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Blog series – Heritage, belonging and land: global perspectives on Grace Ndiritu’s ‘A Season of Truth and Reconciliation’ – Blog 3 – Lake Poopó as cultural heritage: the entangled futures of a drying water basin and the ‘people of the lake’

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Lake Poopó, chronicle of a death foretold?

Lake Poopó is a shallow, saline lake situated in the Andean highlands of Bolivia at an altitude of about 3,700 meters. It constitutes the country’s second largest lake, after Lake Titicaca. While the lake’s size has always been subject to extreme variability, its surface during stable, dryer seasons used to span 1000 km2. Late 2015, however, Lake Poopó’s vast body of water dried up almost completely. The desertification is the outcome of slow natural processes in combination with anthropogenic climate change factors. Mining, irrigation, and urbanisation in the broader basin have led to a loss in water quantity and quality (Marti-Cardona & Torres-Batlló, 2021). Poor water management has dramatically sped up the area’s natural salinization. The lake is situated within an endorheic basin, which means that its water has no outflow to the ocean, and can only evaporate. Salt and waste are trapped in the retained water, condemning the lake to a future as a salt flat.

Landsat recording of Lake Poopó, 12 April 2013. NASA Earth Observatory images by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey (Wikimedia Commons).
Landsat recording of Lake Poopó, 15 Januar 2016. NASA Earth Observatory images by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey (Wikimedia Commons).

The dramatic transformation of the lake directly affects the livelihoods of the communities living in the basin, with many migrating in search for work. The impact is particularly significant in the indigenous communities of the Uru Qot Z’oñi people (Perreault, 2020). Known as ’people of the lake’, and generally referred to as ‘Uru-Murato’, this ethnic minority group maintains a very intimate bond with this body of water, economically and spiritually. However, throughout their history this identification with the lake has been used as an excluse to deny these communities land rights, leading to dispossession and displacement (Barra Saavedra, Lara Barrientos & Coca Cruz, 2011). Through centuries-long processes of colonial and inter-ethnic discrimination, exploitation and assimilation, only three small communities still survive on the former shores of the shrunken lake, disconnected from other Uru ethnic sub-groups, the Uru-Chipaya and Uru-Iruhito. The lake’s announced death seems to seal the fate of the Uru Qot Z’oñi communities as well, on the brink of becoming climate refugees. In their strategy to guarantee the entangled survival of their people and the lake, they managed to have their ‘knowledge, wisdom and ways of life linked to water as traditional living spaces and ways of subsistence’ declared Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2019 by the Bolivian state.

This blog assesses how the link between the Qot Z’oñi people and the lake has been ‘naturalized’ and eventually ‘heritagized’ in a contradictory context of climate change and environmental policies, discrimination and indigenous revitalization. While this complex history deserves a more in-depth elaboration, the aim of this blog is to briefly cover how the exploitation and contamination of Lake Poopó has deprived the Uru from their most basic means of subsistence, leading to the extreme drought of 2015. Considering different stakeholders’ responses to the lake’s transformation since the late 20th century, the blog finally reflects on what role “heritage”, memory and related artistic and ritual practices play in the Qot Z’oñi’s efforts to recover and gain recognition of their identity and their ways of life.

The intimate bond between Uru communities and Lake Poopó: from land grab to water grab

As the people inhabiting the Andean central high plateau the longest, the Uru people self-identify and are generally acknowledged as Qot Z’oñi or ‘people of the lake’. This ethnic identity seems to be supported by colonial accounts, Uru memory and mythology, and ethnographic observations of the Uru as fishers and hunter-gatherers of aquatic plants and birds and their eggs. However, ethnohistorical research suggests that this apparently “natural” bond with the lake obscures a more complex history through which Uru communities gradually lost their lands, and thereby their agricultural and pastoral practices (Barra Saavedra et al., 2011).

Through the assignment of fiscal categories and a process of “othering”, an initially heterogeneous Uru population was gradually excluded from land access and reduced to an ever smaller group of poor, marginalized families (Wachtel, 1978). In order to remain outside the reach of discriminatory colonial politics and inter-ethnic exploitation, the Uru families appropriated Lake Poopó as their refuge. The high reed vegetation named totora allowed them to retreat in a kind of marronage community, providing shelter and a means to construct houses and floating islands on the lake.

The intimate bond with the lake became a survival strategy, yet as the lake basin integrated deeper, albeit weakly, within an emerging state apparatus and market economy, this bond came under growing pressure. Throughout the 19th century, the lake’s fluctuating water levels seriously tested that survival strategy and drew the Uru closer into the logic of on-land settlement and labour exploitation (Mamani Humérez & Reyes Zárate, 2005). Episodes of drought motivated neighbouring Aymara communities to seize the “new” land for cultivation, initiating long cycles of conflict over land and at times forcing Uru to migrate and assimilate with dominant ethnic groups.

By the 1930-40s, the last group of Uru still remaining on Lake Poopó were forced to settle on land (Miranda, Moricio, Alvarez & Barragán, 1992). Out of the lake, their intimate bond with the water continued to offer a justification to other communities to deny them access to land. In addition, they gradually lost control over their access to water resources due to competition over, reduction and contamination of those resources. In the decades after pejerrey (silverside) fish was introduced in the lake in the 1950s, surrounding communities set up enterprises that obtained fishing concessions, an economy that boomed in the 1980s (Rocha Olivio, 2002, p. 97). In the following decades, the lake started to suffer more frequently from serious drying cycles (Satgé et al., 2017). Moreover, the effects of water extraction for irrigation and contamination caused by urban and mining activities became more evident. Pollution levels disturbed the dynamics that had interwoven Uru and lake life, taking the adaptive potential of the Uru’s survival strategy to the edge.

‘Heritage’ as an attempted ecological and cultural revitalization strategy

The changes in Lake Poopó started to attract attention among scientists and public institutions in the late 1970s, and especially from the 1990s onwards (Coronado Pando, 2009). This led to the design of action plans to combat drought and desertification with financial and technical support from international cooperation, including a major EU programme, and new initiatives to monitor changes in the broader water basin system that interconnected with Lake Titicaca (OEA, 1996; Comisión de las Comunidades Europeas & República de Perú y Bolivia, 1993; Vazquez Ruiz, 2018). Under growing national and international attention, and as a way of protecting the area’s biodiversity and culture, Lake Poopó was declared National Heritage and Ecological Reserve in 2000 by the Bolivian state. In 2002, the site was designated as a conservation site under the international Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.

Despite the research, the money and institutional arrangements, the heritage and conservation site was officially declared evaporated in December 2015. A year earlier, the massive death of aquatic fauna in the lake had already led to the declaration of Lake Poopó as a ‘natural disaster zone’ by the regional government, to enable authorities and international organizations to attract resources for the recovery of the lake’s water level and its biodiversity as well as communities’ livelihoods. However, few concrete initiatives followed. Around that time, the 14 million EU programme for the conservation and rehabilitation of the Poopó basin came to an end, unable to prevent the lake’s transformation to a ‘puddle’ on the brink of completely disappearing.

Just as during previous declines of the lake, the dramatic events in 2015 provoked scientific analyses, campaigns and popular media reports that tend to frame the fate of Lake Poopó and the Uru Qot Z’oñi as a rather linear tale of inevitable disappearance. Already in the 1990s, there was critique about how scientific and political responses to the desertification and contamination of the lake failed to consult and include Uru perspectives and experiences (Schwarz, 1996). Both the lake and the Qot Z’oñi tend to be reduced to passive residues of water and cultural practices respectively, detached from the intimate relations between not only water and humans, but also plants, animals, salt, and spiritual ‘presences’ (De Munter, Quintero & Rocha, 2019). Against such rather victimizing discourses, the remaining Qot Z’oñi community leaders and their families seek to revitalize their fragmented community organization and political representation. After establishing the ‘indigenous Uru nation’ in 1992 among different Uru groups, they initiated a demand for land titles before the National Institute for Land Reform in 1997, based on colonial documents that proved their control over the entire lake area. While unsuccessful, they gained access to some small patches of land around the lake thanks to land donations. This material reconstruction of their territory was accompanied by political mobilization and the recovery of ceremonial and artistic links with the lake. Since 2000, the Uru communities surrounding the lake have restored – and partially reinvented – the annual ritual offering to ‘Qucha Mama’, Mother Lake. Through artisanal crafts with different reed types that grow in and around the lake, the Uru families are generating a new, albeit precarious source of income, thereby demonstrating their rich knowledge of plant and animal life in and around the lake.

Annual ritual offering to ‘Qucha Mama’ in Lake Poopó. Picture by author, 30 August 2022.
Young Qot Z’oñi women walking towards what remains of the lake. Picture by author, 30 August 2022.

This process of revitalization and visibilization culminated in 2019 with the declaration of a law, co-designed among the communities and public institutions, to recognise their mutual bond with the lake as intangible heritage, thereby identifying the lake as a ‘traditional life space’ (Bolivia: Ley No 1255, 2019). ‘Heritage’ in this case encompasses knowledges, ancestral wisdom, subsistence practices, and ecological resources including the landscape produced through those knowledges and practices. Reflecting recent developments around biocultural heritage management, the law offers a good example of how indigenous peoples seek to bridge entrenched dichotomies between cultural heritage and nature conservation by recovering and demanding recognition for ‘traditional’ resource management practices in specific landscapes (Bridgewater, Rotherham, & Rozzi, 2019). Often, such examples derive from science- and or state-initiated conservation projects that seek to integrate indigenous knowledges as directly imported from an inert past (Sarmiento & Hitchner, 2019). Different from the 2000 heritage status, the Uru leadership was the demanding party for this law and was directly involved in its formulation, attempting to create an instrument that allows them to steward their historical memory and their landscape.

Of course, opting for heritage status is a well-known pragmatic strategy to bolster indigenous rights claims and generate economic perspectives. Article 3 of the law states explicitly that it aims to

promote actions … oriented towards … strengthening cooperation measures at the municipal, regional, departmental and national levels, to ensure that the Uru Indigenous Nation fully exercises its civil, social, economic, political, cultural, linguistic, educational, health, environmental rights, [and] respect for its ancestral lands and territories, housing, tourism, and hunting and fishing of unprotected wild animals.

However, as of today these remain mostly symbolic words, as a regulation still needs to be elaborated to be able to implement the law.

Mural in the community of Vilañeque. Picture by author, 2022.

Water, property, and reconciliation: The limits of heritage in the lake Poopó basin

The insecure future of the lake highlights the limits of heritage as a strategy for securing material and cultural rights. While Uru communities perceive the recognition of the site as Uru heritage as a means to defend their rights, it will not undo centuries of discrimination and othering, portraying the Uru as ‘savages’ and exploiting them in semi-enslaved relations. On top of landscape transformations depleting Uru heritage, the perpetuating unequal socio-economic relations with those communities constantly undermines the stewarding of Uru ‘traditional life space’. As the heritage status is explicitly linked to water, and not to a land-based territory, there will be every time ‘less’ heritage while the lake continues retreating. At the same time, the patches of dry land that appear tend to be seized by neighbouring indigenous non-Uru communities, even though this land is officially designated as state property.

