Juan Javier Rivera Andia

This ongoing project is interested on exploring perceptions and experiences of cultural and social transformations among the inhabitants of two specific regions of Peru. The project will explore this in the cases of two different Quechua ethnic groups of the Andes in which I have previously conducted fieldwork: Chancay (central Andes, 1999-2003) and Cañaris (northern Andes, 2008-2011). I will compare Andean self-representations and local narratives on contemporary changes through their ritual practices and oral traditions. A secondary goal of this analysis is to bring insights and understandings to how people in the Central and Northern Peruvian Andes represent “alterity”.

I want to relate the contrast among both Andean cases to the different degrees and types of cultural transformations undergone on each region. The project will profit from these differences in order to examine how to detect diverse reactions to the exposition to new conditions, objects, techniques and ideas. I think different recent processes of modernization undergone by both Andean regions would be linked to particular ideologies concerning ethnic alterity. What kind of ideology is used by these indigenous peoples when they evaluate the transformations in their rituals or narratives? What can we learn from these indigenous points of views when we try to understand rural peasant societies in Latin America?