhere about the complex issue of Mapuche hunger strikes, the act o� burning lands can be understood only in the con- ditions of extreme scarcity and duress that many Mapuches must reckon with.

In terms o� bare life, Giorgio Agamben�s explanation of the �gure of homo sacer in relation to the state of exception is useful, even as its Euro- centric bias o� world history has rightly been critiqued by Scott Morgen- son and Alexander Weheliye.�  Agamben elaborates upon the �gure of

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

76 C H A P T E R T H R E E

homo sacer, or the Roman legal subject, as a term describing a bare life �rst coined by Walter Benjamin in an essay on violence and the state. Accord- ingly, Agamben pursues this �gure because it remains �undertheorized� by Benjamin, even as it is pivotal for how to conceptualize the state of ex- ception, which reproduces sovereign power through the split between bare and sacred life. Homo sacer refers to the �gure o� bare life that is always consecrated to death through the legal apparatus, or �a life that may be killed but not sacri�ced,� whereby sovereign power discerns between life and death.�› Bare life is the condition of the exceptional as it is applied to particular marginal subjects, which the law constitutes as unrecognizable through its granting and withholding of rights and protections. The reduc- tion o� land, the elimination of the pehuen tree, and the expropriation of communal lands has led to increased food scarcity and a crisis o� livability that produced �bare life� responses. Yet, i� we stayed solely with the model of Agamben�s bare life we would not be able to perceive the continuous histories of colonial capitalism, and the active search for another future. Mapuche life uses quemadas and hunger strikes in addition to a range of technologies of resistance as declarations of autonomy within the extreme conditions produced by neoliberal colonialism.

Land- burning strategies, as founder and leader of the organization Con- sejos de Todos las Tierras (Council of All Lands), AucÆn HuilcamÆn Pai- llama told me in 2004, worked to literally irradiate the acute a�front upon Indigenous territories. More speci�cally, HuilcamÆn described quemadas as a method o� land recovery in line with both an Indigenous praxis of Earth renewal and a �symbolic reoccupation,� a term that reveals the de- gree to which material and discursive occupation function together to re- produce the colonial divide, which in turn must be doubly decolonized. �Reoccupation� is a counterstrategy that calls to mind Gil Hochberg�s re- cent understanding o� �visual occupation� as the operations by which op- pression is �rst reproduced spatially through the extension of, in this case, the Israeli settlers that occupy Palestinian territories.�� Burning the lands could o�fer a means to counter the vast armament of the state, which had long contracted with US and Israeli companies to expand its occupation of Indigenous territories.��

As a mechanism of power, the visual command of space has functioned as an important site/sight of colonization, in which occupied landscapes become semiotic geographies that contain metonyms of power. For in-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N A R C H I V E F O R T H E F U T U R E 77

stance, the replacement of the ancestral pehuen tree, that had for genera- tions been at the center of Mapuche daily life with pine plantations, trans- forms both the physical landscape and the practice o� livability. In terms of the biopolitical imperative to control Indigenous populations, it is im- portant to remember that state and corporate power reorganized the Bío Bío region by subsuming Mapuche territories into an extractive viewpoint aimed at what Patrick Wolfe has described as �eliminating the native� by �rst eliminating the forest.��

Within the colonized visual geography, �re does the important symbolic work of reoccupation, as a symbol of unruliness, an expressive format of dissent, a retaking of the land, and a method to visibly cleanse the occupied territories. Indeed, �re both illuminates and burns through, the conditions of coloniality.

Dreaming, the Sonic, and Ancestral Mourning

As the reader might sense, the �lm is not a facile viewing experience. Mencer: Ni Pewma performs what Jennifer Doyle has referred to as �dif- �cult art,� which mediates a range of complex emotions whereby viewers may feel interpolated by the subject matter.�� In this case, when coupled with its aesthetic unconventionality, the work�s a�fective charge produces a sensation of fragmentation and unease. Poignantly, Mencer: Ni Pewma in- corporates accessible elements, such as documentary footage, animation, performative reenactments, still images, voice- over narratives, and footage that spans from the early 1970s until 2011. Even with these more approach- able elements, however, the �lm disorients the viewer with sharp, discon- nected edits. The immersive view is unclear within a darkened landscape, while a jolting narrative voice on the soundtrack calls out, creating a mne- monic echo to an ancestral world that reverberates as a colonial haunting.

As the camera tracks through the forest at ground level, our view is mapped by the matrix of ubiquitous �pine, pine, pine� trees, the foreign species that replaced the pehuen. As we travel quickly through the neatly lined forest, the voice- over is loud and startling, as if to invoke the onto- logical space between the visible and the immaterial realm. The state can- not perforate the invisible line between this world and the �one beside,� as Francisco Huichaqueo reminds us, because the invisible world of ancestors is ungovernable and out of the reach of extractivist corporations, politi-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

78 C H A P T E R T H R E E

cians, and technocrats and the ideologies that all of these use to displace and dispossess.

With the kultrün, a sacred Mapuche drum, beating in the background, the ghostly voice of a man speaks for the nearly extinct pehuen tree: �Pe- huen extinguido. . . . Como llora el viento ancleta. Como cuentan sus millones. Pinos, pinos, pinos. Eucaliptos. Eucaliptos. Eucaliptos� (Ex- tinct pehuen. . . . How the wind cries. How we count your millions. Pines, pines, pines. Eucalyptus, Eucalyptus, Eucalyptus). With the mourning cry for the endangered pehuen, Huichaqueo returns us to the scene of ecology not simply to represent melancholic loss and separation but also to render how capitalist valuation depends upon Native territories for its pro�t and expansion, and how those territories bear their own traces o� historical vio- lence. Indeed, through the reverberation of the moans and the pounding of the drum,�� Huichaqueo sonically renders late capitalism�s e�fect of �at- tening the rich worlds of relationality with respects to the ancestors and the forest. Certainly, amid the state and corporate land invasions, the gene- alogical and cosmological dimension of Mapuche histories has not been considered on the balance sheet of accumulative pro�t, yet Huichaqueo o�fers another way to understand such past- present subjugation. In a mon- tage that follows, a Mapuche elder points to the land and sky, even as in the background we still hear the resounding cry o� �Pino, pino, pino. Euca- lypto, eucalypto, eucalypto.�

The echo in the �lm functions not only in the o�f- track voice that rever- berates but also in the repetition in the poem, and �nally as visual repeti- tion. For instance, the sequence ends with a shot of a young woman in the city, a machi �gure, the powerful female healer and spiritual center of Ma- puche society. The machi stands in a warrior position with a laurel branch in her teeth, contrasting with the governmental coat of arms of the Repub- lic with its motto, �Por la razón o la fuerza� (By reason or strength), that the camera pans to. The echoes both of sound and of image propose that, through the reverberations, Mapuche agency can be articulated against statecra�, whether through the sound of the sacred drum, the invocation of the ancestral realm, or the spiritual �gure of the machi.�� Huichaqueo seems to assert that the history of occupation on Mapuche territories can- not be reduced to extinction, colonial absorption, or violence. The Ma- puche histories that echo through this �lm are sustained by a continuous process of resistance�through �re, song/mourning, and acknowledgment

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N A R C H I V E F O R T H E F U T U R E 79

of the ancestral realm that dips into invisible realms beyond the extractive zone.

In the next scene, we see a second portrait, this time a longko, the head male �gure of Mapuche culture. This �gure, a tribal chief, is central to Ma- puche social, economic, and political organization. The photograph of an Indigenous male authority �gure reminds the viewer what is at stake in the visual realm, since South American Indigeneity was �rst captured within the colonial portrait studio.�� In another scene, an establishing shot of a Na- tive cacique�s (overseer) colonial portrait further illustrates how the para- digm of coloniality constrains representation, and recalls the period of Ma- puche communal land, in contrast to the neoliberal corporate takeover that has stripped Indigenous legal claims to land.

The metaphor of slow- burning �re, the quemada, again makes an ap- pearance as burning land, as burning tires in the street, and as the burnt- orange sky. By visualizing burning land as a recurrent symbol of Mapuche resistance, Mencer: Ni Pewma references and intervenes in the overdeter- mined symbols of colonial domination. In its deployment of �re, the �lm also interestingly echoes other texts that have historically worked to inter- rupt past state violence. Most vividly, the image of a lit- up landscape al- ludes to the literary and visual work of avant- garde poet and performance artist Raul Zurita. In 1979, Zurita published Purgatorio, with a cover image of the author�s self- in�icted wound. The cover featured a close- up photo- graph of a scar that was the result of a performance in which, Zurita ex- plains, �I locked myself in the bathroom, I put an iron in the �ames of the hot water heater until it was red and I put it to my le� cheek. At that� I don�t know why, and maybe a psychiatrist could explain it well�I felt that that action reunited me a little. I was in a state of total dissociation. A�er a while I realized that i� I were to write something, it had to start from this.���

In an essay that describes these acts, Matías Ayala reads Zurita�s per- formative, and literal, self- in�iction of a wound as the descent into pur- gatory, or Dante�s inferno, and Zurita�s quote su�ests as much. However, the photograph of the scar is also a way of marking a collective body and showing how the self- in�ected wound is, as Nelly Richard argues about the same performance, an act o� �self- punishment that merges with an �us� in that it is both redeemer and redeemed� within a �tradition of commu- nal sacri�ce or the ritual exorcism of violence.��  Indeed, if Zurita�s facial self- mutilation, an act that has important resonances as part of experimen-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

80 C H A P T E R T H R E E

tal aesthetic practice, enacts the resistance to modern state violence, then surely the collective immolation o� Indigenous territories in Huichaqueo�s �lm represents a longer arc o� historical violence and refusal. The collec- tive act o� lighting �re to the land becomes the supreme example of com- munal sacri�ce, and, to borrow Richard�s phrase, its own �ritual exorcism� of settler violence. Invoking the nightmare (or æi pewma, bad dream) as a descent into colonial and neocolonial hell, Huichaqueo�s visual language experiments with the dystopic surreal as a way out of the trap of realist representation.

Water and the Death of Ophelia

Whereas �re symbolizes the space of resistance and collective redemption in the �lm, water most o�en signi�es the cycle of death and renewal. For instance, in the powerful recreation of a scene from Shakespeare�s Hamlet that takes place in the last third of Mencer, the river contains a �oating, and presumably lifeless and masked Ophelia.

Water is a protagonist, a living force, both in the �lm itself and at the center of Mapuche, Huilliche, and Pehuenche life. Water repeats, or echoes, at least a dozen times throughout the �lm. Steady shots of the Maule River reference the iconic body o� water that was �rst diverted, and then blocked, by the Spanish company Endesa�s building of the Ralco Dam in 1996, which, as we will see in the next chapter, was the blueprint for mega- and re- gional development in the region. Stopping the building of the hydroelec- tric dam�s infrastructure was an international touchstone for Indigenous and environmental rights movements, since its construction reduced the local water table by half, meanwhile displacing dozens o� Huilliche com- munities living or resettled in the upper Bío Bío region. The long takes of the Maule River and the lifeless �gure of Ophelia serve to remind the viewer of these more recent and material and symbolic histories of colonization, but also link up to ecological crises wrought by state- corporate alliances within the new global order.

Huichaqueo most likely is not referring simply to Shakespeare�s Ophelia here but to the famous Pre- Raphaelite nineteenth- century portrait by John Everett Millais from 1852. Millais�s sumptuous image of the mad Ophelia �oating down the river and singing to herself in her madness before she drowns captures not only the death of the maiden but also the abundance

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N A R C H I V E F O R T H E F U T U R E 81

o� both growth and decay along the fertile banks of the river, which cre- ate a fecund backdrop for her passage from life to death. As in other Pre- Raphaelite paintings, human life looks pale next to the abundance of �ora and fauna, and we are invited to see Ophelia�s death alongside the continual renewal of the natural world, beyond the damming and occupation of the Maule River.

In the �lm, Ophelia emerges as a masked �gure in a long white dress, �oating on screen and surrounded by wild�owers, as if in homage to the Millais painting. Indeed, the video moves out of its monochromatic palette into pastel coloration that mimics the rich Pre- Raphaelite colors. Huicha- queo adjusts the video with color enhancement, which enhances the sense of surrealist time and space, and calls even more attention to the paint-

Francisco Huichaqueo, Mencer: Ni Pewma, �Floating Ophelia,� video still, 2011. Image courtesy o� Francisco Huichaqueo.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

82 C H A P T E R T H R E E

erly scene that the sequence brings to life. In a particularly slow sequence, Ophelia �oats through a dreamtime state of suspension, embodying the �gure of a chaste romantic heroine, that also merges colonial notions o� life and death with Mapuche dreamscapes of a parallel surreal state.

With this poignant image, Huichaqueo gestures to other histories of Latin American surrealism that are neither con�ned to the commercial genre of magical realism nor completely separate from European aesthetic traditions. Instead, these new imaginaries o�fer di�ferent mappings of aes- thetics that destabilize traditional art histories, and illustrate the mixing o� Indigenous cultural production against, but also through, European codes. In a recent in�uential volume on Latin American surrealist art, edi- tors Dawn Ades, Rita Eder, and Graciela Speranza su�est that the transits between the AmØricas and Europe regarding surrealism have been both poorly understood and contemporarily misconstrued.�› The volume shows how the mutually constituting aesthetic formations that might cohere within the category of surrealism are too o�en separated out by national boundaries. Movements such as surrealism cannot be reduced to any pre- scribed or preset de�nition or given a European origin story, but instead must be understood as emanating from multiple points of di�fusion and in- �uence. The �lm illustrates and then dissociates from romanticism in order to show multiple trajectories of aesthetic in�uence that travel from north to south, from south to north, and south-south, and cannot be cast simply in terms of a European in�uence within South America. These transits re- mind the viewer of colonialism�s tangled aesthetic and political legacies.

In Huichaqueo�s restaging, Ophelia embodies a global preoccupation with water, the natural world, and land, and while the tragedy of Ophelia is o�en emphasized in European critical contexts, Huichaqueo uses her death to �gure the tragedy o� land loss and water reappropriation upon In- digenous territories. Given the Chilean nation�s imbrication with not only Spanish colonialism but also British Empire and a fetishistic relationship to English culture, we can read the sudden insertion of the immobile Ophe- lia as both a metaphor for the death o� Eurocentrism and a reminder that ecological degradation is the dystopic future everywhere and for everyone.

We can think about this �lm as an archive of the future that shows the centrality of the river to Indigenous life. Mencer: Ni Pewma also relies on images of the Maule River to show its �ow and to activate a memory of the local and international e�forts that fought against the Ralco hydroelec-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N A R C H I V E F O R T H E F U T U R E 83

tric dam. Huichaqueo weaves through several shots of the river in motion, visually su�esting its cosmological vitality, and imagining its life source. In these long shots, the river becomes another protagonist in the �lm. Like the unpredictability of �re, it too cannot be contained or tamed by human developmental designs, a view of natural world where memory animates against the river�s erasure.

By distorting a linear sense of time and visualizing a sensual relation to place, Huichaqueo searches for a means to document the past- present, one that leaves a trace as an archive for the future. The choppy fragments of Mencer: Ni Pewma make most sense, therefore, when viewed not within the su�focating logics of colonial visual culture but rather within a larger Mapuche ecological relationality to land, water, air, and �re, and within the histories of occupation. By highlighting the stru�le over representation, the viewer begins to understand the multidirectional sensorium o� Indige- nous experience that, because it lives on the other side of colonial catastro- phe, is always at odds, and defends against ongoing destruction.

Forest Recovery

Within the highly reorganized landscape of occupation, it is perhaps dif- �cult to imagine a di�ferent future for Mapuche territories and the once resource- rich region. Yet, the work o� Indigenous and international organi- zations throughout South America, and acutely in the Ralco con�ict, illus- trates the degree to which conservation and protection o� lands is an im- portant antidote to statecra� upon naturally resource rich lands. However, the question of conservation in relation to Indigenous territories is a more complex one as I addressed in the previous chapter, and, given the modes of decolonization that Huichaqueo attends to, I consider it central to the di�ferent imaginaries of the planetary at the heart of Mapuche praxis and cultural production.

An impactful and still relevant report from 1990 on South American conservation, National Parks without People? The South American Experi- ence, su�ests that state policy aimed to protect nature has historically been accompanied by a lack of consideration for the Indigenous presence on those same lands. As the report�s preface indicates, one approach to the project o� land conservation has been to �systematically close one�s eyes to reality and refuse to recognize the fact that a large number of the national

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

84 C H A P T E R T H R E E

parks are not spaces without inhabitants. This has caused a sort of schizo- phrenic behavior in many o cials: formally enforcing the laws and regu- lations, maintaining publicly that human populations do not, or should not, exist.���

What the report describes as �schizophrenic behavior� is actually an- other iteration of the history of colonial discovery that representationally evacuates Native peoples in order to produce an innocent account o� Euro- pean settlement. The immigration policies of the nineteenth century in Chile would be the parallel instance, in which the Law of Selective Immigra- tion of 1845 accommodated several thousand German and Swiss families into the southern territories, and had as its consequence an impactful wave o� �reduction� laws aimed at eliminating Indigenous land titles.�� This legis- lation historically forced Mapuche communities onto poor lands, reducing viability for everyday activities, leaving lasting consequences in the region as the violent dispossession of Mapuche land and water rights. Contempo- rary conservation schemes, then, must be historicized within this context of �selective immigration� as forced removal and representational evacuation.

When I �rst visited Southern Chile in the early 1990s, a time of rapid forest decimation, I heard of the conservation plan that was put into place through the wealth and vision o� Douglas Tompkins, the former co- founder of the US clothing company The North Face. His idea was to con- serve the rapidly decimated ancestral forests by �buying them up� and taking stewardship of the land. Local communities were wary about US corporate ownership, not because they did not see the validity o� what might come from conservation practices, but because it put vital lands and resources into foreign hands. Tompkins�s public statements have done little to disavow this local view of US paternalism, since he has o�en only super- �cially responded to the question of motives. For instance, he stated in an interview, �I bought the �rst piece o� land almost whimsically, because it was so cheap and so beautiful . . . that�s where it all started.��� Tompkins has been situated as a global leader of ecophilanthropy, a movement that has gained momentum among elite liberal entrepreneurs invested in reducing global climate change. Yet, these unthinking statements ignore the weight and persistence of colonial control over Indigenous territories.

Conservation has deeper roots in a liberal imaginary about land and biodiversity that sees nonhuman life as its principal site of advocacy but that also o�en makes recourse to representational evacuation. With rare

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N A R C H I V E F O R T H E F U T U R E 85

exceptions,�� conservation initiatives usually perceive Native peoples as an obstacle to, rather than an imperative for, preservation.�� Well- meaning re- ports by nongovernmental environmental organizations contribute to the representation of Southern Chile as an unpeopled landscape, what Martin Berger has referred to as a �racialized discourse of property.� �� Though Berger studies art history and US perception as the objects of an analysis about structured audience responses to cultural phenomenon, his inter- pretive methodology is useful in the context of the South American preser- vationist gaze. It demonstrates how whiteness reduces land to a represen- tation of terra nullius. For Berger, whiteness �uctuates, but is uni�ed in its �magisterial view,� as a visual entitlement that symbolically appropri- ates land as patterns of racialization that reproduce material inequities. Here, Berger�s model o� whiteness may be applied to the extractive view that privileges empty �beautiful� land over seeing Indigenous territories.

Although the World Watch Institute report criticizes Tompkins and questions his interventionist, ecophilanthropist interests, it also repro- duces the problematic assumption o� Indigenous absence in the region, such as in this passage:

It is easy to see why the place so enchanted them. Densely forested slopes plunge from snow- capped volcanic peaks into icy waters. The mist- shrouded old- growth rainforest receives 6,000 millimeters of rain per year and shelters giant alerce trees that were already a thousand years old when Jesus walked the Earth. Once a common species, similar to the California redwood, the alerce has almost been lo�ed into ex- tinction. To Doug Tompkins, this extinction crisis is the central problem facing the planet and humanity, and the stru�le to preserve biodiver- sity is the primary concern, �the point upon which everything turns.���

Like the extensive regions of preservation that exist globally, Tompkins�s land ownership forms part of the system of forest management and conser- vation, that functions within a colonial paradigm that privileges outsiders, erases Native peoples, and imagines saving the planet through �American philanthropy.� In this missionizing project, forest management and con- servation protect land that privilege a colonial viewpoint that contributes to the dispossession o� Indigenous peoples.

As the Chilean state continued to expand its governance on the Bío Bío frontier, La ley de bosques 4.363, known as the 1931 Forest Law was put

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

86 C H A P T E R T H R E E

into place to protect lands with little acknowledgment of its Mapuche, Pe- huenche, and Huilliche inhabitants. As Gutierrez- Vilches explains:

The Forest Law was the �rst to address how national parks should regu- late timber trading, guarantee the survival of certain tree species, and preserve scenic beauty. From a conservation perspective, the Forestry Law allowed for the creation of national parks in Chile that established certain criteria that served as the basis for the present protection system. Such criteria included the type of property on which national parks may be created, creation by presidential decree, and divestment by law; the objectives for which protected areas are created; the administration of such areas by a specialized agency; and the feasibility of their use by the public.��

In other words, the state organized forest protection without consideration for Indigenous peoples� claims on southern territories. In addition to rep- resentational evacuation, such laws, from their �magisterial perspective,� overlook the expansive literature addressing how Native peoples contrib- ute to, rather than degrade, biodiversity.

Neoliberal governance links the law to administrative and technocratic nation making, what Fred Moten and Stefano Harney refer to by using the shorthand term �policy and planning.��  As a technique of governmentality, policy and planning produce a complicated incentive system that results in the ubiquitous presence of forest industry within the Bío-Bío region. More speci�cally, Lucio Cuenca, national coordinator for the Latin American Observatory o� Environmental Con�icts, explains the incentive conun- drum for Indigenous peoples this way: �The response by the State has been to provide favorable legal and social conditions to enable the forestry com- panies to ful�ll their production goals and continue their expansion. On the one hand it does this through repression and criminalization [of Mapuche opposition], on the other it reroutes subsidies that were formerly aimed at large companies to small farmers and indigenous landowners. This obliges them to convert to forestry activities. Thus, the strategy for expansion be- comes more complex, operating through political and economic blackmail that leaves no alternatives.��› In this quote, Cuenca describes a perverse legal and political model wherein subsidies are diverted to small farmers and Indigenous landowners to facilitate their participation in the monocul- tural forest industry. In this �no alternative� paradigm, Mapuche peoples

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N A R C H I V E F O R T H E F U T U R E 87

either incorporate their lands into the extractive zone or become the target of state repression. In this logic, the state reinforces a system that produces criminals out of those it has dispossessed.

Mapuche peoples, as Cuenca indicates, are o�en locked within extrac- tive schemes that dispossess them, either through privatization o� lands or through conservation that produces expulsive migrations. In spaces where states o�fer no alternatives, survival must be tactile and practical. For in- stance, a�er the pine and eucalyptus trees have been harvested, Mapuche communities who stay move in to plant subsistence gardens between the scars le� on the earth by large bulldozers. Reshaping the state paradigm that leaves no alternatives is at the core of a vernacular archive of the future. In this way communal gardens have become an important and seasonal means of subsistence, an imagination of the future out of reduction and bare life.

A Mapuche worldview reconstitutes the future by interpreting the pro- cesses of extractivism and conservation as two sides of the same develop- mentalist vision. In the poles between conservation and land defense, Hui- chaqueo decolonizes Western aesthetics and Chilean representations to make room for perceiving and making life otherwise.

Beyond the Colonial Divide

I have discussed how dominant representations o� Indigenous people in southern territories is, on the one hand, trapped within the hypervisible logics of racism and extractivism, and, on the other hand, rendered in- visible by discourses of conservation and liberal multiculturalism. My own stake in addressing Huichaqueo�s experimental generativity is to make visible and available the multiple strategies that challenge occupation toward moving beyond the colonial divide. Through a nonlinear sense of time, surrealism, and a critique of representational evacuation, we �nd de- colonial alternatives.

As we have seen, Huichaqueo�s multimedia experiments constitute an archive of the future; his subject matter and sensibilities very squarely con- sider the project of decolonizing perception�whether through the sonic, through dreamscapes, and through the undoing of romanticism, or by in- verting dominant racial and colonizing tropes. An archive of the future documents occupation so as to see beyond its capitalist rationale. Through

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

88 C H A P T E R T H R E E

the use of surrealist techniques, Huichaqueo o�en swaps formal linearity for fragmented content, and he exchanges a liberal viewpoint that merely documents violence and destruction for a perspective that sees through and to the other side of occupation. Furthermore, through images and per- formances that symbolically make visible how racialized tropes di�feren- tiate to facilitate extractive capitalism, Mencer: Ni Pewma condenses the events of the last thirty years in the state war against Mapuches linking them to Spanish colonialism and settler colonization in earlier centuries.

By way of closing, I want to return to what the decolonial queer method can o�fer in the landscape of occupation. In conversations over a two year period with Francisco Huichaqueo in which we built trust and ultimately a close friendship, I slowly found out that the production of the �lm was co- ordinated to re�ect a Mapuche cosmology through a symbolic idiom that was guided by the hands of a machi. If the machi is the powerful spiritual and ritual center of Mapuche culture, then it is through her embodied en- actments, as mediated through Huichaqueo�s �lmic techniques, that we are able to conjure and see beyond the colonial condition.

In conceiving the �lm together, the machi Silvia Kallfüman guided Hui- chaqueo to include elements of Mapuche symbolic language, and to bring the mnemonic echoes of the ancestral realm forward into the sound and visual tracks. As Huichaqueo summed up to me, Mencer: Ni Pewma was �consciously and subconsciously made in fragments as an orchestrated memory for the future.��� By leading the viewer through the symbolic realms of dreaming and the parallel sensibilities of the ancestral realm, Hui- chaqueo found other ways to perceive and �lm the images of occupation, o�en in ways that he has yet to decode for himself. A decolonial femme episteme that is porous to the possibility of multiple viewpoints avows the machi �s ability to render the language of dimensions, and to tread into un- seen and unknown realities. Kallfüman guides Huichaqueo into unmapped terrains, and brings the viewer with him to the other side of the collapse of the extractive zone.