It remains challenging to envision how heritage can help to disrupt the stark (inter-indigenous) inequalities and fragilities that have reorganized Lake Poopó into a sacrifice zone, and create openings towards ‘living together’. Yet, while this heritage of knowledge and practices is mostly a symbolic and nostalgic site for younger Uru generations—having never eaten fish from the lake, let alone been fishing in the lake—it nurtures a first step of reconciliation with their identity as ‘people of the lake’. It also forces authorities to recognize the Uru people and their culture, and sit around the table to support this process of revitalization, however still conditioning that process to its link with water without viable bases for recovering land rights.

References

Barra Saavedra, S. Z. de la, Lara Barrientos, M., & Coca Cruz, R. O. (2011). Exclusión y subalternidad de los urus del lago Poopó: discriminación en la relación mayorías y minorías étnicas. La Paz, Bolivia: PIEB.

Bolivia: Ley No 1255, 25 de octubre de 2019, no. 1255. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.lexivox.org/norms/BO-L-N1255.html

Bridgewater, P., Rotherham, I. D., & Rozzi, R. (2019). A critical perspective on the concept of biocultural diversity and its emerging role in nature and heritage conservation. People and Nature, 1(3), 291–304.

Comisión de las Comunidades Europeas & República de Perú y Bolivia. (1993). Plan director global binacional de protección – prevención de inundaciones y aprovechamiento de los recursos del lago Titicaca, Rio Desaguadero, Lago Poopo y Lago Salar de Coipasa (Sistema T.D.P.S.). La Paz, Bolivia: Intecsa, AR, CNR.

Coronado Pando, F. (2009). Una mirada a tres investigaciones sobre el lago Poopó. Tinkazos, 12(27), 183–186.

De Munter, K., Quintero, H. F. T., & RochaGrimoldi, R. C. (2019). Atencionalidad y líneas de vida en la malla Poopó-uru-qotzuñi (“gente del agua”). Antípoda: Revista de Antropología y Arqueología, 34, 19–40.

Ibarra Grasso, D. E. (1962). Los desconocidos Urus del Poopó. Zeitschrift Für Ethnologie, 87(1), 77-92.

Mamani Humérez, F., & Reyes Zárate, R. (2005). Conflictos intercomunitarios por el control del espacio. Aymaras y urus en la region del lago Poopó, 1770-1900. In XVIII Reunión Anual de Etnología 2004 (pp. 13-44). La Paz, Bolivia: MUSEF.

Marti-Cardona, B., & Torres-Batlló, J. (2021, January 11). Lake Poopó: why Bolivia’s second largest lake disappeared – and how to bring it back. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/lake-poopo-why-bolivias-second-largest-lake-disappeared-and-how-to-bring-it-back-152776

Miranda Mamani, L., Moricio Choque, D., Alvarez de Moricio, S., & Barragán R., R. (1992). Memorias de un olvido: testimonios de vida Uru-Muratos. La Paz, Bolivia: ASUR/hisbol.

OEA. (1996). Diagnóstico Ambiental del Sistema Titicaca-Desaguadero-Poopo-Salar de Coipasa (Sistema TDPS) Bolivia-Perú. Washington, D.C., USA: Organización de Estados Americanos,.

Perreault, T. (2020). Climate Change and Climate Politics: Parsing the Causes and Effects of the Drying of Lake Poopó, Bolivia. Journal of Latin American Geography, 19(3), 26–46.

Rocha Olivio, O. (2002). Diagnóstico de los recursos naturales y culturales de los lagos Poopo y Uru Uru, Oruro – Bolivia: para su nominación como Sitio Ramsar. La Paz, Bolivia: Convención RAMSAR.

Sarmiento, F., & Hitchner, S. (2019). Preface. In F. Sarmiento & S. Hitchner (Eds.), Indigeneity and the sacred: indigenous revival and the conservation of sacred natural sites in the Americas (pp. xiv – xxi). New York, USA: Berghan Books.

Satgé, F., Espinoza, R., Zolá, R. P., Roig, H., Timouk, F., Molina, J., Garnier, J., Calmant, S., Seyler, F., & Bonnet, M.-P. (2017). Role of Climate Variability and Human Activity on Poopó Lake Droughts between 1990 and 2015 Assessed Using Remote Sensing Data. Remote Sensing, 9(3), 218. doi:10.3390/rs9030218

Schwarz, B. (1996). La categoría neocolonial en la problemática ecológica de la Quta Pupu y del petpuju: Algunas consideraciones sobre el aspecto socio-étnico-cultural. In H. D. Ruiz, A. M. Mansilla, & W. I. Vargas (Eds.), Reunión Anual de Etnología 1995 (pp. 13–44). La Paz, Bolivia: MUSEF.

Vazquez Ruiz, A. (2018). Strengthening of clientelism by development cooperation. The case of the EU “Poopó Basin Program” (2010-2015) in Lake Poopó Basin (ORURO, BOLIVIA). Master thesis. Ghent, Belgium: Ghent University.

Wachtel, N. (1978). Hommes d’eau: le problème uru (XVIe-XVIIe siècle). Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 33(5-6), 1126–1159.

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Blog series – Heritage, belonging and land: global perspectives on Grace Ndiritu’s ‘A Season of Truth and Reconciliation’ – Blog 2 – Castle of Good Hope: from bastion of colonialism to beacon of decolonization?

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On 9 August 2017, a couple dozen activists gathered in front of the Castle of Good Hope in central Cape Town to mark International Indigenous People’s Day. Constructed between 1666 and 1679 at the behest of the Dutch East India Company, the Castle is South Africa’s oldest surviving colonial building and the epicentre from which settler colonialism spread across the subcontinent, leaving the indigenous people, commonly known as ‘Khoi and San’ or ‘Khoisan’ — a controversial term, subjugated, decimated and dispossessed (Verbuyst, 2022). Using the Castle as a base of operations, European settlers eventually broke down the Khoisan’s resistance and chased them away from the lands they traditionally occupied (Adhikari, 2010). The Khoisan could remain only as pacified colonial labourers with a Christianized identity stripped of references to indigenous culture, identity and modes of subsistence. This protracted process of assimilation reached its peak with the promulgation of the Population Registration Act of 1950, through which the apartheid regime categorized people according to supposedly innate and neatly bounded racial identities. The Khoisan were thereby definitively lumped together alongside various others, such as descendants of enslaved people from Asia and East Africa, as ‘Coloureds’: a label devoid of indigeneity, vaguely denoting mixed-race origins and situated between ‘Whites’ (i.e. Europeans and Afrikaners), ‘Blacks’ (i.e. the majority Bantu-speaking demographic) and ‘Indians’. Badgered by centuries of oppression, most Khoisan internalized their ‘Coloured’ identity and lost any meaningful connection to their ancestral roots, even if some kept the awareness alive covertly (Øvernes, 2019; Bam, 2021).

This changed dramatically with the democratic transition of 1994, when increasing numbers of ‘Coloureds’ were reclaiming Khoisan identities with a vengeance. Ever since, more and more Khoisan activists are demanding recognition and reparations from the state. One such occasion was the aforementioned protest, where the activists attempted to form an “Aboriginal Khoisan human chain” around the Castle to highlight how the Khoisan were still not recognized as indigenous people by the post-apartheid state, how their historical land claims unjustly fell outside of the scope of the official land reform program, and how the Khoisan were marginalized in various other cultural, political and economic domains (SAHRC, 2018). The Castle was chosen as the location to stage the protest due to its historical and symbolic significance and because it houses museums dealing with military history, art and colonialism, attracting thousands of visitors each year. Together with other dissenters, various Khoisan were for centuries imprisoned and tortured at the Castle, a history currently not adequately recognized and represented according to the activists. The “slaughterhouse” embodied centuries of unsubdued oppression. For them, it was better to tear down the offensive structure altogether.

However, not all Khoisan share in this damnation of the Castle. There have been various self-styled “decolonization” initiatives by the management of the Castle, which many Khoisan support or have givenimpetus to (Gilfellan, Hendricks & Sipoyo, 2019). It is moreover important to take into account that the Castle is not just a museum hub, a provincial and national heritage site or a popular location to host public events. Remarkably, as it remains under the custodianship of the Ministry of Defence and Military Veterans, the Castle still hosts military ceremonies and houses military equipment and personnel. Given the shared use of the site, the Castle is governed by its own legislation, the 1993 Castle Management Act, and since 2013, by a CEO and management board made up of representatives from various public entities, including the military, the city of Cape Town and South African Tourism Board. We do not have the space in this article to extensively detail the ways in which all stakeholders utilize and relate to the Castle. Rather, in keeping with the overarching theme of the blog series, we want to show below how the Khoisan are engaging with the Castle as ‘heritage’ in order to contest and/or (re)define the relationship between the site and the growing Khoisan community, particularly since 2013, when the current CEO, Calvyn Gilfellan, took office with a mandate to “decolonize” the building.

Decolonizing the Castle of Good Hope

Resurrection Day Event 2018 (Rafael Verbuyst)

Indeed, together with two colleagues, Gilfellan explained in a 2019 contribution for the South African Museums Association Bulletin that a deliberate choice was made in 2013 by the Castle Control Board to “reposition, reimagine and reimage the Castle of Good Hope into a beacon of hope” (Ibid.: 11). Although the precise reasons for this timing remain unclear — the article mentions “a global call for the redefining of the museum and its sector and the national appeal to address how museums are decolonised”, it is undoubtedly related to the rise of Khoisan activism during this time, even if they were not directly involved in determining the agenda. With decolonization as “a ‘code’ word”, this agenda was articulated in terms of “nation building and reconciliation”, pursuing UNESCO World Heritage Site Status and maximising tourism potential. However, as other stakeholders are not really highlighted in the article, at the core of this “decolonization and Africanisation drive” was (and is) “direct and robust engagement and programmatic activities” with the Khoisan, as well “acknowledging the significance of the connections between the Castle and the chequered and painful past of the country”. The Castle records show hundreds of engagements with Khoisan representatives in recent years. As Gilfellan explained in various contributions in Eerste Nasie Nuus [First Nation News], a Khoisan community newspaper, this ongoing dialogue allows for the Castle to shed its image as “a bastion of white colonialism” and “transform… into a living heritage space” (Gilfellan, 2014; 2016). To facilitate this, the new CEO not only established “the Centre for Memory, Healing and Learning” – essentially a conference space — but also brought the unwritten rule into effect that the Khoisan are free to utilize the Castle for events, meetings or ceremonies.

This has allowed for a wide range of activities to take place at the Castle since, from community-organized Khoisan language classes and book launches for Khoisan authors, to !Nau ceremonies, which some Khoisan representatives use to swear in tribal members and traditional leaders, and cultural festivals. A noteworthy example of the later was Aba Te, launched by Khoisan activists in August 2015 and involving educative and creative sessions covering art, history, hunting and gathering, cooking, plants, spirituality, indigenous music and medicinal practices. A year later, the same people involved with Aba Te created a “Khoi-khoi Village Scene” at the entrance of the Castle: “a new exhibition celebrating the journey, culture, heritage and aspirations of the first indigenous people”. As the main designer explained in Eerste Nasie Nuus: “[T]he KhoiSan kraal retains all the elements of authenticity”, which creates educational opportunities for youths in particular to learn about Khoisan identity, culture and history (Eerste Nasie Nuus correspondent, 2016).

