BEING KOLLA: INDIGENOUS IDENTITY IN NORTHWESTERN ARGENTINA

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BEING KOLLA: INDIGENOUS IDENTITY IN NORTHWESTERN ARGENTINAAuthor(s): LAURIE OCCHIPINTISource: Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revue canadienne desétudes latino-américaines et caraïbes, Vol. 27, No. 54 (2002), pp. 319-345Published by: University of Calgary Press on behalf of Canadian Association of Latin American andCaribbean StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41800210 .

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BEING KOLLA: INDIGENOUS IDENTITY

IN NORTHWESTERN ARGENTINA

LAURIE OCCHIPINTI Northeastern University, Boston

Abstract. Using a case study of the Kolla in Argentina, this paper considers how indigenous identity may be constructed, practiced, and imagined in Latin America. People in the northwestern highlands have only recently begun to re- claim an identity as "indigenous" people. Reimagining their identity has been highly contested by the larger society. Nationally, the image of Argentina as a "European" nation denies the inclusion of indigenous peoples. Moreover, many of the Kolla have found being identified as an "Indio" a source of stigma rather than of pride. The debate, shrouded in "scientific" jargon on language, archaeological sites, and historical migration, has immediate and material consequences: "indigenous" peoples are entitled to specific rights in the national constitution, rights which poor white peasants do not necessarily share.

Résumé. A partir d'une étude de cas sur les Kollas d'Argentine, cet article explore comment on construit, pratique et imagine une identité autochtone en Amérique latine. Les habitants des hautes terres du nord-ouest de l'Argentine cherchent depuis peu à retrouver une identité autochtone, démarche fortement opposée par le reste de la société. Le fait que l'Argentine se fasse d'elle-même une image "européenne" est incompatible avec l'inclusion de peuples indigènes. En outre, pour de nombreux Kollas être considéré comme un "Indio" est davantage une source de stigmatisation que de fierté. Ce débat, qui est enveloppé d'un jargon "scientifique" en matière de langue, de sites archéologiques et de migration historique, a pourtant comme conséquence concrète et immédiate le principe que les autochtones ont des droits spécifiques au sein d'une constitution nationale qui ne coïncident pas nécessairement avec ceux des paysans pauvres d'origine européenne.

Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies , Vol. 27, No. 54 (2002): 319-345

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320 CJLACS / RCELAC 27/54 2002

Introduction

After several months in the southern Andes researching economic

development, local villagers I had befriended invited me to come along with them to a festival in a nearby village. The winter floodwaters had

finally receded enough to make the route through the steep valleys passable, and a caravan consisting of a rickety bus, a couple of pickups, and a Jeep, all filled with Iruyans dressed in their festival best, headed out. Our ensemble was cheerfully greeted at our destination by kin and acquaintances, who good-humoredly helped to pry the bus from the river ford which, as it turned out, was not quite passable after all. Our group rapidly dispersed into the crowd, which included similar

troupes from other small villages throughout the region, but notably few tourists. A few hours later, the festival officially began with an elaborate pachamama ceremony. Village officials and a couple of

prominent invitees, provincial politicians, performed a lengthy ritual of making a sacrifice of alcohol, chicha (corn beer), and tobacco to the traditional spirit of the earth. Several older men stood in the back-

ground, directing the proceedings and instructing the less-schooled

participants on the proper sequence and gestures of the ritual. Women from the host village circulated through the crowd, handing around

cups of chicha to the spectators, who were thus also participants. Fi-

nally, the copla competition, the main feature of the festival, began on the athletic court near the main square.

Coplas are short songs, performed to one of only a few variations of a four-line melody. Some verses are "standards," widely known

throughout the region. Others are "local," performed in a particular village or locale. Some of the most highly appreciated coplas are im-

provised, often as witty and slightly suggestive repartees between a male and a female singer. In northern Argentina, coplas are considered to be part of Kolla culture, icons of cultural and local identity. As the

singing began, the group from our village coalesced to watch its com-

petitors. Each village's participants performed local coplas, usually accompanied only by a drum. The singers - dressed in ponchos which, to the educated local eye, identify their village of origin by their pattern and weave - danced slowly in a circle with deliberate steps, occa-

sionally breaking into a wild race around the floor for a moment before subsiding once more into the measured steps of the circle. In between groups, the announcer praised "Kolla culture and traditions,"



Occhipinti / Being Kolla 321

inviting attendees to visit the tables where produce and crafts repre- sentative of the Kolla people were being displayed and also judged.

The Iruyan group with whom I traveled was delighted with their

first-place finish in the group competition, and several members won additional individual recognition. As the afternoon wore on into

evening, copla singing and dancing continued in the main square, while another dance, to popular music, began in the school gym later that

night and continued until the early morning hours. The Iturbe festival was such a success that Iruya staged its own

copla festival a couple of weeks later. Many of the groups that had

competed at Iturbe were invited, and competed with local groups from each of the tiny villages in the mountains around Iruya. There were even fewer cultural "outsiders" in Iruya than in Iturbe, with no tourists or provincial officials. There was, however, no pachamama cer-

emony; instead, local officials played the national anthem and led a salute to the Argentine flag that had been carried down from the school for the occasion. Iruyan school children performed several dances, all

Argentine folk dances rather than indigenous ones. The festival announcer, like the one in Iturbe, was effusive in his enthusiasm for local culture. But he specifically avoided the word "Kolla," preferring instead to talk about "local" culture, about "our" culture. This shift in

emphasis was glaringly obvious to me, as an anthropologist who had become interested in how Iruyans formulate their ethnic identity. Yet

despite the added nationalistic trappings and the avoidance of any in-

digenous references, the festival remained an opportunity to enact and celebrate the uniqueness of their culture and identity.