Rather than mediating the past- present occupation through a recogniz- able, conventional narration of political and collective experience, Huicha- queo chooses a more opaque, experimental, and irreducible form of con- tending with occupation�s legacies and social traces. The machi whispers her secrets to Huichaqueo and into the wind, speaking her own dream and visions through the �lmmaker mediator. Thus, the �lm�s experimentation

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A N A R C H I V E F O R T H E F U T U R E 89

enters us into the landscape of dreams, the archive for and of the future that exists in parallel tension with a wounded landscape.

In a two- minute segment from Dreams of Machi Silvia Kallfüman (2015) that was made for the Chilean archaeological museum, the �rst time in the history of the museum that a Mapuche curator had organized an exhibit, we see Huichaqueo�s guide at the center o� her cosmic world, the river. In my estimation, this �lm is the most realized in its submerged perspective, and allows me to stage the decolonial femme method explicitly. In this �lm segment, the director uses the technique of temporal lag, as well as the in- habitance of the machi �s repetitious gestures, to entice us into the �owing river water. This haptic sensual movement that �ows alongside the river�s undulation opens the parallel perrimonton dream world. Once we enter the dream, as an imaginary, an ancestral world, and a parallel real, we can per- ceive anew, outside of the duality that the visual has conventionally occu-

Francisco Huichaqueo, The Dreams of Machi Silvia Kallfüman, video still, 2015. Image courtesy o� Francisco Huichaqueo.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

90 C H A P T E R T H R E E

pied. This other world emerges in saturated tones of the �lmic landscape as rich blue and green hues, where light plays on water, and where sound vibrates through the rush of the waterfalls. By using a decolonial femme method, we can perceive the machi �s immersion in the water, her repetition of gestures, the dancing o� light on the river, and the undulating waves as guiding us toward a world before and beyond the extractive zone.

Through the machi �s view, Huichaqueo shows us submerged and emer- gent perspectives as parallel perception. This space otherwise �ows like the river, a dream that escapes colonial duality, and that moves toward a state of undi�ferentiation. I� we take this perception seriously, Huichaqueo and Kallfüman seem to intimate, then we can learn how to reoccupy through a full return of the senses.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

C H A P T E R �

A Fish- Eye Episteme

Seeing Below the River�s Colonization

It takes many aesthetic strategies, modes of critique, engaged activisms, acts o� land and water defense, and forms of perception to decolonize the dominant viewpoint that misrecognizes territorial relations for the extrac- tive zone. One strategy that mestiza Colombian multimedia artist Carolina Caycedo employs is to repurpose the images taken by satellite technologies so as to visibly document how hydroelectric corporations block the �ow of South American rivers.

In the installation Dammed Landscapes (2012), Caycedo works with digi- tal imaging to document �ve stages of the El Quimbo Hydroelectric Project construction, a highly controversial plan that has led to widespread dispos- session in the region.� In Caycedo�s hands, satellite photographs become the source for enormous wall panels that illustrate how the Southwestern Colombian landscape has, since 2011, been thoroughly damaged by the on- set o� hydroelectric development. What time- sequenced images show over a four- year period is the trail o� barren territory le� in the wake o� hydro- power�s advancement. The riverbed scar visibly reminds the viewer of the pathway where the powerful Magdalena River once �owed.

The sectional erasure of the river body, and the dispossession of com- munities that depend upon the Magdalena, is at the core of Caycedo�s im- pressive body o� work. Dammed Landscapes pursues how technocratic de- signs distort a multi- tiered perception o� life through stark images that track a twenty- mile stretch of the disappearance of the Magdalena River. Caycedo inverts the extractive view to show how the Magdalena�s con�u- ence with the PÆez River literally damns the river to extinction.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

92 C H A P T E R F O U R

In Yuma: Land of Friends (2014), Caycedo o�fers important video work that testi�es to the process o� literally submerging the rural mestizx and In- digenous communities that for generations lived intermixed with the �ow of the Magdalena River. In this chapter, I take a close look at Yuma: Land of Friends, a video that blends the experiences of those most a�fected by damming with long shots of the river�s movement, its sound, and its voice. That dams �silence rivers� has been an important way to perceive modern- ization�s separation from the agency and life forms of the natural world.� Caycedo�s visual and sonic techniques are based in anti- dam counterlogics and do not �silence the river,� but instead allow for its rushing sound and the gurgling voice o� Yuma to emerge. Through edits that literally submerge the camera into the mucky brown water below the surface, Caycedo li�s submerged perspectives within the extractive zone.

Perceiving anew matters on a continent where small, medium- sized and

Carolina Caycedo, from Dammed Landscapes, Magdalena River (Yuma) a�er Endesa river diversion, satellite image, 2012.

Image courtesy of Carolina Caycedo.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A F I S H � E Y E E P I S T E M E 93

large- scale dams are planned for much of its rivers, and where the per- vasiveness of megaprojects in mining, petroleum, and hydroelectricity is hegemonic.� Almost one hundred new dams are currently under con- struction throughout South America, obscuring the promotion of energy alternatives that do not depend on life�s extinction. Despite growing so- cial movements that aim to protect territories and an accompanying vast political ecology literature that challenge the costs o� hydroelectric power on human and nonhuman life,� mega dams are o�en constituted by state and corporate actors as the necessary means to continuing to pursue a retrogressive view of national and regional integration toward globalized modernity.

We might pause to consider how hydropower functions on a scale of ex- tractive capitalism that demands exponential, if �nite, social and ecologi- cal resources.� Large dams require expansive infrastructure and intensive capital investments, usurping thousands of acres o� land. Whether it is the Itaipu Dam along the ParanÆ River, the Three Gorges Dam that spans the Yangtze River, or the projected �Master Plan� that imagines building seven- teen dams along the Magdalena River, since their design in the nineteenth century, large dams have continually dispossessed millions o� Indigenous and rural peoples.� What conceptual tools allow us to puncture the as- sumption of dispossession that is embedded in the logic o� hydropower? How do local communities counter these colossal schemes and their cy- cloptic viewpoint? Because of its sheer size and potential for destruction, mega dam development o�en casts doubt about the potential for local re- sponses, yet in this chapter I enumerate how visual and embodied resis- tance �nds ways to �ssure the dam walls, working to perforate the matrix of capitalist expansion.

By centering on hydropower, I analyze how plans to absorb and drown the proliferation o� life are contested by local communities, speci�cally in the Cauca Valley of Colombia by the Asociación de Afectados por el Proyecto Hidroelectrico El Quimbo (Association of A�fected Peoples of the Quimbo Hydroelectric Power, ���������). In tandem with this move- ment, the artwork and decolonial praxis of Carolina Caycedo inverts, re- fuses, and subtends the visual formats of the dam�s view to instead support the experiences o� local social and ecological movements that live and die within the extractive zone.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

94 C H A P T E R F O U R

Seeing Like They Do

Over the past decade, the Spanish hydroelectric company Endesa has threatened territories in the Department o� Huila with the construction of the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project. In 2008, President ̀ lvaro Uribe VØlez�s neoliberal government (2002�10) sold ten thousand hectares to Endesa, legally handing over rights to land alongside the Magdalena River, terri- tories that had been inhabited by Indigenous groups, mestizxs, and local �shing and agricultural communities for generations. Eschewing their re- sponsibility for resettlement and ecological mandates, the state o ce of the National Authority o� Environmental Licenses has become notori- ous for systematically ignoring the land rights o� local communities. As the ��������� activist Jose AvilÆ described it, �We lost everything, this land is what has supported my family for generations and all we demanded was to be relocated or compensated fairly as stated in the environmental license.� 

Carolina Caycedo has worked both independently and alongside Desco- lonizando La Jagua (Decolonizing La Jagua, ���������), and Rios Vivos (Rivers Alive Colombia), anti- extractivist campaigns based on local mem- bership that has spearheaded organizing against Endesa. The strategies of these local movements proliferate to include protests, marches, forums, press conferences, and legal pressure aimed at stopping both Endesa and the Chinese state- owned company Hydrochina from dredging and block- ing the river. Overall, the objective has been to decolonize the river com- munities that have been �ooded with state agents, corporate workers, the military, dam builders, bulldozers, cement, and so forth, that have made artisanal and low- resource ways o� life nearly impossible.

Since 2011, ����������s work has focused upon Endesa�s disregard for local communities, and taking back lands along the Magdalena River that were illegally granted to the extractive corporation. More recent e�forts have placed emphasis not only on the river�s destruction and disposses- sion but also on the resilient and vibrant aspects of river life, such as the intertwined living that takes place between riverbank communities and their interdependent relation to the Magdalena River. In this announce- ment, for instance, there is a palpable expression of a future- oriented desire to recuperate land and place: �On March 14, 2015 we will initiate a great mobilization for the defense of the Magdalena River and the territories of

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A F I S H � E Y E E P I S T E M E 95

life. We take a journey through the country from Macizo Colombiano to Bocas de Ceniza to reject the Master Plan that takes advantage of the River Magdalena. We do this to recuperate memory, identity, and culture by an entire nation that has constructed its life, territory, and history alongside the river.�› Taking long walks alongside the Magdalena River as a mne- monic experience of community identity allows for the acknowledgment of the imbricated relation with and deep respect for the Magdalena River.

Such acts as organizing collective walks not only signal the importance o� local land memory as constitutive of regional and national identity; they also point to how the river itself is enlivened by human activity that does not merely extract from its ecological life. Taking this insight one step fur- ther, we might imagine how the river possesses its own form of memory, as a witness to the dialectic between life and death of damming, as weigh- ing in on the contradictions between converting value and devaluing, and as a source of �ow that energizes against its own erasure. Seeing, watching, knowing the histories of riverbank communities and being enlivened by their presence is a submerged perspective that one might imagine could emanate from the river. These submerged perspectives refuse to be limited by regional or national boundaries, as they are able to �ow beyond the cor- poration�s e�forts at containment.

In the demand for legal accountability from Endesa, over the past de- cade transregional communities have compared and shared knowledge across national borders to support them in their legal battles. As I men- tioned in chapter 3, the Mapuche stru�le against Endesa in the Bío Bío re- gion of Chile began in 1996 and continues until today, marking an earlier era o� hydropower expansion in South America. When ��������� in the Cauca Valley learned about the successes and failures of anti� Ralco Dam stru�les, it used knowledge o� what worked there to combat Endesa on its own territories. Furthermore, as in the stru�le against Ralco, ��������� also coordinated its actions with International Rivers and other interna- tional ���s, in e�fect strengthening its vertical and lateral alliances. Like the Magdalena River that transits through multiple regional borders, the �ow o� knowledge between a�fected Indigenous and rural communities moves freely in ways that facilitate the positive deployment of resistance strategies.

To combat the violent disarticulations and dispossessions required by the presence of the hydropower corporation, over the past decade ��� -

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

96 C H A P T E R F O U R

������ has taken an increasingly militant stance. Violent escalation in the extractive zone occurs through a familiar sequence of events: militarized dispossession leads to confrontations between local organizations and the state, con�ict that is then followed by the state�s criminalization o� land and river defenders. The ��������� case is legendary in this respect, in that there are currently dozens of river defenders who have been impris- oned without trial or promise of release, in many ways replicating the vio- lent scenes and media frenzies that have taken place in other sites around South America.

Through militarization of the extractive zone corporate control is able to advance its capitalist agenda, by dispossessing Indigenous and rural peoples of their territories. In Caycedo�s visual and narrative work, she makes this link directly as she plays with the multiple meanings contained within the word �dam,� using it alternatively as a verb, simile, noun, and metaphor. For instance, in Spanish the word represa is used for �to dam,� and also for �to repress.� A represa literally contains the river�s natural �ow as well as signifying the political repression against local land and river de- fenders. For Caycedo, then, extractivism cannot be separated from forms of violence and repression that are rendered invisible by current economic and political models. Attending to this colonial matrix, her work �explores the interrelations between social repression, and the planning and con- struction o� water dams/reservoirs. Dams generally serve the primary pur- pose of retaining water by stopping the �ow of a river. By analogy, we may think of repression as an instance of power that also interrupts the �ow of social and community organization.��

Thus, Caycedo�s visual work does a kind of relational mapping of power that uncovers the epistemological, material, and bodily violence that thwarts biological life. It also reveals how the river�s diversion does not block submerged perspectives and movements that look to defend local autonomy.

Damned Landscapes

Damned landscapes are extractive zones where military, corporate, and state technologies of resource surveillance convert Indigenous and rural territories into a digital colony. Caycedo�s unique approach to the digital colony is to produce countervisualities that expose the extractive view-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A F I S H � E Y E E P I S T E M E 97

point by presenting the containing logic of damming. Nicholas Mirzoe�f �s The Right to Look: A Counter History of Visuality historicizes visuality within a Western genealogy, and outlines the contours of a countervisual methodology that moves against the organizing principle of colonial see- ing. Though Mirzoe�f �s e�fort to produce �a comparative decolonial frame- work� is only su�estive and might require more sustained attention to the scholarly and cultural production of the Global South, his book generates an important set of proposals about the potentialities and constraints of the visual. Drawing upon the classic work o� W. J. T. Mitchell, Mirzoe�f imagines a range of medium theory as a venue �for the transmission and dissemination of authority, and a means for the mediation of the subject of that authority.��� I� we consider that the extractive viewpoint succeeds pre- cisely by becoming the normative way we see and universalize the plane- tary, then in the regions I study countervisuality reveals extractive zones as corporate and state collusion over the destruction o� life, refocusing our attention upon a smaller scale of experience.

Rather than condemn technology to its hegemonic use as surveillance, Caycedo�s eye inverts the instrumental usage of colonial digitality, present- ing the devastation o� local communities and the landscape from multiple scales. In other works, Caycedo weaponizes digital technology to facilitate the visibility and vitality of communities that persist despite hydropower�s extinguishing footprint. Overriding the viewpoint of the digital colony, her artistic production eschews the developmentalist fallacy that assumes that hydroelectricity is good for everyone.

In a video of a midrange satellite image, we see Caycedo�s hand drawing over the white space where the emptied river once �owed. This movement o� her pen renders the memory of the river�s �ow and o�fers a mapping of the Earth�s rapid changes at the hands o� human development. Rather than reproduce the extractive view that sees like a satellite from above to enable the management and diversion of the river�s resources toward capitalist accumulation, Caycedo�s pen instead works in the opposite direction: Trac- ing the �ow o� water reverses the �ow of capital and its amnesic evacuation o� what was once there, placing the river back in the frame and outside of the digital colony.

Drawing the connection between damming, violence, and the evacua- tion o� localized territories was at the center o� her solo exhibitions The Headlong Stream Is Termed Violent, but the Riverbed Hemming Is Termed

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

98 C H A P T E R F O U R

Violence by No One (2009) and Beyond Control (2010) that took place in Berlin. In them, Caycedo used multiple artistic formats to invert the gaze and rearrange the way we relate to the mutations imposed by hydroelec- tricity. Her photographs and sculptures illustrate the degree to which hydroelectricity in the Quimbo region has blocked the �ow o� long- term residents, rerouting and reconstituting the memory of the region�s ecologi- cal biodiversity.

In Represa/Repression (2012), Caycedo depicts a fragmented and carved- up landscape that has been violated by the Endesa dam construction. She describes this work as a �research- based project that explores concepts of �ow and containment, while investigating correlations between the mecha- nisms of social control and the unethical aspects of projects including large water dams and reservoirs.��� This quote implies that regions are extracted by sending police and military personnel that �rst repress, then quell, and later displace local residents. Caycedo�s work shows that these submerged perspectives and counternarratives require deep investigation into how peripheral spaces and community are repressed. Caycedo�s viewpoint uti- lizes the same technologies of research and digital output that corporations use but she diverts and repurposes them to deauthorize the extractive view.

Other Views: Fish- Eye Episteme

If satellite technologies, which identify high- resolution social and ecologi- cal activity, so completely map and commoditize the landscape from above, does any view reside outside of the society of control? The answer to this seems to depend on how we enter the colonial condition. In Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide, Boaventura de Sousa Santos ar- gues that what underlies grave social inequalities in the current global con- �guration is the persistence of cognitive injustice�what I refer to as forms of perception�that have reproduced asymmetries through colonial sys- tems, modern states, and global capitalism�s economic rationale.�� Western modernity, as de Sousa Santos maintains, devalues heterogeneous knowl- edge formations and reduces diverse life forms into a modern scienti�c perspective, underscoring both the limits of disciplinary knowledge as well as the erasure of the multivalent ontologies that express themselves within the vernacular practices of peripherally constituted spaces.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A F I S H � E Y E E P I S T E M E 99

I �nd De Sousa�s naming of cognitive injustice a useful point of depar- ture with respect to seeing otherwise. �Cognitive injustice� refers to the constraining paternalisms imposed on the Global South through colo- nizing discourses and practices that continue to perceive these regions as purveyors of natural materials, and undervalue the heterogeneity o� life embedded within local epistemes. De Sousa�s larger contention is that multifaceted knowledge formations already exist, and it is the task of scholar- activists, and, I would add, artists and performers, to li� up those submerged epistemes and juxtapose them within a Western canon that cannot apprehend its own limitations.��

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, whose perspectivist insights have come out of a thirty- year ethnographic engagement, helps me to de�ne such a point of view. His work both parallels and departs from subaltern genealo- gies and other Global South epistemes.�� Moving beyond the object- subject divide, Viveiros de Castro�s work increasingly poses a decolonizing chal- lenge to Western anthropology, and to the reproduction of the human as a singular entity standing within a world of subordinate beings. Through ethnographic critique, Viveiros de Castro o�fers Indigenous thought as a philosophical challenge to the classic European distinction between Nature and Culture. Inverting the signi�ers o� �multiculturalism,� which has been the center of colonial/modern thought, to �multinaturalism,� Viveiros de Castro references how Indigenous peoples acknowledge the coexistence of multiple perspectives in the human and nonhuman world. The fundamen- tal conceptual shi� of perspectivist theory, then, is to reorder the nature- culture divides of primordial immanence: reversing the order of universal- ism to follow that of nature, and particularity to that of culture.

Indigenous thought, as Viveiros de Castro shows us, has long been en- gaged with apprehending �reality from distinct points of view,��� and onto- logically has organized its societies and spiritual practices accordingly. A constantly shi�ing imagination of the Other is not constrained or delimited through the privileging o� Homo sapiens.�� For my purposes, Viveiros de Castro�s work not only moves us into the realm of decolonial possibility, it also pursues and elaborates a rescripting o� European thought. More im- portantly, it proposes that agency exists within a multiplicity of vantage points that are irreducible. As Viveiros de Castro puts it about Indigenous perspectivism, �We must remember, above all, that if there is a virtually

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

100 C H A P T E R F O U R

universal Amerindian notion, it is that of an original state of undi�feren- tiation or �undi�ference� (don�t mistake this for �indi�ference� or �sameness� between humans and animals).��  This state of undi�ferentiation does not propose a unifying viewpoint but instead shows how the act of viewing can itself contain an agency that is not uniquely human. Furthermore, by conceptually naming multinaturalism, perspectivisms locate agency within the realm of the animate as well as the inanimate. Thus, in opposition to the gaze that is merely about ocular extensions of centralized power, per- spectivist thought escapes the view of dominant visuality to encompass the modes of seeing that emerge outside of the range of the human eye and its capture.

My insights here touch upon, and also depart from, the recent turn in the humanities to new materialisms. The work on posthumanisms and new materialisms has been important as shi�ing epistemes that function within European logocentricity and the human- centered approaches that much of European continental philosophy has labored upon. Through a philosophy of vibrant objects, in which materiality enlivens through its active shaping o� human and nonhuman events, Jane Bennett gestures to a nonhuman something else.�› The expanded vocabulary of new materialist analyses are provocative. How can we read such work through the realities of margin- ality and expulsion faced in the growing extractive zones around the globe and through the regions that already experience biomatter as not separate from the human? How can we understand the human as already inscribed within the logics of coloniality?

There may indeed be an emergent consciousness about how to think about the natural world through other knowledge formations. As Diana Coole and Samantha Frost explain about the new materialist turn, �We are �nding our environment materially and conceptually reconstituted in ways that pose profound and unprecedented normative questions. In addressing them, we unavoidably �nd ourselves having to think in new ways about the nature of matter and the matter of nature; about the elements o� life, the re- silience of the planet, and the distinctiveness of the human.��� Yet, Global South epistemologies and philosophies of race and racism, ranging from postcolonial and decolonial theories, to Indigenous critique, to Afro- based thought, to Black Studies to perspectivisms and relational models, have long anticipated the ways to di�ferently imagine knowledge and perception as the foundation of planetary inhabitance. These other knowledge forma-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A F I S H � E Y E E P I S T E M E 101

tions when grounded in the material relations of social ecologies form a sustained way to see and sense life otherwise. As Caycedo shows us, in the Land of Friends there is much to perceive anew.

Other Views 2: Land of Friends

Yo no tengo ningœn idea romantica de como era el pasado. Las cosas

no estaban perfectas. La tierra quizÆs no se uso de la major manera.

Pero en sí eso de ninguna manera es raison ni logica de

supultar todo el territorio.

I don�t have a romantic idea about the past. Things were not perfect.

The land was perhaps not used in the best way, but that is

not a reason or logic to drown a territory.

Activist in Land of Friends

As a Latina, mestiza, and once resident of the Magdalena River commu- nities, Carolina Caycedo�s point of view draws from Indigenous relational understandings o� land that imagine these geographies as enlivened and en- chanted by its social ecologies. An artist skilled in multiple techniques and media, Caycedo is obsessed with the microlevel of gesture, social texture, and embodiment that contrasts the transparent logic of an extractive view that leaves no place �undiscovered.� In Yuma: Land of Friends (2014), a thirty- eight- minute video that experiments with the genre�s conventions, Caycedo focuses on seemingly small images and micromoments of everyday life to highlight the tensions and stru�les between local �shing communities and Endesa�s conversion of the Magdalena River into hydroelectric power.

Importantly, the river was called Yuma by the Musica confederation whose inhabitants intermixed with the Incan extended empire several cen- turies before the river�s discovery by Spanish colonizers. In 1501, it was re- named a�er Mary Magdalene. As a symbol of these palimpsest histories, vernacular objects from the Musica confederation have recently been un- earthed by the dozens during the drowning of territories by Endesa.

Panning across a dense view o� highland Andean landscape, Caycedo expresses great a�fection for the Yuma River. Indeed, the fertile landscape at the center of Yuma: Land of Friends is an important way to feel the per- ceptual shi� we are making against the extractive viewpoint and into a hy- brid river nexus. Yuma territories are where Afro- Caribbean cultures meet

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

102 C H A P T E R F O U R

the Andean region, and then one thousand miles further downstream �nd con�uence with the Amazonian basin. By tracking these trans- regional spaces through long pans, Caycedo makes the river the �owing center of Huila residents� living.

Using her own photographs as intertextual stills, Caycedo opens the �lm with a satellite photograph of ongoing dam construction that has already blocked and diverted long stretches of the Magdalena. In the next scene, a large mosquito sits on a pair of folded hands. �I have no nostalgia about the past,� an activist from Entre Aguas says. As he continues to talk, the soundtrack gets quieter to the point that his words are inaudible. In this way, human voices are decentered and minimized so that visual ontologies that frame the river become the subject of emphasis within the �lm. About the Magdalena River, Caycedo narrates in a whisper, �It�s also the golden thread, a sacred place where the ancestors and spirits dwell. Yuma�s strait is especially magic. We all have our own quotidian rituals, our own goddesses and gods. They are among us.���

In the scene that follows, the director returns us to the satellite view of El Quimbo; her hand traces over the shadow terrain, the absent river, �lling in the place where the river used to run before Endesa�s construction in the Cauca Valley. The camera cuts to midlevel views of the river before hold- ing for a full minute on a thick and squat waterfall that settles into a brown

Carolina Caycedo, Yuma: Land of Friends, mosquito on hands, video still, 2014. Image courtesy of Carolina Caycedo.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A F I S H � E Y E E P I S T E M E 103

shadowy pool of rock and ferns below. Then we are taken under the falls, into the beige then blue- gray space of moving water. We wait, holding our breath, acclimating, and we begin to see both clear spaces and those that are more opaque. We move with the ribbons of currents and the circling movements of oxygen below the water. We accept the fact that our sight is obstructed by the cloudy water, with pieces o� leaves blocking the view, �eeting away, as small and then larger bubbles force us to try to �nd some- thing familiar in the visual muck. In long takes that submerge the camera completely in the muddy water, the �eld of vision hovers in that transi- tional zone between the translucent and opaque, between oxygen bubbles and swirling currents.

The e�fect is remarkable: I felt as i� I were seeing what a �sh sees, per- haps itself an anthropocentric viewpoint. By dipping into the muck, Cay- cedo produced a �sh- eye epistemology that changes how we might relate to Yuma as a sentient being, rather than as an extractible commodity. Coinci- dentally, the term ��sh- eye� also refers to an extreme wide- angle lens shot in which the edges of the frame are distorted to a near circle, with the center of the image forming a pregnant bubble. Both meanings work for the kind of material and philosophical shi� in perspective or ��sh- eye episteme�: an underwater perspective that sees into the muck o� what has usually been rendered in linear and transparent visualities.

In Yuma: Land of Friends, Caycedo�s camera o�en dwells on the move- ment of the brownish- green water, the moss- covered stones surrounding it. The river in Caycedo�s perspective, inhabits a generative if turbulent landscape where the human, animal, and plant life that surrounds it lives o�f of its provisions. However, there is no illusion that the Magdalena River is an unspoiled utopia; its cold waters make swimming for long periods di cult; its small �sh do not fetch a very good price in local markets; and overall the terrain is rough and untamed, and its currents dangerous to un- trained swimmers and nonhuman animals alike. Yet, without lament, local knowledge accustoms to and becomes �exible with what the river o�fers. Submerged, from below, seeing out from underwater, how do we think about the complexity of ecology, humanity, and the conditions of other beings from the �sh- eye point of view? And, as I elaborate upon through- out the book, how do nonnormative viewpoints from within social ecolo- gies decenter the logocentric perspective of the human?

In a signi�cant moment in the �lm, Caycedo�s camera lingers on the

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

104 C H A P T E R F O U R

verdant green space. We are in the river�s brown �ow, surrounded by loud insects and birds and immersed within a roaring river�s soundscape. The camera holds this still shot for three minutes; we breathe with the river�s �ow. Suddenly, and with the disorientation that comes from unexpected inversion, the camera is turned upside down, our view �ips 180 degrees. From the top of the screen the river continues to �ow, and this is the mo- ment that fabrication breaks down, the instant we know that Caycedo has constructed the river world as the protagonist. The �ow of gravity shi�s, and the safety of our distant viewing is �nally pierced. Caycedo�s viewpoint is not only o�f- kilter but completely inverted, fundamentally reordering the river before us. What is this mirrored being that �ows continuously from the top of the screen, the triangulated ferns that signal some kind of other worldly divinity? The gasping river, the inverted gaze we cannot move for- ward as we did before, now that we know of this place teeming, �owing, di- verting our visions. The extractive view dissolves.