Statues of resistance fighters, unveiled in 2016 (https://www.castleofgoodhope.co.za/index.php/gallery)

The CEO has also endeavoured through countless activities to have the Castle “recognized as a safe space to deal with the aftermath and pain of colonialism, slavery and apartheid” (Gilfellan, Hendricks & Sipoyo, 2019: 14). Some events have been more modest, such as private ‘cleansing’ ceremonies or Khoisan-organized tours of the building highlighting traumatic legacies, whereas others have been more largescale. An example of the latter was the “Resurrection Day Event”, a religious Khoisan-themed event organized by a local church on Easter Sunday 2018. The goal was for the Khoisan to gather en masse and “spiritually take possession of the gates trauma… to go back to the original sin” and carry out “a cleansing of the curses which have lingered for centuries, especially those emanating from the Castle and its torture chambers” (Verbuyst, 2022: 159-160). Similar rhetoric surfaced in the context of the Castle’s “commemoration”, rather than “celebration”, of its 350 years existence. As part of the events marking the occasion, the “soul” of Krotoa, a 17th century Khoisan woman of note, was symbolically “reburied” at the Castle by a sizeable Khoisan contingent (SABC News, 2016). Krotoa was however not featured among the four statues of Khoisan and non-Khoisan prisoners that were unveiled in the main courtyard. Instead, Krotoa was honoured with a commemorative wooden bench in one of the smaller courtyards of the complex. This stirred up quite the controversy. Various Khoisan representatives argued that a bench was disrespectful and insignificant. They claimed they had not been meaningfully consulted on the decision (eNCA, 2016).

Beyond the Castle: ongoing heritage tensions and the limits of decolonization

The fallout over the commemorative bench is an apt reminder that the Castle’s role as ‘heritage’ remains unsettled and fiercely contested. Echoing arguments often made elsewhere about material changes being a prerequisite for decolonization (Tuck & Yang, 2012), some of the Khoisan desire total ownership of the site and do not agree with the “nation-building” dimension of the Castle’s rebranding exercise (Gilfellan, Hendricks & Sipoyo, 2019: 13). Others want to transform the structure itself in more profound ways or become part of the Castle Control Board, which they are currently not represented in. William Langeveldt, a prominent activist who also temporarily acted as a Khoisan representative to the United Nations, has long been campaigning to transform the “Stone-Kraal” into a “Place of Love and Indigenous Healing” and the headquarters of a “Ministry of Indigenous Affairs” (Verbuyst, 2022: 253). In Langeveldt’s view, this would require renaming the five bastions of the Castle after indigenous nations, creating “storage facilities for organic food production” and “using the roofs to generate solar and wind energy”. So far, these types of ideas have not been taken on board by the management team at the Castle. There are also pressures for the Castle to respond to issues that do not directly relate to the building itself. At the 2017 Indigenous Peoples’ Day protest there was a telling moment when the protesters ceased marching across the perimeter of the Castle and pointed out how a group of homeless people, some of them stuck on social housing waiting lists for decades, had set up shelter just outside of the Castle’s walls. To the activists, their living conditions symbolized the ongoing marginalization of the Khoisan as many were “still” forced to sleep outside on the pavement and did not have decent access to basic services and infrastructure.

Housing is evidently not the responsibility of the Castle Management Board; nor can it satisfy everyone’s demands or is disagreement among the Khoisan something the Castle should get involved in. And yet, because it is such a symbolically significant location and housing conditions have such a painful historical legacy in South Africa, the Castle quickly becomes the focal point of these types of broader calls for decolonization linked to urgently needed material change. The Castle is not the only heritage site being contested in this manner in the City (or elsewhere). Just a few kilometres further, there is a fierce ongoing battle over the Two Rivers Urban Park, part of which is currently being redeveloped into a commercial and residential complex, with Amazon as the anchor tenant (Charles, 2022). Here too, the Khoisan community is split between those conditionally supporting the redevelopment and those opposing it on grounds that it is allegedly located on a “sacred site”. What makes the Castle unique, however, is that it has committed itself to decolonization and made it a priority to include the Khoisan in particular in decision making processes and dialogue, or at least allow them to use the space to host events, meetings and rituals. Further research is needed to ascertain how non-Khoisan stakeholders — the military in particular — feature in the Castle’s decolonization agenda and respond to Khoisan activism and its diverse engagements with the building. Moreover, the debate is ongoing about whether the Castle’s take on “decolonization” is in line with, a response to, or an attempt to co-opt the diverse calls for decolonization by Khoisan activists. However, as one Khoisan academic recognizes, for now the Castle’s decolonization agenda has allowed the Khoisan to create “a counter narrativewithin the space… by counter curating the castle as a site of memory” (Bam-Hutchison, 2016: 24). Ironically then, though not by coincidence, because of the Castle’s commitment to explore creative solutions and think outside of the box about ‘heritage’, the old bastion of colonialism and symbol of Khoisan oppression is becoming a prime facilitator for the growing indigenous revival movement in South Africa.

References

Adhikari, M. (2010). The Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Bam-Hutchison, J. (2016). Lalela: Occupying Knowledge Practices and Processes in Higher Education in South Africa (UCT as Case Study). Paper presented at the Social Anthropology department at University of Cape Town, Cape Town, 1 March.

Bam, J. (2021). Ausi Told Me: Why Cape Herstoriographies Matter. Cape Town: Jacana.

Charles, M. (2022, April 7). Work on River Club continues despite court order halting R6bn redevelopment. News24. Retrieved from https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/see-work-on-river-club-continues-despite-court-order-halting-r6bn-redevelopment-20220708

Eerste Nasie Nuus correspondent. (2016). Castle exhibition affirms first nation. Eerste Nasie Nuus, July edition, 15.

eNCA. (2016). Khoi community protesters disrupt Krotoa monument ceremony. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/8FLW0Xm23-M.

Gilfellan, C. (2014). Castle Cool and Creepy at the Same Time. Eerste Nasie Nuus, September edition, 2.

Gilfellan, C. (2016). Castle, Centre of Shared Heritage. Eerste Nasie Nuus, November edition, 5.

Gilfellan, C., Hendricks, D., & Sipoyo, G. (2019). The Decolonisation of South Africa’s Oldest Surviving Colonial Building: Lessons From the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town. South African Museums Association Bulletin (41), 10-19.

Øvernes, S. (2019). Street Khoisan: On Belonging, Reconciliation and Survival. Pretoria: UNISA Press.

SABC News. (2016). Mapisa-Nqakula on unveiling a monument in honour of Krotoa. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/1bEKCeCjT0E.

South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) (2018). Report of the South African Human Rights Commission: National Hearing Relating to the Human Rights Situation of the Khoi-San in South Africa. Cape Town: South African Human Rights Commission.

Tuck, E., & Yang, W. (2012). Decolonization is not a Metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education Society, 1 (1), 1-40.

Verbuyst, R. (2022). Khoisan Consciousness: An Ethnography of Emic Histories and Indigenous Revivalism in Post-Apartheid Cape Town. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

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Blog series – Heritage, belonging and land: global perspectives on Grace Ndiritu’s ‘A Season of Truth and Reconciliation’ – Blog 1 – Het Pand

Blog 2

Blog 3

On a warm September evening in 2021, we joined a group of residents, researchers, and activists at the centre for contemporary art Kunsthal, which is part of the 13th century Caermersklooster, the old Carmelite convent in Ghent’s historic city centre. On the trail of plundering iconoclasts, poor working class families, young artists and the monks once shuffling through these corridors, we attended a “therapeutic Townhall Meeting”, convened by artist Grace Ndiritu. The meeting concerned the fate of the neighbouring building, the second monastery courtyard dubbed het Pand. Since the mid-19th century, the galleries of het Pand were reorganized into tiny houses for poor families. When the Province of East Flanders acquired the property in the late 1970s, residents were threatened with eviction to make way for real estate developers. However, the Province dropped its plans in the face of the Pandinisten, an activist collective successfully advocating social housing. 2020 saw a renewed push for privatisation, with the Province and the social housing company WoninGent announcing their intention to sell part of the building complex. This once again triggered fierce opposition from activists and squatters, this time going by ‘Pandemisten’ in reference to their predecessors and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Participating in the Townhall Meeting made us reflect on the global dimensions of the ongoing dispute over het Pand. Our enquiry was framed and nurtured by Ndiritu’s A Season of Truth and Reconciliation, which ran from September to December 2021 as part of her art project Ghent: How to Live Together (Ndiritu, 2021a). Informed by the site’s rich history and contested sites elsewhere, particularly involving indigenous people, Ndiritu’s “season” included a movie night, a reading group, a public debate, sharing local knowledge and assembling a community archive (see below). An international ‘truth and reconciliation’ perspective on the conflict over het Pand guided all events, drawing as well on Ndiritu’s ongoing project Healing The Museum and her work on non-rational healing and radical pedagogical methodologies (Ndiritu, 2021b; 2021c). Collaborating with legal specialist Julie Van Elslande of the Brussels-based artists’ initiative Jubilee, A Season of Truth and Reconciliation is also one the art trajectories of Jubilee’s collective research project Emptor, which interrogates the concept of “property” in the quest for an ecology of practices on the field  of visual arts (https://caveat.be/pages/about.html). A Season of Truth and Reconciliation deliberately goes beyond the Caermersklooster, examining what the situated dispute in this historical, European urban place can teach us on practices of “living together” in contested sites.

Ndiritu’s international lens on het Pand facilitated a framework for us in this blog series to critically reflect on our own research on indigenous people and their ongoing struggles to access and/or assert rights over heritage sites in South Africa (Rafael) and the Andes (Hanne): What happens to a place-related community’s identity and their way(s) of life, as well as the place itself and its identity, when that place is being (re)claimed as heritage? How do (re)claimed heritage sites become the object of      community dispossession, displacement, and revitalization (Cottyn, 2022; Verbuyst, 2022)? Tackling cases that might at first sight have little in common, we identify topics, questions and challenges that can inform future research and policy regarding contested heritage. Broaching topics such as indigenous rights, property law, commoning and the role of ‘archives’, we are particularly interested in the relationship between heritage, belonging, and community and their relationship to what Laurajane Smith famously called the ‘Authorized Heritage Discourse’, i.e. Western/conventional management, assessment and conservation perspectives about ‘heritage’ (Smith, 2006). As Smith and others remind us, ‘heritage’ is always subject to ‘heritagization’: the process of defining, valorising and contesting something as ‘heritage’, which usually encompasses tangible and intangible features and involves various stakeholders (Harvey, 2001). With recent decades bringing heritage issues sharper into focus, resulting in new conceptual proposals including “heritage from below”, “heritage otherwise”, or “decolonial heritage”, many have argued that we need to think more outside the box and explore heritage’s relation to social struggles, local heritage knowledge, decolonial epistemologies, property regimes, and (a lack of) community participation (Arregui, Mackenthun & Wodianka, 2018; Ginzarly, Farah & Teller, 2019; Bigenho & Stobart, 2018; Robertson, 2016).