The differences in emphasis and expression of cultural identity between the two communities serve to highlight the intensely local

aspect of indigenous identity in this region, where Kolla identity is

recently taking on a highly politicized dimension. Iruya and Iturbe are similar in size and share a common culture, with ties of kinship and a

long history of trade between the two. Iturbe, closer to the main highway, to a major regional tourist centre, and with electricity and mod- ern communications, is more conscious and more activist in its embrace of Kolla identity than is the small community of Iruya which, in its isolation, is more fervent in its embrace of icons of national identity.

According to both the national census and indigenous rights activists, the largest ethnic group in highland Argentina is the Kolla of the northwest. Many people in this region have recently begun to redefine




themselves and their culture as "indigenous," a notion highly contested

by the larger society and within the highland communities themselves.

Indeed, the idea of belonging to a larger "Kolla" group is itself a mod- ern phenomenon in this region where identity is intensely local, so that inhabitants of one tiny hamlet see themselves as distinct from those of another village a few hours away. In this article, I explore Kolla ethnic

identity as it is experienced and enacted in Iruya, where indigenous identity has been highlighted recently as a result of land claims cases.

My goal is to contribute to an understanding of how ethnicity func-

tions, not just as an abstract social category, but how such categories take shape through individual experience, and how the use of those kinds of categories shape lived experience.

Unlike some neighbouring countries which have begun to envi- sion themselves as pluriethnic or multicultural societies, the enduring image of Argentina as a "European" nation denies the inclusion of

indigenous peoples. Many people in the highlands learn very young that being identified as an "Indio" is a source of stigma rather than of

pride, an attitude that explains at least in part the avoidance of indigenous references for the organizers of the Iruyan festival. The process of contesting and negotiating indigenous identity takes place in a particularly charged political and social context (Warren 1992; Jackson

1989, 1995). In this process, identity is linked to certain beliefs and

practices, to what is considered "traditional," to a lifestyle and worldview often conceived of as being fundamentally at odds with that of the dominant society. Individuals and groups who wish to claim an identity as "indigenous" are often in the position of having to prove their own "authenticity," a conundrum which is certainly facing people who consider themselves to be Kolla.

The people of this region are enmeshed in a process of cultural

change, one in which ethnic identity has taken on new meaning and

significance, yet without a clear common understanding of what it means to "be" Kolla. This reformulation of identity, which can be understood as a snapshot of the dynamic process of identity construc-

tion, is occurring in a highly politically charged context in which this

indigenous identity is being denied and negated by forces within as well as outside of the community. The debate, shrouded in "scientific"

jargon on language, archaeological sites, and historical migration, has immediate and material consequences: "indigenous" peoples are enti-




tied to specific rights in the national constitution, rights which poor white peasants do not share.

My focus is rather specifically on Iruya and the ways in which local residents experience, practice, and create their ethnic identity. I believe that this narrow focus is both methodologically necessary and

theoretically useful. Methodologically, my own experience and research in the region were confined to Iruya, with only occasional and spo- radic ventures to other highland communities. I thus cannot presume to address questions of identity for people in other parts of the northwest. Iruyans themselves feel a great deal of commonality with other

highland communities, although locally the culture of the valles (valleys) is perceived to be distinct from that of the high plains of the

puna. Even my focus on Iruya can be brought into question: identity, as it is experienced and created, is intensely local and individual. Many people from the departamento (an administrative district similar to a

county) of Iruya would never say that they are "Iruyan," but that they are from San Isidro or Higueras or one of the other tiny villages scat- tered through the valleys. This hyper-locality of identity is hardly unique to Iruya, but it sometimes has more salience locally than affiliations with larger units of belonging.

Theoretically, then, my rather specific focus allows a closer examination of the processes of identity creation which are so intensely local. A consideration of the lived experience of people in Iruya may shed more light on this theoretical question than a more sweeping analysis of the larger "ethnic group." My analysis is based on the in-

tensely local experience of community, on the participation in creative

processes of making culture and forming identity, and on the ways in which local identity may be deliberately transcended in order to mobilize political power.

Identity in a locale such as Iruya is shaped in continual dialogue with social and political forces that transcend the local, contexts such as interactions with various levels of government, with outside organizations such as the Catholic church, with national discourses of

Argentine identity, and with national and international discourses about

indigenous identity and indigenous rights. Yet identity is played out not in a political arena but in local events, where culture is demon- strated, enacted, and experienced by individuals. By situating my dis- cussion in a local framework, from the point of view of a single com-




munity, one which is multivocal and complex (as perhaps all "local" communities are), I hope to contribute to an ongoing dialogue about what it means to "make" culture (Jackson 1989), from a perspective mirroring that of Iruyans themselves.