Earlier in the �lm, Colombian senator and opposition leader Jorge Robledo conjectures about the colonial and hydroelectric presence in the region. O�fscreen, he states,

The key question is why did they come here? There are two theories. The theory for idiots is that they came to save us from underdevelopment,

Carolina Caycedo, Yuma: Land of Friends, inverted view, video still, 2014. Image courtesy of Carolina Caycedo.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A F I S H � E Y E E P I S T E M E 105

un- civilization, and poverty. They came for one thing. The pro�t mar- gins are higher here. Not that they can�t use their capital and gain pro�ts over there. The fact is that they gain more here, and under globalization policies they can move that money easily without the risk of it getting stuck so there is more motivation to come here, because in the current time there is not even the risk of a strike or a revolution.��

As he speaks, the camera remains focused on a still shot of the �ow of the river. And then, when the interviewee begins to raise his voice and talk about something else, we no longer see him on camera, and instead the view returns to the river to become completely submerged within the brown water, as more foam streams to the surface. Robledo continues,

Y en la medida que han ido logrando, con la globalización que esa plata pueda entrar y salir libremente, sin los riesgos de quedar atrancada, con mayor razón intentan a venir mÆs.��

And, to the degree that they have been able to, with globalization that money can enter and exit freely, without risks to forestall pro�t, giving more reasons for them to come and try the same thing again.

In the background track, the water echoes and �nally drowns out the voice of technocracy, the �attening speech of a man- splainer; and, despite his solid analysis of the prevailing situation, what seems more important now, and again, is the river�s voice. That is, Caycedo authorizes cognitive justice for the river itself, drowning out the global economy and its rationalized logic, and instead o�fers us the �sh- eye point of view that sees below the surface.

In the scene that immediately follows, Caycedo introduces us to Zoila, an artisanal �sherwoman, who stands knee- deep within the Magdalena River. By moving from a �sh- eye episteme to a local �sher, Caycedo em- phasizes the web o� local economies and perspectives. Behind the woman, the water �ows at a surprising rate compared to her stillness. Zoila repeat- edly throws out her net, casting it farther each time and gathering a few �sh with each catch, the protein for the soup that she will later make for her children, grandchildren, and adoptive kids: �If there is nothing else to feed the kids, then you take these little cat�sh home, you make a cut here and take out the entrails, you cook them with onion and salt. Many times this makes for a nutritious broth; boil them for ten minutes and they are ready

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

106 C H A P T E R F O U R

to eat.��� The camera focuses on the small �sh that Zoila catches, whereby the repetitive close- up o� hands becomes the local perspective that resides within the extractive zone. This is not a stranger�s land but a territory of friends.

Embodied Geographies

So far, I have addressed visualities and countervisualities within Caycedo�s oeuvre as doing important work to decolonize the extractive view. How- ever, at a certain point, visuality can only take us so far into the realm of the senses and daily life experiences from within the extractive zone. In 2014, Caycedo, in conjunction with the local collective Descolonizando La Jagua (Decolonizing La Jagua) began a project that took into con- sideration the question of embodiment through a set of performances called �geo- choreographies.� These Earth- based performances are col- lectively authored to expose the dispossession of damming, as well as to show how kinesthetic movement by a�fected communities works to re- direct the deadening logic of developmentalism. This work began through a series of choreographic workshops organized in partnership with Des- colonizando La Jagua that engaged local communities in the towns o� La Jagua, El Agrado, Oporapa, and Gigante. In recent years, Caycedo�s work has extended this project throughout the AmØricas, using a hemispheric framework that considers embodiment in relation to rivers throughout the continent. More speci�cally, Caycedo has performed and made work in collaboration with the ecological organization Friends of the LA River and with Indigenous networks and river defense projects throughout the United States, Canada, and Latin America.

Geo- choreographies theorize how water functions as connective tis- sue, wherein rivers express the microlevel o� human embodiment. In this view, rivers form the arteries o� liquid, as Caycedo puts it, �for the river is to water as the veins that carry our blood.� While I am not convinced by all of this project�s analogies, in that they sometimes reach into gener- alities about human bodies and rivers that leave little room for textured analysis, the aesthetic and performative work of these comparisons seem important. And though the colonizing move o� Eurocentric thought and exploration �rst sutured Indigenous peoples and the female body to land and nature, Caycedo di�ferently names these historical lineages, avoiding

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A F I S H � E Y E E P I S T E M E 107

the trap of essentialism through an artistic practice in which many angles and takes avoid a unidimensional view. While one might point to how this work could easily reassert the binaries of female/nature, indigenous/land, and human body/planet; ultimately, Caycedo�s geo- choreographies seek out forms o� human kinesthetic movement that mimic or work alongside the motion of the river in an expression of collaboration with it.

Caycedo�s performance work in particular links to a genealogy of femi- nist performance praxis in the AmØricas that �nds new ways to express the old questions of embodiment as it relates to land, ecology, and politics. For instance, the recent video piece by Guatemalan artist Regina Galindo, Earth (2011), expresses the dangers of extractivism as she stands in what�s le� of a piece o� land that has been cut through by a giant yellow bulldozer that digs out all around her. Though the reference to collective burials such as Ayotzinapa in which young Indigenous students have become fodder for the corrupt state is evident in Galindo�s piece, the video could just as easily reference more conventional forms of extractive capitalism that bulldoze the earth to reap capital from it. Whether in the violence and poetry of Ana Mendieta�s images and performances, or Laura Aguilar�s land-based photo- graphs or the Earth performance by Regina Galindo, the dimensions within Caycedo�s work clearly link her to a feminist hemispheric genealogy of pro- ducing work about embodiment, disappearance, visibility, and against a normative and extractive view o� landscape. In particular, the body o� work shows us how to see from the perspective of the �sh, or the inhuman, or even the local river communities to appreciate the transits between these bodies as �uid encounters of perception, engagement, and vernacular meaning. Through the performative mediations of community knowledge we learn how to move and be in relation to land and water otherwise.

Caycedo�s particular vision is multidimensional, integrating the formats of visuality, whether it be satellite images, still photographs, documentary video, installation, or the embodied collaborative performance work with communities that blurs the distinction between human and water bodies. Caycedo multiply sources formats and materials to communicate the alienated conditions that extractive capitalism produces, foregrounding the issue of scale to directly respond to the question I initially posed: How does the micro matter anyway?

While much o� �geo- choreographies� is a work in progress, these per- formative iterations are key to producing spaces of communal meaning

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

108 C H A P T E R F O U R

that avow the expression of territorial loss, and toward �nding communal forms that abate the melancholia of ecocide or the sadness of experiencing the river�s death. This anti- damming intersectional and coalitional work �nds its resources in producing embodied art that intervenes in the nor- malized view of the extractive zone.

Toward a Conclusion

I have been tracking social and knowledge formations that exist alongside the colonial developmental paradigm, showing how the extractive zone has not managed to fully colonize life, but reduces, eliminates, and destroys its heterogeneity. In this chapter, we returned to the river to analyze its

Carolina Caycedo, ���������, Rios Vivos, �We are not just the defenders of the river; we are the river,� 2015. Photo courtesy of Carolina Caycedo.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

A F I S H � E Y E E P I S T E M E 109

submerged perspectives that exceed where the corporate management and technological domination over La Jagua, Colombia. I showed how life along the Yuma River in Colombia, which stretches from the Caribbean basin through the length of the entire country, depends upon a vast and interconnected river system that hangs in balance as it is organized into an extractive zone. If the extractive view naturalizes hydropower as the in- evitable solution to the voracious energy demands of global urbanization, then the art and performance work of Carolina Caycedo renders visible a range of submerged perspectives that see from below and beyond its view- point.

I have illustrated how regimes of visual power are both used toward ex- tractive ends and �nd their inversion through the viewpoint of artists such as Caycedo. Fundamentally, Caycedo�s visuality gives us tools for analyz- ing complex modes of power toward the decolonization of mestizx and In- digenous territories. She provides the texture and context for how to think di�ferently about visual power as a digital colony of the extractive zone. The networked society from below counters extractive regimes that con- trol, silence, and extinguish the rivers. Such decolonial viewpoints emerge from the stru�les o� local populations in relation to their own subsistence economies, and also in relation to what it means to be under surveillance within the extractive zone. In this vein, ��������� and Rios Vivos activ- ism and the moving artistic practice of Carolina Caycedo insist that the future is now or there will be no future. Despite the fact that new extractiv- isms and megaprojects leave little room for the subtlety of riverbed knowl- edge, but what the �sh eye sees is precisely the muck of the neoliberal and colonial condition.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

C H A P T E R

Decolonial Gestures

Anarcho- Feminist Indigenous Critique

In the Casa del Museo de la Moneda (House of the Coin Museum) in Potosí, Bolivia, large glass exhibits display the �rst coins produced from silver extracted from within the nearby Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) mine. First made in 1536, before switching to tin in 1576, these rough- edged coins circulated within the local and global economy until they became odd- shaped pieces that had to be taken out of circulation when bits of silver were picked o�f each of the monedas. By early in the seventeenth century, Potosí, Bolivia, was a bustling cosmopolitan center. Dubbed �the richest city on the planet,� Potosí became the epicenter of a colonial global econ- omy based on extracting silver from Cerro Rico, a mountain sacred to Aymara Indigenous people, and originally named Sumaj Orco. The ex- treme conditions of the mine diminished the Indigenous labor force that worked there, and a�er a request made in 1608 to the Spanish Crown, Afri- can slaves were imported to the Andes to supplement the arduous death work of silver extraction, fundamentally reshaping the character of colo- nialism, slavery and the racial caste system.�

In the two- hour tour of the museum through exhibitions on Potosí colo- nial art with detailed panels dedicated to the colonial life of the city and an intricate explanation of the coin production process, the colonial and modern history o� Indigenous and African labor was curiously absent from the museum narrative. When pausing in front of the famous anonymous eighteenth- century painting Virgin Cerro Rico for a long explanation of its metaphoric content, there was little reference to the colonial condition that produced the rendering. In the painting, Cerro Rico Mountain is symbol-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

D E CO LO N I A L G E S T U R E S 111

ized as a syncretized Virgin Mary, with a depiction o� Diego Hualpa folded into the deity�s mountain skirt. The Aymara discoverer of silver lights his way through the cavernous spaces of the deep mine. Even while the dense symbols of this painting were thoughtfully interpreted by our guide, what he did not address were the enslaved eight million Indigenous and the thirty thousand African peoples who labored within Cerro Rico. Or was there any mention of the one million whose remains are still buried within it. Finally, the gender, sexed, and racialized meaning of the Cerro Rico Mountain, as a mestiza Virgin Mary, was also not commented upon.

How can we understand the disappearance and silencing o� Indigenous and African labor within the museum narrative of primitive accumula- tion that jump-started the global economy? Where were the displays that attended to the memories of the slavelike conditions of the mita (forced labor) system that lasted from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth cen- tury? As I moved from one cold thick- walled adobe room to another, the museum continued to forestall an answer. Overcome by these thoughts, I could not �nd warmth within the vault- like spaces.

As the museum tour came to a close, I looked up in the courtyard and hanging several feet above me was a large brown mask with a smile on its face and a thick bandana over the forehead. This �red face� mask hung over the courtyard entrance, a cartooned and racist presence that reminded the visitor of the conspicuous disappearance o� Indigeneity elsewhere.� Find- ing a slice o� warm sun on the patio, I ditched my tour guide and instead made room for a groundskeeper who was also in need of sunlight. As we looked out onto the pale orange Cerro Potosí in the distance, we noted how from our two- kilometer vantage point we could not see the sinkhole on the top of the mountain that had been created by �ve hundred years of overextraction.

As a majority Aymara Indigenous space and the site of primitive accu- mulation since the sixteenth century, Cerro Rico represents a highly sym- bolic geography of Spanish colonialism and early extractive capitalism. It is also a dense site o� heteropatriarchy because of the mining industry�s ten- dency to absent Indigenous gendered labor from national and local narra- tives.� My tour through the amnesiac corridors of the Casa del Museo de la Moneda led me to study intersectional critique and histories replete with the memory of collective and embodied resistance as found in the genealo- gies o� Indigenous anarcho- feminisms.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

112 C H A P T E R F I V E

My analysis in this chapter attends to the complex of anticolonial and anticapitalist genealogies that are also linked to Indigenous anarcho- feminisms. As Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui has critically conceptualized, In- digenous anarcho- feminisms simultaneously defy the capitalist global economy and �nd routes of escape from the reinscription of Andean patriarchy.� Thus, the speci�c connections I develop in this chapter move through genealogies of contestation that presence enactments of feminist, queer, anarchist, and Indigenous resistance that refuse and contend with institutions of foreign control, the criollo (European elite) state, sex nor- malcy, and forms of Andean and colonial patriarchy.� More speci�cally, I examine Indigenous anarcho- feminisms as decolonial gestures, or political enactments that articulate the complexity of overlapping forms of subjuga- tion from within the extractive zone.

Anarcho- Indigenous feminisms represent a form o� living otherwise that opposes, critiques, makes visible, and remakes the extractive zone. What lessons can be learned from anarcho- Indigenous feminism, which is both rooted within and disidenti�ed from coloniality and Andean �tradi- tion�? How does this form of social a liation and long- standing intersec- tional critique provide a model for moving beyond the colonial divide and the extractive zone?

Since the 1980s, Mujeres Creando has been an important nexus of ac- tivity for anarcho- Indigenous feminisms. The group uses the principle of embodied and autonomous critique as a source for knowledge production. It draws upon historical models o� horizontal organizing endemic to In- digenous Andean societies and anarchist praxis, articulating a mode of criti- cal living that is not satis�ed with the erasure of gender/sex embodiment. Rather than a land- based episteme, it is an intellectual and vernacular for- mation that begins with modes o� being, thinking, doing, and relating other- wise, that are experienced through the body and in relation to each other.

Mujeres Creando represents two di�ferent paths of anarcho- feminism, both o� which are rooted in antiracist work and within decolonial expres- sive praxis.� I address early Mujeres Creando performances and the later instantiations that include Julieta Paredes�s work with feminist cultural center CafØ Carcajada as well as her writings, and María Galindo�s activi- ties at the cultural house in La Paz, also called Mujeres Creando. I also ana- lyze one of the most important expressions of current anarcho- Indigenous

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

D E CO LO N I A L G E S T U R E S 113

feminisms, the rewriting o� Evo Morales�s Plurinational Constitution (2011) as �The Feminist Constitution.�

It is impossible to understand a formation such as Indigenous anarcho- feminism and the important work it does to li� decolonial perspectives without thinking about the extractive zone that is silver and tin mining. In the �rst part of the chapter, I complicate the parameters of radical his- tory within the Andes to rewrite the narrative of colonial dissent through anarcho- Indigenous feminist critique. These early sections allow me to show how Mujeres Creando and Mujeres Creando Comunidad, two dif- ferent, if imbricated, formations, have inherited this genealogy, activating anarcho- Indigenous- feminist politics, aesthetics, and communal modes of decoloniality from within the extractive zone.

The Potosí Zone

Whether resisting the forced labor of the mita system or by creating forms o� local trade, horizontal living, or land- based economies that parallel the colonial order, the sheer number of revolutionary social movements and alternative models in the region lead me to describe the particular extrac- tive zone of silver and tin mining as one of permanent insurrection.  Like the Black radical tradition born from inquiry into racialized subjugation and disidenti�cation with the death project of transatlantic slavery, the Andean radical tradition emerged during the sixteenth century to critique, contend with, and seek routes out of colonial subjugation and violence. Indeed, this intellectual and grounded genealogy of stru�le presences the Indigenous laborer and resistance in the extractive zone, in spaces such as Cerro Rico, throughout the mining economies o� Bolivia, and later within the urban peripheries o� La Paz.

To move toward an anarcho- Indigenous feminist critique of the ex- tractive zone, several points are key. First, as Glen Coulthard, Sarita See, and many others have pointed out, Marx�s concept of primitive accumu- lation incompletely theorized that capitalism was historically predicated upon Indigenous dispossession.› Second, because Indigenous peoples and their territories have long �gured as a shadow global labor force, whose territories fuel the global capitalist system, critical Indigenous theory be- comes a major, rather than minor, analytical frame in relation to the topic

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

114 C H A P T E R F I V E

of extractivism. And third, like the maquila (assembly factory) industry along the US border, and the garment industry that depends upon Asian and Latina/Latin American working- class labor, mining extracts from and pro�ts upon gendered and sexed bodies to literally power global capital- ism.� Thus, using the lens o� Indigenous feminisms, an analytic that does not conform to European gender and sex systems, allows us to see deeper into the workings of the mining industry, its demand for racialized and gendered labor within the extractive zone, and genealogies of resistance.

As a gendered enterprise, mining plays a major economic, political, and cultural role within Andean societies,�� o�en to the exclusion of its female laborers. For instance, since the nationalization of natural resources in 1952, mining cooperatives such as the Corporación Minera de Bolivia con- tinue to retain a highly visible, powerful, and much celebrated culture of mining organized through masculine work and survival. Within mining, female Indigenous workers have o�en been relegated to a secondary status, and within studies of revolutionary activity, female organizing has been even less visible, overshadowed by a masculinist narrative of revolution- ary heroism. The lesser- known story of mining is its dependence on the labor o� women and children, a fact that is o�en hidden from archives of anticapitalist and anticolonial stru�le. In particular, women and children provide labor to the extractive zone by supporting the heterosexual �min- ing family� at home, while also working within the slag waste piles that lie just to the south of Cerro Rico, the million- ton heap of the mining sector�s wasted materials. Over the course of �ve centuries, hundreds of thousands o� women and children have labored as porters, recycling mining extrac- tion�s toxic materials.��

In her study Nos/Otras en democracia: Mineras, cholas, y feministas, 1976�1994 (Us Feminists: Miners, Cholas, and Feminists), Lourdes Zabala details how extreme exploitation within the mining industry could take place only by normalizing patriarchy, a condition that was later refuted by female anarchists who organized among working- class women. In the con- text o� labor�s increasing radicalization during the 1920s, female laborers worked alongside their male counterparts to achieve the eight- hour work- day. Furthermore, through hunger strikes and other embodied means of protest, they also successfully liberated political prisoners and improved wages, developing an antistate and profeminist agenda.�� Thus, Indigenous and working- class women o�en articulated their dissent through multiple

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

D E CO LO N I A L G E S T U R E S 115

viewpoints and perspectives, opening the hemisphere�s horizon of radical politics beyond that of a heteronormative and masculinist vision.

In We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us, June Nash famously inter- viewed Aymara leader and organizer Domitila Chœngara about the hunger strike led by Indigenous women in 1962 to protest a labor union lockout in the tin mine industry. In the interview, Chœngara describes how the �house- wives organized themselves because they did not pay their salaries on time. The army came and imprisoned the union leaders. Then all the workers declared a strike. Those women whose husbands were in jail . . . went to get their husbands� liberty, but failed. They decided to unite and make a solid front to ask for their liberty.��� Though female organizing began as an ex- pression of solidarity for male union leader mistreatment, it soon unfolded into a force of its own that grew in both size and consequence.

Moreover, as a response to the lack of remuneration, female leaders structured their protests through collective bodily dissent, namely through the public activity of self- starving. As Chœngara describes it, �The com- mittee went to La Paz and declared a hunger strike. Radio �Pio XII� cen- sured the act because it was immoral�they said a person could not de- clare a hunger strike because it was against God�s law . . . but the hunger strike was successful because they brought in the food and pay and also their husbands. At �rst there were only seventeen women in the strike, but it grew.��� As news of the hunger strike traveled, more joined, to the point that self- starving bodies became a critical nexus for antistate, anticapitalist resistance within structurally impossible conditions.�� Chœngara and the ComitØ de Amas de Casa (Housewives� Committee) worked to rearticu- late their positions within the mining economy, challenging the extractive gaze that made their unremunerated work invisible. By engaging in hunger strikes and mining organizing e�forts, they showed how their labor was not menial to but rather a mainstay of the global economy, and thus demanded visibility for their embodied labor. Given that mining �rms routinely with- held payment to their employees and systematically imprisoned those sus- pected o� labor organizing, mining has been the hotspot o� Bolivian labor discontent and organizing activities, with female organizers leading slow- downs, strikes, marches, and other activities of dissent.

Another group o� workers that have been rendered invisible within the extractive zone are the poorly paid pailliris, or slag pile workers, who opened up new spaces of visibility and a discursive terrain of stru�le in

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

116 C H A P T E R F I V E

otherwise masculine radical narratives and geographies of gender oc- clusion. During the late 1960s and 1970s, when the Lozada authoritarian regime was in power, the authoritarian state extracted gendered Indigenous labor through a military and police apparatus that was deployed to con- trol �dissidents.� In this period, the slag pile workers and female counter- parts to male miners emerged as main protagonists, organizing against the increasing tide of state violence. Radicalized by their experience and suc- cesses, Indigenous female workers within the mining industry challenged and endured some of the most brutal conditions, and police patrols con- trolled their labor. Collective resistance by pailliris, then, has been essen- tial to a genealogy of anarco- Indigenous feminist critique within mining economies.

Given that extractive economies depend on Indigenous and female re- productive labor as part of its primitive accumulation, anticapitalist orga- nizing must necessarily take place at the interstices of the peripheral and global economies. By opposing the heteropatriarchal structures embedded within the industry, Indigenous female anarchistic resistance placed duress upon extractive capitalism�s uneven distribution. As I show in the next sec- tion, as colonial capitalism historically expanded and gave rise to an un- even process of modernity, the �eld of opposition also increased such that the social ecologies produced out of stru�le also rose to the surface. In other words, new articulations o� Indigenous feminist politics and sex managed to slip through the tight grip of the extractive zone.

The Chola�s Submerged Activities

Writing on the interstices of resistance within the extractive zone, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Julieta Paredes both cite the chola market woman as a key �gure o� Indigenous anarcho- feminism. In this section, I analyze how cholas, or Indigenous women in the local market spaces o� La Paz, historically organized and represent an important genealogy to present forms of anarcho- feminism. Unlike the slag- pile workers, the chola oper- ated through new market circuits, linking her activities to traditional ways while disidentifying from the dominant European heterosexual order and from Andean patriarchy. In this way, chola market women posed an alter- native to bourgeois and racialized norms of femininity while also challeng-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

D E CO LO N I A L G E S T U R E S 117

ing the hegemony of global capitalism. Even as their decolonial acts were o�en hidden, cholas radicalized the local, national, and international po- litical sphere by linking anarchism, Indigeneity, and feminism in ways that produced new publics for themselves and their communities.

Let me elaborate. Early in the twentieth century, anarchism and Indige- neity found similitude in ways that proved fruitful to intersectional chal- lenges to capitalism and heteropatriarchy. Given the exploitative legacies of coloniality, within modernity new forms of radicalism passed through anarcho- syndicalism in which female subjects were vitally present.�� Lack- ing access to elite privileges, working- class and Indigenous women found new avenues of visibility through anarcho- syndicalism, such as the groups Sindicato de Minos de O�cios Varios and Federación Obrera Femenina, which included the participation of such female anarchist activists as Cata- lina Mendoza, Petronila Infantes, and Susana Radar.� 

There were important resonances between Indigenous formations and anarcho-syndicalism. For Aymara peoples, the main social and economic formation was the ayullu, or horizontal bartering and exchange system, which functioned as a �exible and nonhierarchical social structure. Simi- larly, during modernization, anarchist principles challenged hierarchies by seeking alternatives outside of the capitalist system. Bartering, horizontal decision making, and nonhierarchical forms o� living were central to daily life in Bolivia. In this way, the rise of anarcho- syndicalism found resonance within Indigenous communities, presenting social alternatives and models of political organizing that addressed the inequalities of the �winner take all� approach of extractive industries.

As Indigenous women entered the labor market in vast numbers dur- ing twentieth- century industrialization, they found themselves within an increasingly complex matrix of coloniality. With capitalism expanding into the hinterlands, rural to urban migration dramatically altered the so- cial fabric, intensifying racial and cross- class contact and enhancing the uneven conditions of a gendered public sphere. In this context, Bolivian middle- class women fought for su�frage rights within organizations such as El Ateneo Feminino. Meanwhile, Indigenous feminisms made visible the asymmetries within the labor market, while also drawing attention to the racialized and moralizing exclusions within gender- equality campaigns.

As touchstone �gures within a rising and de�ant anarchist feminist po-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

118 C H A P T E R F I V E

litical culture, cholas actively worked against the normative structures of gender and sexuality. Zabala documents how cholas challenged middle- class and upper- class feminists by raising such issues as �couple violence, and the need for a new morality, the defense of free love, absolute divorce, and the rejection of civil marriage,� and incorporating such principles into a radical new feminist agenda.�› The radical proposals by cholas paid close attention to sex and gender in ways that challenged moral discourses while also addressing the dramatic changes wrought by Bolivian modernity. For instance, they challenged the presumption o� bourgeois marriage, and the idea that sex had to be tied to one partner within a normative European or criollo family structure.

Over the course of the twentieth century, cholas gained considerable power through their commercial success that came from selling, buying, and bartering goods in the regional marketplace, creating a network of female Indigenous activists that pushed beyond the constraints of a mas- culine public sphere. As Julieta Paredes told me, according to her grand- mother, who was an Aymara market woman, the chola was not someone to be messed with: she had the con�dence and skill that made her dominant within a supposedly male economic sphere.�� Cholas organized, sold, and bartered within complex marketplace economies using the ayullu system as a system of commercial exchange that was not legible to the rules and struc- tures of capitalism; they also created new social systems and extended kin- ship networks, thereby growing the spaces of in�uence for Andean cultural forms. Thus, local market spaces run by chola women represented a sub- merged network of economic and cultural activity within the wider global structure of the extractive mining economy. And within urban spaces that were in close contact with the rural sector, chola market women were powerful and visible brokers of alternative commercial exchange.