In this vein, our three cases demonstrate diverse questions of legal ownership (this blog), colonial legacies (the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, blog 2), and environmental change (Lake Poopó in Bolivia, blog 3). In each blog, we situate the contested land, and the historical trajectory of the property or use rights over it. We sketch a brief history of “belonging” and community formation at the site, survey the contemporary problems, and discuss the tensions and protagonists, as well as the strategies and potential creative solutions that have been put forward, with an emphasis on the theme of ‘truth and reconciliation’. In the remainder of this post, we engage in this exercise by expanding on the case of het Pand and Ndiritu’s A Season of Truth and Reconciliation.

A history of belonging

Caermersklooster, 2011. Wernervc, Wikimedia Commons.

Throughout history, the Caermersklooster complex has been drawn intimately into the rhythms of diverse projects of community making, religious worshipping, housing, artistic creation, and capital production. This history of belonging starts with the Carmelites procuring the property in 1287 (see Vandamme, 2021). An strong bond emerged between the monks and the wider neighbourhood as they built more structures on the site from the 14th century onwards. The monastery was plundered during the Reformation in the second half of the 16th century, but Catholics eventually regained control of the city. A long process of recovery and expansion of both the building and monastic life ensued. However, the Order of the Carmelites was abolished in the wake of the 1789 French Revolution and the monastery was declared private property. The “kerkfabriek”, the institution overseeing the Church’s assets and property, eventually assumed ownership in 1841. In 1881, the City of Ghent acquired the church and restored the site in neogothic style. Thecomplex hosted an archaeological museum, later the Museum of Folklore and it was eventually used for storage. The church was declared a protected monument in 1943, encompassing the entire complex by 1980. In 1977, the Province of East Flanders assumed ownership of the rest of the monastery complex.

Impoverished labourers had meanwhile settled in the former monastery hoping to find employment in Ghent’s booming textile industry. The galleries surrounding het Pand were restructured into tiny houses in the mid-19th century. While participating in Ndiritu’s ‘Local Knowledge’ event, Norbert, a former resident, described a fairly closed community with strict rules and strong social and religious traditions in the first half of the 20th century. Apart from his family, only unmarried women lived between the walls of the building, whose concierge reportedly locked the outside doors every night by 10 pm: “It was something between a prison and a beguinage [housing for lay religious women who lived in community]”. The space opened up in the 1970s, when mostly poor students from the nearby art school began occupying rooms on the top floor of het Pand. While het Pand had been repurposed for social housing to support the neighbourhood’s poor residents, it became an eyesore to politicians and investors. In the late 1970s, the Province revealed plans to sell its stake of the complex on the private market, dismissing pleas by tenants to maintain the housing function of the site. While these kinds of evictions were later declared unlawful, various people, such as the parents of Norbert, were forced out in the 1980s.

Others stayed behind and resisted. A coalition of poor residents, students and artists, mainly youngsters without domicile, formed an organization, mischievously called Pandinistisch Verblijvingsfront [Pandinist Residence Front], after the Nicaraguan Liberation Front. The Pandinisten sought to safeguard the right to housing, juxtaposing “erfgoed” (heritage/patrimony) with “vastgoed” (real estate/property). The group had their own pirate radio and newspaper and received support from locally renowned artists. Luc recalls how their often radical tactics were infused with playful and artistic elements, which helped win over the public opinion in Ghent. Authorities eventually opted for a “revaluation” of the site as well as an overall gentrification of the neighbourhood into a picturesque, touristy district. Now in the hands of the municipality, het Pand retained its social housing function and restoration works followed in the 1990s. The Province meanwhile restored the church hall.

Het Pand between community and market

As het Pand entered the 21st century, it continued to be occupied by people looking for social housing, and a tree, which had been planted by the Pandinisten. Since 2018, most of the Caermersklooster is owned by the City of Ghent, which includes the Kunsthal in the church hall since 2019, but a large portion of the complex remains under control of the Province. Towards the end of 2020, the City, Province and the social housing company managing the site, WoninGent, announced their plans to sell their property on the private market, arguing that there are no possibilities to use the building for public purposes. A group of (non-)squatting activists swiftly joined the sole family remaining at het Pand in response to this announcement. Inspired by their predecessors and the COVID-19 pandemic, the arguments, demands and tactics of the ‘Pandemists’ resonated strongly with those of the 1970s and 1980s. Advocating for social housing, the constitutional right to a dignified life and greater participation in decision-making, the activists claim the municipal government disregards its (in)tangible heritage by selling off historical buildings and forgetting about ‘people’ in its ‘development’ agenda (De Pandemisten, 2021; see also https://hetpand.noblogs.org/english/). These sentiments grew even more prominent when a judge ordered the evacuation of the site in December 2021.

Collectively reflecting on these grievances during A Season of Truth and Reconciliation, international parallels surfaced alongside a strong emphasis on the relationship between (in)tangible heritage and belonging. Both tend to get lost in the more managerial and utilitarian discourse on heritage and its emphasis on the material and financial sustainability, which the City and the Province at times promulgates. As Emilie, the last resident of het Pand, argued during the ‘Local Knowledge’ event, the site has incredible historical value, but this value is intrinsically linked with its social, housing, and artistic role in Ghent. The Pandemisten indeed explicitly engage broader critiques on social crises around housing, gentrification and citizen participation across the Ghent region, Europe and beyond (Grazioli, 2021; Neven, 2021). Different generations of residents also expressed a strong sense of unrecognized belonging performed through communal or customary practices. During A Season of Truth and Reconciliation, (former) residents argued that practicing ‘property’ through ways of commoning was explicitly/implicitly constant across the history of the Caermersklooster: from the 13th century Carmelites to the social housing tenants today.

Het Pand Community Archive, Kunsthal Gent. Grace Ndiritu and Jubilee vzw, 2022.

From the interweaving of materials and people, het Pand thus emerged as a “meshwork” of relationships of belonging in which knowledge and meaning is enmeshed (Lefebvre, 1991; Ingold, 2015). Articulating het Pand as a threatened fabric of intimate associations, residents argued during A Season of Truth and Reconciliation that you cannot subdivide the space of het Pand. It must be taken as a whole, as “inextricably” connected with the neighbourhood and its inhabitants. This form of life that sustains the meshwork that keeps het Pand together is what they want to safeguard and celebrate. As former Pandenist Luc put it, het Pand allows for “a form of dwelling (wonen), and in that sense a kind of heritage.” A kind of heritage that exceeds the definition and practices of heritage management currently proposed by public authorities and private investors, and whose revitalisation relies on interpersonal rather than monetary agreements. 

As part of their response to the contestations over het Pand, Grace and Julie aimed to document this (conceptualization of) living and dwelling through the curation of a ‘community archive’, which was on display for several months. Informed by Jubilee’s research, the input from various community members and the public, and efforts to involve all stakeholders invested in the site and its future, the archive traces the many historical users of the building, its changing property status, and shifting institutional management of the place over time. In line with Ndiritu’s overarching project of Healing the Museum, the initiative demonstrates how collaborative artistic projects can generate productive spaces of dialogue with institutions around creative resistance and alternative practices of heritage (Serafini, 2022). This initiative in the spirit of truth and reconciliation is partially responsible for the fact that residents feel there is greater room for participation in the ongoing negotiations, even if tensions still regularly run high. A report looking into possible design for het Pand was ordered by the City in the meantime (Miss Miyagi, 2021), and venues for dialogue were facilitated by public institutions, activists and artists. While city officials and WoninGent usually did not respond to invitations to engage in dialogue, the municipality recently organised a series of “city debates” about the Caermersklooster in direct response to A Season of Truth and Reconciliation – the results of which will be presented in September 2022 (Personal communication Grace Ndiritu; see also https://stad.gent/nl/binnenstad/bouw-mee-aan-de-binnenstad/stadsdebat-caermersklooster). Meanwhile, the use and purpose of the site is everchanging, with the Province announcing plans to host refugees at the site in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and programmes for troubled youths being organized by youth organizations and networks (Schouppe, 2022; Van Waeyenberghe, 2022).

When the building’s ownership passed from the “kerkfabriek” to the Province, the former owner explicitly expressed its trust in the new owner’s intentions and capacities to maintain the building’s historical purpose. Whether the site of het Pand remains true to its history, if chequered, of community building is yet to be seen. While the possibility of a sell off on the private market remains, several innovative options have been identified to do this in coordination with public authorities, under certain heritage arrangements, and/or the community, so as to ensure their right to their own kind of heritage.

References

Arregui, A., Mackenthun, G., & Wodianka, S. (2018). DEcolonial Heritage: Natures, Cultures, and the Asymmetries of Memory. Münster: Waxmann Verlag.

Bigenho, M., & Stobart, H. (2018). Grasping Cacophony in Bolivian Heritage Otherwise. Anthropological Quarterly, 91(4), 1329–1363.

Cottyn, H. (2022). The More-than-human Histories of a Dying Lake. The Uru-Qotzuñi and Lake Poopó, Bolivia. Paper presented at the POLLEN22/3 conference, 27 July.

De Pandemisten (2021, May 29). Stop de verkoop van ‘t Pand (Caermersklooster Gent). De Wereld Morgen. Retrieved from https://www.dewereldmorgen.be/artikel/2021/05/29/stop-de-verkoop-van-t-pand-caermersklooster-gent/

Ginzarly, M., Farah, J., & Teller, J. (2019). Claiming a role for controversies in the framing of local heritage values. Habitat International, 88 (101982). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2019.05.001

Grazioli, M. (2021). Housing, urban commons and the right to the city in post-crisis Rome. Lonon: Palgrave Macmillan.

Harvey, D. C. (2001). Heritage Pasts and Heritage Presents: temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 7 (4), 319–338. https://doi.org/10.1080/13581650120105534

Ingold, T. (2015). The life of lines. New York: Routledge.

Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. New York: Blackwell.

Miss Miyagi, (2021). Eindrapport – Caermersklooster. Retrieved from https://sogent.be/sites/default/files/20211018_NO_CAERKL_eindrapport.pdf.

Neven, B. (2021, December 9). De Gentse krakers van ‘Het Pand’ zetten de wooncrisis op de agenda.Vice. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/nl/article/y3vpnm/de-gentse-krakers-van-het-pand-zetten-de-wooncrisis-op-de-agenda

Ndiritu, G. (2021a). Ghent: How to live together. Retrieved from https://kunsthal.gent/en/development/invoer-29787

Ndiritu, G. (2021b). Healing The Museum. Retrieved from https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/gropiusbau/programm/journal/2021/grace-ndiritu-healing-the-museum.html

Ndiritu, G. (2021c). Being Together: A Manual For Living. Hasselt: KRIEG.

Robertson, I. J. M. (2016). Heritage from below. London/ New York: Routledge.

Schouppe, W. (2022, March 11). Oost-Vlaanderen maakt noodopvang voor vluchtelingen uit Oekraïne in Caermersklooster in Gent.VRT NWS. Retrieved from https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/03/11/provincie-oost-vlaanderen-plant-noodwoning-oekraiense-vluchtelin/

Serafini, P. (2022). Creating worlds otherwise. Nashville: Vanderbildt University Press.

Smith, L. (2006). Uses of Heritage. New York/London: Routledge.