Recent theories of ethnicity and race have made a compelling case that these are not fixed, timeless categories but social constructions,

continually changing, contested, and flexible understandings, rather than essential qualities of an individual or culture (see, for example, Anderson 1983; Handler 1988; Herzfeld 1987; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Warren 1992). As Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson note, this

body of work has served to shift attention to identity as a social construct: "If we question a pre-given world of separate and discrete 'peoples and cultures,' and see instead a difference-producing set of rela-

tions, we turn from a project of juxtaposing pre-existing differences to one of exploring the construction of differences in historical process" (1992, 16). Yet, as John Comoroff remarks,

ethnic identities may take on a powerful salience in the experience of those who bear them, often to the extent of appearing to be natural, essential, primordial. To borrow an aesthetic

metaphor from Marx: before it is built, a building exists purely in the imagination of its designer. . . . But once erected, it takes on a real materiality, an objective, lived-in quality - notwith-

standing that it can be deconstructed (1996, 166).

It is this experience of ethnic identity that concerns me here. For the people of Iruya, the notion that indigenous identity is constructed and continually refashioned can only be understood as ephemeral, as a

necessarily intangible meta-process. Instead, they see their ethnic iden-

tity as substantial and concrete, as essential, permanent, and natural.

Further, as they engage in an active political struggle in which ethnic

belonging is both a tool and a point of contention, this permanence and intransient sense of identity is even a goal. The static markers of ethnic identity (de la Cadena 1995) become politically significant, not

only as indicators of a legitimate indigenous status, but because people attach great importance to them. To extend Comoroff 's (borrowed)

metaphor, in their search to define Kolla identity, Iruyans are not seek-

ing the materials with which an identity may be constructed, but a

grand edifice, already built, that they can inhabit.




The Kolla of Northwestern Argentina

Despite the image of Argentina as a nation without Indians, some es- timates suggest that there are nearly 500,000. The people of the northwestern highlands generally refer to themselves as Kolla, a term that was previously considered pejorative but has been reclaimed by some local leaders and is now generally accepted in the region. By far the

largest indigenous group in Argentina, the Kolla number about 170,000 (Carrasco and Briones 1996, 24). The culture is part of the Andean cultural region and shares much in common with highland people in

nearby Bolivia. Most are settled agriculturalists and herders, eking out a marginal living on the harsh highland landscape.

The village where I worked, Iruya, is located in the mountainous northwest of the province of Salta in the northernmost corner of Ar-

gentina, only 30 miles as the crow flies from the Bolivian border. Iruya is one of two villages located in the valles that lie between the high Andes (puna) and the lowland Chaco to the east. Altogether, the epony- mous departamento of Iruya has about 5,000 inhabitants. Home to about 1,000 people, the village of Iruya serves as the market and administrative center for a number of smaller villages and dispersed home- steads located from two to fourteen hours' walking distance in the

surrounding area. The question of what it means to be Kolla is continually raised in

Iruya. Maria is a middle-aged woman active in land claim efforts and the local church in one of the small villages outside the market centre.

Sitting in the school kitchen where she worked, she speculated about the ancestry of the Kolla with two friends:

The people here, what race are we? I read once that we are, what is it? I forget now the name. To the south, the people there are Diaguita.... Some people say we are mestizo, that we are descended from Italians, or from the gringo Federico [a European land owner around the turn of the century] . I heard

something that Jesuits used to live here. Could we be descended from the Jesuits? . . . There are Kollas in Bolivia. But we aren't the same. Before, around here, they didn't say Kolla. There was another name, but now I can't remember it. But then there were the Incas, they were here, weren't they?




One of Maria's friends interjected with a comment that since the Jesu- its were priests, they could not be the ancestors of the people now. The women laughed as they pondered the possibilities that the priests could, in fact, have left descendants locally. Then Maria continued,

[In the Chaco], the [indigenous people] are lucky. They have more of their own traditions, their language.. . . You know, in Bolivia, they have a lot more of their own traditions too. The

people there, they have very strong communities, not like here. There, if there is a problem . . . they just go straight to the older

people in the community, the abuelos [literally, grandparents], and they say, "You go work here, you do this," and that is it.

Kay Warren (1992, 190) suggests that memory is contentious for the Guatemalan Maya, the issue of who "remembers" and who writes

history. This sense of memory is problematic in Iruya - there is no collective memory of what is means to be Kolla, of a sense of

peoplehood. Maria, with other community leaders, was actively en-

gaged in a process of recapturing memory and history, searching for a sense of ancestry. In their search, they incorporate the annals of histo- rians and archaeologists, but these reach the community in a frag- mented, contested way. They also turn to a more local memory, to tales of "the gringo Federico" and Jesuit priests, dimly remembered and preserved in stories heard from long-deceased grandparents. Maria's comparison of her community with those of the Chaco and of Bolivia - both implicitly seen as truly "indigenous" groups - is best understood as an expression of a profound sense of cultural loss and a

recognition of the difficulties inherent in self-definition in a context of historical oppression and forced assimilation. Jeffrey Gould (1998) describes the silencing of memory of indigenous identity in Nicaragua, documenting the way that both church and state engaged in the deliberate destruction of indigenous symbols, for example clothes and reli-

gious icons. Local people retained only "dispersed memories" (1998, 286) of indigenous history and traditions. Yet Gould argues that this

