Mixing and its challenges: an ethnography of race, kinship and history in a village of Afro ...

276 Pages·2015·17.02 MB·English

The London School of Economics and Political
Science

Mixing and its challenges: an ethnography of race, kinship
and history in a village of Afro-indigenous descent in coastal
Peru

Tamara Hale

A thesis submitted to the Department of
Anthropology of the London School of Economics for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, June
2014
Declaration

I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of
the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other
than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which case the
extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified
in it).

The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted,
provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced
without my prior written consent.

I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of
any third party.

I declare that my thesis consists of 91,637 words.

Statement of use of third party for editorial help

I can confirm that my thesis was copy edited for conventions of language, spelling and grammar
by Eona Bell.
2
In Latin America, politics
is the water you swim in.
—Olivia Harris

To her memory
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Abstract

This thesis, based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, is about ordinary
Peruvians of mixed African slave and indigenous descent. It shows that villagers
in Yapatera, northern Peru, have responded to contradictory historical forces
through everyday practices of ‘mixing’. Villagers live in a society that officially
downplays the significance of race while it simultaneously discriminates against
non-white ‘others’. The thesis finds that villagers reject the ethnic (‘Afro-
Peruvian’) and racial (‘black’) labels cast upon them by outsiders, and instead
illustrates how villagers are engaged in a variety of social practices and local
narratives which stress the cultural, social, religious, political and economic
integration of the community into the local region, and which seek to de-
emphasise its potential ethnic distinctiveness. ‘Mixing’ permeates through
villagers’ ideas and practices relating to human physiology, procreation, descent,
marriage, personhood, historicity, religion, place-making, local politics, and
relations with the state. However, mixing is ultimately a fragile project. ‘Race’,
as a social divider, reappears often in the very practices or domains where mixing
occurs. Mixing itself can be understood as an attempt to overcome thinly-veiled
local racist discourses. It is also an attempt to negotiate oneself out of the very
undesirable category of ‘black’, and as such it bears continuities with historical
social practices. Mixing is not so much an outright resistance to racism, nor is it a
straightforward appropriation of nationalist ideologies. Instead mixing is to be
understood as an alternative form of knowledge: an autochthonous attempt to
engage with these external forces. By bridging the gap between Andean
anthropology and the study of Afro-descendants in a variety of disciplines, the
thesis helps fill a gap on mestizaje as a form of lived experience. By highlighting
the central role of kinship in ideas and practices of mixing, it also indicates the
wider implications of mixing for anthropological theory.