Vandamme, G. (2021). Het Caermersklooster te Gent: een (bouw)historische benadering. Retrieved from http://geertvandamme.blogspot.com/2017/10/het-caermersklooster-te-gent-een.html

Van Waeyenberghe, S. (2022, March 3). Nu de krakers weg zijn, heeft Caermersklooster nieuwe tijdelijke functie: “Een ontmoetingsplek voor jongeren”. HLN. Retrieved from https://www.hln.be/gent/nu-de-krakers-weg-zijn-heeft-caermersklooster-nieuwe-tijdelijke-functie-een-ontmoetingsplek-voor-jongeren~ad46ecfc/

Verbuyst, R. (2022). Khoisan Consciousness: An Ethnography of Emic Histories and Indigenous Revivalism in Post-Apartheid Cape Town. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

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Episode 6: Are we in the age of Anthropocene?

In the 6th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews environmental historian and historical geographer, Jason W. Moore. Moore’s work radically upsets the Nature-Society dualism of capitalism both materially and symbolically manifested in the logic of Anthropocene. We discuss the periodization of history, its framing, and the kind of role it played in shaping our interpretation of climate change and the inanimate world.

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Book Review – Watershed Politics and Climate Change in Peru, by Astrid B. Stensrud. Pluto Press, 2021

In this ethnographic account, Astrid B. Stensrud explores the ways in which water is perceived and used. Based on 13 months of ethnographic work between 2011 and 2014, the book provides a vivid description of how social practices, legal frameworks, and the changing weather due to climate change and insecure water supplies influence the pluralities of understandings and practices linked to water. The book adds to the corpus of scholarly work that recognizes the ontological pluralism of water (Perreault et al., 2018) and contributes to the debates on water justice.
The ethnographic work took place in a critical period: during Peru’s implementation and adaptation of a new regulatory framework on water management, in line with the neoliberal policy adopted by the Peruvian water sector since 2000 (Harris & Roa-García, 2013). The first pilot for a river basin council implemented through the 2009 Water Law was initiated in the very region where the study took place (Arequipa), in the neighbouring watershed of Quilca-Chili. Arequipa is also a region where there are ongoing, long-lasting social conflicts over water sources (as the case of Tia Maria (Dunlap, 2019)) and a region that has litigated at the higher courts to prioritize scarce water sources in irrigation projects to expand agro-business in the desert (Majes Siguas) (La República, 2012; Ruíz, 2011).
Throughout the duration of the study, there was debate on the right to water at the national level (which the book omits). Between 2000 (the return to democracy) and 2011 there were no constitutional amendment proposals concerning the right to water. However, between 2011 and 2012, all political parties with representation in the national Congress issued bills for constitutional amendments (seven in total). But all the bills contained a limited understanding of water rights and linked the right to drinkable water to other fundamental rights. The rights mostly referenced were the rights to health and life. In 2017, Peru passed constitutional reform Article 7-A recognizing the fundamental right to water.

Within this context of regulatory changes, which also consolidated a neoliberal approach to water management, Stensrud’s book, organized into seven well-structured chapters, provides an informed analysis of the changes in the social relations in the Colca-Majes watershed, offering a detailed report on the multiple dimensions of these relations. While recognizing the transformation and resistance produced by the 2009 Water Law and the water management structures generated by the law, Stensrud’s ethnographic work shows that in these transformations climate change is also playing a role. Yet, Stensrud goes beyond describing the inhabitants of Arequipa’s perceptions of climate change (Bowling et al., 2021) and water stress, accounting for how this phenomenon is already shaping social relations and the relationship between the watershed inhabitants, the mountains and the springs, as well as the water authorities.

References

Bowling, L. C., Mazer, K. E., Bocardo-Delgado, E., Frankenberger, J. R., Pinto, J., Popovici, R., & Prokopy, L. S. (2021). Addressing Water Resources and Environmental Quality Programming Needs in Arequipa, Peru. Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education, 173(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1936-704X.2021.3354.x

Dunlap, A. (2019). ‘Agro sí, mina NO!’ the Tía Maria Copper Mine, State Terrorism and Social War by Every Means in the Tambo Valley, Peru. Political Geography, 71, 10–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2019.02.001

Harris, L. M., & Roa-García, M. C. (2013). Recent Waves of Water Governance: Constitutional Reform and Resistance to Neoliberalization in Latin America (1990–2012). Geoforum, 50, 20–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.07.009

La República. (2012). En Arequipa alistan paro contra el Gobierno por proyecto Majes Siguas II. La República. Retrieved 14 August 2012, from: http://www.larepublica.pe/31-07-2012/en-arequipa-alistan-paro-contra-el-gobierno-por-proyecto-majes-siguas-ii

Perreault, T., Boelens, R., & Vos, J. (2018). Introduction: Re-Politizing Water Allocation. In T. Perreault, R. Boelens & J. Vos (Eds.), Water Justice. Cambridge University Press.

Ruíz, J. C. (2011). El mundo al revés en el caso Majes Siguas II: proteger derechos constitucionales puede acarrear sanciones. Justicia Viva. Retrieved 11 April 2011, from: http://www.justiciaviva.org.pe/notihome/notihome01.php?noti=452

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Episode 5: Science and economy of selling pesticides

In the 5th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews Historian Elena Conis on how risky pesticides were culturally accepted and what kind of role did science play in its acceptance. Professor Conis explains how scientific research during war and epidemics prioritized some types of scientific questions over others, and how this approach built an economy that was geared towards selling poisonous pesticides and making them socially desirable.

Science and economy of selling pesticides by Public Anthropologist Podcast (anchor.fm)

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Podcast Episode 4: Economies of scarcity and abundance

In the 4th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews a professor of English, Candace Fujikane, on how ideas of abundance and scarcity are forged under capitalism. Professor Fujikane’s research uses cartography as a methodology to map Kanaka Maoli’s knowledge and relation of abundance with lands, seas and skies. In doing so, Fujikane’s work raises fundamental concern about the capitalist economies of scarcity, which have devastating consequences for the planet.

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Public Anthropologist Award 2023 (PUAN-A)

PUAN-A is awarded to a social and cultural anthropologist who has published an outstanding contribution that addresses – in innovative, engaging and compelling ways – key societal issues related to one or more of the following topics: violence, war, poverty, social movements, freedom, aid, rights, injustice, inequality, social exclusion, racism, health, and environmental challenges.

A contribution can be any published research output – for example a book, peer reviewed article, documentary, etc.

Application: submit your research output together with your CV (2 pages) to Public Anthropologist’s Editor-in-Chief, Antonio De Lauri: antonio.delauri@cmi.no

Write PUAN-A + “Title of the research output” in the subject heading.

Prize: A committee chaired by the Editor-in-Chief will select one research output for the Public Anthropologist Award. The author will receive a prize of 500 €.

Deadline for PUAN-A 2023: 15 January 2023 (for outputs published in 2021 and 2022).

For more information on the journal, please visit brill.com/puan.

Prize Winners

The winner of the Public Anthropologist Award 2022 was Catherine Besteman for her book Militarized Global Apartheid (Duke University Press, 2020). Catherine Besteman is Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology at Colby College. Throughout her career, she has worked on issues related to power dynamics that produce and maintain inequality, racism, and violence, as well as collective efforts for social change. Militarized Global Apartheid effectively addresses key instances of exploitation, inequality, and division in the contemporary world. The book is a lucid and nuanced exploration of the global hierarchies that, whether we are aware of it or not, have a devastating impact on the lives of many while creating privileges for a few others.

The winner of the Public Anthropologist Award 2021 was Ather Zia for her book Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir (University of Washington Press, 2019 & Zubaan Publishing, 2020). Ather Zia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Gender Studies Program at the University of Northern Colorado Greeley. She holds a doctorate in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine. Her research examines the Indian military occupation, settler colonialism, and women’s collective political and social challenges in the disputed Indian-administered Kashmir. Resisting Disappearance is a powerful narration of the effects of oppression and political disputes on people’s everyday life. The book is engaging and shrewdly written. It effectively summarizes the broad and committed scholarship and research behind it. An excellent example of anthropology’s capacity to both inform and inspire.

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Suggested by Public Anthropologist: Love and Liberation

Public Anthropologist‘s suggested reading today is Love and Liberation. Humanitarian Work in Ethiopia’s Somali Region by Lauren Carruth.

Shifting the focus from international humanitarian workers to Somali locals caring for each other, Carruth develops a rich ethnographic analysis of interdependence, kinship, and ethnic solidarity in Ethiopia’s Somali region.

The book is an important contribution to both humanitarian studies and the anthropology of care.

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Podcast Episode 3: Colonial dispossession and heroin use in northern New Mexico

In the 3rd episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews Anthropologist Angela Garcia on the endless dispossession, inequality, and heroin use etched in the history and memory of northern New Mexico. Professor Garcia’s avant-garde scholarship combines apparently isolated moments of intimacy, addiction, care and abuse to shed light on the impacts of a colonial past that is eating up the landscape inside.

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Book review: John-Andrew McNeish (2021) Sovereign Forces: Everyday Challenges to Environmental Governance in Latin America. Berghahn Books.

In Sovereign Forces John-Andrew McNeish, an anthropologist based in Norway, offers a fresh perspective on “resource sovereignty,” identifying sovereignty, at various scales and in different spaces, as a vital analytic concept for understanding land, territory and energy development in Latin America and beyond. Reflecting on more than twenty years of ethnographic engagement and research projects in and on Latin America, McNeish constructs a rich, historically grounded, account of the region’s economic and political development and how it is inextricably bound with sovereign claims to territory and resources.

The author begins his new book by figuratively plunging us into the cold waters of everyday violence against indigenous environmental defenders in present-day Latin America. He recounts the case of Hector Jaime, an indigenous community leader, from the Chocó region of Colombia, who receives a telephone message that an assassin has been hired by a criminal organization to kill him and his family. Jaime, who has been working with other community members to block mining and other extractive activities from entering their legal territory, reaches out for assistance to McNeish and others via a signature campaign, urging that national authorities protect him and investigate the threat to his and his families’ lives and livelihoods. No direct police protection results, although Jaime is given a bulletproof vest and an investigation is begun.

McNeish’s opening narrative device, recounting this personalized account, powerfully reminds us that the themes he deals with are not merely scholarly preoccupations. These are urgent practical challenges daily confronting citizens, families, activists and authorities. Indeed, this sense of urgency is sustained throughout the volume, as it expertly unpacks contestations around resource landscapes, mainly in Bolivia, Guatemala, and Colombia.

A particular strength of the book is its situating of Latin American experiences of resource contestation within the global political economy, drawing on historical sources and analysis to explain the multiple forces and actors, both within and outside the region, at play in shaping its developmental trajectories. McNeish’s basic thesis, which extends from his earlier published works, is that sovereignty practically matters at multiple scales: it is crucial in explaining national, regional and local decisions on the ownership, use, protection and management of natural resources. From his perspective, Latin American conflicts over land and resources are “conjoined economic and ontological conflicts regarding the equivalence of knowledge and value” (p. 22).