"dispersed memory" is in fact one of the most crucial sites of contem-

porary ethnic identity as indigenous: "The survival of indigenous eth-

nicity as well as its demise appeared to lie in the people's collective

memory of specific forms of oppression and conflict rather than in

language and material culture" (1998, 3). The notion that a collective




memory of oppression and marginalization may serve to define and unite a specific indigenous people more than material culture, lan-

guage, or remnants of "traditions" finds an apt case study in Iruya. The highlands of Salta and Jujuy were incorporated into the Span-

ish colonial system by the end of the seventeenth century. While many local practices are rooted in pre-colonial traditions, rural highland communities, like peoples elsewhere in the Andes, have been specifically organized by colonial policy and legislation, and now exist within the political, legal, and economic frameworks of the Argentine nation- state. During the colonial period, significant ecological changes took

place in Iruya, as the Spanish replaced local systems of management and tenure as well as crops and animals with those they brought from

Europe (Reboratti 1996, 54-55). Argentine independence in 1810 served only to increase the isolation and peripheral status of communities in the northwest. As control of the nation was centralized in Buenos Aires, the remote northwest was increasingly dominated by the power of local leaders, called caudillos, who ruled through their

personal ties with local elites (see Shumway 1991, 4-6). The rural

population lost whatever meagre protections granted to them under

Spanish law as wards of the Crown, such as limitations on the amount of labour that could be required by landowners. Although northern

highlands were largely spared the genocidal wars that Argentina waged on some segments of its indigenous population in the nineteenth century, exploitation of land and labour continued apace. Since the begin- ning of the twentieth century, many households in the highlands, especially the region near Iruya, have been incorporated into a capitalist labour market as migrant agricultural workers on the sugar planta- tions of eastern Salta. This pattern of seasonal migration in search of a cash income has led to a decrease in the productivity of land control- led by rural communities, as much of the labour force has been si- phoned off (Abduca 1995).

Today, most Iruyans are smallholding farmers, raising potatoes and corn as staples and herding sheep, goats, and small numbers of cattle. Crops depend on altitude and the availability of water, and most families employ a diversified strategy that calls for the cultivation of tiny plots of land in various locations and pasturing small herds on common grazing land at higher altitudes. Most families own or rent less than one hectare of land; few are truly landless. In the market village of Iruya itself, many residents make a living in almacenes (small




shops) that sell food and small quantities of manufactured goods to their neighbours and the occasional tourist. The market village has

running water and electricity, provided by a gasoline generator several hours a day, amenities which the smaller villages lack. Residents of the

"interior," as it is called, travel to Iruya for mail, to use the single public telephone, to visit the hospital, to attend church services, or to send their children to secondary school. A single dirt road, impassable for much of the rainy season, links Iruya with the highway and the cities of the northwest. A few of the more prosperous families in Iruya own pickup trucks, but most rely on weekly bus service to journey beyond the departamento.

Yet the community of Iruya is hardly a homogenous, self-con- tained village. Instead, the people of Iruya, individuals from both the market village and, to a more limited extent, the smaller villages of the

departamento, are far from isolated from the larger society and culture. They frequently travel to and from urban areas, engage in permanent and temporary labour migration, and develop economic links to the city through the marketing of produce. Local people are consum- ers of manufactured goods and the media. They have kinship links to

multiple communities outside the departamento and numerous organi- zational ties, mostly through the Catholic church, to other rural highland communities.

Being Kolla

Local leaders like Maria recreate and redefine what it means to be Kolla through a continual process and dialogue. Ethnic identity is given meaning and enacted in the routines and rhythms of daily life, a praxis that confirms a distinct local culture. In highland communities such as

Iruya, "local culture" is celebrated even as community members disa-

gree on what it means to be Kolla, or even if they wish to claim an

identity as such. How being Kolla is imagined and lived varies markedly even within

a small population such as Iruya. It would be possible, but not terribly useful, to recite a long list of aspects of traditional culture which have been "lost" locally: a native language, styles of dress, many features of non-Catholic religion. It would be similarly possible to find those as-

pects of the local culture that reflect what we imagine to be "traditional": patterns of subsistence, community work projects, and so on.




In fact, many aspects of what endures might even be the same as those that we fear are lost, depending on how we choose to analyze them

symbolically: distinctive local speech patterns, styles of dress, some features of folk religion. As Marisol de la Cadena indicates in her study of ethnicity in a rural community near Cuzco, material markers of

identity such as particular types of clothing or styles of hat may be

replaced by more subtle markers (many of which are virtually invisible to outsiders) that define more fluid identity boundaries (1995, 339- 340). The kind of music one listens to or performs, the way that a

person wears his or her hair, the kind of food that is served for a family celebration or for a regular dinner, all express ethnic identity. Like

wearing traditional clothing, such markers of culture are transient and

easily changed, depending on the situation and the motivations of the individual.

Even if these kinds of markers are understood as being subtle or

ephemeral, such an analysis still seeks to define culture by the pres- ence or absence of "traditional" traits, an approach which ultimately "does very little to aid our understanding of the history or reality of

indigenous communities" (Gould 1998, 288). In Iruya, "being Kolla" is marked as much by dancing to popular cumbia music as it is by dancing to traditional coplas and, indeed, individuals may move

smoothly from one to the other without a sense of disjuncture. Gould (1998) rejects an essentialist view of cultural survivalism that counts markers of ethnicity such as language and dress, yet nonetheless ar-

gues that the destruction of communities, community organizations, and identity is a real and significant "loss," not just a relativist "transformation" (14). As in the communities studied by Gould, in Iruya cultural loss occurred as a result of the constant negation of the au-

thenticity of indigenous identity, in the context of land dispossession, forced labour, and political violence, which acted to severely constrain the ways in which people could reconfigure their identities ( 1 998, 287- 288). An identity as indigenous, understood as a continued negotiation of identity in relationship with the state, has been nearly impossi- ble to maintain under such conditions.