However, cholas� newfound visibility functioned in contradictory ways, as they were o�en met with hostility by a racialized and gendered system of coloniality that sought to circumscribe Indigenous and mestiza women�s roles within society. While cholas continued to mediate the marketplace, retaining authority in alternative economic circuits, they increasingly faced workplace discrimination for wearing Indigenous clothing, such as polleras (Indigenous skirts and petticoats) and the bowler hat that was popular from the 1920s on. In short, because of their rising economic and political position, cholas o�en contended with ever- changing forms of racism and

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

D E CO LO N I A L G E S T U R E S 119

sexism that reproduced their invisibility within masculine spheres even as their highly visible image was appropriated by national culture.��

In addition to criollo society�s contradictory discourses, which o�en scrutinized the �less than moral� behaviors of cholas, masculinist political movements also occluded the presence o� Indigenous feminisms, speci�- cally in relation to anarchism. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui threads together how the history of anarchism in Bolivia and throughout the AmØricas has been contained and obscured by le�ist Marxist hegemony.�� She shows how revolutionary forces increasingly consolidated around a growing Marxist hegemony that culminated in taking state power, forcing feminist anarchist leaders to pull back in subsequent decades. Although the rise in 1954 of the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (���) nationalized the substantial wealth that came from Bolivia�s resources, for instance, it did not register signi�cant levels of female membership during its reign. What happened in Bolivia, as Rivera Cusicanqui explains, is that �there have been two o - cial histories: The o cial history written by the [Revolutionary] National- ist Party�����that basically denies all the agency o� both workers and peasants and indigenous peoples; and the o cial history of the Le� that forgets about anything that was not Marxist, thus eclipsing or distorting the autonomous history of anarchist unions. It�s the links between the an- archists and the indigenous people that gave them another nuance, be- cause their communities are self- sustained entities and they basically are places where anti- authoritarian type of organization can take roots.� �� Rivera Cusicanqui analyzes how the ��� tended to write out non- Marxist lineages from Bolivia�s history, speci�cally marginalizing anarchism from radical history. She later addresses the eradication of female protagonists as another signi�cant omission. Then, as now, anarchist feminist Indigenous critique o�fers other models of anticolonial stru�le o�en imperceptible to the o cial Marxist political narrative.

By giving primacy to the social, cultural, economic, and political role of cholas and pailliris within the modern capitalist global economy, an Indige- nous feminist genealogy of radicalism emerges. Piecing together these his- tories, as Rivera Cusicanqui reminds us, cholas reshape masculine revolu- tionary narratives �because the chola �gure, the women, the female �ghter, the female organizer are all part o� Bolivian daily life.��� Engaging Indige- nous anarcho- feminist critique by centering on the chola o�fers a power- ful decolonial femme perspective that peers into the hidden but parallel

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

120 C H A P T E R F I V E

economies of the global capitalist system. At the same time that Indige- nous anarcho- feminisms enliven the social ecologies that organize to sur- vive within the extractive zone, they also li� the hidden transcripts of non- normative sexualities.

Decolonial Gestures

Over the next several decades, the a�erlives of authoritarianism, the rise of neoliberalism, and the ravages of a debt economy demanded new spaces of anarcho- feminist intervention. As in many nations of the Global South, and especially within South America, the 1980s represented a period of hyperin�ation, with devastating outcomes for the middle and working classes. Bolivia, in particular, was in the middle of a US austerity experi- ment and an uneven transition to liberal democracy.�� As Julieta Paredes, cofounder of Mujeres Creando, explained, �Feminist communalisms o�fered economic and social alternatives, as well as a critical stance during the failure of the Washington Consensus.��� Thus, the Mujeres Creando network was created at a time of acute capitalist crisis, a time when Bolivia was undergoing intense political and economic change within an expulsive and debt driven global economy.

A series of video performances from this decade, produced by Muje- res Creando and housed with the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, shows how anarcho- Indigenous feminisms addressed sexu- ality, desire, and the invisibility o� homoerotic intimacy amid this bleak economic backdrop. In one performance, an Aymara woman stands in the middle of a tin container �lled with water and washes her feet. The city- scape o� La Paz stretches behind her, as she pauses, looks into the camera, and directly states, �I am a chola.��� In this direct address, she a rms her Indigenous feminist positionality. In the next scene, the same member of Mujeres Creando addresses her sexual preference by saying, �It has been very lovely to be in the company of other women.� She then declares her- sel� heterosexual, recounting that it has taken her a very long time to make such a decision. Posed de�antly as she unbraids and then combs through her hair, she tells the story o� how she met and decided upon being with her current partner. As she says, �He needed to know that soy una chola dife- rente, soy una chola libre� (I am a di�ferent kind of chola, a free chola), and �you will have to accept that.�� 

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

D E CO LO N I A L G E S T U R E S 121

The Mujeres Creando video archive represents a composite consider- ation of the intertwining of race and gender within the strati�ed public sphere, and a confrontation to expectations about traditionalism. It also articulates local vernaculars with respect to sexuality. As Paredes describes it, this work emerged in a time of neoliberal transition when anarcho- feminist performances symbolically blocked the reach of US Empire by moving away from imported discourses about gay liberation toward the declaration, �I am a di�ferent chola, a free chola.� Linking this di�ference back to the history of coloniality, Indigenous embodiment has long been inscribed within Spanish conduct codes and outside of the bourgeois para- digm o� heterosexual female normalcy. While these constructions produce few actual spaces of sexual autonomy, the performance videos archive the importance of chola�s free expression in whatever form it takes.

An instance of this emerges in another performance video, in which a large bed is framed within an open public square in an unidenti�ed part of La Paz. On the bed, two female lovers lie provocatively and openly. While this may seem like a simple act of visibility, the political implications of the work are profound, especially given that at the time lesbianism and female sexuality were themes that were hardly publicly addressed. Thus, the per- formance extends the site o� homoerotic desire and political aesthetics from the bedroom to�in this case, quite literally�the public square.

Public expressions by the Indigenous and mestiza women of Mujeres Creando have o�en taken an even more confrontational approach, making the colonial hierarchies of the extractive zone visible through a range of interruptions. For instance, dressed in polleras and with their hair in long braids, Mujeres Creando would enter high- end restaurants o� La Paz and wait to be served. If denied service, members of Mujeres Creando would decry di�ferential treatment by the restaurant owners and its patrons, de- nouncing such spaces as exclusionary. The objective of such actions was not solely to contest the vernacular condition of racism or to recenter a politics of recognition through the �gure of the chola. By visibly performing the chola identity in spaces of economic and cultural exclusion, members of Mujeres Creando also were not �playing Indian� or putting on �redface.� Indeed, given that the members of Mujeres Creando were mostly Aymara and mestiza with intimate connections to chola cultural forms, such inter- ruptions instead presenced the gender and racial nonnormativity of cholas within the Bolivian public sphere.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

122 C H A P T E R F I V E

Perhaps the best- known work by Mujeres Creando is their gra ti, sig- nature slogans with distinctive cursive writing that found their way �rst onto city walls and later into the exhibition hall of the Reina Sofía museum. The tag line, �Ser indígena es tÆn bonito como ser lesbiana o ser maricon� (To be Indigenous is as beautiful as being a Lesbian or a fag), spoke to the late 1990s political moment in the context o� Indigenous uprising and the increasing visibility o� lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. In fact, these gra ti expressed symbolic interpolations of the self/other as an alternative form o� knowledge production and dissemination, writing anarco- feminist Indigenous histories through condensed and public for- mats. When the street gra ti were translated into the museum site of the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the critique addressed Spain�s historical debt with the AmØricas.�›

A memorable gra ti I encountered in the public sphere o� La Paz was �Ní Dios, ní amo, ní marido, ní partido, Mujeres Creando� (Not God, nor boss, nor husband, nor Party, Women Creating), with the sign for �woman� crossed through with an A for �Anarchy� at its closure. This gra ti strikes through the cityscape with its triple- threat refusal o� heteronormativity, Indigenous nationalism, and national party politics, while o�fering the pro- posal o� �Mujeres Creando� (Women Creating) as an open invitation to its viewer.

In contrast to the normalizing visions of urban development and gentri- �cation, gra ti served as a form of visual disobedience, perforating La Paz with moments of anarchic feminist rupture. Gra ti by Mujeres Creando marked out their political terrain not through capitalist transaction, as with real estate speculation or the building of new infrastructure, but instead through the somato- political improvisations of the written word. Further- more, the expressive formats of Mujeres Creando dialogued with the street to interrupt the association of the public as inherently and primarily a space of male privilege.

Mujeres Creando: A Closer Look

Founded in 1985 by Julieta Paredes, María Galindo, and Monica Mendoza, Mujeres Creando is an important locus of anarcho- feminist critique and of the creation of intentional horizontal networks, or feminist communal- isms.�� From its inception, the group was composed of mostly female-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

D E CO LO N I A L G E S T U R E S 123

bodied members, representing a range of genders, sexualities, and races� though mostly mestiza and Aymara�some o� whom openly identi�ed as lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.

Since its inception, Mujeres Creando saw itself as the inheritor of an anarcho- feminist Indigenous lineage. Therefore, it is not surprising that one of its founders would analyze social problems by linking gender and sex to the coloniality of neoliberalism and state politics. As Paredes writes in the opening chapter of Hilando Fino: Desde el feminismo comunitario (re- cently published in its third edition),

Con los cuerpos marcados por el colonialismo, las mujeres hemos re- corrido la historia, relacionÆndonos unas con otras y relacionÆndonos como mujeres con los varones, tambiØn. Estas relaciones, que se han dado en el contexto de un colonialismo interno, tienen por resultado un comportamiento colonial en el erotismo, el deseo, la sexualidad, el placer y el amor, por supuesto.

Sín duda las mujeres de clases medias y altas se bene�ciaron en la Øpoca neoliberal y se siguen bene�ciando del trabajo manual y domØ- stico de las mujeres jóvenes indígenas.

Given that our bodies are marked by colonialism, women have moved through history in relation to each other, such as women have also been in relation with men. These relationships have taken place within a con- text of internal colonialism that has, of course, resulted in colonial be- haviors within erotics, desire, sexuality, pleasure, and love.

Without doubt, middle- and upper- class women bene�ted during the neoliberal period and they continue to bene�t from the manual and domestic labor o� young indigenous women.��

In these lines, Paredes yokes the neoliberal and extractive condition to a speci�c critique of the gender/race/class order that neoliberalism intensi- �es. As Paredes de�nes it, internal colonialism resonates with an anarcho- Indigenous feminist critical lens that begins to disentangle the overwrought colonial histories of feminized and racialized embodiment.

The theory and praxis of anarcho- feminism o�en blend through ver- nacular experience. As Victoria Aldunate Morales analyzes, what it means to do the daily work of anarchist feminism exceeds the ability to theorize and �nd a language for it.�� As a member of Mujeres Creando Comunidad,

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

124 C H A P T E R F I V E

Morales describes how the group �works through collective experiences, reasoning through the body, and elaborating a never- ending �ow of ideas, concepts, categories, proposals, images, that gives a new vision to feminists and other women.� Such close attention to embodiment, collectivity, and new forms o� being requires what Aldunate Morales calls �opening one�s eyes in ways that cannot be closed again, either from oneself or in relation to the female eye.��� From speci�c positions, the notion of a �female eye� could be read as liberal, essentialist, and as possessing an exclusionary de�- nition of gender. However, I read Aldunate Morales�s �female eye� perspec- tive here as a mode of seeing that is embodied, non- essentialist and that multiple genders have access to. The decolonial female eye, with an em- phasis placed on decolonizing the female within a binary gender system, articulates intersectional consciousness visually, or in this case, de�nes an anarchist feminist perspective that subverts and exceeds the colonial sight of the normative. In this way, the multiple perspectives of the female eye perceives in opposition to the extractive gaze, the singular, patriarchal, and hierarchical organizing vision of gendered capitalist economies. Rather than an essentialist move, the term �the female eye� expresses a standpoint that moves beyond the cycloptic colonial view, envisioning theories, activi- ties, and solidarities that the state cannot reduce, or that extractive capital- ist economies cannot fully capture.

In the broader work of Mujeres Creando, Paredes asserts feminist peda- gogies, including exchange with the other�s life history as a source of politi- cal insight. Paredes also advocates that nonindigenous feminists might see di�ferently through an Aymara worldview, and that mestizas might �nd a new source of relationality through what she refers to as �communal feminisms� as a way to link back to the ayullu principle by speci�cally in- voking anticapitalist ideas. Paredes�s project also queers the idea o� Indige- nous tradition by analyzing chachawarmi, or gender complementarity, as a Western projection o� Indigeneity that operates within Andean societies without change. As I described in chapter 2, the notion that �men� and �women� have distinct but equal spheres of in�uence within Indigenous societies is a static concept o� Indigenous tradition, yet it is one that con- tinues to circulate within dominant renderings of Andean Indigeneity.�� Native feminisms counters this normative idea of gender complementarity by analyzing how a liberal feminist vision of gender equality functions as its own episteme.��

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

D E CO LO N I A L G E S T U R E S 125

Paredes and Mujeres Creando trouble the epistemological certainty of gender and sex by rethinking tradition- bound conventions. More speci�- cally, Paredes believes that chachawarmi, or the model of Andean comple- mentarity, o�en reproduces forms of patriarchal authority that reinscribe national and masculinist forms of power. Rather than �xate on a time- less gender system and the presumed durability of extended kin relations, Paredes seems to theorize and put into practice an emergent and alterna- tive structure of a liations. By producing critical bonds through new cir- cuits of intimacies, Mujeres Creando enlivens new, and future- oriented, horizontal networks. In such instances, Paredes reaches for a theory of multivalent criticalities that asks anarchic feminisms to challenge Indige- nous traditions while asserting how Indigenous cosmopolitics help de- colonize and rearrange the meaning o� liberal feminism. In other words, anarcho- Indigenous feminisms create new transfeminist models that are appropriate to local and regional conditions, linking back to a genealogy of radical dissent, but reaching toward utopic potential.

In early July 2013, I visited Paredes at her La Paz home, a split- level brick house perched high above the center of the city, at the same altitude as white �oating clouds. The house was �lled with the books that she and Galindo had published together during the 1990s, including texts on sex education, the meaning o� lesbian love, the principles of anarchism, and the gra ti of Mujeres Creando Comunidad. During Evo Morales�s con- trol of the Bolivian state (2005� present), issues of gender and sex have been overshadowed by a state decolonization discourse that has continued through caudillismo, or the charisma of male leadership.�� When the Pluri- national Constitution was institutionalized by Morales�s Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement for Socialism, ���) government in 2011, abor- tion rights, same- sex marriage legislation, and even the right to divorce were either overshadowed by religious morality regimes or underplayed in favor of anti- imperial and wealth redistribution concerns, even as the state continued to invest in an extractive economy. Even within its own rubric that emphasizes Indigenous subjects, languages, and cultures as central to the new government�s project, Morales�s government has not met its own benchmark of decolonization.�� In contrast, Paredes and Galindo also con- sider sex/gender politics as an important pathway to the complex situating of decolonization, a counterpoint to the o cial version.

I was invited to present my research to Mujeres Creando Comunidad at

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

126 C H A P T E R F I V E

the feminist cultural center CafØ Carcajada. Tucked o�f a small side street near the center o� La Paz, the space attracts a racially diverse group of dif- ferently gendered students, activists, and artists who have collaborated together for anywhere from a few months to up to ��een years. Julieta Paredes and her partner, Adriana, run the cultural center and continue to make anarchist feminist Indigenous politics the center of their expressive agenda, publishing columns in local newspapers, producing lectures and cultural events, and making and selling their arts, cra�s, and books.

During my talk, I made historical connections to the hunger strikes in mining by at one point characterizing the practice o� Indigenous female hunger striking as a performative act that literally, as Patrick Anderson calls it, �wastes away� before the public view.�  While some of the participants appreciated this theoretical point, one member in particular found the idea of equating hunger striking to a performative act to be a decidedly North American colonizing gesture that misappropriated the painful reality of hunger striking to propagate US performance theory. Though I hold on to the analysis and interpretation that hunger striking is performative, as well as o�en an intentionally visible political enactment, I also understand how the participant at the event questioned the way local vernaculars of stru�le are run through the machine o� North American theories, abstracting from local conditions of possibility and constraints. The contradiction, of course, in the member�s thoughtful opinion was that Mujeres Creando Comuni- dad had, in fact, used performative gesture as one of its emblematic modes of dissent. While the participant�s point about overly theoretical language was a necessary question to the proliferation of academic texts coalescing around the term �decolonial��and the ever- capacious understanding of the term �performance� for that matter�what stuck with me most was not this o�en- stated critique of theory. Instead, I wondered how the concep- tual language I named might indeed have emerged from my own vantage point that conditioned regional experience through the mill of US theory.

This kind of critique seemed central to the anti-imperial decolonial ges- ture in the new incarnation of Mujeres Creando Comunidad. As Paredes states, �Political activity does not only happen in political parties or in or- ganized groups; it happens as soon as you are conscious o� your actions and your decisions�an intuitive kind of feminism. . . . Through feminism, women come to know themselves and each other, with all our potential,

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

D E CO LO N I A L G E S T U R E S 127

our strengths, our weaknesses, and we discover a freedom that we keep on developing.��› While what constitutes the category �women� in this quote might certainly be troubled, and could be widened to a perspective of trans- feminisms that is inclusive of genders not assigned female at birth, the idea of freedom as an operation of political activity that keeps on de- veloping is an unusual and prescient way to de�ne feminist and anarchic potential. Whether referring to the chola, the female slag- pile worker, or the hunger striker, together these �gures produce a counterhistory of an- archist Indigenous feminisms that cannot be reduced to the heteropatri- archal con�nes of the extractive zone.

The Feminist Constitution

My second visit to Mujeres Creando occurred in September 2014, this time to the site of María Galindo�s radio program, which has a restaurant cafØ on its premises and is managed by local Aymara Indigenous women. When I �rst walked into the crowded two- story colonial house, where lunch patrons were tucked in eating steaming bowls of Andean potato quinoa soup, I was visually overwhelmed by an enormous, gorgeous photograph of an Indige- nous woman plastered onto the adobe wall. Written below the photograph was the question, �What does racism look like to you?� This was the �rst time I had seen racism so visibly acknowledged and questioned anywhere within South America. Given that racism is o�en occluded within the pub- lic sphere, these direct and visible instances of race/class analysis within the feminist project of anarchism show the importance of Mujeres Creando�s stance and its intervention.

María Galindo�s radio shows, video work, performances, and ongoing writing on decolonization carry a decidedly direct critique of Andean patriarchy, Catholic morality, Morales�s extractivist politics and neoliberal agenda, and what I can only describe as a punk anarchist attitude. Galindo�s book, No se puede descolonizar sin despatriarcalizar: teoría y propuesta de la despatriarcalización (It is impossible to decolonize without destroying patriarchy: Theory and proposals for destroying patriarchy), opens with a dedication to �la india solitaria,� �la puta �era,� �la lesbiana indomable,� �y a todas las mujeres rebeldes� (the solitary Indigenous woman, the �erce sex worker, the indomitable lesbian, and to all rebel women).�� When I

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

128 C H A P T E R F I V E

asked Galindo if this included trans- women, she responded, �trans- women also disobey gender norms.� In an earlier period, perhaps such a direct and forceful response would not have come from Mujeres Creando, but the ���� rainbow tide in Latin America has certainly made trans- awareness more widespread and central to its future oriented project.��

Unlike my interviews at that time with Julieta Paredes, which were somewhat more tempered in their analysis of Morales�s path to decolo- nization, Galindo was decidedly more critical, calling his politics paternal- istic and regressive, and showing visible contempt for the �Aymara path to Andean socialism� rhetoric as mere liberal multiculturalism.�� In this re- gard, Galindo�s e�forts, alongside those of Mujeres Creando, include dra�- ing the Feminist Constitution, an important critique of the 2011 Plurina- tional Constitution that Morales passed through a series of regional and then national assemblies. While the Plurinational Constitution made im- portant gains, the Feminist Constitution functioned as a polemic against it, producing the single most important document of anarchist feminist In-

Nicole Hayward, �To think is highly feminine,� María Galindo (left) with author Macarena Gómez- Barris, 2014.

Photo courtesy o� Nicole Hayward.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

D E CO LO N I A L G E S T U R E S 129

digenous critique in the contemporary period.�� Born of the assembly pro- cess initiated by Morales, yet reaching into the nexus of recent sex- positive rights discussions, while pushing back against the morality of colonial Catholicism and the rhetoric of tradition and family, the Feminist Con- stitution is a poetic, raging collaboration, and presents a parallel e�fort to its better- known counterpart. The Feminist Constitution�s objective is not only to critique existing paradigms of state- centered decolonization but also to imagine concrete visions and proposals that extend Indigenous an- archic feminist projects.

I have discussed the many facets of the work of Mujeres Creando and Mujeres Creando Comunidad as two important collaborative e�forts that use Indigenous feminist anarchist histories to build a present- and future- oriented imaginary of another kind of society. �The Feminist Political Con- stitution of the State: The Impossible Nation We Build as Women� is, in my mind, the pinnacle expression of this multidirectional articulation. Writing from the vernacular subjectivities and experience o� Indigenous women, sex workers, and lesbians�those that �have been le� out of the o cial con- stitution��the document was dra�ed out of a collective sense of urgency. Because of its inclusion of perverse and amoral sexualities, feminist propo- sitions, and queer locations, while also both building upon and inverting Morales�s decolonization project, I engage this document as a transfeminist mode of theorizing and perceiving otherwise.

As Sayak Valencia explains, transfeminism has genealogies in global and local hemispheric sites, the postporn movement in Spain, and decolonial border activism and theorization. She states:

Los sujetos del transfeminismo pueden entenderse como una suerte de multitudes queer/cuir que a travØs de la materialización performativa lo- gran desarrollar agenciamientos g- locales. La tarea de estas multitudes cuir es la de seguir desarrollando categorías y ejecutando prÆcticas que logren un agenciamiento no estandarizado y decolonial�es decir que no busquen asimilarse a los sistemas de representación impuestos por la hegemonía capitalista del sistema heteropatriarcal/clasista y racista y que inventen otras formas de acción crítica�que pueda ser aplicado en distintos contextos de forma re- territorializada, recon�gurando la posi- ción del sur como un posicionamiento crítico y no sólo como un empla- zamiento geopolítico.��

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

130 C H A P T E R F I V E

Transfeminist subjects understand themselves within a nexus of queer/ cuir multitudes that through performative instances are able to develop local forms of agency. The task of this cuir multitude is to keep develop- ing and executing di�ferent kinds of practices that do not lead to stan- dardizations of the decolonial; that is, they do not work toward assimi- lation as systems of representation imposed by capitalist hegemony and heteropatriarchal, classist, and racist systems, but instead invent other forms of critical action that can be applied to distinct contexts as forms of reterritorializations, recon�guring the position of the South as a criti- cal positioning rather than a geopolitical restructuring.��

Using this model of transfeminism with a multidirectional attention to the issues of coloniality and Indigeneity, the Feminist Constitution ana- lyzes ����s decolonization project from the position o� �political and social problems, pending and deferred . . . that stretch out into a remote and uncertain future.��� The deferred future that María Galindo refers to in this quote is the decolonization process that gained political legiti- macy by subsuming gender/sex di�ference into a homogeneous platform. Galindo�s statement brings forward how the assembly constituent process that brought Evo Morales to power functioned as �a pact among men re- garding their gazes, their parceling out of power.� Reaching further back, it also emphasizes how the �ancient law of obligatory heterosexuality� has deferred equality for female subjects, extracting their labor to reproduce patriarchy even before capitalism.

Though Morales�s road to the presidency included radical feminist pro- posals, once he was in o ce, these were put aside. Mujeres Creando articu- lated critical views of the nexus of forces that continued to absent radical female participation from the new con�guration of state power:

We make clear that the voices o� women in the o cial constitution were mediated, brokered, censored, and measured by the political parties that legitimated only the liberal ���s and the conservative voices of in- digenous women who spoke for their men, for their sons, and for their churches and their dogmas of faith. Other women�s voices have been le� out, le� out of the constitutional text, expelled from history once more, along with all of the political and social problems, pending and deferred, that our eyes see, that stretch out into a remote and uncertain future.��

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

D E CO LO N I A L G E S T U R E S 131

The reference to the �pending and deferred, that our eyes see, that stretch out into a remote and uncertain future� is precisely the turn away from the extractive gaze and toward a submerged perspective that I have a rmed throughout this volume, and here takes a decided turn away from conser- vative formulations.

The Feminist Constitution is organized as a series o� legislative, poetic, and sweeping proposals and gestures. Under the subsection �Forms of Government,� Galindo states �no governments should exist,� revealing the antistate ideology embedded within anarchic feminisms. In other sweep- ing and playful acts, the Feminist Constitution abolishes the armed forces, restricts religion to its spiritual function, makes art and artistic expression the universal language, dissolves the police apparatus, grants rights to ani- mals, allows Indigenous peoples a future- oriented tense (rather than being �xed in the past), abolishes political parties, and considers the autonomy of the body a fundamental principle. Given the heated discussions regarding abortion and the con�icts within national governments throughout South American progressive governments, this last point about the female body�s autonomous decision making reasserts transfeminist autonomy as central to multiple projects o� liberation.

Conclusion

The Feminist Constitution calls for the visibility of submerged perspectives and the networked potential of social ecologies. In the last line it states how �this constitution is a fabric that weaves the daily with the historic, the uto- pian with the immediate, forming a rainbow of stru�les and dreams that we will continue building without sacri�cing a single one of them.� This transfeminist, Indigenous anarcho- perspective imaginatively sees and de- scribes the impulse behind not only the arc of radical genealogies but also their potential future.

Like the extractive viewpoint that �attens heterogeneity, masculine revolutionary politics has written out smaller yet pivotal histories of radi- cal Andean feminisms. My work in this chapter has been to thread together a genealogy of anarcho- Indigenous feminism that makes connections be- tween multivalent forms of critique and dissent that address the com- plexities of the extractive zone. That is, an anarcho- Indigenous feminist

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

132 C H A P T E R F I V E

perspective builds upon multidirectional opposition to the excesses of capitalism, the hierarchies of patriarchy, the normativity o� heterosexu- ality, and the racism of colonialism in order to provide alternative models of sociality and perception.