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Contents

Abstract..................................................................................................................4
List of Figures........................................................................................................7
Acknowledgements................................................................................................8
Note on Translations, Figures and Pseudonyms..................................................10
Glossary...............................................................................................................11
Introduction..........................................................................................................14
A historic apology........................................................................................................14
No more dolphins!.......................................................................................................16
Yapatera on camera, Yapatera off camera...................................................................18
Negritud vs. negrura....................................................................................................20
The village of Yapatera...............................................................................................24
The Hacienda Yapatera................................................................................................27
Arriving in Yapatera and methods...............................................................................30
Outline of the chapters.................................................................................................34
Chapter I. Mixing, race and ethnicity in historical and regional perspective......37
In the Lima mansion....................................................................................................37
Historical constructions of difference..........................................................................39
Race and ethnicity in contemporary Latin America....................................................44
Afro-indigenous relations, mixed people and others...................................................48
Ethnic despecification..................................................................................................51
Heterogeneity and mixing in kinship and marriage.....................................................54
Mixing, race and ethnicity in Peru...............................................................................56
Racism in Peru.............................................................................................................62
Peruvian slavery and manumission.............................................................................65
Afro-Peruvian ethnic mobilisation..............................................................................70
A note on the absence of ‘identity’..............................................................................74
Chapter II. A folk theory of race: Mixing, categorisation and racial essentialism
.............................................................................................................................78
Fernando’s cumanana..................................................................................................78
Overview of racial/colour terms..................................................................................80
Racism.........................................................................................................................84
A folk theory of race....................................................................................................90
Race and social categorisation.....................................................................................97
Despecification and mixing as a historical process...................................................102
Essentialism and experimental tasks.........................................................................105
Design of Custom Task 1..........................................................................................108
Design of Custom Task 2..........................................................................................110
Results of Custom Task 1..........................................................................................111
Results of Custom Task 2..........................................................................................112
Discussion of results..................................................................................................113
Conclusion.................................................................................................................115
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Chapter III. Carried in the heart: Surnames and bilaterality in kinship, marriage
and personhood..................................................................................................118
Tumba, Urpi, Cazombon...........................................................................................118
Double surnames: natural, civilised and good to think with.....................................120
Bilateral descent and marriage...................................................................................129
Carried in the heart: bilateral ideology and logic......................................................137
Bilateral personhood..................................................................................................142
‘Bilateral race’ in Yapatera........................................................................................145
Conclusion.................................................................................................................148
Chapter IV. Keeping their tombs warm: Remembrance practices, sociality and
the saint-like dead..............................................................................................151
Negros veletos: fanciful blacks..................................................................................151
Engaging with uncertainty.........................................................................................155
The work of remembering.........................................................................................159
Exchange and sociality..............................................................................................169
The saint-like dead.....................................................................................................176
Conclusion.................................................................................................................183
Chapter V. Sugar Ruins and Rotting Mangos: Hacienda, agrarian reform and
becoming peasants.............................................................................................186
Historical ruptures.....................................................................................................186
Sugar ruins and rotting mangos.................................................................................189
The time of the hacienda...........................................................................................192
Abuse and defiance on the hacienda.........................................................................195
Slavery and mixing....................................................................................................200
From peons to owners................................................................................................202
Yapatera’s ‘ugly stories’............................................................................................205
Freedom means drinking on Mondays......................................................................210
Beggars sitting on a bench of gold............................................................................214
Migration and mixing................................................................................................217
Conclusion.................................................................................................................218
Chapter VI. ‘Yapatera the future district’: The troublesome process of making
one place out of two...........................................................................................222
A camp of Moors.......................................................................................................222
Yapatera was a district before....................................................................................225
The ‘future district’ proposal.....................................................................................231
Village consolidation.................................................................................................234
Like Samaria to Jerusalem.........................................................................................237
The water and sewage project....................................................................................245
Conclusion.................................................................................................................249
Conclusion: Mixing as a fragile project.............................................................251
Appendix............................................................................................................260
Significance test for Custom Task 1..........................................................................260
Significance test for Custom Task 2..........................................................................260
Bibliography......................................................................................................261
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List of Figures

Figure 1. Map showing the principal areas of settlement of Peruvians of African descent..........12

Figure 2. Map of state of Piura......................................................................................................13

Figure 3. Satellite image of Yapatera............................................................................................13

Figure 4. Participants in the Afro-Peruvian pottery project...........................................................23

Figure 5. Race pyramid..................................................................................................................45

Figure 6. Three cousins..................................................................................................................94

Figure 7. A ‘mixed’ family............................................................................................................95

Figure 8. Sample formulation of Custom Task 1.........................................................................109

Figure 9. Sample formulation of Custom Task 2.........................................................................111

Figure 10. Results of Custom Task 1...........................................................................................112

Figure 11. Results of custom task 2.............................................................................................113

Figure 12. Double surname transmission pattern........................................................................121

Figure 13. The ritual of Agua del Socorro...................................................................................143

Figure 14. Father teaching his son how to velar..........................................................................155

Figure 15. Man burning candles to remember his mother...........................................................162

Figure 16. Recuerdos on the wall, on a household altar and near a television............................168

Figure 17. Woman and her children serving the food for the compartir.....................................172

Figure 18. The compartir outside the house................................................................................173

Figure 19. Woman ‘crowning’ the grave of her grandson...........................................................174

Figure 20. Velaciones aided by electric light...............................................................................175

Figure 21. Members of the religious fraternity carrying a Christ figure out of the church.........178

Figure 22. Farmer bringing mangos home from the chacra........................................................188

Figure 23. The old sugar factory..................................................................................................191

Figure 24. Twin chimneys of the factory.....................................................................................192

Figure 25. The old casa hacienda................................................................................................194

Figure 26. The old motor powering Yapatera’s well...................................................................195