As Jean Jackson (1989) has suggested, "culture" tends to be given positive moral and political value, but only if it is believed to be "authentic." Cultural distinctiveness is associated with "culture," while Western culture (expressed in the national society) is presumed to have transcended culture (Warren 1992). Yet peoples throughout Latin




America who consider themselves to be indigenous are enmeshed in

rapid and thorough processes of cultural change, processes that are not simply imposed upon them by "outside" forces. The process by which a given group "invent[s], create[s], package[s], or sometimes

sell[s its] culture" is difficult even to describe without (often implicitly) questioning the validity or authenticity of that culture (Jackson 1989, 127), a difficulty that Jackson credits to a rather conservative

concept of culture itself, one which intrinsically sees culture as a static and fixed thing rather than a process. "The term culture, because of some of the underlying assumptions, is anything but useful when we

try to describe how people with an indigenist awareness of themselves

modify their culture as part of their inter-ethnic strategies" (1989, 127). The answer suggested by Jackson (1989, 1995) is to refine our con-

cept of culture itself in a way that parallels the currently popular notion of identity, as flexible and situational, "something in flux, some-

thing negotiated and grasped for" (1989, 139), rather than as a fixed

commodity which a person or group "has" or "loses." Part of the problem of understanding and describing cultural change, while allowing for an understanding of indigenous identity, is rooted in a static notion of culture, rather than an understanding of culture that is dynamic, as

people use cultural forms to adjust to changing social conditions (see also Appadurai 1996, 12-15). People in Iruya are actively involved in

just such a process, but one which is taking place in a highly politically charged atmosphere, in which their ability to assert an identity as "in-

digenous" holds the key to resources and land which are seen, at the local level at least, as ensuring the survival of local culture itself.

Even as we, as anthropologists, move to a deeper analysis of iden-

tity, it is clearly important to keep in mind that material markers of

identity may be used to deny local claims to a unique cultural identity. In Iruya, for example, the provincial government has claimed that the

"Hispanicization" of local people - the loss of an indigenous language, of many religious rituals, and of other visible signs of cultural difference - is so thorough that the claim to an indigenous status has become invalid (see Reboratti 1996). This argument, mobilized in sup- port of short-term political goals, ignores a long history of the active

suppression of the indigenous language by the government and by white colonists, the eradication of public displays of local religious beliefs by the church, and a pervasive racism that has led many local

people to assimilate as much as possible into the dominant population.



Occhipinti / Being Kolla 33 1

In Iruya, the word "Kolla" itself is seldom heard, and the term

"indigenous" almost never used self-referentially. Instead, people refer broadly to "our culture" or "local" culture; many will acknowledge that they are "Kolla" only if pressed, and others not at all. When people refer only to "local" culture or "our" culture, it has acted as a

partially hidden transcript, one which allows people to recognize difference without having to assume an identity that retains some pejorative connotations in the larger culture. The unwillingness of many local residents to invoke a specific identity as Kolla is tied to a historical context of oppression and the denigration of indigenous culture. This

oppression is not buried deeply in the colonial past, but in the life

experiences of individuals in their interactions with the dominant culture. Don Santos is a thoughtful, soft-spoken man, a farmer like his

neighbours, and active in the church and in local politics. In an inter- view in the community's chapel, with the small children from his cat- echism class running underfoot, he tried to explain the reluctance of

many individuals to identify themselves as Kolla:

For my father, the word "Kolla" was a proud word. But people my age, they don't accept this. They don't consider themselves to be indigenous. Some accept it. But there are others who don't like to say "Kolla." When we go to the sugar plan- tations - I used to go - we would get there on the bus and

they used to say, "Kollas from Iruya, shitty Kollas."

Kolla identity finds expression both in affirmation and in denial. There are those who affirm the culture, who actively embrace being Kolla and are trying to claim ownership of the term in a positive sense. A

newly formed community association in one of the small villages outside of Iruya, for example, recently adopted the name Consejo Kolla de Finca Santiago (Kolla Council of Finca Santiago). Others vigor- ously reject the symbols and markers of Kolla identity, even denigrat- ing them. A negative experience of ethnic identity can, under some circumstances, act to coalesce that identity; Jeffrey Gould finds that in Nicaragua, "the survival of indigenous ethnicity as well as its demise

appeared to lie in the people's collective memory of specific forms of

oppression and conflict rather than in language and material culture" (1998, 3). As Don Santos suggested, this complete denial of Kolla and

indigenous identity may be most vehemently expressed by persons of




his generation, people in their fifties and sixties, who have encoun- tered racism and rejection in the dominant society and feel that being Kolla would relegate them to a lesser status. Their perceived need to

reject Kolla ethnicity, and the intensity with which they do so, in itself

suggests that Kolla is not only a significant social label but a salient and powerful marker of self-identity.