We might consider the possibilities and limitations o� hemispheric In- digenous feminist critique that would consider the principles of Mujeres Creando as part of a broader transfeminist and decolonial project. Again, the submerged perspective here is to challenge the idea o� Indigenous tra- dition as static or pure, setting the stage for a more multivalent theory and actualization of critical praxis. As a method of perceiving and doing other- wise, this submerged form of organizing, critiquing, and living potentially makes visible the path toward undoing coloniality.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

CO N C L U S I O N

The View from Below

I have addressed visual and embodied knowledges, intellectual genealo- gies, and trans- feminist, Indigenous, and networked formations that ex- ceed, escape, mediate, and invert the extractive view. And I have discussed how the extractive view refers to state and corporate logics that map ter- ritories as commodities rather than perceive the proliferation o� life and activities that make up the human and nonhuman planetary. The geogra- phies we have explored emerge out of speci�c regions within the AmØri- cas, placing South American living social ecologies at my study�s center. I have focused on majority Indigenous territories but have also referenced Afro- descended ontologies, for how they perceive otherwise and contain the capacity to erode the extractive gaze, even as the �gure of the African slave within the mita system in the South American extractive zone is o�en disappeared, even from radical histories. These modes of seeing and cri- tiquing urge a reconsideration of the submerged, and of the heterogeneity that resides within the matrix of coloniality.

Throughout the introduction and the volume�s �ve chapters, I put into view other modes of perception that organize time, space, sociality, and the cosmos. These include Mapuche visuality, Andean phenomenology, anarchist- feminist Indigenous analysis, Yasuní cooperatives, and a �sh- eye episteme. Such fecund sites and methods constitute inverted visualities, and reversals of power through vernacular practices that dynamically shi� the meaning o� Enlightenment and Western forms of thought, feeling, and being. What these proposals share is a decolonial, and anti- authoritarian

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

134 CO N C L U S I O N

vision; they project the potential of future planetary inhabitance, beyond the �rise of slime,� as oceanographer Jeremy Jackson has coined impending ecological disaster.� As the diametric opposite of the �rise of slime� that is born from the homogenizing force of decimation, the muck that I refer to in the preface, and throughout my study, is animated by the intangibility o� biodiverse life forms, the poiesis of di�ference, the untaming of the other, refusals and reversals that emerge out of the extractive zone.

I used the term �intangibility� to refer to the thickness and heterogeneity o� life residing within global geographies that require careful practices of conservation against the acceleration of racialized and colonial capitalism. The multiplicity o� life forms found within spaces of the extractive zone complicate the relation between self and other, nature and culture, human and the nonhuman, and exist beyond the grasp of the monocultural and extractive divide. Beneath the surface, where digital technology scans for earthly resources, and outside of the conversion of nature into monetary exchange, something else emerges. Namely, the dream o� �another world� is not merely a future- oriented utopia but it is already in motion, teeming with the alternatives we desire. Seeing the muck, dwelling in it, and �nding ways to make it visible become important antidotes as present- past ways to recognize and strengthen these alternatives.

Over the last decade, I have shared experiences with activists, commu- nities, and scholars throughout South America, spending long days within regional geographies consumed by the histories and contradictions of coloniality. Being in relation to the spaces I study, living there o�f and on over a decade, and having the privilege of moving within them has been central to cra�ing a decolonial queer episteme and method, a porous form o� knowledge production that listens to and takes in social worlds to write about them with a measure of epistemological freedom without having to make objective claims. Paying attention to sex/gender di�ference as its own source of enlivenment and dispossession is part of this perception. Given the dangers of reproducing coloniality, I recognize the ethical signi�cance of treading lightly, but without situated site work, I would not have seen what emerges, grows, adapts within and refuses the extractive zone.

My viewpoint, I hope, has been capacious enough not to reify, �x, or fully describe or comprehend the myriad forms o� life and potentialities I have encountered. Instead of emphasizing an analysis of equivalence that conventionally compares regions, or tracing disciplinary tracks of evi-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

CO N C L U S I O N 135

dence, I have focused instead on the submerged perspectives and social ecologies that reside within the extractive zone, taking my cues from the blurring of an ecotone�s boundaries, or from the �sh that see below the river�s surface, or from the memory of the pehuen trees that have witnessed the duration of colonial violence. Therefore, my standpoint does not aim to quell the histories of the violence upon Indigenous peoples and territo- ries within the hemisphere, and the speci�c forms of objecti�cation, com- modi�cation, and �transits o� Empire,� as Jodi Byrd terms it, that inter- cede and overcome the peoples and geographies that I have written about. Instead, I have attended to the complexities of inhabiting the extractive zone by �nding new concepts and language that propel our understand- ing o� how the leveling of capitalism is negotiated and resisted, refused, and forestalled. Perceiving through the extractive divide has changed me by allowing for dreams, imaginaries, and forms o� living as forcefully and continually emergent.

In the process of researching and writing this book, my perspective on how to challenge extractive capitalism has shi�ed. Indigenous scholars focusing on the United States and Canada have analyzed the limitations of legal recognition, critiquing the law�s liberal impulse, and the constrained ability to a�fect change through the highly codi�ed system of representa- tion that condones private property. As Joanne Barker and Glen Coulthard rightly argue, we must move beyond the recognition paradigm. We must also broaden our perspective on recognition beyond the law and nation- state, beyond liberal multiculturalism, and ultimately beyond the settler colonial and occupational state of extractive capitalism.� There are clear proposals here. Listening to and learning from the Andean world�s phe- nomenological orientation, and Indigenous land- based cosmologies more broadly, we might recognize Pachamama as an important source of a collec- tive future rather than a delimited regional worldview. In other words, we might perceive and enact how Pachamama does not just belong to Andean ways but can be somehow recognizable as our own Earth Being while not giving into the surface- level viewpoints of the New Age. The toxifying con- dition of commodity capitalism is precisely about the appropriative logics o� Indigenous technologies, aesthetics, worldviews. Reckoning with In- digenous epistemes, whether land- based, through intellectual genealogies, the remembering of colonial histories, or through cultural production, we might move beyond coloniality and extinction. This submerged planetary

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

136 CO N C L U S I O N

perspective invites us into another realm of perception that leaves the ex- tractive zone behind.

The promise of new �progressive� states in Latin America has unfor- tunately distracted us with their institutionalization of buen vivir politics. Extractive states crack down on Indigenous and ecological politics while denying the gravity of the� and contamination, as Indigenous and Afro- descendent communities acutely su�fer through increased cancer rates, ex- panded dispossession, and life�s reduction. This is not to say that progress has not been made on integrating Indigenous and African-based view- points into historically Eurocentric nation-states. However, as anarcho- Indigenous feminist critique presciently illuminates, the colonial state can- not be remade.

My analysis of conservation has also been radically altered by being in proximity to these locations. Against militarization and state intrusion, radical conservation is already being carried out by land defenders and through alternatives to late capitalism, but only alongside multidirectional social movements such as YASunidos in Ecuador and ��������� and Rios Vivos in Colombia. These movements understand the web of inter- dependence rather than feed into the matrix of coloniality. Like these trans- regional and intersectional assemblages, we might repel the domi- nant capitalist logic that presumes that �nite natural resources are already depleted. Such pessimism subsumes us even further into the clutches of accelerated capitalism�s no future, facilitating extraction, waste, and the oc- clusion of di�ferential pain within the extractive zone.

Yet, we can still choose to collectively shi� our attention. We can lower our view to where the wild boars make their mushy homes, and watch the ant cutters on their path within the forest�s cycles of entropy. Similarly, we can shi� perspective by raising our view, and see from a bird�s- eye view� or a satellite�s view�all that reaches to perceive space and temporality with attention, precision, attunement. The artistic work o� Francisco Huicha- queo and Carolina Caycedo has shown us this elsewhere, this other side of the colonial divide, this possibility of perceiving and sensing complexly.

In response to Ruth Wilson Gilmore�s always present, provocative, and necessary question �What is to be done?,�� I have shown that in these ex- tractive South American regions, there is already so much being done that what we require is a practice o� listening to and then amplifying present- future analyses, responses, and proposals. As I mentioned in the intro-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

CO N C L U S I O N 137

duction, we must also listen. For instance, the 2005 ¡Escucha Winka! state- ment written by three Mapuche historians, JosØ MillalØn, Pablo MarimÆn, Rodrigo Levil, and the Mapuche sociologist, Sergio Caniuqueo, is a blue- print for autonomous Indigenous governance that dually frustrates assimi- lative state management and the exigencies of a capitalist growth model. Collectively, these authors �nd non- normative ways to sovereignly nego- tiate the thickets of neoliberal governmentality, the monocultural condi- tion of extraction, and the prevalent extinction paradigm of international environmentalism. Speci�cally, the term winka refers to the Mapudungun word for a nonindigenous subject, a mestiza/o, potentially a gringa/o, and potentially you and me. ¡Escucha Winka! literally translates to, �Listen up, white man!�

Mapuche writers hail non- Mapuche subjects with the command to ¡Es- cucha! not as an insulting interpellation, or as a mere critique of present- past colonialism. Rather, the e�fort to speak directly to the winka is, most generatively, a patient call for a listening practice that hovers at the edge of capitalism�s noise, a whispered su�estion to settlers that enables a louder message: �Listen, winka, because occupying Indigenous territories is not good for you, either.� This kind o� Indigenous autonomous thought sharp- ens the edge of the liberal endgame of multiculturalism and state recog- nition. Mapuche autonomous thinking rescrambles how we understand progress, and reassigns meaning away from the devaluing o� life at the core of capitalism.

The authors of ¡Escucha Winka! state that their formulations of collec- tive autonomy �represents an aspiration to recover our �suspended sover- eignty.� � It is this condition of suspension that awaits us. In the epilogue of this text, autonomy is �a form of government, a way to exercise self- administration in our territories,� not as a nostalgic glance back to earlier social and political collective formations but as a proposition for gover- nance that works to guarantee autonomous decision making. The authors express the challenge o� working �in a sovereign fashion about their politi- cal, social, economic and cultural futures as well as about the structure of government and form of participation they desire.�� The use o� �us� and �them� varies throughout the text, as the authors switch between refer- ring to Indigenous peoples�the Mapuche/Pehuenche/Huilliche people of these territories�and calling out to the reader, and then re�exively situat- ing the authorial collective, while also engaging winka settlers. This expo-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

138 CO N C L U S I O N

nentiation of subject positions as a mutable hailing, invitation, interpella- tion, and instruction provides the document with a multiplicity that moves far beyond the �attened premise of the extractive zone.

The submerged perspective of Mapuche hailing and proposal that is in motion within this text is the �consciousness about ourselves as a people who have exercised the right to govern ourselves and to develop our own institutionality.�� A proposal for a nonstate state that centers a Mapuche worldview imagines guaranteed rights and participation for �us� through new/old ways o� how to account for each other while acknowledging and being in relation to Indigenous territories. ¡Escucha Winka!, therefore, in- verts the extractive view on territoriality, and ultimately makes a loud re- quest for epistemological unmooring, for the settler to think di�ferently about our relations to social and ecological worlds as we peer into the muck within the extractive zone. Perceiving these submerged perspectives opens up the decolonial potential that already exists.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S

Preface

1 Maurice Merleau- Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1945: 178). The other classic and obvious text to cite here is Jon Berger�s Ways of Seeing who links seeing to meaning, knowledge and belief systems through art and image pro- duction (1972).

2 My methodology is informed by the decolonial turn and underpinned by a vast literature of interdisciplinary study that emphasizes coloniality, which includes Sylvia Wynter�s oeuvre �Unsettling the Coloniality o� Being/Power/ Truth/Freedom� (2003) and, speci�cally on coloniality in the AmØricas, her �1492: A New World View� (1995); Walter Mignolo�s Local Histories/ Global Designs; Emma PØrez�s The Decolonial Imaginary (1999); and Nelson Maldonado- Torres�s Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity (2008). In Mignolo�s key bibliography, �Modernity and Coloniality,� he cites many origin points for the decolonial turn, including the 1955 Bandung Con- ference, the intellectual production o� Frantz Fanon (1952, 1961) and Ani- bal Quijano�s classic essay �Coloniality o� Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America� (2001).

3 For work that troubles the colonial politics of mastery at the intersections of postcolonial thought, decolonial critique, and new theorizations o� human- isms see Julietta Singh�s Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial En- tanglements, 2017.

4 Since the 1980s the lack of national sovereignty that conditions these pro- cesses has been challenged by Le� political anti- imperialist platforms. How- ever, over the last decade Latin American nations have turned away from the Washington Consensus, the system that exports a US- centered hegemonic economic model, only to become entangled within the Beijing Consensus a few years later.

5 In Saskia Sassen�s analysis, these expulsions are connected to complex sys- tems o� legality, policy and accounting that enable governments to acquire land in foreign territories (2016). Again, though she does not mention this, such geographies are o�en Indigenous territories that require the expulsion o� Native and rural peoples through the complexity of coordination that is advanced extractive or expulsive capitalism.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

140 N OT E S T O P R E F A C E

6 Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (1971). 7 Racial capitalism expanded its reach through violent legislative and bureau-

cratic arrangements that legitimated the rule of a European administration over African- descended and Indigenous populations. Through the produc- tion of racial hierarchies, scienti�c classi�cation, colonial mapping, the tech- niques of the law, and the system of private property, a hemispheric colonial project split humans into categories di�ferentiated from each other and from nonhuman life (Wynter, 2003, 2012).

8 Throughout the book I unpack the racial capitalist logics of new extractiv- isms, especially in relation to Indigenous territories. Even though my analy- sis is largely about how this unfolds in the post neoliberal era, Angelina Snodgrass- Godoy�s �Converging on the Poles: Contemporary Punishment and Democracy in Hemispheric Perspective,� describes similar convergence of political economic processes in relation to state criminal justice institu- tions and the increased rhetoric of crime and terrorism against peoples of color throughout the hemisphere (July 2005). Also see Quimantœ, Resistencias Mapuches al Extractivismo, a book of collected articles published by Mapu- express (2016) for how this contexually operates on Mapuche territories. In Represent and Destroy, an important formulation of racial capitalism�s logics, Jodi Melamed argues that liberal racial regimes have enabled and normalized new US state- capital formulations that perpetuate anti- Black violence (2011). Melamed investigates how liberal antiracist formations actually sustain racial injustice, delimiting the possibility for social and political transformation.

9 For a decolonial analysis o� how the term queer is used and reworked in Latin America, see Diego Falconí TrÆvez, Santiago Castellanos, and María Amelia Viteri�s, Resentir lo queer en AmØrica Latina, 2013.

10 In extraordinary work that extends the already signi�cant scholarship on Native Studies, Indigenous Feminisms, and Native queer studies, see Joanne Barker�s edited volume, Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, 2017.

11 See Enrique Dussel, �Transmodernity and Interculturality: An Interpretation from the Perspective o� Philosophy� (2003). Lynda Lange�s important work on Dussel�s philosophy articulates the subtlety o� his approach and its radi- cal decentering o� Eurocentric logics, as well as its anti- Indigenous racism analytics (2000). However, Lange argues that while Dussel best expressed the problem of the Enlightenment as a developmental fallacy, he also invested in the idea that human communities possess di�ferent levels of maturity (see Lange�s article in Linda Alco�f and Eduardo Mendieta�s, Thinking from the Underside of History: Enrique Dussel�s Philosophy of Liberation).

12 Anibal Quijano, �Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,� April 2007. 13 For the quote and for an analysis of the justi�cation of extractivism within

progressive discourses, see �Latin America: New Governments, Old Econo- mies: The New Latin American �Progresismo� and the Extractivism of the 21st

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S T O P R E F A C E 141

Century,� by Carmelo Ruiz Marrero, February 17, 2011, http://lab.org.uk /latin- america- new- governments- old- economies. Eduardo Gudynas�s works that have not been translated into English are extremely useful on questions of extractive capitalism and sustainable environments. His book Ecología, economía, y etica el desarrollo sostenible is an o�en- cited work for discussions on extractive capitalism (2002).

14 Jon Beasley- Murray�s book Posthegemony is an example of this line of critique that works to obscure increased focus on indigenous critique by overgeneral- izing certain strains o� Latin American Cultural Studies (2010).

15 Mary Louise Pratt�s term �contact zone,� in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, invokes the imperial periods o� European and American ex- pansionism in South America through scienti�c, military, and tourist expe- ditions (1999). By using the term colonial contact zone, I similarly refer to the asymmetrical spaces of interaction that have dominated the region from the ��eenth century forward, emphasizing coloniality as a key analytic.

16 The term �ecocide� can also refer to the massive death of ecosystems by global climate change and extractive capitalism. Then Swedish prime minister Olaf Palme employed the term �ecocide� during the 1970s to discuss the use of Agent Orange by US forces in Vietnam. For a map that tracks recent shi�s and the rise of murders of ecological activists, see �Deadly Environment,� Global Witness, April 15, 2014, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns /environmental- activists/deadly- environment/.

17 For a discussion of the pipeline and Idle No More, see Glenn Coulthard�s Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, especially chapter 5 on indigenous emergence and forms o� land defense in Canada. For extractivism upon Indigenous territories within Latin America, see Eduardo Gudynas, �El Nuevo Extractivismo Progresista,� in Nueva Crónica, January 30, 2011, http://www.gudynas.com/periodismo/GudynasExtractivismoNva CronicaBolEne10.pdf; and Henry Veltmeyer and James Petras, The New Ex- tractivism: A Post- Neoliberal Development Model or Neoliberalism in the Twenty- First Century? (2014).

18 This statement draws from �eldwork conducted between January and May 2015, and is also widely documented by the important movement, Acción Eco- lógica that has recently been threatened with forced closure by the Correa government. Despite the Rafael Correa government�s early progressive gains, since 2012 activists describe an increasing climate of fear and repression, in- cluding alarming levels of surveillance of anti- extractivist organizing and visi- bility. Furthermore, as megaextractivist projects increase their purview and reach, so increases the criminalization o� land defenders; concomitantly, as social contestation becomes more intense, digital repression expands. Global corporate imbrication with military states results in the killing o� human and nonhuman life for extractivist ends, or ecocide, as well as an upswing in the surveillance and repression o� land defense activism.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

142 N OT E S T O P R E F A C E

19 The attack upon Honduras Indigenous activists is truly alarming. Four months a�er Berta CÆceres was killed March 3, 2016, Lesbia Janeth Urquía�s body was found abandoned in a dump within the municipality of Marcala. Both CacØres and Janeth Urquía aimed to stop the construction of multiple hydroelectric projects in Western Honduras. At least fourteen Indigenous activists have been found murdered in Honduras making it the deadliest place in the world for ecological defense according to Global Witness.

20 See Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States (2014); and Jodi Byrd, Transits of Empire (2011); Glen Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks; Joanne Barker, Native Acts: Law, Recognition and Cul- tural Authenticity (2011); Mishuana Goeman, Mark My Words, Native Women Mapping Our Nations (2013).

21 In Alberto Moreiras�s The Exhaustion of Di�erence: The Politics of Latin Ameri- can Cultural Studies (2001), he moves to consider subalterity as a way to re- spond to epistemological homogenization. This volume expands the terms of engagement that extend cultural theory through decolonial critique, arguing that di�ference is indeed inexhaustible.

22 Ann Stoler�s work Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2010) has informed my ability to think of decolonial methods in tandem with a practice and perception o� what she refers to as the confused epistemic spaces of colonialism. In Stoler�s ethnography of the state archive she opens an analysis of the a�fective dimensions of colonial governance. I have also been in�uenced by Lisa Lowe�s stunning The Intimacies of Four Con- tinents (2015) that addresses modern liberal subjectivity by connecting it to the rise o� European coloniality to confront �the o�en obscure connections between the emergence o� European liberalism, settler colonialism in the Americas, the transatlantic slave trade, and the East Indies and China trades in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century� (1). Both works are essen- tial to sociological inquiry that have limited their sights to modernity rather than inquired into the foundational condition of colonialism.

Introduction

1 See Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang�s �Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,� in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society for a speci�c critique of the problem of overusing the term decolonization when not in relation to the re- patriation o� Indigenous territory and life (2012).

2 By �multiperceptual cosmologies� I am referring to Brazilian anthropologi- cal insights. See the foundational work o� Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, for instance, �Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere,� acces- sible in English as four Cambridge lectures, February� March 1988. Vivieros de Castro�s work signals a shi� in Brazilian anthropology that has been widely

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S T O I N T R O D U C T I O N 143

in�uential for its epistemological undoing of colonial perspectives and re- de�ning the terrain of alterity.

3 My use of Édouard Glissant here with respects to other AmØricas is to bring forward the grounded theory of the Caribbean Afro- diaspora as producing the kinds of sensibilities and orientations that opens up the theorization for other regional spaces of this study. Recognizing the particular transcultural histories o� First peoples and Afro- diasporic populations within the Carib- bean and Glissant�s �uidity with European, especially French traditions is part of the layered meaning systems that shape Glissant�s work.

4 See Glissant�s Poetics of Relation (1997) whose elusive poetics, rich language, and complex circularities impede reduction of the work to a singular thesis or argument. Also see Manthia Diawara, �Édouard Glissant�s Worldmentality� (2014). In this short, beautiful piece Diawara refers to the process of making his �lm, Édouard Glissant: One World in Relation, K�a YØlØma Productions (2009) and Glissant�s search out of transparency over complexity, reason against poetry, and the traps of monolingualism.

5 I refer here to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney�s The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study, whose elaboration of social poiesis by extending the genealogy of the Black Radical Tradition also contributes to decolonial theory and methods (2014). This text is generative for the historical legacies of mar- ronage and communal autonomy by former African slaves in the AmØricas. I am particularly in dialogue with its rich theoretical language for producing new modes of study. Also see Alvin O. Thompson, Maroons in the Americas (2006).

6 See Arturo Escobar�s Territories of Di�erence (2008), where an important dis- cussion on territoriality as the locus of self- governance is elaborated in rela- tion to Proceso de Comunidades Negras (���) within Colombia�s Paci�c region and in relation to palm oil monocultural production.

7 To elaborate the concept of the emergent within extractive capitalism, I build upon Stuart Hall�s notion o� �vernacular modernities� originally developed as a theory about the a�er- condition of enslavement, and particularly in re- lation to Afro-Caribbean histories. �Vernacular modernities� refer to how local identities and cultures can never be wholly articulated or captured by the onset of capitalism. As Hall puts it, this is a �new kind o� localism that is not self- su ciently particular, but which arises within, without being simply a simulacrum of, the global� (my emphasis). See Stuart Hall, �Conclusion: The Multicultural Question,� in Un/Settled Multiculturalisms, Diasporas, Entangle- ments, Transruptions (2000), 261. Also see Hall�s seminal essay, �Negotiating Caribbean Identities� (1995).

8 My point is to not collapse African- descended peoples and the history of trans- Atlantic slavery with the colonization o� Indigenous peoples, even as the work of John Brown Childs and Guillermo Delgado- P, among many

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

144 N OT E S T O I N T R O D U C T I O N

others, have shown their long and complex imbrications in the AmØricas (2012). Throughout the chapters, I contend with the di�ferent colonial and racial formations of each geography I discuss, underscoring what Eduardo Galeano, Lewis Gordon, Sylvia Wynter, and many others have de�ned as the complex space of colonial convergence that emerges from colonial a�erlives.

9 The work o� Viveiros de Castro investigates the Yawalapíti and other Indige- nous groups of the Amazonian Brazilian basin, undoing Claude LØvi- Strauss�s structuralist anthropology based on Indigenous groups within Central Bra- zil. Viveiros de Castro writes against the grain of structural and ethnocentric strains of anthropology by conceptualizing a �multinaturalist perspectivism,� or a non- anthroprocentric virtuality of the idea of species. Again, see Viveiros de Castro, �Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elswhere.�

10 Walter Mignolo�s classic text Darker Side of the Renaissance (1995) acknowl- edges the importance of theories of race and racism and Africana philoso- phy in shi�ing Eurocentric knowledge towards decolonial critique. About the work o� Lewis Gordon on existentia Africana, Mignolo states that �geo- graphical and bio- graphical genealogies of thought are at the very inception of decolonial thinking� (Mignolo, Darker Side, xxiii).

11 In this introduction, for the sake of not confusing genealogies of thought, I try to stay a course by using the term �decolonial,� even while anticolonial think- ers from the Caribbean, the AmØricas, and the Global South more broadly are also cited as important to the decolonial turn. What these thinkers share is a commitment to analyze from coloniality rather than modernity, what Sylvia Wynter terms the �paradigm of discovery� that sees modern analysis as new rather than as ensconced within longer processes o� war, colonization, vio- lence, slavery, and capitalism (2003, 2012). For an excellent overview of de- coloniality, see Nelson Maldonado- Torres�s introduction to a special issue of Transmodernity 1, issue 2 (Fall 2011): 1�15.

12 See the broad literature here on Global South ecological activisms and theo- rizations that center feminist perspectives, including Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai�s work as the founder of the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya. Her book addresses the challenges of the movement and the importance of replenishing the Earth during a period of extended crisis (2003). Also see An- rudathi Roy�s work on dams and Capitalism: A Ghost Story (2014). Also, see chapters three and four for decolonial femme perspectives and inversions on land and water.

13 Lee Edelman�s critique of reproductive futures through the �gure of the child is the most obvious text to cite here on a theory o� �no future� (2014), but I am more speci�cally referring to the recent spate of popular literature, such as Elizabeth Kolbert�s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014) and other models that give primacy to the excesses of the Anthropocene. With the exception o� Naomi Klein�s This Changes Everything, the �no future� paradigm o�en does not explicitly name capitalism as the dominant culprit. Further-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S T O I N T R O D U C T I O N 145

more, within Indigenous spaces in the AmØricas, a critique of reproductive futures has to be balanced against the historical weight project of eugenics, anti- Indigenous policies, and the state-centered project of mestizaje. For an astute recent discussion of mestizaje in relation to anti- Indigenous violence see Nicole Guidoletti- Hernandez�s Unspeakable Violence: Remapping US and Mexican National Imaginaries (2011).

14 Vandana Shiva�s work continues to be a de�ning study of the implications of biotechnology on the Global South; see Monocultures of the Mind (2003). New eco- feminisms also build upon and engage Shiva�s discussions of earlier ar- ticulations of eco- feminism that may have not fully considered gender non- conformity or the unilinearity of the biological category o� �woman.� See chapters 1 and 5 for more instances.

15 For an exceptional account of global racism see Denise Ferreira da Silva�s Toward a Global Idea of Race (2007).

16 See Anibal Quijano, �Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality� (2007), 178. 17 For a rich discussion of some of the absences o� women of color scholarship

within the body o� work and citational practice that is decolonial theory see Laura PØrez, �Enrique Dussel�s Etica de la liberación, US Women of Color De- colonizing Practices, and Coalitionary Politics amidst Di�ference� (Spring/ Summer 2010).