Taking aim at the top-down readings of state-building and resource contestation often found in the resource curse literature, McNeish draws on debates in the cognate fields of social anthropology, political economy and political ecology to further develop the concept of “resource sovereignty.” What are found in the Latin American cases examined are not straightforward manifestations of the classic idea of supreme authority in a defined geographic territory. Rather, multiple attitudes to territory, identity, capital and resources co-exist, compete and conflict – ultimately helping explain empirical outcomes. In this story, indigenous and peasant peoples have been victims of colonization and, frequently, of annihilation, but also agents whose everyday encounters with the state, the market, and politics have left distinctive marks on the geographies and institutions of Latin American states.   

The author builds his argument using a series of “ethnographic fragments” drawn from his years of engagement with Latin America. In Chapter 1, two major events in Bolivian politics (the gasolinazo fuel subsidy backlash and TIPNIS roadbuilding protests) are used to explore the broader relationships in Latin America between the politics of natural resources, territory and sovereign claims within and beyond the state. The second chapter uses the example of fuel and resource smuggling along the Bolivian and Guatemalan borders to discuss contrasting visions and definitions of sovereignty, but also to demonstrate how classic accounts of resource politics pay insufficient attention to sovereign claims beyond and beneath the state.

The intertwining of the politics of sovereignty and natural resources is further explored in Chapter 3, with cases from Colombia and Guatemala of new political and legal spaces actively created, despite risks of violence, through community engagement with state entities. The fourth chapter focuses on the politics of establishing lithium production in the Bolivian Highlands. This Salar de Uyuni case shows that contests around resource sovereignty are not limited to fossil fuels but are also manifest in what are conventionally thought-of as “green” resources. Chapter 5, the final case-based chapter, returns to McNeish’s normative claim, with which the book begins, that resource sovereignty matters for peace and governance goals. Reflecting on the land rights case of the Embra Chamí community of the Cañamomo Lomaprieta in western Colombia, he shows how the state can sometimes directly enable the illegal circumvention and abuse of rights. Technocratic avoidance of certain features of contested resource sovereignty thus requires attention if environmental governance is to deliver on its aims.

Finally, the concluding chapter succeeds in pulling together in one place the various concepts and cases expounded upon in the earlier, empirical sections of the book. This is a helpful addition since the volume can sometimes feel a little bewildering in the breadth and depth of its scope and examples, especially to non-Latin America experts. McNeish views contestations around resource sovereignty as arising from the efforts of citizens and communities to secure a future without constant fear of violence or the actual experience of insecurity. He further suggests that a significant match can be made between the concept of contested resource sovereignty and critical institutionalism. The latter’s recognition that institutions are the outcome not just of acts of design, but of long-term acts of “bricolage” whereby indigenous and peasant communities write themselves back into the history of state-formation, shows that the engagement of these communities has, put bluntly, a direct impact on the success and failure of environmental governance.

In conclusion, Sovereign Forces is a fascinating, multi-disciplinary and historically grounded account of the contested resource politics of Latin America. It makes an impassioned plea for critical engagement with resource sovereignty as a crucial aspect of environmental peacebuilding, that resonates far beyond the country contexts examined here. The book is a must-read for anyone wishing to engage with the complexities of everyday environmental governance in Latin America and elsewhere.   

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Podcast Episode 2: History and geography of a city soaked in water

In the 2nd episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews Anthropologist Nikhil Anand on the concept of wet cities. Professor Anand focuses on Mumbai, a city built in and out of the Arabian Sea. He encourages us to think about the long history of engineering cities as dry lands devoid of wetness, and how that is contributing to the current climate events.  

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Transcending identities: Narrative reflection on the ritual of coming out

The term ‘coming out’ is still unfamiliar to many Indians. It is safe to say that it is a new term known mostly to the urban, English-speaking world of India who are familiar with gender and sexual minorities. Coming out of the closet can mean different things to different people; it can be an emancipatory act for some, forced upon for others. The timing of coming out and to whom is a matter of careful evaluation of consequences and trust. It is a self-learnt process born out of an inevitable need and a survival tool to overcome mental health issues. With this background in mind, this blog revolves centrally around my own coming out experience, which I have analysed as a ritual. I attempt to explain the coming out process that I have developed over the years through reflexive learning. I use autoethnography to narrate how my identity transcends contextual spaces while navigating in and out of the closet.

I hail from a fast-growing metropolitan city in South India where there are safe spaces such as support groups and NGOs, which my rural friends do not have. As is the case in most countries in the world, criminalising laws on homosexuality have colonial origins. Despite having a rich history and queer tradition in India, homosexuality is heavily frowned upon in Indian society. Awareness about sexual health, let alone homosexuality, is still a far dream. For example, men who identify as gay are thought by society at large to become transgender in the future. Although the supreme court of India decriminalised homosexuality in 2018, it will be a long time before there is complete societal acceptance, and there are no explicit anti-discriminatory laws in India that will legally protect an individual based on their sexual orientation. However, post-2018, some multi-national companies in India have initiated diversity and inclusion policies.

From the outset, it appears that I have a dichotomous life, taking up different identities as and how the situation demands. Privately, I am chiefly a gay man (of late, I am questioning this identity, too). Yet for the outer world, I am a middle-class, polyglot, backward caste, urban-raised, English-educated clinician and public health professional, with little exposure to world travel due to work, and with varied interests including philately, Indian philosophy, pottery, among others. I use the word ‘transcend’ instead of ‘transform’. In my understanding, transforming is a superficial change physically visible to others. In contrast, transcendence involves an enormous shift in personality, which is susceptible to quick changes, involving a distinct private and public self (p 57) where the two are related.

The idea of coming out is an exhaustingprocess, often with both negative and positive consequences. I have come across friends who have been ostracised by their highly conservative religious families and friends in India, causing severe mental health issues ranging from depression to suicidal ideations. The thought of coming out makes me highly anxious. Growing up, I didn’t have any resources to help myself deal with bullying and the self-awareness that I am different from others. The socio-cultural conditioning of my personhood in the heteronormative society led to the othering of myself to the extent that I believed something was wrong with me and my behaviour. Personhood (p 57) is ‘acquired gradually from birth onwards as the child becomes increasingly familiar with the shared customs and knowledge of society’. The fear of rejection and ridicule has led to lower academic and work performance, and I also developed psycho-somatic conditions such as fibromyalgia. The social fears I have developed are linked to clinical health conditions. General prejudice in society, minority stress, lack of accessible help and stigma related to rejection and discrimination all lead to excessive stress resulting in a range of mental and systemic health and behavioural issues among the queer community that are largely unnoticed.

On the other hand, coming out to a few friends strengthened our relationships, and there was mutual growth and understanding of differences in sexuality and sexual orientation. It also helped me to overcome my internalised homophobia. So far, I have come out only to friends and to two cousins in my family. I come from a joint family which is holding onto traditional Indian family values and customs. Since my family is unaware of my sexual orientation, the pressure to marry a girl is always there. I have learned to dodge the topic by giving excuses such as studying further, sometimes telling my family that I don’t find marriage interesting, pointing to the failed marriages in family and friend circles, or sometimes quoting the Hindu monkhood as an ideal way of living. Despite changes in contemporary Indian society with rapid urbanisation and Western lifestyle influences, the family institution plays an important role in India. Though there is an intergenerational change in the marriage system in India where inter-religious and inter-caste marriages are on the rise, one survey revealed that middle-class Indian youth favoured the legalisation of same-sex marriage, but were still not attracted to homosexual marriages. Every time I manage to dodge the marriage topic, I am aware of the pricking lies that I tell. Deep within, I crave a boyfriend, possibly moving where there is no discrimination against homosexuality and gay marriage is legalised. Therefore, sometimes, coming out is an answer to those close and trusting friends concerned about my well-being and showing genuine interest in my personal life.  

The ritual of coming out is a step-by-step process, complex and not always linear. It is like working out the maths to find an answer based entirely on assumptions. Every coming out ritual is a rite of passage to that person. Gennep’s description of rites of passage finds familiarity here. Rites of passage (p 148) is an event in a person’s life such as divorce, retirement, and so on, where an individual goes through separation, trial, and reintegration, marking progress through life stages. Eichler has used an autoethnography tool to illustrate his coming out using vignettes ranging from materials to places. Garrick has analysed the coming out act of self-disclosure using the ritual theory and the rites of passage and offers a generalisation that ritual can be protective and act as a guide for self-disclosure.

My coming out ritual involves three stages: a preparatory phase that happens in my mind, the actual coming-out event, and the post-coming-out engagement. The first stage is the most challenging part for me. It involves answering an algorithmic pattern of questions in my mind. I deal with many uncertainties of ifs and buts. A slight doubt could cancel the ritual. It begins with a person in mind to whom I could come out and then follows a barrage of mind-numbing questions. Why should I come out to this person? What is the necessity? Is there a threat to my life, work, or future that necessitates an outing? What is it that I am getting back in exchange? Will I face any threats from this person later? If yes, what is my safety net? Are there any secrets of this person I know which would prevent them from putting me in a fix?

Once I have convincing answers that fulfil the criteria of the first stage, the ritual preparation begins. How do I come out? Should I do it in person, write an email, or send a text? The first time I came out to my closest friend, I took more than four hours of talking to speak the three words that have defined my life – ‘I am gay!’. Nowadays, it has downgraded to a simple text message. The timing of coming out is another essential aspect of the ritual. It involves a lot of homework about the chosen person’s daily routine that leads to other questions about the selected person. For example, is this person going through any stressful situations at the moment? Will this person be able to handle this information that they might not have known? Do I have to inform anyone else and be prepared for any untoward outcome as a safety measure?

Once these questions are all resolved, then comes the second stage: the actual coming-out ritual. I have always preferred doing it in person. It gives me more confidence. It leaves me with a comfort that I have confronted my projected fear. It is also about providing a chance for them to clarify any questions about homosexuality in general and specific questions about myself, setting a stage to enter the third phase. While I come out, I take a deep breath, directly look into the other person’s eyes, smile and say the three golden words. In the beginning, I would prepare a speech describing how good a person I am (and so should not be discriminated against based on my homosexual inclination), and how this relationship is so significant to me that I cannot hide it.

The third phase is a continuation of the second with a self-imposed obligation to engage. I take the responsibility of helping the person understand my coming out. I have deduced that coming out is not a mono act since I involve the other person. I have realised that everyone, whether queer or straight, has to metaphorically come out of the closet.

Who better than me to answer questions on who else have I come out to, how sex works between two men, and so on? They only knew me as a façade. I also have to patiently listen to anyone’s unsolicited advice. All of this subsequently reduces any future awkward encounters.

After the ritual, I might not be reintegrated back into the person’s life. There is a risk of exposing one’s vulnerability to exploitation and to losing loved ones. The ritual is similar to the exchange of a gift except that there are no materials exchanged, only emotions. Coming out is sharing important information about one’s sexual orientation to gain support and solidarity, seeking a stronger allyship, overcoming deep layers of inhibition, shame, and guilt. For this is necessary to build a kinship network, a ‘chosen family’ of those who are accepting my sexuality, yet also open those who disagree.