Finding that ethnic identity is flexible and situational is hardly unique to Iruya or the Kolla. Ethnic identity is, in the words of Kay Warren, "a collage of conflicting meanings, simultaneously advanced by different actors in social systems. In this formulation, ethnicity becomes the

practice, representation, negotiation, resistance, and appropriation of

identity for all parties" (1992, 204). This does not imply that the individual can choose in a "free market" of identities, as her/his choices are constrained by a variety of political, cultural, and economic fac- tors (Warren 1992, 205). Throughout Latin America, people ascribe ethnic identity in a fluid and contingent way; an individual can be "Indio" in one circumstance and "mestizo" in another.

For the Kolla, however, situated as they are in northern Argentina, there is no intermediate category of "mestizo" (Nostro 1992, 59). The

Argentine national identity is built on associations with Europe. Un- like Bolivia to the north or most of the other nations of South America,

Argentina does not have a large indigenous population. The myth of the white, European Argentine has deep historical and cultural roots, even in the northern provinces where some degree of physical mestizaje is the norm (see Shumway 1991). This word itself, commonly used elsewhere in Latin America to refer to people of mixed European, indigenous, and African ancestry, is rarely heard in Argentina. In the national imaginary, those who are not European - chiefly indigenous peoples and the nation's small Afro-Argentine population - are rel-

egated to the sidelines (see Andrews 1980), given a place in the nation's historical imagination but not in its self-image. The flexibility of

identity for Iruyans and other highland people, then, is limited by phenotypic markers of race. There is no clear, non-derogatory cat-

egory of identity for the urban "mestizo," nor for the rural migrant who might choose to leave that indigenous identity behind.

In the rural communities, permanent migration to the city is sometimes seen as abandoning Kolla identity, despite the difficulties such

migrants may face in urban areas where the negative construction of




indigenous identity becomes even more salient. Yet as Kolla identity has been formulated and reformulated, it has been closely linked with a particular rural lifestyle and economy. As an example, an elderly farmer sitting in a village restaurant, Don José, recounted the success that two of his children had found as a teacher and a nurse in the

provincial capital. But, he continued dolefully, "They are no longer Kollas. For better or worse, this is a fact." He explained that they "forgot" their identity when they moved to the city, and now live like "whites." The equation being made here, common in the rural vil-

lages, is that "being Kolla" is somehow almost inherently incompatible with an urban lifestyle and professional work. Instead, "being Kolla" entails a rural lifestyle, one which at times is equated with hardship and poverty. Thus, those individuals who leave the agricultural vil-

lages for any extended period may find that they are cultural outsiders in their own village as well as in the city. Norma, a young woman, returned to her native village as an elementary teacher after complet- ing post-secondary training in the city. Instead of the warm reception that she expected, she felt that her neighbours viewed her with suspi- cion, "as if I were an outsider."

A middle-aged woman from one of the interior villages, Doña

Angela, described the "life of the Kolla": "We work here. We have to move the earth, the rocks, to get our daily bread." Doña Angela is a

particularly outspoken advocate of local cultural identity. She empha- sizes the element of suffering frequently described by local residents as part of their life, which resonates strongly with her own rather difficult life history. Suffering, valued as part of "being Kolla," is inti- mately linked to working the earth.

The relationship between cultural values and a subsistence economy is reinforced, perhaps inadvertently, by institutions such as the local Catholic church, administered by Spanish Claretian missionaries, which has been active in its efforts to promote a valorization of indigenous identity in the highlands. Perhaps because other material markers of culture are largely absent, the "traditional" lifestyle of local people, which necessarily entails subsistence agriculture and herding, has been invoked as a key symbol of being Kolla, even though agriculture in the region has long been connected with the larger economy. Subsistence farming is so strongly associated with what it means to be Kolla, in both the eyes of outside agents such as the Church and other develop-




ment agencies and by rural villagers such as Don José and Doña Angela, that defining Kolla identity apart from the rural context at times seems to make little sense to those in the community.

Claiming Land

Ethnic identity is not merely a question of sentiment or cultural

connectedness, nor a symbolic attachment that occurs outside the context of political and economic reality. Rather, ethnic identity is claimed or denied by various actors enmeshed in political and social relation-

ships. For people in the departamento of Iruya, ethnic identity has

recently come to have clear material consequences, as land claims cases have reshaped systems of land tenure in these rural communities. This has occurred, in part, because of a changing legal landscape.

The recent revision of the Argentine constitution grants clear and

relatively expansive rights to indigenous peoples, including rights to

ownership of lands that they have traditionally occupied. Prior to this 1994 revision, the constitution specified the state's desire to deal peace- fully with its native peoples and promote their conversion to Catholi- cism. The archaic language and goals of the former constitution reflect a patriarchal attitude towards indigenous peoples that has only begun to change in the last thirty years. The constitutional revision of 1994 essentially states that each community has a right to the land that it has "traditionally occupied." The inclusion of this language in the constitution brought considerable power to bear on the subject, and led to a spate of new land claims being filed and old claims being settled. Certain aspects of the new laws are particularly important to the success of land claims and the question of ethnic identity. Signifi- cantly, all these rights are exclusive to indigenous peoples; these are

rights that neither poor "white" or "Argentine" farmers nor so-called "Bolivian" migrants share. Ongoing land claims have highlighted the issue of identity in many highland communities, as indigenous rights activists and community leaders have actively worked to mobilize communities.