18 Cedric Robinson�s foundational Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radi- cal Tradition (1983) carefully catalogues the rise of capitalism�s long and imbri- cated history with racialized violence, which hierarchized di�ference by estab- lishing a political economy that drew surplus from Black and Brown bodies.

19 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment (1978). 20 Gilles Deleuze, �Postscripts on Societies of Control� (1992). 21 By narrating a counterhistory of visuality, Nicholas Mirzoe�� links the au-

thority of colonial actors to the naturalization of the right to look. Counter- visuality �nds forms to see otherwise within and through a self- authorizing system of power (see especially the introduction, �The Right to Look or How to Think With and Against Visuality,� 1�34).

22 See James Scott�s important work Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1998) for a grounded theoreti- cal treatise on the utopian schemes of development. Scott argues for a turn to local knowledge sources to counter the epistemic and material violence of au- thoritarian state decision- making.

23 For instance, in its global war on terror, the United States utilized satellite images not only for war in Iraq and Afghanistan but also for what Lisa Parks refers to as the production o� �digital real estate,� or intellectual property owned by the US government and its corporate surveillance apparatuses, where remote sensing literally absorbs �territories into a global digital econ- omy.� See Lisa Parks and James Schwoch, eds., Down to Earth: Satellite Tech- nologies, Industries, and Cultures (2012).

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

146 N OT E S T O I N T R O D U C T I O N

24 See Parks and Schwoch, Down to Earth. 25 In their book Remote Sensing of Natural Resources, Guangxing Wang and Qui-

hao Weng describe the sampling applications and image- based algorithms that can be used for scienti�c researchers as easily as it can be used by corpo- rate.

26 Maurice Merleau- Ponty�s Phenomenology of Perception is the classic citation here, an important critique of the Cartesian split between mind and body by establishing the body as a site of perception. My reference here is to the lesser- known but equally prescient work of Maturana and Varela that foregrounds epistemologies of perception based on neurobiology, including the impor- tant concept o� �autopoiesis,� which refers to the autonomous dynamic within complex recursive and self- referential living systems. Maturana and Varela, El Ærbol del conocimiento (1984), The Tree of Knowledge. Also see Ira Livingston�s Between Science and Literature (2006) that thinks through autopoetics as open social and discursive knowledge formations in relation to the sciences.

27 This is part o� Humberto Maturana�s response to Morris Berman�s critique of The Tree of Knowledge, which Maturana analyzes as Berman not fully under- standing. See �Response to Berman�s Critique of the Tree o� Knowledge� (1981).

28 Considering the current importance and acuteness of racialized politics of knowledge production, I would like to make explicit my entry into the ex- tractive condition. I am not Indigenous, and do not pretend to speak for nor fully understand the realities of the spaces I have lived in, researched, and analyzed, but instead o�fer my partial and situated relational view as a South American mestiza, and Latina queer femme.

29 Here, I am invoking and citing a range o� work that could broadly be situated as queer of color critique, including JosØ Muæoz�s Disidenti�cations: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999), Roderick Ferguson�s Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique; and Gayatri Gopinath�s Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (2005), which names postcolonial diasporic queer critique. Queer femininity is addressed especially in Gopinath�s work and in Juana Rodriguez�s Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings (2014). Putting this conversation in connection with decolonial literature and extending both into the �eld of multiplying dif- ference against the monocultural view is my point here.

30 JosØ Muæoz�s Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009) is an important model of theorizing world- shaping activities as future- oriented endeavors. See also Jack Halberstam�s In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005), especially his analysis of the subcultural and queer temporality as non- normative modes of study, creative production, and being.

31 See the queer decolonial text Phenomenology of Chicana Experience and Iden- tity: Communication and Transformation in Practice (2000). In it, Jacque-

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S T O I N T R O D U C T I O N 147

line M. Martinez references Phenomenology of Communication: Merleau- Ponty�s Thematics in Communicology and Semiology (1988) by Richard L. Lanigan as a source of inspiration for her theory building. Also see Martinez�s more recent Communicative Sexualities: A Communicology of Sexual Experi- ence (2011) for how to address the pedagogy of theory and praxis in relation to queer orientation. See Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Ob- jects, Others (2006), though my notion of femme positionality slightly di�fers from Ahmed�s formulation early in the book. Rather than being connected to butch masculinity as the pull and orientation for a relational understand- ing of self, the decolonial queer method considers nonnormative femininity as a mode of perceiving the world, an autonomous format that is dialogically formed by queer relations and perspectives beyond the extractive view.

32 Linda Tuhwai Smith�s game changing book, Decolonizing Methodologies: Re- search and Indigenous Peoples (1999) discusses the importance of sovereign forms o� Indigenous knowledge production as central to transforming the ac- tivity of research. By focusing on Indigenous and mestizx cultural production and critically examining power relations within the extractive zone, I work to delink from the traps o� Western knowledge that condition Indigenous knowledge as �Other.�

33 See my edited volume with Herman Gray, Toward a Sociology of a Trace where we seek to reframe the problematic of disciplinary social inquiry, a frame that I have expanded here to include a rethinking of the ongoing working of colo- niality. Avery Gordon�s Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagi- nation (1998) is a key text for our elaboration of a sociology of a trace. Given that sociology is predicated upon observation, and the disciplines of the uni- versity self- a rm visibility as the key site of social analysis, methods that for- mulate quantitative and descriptive knowledge projects formulate the eviden- tiary in terms of the literal ability to see to know. While I critique empiricism, I retain a place for the importance of grounded research that learns from ver- nacular knowledges on the same plane of valuation as o cial knowledge.

34 In The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogy of Minority Di�er- ence (2012), Roderick Ferguson describes an interdisciplinary rather than dis- ciplinary frame for his institutional critique, namely how the interdisciplines do not fundamentally break with the expansion of neoliberalism in the uni- versity. Liberal multiculturalism �nds support through the university man- date of diversity.

35 Having worked as an academic sociologist at a US research institution over the past ten years, though also situated within a comparative ethnic studies department, I have been faced with the epistemic assumptions of the disci- plinary very directly in my knowledge production. These include problems of reproducing the elevated status of evidence, or too easily rendering social life as fractured, dependent, and impoverished. As the domain of observable behavior, sociology�and �American� sociology in particular�reproduces

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

148 N OT E S T O I N T R O D U C T I O N

through and invests in truth- value that can be seen and therefore recorded. It is, moreover, a modern discipline that deploys and gives meaning to the colonial European scienti�c method, and defers questioning either the epis- temology of its narrowed perspective, or the geopolitical locus of enunciation that frames its inquiry.

36 Gurminder K. Bhambra�s Connected Sociologies addresses how classical soci- ology continues to narrativize history and modernity without reference to coloniality, reproducing European origin stories o� world history (2014). Her work recognizes a broader plurality of theoretical positions, constructs, and interpretations than modern and Eurocentric Sociology.

37 See Ricardo D. Salvatore�s Disciplinary Conquest: US Scholars in South America, 1900�1945 for an analysis of the period prior to the consolidation of Area Studies (2016).

38 Roman de la Campa�s classic book Latin Americanism contains a synthetic discussion on the imperial trouble with area studies (1999).

39 W. E. B. Du Bois famously attributed �double consciousness� with piercing the veil of racism by making the subjecti�cation o� Blackness visible (Souls of Black Folk, 1903). In Du Bois�s rewriting of the Civil War in Black Reconstruc- tion in America (1935), a decolonized perspective allows a dual critique, one that renarrates American history as a racial and nationalist project, while also writing from the standpoint o� Black workers.

40 I refer here to a construction of violence as ensconced within and against In- digenous (and African) being at the very core of the colonial de�nition of the human and human progress. See Anibal Quijano�s �Coloniality o� Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America� (2000) and the introduction to Katherine McKittrick�s Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis (2015).

41 Salvatore Eugenio Pappalardo, Massimo de Marchi, Francesco Ferrares, � Uncontacted Waorini in the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve,� June 19, 2013, ���� Journal, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone .0066293. Also see Matt Finer et al., �La frontera extractiva avanza en el Parque Yasuní,� November 12, 2013 (http://www.geoyasuni.org/?p=1283) for a history of the intangible zone�s legal protection, an important rendering of the legal loopholes that facilitate state and corporate extraction.

42 I am referring here to Phillip De Loria�s Playing Indian (1998). 43 See Patrick Wolfe�s discussion of the elimination of the Native in relation to

Australian settler colonialism (2006). While this article has been critiqued for being applied too widely outside of the speci�c settler condition of Australia, in the context of Chilean ideology in relation to Mapuche, Huilliche, Pe- huenche, Fuegan, and other Indigenous peoples the terminology �elimination of the Native� can be aptly used in relation to the discourses and practices of the colonial and modern state since the sixteenth century.

44 Elsewhere I have written a feminist decolonial discussion of Mapuche hunger strikes. See �Mapuche Hunger Acts: Epistemology of the Decolonial� (2012).

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S T O C H A P T E R O N E 149

45 For a discussion of utopic visions centered within the state�s capture of power see Nancy Postero�s �Andean Utopias in Evo Morales�s Bolivia� (2007).

Chapter 1. The Intangibility of the Yasuní

1 Bruno La Tour, �Circulating Reference: Sampling the Soil in the Amazon For- est� (1999).

2 William Sacher, personal communication with the author, May 18, 2015. 3 In a reconsideration of the epistemes of ethnographic method, Eduardo Kohn

places the human within a web of complexity that is based upon �eldwork in Ecuador�s upper Amazonian region (2017). Though my work di�ferently situ- ates the threat of extractive capitalism, my thinking in this chapter is in�u- enced by this rich study and theorization of the Ecuadoran Amazon.

4 See Gilles Deleuze and FØlix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980).

5 In Autopoiesis and Cognition, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela ex- plore cognition as a biological matter at the basis of all living systems and as self- referential systems that operate outside of the logics of observer and ob- served (1980). This is the epistemological foundation for how I am using the term social ecologies of intangibility in this chapter. Also see Ira Livingston�s concept of autopoetics that expands these ideas (2006).

6 Werner Herzog�s Fitzcarraldo (1982) is the cinematic expression of colonial madness that is at the center of director Les Blank�s documentary Burden of Dreams (1982).

7 In her work on the overdetermined representations of the natural world, En- tangled Edens: Visions of the Amazon (2001), Candace Slater attends to the hegemonic representation of the Amazon as a diversity of �ora and fauna that functions to absent Native inhabitants within the rain forest. Slater�s book disentangles how the Amazon functions as an idealized icon rather than the complex set of competing visions that it is.

8 The Tagaeri and Taromenane must also be named here, the tribes who broke o�f from the Huaorani, rejecting colonization to live deeper in the forest as a �no contact� group. While many Indigenous groups have also put pressure on the Amazon with hunting practices and an expanding population, the balance I am referring to here is about the level of engagement with the outside world.

9 This is quoted in Esperanza Martínez�s important and speedy account of these events that unfolded from 2009 to 2014, with continuing processes and e�fects unfolding around the Yasuní today. See Esperanza Martínez, Yasuní, el tur- tuoso camino de Kioto a Quito (2013).

10 Martínez, Yasuní, el turtuoso camindo de Kioto a Quito (2013), 15. 11 As cited in the Guardian report that revealed these agreements, the docu-

ment, titled �China Development Bank Credit Proposal,� bears the name of Ecuador�s Ministry o� Economic Policy Coordination on every page. Under

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

150 N OT E S T O C H A P T E R O N E

the heading �Results of the 1st Negotiating Round: Preliminary Agreements,� which took place between May 13 and May 23, 2009, it states, �Last minute clause: The Ecuadorian party has said it will do all it can to help Petro- China and Andes Petroleum explore ��� and Block 31.� David Hill, �Ecuador Pursued China Oil Deal While Pledging to Protect Yasuní, Papers Show,� The Guardian, February 19, 2014.

12 Freddy Javier `lvarez GonzalØz, �El Buen Vivir, Un Paradigma Anti- Capitalista,� Pacarina del Sur: Revista de Pensameinto Crítico Latinoameri- cano, November 2016.

13 In terms of Afro- descended peoples along the Caribbean coast, Arturo Es- cobar elaborates upon local models of nature that he does not term el buen vivir, perhaps due to the date of publication as preceding these public debates, which took place in 2000. The communities he describes certainly practice what might now be labeled by the principles of el buen vivir. For instance, Es- cobar notes how the central principle o� Black communal knowledge is that of transformation prevalent in nature as much as in human interaction. �It is because plants mediate between the natural, the human, and the supernatu- ral�between life and death, masculine and feminine, past and present�that the model enacts a logic of multiplicity and fragmentation� (Escobar, Territo- ries of Di�erence, 116).

14 Eduardo Gudynas and Alberto Acosta, �El buen vivir,� 71�81. 15 Atawallpa Oviedo Freire, Buen vivir vs. Sumak Kawsay, 45. 16 Atawallpa Oviedo Freire, Bifurcación del buen vivir y el Sumak Kawsay. In his

preface to the same volume, Oviedo Freire pushes this comparison further, engaging not only the Indigenous practices o� �rightful living,� but also the way that Afro- based cultural formations enable a particular set of ethical be- haviors in relation to the natural world.

17 Salvador Schavelzon, Plurinacionalidad y vivir bien, my translation. 18 Michel Foucault�s notion of governmentality refers to how the state exercises

control and governs the populace and is theorized throughout his College de France lectures. Extractive capitalism requires a particular form of govern- mentality that is corporate, seizes upon Indigenous territories, and subsumes the complex logic of social ecologies to expand its representational and ma- terial control over human and inhuman life. See especially Foucault�s Security, Territory, Population (1977�1978) and The Birth of Politics (1978�1979).

19 Pablo Piedra, personal communication with the author, April 8, 2015. 20 Rafael Correa, �El Buen Vivir: Plan Nacional, 2013�2017.� Accessed October 5,

2016. http://www.buenvivir.gob.ec. 21 Correa, �El Buen Vivir,� 313, my translation. 22 Amazon Watch is in the process of publishing papers on the high polluters of

the oil industry in Ecuador and of the top ten, �ve are Ecuadoran companies. 23 Translated from Spanish into English on Political Database of the Americas.

Accessed May 21, 2015. http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Ecuador

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S T O C H A P T E R T W O 151

/english08.html. To view the entire Ecuadoran Constitution, see http://www .asambleanacional.gov.ec/documentos/constitucion_de_bolsillo.pdf.

24 �Rights o� Nature Articles in Ecuador�s Constitution.� Accessed February 14, 2015. http://therightsofnature.org/wp- content/uploads/pdfs/Rights- for - Nature- Articles- in- Ecuadors- Constitution.pdf, my translation.

25 Acosta A., Gudynas E., Martínez E., Vogel J. (2009). �Leaving the Oil in the Ground: A Political, Economic, and Ecological Initiative in the Ecuadorian Amazon,� Washington, DC: Center for International Policy, April 17, 2011. Accessed May 1, 2017. http://americas.irc- online.org/am/6345.

26 Diana Coryat, �Extractive Politics.� 27 See YASunidos. Accessed March 9, 2017. http://sitio.yasunidos.org/en/, my

translation. 28 For an account and theorization o� how intersectional coalitions emerge out

of intimate connections, see Claudia So�a Garriga- López on the Ecuadoran context of transfeminism that roots itsel� within broader feminist movements and praxis (2017).

29 Acción Ecológica, in addition to a number of alternative journalistic e�forts, has worked to document the criminalization o� Indigenous peoples and eco- logical allies. Despite the Ecuadoran Constitution�s legal protections o� land defenders, surveillance has expanded, as discussed in the introduction. See �Criminalización de defensores de la naturaleza,� Acción Ecológica. Accessed June 10, 2015. http://www.accionecologica.org/criminalizados.ac.

30 Coryat, �Extractive Politics,� 8. 31 �Ecuador: The Tagaeri Taromenane Intangible Zone in Yasuní Park,� World

Rainforest Movement. Accessed October 17, 2016. http://wrm.org.uy/articles - from- the- wrm- bulletin/section1/ecuador- the- tagaeri- taromenane- intangible - zone- in- yasuni- park/.

Chapter 2. Andean Phenomenology

1 Marisol de la Cadena�s important book Earth Beings (2015) considers the multiple ecologies that can be found across the Andes and through the en- tanglements between Indigenous and nonindigenous worlds. These ecologies include the practices of communication across incommensurate di�ferences where Indigenous political strategies reach beyond binary logics towards other ways of thinking, being and inhabiting.

2 In the Pisac marketplace of the Sacred Valley, there is a mix o� local handi- cra�s made by Indigenous cooperatives and imported cra�s both from the national Peruvian industry, but increasingly also from the industrial cra�s market in China and other locations outside o� Peru. The perception of sou- venir authenticity is a reoccurring theme within the broader context of tour- ism and tourism studies. See the recent article by Pooneh and Susan M. Arai (2013) for an analysis o� �handmade� cra�s and the tiers of authenticity that

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

152 N OT E S T O C H A P T E R T W O

circulate within tourist economies. On the political economies o� handmade objects more broadly see Julia Bryan- Wilson�s forthcoming book Fray (2017), especially the chapter �Threads o� Protest,� which considers the complex di- mensions o� handmade objects, art, and authenticity in relation to the work of installation artist Cecilia Vicuæa.

3 See Lisa Aldred�s classic essay on the topic, �Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age Commercialization o� Native American Spirituality,� (2000), 331.

4 Cheryl Harris, �Whiteness as Property.� 5 Edward Said, Orientalism. 6 For a thoughtful examination of the making of matter into insensate and im-

mobile categories, especially in relation to racialized histories and representa- tions, see Mel Y. Chen�s Animacies.

7 Sylvia Wynter, �1492: A New World View.� 8 Nelson Maldonado- Torres, Against War. 9 Here, I am referring to colonial legacies of racial inheritances that continue

to impress themselves upon the daily negotiations of mestizx and Indigenous lives. For an in- depth analysis of the modern histories of race and Indigeneity in Peru, see Marisol de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru (1919�1991) (2011).

10 For an analysis of these �ctions in relation to colonial Mexico and the caste system, see Maria Elena Martinez�s Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religions, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (2008).

11 Rolena Adorno, Guaman Poma. 12 Kathryn Burns, Colonial Habits. 13 Michael Taussig, Shamanism. 14 Taussig, Shamanism, 100. 15 See Daniel Serrano, El cazador de gringos [The gringo hunter] (2007). This

popular book of short stories puts into circulation the term brichero to de- scribe a straight male mestizx �gure of the tourist economy that tra cs in sex and mysticism in search of a US green card by �hunting gringas.� This hetero- sexual economy, like its counterpart in spiritual tourism, constructs and me- diates forms o� Indigenous embodiment through the consumer desire for authenticity.

16 Taussig, Shamanism. 17 Jose� Estermann, �Ecoso�a Andina.� 18 Estermann, �Ecoso�a Andina,� 77. 19 For a Fanonian analysis that rethinks the presuppositions of Marxism from

Indigenous modes of thinking and being see Glen Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (2014).

20 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter (2012). 21 Rosie Braidotti, Nomadic Theory (2012)

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S T O C H A P T E R T W O 153

22 Enrique Dussel, Ethics of Liberation (2013). 23 Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs (2000). See also Gloria Anzal-

dœa�s Borderlands: The New Mestiza (1987). 24 For a now classic essay on the topic of decolonization in relation to Indige-

nous land dispossession, see Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang�s �Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor� (2012). Rebekah Garrison�s dissertation on settler respon- sibility and island epistemology invokes the methodology of settler respon- sibility through a comparison o� Hawai�an, Guam, and Vieques stru�les against militarization and settler coloniality. Garrison�s notion of settler re- sponsibility informs my understanding here. For a more extended discussion, also see Sarah Fong, Rebekah Garrison, Macarena Gómez- Barris, and Ho�esta Mo�e�hahne�s �Decolonizing Horizons� in Amerasia Journal (2016).

25 These migrations from the North to the South by American ex- pats can also be referred to as �lifestyle migrations,� such as those that Maria Amelia Vi- terbi has written about, albeit in the context of Cotacachi, Ecuador (2015).

26 See Diane Dunn, introduction to Cusco: The Gateway to Inner Wisdom: A Jour- ney to the Energetic Center of the World (2007). Accessed March 22, 2017. http://pazyluzperu.com/wp/books- articles/dianes- books/gateway/gateway - introduction/.

27 Diane Dunn, Cusco. 28 For an important treatment of new age as a particular religious identity that

arises with the advent of neoliberalism see Paul Heelas, The New Age Move- ment: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity (1996).

29 Diane Dunn, Cusco. 30 Diane Dunn, Cusco, 129�31. 31 Diane Dunn, Cusco. 32 Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism (2010). 33 Joanna Drzewieniecki, �Indigenous People, Law and Politics in Peru,� paper

given at the Washington D.C. Latin American Studies Conference, 1996. 34 JosØ María Arguedas, Formación de una cultura nacional indoamericana

(1981), 25. 35 Diane Dunn, personal communication with the author, May 17, 1011. 36 Diane Dunn, personal communication with the author, April 11, 2011. 37 Michael Hill, �Contesting Patrimony.� 38 Taussig, Shamanism. 39 Gail Valaskakis, Indian Country; Phillip Jenkins, Dream Catchers; Lisa Aldred,

�Plastic Shamans�; Cynthia Snavely, �Native American Spirituality: Its Uses and Abuse by Anglo- Americans.�

40 Phillip De Loria, Playing Indian, 7. 41 Jodi Byrd, Transits of Empire, 54. 42 Dunn, Cusco. 43 Ricardo Valderrama FernÆndez and Carmen Escalante GutiØrrez, Andean Lives.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

154 N OT E S T O C H A P T E R T W O

44 See Paul H. Hellas and Gabriela Martinez Escobar, trans., introduction, Andean Lives, 13.

45 Gelles and Martinez Escobar, Andean Lives, 11. 46 Chicana feminists have been writing about the sacred toward a model of de-

colonization for some time, even while citational practices o�en reduce this literature only to the work of Gloria Anzaldœa. Emma Perez�s The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (1999) and, more recently, Clara RomÆn- Odio�s study, Sacred Iconographies in Chicana Cultural Production (2013) are inspired books in this direction. Also see the theoretically impor- tant example of epistemic disturbance in Laura E. PØrez�s Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities (2007).

47 Don Francisco, personal communication with the author, August 6, 2008. 48 Don Francisco, personal communication with the author, August 6, 2008.

Chapter 3. An Archive for the Future

1 See Mencer: Ni Pewma (2011), experimental documentary, directed by Fran- cisco Huichaqueo. Accessed May 16, 2017. http://huichaqueo.cl/2011/02/01 /mencer- ni- pewma/.

2 Francisco Huichaqueo, personal communication with the author, July 6, 2016. 3 Francisco Huichaqueo, personal communication with the author, May 22,

2015. 4 See Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart, eds., Global Indigenous Media: Cul-

tures, Poetics and Politics (2008). 5 See Glen Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks (2014). 6 It could also be situated more broadly within a growing discussion o� Indige-

nous �lm, documentaries, and representations. For an important analysis o� Hollywood �lms that centers Indigenous actors, directors and spectators, see Michelle Raheja�s Reservation Realism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film (2011). For a decolonial focus on Ecuadoran documentary �lm made by Indigenous directors see Christian Manuel León Mantilla�s Reinventando al Otro: El Documental Indigenista en el Ecuador (2010).

7 See Ximena Troncoso�s essay on the topic, �MariluÆn: Lautaro en la encruci- jada,� in Anales de Literatura Chilena 4 (2003).

8 Patricia Richards, �O� Indians and Terrorists,� 62. 9 The instances of this are numerous in mainstream press, but also within

right- wing and military discourses, where �Mapuche anarchism� is seen as the justi�cation for an increased militarized presence. See for instance, �Diez carabineros lesionados deja enfrentamiento con mapuches en la Araucanía.� Accessed October 8, 2014. http://www.defensa.pe/forums/showthread.php /3556- Problematica- Mapuche- y- el- Anarquismo.

10 Joanna Crowe, The Mapuche in Modern Chile (2012).

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S T O C H A P T E R T H R E E 155

11 Charles Hale, MÆs que un indio (2006). Blest Gana�s novel romantically de- picts Lautaro as a national hero whose identity has been conveniently whit- ened.

12 For an astute discussion of primitive accumulation on Indigenous territories see Jimena Pichinao Huenchuleo�s �La Mercantilizacón del Mapuche Mapu: Hacia le expoliación absoluta,� in Awükan ka kuxankan zugu wajmapu mew: Violencias coloniales en Wajmapu, 2015. The entire bilingual Spanish/Mapu- dungun volume represents an Indigenous episteme that decolonizes knowl- edge production through collective editorial and study of the southern terri- tories through Indigenous research.

13 See Luis Campos Muæoz�s article, �Chile�s Mapuche: Not Yet Paci�ed,� that references the long stru�le against state encroachment and the �Paci�cation� wars of the nineteenth century, https://nacla.org/article/chiles- mapuche- not - yet- paci�ed. Accessed May 16, 2017.

14 Thomas Klubock, La Frontera, 218. 15 Like the repeal of Article 27 in the Mexican Constitution, Pinochet�s legal

architecture reformulated the legal concept of territories facilitating privatiza- tion, as I soon discuss in more detail.

16 Timothy Clark, �Putting the Market in Its Place,� 160. 17 See Scott Morgenson, �The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism� (2011). Mor-

genson�s rewriting of the �gure of the homo sacer by working through the biopolitics of settler colonialism is essential to understanding the politics of elimination that are at the troubling center of the settler nation. Here, I con- tinue to work with the �gure of the homo sacer to understand the production o� bare life as the starvation practices of the Chilean settler state in relation to Mapuche activism and stru�les that have been criminalized. For a thorough- going critique of the discourses o� bare life and biopolitics in relation to how profoundly the idea of the human is shaped by race and racial discourse see Alexander Weheliye, Habeas Viscus (2014).

18 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, 62. 19 Gil Hochberg, Visual Occupations (2015). 20 AucÆn HuilcamÆn, interview with the author, San JosØ, Costa Rica, March 15,

2004. 21 Though there have been recent discussions of the lack of ability to use the

�elimination of the Native� idea beyond the settler colonial practices of Aus- tralia, the techniques of the colonial state in Chile parallel many of those de- scribed by Patrick Wolfe in �Settler Colonialism� (2006).