I will illustrate this process using two examples. I confessed my sexual orientation to one of my closest friends, Shaantha, in 2016. I planned to meet her at a restaurant over lunch. We sat down over the table, ordered food, and were catching up about our work and other things. I had planned my conversation in detail. At one point, I mentioned my new project at work where my team were involved in developing a community health programme for queer folks. I mentioned it nonchalantly to observe her reaction. Knowing her personally for many years, I knew she would not judge me. Yet I wanted to be assured. The conversation moved to relationships and marriage. I brought up the issue of marriage not being an option to many individuals and she responded that it was unfortunate. I asked a follow-up question about what her feelings were about homosexual people. She said, without taking any time to think, that she would accept them for what they are. Taking advantage of the moment, I asked her how would she feel if anyone came out to her, to which she replied she would feel very happy that someone thought of her as trusting enough to share such personal information. At this moment, I revealed it to her. There was an instant shock on her face, but she got up from her chair and came towards me to give a tight hug. This was very assuring. She had many questions afterwards about my dating scene, personal journey, and so on. Throughout this conversation, I was on my guard and testing the waters slowly. I had to check every move, reassure myself that I was doing well, and be ready to abort the procedure if I sensed any red flag.

Almost three years later, I was visiting on one of my cousins who was going through a rough time and quit his job abruptly. He was visibly uncomfortable with my arrival. Sensing this, I prepared to leave, but he asked me to stay for a little longer. I obliged; yet the awkward silence continued. He suddenly popped the question and confronted me, asking if I was gay. He caught me off guard and I froze. I was speechless. I took a deep breath and just answered ‘yes’. By this time, I had performed many coming out rituals and I started to realise that it was a tiring process. A simple yes was easier than to carry out the laborious procedure. My cousin appeared flabbergasted. He told me to see a doctor to get rid of my homosexuality (he wouldn’t utter the word gay later in the conversation). I mustered up enough courage to tell him that I was fine and needed no treatment and then left immediately to prevent any further embarrassment. He cut off all communications with me. It did not bother me much but occasionally hurt me that a family member could stop talking to me because of my sexual orientation. I came face to face with one of my worst fears. This incident opened my eyes to the fact that people will choose to be homophobic because of the conditioning of society and I could do very little to change it.

From my experiences, coming out is a repetitive process and not a one-time event. It is an elaborate ritual involving lots of preparation and anticipating repercussions. I have found out that this technique resonates more or less with other queer individuals’ styles with whom I interacted through support group networks and random strangers on the internet. Using the language of queer people, ‘it gets better’ after every coming-out ceremony. I have become better with my choice of words, gained more confidence in uttering the word ‘gay’, and learnt from mistakes. Through this autoethnography, I have elucidated the nuances of navigating the in and out of my closet space. As I conduct this ritual often, I am at ease and perform it effortlessly, shedding the shame and guilt little by little, thus transcending to the true self. I have, over the years, broken the false sense of two lives and slowly accepted the fluid nature of life in general and, specifically, the spectrum of gender and sexual identity.

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The construction of an internal humanitarian border: the case of Puebla, Mexico

Introduction

The October 2018 migrant caravans prompted migration to be reconfigured as a political issue in the Central America–Mexico–United States region. Described as a forgotten crisis by the European Commission (European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, 2021), transit and settlement migration from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to Mexico had until then been invisible to regional and international institutions (Coutin, 2005) and migrants were primarily assisted by networks of shelters and associations overseen by the Catholic Church. However, in October 2018, the situation changed radically when thousands of people mobilised in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, to migrate collectively to the United States in migrant caravans, defying the region’s securitarian apparatus. Within a regional geopolitical context dominated by the United States, these mobilisations were framed as a national security concern and, in January 2019, the US government launched the “Remain in Mexico” programme. This restrictive migration policy remains in place and forces people seeking asylum in the United States to wait for a decision on their application on Mexican territory (Homeland Security, 2019; WOLA, 2019). As a result of this measure, Mexico was obliged to take responsibility for supplying humanitarian aid to the waiting migrants, while militarisation spread across the national territory in an attempt to limit the number of people reaching the northern border. The consequences of these changes are highly concerning: today, thousands of people are trapped at Mexico’s northern border in poor conditions and their human rights and rights to asylum are being violated.

As well as mobilising the security apparatus, the hypervisibility of the migrant caravans prompted the declaration of a regional humanitarian crisis and led many local and international humanitarian organisations to take action to meet the needs of people in transit or waiting at the borders. Media and humanitarian attention has focused particularly on Mexico’s northern and southern borders, which have become geographic and symbolic spaces of violent dispute over the right to mobility. However, Mexico’s interior states have been frequently overlooked as areas structurally traversed by migrants and shaped by tensions between securitarian and humanitarian concerns. What is happening in the states located far from the country’s borders? How is the migration issue constructed and what is the response to it? This post reflects on these questions in the context of the state of Puebla in Central Mexico, which has been identified as a key transit area for migrants where securitarian and humanitarian dynamics are reproduced and extended. It is based on ethnographic research conducted in Puebla between July and September 2019 with three non-governmental organisations (two international and one Mexican) and an international humanitarian organisation involved in providing migrants with humanitarian assistance. This fieldwork was carried out as part of the research project ‘Reinforcing the Permanent Seminar on Gender and Migration’ (2019) coordinated by the Institute of Feminist Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain (INSTIFEM-UCM) and the Centre of Gender Studies at the Autonomous University of Puebla in Mexico (CEG-BUAP).

These reflections are framed within the existing debate on humanitarian borders, which are defined by Walters (2011) as a complex, contradictory assemblage comprising humanitarianism and the securitarian dimension of migration control and management. Humanitarianism is a cultural model of assistance involving intervention at borders as spaces of migration management, with the aim and mandate of alleviating human suffering through a coordinated network of different stakeholders. According to De Lauri (2019), the expansion of humanitarianism in these spaces is redefining borders not only as basic components of migration control and containment, but also as areas affected by humanitarian crises, giving rise to new approaches to migration governance grounded in an acknowledgement of suffering, compassion and aid. Against this backdrop, it is important to conceptualise borders not only in terms of their securitarian dimension but also as cultural products, “invisible or ostentatious boundaries used to create ‘different’ groups of human beings” (Juliano, 1998). The borders shaping Mexico’s migration scene are culturally constructed and reproduced in multiple ways. The hypervisible process whereby migration is constructed as a humanitarian issue in a context of ongoing crisis (Benincasa & Cortés, 2021) is culturally redefining the migrant population in terms of otherness and foreignness. Migration is pinpointed as a regional issue requiring legitimate intervention and presented simultaneously as a depoliticised humanitarian object and a threat to national security. The dynamics and tensions inherent in the humanitarian border extend and are reproduced beyond territorial borders in the overlooked migration transit area of the state of Puebla.

The ethnographic context

The state of Puebla is located in the southern part of Central Mexico, approximately 130 km to the south-east of Mexico City. It has traditionally been a migrant-sending region, with migrants travelling to the United States in particular (Cortés, Forina & Manjarrez, 2017). Internal migration remains a priority on the local political agenda, which is currently focused on responding to return migration in the state. However, Puebla is also a destination for international migrants, especially those from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. According to the Migration Statistical Bulletin, Puebla received 2,804 migrants in 2019 and returned 1,883, most of whom came from Central America (Unidad de Política Migratoria, 2019). Meanwhile, in 2021, 3,521 people arrived in the state and 2,266 were returned (Unidad de Política Migratoria, 2021). In their study of Central American migration in Puebla, Cortés, Forina and Manjarrez (2017) show that the state is a key stage in Mexico’s main migration routes. Firstly, it lies on the route taken by the Beast: the train used by many migrants to cross Mexico. Secondly, the implementation of the Comprehensive Plan for the Southern Border in 2014 and the increasing militarisation of the cargo train have transformed Puebla into a transit region, with migrants taking alternative, unnoticed routes on foot, accompanied by people smugglers or using motorised transport when their financial resources allow. Puebla is also a stage on the route to Mexico City, which is the departure point for the main routes leading to the northern border.

International migration in Puebla has been identified as transit migration, so it has not been labelled a political issue on the local public agenda. Although their institutional invisibility can facilitate their transit towards the north of the country, it also leaves migrants more vulnerable to dangers such as kidnapping, mugging, abuse, detention and deportation as they move (Cortés, Forina & Manjarrez, 2017). Indeed, migrants are only invisible on the local public agenda to the extent that their status as individuals with rights goes unacknowledged. Puebla has drawn increasing attention from the security apparatus as a stage on the migration route: the state is home to one of the 29 permanent holding centres used to detain irregular migrants that have opened in Mexico (Global Detention Project, 2021) and are coordinated by the National Institute of Migration (INM). In the words of Sánchez Gavi (2016), this institutional invisibility also contrasts with the visibility afforded to migrants as “delinquents” and their construction as objects of suspicion and peculiarity among some political groups and the local population. Amid these tensions, the Catholic Church has traditionally been responsible for providing migrants with humanitarian assistance in Puebla through the Human Mobility Pastoral Program and a network of five shelters. These are supplemented by impromptu aid initiatives (Sánchez-Gavi, 2016): a mobile Red Cross surgery on the Beast train route at Ciudad Serdán and groups of women known as Las Patronas led by Doña Luisa (Moncó, 2021).

Reconfiguring migration in Puebla

An analysis of the ethnographic data collected in 2019 shows how the arrival of the first migrant caravans in 2018 brought about major changes in humanitarian assistance for migrants in Puebla (Benincasa & Cortés, 2021). Firstly, one of the most significant impacts of the emergence of the caravans as a new form of regional mobility was a dramatic increase in scrutiny of the routes used by migrants to cross the country. In this context, Puebla has been publicly recognised as a stage on the migration route to Mexico City, where migrants continue towards the northern border (Benincasa & Cortés, 2021). Secondly, the emergency situation in October 2018 prompted a number of public and private stakeholders to mobilise to respond to the needs of the migrants in transit. The public authorities, coordinated by Claudia Rivera Vivanco from the left-wing National Regeneration Movement as municipal president (2018–2021), introduced measures to accommodate the migrants on a temporary basis, providing shelter, medical care and basic necessities. Civil society associations, local and international non-governmental organisations, and international organisations also played a part in managing the reception of the migrants.

Puebla’s increasing visibility as a transit region for international migrants has resulted in the emergence of a new political issue for the organisations covered by our 2019 ethnographic fieldwork. Despite traditionally being involved in preventing internal migration, they were obliged to reorder their priorities in response to the emerging migration problem. In the narrative they present, the political context of crisis and its tensions made it difficult to establish a clear stance and structured working agenda. Their humanitarian work was shaped by two tensions in particular. Firstly, the highly mobile nature of the population impeded longer-term planning. The extent to which migration is temporary varies across Mexico, ranging from high levels of mobility to long waits at the northern border or in detention centres (a consequence of policies intended to contain migration). In 2019, Puebla continued to receive large numbers of migrants travelling northwards, which led to prolonged uncertainty for humanitarian stakeholders.

Secondly, a clear tension emerged between the political stance held by humanitarian stakeholders and the contextual need to negotiate the security-focused law governing migration management in Mexico. Broadly speaking, the humanitarians’ political approach to migration revolved around the right to asylum and human rights (Benincasa & Cortés, 2021). However, this stance and the search for political responses were undermined by Mexico’s inconsistent official discourse, which wavered between concern for protecting migrants’ rights and restrictive measures used to detain, imprison and deport them, violating these rights and creating an ambiguity that has yet to be resolved (París Pombo, 2019). Moreover, the construction of a prolonged humanitarian crisis fuelled the notion of instability in relation to Mexico’s migration and political situation, legitimising and reinforcing humanitarianism as the only possible response to migration.