Land claims and the associated issue of indigenous rights have served as a catalyst for questions of identity in Iruya. In one of the small villages outside of Iruya, Rodeo Colanzuli, the Kolla Council of Finca Santiago was formed in order to pursue a land claim. Its leaders and members are highly conscious of the relationship between indig-




enous identity and their ability to successfully claim land, and the com-

munity is one of the few in the departamento where the term Kolla is

freely employed. Nicolas, a community leader who moved to Colanzuli from another highland community when he married a local woman, noted that there is a relationship between the land claim and the revi- talization of identity that has occurred in the community:

The people were losing their sense of identity as Kolla. Be- cause of the land, they are recovering their sense of identity. As of this year, we are registered with the national bureau of

indigenous affairs [INAI] and the provincial bureau as an in-

digenous community. Before, we weren't registered, we weren't anything. We are just now starting to be aware of our- selves as an "indigenous" community.

The acceptance of Kolla identity varies between communities within even such a small area as the departamento of Iruya, at least in part because of different levels of politicization of identity through experience with land claims and other salient issues. In San Isidro, the home of Don Santos, land titles were attained by the community after a

lapse in the formal ownership of the finca, a lull where rents were not collected, and a brief paper struggle to regain titles. In Colanzuli, there was much more of an active struggle which, because of the way the laws were rewritten, required people to identify themselves as indigenous. As a result, community leaders in Colanzuli were active participants in a heightened level of interaction with non-local agents, with regional indigenous organizations, and with a broader discourse of indigenous identity. This active struggle politicized the idea of identity and sparked a revalorization of Kolla identity within the community. Where Don Santos, of the village of San Isidro, noted that the people of his generation found the term Kolla to be insulting, his middle-aged peers in Colanzuli found that they needed to firmly establish their ethnicity as Kolla in order to win their case. A document that the Kolla Council of Finca Santiago wrote to establish its credibility as a local institution declared that:

We [are] the indigenous owners of these lands since time im- memorial, which is today the Finca Santiago. We belong to the




Kolla people [pueblo], in other times Koyasullo. [We are the] direct heirs of our ancestors the Omaguacas and their lands.

This document represents one outcome of a long process of local dis- cussion and debate, in which people took an active interest in their

ancestry, in pre-colonial history and the settlement of the highlands, and in the history of land ownership under colonial and post-colonial forms of tenure that they generally judge to be oppressive.

Being Indigenous

Even as an identity as Kolla is being revalorized and given new mean-

ing in Iruya and the surrounding communities, there is a disconnect that persists between "being Kolla" and "being indigenous." In northern Argentina, the image of "indigenous peoples" is primarily associated with lowland peoples, particularly those of the Chaco, and not with highland farmers. In the north and in the province of Salta where

Iruya is located there are numerous lowland peoples that have vibrant cultures and significant populations. Most of these groups do maintain visible material markers of culture - indigenous languages, econo- mies that continue to incorporate the practice of hunting and gather- ing, traditional craft production, and so on. In these lowland regions, there is little ambivalence about the "indigenousness" of these groups, unlike in the Argentine highlands. Groups like the Wichi, a tribe in the

nearby Chaco, are so clearly identified as "real" Indians that the iden-

tity of the Kolla as indigenous is thrown into question by comparison (see Gould 1998). Because they lack the obvious markers that other

neighbouring groups do have, they appear to be "Hispanicized," or to be merely

" campesinos

" without claim to indigenous status. The pres- ence of "real" Indians so nearby in Salta may detract from the (exter- nal or internal) identification of highland people as equally (or simi-

larly) "indigenous." This detachment of Kolla ethnicity from a specifically indigenous

identity holds true within the Kolla community itself. The reclamation of the term "Kolla" discussed above has not been extended to "indigenous" identity. To a certain degree, this is undoubtedly due to the

pejorative connotations attached to the term and to the historic stig- matization of indigenous peoples. Similarly, Abercrombie notes that




there are few Bolivians who claim to be "Indian" per se (although ayllu membership is frequently claimed), and argues that this reluctance is a product of historical power relationships:

Given their advantage in force, it is not surprising that aspects of the colonizers' value system have become hegemonic, so that the stigma attached long ago by Europeans to "Indianness" has worked its way into "Indian" self-consciousness as well.

Consequently, self-proclaimed Indians are exceedingly scarce, apart from urban representations of "Indian" types in folkloric

pageantry: they persist in this discourse only as romanticized or stigmatized alters (1991, 96).

This image of the Indian as alter - as a fossil, as a relic, as alternately stigmatized or romanticized - may contribute to the reluctance of people such as Iruyans to embrace this particular identity.

Yet even as Kolla identity has been redefined in the active process of its local revalorization, indigenous identity surely has the same ca-

pacity to be transformed and redefined. In Nicaragua, Gould found that one indigenous community, Sutiaba, without well-defined ethnic markers was able to survive as an "indigenous" community because it was able discursively to broaden the category of "indigenous" in a

way that united factions within the community (1998, 103-104). Work- ers, artisans, agricultural labourers, and smallholders were united within this ethnic category. In Iruya, Gould's cautionary example finds its mark: the close association between indigenous identity and subsistence agriculture has fractured the community. Land rights have acted as the central issue uniting the local community in its quest for political recognition, while other categories of rights have been peripheral. Just as land has been the unifying factor locally, it has also taken on a central role in local rhetoric and discourse about identity. The tie presumed to exist between the traditional culture and the land enshrined notions of Kolla identity. This has served to exclude other claimants to Kolla identity from legitimately sharing ethnic belonging.