22 Jennifer Doyle, Hold It Against Me (2013). 23 Fred Moten�s �Black Mo�nin� attends to the close relationship between

�mourning� and �moaning,� where �moaning� becomes the �sonic augmen- tation� o� �mourning.� Moten�s analysis of the photograph o� Emmett Till is to note the sonic substance that is a trace within the visual domain, as a kind o� �di�ference semiotics� and challenge to theory (63). My point in citing this

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

156 N OT E S T O C H A P T E R T H R E E

work here is not to compare these speci�c histories of racial violence, but to su�est the repetition of ancestral moaning with Mapuche mourning that Huichaqueo returns to as central to the audiotrack of the �lm.

24 For a beautiful historical treatment of the machi in relation to feminism, see the work of Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, �Rethinking Identity and Feminism,� an analysis I take up elsewhere. See Gómez- Barris, �Mapuche Mnemonics� (2016).

25 In a major contribution on Hochunk representation that speaks back to the legacies of colonial photography, see Jones et al., People of the Big Voice: Photo- graphs of Hochunk Families by Charles Van Shaick, 1879�1942. Northern Native peoples are depicted through family portraits that engage a deeper sensibility o� Indigenous communities and daily lives, dress, roles, and ceremonies, even within the space of the studio (People of the Big Voice).

26 Zurita quoted in Piæa (1990), 195�233. The text accompanying the image on the back cover reads, �Ahora Zurita, que rapado y quemado, te hace el arte / Santiago de Chile 1979� (Now Zurita, shaved and burned, art makes you / Santiago de Chile 1979).

27 See Nelly Richard�s classic work Margins and Institutions (1986), 66, 68. See also Richard�s book, Critica de la memoria (2010), 185. For an astute analysis of Zurita�s performance see Matías Ayala�s essay, �Bolaæo, Zurita, Vidal: Van- guardia, violencia, sacri�cio� (2015).

28 Dawn Ades, Rita Elder, and Graciela Speranza, Surrealism in Latin America (2012).

29 Stephen Amend and Thora Amend, eds., National Parks without People, 13. 30 Some German settlers later had ties to the Nazi party that had continuous

in�uence through the Pinochet regime. See �Nazis y Movimiento Nazi en Chile, 1931�45.� Accessed May 16, 2017. http://www.archivochile.com/Poder _Dominante/doc_gen/PDdocgen0007.pdf. For a source that tracks this in English see Graeme S. Mount�s Chile and the Nazis: From Hitler to Pinochet (2001).

31 For another critical perspective on Donald Tompkins�s conservation schemes, see Frank Zeller, �Buy Now and Save! Preserving South American Wildness by Buying It Up,� Worldwatch, July/August 2005. Accessed November 12, 2014. http://www.worldwatch.org/system/�les/EP184C.pdf.

32 See chapter 1 for an analysis of postdevelopmental representation by Indige- nous communities, and also on Ecuadoran international imaginaries and the role o� Rainforest Action Network as well as International Rivers Network as providing a di�ferent international approach to the hitherto dominant rela- tionships among conservation, extractivism, and Indigenous peoples.

33 Daniel Gutierrez- Vilches, �Chilean Legislation on National Parks,� 177. 34 Martin Berger, Sight Unseen. 35 See Zeller, �Buy Now and Save!� 36 Gutierrez- Vilches, �Chilean Legislation on National Parks,� 176�77.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S T O C H A P T E R F O U R 157

37 See Fred Moten and Stepfano Harney, The Undercommons (2014). 38 Francisco Huichaqueo interview with the author, Santiago, Chile, July 11, 2016. 39 Francisco Huichaqueo interview with the author, Santiago, Chile, July 13,

2016.

Chapter 4. A Fish- Eye Episteme

1 This work by Carolina Caycedo was �rst presented in ���� Gallery in Berlin in 2012.

2 I am referring here to the important book by Patrick McCully, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams (2001), a careful study of the contro- versial technology and impacts o� large dams. In the new edition, McCully su�ests that the growing anti- dam movement is one way to counter the planetary spread of dam construction. Rather than focus on anti- dam move- ments exclusively, my analysis reaches across extractive regions to understand the wider intersectional and coalition work that takes place within social ecologies against development and mega- development.

3 Some might argue that Potosí and Cerro Rico silver extraction is the colonial megaproject precedent, as is Italupo River damming in Brazil. While I agree with this analysis, my point here is that megaprojects are now seen as repro- ducible and as a supposedly �new� extractivist model o� hyperdevelopment and expansion.

4 In hydroelectric power, dammed water drives generators whose energy is measured by the proportional di�ference between the source and the water�s out�ow, yet, as studies have documented, such energy production is ulti- mately unsustainable (Bermann, �Impasses e controvØrsias�). These projects decrease water quality, transmit disease through backwater formations, emit greenhouse gases, deforest and remove vegetation, reduce ecological biodi- versity, and eliminate the functionality of other kinds of sustainable activities.

5 There are currently four dams in the world that are larger than 10��, includ- ing the Three Gorges Dam (the �rst mega dam), the Xiloudu Dam, the Itaipu Dam across the Brazil- Paraguay border, and the Guri Dam in Venezuela. While the scale of dams ranges from small to large, and the cost o� hydroelec- tricity is presumably cheap, wide- scale costs include displacement and eco- logical destruction.

6 The master plan for the Magdalena River can be seen at https://drive.google .com/�le/d/0ByrzVKn6lnmSOVg4TkYwemhLMUE/view?usp=sharing. Ac- cessed March 17, 2017.

7 �Colombia: Stru�le against Quimbo Dam Reaches Critical Point,� Upside Down World, July 17, 2015. Accessed April 15, 2017. http://upsidedownworld .org/main/news- briefs- archives- 68/5397- colombia- stru�le- against- quimbo - dam- reaches- critical- point.

8 My translation. The original reads, �El 14 de marzo de 2015 iniciaremos la gran

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

158 N OT E S T O C H A P T E R F O U R

movilización por la defensa del Río Magdalena, los Territorios y la Vida. Re- correremos el país desde el Macizo Colombiano hasta Bocas de Ceniza, en rechazo al Plan Maestro de Aprovechamiento del Río Magdalena recuperando la memoria, la identidad y la cultura de todo un país que ha construido su vida, su territorio y su historia alrededor del río�; ���������, Movilización El Río de la Vida. Accessed March 19, 2017. http://www.quimbo.com.co/p /movilizacion.html.

9 See Carolina Caycedo�s blog and site �Be Dammed.� Accessed January, 25, 2017. https://carolinacaycedo.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/be- dammed - ongoing- project/.

10 Nicholas Mirzoe�f, Right to Look (2011), xv. 11 See Caycedo�s blog and site �Be Dammed.� Accessed January, 25, 2017. https://

carolinacaycedo.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/be- dammed- ongoing- project/. 12 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South (2014). 13 de Sousa Santos makes similar interventions into the main discipline of Soci-

ology as Herman Gray and my arguments in our edited volume Toward a Sociology of a Trace. De Sousa Santos�s and our approach to sociology draw from interdisciplinary methods and attend to the importance of social theory and the cultural sphere not as a separate realm of analysis but as integral to theories and studies of political spaces, colonialism, nationalism, economic change, and a history from below that is critical of the �attening tendencies of empiricism.

14 Outside of the United States, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro is increasingly taken up by US scholars who are perhaps more familiar with Nietzsche�s philosophy on perspectivism that detracts from the idea that there is any one epistemo- logical truth.

15 Viveiros de Castro, �Cosmological Perspectivism� (2012). 16 Following LØvi- Strauss�s work on myth, yet against the separation of nature

and culture that it, in the end reproduced, in �Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies,� Viveiros de Castro describes how �myths are �lled with beings whose form, name, and behavior inextricably mix human and animal attributes in a common context of intercommunicability, identical to that which de�nes the present- day intra- human world� (464).

17 Viveiros de Castro, �Cosmological Perspectivism� (2012). 18 Bennett, Vibrant Matter (2012). 19 Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, New Materialisms (2010), 6. 20 Carolina Caycedo, Yuma: Land of Friends (2014). 21 Caycedo, Yuma: Land of Friends (2014). 22 Caycedo, Yuma: Land of Friends (2014). 23 Caycedo, Yuma: Land of Friends (2014).

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S T O C H A P T E R F I V E 159

Chapter 5. Decolonial Gestures

1 For a historical analysis of colonial race relations in the broader Andean region, see Rachel Sarah O�Toole�s Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru (2012). O�Toole�s book counteracts stereo- types about colonial Indigenous and African relations and shows the en- tanglements of everyday life within the matrix of violence that was Andean enslavement.

2 For a cultural and social approach to the violent vernacular o� Indigenous representation see Ho�esta Mo�ehahne�s chapter, �Corporeal Consumption and the Everyday Violence o� Indigenous Signi�cation: �Uncle Yu Indian Theme Restaurant,� � Phd Dissertation, University of Southern California, June 2017.

3 Histories of African enslaved labor is decidedly missing from these colonial histories, and from the representation of the extractive global economy. There is little scholarship on this topic, yet over the past several decades the emer- gence of Afro- Bolivian identity and organizations has increased the visibility of this minority population within Bolivia, a population that is spread be- tween La Yungas province, La Paz, Santa Cruz, and Cochabamba. During the 1990s, a resurgence of Afro- Bolivian identity emerged through new social movements, and there have been repeated cultural, intellectual and political e�forts to raise the visibility of these histories and so to be counted within the national census.

4 The work of Sylvia Rivera Cusicanqui is essential to this chapter as it names Indigenous anarcho- feminisms as an intersectional formation from the Andean region. See especially Chi�ixinakax utxiwa: una reflexión sobre prac- tices y discursos descolonizadores (2010), �Ser mujer Indígena, chola o bir- locha� (1996), and �the Notion o� �Rights� � (2010).

5 The criollo state here refers to the legacies of the colonial Spanish caste system established in Latin American colonies from the sixteenth century onward. It placed peninsulares, Spanish- born elites, at the apex of the social triangle, and next were the criollos, those of Spanish genealogy and mixed descent that also occupied high status in the franchise colony but with lower status than pe- ninsulares. See also Maria Elena Martinez�s Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in the Colonial System (2008) for a critical study of the racial ideologies and historical legacies of the caste system based on blood �ctions in Mexico. During the nation- building period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Latin American nations took on speci�c character- istics of racialized gender that were re�ected in a criollo state.

6 Since 2002, the cofounders María Galindo and Julieta Paredes went separate ways, and Mujeres Creando therefore split into two di�ferent feminist forma- tions. Mujeres Creando is now represented by Galindo, and Mujeres Creando Comunidad is currently convened by Paredes.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

160 N OT E S T O C H A P T E R F I V E

7 See Sylvia Rivera Cusicanqui�s Chi�ixinakax utxiwa: una reflexión sobre prac- tices y discursos descolonizadores (2010). Also see Steve J. Stern�s book Resis- tance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (1987).

8 See Sarita See�s important analysis of primitive accumulation in relation to Rosa Luxembourg�s rethinking of Marx, speci�cally about the colonial dy- namics of global capitalism. �Accumulating the Primitive� (2014). Glen Coul- thard also analyzes Marx�s thesis of primitive accumulation to discuss the essential dynamic o� Indigenous dispossession for colonial capitalism as a �persistent role that unconcealed, violent dispossession continues to play in the reproduction of colonial and capitalist social relations to both the domes- tic and global contexts� (Red Skin, White Masks, 9). An important debate within Indigenous studies and within Marxist thought centers on the degree to which Marx focused his attention on the capitalist development o� West- ern Europe rather than the rest of the world, and his undertheorized thesis of primitive accumulation in relation to Indigenous peoples and territories. See Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks, especially 6�15, for an exceptional analysis of the primitive accumulation thesis in relation to Indigeneity and Indigenous studies.

9 Looking more broadly within the hemisphere, Josephina Saldaæa- Portillo documents how revolutionary masculinity operates to occlude gendered nar- ratives within agrarian cultures and the twentieth- century revolutions within Latin America (Revolutionary Imagination). I make a similar argument here about how male heroism within mining culture has historically occluded the centrality of female resistance within extractive geographies.

10 Even as the sector technically constitutes only one- third o� Bolivia�s economic sector, and during the 1985 crisis constituted as little as 4 percent of the ���, it has fundamentally shaped global, national, and local economies, where places such as Huanuni in the Oruro region annually produced almost 500,000 tons of silver.

11 As reports have highlighted, mining is also highly extractive o� water re- sources, and given that the Cerro Rico is located at the top of major head- waters of the Rio Pilcomayo, mining has had extensive negative e�fects upon the watershed and underground water supplies (Strosnider, �Acid Mine Drainage�). Thus, in addition to being extractive of female Indigenous bodies, mining is a highly toxic and wasteful condition that negatively a�fects daily living.

12 Zabala, Nos/Otras, 29. 13 Nash, We Eat the Mines, 114. 14 Nash, We Eat the Mines, 114. 15 Elsewhere I have written about the role that female hunger strikers play within

the extractive wars that criminalize Indigenous land defenders; see Mapuche Hunger Acts (2012). My point here is to su�est that hunger strikes throughout

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S T O C H A P T E R F I V E 161

the AmØricas have been an embodied response to territorial wars and labor conditions, especially as organized by female subjects in the public sphere. For an account o� how settler sovereignty plays out in relation to the hunger striking practice of Attawaspikat Chie� Therese Spence, see Audra Simpson�s �The State Is a Man: Therese Spence, Loretta Saunders, and the Gender of Settler Sovereignty� (2016).

16 Lehm and Rivera Cusicanqui, Los artesansos libertarios. 17 Webber, Red October. 18 Zabala, Nos/Otras, 29. 19 Julieta Paredes, personal communication with the author, August 9, 2013. 20 Within an expanding mestizx urban society, the chola mediated Aymara cul-

tural traditions by occupying a pivotal role as a Bolivian national icon (Poole, Vision, Race, and Modernity). However, she was also targeted by bourgeois society through negative stereotypes within discriminatory public spheres, such as the media.

21 Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, �Ser mujer Indígena, chola o birlocha� (1996). 22 �Indigenous Anarchism in Bolivia: An Interview with Silvia Rivera Cusican-

qui.� Accessed June 15, 2016. http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/silvia - rivera- cusicanqui- andalusia- knoll- indigenous- anarchism- in- bolivia.

23 Rivera Cusicanqui, �Ser mujer Indígena, chola o birlocha,� 1996. 24 Bolivia experienced a series of false democratic transitions in the late 1970s

and early 1980s that resulted in a military dictatorship (1980�82) and culmi- nated in the second HernÆn Siles Zuazo presidency. This tumultuous time of hyperin�ation, increased urban and rural labor radicalization, and state vio- lence made the formation of Mujeres Creando that much more necessary.

25 Julieta Paredes, interview with the author, La Paz, Bolivia, August 9, 2013. 26 This performance is currently available at the Hemispheric Institute o� Perfor-

mance and Politics archive, http://hidvl.nyu.edu/video/003888408.html, May 26, 2015, in the Mujeres Creando Collection, Mujeres Creando, Acción 6.

27 See Mujeres Creando, Acción 6, Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics.

28 For an analysis of this exhibition and its impact within Madrid cultural cir- cuits, see �Mujeres Creando. Ten cuidado con el presente que constuyes, debe paracerse al future que sueæas.� Accessed March 18, 2017. http://www.museo reinaso�a.es/exposiciones/mujeres- creando- ten- cuidado- presente- que - construyes- debe- parecerse- al- futuro- que- suenas.

29 The focus on mujeres has been a constant nomenclature, which has led to ten- sions with transgender political and subject formations. Though its history in relation to transgender rights is complex, to be fair, Mujeres Creando has not organized exclusively around �women�s issues� and has o�en included an analysis of multiple genders and sexual identi�cations.

30 Paredes, Hilando Filo, 3. 31 Commentary on Hilando Filo blog, Mujeres Creando Comunidad blog site.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

162 N OT E S T O C H A P T E R F I V E

Accessed January 12, 2015. http://memoriafeminista.blogspot.com/2010/04 /3 - edicion- del- libro- hilando- �no- desde.html.

32 See the �rst book in the independent series by Victoria Aldunate and Julieta Paredes, Constuyendo Movimientos (2009).

33 In what I �nd to be a somewhat troubling analysis of the politics of chacha- warmi in the gender- equality debates in Bolivia, Anders Burman analyzes the issues of Aymara silence as an o�- found trait o� Indigenous women (Burman, �Chachawarmi �). While his line of questioning is not dissimilar to my own concerns around coloniality, tradition, and decolonization, we come to di�fer- ent conclusions with respect to our observations about feminist radical histo- ries in Bolivia. In part, this di�ference lies in Burman�s overreliance on politi- cal narratives and ethnographic observation that positions Aymara feminisms within and against a frame o� Western feminisms, which is not that useful for discerning what I identify as a utopic horizon. Feminist- indigenous- anarchic critique has its own regional genealogies that need not be compared to other forms of gender analysis but must be seen as challenging stagnant ideas about indigeneity, including the overdetermination o� Indigenous female silence.

34 See Mishuana Goeman and Jennifer Nez Denetdale�s �Native Feminisms� (2009). Also see Joanne Barker�s important recent edited volume, Critically Sovereign (2017) that addresses autonomous embodiment and theorizations within a North American Indigenous context.

35 For a longer discussion of this, see Green and Lackowski, �Bolivian Radical Feminist.�

36 Nancy Postero, �Andean Utopias� (2007). 37 See Patrick Anderson�s brilliant book on the politics o� hunger and self-

starvation, So Much Wasted (2010). 38 See Julieta Paredes in the interview �Disobedience Is Happiness: The Art of

Mujeres Creando,� with �Notes from Everywhere.� Accessed April 3, 2017. http://artactivism.members.gn.apc.org/allpdfs/256- Disobedience%20Is %20Happiness.pdf.

39 María Galindo, No se puede descolonizar (2013). 40 For a quick overview of the rise of gay marriage rights and trans- rights pro-

cesses throughout the AmØricas see Chris Lewis, �Rainbow Tide Rising: How Latin America became a Gay Rights Haven,� Alternet, February 13, 2014. Ac- cessed March 19, 2017. http://www.alternet.org/world/how- latin- america - became- haven- gay- rights. See also my forthcoming The Rainbow Tide: Be- yond Politics as Usual (2018).

41 María Galindo interview with the author, La Paz, Bolivia, August 12, 2014. 42 Because of its importance, we translated Mujeres Creando and María

Galindo�s �Constitución política feminista del estado� from Spanish into English.

43 Sayek Valencia, �Interferencias transfeministas.� Accessed April 14, 2017.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

N OT E S T O CO N C L U S I O N 163

http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/es/e- misferica- 111- gesto- decolonial /valencia.

44 Valencia, �Interferencias transfeministas,� my translation. 45 Galindo, �Constitución política feminista del estado,� �No se puede descolo-

nizar,� 2013. The English version is accessible at http://hemisphericinstitute .org/hemi/en/emisferica- 111- decolonial- gesture/galindo. Accessed March 22, 2017.

46 Galindo, �Constitución política feminista del estado,� �No se puede descolo- nizar,� 2013. The English version is accessible at http://hemisphericinstitute .org/hemi/en/emisferica- 111- decolonial- gesture/galindo. Accessed March 22, 2017.

Conclusion

1 See �Ecological Extinction and Evolution in the Brave New Ocean,� by Jeremy B. C. Jackson, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2008.

2 Barker, Native Acts; Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks. 3 Ruth Wilson Gilmore, �What Is to Be Done?� American Studies Association,

Presidential Address, June 2011. 4 MillalØn et al., Escucha Winka!. Accessed April 4, 2017. http://hemispheric

institute.org/hemi/en/emisferica- 111- decolonial- gesture/carcamo. 5 MillalØn et al., Escucha Winka!. Accessed April 4, 2017. http://hemispheric

institute.org/hemi/en/emisferica- 111- decolonial- gesture/carcamo.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

This page intentionally left blank

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Ades, Dawn, Rita Eder, and Graciela Speranza, eds. Surrealism in Latin America: Vivísmo Muerto. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2012.

Adorno, Rolena. Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru. Austin: University o� Texas Press, 2000.

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.

Alco�f, Martín Linda. �The Construction o� Indigenous Peoples.� In Thinking from the Underside of History: Enrique Dussel�s Philosophy of Liberation, edited by Linda Martín Alco�f and Eduardo Mendieta. Oxford: Rowman and Little�eld, 2000.

Aldred, Lisa. �Plastic Shamans, Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age Commercializa- tion o� Native American Spirituality.� American Indian Quarterly 24, no. 3 (2000): 329�53.

Aldunate, Victoria, and Julieta Paredes. Constuyendo Movimientos. La Paz: Hilva- nando, 2009.

Alexander, Jacqui M. Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Poli- tics, and the Sacred. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.

Alfaro, Raquel. �Mujeres creando comunidad: Feminización de la comunidad.� Bolivian Studies Journal, Revista de Estudios Bolivianos, issues 15�18 (2010): 211�36.

Alsina, Miguel Rodrigo. �Elementos para una comunicación intercultural.� Re- vista ��� �� 36 (1997): 11�21.

`lvarez GonzalØz, Freddy Javier. �El Buen Vivir, Un Paradigma Anti- Capitalista,� Pacarina del Sur: Revista de Pensameinto Crítico Latinoamericano, November 2016.

Alvarez, Sonia E., Evelyn Dagnino, and Arturo Escrobar, eds. Cultures of Politics and Politics of Culture: Revisioning Latin American Social Movements. Dur- ham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.

Amend, Stephan, and Thora Amend, eds. National Parks without People? The South American Experience. Cambridge: World Conservation Union, 1995.

Anderson, Patrick. So Much Wasted: Hunger, Performance, and the Morbidity of Resistance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

166 B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Antileo Baeza, Luis CÆrcamo- Huechante, Margarita Calfío Montalva, and Her- son Huinca- Piutrin, eds. Awükan ka kuxankan zugu wajmapu mew: Violencias Coloniales en Wajmapu. Bilbao: Ediciones Comunidad de Historia Mapuche, 2015.

Anzaldœa, Gloria, Borderlands: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987.

Arguedas, JosØ María. Formación de una cultura nacional indoamericana. 2nd ed. Mexico City: Siglo Vienteuno Editores, 1997.

Bacigalupo, Ana Mariella. �Rethinking Identity and Feminism: Contribution of Mapuche Women and Machi from Southern Chile.� Hypatia 18, no. 2 (2003): 32�57.

Barker, Joanne. Native Acts: Law, Recognition, and Cultural Authenticity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.

Barker, Joanne, ed. Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.

Barrios Chœngara, Domitila, Victoria Ortiz, and Moema Viezzer. Let Me Speak! Testimony of Domítila: A Woman of the Bolivian Mines. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978.

Bass, Margot S., Matt Finer, Clinton N. Jenkins, Holger Kre�, Diego F. Cisneros- Heredia, Shawn F. McCraken, Nigel C. A. Pitman, Pether H. English, Kelly Swing, Gorky Villa, Anthony Di Fiore, Christian C. Voigt, and Thomas H. Kunz. �Global Conservation Signi�cance o� Ecuador�s Yasuní National Park.� ���� One Journal. January 19, 2010. http://www.plosone.org/.

Beasley- Murray, Jon. Posthegemony. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. New York: Penguin, 1972. Berger, Martin. Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2006. Bermann, CØlio. �Impasses e controvØrsias da hidreletricidade.� Estudos Avanca-

dos 21, no. 59 (2007): 139�53. Bhambra, Gurminder K. Connected Sociologies. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Braidotti, Rosi. Nomadic Theory. Columbia Press: New York, 2012. Bretón de Solo de Zaldívar. �Etnicidad, desarrollo y �buen vivir�: Re�exiones críti-

cas en perspectiva histórica.� European Review of Latin American and Carib- bean Studies/Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, no. 95 (October 2013): 71�95. www.erlacs.org.

Burman, Anders. �Chachawarmi: Silence and Rival Voices on Decolonization and Gender Politics in Andean Bolivia.� Journal of Latin American Studies, 43 (1) 65�91, February 2011.

Burns, Kathryn. Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

B I B L I O G R A P H Y 167

Byrd, Jodi. The Transits of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism. Minneapo- lis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

Carcamo- Huechante, Luis. �Indigenous Interference: Mapuche Use o� Radio in Times of Acoustic Colonialism.� Special issue, Latin American Research Re- view 48 (2013): 50�68.

Chen, Mel Y. Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering and Queer A�ect. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.

Childs, John Brown, and Guillermo Delgado- P. Indigeneity: Collected Essays. New Paci�c Press, 2012.

Clark, Timothy David. �Putting the Market in Its Place: Food Security in Three Mapuche Communities in Southern Chile.� Latin American Research Review 46, no. 2 (2011): 154�79, 267, 269.

Clastres, Pierre. Society against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology. New York: Zone Books, 1989.

Comunidad de Historia Mapuche. Ta iæ �jke xipa rakizuameluwün, Historia, colo- nialismo y resistencia desde el país Mapuche. Temuco: Ediciones Comunidad de Historia Mapuche, 2012.

Coole, Diana, and Samantha Frost, eds. New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.

Coryat, Diana. �Extractive Politics, Media Power, and New Waves o� Resistance against Oil Drilling in the Ecuadoran Amazon: The Case o� Yasunidos.� Jour- nal of International Studies 9 (2015): 3741�60.

Coulthard, Glen. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recogni- tion. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

Crowe, Joanna. The Mapuche in Modern Chile: A Cultural History. Gainsville: Uni- versity Press o� Florida, 2013.

�. �Mapuche Poetry in Post- Dictatorship Chile: Confronting the Dilemmas o� Neoliberal Multiculturalism.� Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (August 2008): 221�40.

de la Cadena, Marisol. Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919�1991. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.

De la Campo, RomÆn. Latin Americanism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

Deleuze, Gilles. �Postscript on the Societies of Control.� October 59 (Winter 1992): 3�7.

De Loria, Phillip J. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Delsing, Riet. Articulating Rapa Nui: Polynesian Cultural Politics in Latin American

Nation- State. Honolulu: University o� Hawai�i Press, 2015. De Marchi, Massimo, Salvatore Eugenio Pappalardo, and Francesco Ferrarese.