These tensions illuminate how Puebla has become a focus of attention for humanitarian intervention in migration in Mexico. Changes in the migration situation in Puebla, which have been driven and highlighted by the migrant caravans, are transforming the state into a clear space of tension between mobility, humanitarianism and securitarianism. This ethnographic case study shows how the intersection between border dynamics and humanitarian action transcends national borders to affect Mexico’s interior states. The humanitarian border that is being constructed in Mexico is expanding and being reproduced in the state of Puebla, which is emerging as an internal humanitarian border. This process highlights the urgent need to understand these specific local manifestations of the border with the aim of demonstrating and comparing the ways in which migrants are stripped of their political and human rights (Moncó, 2021) and the influence of the humanitarian border on their mobility and immobility as they cross the state of Puebla.

Bibliography

Benincasa, V. & Cortés, A. (2021). Humanitarizando la movilidad en México: la migración centroamericana como problema humanitario.Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 11(3), 809–832. Available at: https://opo.iisj.net/index.php/osls/article/view/1270

Cortés, A., Forina, A. & Manjarrez, J. (2017). El caso de Puebla. Trayectorias y rutas migrantes. Experiencias de violencia y necesidades especificas. In Cortés, A. & Manjarrez, J., eds. Mujeres, migración centroamericana y violencia: un diagnóstico para el caso de Puebla. Puebla, Mexico: BUAP. Available at: https://eprints.ucm.es/id/eprint/46054/1/Mujeres,%20migraci%C3%B3n%20centroamericana%20y%20violencia.pdf

Coutin, S. B. (2005). Being en Route. American Anthropologist, 107(2), 195–206.

De Lauri, A. (2019). A Critique of the Humanitarian (B)order of Things. Journal of Identity and Migration Studies, 13(2), 148–166. Available at: http://www.e-migration.ro/jims/Vol13_No2_2019/JIMS_Vol13_No2_2019_pp_148_166_LAURI.pdf

European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (2021). Forgotten Crisis Factsheet. European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/echo/what/humanitarian-aid/needs-assessment/forgotten-crises_en

Homeland Security (2019). Migrant Protection Protocol. Available at: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2019/01/24/migrant-protection-protocols

Juliano, D. (1998). Las que Saben: Subculturas de mujeres (Cuadernos inacabados). Madrid: horas y HORAS.

Moncó, B. (2021). Cuidados y solidaridad femenina en contextos migratorios: el caso de la migración centroamericana en su paso por México. In Cortés, A. & Manjarrez, J., eds. Género y Movilidades: lecturas feministas de la migración, pp. 159–177.

París Pombo, M. D. (2019). Las barreras migratorias en México y los términos de colaboración con el gobierno estadounidense. In Calva, J. L., ed. Migración de Mexicanos a Estados Unidos. Derechos Humanos y Desarrollo (Vol. 20, pp. 961–982). Mexico City: Juan Pablos Editor.

Sánchez Gavi, J. L. (2016). Movilidad humana. El fenómeno migratorio de Puebla bajo la perspectiva de la Iglesia Católica. TLA-MELAUA Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 9(39), 108–130. Available at: http://www.apps.buap.mx/ojs3/index.php/tlamelaua/article/view/94

Unidad de Política Migratoria. (2019). 2019 Boletín Estadístico mensual.

Unidad de Política Migratoria. (2021). 2021 Boletín Estadístico mensual.

Walters, W. (2011). Foucault and frontiers: notes on the birth of the humanitarian border. In Bröckling, U. Krasmann, S. & Lemke, T., eds. Governmentality: Current Issues and Future Trends. New York: Routledge, 138-164.

WOLA. (2019). The “wall” before the wall. Mexico’s crackdown on migration at its Southern Border. Washington DC: WOLA. Available at: https://www.wola.org/analysis/mexico-southern-border-report/

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Book review: Unexpected Subjects: Intimate Partner Violence, Testimony, and the Law. By Alessandra Gribaldo, 2021. HAU Books.

This short book is an ethnographic essay on the constitution of the abused subject through testimony in the Italian judicial system. How do experiences of intimate violence get translated into legally intelligible language? How does the ambivalence and trauma of intimate partner violence complicate the articulation of experience in the court? What inadequate institutional structure renders a victim’s narration of violent experience necessary but impossible at the same time? Gribaldo refers to domestic violence as “Violence Degree Zero” in anthropological research (13) – one of those “dead zones of the imagination” (Graeber 2012) that simultaneously represents “an excess of relevance” and an area of “violent simplification” (15). Her book fills this gap with a theoretically sophisticated investigation of the encounter between women’s words and the legal system, paying keen attention to the friction between intimacy and violence in the production of subjectivity and modalities of truth-telling.

Gribaldo makes a compelling case for ethnographic knowledge in providing a privileged site to examine the complicated relationship between intimacy and violence, the conflicting demands of victimhood in legal institutions, and the potentials of ambivalence and hesitations in narrating experience of violence. Engaging with a wide range of feminist and anthropological scholarship on violence, subjectivity, and silences, Gribaldo’s analytical focus is on the different modalities of “speaking violence” (4). The domestic violence cases in the book revolves around women as victims and men as perpetrators in heterosexual relationships.

In Chapter 1 (Un)Familiar Violence, Gribaldo draws on anthropological and feminist scholarship to expound on the tensions between intimate relations and legal institutions, and the paradoxes in rendering women’s victimhood legible and legitimate. Drawing on Foucault while bearing in mind “the unresolved tension between the chance to rethink and free gender differences” (30), Gribaldo focuses our attention on the issue of experience and the possibility of conveying and verifying such knowledge. The evidentiary requirements of the court – coherent, clear, objective – is contradicted by the subjective, experience-based, and emotion-filled narratives that victims produce.

Chapter 2 Wavering Intentions illuminates the contradictions of women’s subjectivization as victims and as witness in court. Originally introduced to protect women from familial pressure to withdraw their cases, the Italian Criminal Code requires mandatory prosecution of domestic violence cases, in which the women’s testimonies are central to the trial. This juridical protection presumes women as passive subjects who could not make their own decisions but also expects them to be reliable speaking subjects. For a host of reasons, many women choose not to press charges or retract their statements during the trial. Those who do testify would be interrogated not only for the veracity of their claims, their understanding of violence, but also their own subjectivity. Their testimonies are further constrained by the modalities of judicial procedure that requires coherence and focus. For example, a woman was stopped by the judge when she lamented “I didn’t go to work because I had a black eye…love is not enough.” Domestic violence hearings do not produce a simple dichotomization of perpetrators and victims, but rather, “the proof of the crime [of domestic violence] is constituted by the intimate relationship, the experience of violence, and the consciousness of the abused victim (53).” The victim’s perception and statements crucially become such proof.

In Chapter 3, Gribaldo questions the focus on victim’s testimonial proof, and critiques the burden of confession on the victim who “must supply a meaningful framework that allows for recognition and certification, making the production of evidence possible” (86). The centrality of the victim’s testimony means that she is the main target of interrogation and questioning – “not only to verify the facts but also verify women’s capacities to understand and communicate the intimate violence experienced” (91). Furthermore, because the intention of the perpetrator could only be evidenced by the victim’s testimony, “[t]he victim is asked to speak for the perpetrator, to clarify the reasons behind the crime” (85). Any difficulty in remembering events, inconsistency in narration, or failure to comply with the judicial modality of questioning, comes to be interpreted by the defense and the judge as the woman’s unreliability as a witness. Feelings, contexts, and performance pertinent to the woman’s own communication of the experience of violence are considered excesses in the judicial proceedings.

Gribaldo’s ethnography in Chapter 4 The Gender of True-Lying helps readers see vividly how the authenticity of women’s narrated experience is always suspect. Speaking up as a victim-subject renders unreliable the woman’s intentionality in breaking the silence. It is the entirety of the victim’s act of testifying that is being assessed – down to “the appropriate emotional tone” in which she delivers her testimony, as one prosecutor said (99). Gribaldo must be credited for effectively bringing together court exchanges with the perspectives of prosecutors, judges, social service managers, demonstrating the contradictory expectations that the victim “must be subjugated, passive, and aware at the same time” (99). Reflecting on these impossible expectations in institutionalized political language, Gribaldo advocates for “the need to consider hesitations, and the unexpectedly oblique and mediating modes of testimony, action, subtraction, and resistance” (112).

Gribaldo demonstrates a dexterity with theory and ethnography when analyzing the unorthodox testimony performed by Giovanna. Her expressions departed from the expectation of coherence and clarity required by the court, and resembled the mode of self-expression called ‘la piazzata’ (open quarrelling in public). By describing how Giovanna’s declaration of love for her ex-husband allows the judge to verify the authenticity of her testimony, Gribaldo demonstrates the ways the gendered subaltern subject made herself recognizable. The significance of love captured here echoes with legal scholar Mark West’s (2006) analysis of love as a significant discourse in Japanese court decisions on love-suicide, murder, and stalking.  A brief discussion about how love is understood as an emotion both in popular culture and in legal institutions – something that West accomplished with ample room in his full-length book – would advance readers’ understanding of the role emotions play in mediating legal processes on intimate relations.

In condensing years of fieldwork into a short book that is both theoretically engaged and ethnographically illuminating, Gribaldo had to make some difficult choices. She states in the Introduction that she keeps the ethnography “suspended” (9) – not locating the juridical dynamics by setting them within the specific Italian context – in order to address specific theoretical issues. As such, the priority of Unexpected Subjects is theoretical elaboration over thick description. Therefore, readers may find ample room for reflection in Gribaldo’s eloquent exposition of concepts from Strathern, Ortner, Mahmood, Foucault, and Agamben, but may at times be left wondering how some of her ethnography fits in. For example, a woman at a shelter insisted on talking about the story of her intimate relationship, a narrative mode not accommodated by the Italian penal code. Gribaldo suggests that the resistance to speak about violence lies in the contradiction inherent in intimate violence – “[t]hese women have embodied a perception of intimacy with a liberal stress on self-responsibility and freedom. They are victims who see themselves as guilty for not knowing how to react to a context of power abuse considered to be obsolete in a society presumed egalitarian” (56). It is unclear to the readers how these ideas were articulated by her interviewees. Furthermore, readers who are not familiar with gender politics in Italy would appreciate an earlier discussion of the white woman-mother figure in the Italian imaginary (102, Chapter 4) that circulates in and behind these testimonies. For example, such contextualization may help readers understand how a woman, who was displeased with her children’s testimony exonerating her ex-partner, retracted her testimony and forgave the perpetrator when called upon by the judge (42, Chapter 2).

Unexpected Subjects should be applauded for being among the few ethnographic investigations into judicial proceedings on domestic violence. Its thoughtful engagement with a rich body of feminist and anthropological scholarship opens up a crucial space for theoretical reflections on violence, testimony, and the law. To accomplish all these in such a short book is an intellectual feat. The book should be read by researchers, postgraduate students, and upper-level undergraduate of all disciplines interested in gender, violence, and the law.

Reference

West, Mark. 2006. Law in Everyday Japan: Sex, Sumo, Suicide, and Statutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.