Figure 27. Children rest on the cepo during a cultural event.......................................................200

Figure 28. Farmer with his organic mango trees.........................................................................209

Figure 29. Men enjoying a domingo chiquito..............................................................................211

Figure 30. Campesino shelling maize with the help of sons and nephews..................................213

Figure 31. Miss Mango Festival, Winner of the Silver Mango, Miss Morropón Province, and the
Winner of the Silver Mango, 2011..............................................................................................214

Figure 32. Welcome sign at the entrance to Yapatera.................................................................225

Figure 33. Map depicting the village of Yapatera as the capital of the ‘future district’..............233

Figure 34. Detail from map of the Hacienda Yapatera, dated 1961............................................243

Figure 35. Detail from map of ‘future district’............................................................................244

Figure 36. Satellite image of Yapatera........................................................................................245

Figure 37. Population growth in Yapatera 1940-2007................................................................248

Figure 38. Statue of a campesino on Yapatera’s main square.....................................................252

Figure 39. The repainted statue....................................................................................................253

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Acknowledgements

This research was made possible by an Economics and Social Research Council
Studentship (ES/G017964/1). Additional funding was provided by an International
Culture and Cognition Institute grant and a LSE Student Support grant. I am very
grateful to these institutions for the opportunities provided.
My thanks go to the good people of Yapatera, who generously shared with me
the substance of their lives: espero que haya dejado el nombre de Yapatera en alto.
While I have chosen not to name the friends, neighbours, and acquaintances who helped
me, in order to protect their anonymity, I carry all their names in my heart. The sense of
pride that many Yapateranos expressed in my project and their incomparable sense of
humour got me through the most difficult parts of fieldwork. Thank you, Chabaquito for
ensuring my safety and for making my work fruitful. In particular, I want to thank my
host mother in Yapatera, a remarkable woman and friend, who intuitively knew just
what I needed and when. I am very grateful to Taba, whom I regretfully never met, but
who provided my entry in to Yapatera and whose name opened many doors for me. To
the rest of my host family, thank you for your kindness, generosity and protection.
Thank you to Abelardo who included me in his many projects and to Fernando for
sharing his cumananas and more.
In the event that this thesis makes it back to Yapatera, I would like to take this
opportunity to disclose that while you told me so much about your lives and your loved
ones, I felt unable to tell you the truth about mine. Peru is a country where gays and
lesbians like myself still live in fear. I made the decision to protect myself by going,
reluctantly, back into the closet. This has caused me pain; I hope you understand.
This research project has a back story in the years I spent living in and visiting
Chiclayo. I owe more to Sonia Arteaga and Lucho Rocca of the Afro-Peruvian Museum
in Zaña than I can explain. Their friendship, dedication, generosity, patience, open-
mindedness, and vision has inspired me beyond words. Sonia, thanks for hammering
home the point that afros are andinos. Lucho, thanks for reminding me to look beyond
the obvious, to look at mixture as well as blackness. I thank Carolina Dominguez
Guzmán, for teaching me how to live in Peru, to be guerrera and how to love Peru;
thanks to the whole Dominguez Guzmán family for all their support and kindness over
the years. In Karlsruhe, Germany, I thank Hilda Gálvez whose stories sparked my initial
fascination with Peru.
I was fortunate to be supported and encouraged by a large number of individuals
in Peru. In Piura I thank Bruno Revesz and Jorge Requena (CIPCA), Chabela Ramos
(Casa Museo Almirante Miguel Grau), Lucho Gulman and his family, Henry Stewart,
Maria Zúñiga del Riofrío and Carlos Arrizabalaga Lizárraga (UDEP). In Chulucanas I
thank everyone at the Diocese, Ricardo Rivas Pizarro, Carlos Espinoza León and Raúl-
Estuardo Cornejo. In Lima I thank Joanna Drzewieniecki, Alejandro Diez Hurtado and
Wilfredo Ardito (PUCP), Humberto Rodriguez Pastor, Bertha Balbín, Nestor Valdivia
and Martin Benavides (GRADE), Cynthia Sanborn (Universidad del Pacífico) and Lucy