�Zona Intangible Tagaeri Taromenane (����): Delimitación cartogram�ca, anÆlisis geogrÆ�co y pueblos indígenas aislados en el camaleónico sistema ter- ritorial del Yasuni.� Quito, Ecuador: Independently published, 2013.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

168 B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Den Berghe, Van, Pierre L. and Jorge Flores Ochoa. �Tourism and Nativistic Ideol- ogy in Cuzco, Peru.� Annals of Tourism Research 27, no. 1 (2000): 7�26.

de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemi- cide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2014.

Diawara, Manthia. �Édouard Glissant�s Worldmentality: An Introduction to One World in Relation.� Accessed February 13, 2017. http://www.documenta14.de /en/south/34_douard_glissant_s_worldmentality_an_introduction_to_one _world_in_relation.

Doyle, Jennifer. Hold It Against Me: Di�culty and Emotion in Contemporary Art. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.

Drzewieniecki, Joanna. �Indigenous People, Law, and Politics.� Paper presented at Latin American Studies Association, September 28�30, 1995, Washington D.C.

Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1935.

�. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago, IL: A. C. McClurg, 1903. Dussel, Enrique. Ethics of Liberation: In the Age of Globalization and Exclusion,

1973. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. �. �Europe, Modernity, and Eurocentrism.� Nepantla: Views from South 1,

no. 3 (2000): 465�78. �. �Transmodernity and Interculturality: An Interpretation from the Per-

spective o� Philosophy,� Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso- Hispanic World (Spring 2012): 28�58.

�. The Underside of Modernity, Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, Taylor, and the Philoso- phy of Liberation. New York: Prometheus Books, 1998.

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke Uni- versity Press, 2004.

Escobar, Arturo. Territories of Di�erence: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.

Estermann, Josef. �Ecoso�a Andina.� In Bifurcación del buen vivir y el Sumak Kawsay, edited by Eduardo Gudynes, Jose� Estermann, Freddy Alvarez, Javier Medina, and Atawallpa Oviedo Freire. Quito, Ecuador: Ediciones Sumak, 2014.

Falconi TrÆvez, Diego, Santiago Castellano, and María Amelia Viterbi, eds. Re- sentir lo queer en AmØrica Latina: Dialogos desde/con el sur. Barcelona and Madrid: Eguales, 2013.

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks, New York: Grove Press, 1952. �. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. Ferguson, Roderick. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. Min-

neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. �. The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Dif-

ference. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2012. Ferreira da Silva, Denise. Toward a Global Idea of Race. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 2007.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

B I B L I O G R A P H Y 169

Finer, Matt, Varsha Vijay, Salvatore, Eugenio Pappalardo, and Massimo de Marchi. �La frontera extractiva avanza en el Parque Nacional Yasuní.� Geoyasuni. November 12, 2013. http://www.geoyasuni.org/?p=1283.

Fong, Sarah, Rebekah Garrison, Macarena Gómez- Barris, and Ho�esta Mo�e�hahne. �Decolonizing Horizons� in Amerasia Journal 42, no. 3 (2016): 129�41.

Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Politics: Lectures at the CollŁge de France, 1978�1979. New York: Picador, 2004.

�. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. First published in 1975.

�. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the CollŁge de France, 1977�1978. New York: Picador, 2010.

�. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the CollŁge de France, 1975�1976. New York: Picador, 2003.

Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973.

Galindo, María. �Constitución política feminista del estado: El país imposible que construmos las mujeres / Political Feminist State Constitution: The Nation We Impossibly Build as Women.� In �Decolonial Gesture,� edited by Maca- rena Gómez- Barris, Marcial Godoy- Anativia, and Jill Lane, special issue, E- misfØrica 11, no. 1 (July 2014). Accessed March 18, 2017. http://hemispheric institute.org/hemi/es/e- misferica- 111- gesto- decolonial/galindo.

�. No se puede descolonizar sin despatriarchalizar: Teoría y propuesta de la despatriarcalización. La Paz: Mujeres Creando, 2013.

García Barrera, Mabel. �El discurso poØtico Mapuche y su vinculación con los �temas de Resistencia cultural.� � Revista Chilena de Literatura, no. 68 (April 2006): 169�97.

Garriga- López, Claudia So�a. �Transfeminist Crossroads: Reimagining the Ecua- dorian State,� Transgender Studies Quarterly 3, no. 1�2 (2017): 104�19.

Gelles, Paul H. �Introduction.� In Andean Lives: Gregorio Condori Mamani and Asunta Quispe HuamÆn. Austin: University o� Texas Press, 1986.

Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, and Opposition in Globaliz- ing California. Berkeley: University of California, 2005.

�. �What Is to Be Done?� American Studies Association, Presidential Ad- dress. American Quarterly 63, no. 2 (June 2011): 245�65.

Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.

Goeman, Mishuana R. and Jennifer Nez Denetdale. �Native Feminisms: Lega- cies, Interventions, and Indigenous Sovereignties.� Wicazo Sa Review 24, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 9�13.

Gómez- Barris, Macarena. �Andean Translations: New Age Tourism and Cultural Exchange in the Sacred Valley.� Special issue, Latin American Perspectives (August 6, 2012): 68�78.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

170 B I B L I O G R A P H Y

�. �Mapuche Hunger Acts: Epistemology of the Decolonial.� Transmoder- nity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso- Hispanic World 1, no. 3 (2012): 1�13.

�. �Mapuche Mnemonics: Reversing the Colonial Gaze through New Visu- alities o� Extractive Capitalism.� Radical History Review, vol. 2016, no. 124: 1, 90�101.

�. �Mnemonic Visuality: Mapuche Cultural Memory.� Special issue, Mem- ory Studies Journal, 90�101.

�. Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile. Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 2009.

Gómez- Barris, Macarena, and Clara IrazÆbal. �Transnational Meanings of La Vir- gen de Guadalupe: Religiosity, Space and Culture at Plaza Mexico.� Culture and Religion 10, no. 3 (2007): 339�57. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp /content~content=a916553642~db=all~jumptype=rss.

Gómez- Barris, Macarena, and Herman Gray. Toward a Sociology of a Trace. Min- neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Gómez- Barris, Macarena, Marcial Godoy- Anativia, and Jill Lane, eds. �De- colonial Gesture.� Special issue, E- misfØrica 11, no. 1 (2014). Accessed May 14, 2017. http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/e- misferica/1834�111- the - decolonial- gesture.

Gopinath, Gayatri. Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Min- neapolis: Minnesota, 1997.

Green, Sharyl, and Peter Lackowski. �Bolivian Radical Feminist Maria Galindo on Evo Morales, Sex- Ed, and Rebellion in the Universe o� Women.� Upside Down World. April 2, 2010. http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia- archives- 31 /3549�bolivian- radical- feminist- maria- galindo- on- evo- morales- sex- ed - and- rebellion- in- the- universe- of- women.

Groesfoguel, Ramon. �The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond Political Economy Paradigms, Journal of Cultural Studies, volume 21 (2007): 211�23.

Gudynas, Eduardo. Ecología, economía, y etica el desarrollo sostenible. Montevideo, Uruguay: ����� , 2002. http://www.ecologiapolitica.net/gudynas/Gudynas DS5.pdf.

Gudynas, Eduardo, and Alberto Acosta. �El buen vivir mas allÆ del desarrollo.� Que Hacer (2011): 71�81.

Guha, Ranajit, ed. A Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986�1995. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Guidotti- HernÆndez, Nicole. Unspeakable Violence: Remapping US and Mexican National Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.

GutiØrrez Vilches, Daniel. �Chilean Legislation on National Parks: Use o� Natural Resources.� In National Parks without People? The South American Experience,

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

B I B L I O G R A P H Y 171

edited by Stephan Amend and Thora Amend, Cambridge: World Conserva- tion Union, 1995.

Halberstam, J. Jack. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: ��� Press, 2005.

Hale, Charles. MÆs que un indio: Racial Ambivalence and Neoliberal Multicultural- ism in Guatemala. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2006.

Hall, Stuart. �Conclusion: The Multicultural Question,� in Un/Settled Multicultur- alisms, Diasporas, Entanglements, Transruptions. Edited by Barnor Hesse. New York: Zed Books, 2000.

�. �Negotiating Carribean Identities.� New Left Review I /209, January- February 1995.

Harris, Cheryl. �Whiteness as Property.� Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993), 1709�91.

Heelas, Paul. The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacraliza- tion of Modernity. New York: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

Hill, David. �Ecuador Pursued China Oil Deal while Pledging to Protect Yasuni, Papers Show.� Guardian, February 19, 2014.

Hill, Michael D. �Contesting Patrimony: Cusco�s Mystical Tourist Industry and the Politics of Incanismo.� Ethnos 72, no. 4 (December 2007): 433�60.

�. �Inca of the Blood, Inca of the Soul: Embodiment, Emotion, and Racial- ization of the Peruvian Mystical Tourist Industry.� Journal of the American Academy of Religion 76, no. 2 (June 2008): 251�79.

Hochberg, Gil Z. Visual Occupations: Violence and Visibility in a Conflict Zone. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.

Huenchuleo, Jimena Pichinao. �La Mercantilizacón del Mapuche Mapu: Hacia la expoliación absoluta,� in Awükan ka kuxankan zugu wajmapu mew: Violen- cias Coloniales en Wajmapu. Edited by Enrique Antileo Baeza, Luis CÆrcamo- Huechante, Margarita Calfío Montalva, Herson Huinca- Piutrin. Bilbao: Edi- ciones Comunidad de Historia Mapuche, 2015.

Huinao, Gabriela. Desde el fogón de una casa de putas Williche/From the Hearth within a House of Williche Prostitutes. Independently published. Santiago, Chile, 2012.

Ingold, Tom. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill. New York: Psychology Press, 2000.

Jenkins, Phillip. Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Jones, Tom, Michael Schmudiach, Matthew Daniel Mason, Amy Lonetree, and George A. Greendeer. People of the Big Voice: Photographs of Ho- Chunk Fami- lies by Charles Van Schaick, 1879�1942. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 2011.

Kauanui, J. K�haulani. Hawaiian Blood: Colonalism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity. Durham: Duke University Press.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

172 B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Klubock, Thomas M. La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile�s Fron- tier. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.

Kohn, Eduardo. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014.

Kuecker, Glen. �Fighting for the Forests: Grassroots Resistance to Mining in Northern Ecuador.� Latin American Perspectives, 34, no. 2 (March 2007): 94�107.

Lanigan, Richard L. Speaking and Semiology. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 1991. Lehm, Zulema, and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Los artesansos libertarios y la Øtica

del trabajo. La Paz, Bolivia: Taller de Historia Oral Andina, 1988. León Mantilla, Christian Manuel. Reinventando al Otro: El Documental Indigenista

en el Ecuador, 2010. Leuthold, Steven. Indigenous Aesthetics: Native Art, Media, and Identity. Durham,

NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Pro�t

from Identity Politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999. Livingston, Ira. Between Science and Literature: An Introduction to Autopoetics.

Champaign: University o� Illinois Press, 2006. Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Durham, NC: Duke University

Press, 2015. Lowry, Michael, and Robert Sayre. Romanticism against the Tide of Modernity.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983. Maathai, Wangari. The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experi-

ence. New York: Lantern Books, 2003. Maldonado- Torres, Nelson. Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. �. �Thinking through the Decolonial Turn: Post- Continental Interventions

in Theory, Philosophy, and Critique�An Introduction.� Trans- Modernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso- Hispanic World 1, issue 2 (Fall 2011): 1�15.

Mallon, Florencia E. La sangre del copihue: La comunidad mapuche de NicolÆs Allío y el Estado Chileno, 1906�2001. Santiago, Chile: Lom Ediciones, 2005.

Martinez, Elizabeth. Yasuní: El tortuoso camino de Kitoto a Quito. Quito, Ecuador: Abya-Yala, 2009.

Martínez, Esperanza and Alberto Acosta. La Naturaleza con derechos: de la �loso- fía a la política. Quito, Ecuador: Ediciones Abya- Yala, 2011.

Martinez, Jacqueline. Phenomenology of Chicana Experience and Identity: Com- munication and Transformation in Practice. Rowman & Little�eld Publishers, 2000.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

B I B L I O G R A P H Y 173

Maturana, Humberto. �Response to Berman�s Critique of the Tree o� Knowledge.� Journal of Humanistic Psychology 31, no. 2 (1991).

Maturana, Humberto, and Francisco Varela. El Ærbol del conocimiento: Las bases biológicas del entendimiento humano. Santiago, Chile, Editorial Universitaria, 1984.

McKittrick, Katherine. Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.

Melamed, Jodi. Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Capitalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

Mendoza, Zoila. �From Folklore to Exotica: Yma Sumac and the Performance of Inca Identity.� Appendix, Out Loud, August 29, 2013. Accessed March 19, 2017. http://theappendix.net/issues/2013/7/from- folklore- to- exotica- yma- sumac - and- inca- identity.

Merleau- Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge, 1965. First published in 1945.

Mignolo, Walter D. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, De- colonial Options. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.

�. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.

�. �Modernity and Decoloniality.� October 2011. Accessed March 13, 2017. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo- 9780199766581 /obo- 9780199766581�0017.xml.

MillalØn, JosØ, Pablo MarimÆn, Rodrigo Levil, and Sergio Caniuqueo. Escucha Winka! Santiago, Chile: Lom Ediciones, 2005.

Mirzoe�f, Nicholas. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.

Mo�e�hahne, Ho�esta. �Spaces o� Violence: Indigenous Figuration and Los Angeles Colonial Culture.� PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, 2017.

Moreiras, Alberto. The Exhaustion of Di�erence: The Politics of Latin American Cultural Studies. Durham: Duke Unversity Press, 2001.

Morgenson, Scott. �The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now.� Settler Colonial Studies 1, no. 1 (2011): 52�76.

Moten, Fred. In In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minne- apolis: University of Minnesota, 2003.

Moten, Fred, and Stefano Harney. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Study. New York: Minor Compositions, 2014.

Motta, Roberto. �Ethnicity, Purity, the Market, and Syncretism in Afro- Brazilian Cults.� In Reinventing Religions: Syncretism and Transformation in Africa and the Americas, edited by Sidney Green�eld and Droogers Andre, 71�85. New York: Rowman and Little�eld, 2001.

Muæoz, Jose. Cruising Utopia, The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: ��� Press, 2009.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

174 B I B L I O G R A P H Y

�. Disidenti�cations: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minne- apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

Nash, June. We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us. New York: Columbia Univer- sity Press, 1993.

�Nazis y Movimiento Nazi en Chile, 1931�45, Centro de Estudios Miguel Enriquez (���),� Archivo Chile: Historia Politico Social, Movimiento Popular. Ac- cessed May 16, 2017. http://www.archivochile.com/Poder_Dominante/doc _gen/PDdocgen0007.pdf.

Ochoa, Marcia. Queen for a Day: Transformistas, Beauty Queens, and the Perfor- mance of Femininity in Venezuela. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.

O�Toole, Rachel. Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru. Pittsburgh: University o� Pittsburgh Press, 2012.

Oviedo Freire, Atawallpa. Bifurcación del buen vivir y el Sumak Kawsay. Quito, Ecuador: Multiversidad Yachay Wasi, 2014.

�. Buen vivir vs. Sumak Kawsay: Reforma capitalista y revolución alter- nativa: Una propuesta desde los Andes para salir de la crisis global. Quito, Ecua- dor: Ediciones, ������ , 2013.

Paredes, Julieta. Hilando Fino: Desde el feminismo comunitario. La Paz, Bolivia: El Rebozo Collective, 2008.

Parks, Lisa, and James Schwoch, eds. Down to Earth: Satellite Technologies, Indus- tries, and Cultures. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012.

Perez, Emma. Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

PØrez, Laura. Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities. Dur- ham: Duke University Press, 2007.

�. �Enrique Dussel�s Etica de la liberación, US Women of Color Decoloniz- ing Practices, and Coalitionary Politics amidst Di�ference.� Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences 18, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 121�46.

Piæa, Juan AndrØs, ed. Conversaciones con la poesía chilena: Nicanor Parra, Ed- uardo Anguita, Gonzalo Rojas, Enrique Lihn, Oscar Hahn, Raœl Zurita. San- tiago, Chile: PehØn, 1990.

Pinho, Osmundo. Preface to Portuguese translation of The Undercommons. In �Decolonial Gesture,� edited by Macarena Gómez- Barris, Marcial Godoy- Anativia, and Jill Lane, special issue, E- misfØrica (2014). Accessed March 20, 2017. http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/emisferica- 111- decolonial- gesture /harney#.

Pinto, Jorge. La Formación del estado y la nación, y el pueblo mapuche: De la inclu- sión a la exclusión. Santiago, Chile: Dibam, Centro de Investigaciones Diego Barros Arana, 2003.

Pinto, Maria. �Feminist Constitution.� Republished in �Decolonial Gesture,� edited by Macarena Gómez- Barris, Marcial Godoy- Anativia, and Jill Lane, special issue, E- misfØrica (2014). Accessed March 20, 2017. http://hemispheric institute.org/hemi/en/emisferica- 111- decolonial- gesture/galindo.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

B I B L I O G R A P H Y 175

Poole, Deborah. Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.

Postero, Nancy Grey. �Andean Utopias in Evo Morales�s Bolivia.� Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 2, no. 1 (2007): 1�27.

�. Now We Are Citizens: Indigenous Politics in Postmulticultural Bolivia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Pratt, Mary Louise. �Arts of the Contact Zone,� ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, Ways of Reading. New York: Bedford/St. Martin, 1999.

�. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992.

Quijano, Anibal. �Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.� Cultural Studies: The Decolonial Option 21, issue 2�3 (April 2007): 168�78.

�. �Coloniality o� Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.� Nepantla: Views from the South 1, no. 3 (2000): 533�80.

Quimantœ. A Mapuche Collective, Resistencias Mapuche al Extractivismo. Santiago: Mapuexpress, 2017.

Raheja, Michell. Reservation Realism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Represen- tations of Native Americans in Film. Lincoln, NE: University o� Nebraska, 2011.

Richard, Nelly. Margins and Institutions: Art in Chile since 1973, Art and Text. Spe- cial issue, vol. 21, 1986.

Richards, Patricia. �O� Indians and Terrorists: How the State and Local Elites Construct the Mapuche in Neoliberal Multicultural Chile.� Journal of Latin American Studies 42, no. 1 (2010): 59�90.

Richter, Gerhard, ed. Benjamin�s Ghosts: Interventions in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory. Palo Alto, Stanford University Press: 2002.

Rivera Cusicanqui, Sylvia. �The Notion o� �Rights� and the Paradoxes o� Postcolo- nial Modernity: Indigenous Peoples and Women in Bolivia.� Qui Parle: Criti- cal Humanities and Social Sciences, 18, no. 2 (2010): 29�54.

�. �Ser mujer indígena, chola o birlocha en la Bolivia postcolonial de los aæos 90,� La Paz: Ministerio de Desarrollo Humano, Secretaría Nacional de Asuntos Øtnicos, de GØnero y Generacionales, 1996.

Robbins, Nicholas. Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011.

Robinson, Cedric. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill: University o� North Carolina Press, 1983.

Rodriguez, Juana. Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

Róman- Odio, Clara. Sacred Iconographies in Chicana Cultural Production. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2013.

Roy, Anrudhati. Capitalism: A Ghost Story. New York: Verso Books, 2014. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

176 B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Saldaæa- Portillo, María Jose�na. Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

Salvatore, Ricardo D. Disciplinary Conquest: U.S. Scholars in South America 1900� 1945. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.

Sanjines, Javier. Mestizaje Upside Down: Aesthetic Politics in Modern Bolivia. Pitts- burgh, PA: University o� Pittsburgh Press, 2004.

Saskia, Sassen. Expulsion: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cam- bridge: Belknap Press, 2014.

Schavelzon, Salvador. Plurinacionalidad y vivir bien/Buen vivir: Dos conceptos leídos desde Bolivia y Ecuador post- constituyentes. Quito, Ecuador: Abya Yala, 2015.

Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

See, Sarita. �Accumulating the Primitive.� Settler Colonial Studies 6, no. 2 (2016): 164�73.

Shae�fer- Gabriel, Felicity. �Technologies of Subjectivity and Mobility across the Americas.� American Quarterly 58, no. 3 (September 2006): 891�914.

Simpson, Audra. �The State Is a Man: Theresa Spence, Loretta Saunders and the Gender of Settler Sovereignty.� Theory & Event 19, no. 4 (2016).

Singh, Julietta. Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.

Slater, Candace. Entangled Edens: Visions of the Amazon. Berkeley: University of California, 2002.

Snavely, Cynthia A. �Native American Spirituality: Its Use and Abuse by Anglo- Americans.� Journal of Religious and Theological Information, Volume 4, Issue 1 (2001): 91�103.

Snodgrass-Godoy, Angelina. �Converging on the Poles: Law and Inquiry.� Journal of the Amerian Bar Foundation 30, no. 3 (July 2005).

Spedding, Allison. De cuando en cuando Saturnina. La Paz, Bolivia: Editorial Mama Huachaco, 2005.

Stern, Steve. Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries. Madison: University o� Wisconsin Press, 1987.

Stoler, Ann. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Strosnider, William H. J. �Acid Mine Drainage at Cerro Rico de Potosí II: Severe Degredation of the Upper Río Pilcomayo Watershed.� Environmental and Earth Sciences 64, no. 4 (2011): 911�23.

Taussig, Michael. Shamanism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Theidon, Kimberley. Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru. Phila- delphia: University o� Pennsylvania Press, 2012.

Troncoso Araos, Ximena. �MariluÆn: Lautaro en la encrucijada.� Anales de Litera- tura Chilena 4, no. 4 (December 2003): 59�72.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

B I B L I O G R A P H Y 177

Tuck, Eve and K. Wayne Yang. �Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,� in Decoloniza- tion: Indigeneity, Education and Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1�40.

Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York: Zed Books, 1999.

Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze. London: Sage Publications, 2002. Valaskakis, Gail Guthrie. �Indian Country: Negotiating the Meaning o� Land in

Native America.� In Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies, edited by Cary Nelson and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar. New York: Routledge, 1997.

�. Indian Country: Essays on Contemporary Native Culture. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005.

Valderrama FernÆndez, Ricardo, and Carmen Escalante GutiØrrez. Andean Lives: Gregorio Condori Mamani and Asunta Quispe HuamÆn. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.

Valencia, Sayak. �Interferencias transfeministas y pospornogrÆ�cas a la colonia- lidad del ver.� In �Decolonial Gesture,� edited by Macarena Gómez- Barris, Marcial Godoy- Anativia, and Jill Lane, special issue, E- misfØrica 11, no. 1 (2014). Accessed March 18, 2017. http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/es /e- misferica- 111- gesto- decolonial/valencia.

Veltmeyer, Henry, and James Petras. The New Extractivism: A Post- Neoliberal De- velopment Model or Imperialism of the Twenty- First Century? London: Zed Books, 2014.

Veracini, Lorenzo. Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Vich, Victor. �The �Royal Tour� of Alejandro Toledo.� Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 16, no. 1 (March 2007): 1�10.

Viteri, María Amelia, Cultural Imaginaries in the Residential Migration to Cota- chachi, Journal of Latin American Geography 14, no. 1 (2015): 119�38.

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. �Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Else- where.� Four Lectures Given in the Department of Social Anthropolgy, Uni- versity of Cambridge, February� March 1998. Accessed March 30, 2017. http:// haubooks.org/cosmological- perspectivism- in- amazonia/.

�. �Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies.� Common Knowledge 10, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 463�84. Accessed May 16, 2017. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/171397.

�. �Perspectivismo y multinaturalismo en la AmØrica Indígena.� In Tierra adentro: Territorio indígena y percepción del entorno, edited by Alexandre SurrallØse and Pedro García Hierro, 37�80. Lima, Peru: International Work Group for Indigenous A�fairs, 2004.

Wang, Guangxing, and Quihao Weng. Remote Sensing of Natural Resources. New York: CRC Press, 2013.

Webber, Je�frey R. Red October: Left- Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia. Lei- den, Germany: Brill, 2011.

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

I N D E X

Acción Ecológica (Ecological Action), 33, 141n18, 150n29

Ades, Dawn, 82 African diaspora, transcultural history

and, 143n3, 143n8 Afro-Indigenous cultures: el buen vivir

(good living) practices and, 23�25, 150n13; resistance to hydroelectricity and, 101�6; slave labor and, 159n3

Agamben, Giorgio, 75�76 agrarian reform, spiritual tourism and,

54�55 Aguilar, Laura, 107 Ahmed, Sara, 146n31 Aldred, Lisa, 42 Aldunate Morales, Victoria, 123�24 Along the Archival Grain (Stoler), 142n22 `lvarez Gonzalez, Freddy Javier, 22�23 Amazon, colonial representations of,

19�20 Amazon Watch, 150n22 anarchism, history in Bolivia of, 118�20 anarcho-Indigenous feminism: chola

market women and, 116�20; mining industry and, 114�16; resistance and, 16, 112�32

Andean cultures: language and media- tion of, 61�65; phenomenology in, new settler colonialism and, 39�65; spiri- tual tourism and, 13�14

Andeanism, spatial imaginaries of, 43 Andean Lives (Valderrama FernÆndez

and Escalante GutiØrrez), 58�59 Anderson, Patrick, 126 Anthropocene: Andean phenomenology

and, 49, 63�65; extractive capitalism and, 4�5

Anti-Terrorist Law (Chile), 71 Anzaldœa, Gloria, 49 Arauco-Malleco Coordinator (���),

73�74 Arguedas, JosØ María, 54 Asociación de Afectados por el Proyecto

Hidroelectrico El Quimbo (Associa- tion of A�fected Peoples of the Quimbo Hydroelectric Power, ���������), 93�96, 109, 136

asymmetrical power relations, Andean phenomenology and, 41�65

Athualpa (Incan King), 44 authenticity: consumption and loss of,

42, 151n2; tourism and desire for, 56�57, 152n15

autopoiesis, 146n26; o� biological sys- tems, 18�19

AvilÆ, Jose, 94 ayahuasca (hallucinogenic plant), 50 Ayala, Matías, 79�80 Aymara Indigenous people, 110�13, 117;

anarcho-feminism and, 124�27, 162n33 ayullu system, 117�20, 124�25

Barker, Joanne, 135 Beijing Consensus, 139n4 Benjamin, Walter, 77 Bennett, Jane, 100 Berger: Jon, 139n1; Martin, 84�87 Berman, Morris, 146n27 Beyond Control (Caycedo), 98 Bhambra, Gurminder K., 148n36

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/4/2022 7:10 AM via . All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use