Harman. I am especially indebted to James McDonald and Elke Zapff, for their
hospitality and generosity. To Oswaldo Bilbao and Newton Mori (CEDET), Monica
Carrillo of Lundú, and the many other passionate and engaged activists with whom I had
the pleasure of speaking, I thank them for their interest and openness.
At the LSE, Rita Astuti is the kind of supervisor I would wish for any PhD
student; she truly listens and engages. And then she asks very difficult questions—but
ones which cut past all the fluff, to the heart of the matter, and help bring out the best
thinking. Rita has also gone above and beyond as a friend: thanks for the moral support,
the fabulous meals, the walks with Dapple, and for inviting me, and my family, into your
home.
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Without Olivia Harris’s coaxing I would probably not have returned to the LSE
to pursue a PhD, nor would I have developed this particular research project. With
Olivia’s sudden death I was forced to reach out for help and I discovered how lucky I am
to form part of such a large group of people she inspired. When I write, I do so with her
in mind, and I find myself trying to retrace so many of her ideas and questions, wishing
more had made it to print.
At Manchester I thank Peter Wade, for taking me on as his student after Olivia’s
passing. I have benefitted tremendously from his vast command of Latin American
anthropology, his expertise on race, ethnicity and Latin Americans of African descent,
and from his pragmatic advice and encouragement.
At LSE I also wish to thank all my fellow PhD students, the many rotating
members of the writing up seminar and my fellow inhabitants of ‘the cave’ for their
friendship and intellectual engagement. I especially thank Amy Penfield, my kindred
spirit in this doctoral-plus-maternal endeavour, for all the laughs we have shared. The
department of anthropology has been a wonderful intellectual home through all these
years; I am grateful to all those who read and commented on parts of my work:
Catherine Allerton, Charles Stafford, Mathijs Pelkmans, Véronique Bénéï, Matthew
Engelke and all those who provided feedback at the Friday Morning Seminar. Maurice
Bloch and Johnny Parry have been inspirational teachers since my undergraduate days. I
am grateful to Yanina Hinrichsen and all the other administrators in the department who
have taken such excellent care of all of us.
Various forms of guidance and encouragement were also provided face-to-face
or via email by scholars in the UK and beyond. Rachel O’Toole has been particularly
engaged and I have found her historical research on Peruvians of African descent
thoroughly illuminating. I am grateful for advice provided by Magnus Course, Jakob
Schlüpmann, Frank Salomon, Harry Sanabria, Dennis Gilbert, Peter Gose, Irene
Silverblatt, Donna Goldstein, Susan Gelman and Gil Diesendruck. I also thank all the
participants, panellists and convenors in conferences and workshops who have provided
valuable feedback on my emerging research.
In London I thank Robin Pharoah, Becky Rowe and Will Norman, my
colleagues at ESRO but above all my friends, for letting me go and for cheering me on.
Thanks to Alice Kadri, for going through thick and thin with me, and to Sarah Gottlieb,
because we became Londoners together.
I thank my family for all their emotional support, especially Shirley and Bob for
taking care of Dominique so wonderfully while I wrote. I am also indebted to Lisa Baker
for her help with babysitting. My grandfather, Ernst Münker, did not live to see this
work finished; if he had, he might have held it in his hands and perhaps finally believed
that I had been up to something worthwhile all these years. I thank my father Eckhard
Münker for offering his support and believing in me. Thanks to my mother Niko Hale,
my father Holger Barunke, and my grandmothers Sandy Hale and Adele Hale for giving
me the travel bug.
To my daughter Dominique, who arrived on the scene when this project had
already taken substantial shape: thank you for showing me what life is really about. And
finally, but most importantly, to my wife Cheri Tatem-Hale, whose love, humour,
patience and intuition have been the anchor of this thesis and its author for the last five
years. For coming to Yapatera and London, I thank you. Thank you for saying to me
things like, ‘great things are never perfect’.
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Note on Translations, Figures and Pseudonyms

All translations, diagrams and photographs are my own, unless otherwise
specified.

To protect my informants’ anonymity I have used pseudonyms throughout.

I have not used a pseudonym for my research site. My discussions of local
history and geography make the village easily identifiable as Yapatera.
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