Individuals who have become political leaders in urban-based indigenous rights groups have faced mistrust at times by the Iruyan community. Urban migrants who have been active in Kolla groups in Salta, for example, are seen as being out of touch with the real needs of the




local population and as culturally disconnected but at the same time as

being overly sentimental and resistant to practical change. Rural leaders have few connections with urban-based groups and express seri- ous misgivings when those groups claim to represent "the" Kolla. Yet it is these kinds of representatives, as well as organizations from outside the community, such as NGOs and the Catholic church, that link the local community with larger discourses of Indianness and indigenousness. These links may ultimately provide a vehicle that expands the notion of indigenous identity to the point where it is accepted by Iruyans.

As Kolla identity has been revalorized, more people have been

willing to openly lay claim to it, using the word again with a sense of

pride. In the last several years, it appears as though some of the reluctance to claim Kolla identity has diminished, and it is emerging as an

important facet of political and cultural interactions, both within the local region and in the relationships of local communities with the

larger regional and national systems. To some extent, this identity has been politicized, invoked by urban migrants and pan-indigenous political organizations - ironically, both groups that rural residents often feel have lost their genuine connections to the community. At this

level, an internationalized discourse of indigenous rights (see Nostro

1992) has taken some precedence over local cultural differences and the needs of local people. However, this politicized struggle has had direct and concrete benefits for local people, as activist organizations have contributed to spur the national government to reconsider indigenous land claims.

In considering the role of leadership and organizations in construct-

ing Kolla identity, I am not offering an analysis of the rather more

politicized arena of formal organizations and the government, nor those who claim to represent the Kolla on any particular level. While this would be an interesting and surely worthwhile study, my present goal is to understand the processes of identity formation as they are played out at the local level. Still, the implied interlocutors and audience, and

certainly the most important, are the government and those organizations that stand to have a material impact on the community, such as NGOs.

Within the departamento of Iruya itself, there are no organizations based on ethnicity, either locally based or arms of larger ethnic organi-




zations based in other areas. There are no locally managed non-gov- ernmental organizations that purport to represent the community to the "outside" based on any kind of "indigenous" identity. In fact, there is no locally based organization more encompassing in scope than centros vecinales, or neighbourhood associations. Several of these exist in the small villages throughout the departamento, and some of them have, rather by default, found themselves in a leadership role in the land claims issue. They are, however, rather weak organizationally precisely because they lack wider ties. An examination of their recent

history suggests that the organizations themselves, as well as the local individuals who have assumed leadership positions within them, have

grown tremendously as a result of acting as the vanguard of land claims. This growth, however, has been erratic and costly, as they are inexpe- rienced and at times naïve at dealing with larger bureaucracies (for a similar example, see Jackson 1995).

The most active and significant organization in Iruya in the last 15

years has been the regional Catholic church, which has been a principal actor in revitalizing Kolla identity in the local community. The Catholic church, throughout most of the northwestern highlands, is administered by the Claretian Order. Church leaders have expressed a belief that the church has a leading role in promoting educational efforts that teach the inherent value of local culture and traditions, as well as a responsibility to respect the culture and allow space for local traditions and rituals (Prelature of Humahuaca 1997, 10). This role is defined as an intrinsic element of promoting social justice and human

dignity, in a religious discourse that derives much of its content and emphasis from liberation theology. Accordingly, the church has de- voted considerable effort and emphasis on the valorization of local Kolla identity and the promotion of Kolla culture and political inter- ests. The church and its agents have an interest in promoting what I have argued elsewhere is an idealized image of "traditional" culture (see Occhipinti 2000) with a strong emphasis on subsistence farming. It also promotes a rather sanitized attachment to local traditions such as pachamama rituals, mediated through a syncretic lens that imagines such rituals to be part of indigenous identity but largely strips them of their spiritual content. In the community of Iruya, the role of the church in reimagining Kolla identity has had two principal effects. First, the church's willingness to embrace Kolla identity as a valued part of local




culture has spurred its revalorization by members of the community. The church's consistent and emphatic message of cultural worth has been received by the faithful.

The church has also played a more instrumental role, in its singular ability to act as a supralocal agent. In its own efforts to develop net- works of local lay leaders, through frequent retreats, training sessions, and meetings, the church has brought together individuals from communities throughout the region, bridging a distance caused by geo- graphic and social isolation. Through a theme of the commonality of the experience and shared ethnic identity of the Kolla which is con-

tinually reiterated at such events, the church has helped to forge, or

perhaps has provided a site for the creation of, a Kolla identity that transcends a local identity as "Iruyan." While this sense of common

experience and identity exists apart from such events, the church gives it a political voice and ties it explicitly to indigenous identity and in-

digenous politics and indirectly to an international discourse of indigenous rights and liberation theology.

Being Authentic

For peoples who consider themselves indigenous, the process of con-

testing and negotiating identity takes place in a particularly charged political and social context. In this process, identity is linked to certain beliefs and practices, to what is considered "traditional," to a lifestyle and worldview often conceived of as being fundamentally at odds with that of the dominant society. People in Iruya are actively involved in

just such a process, in which their ability to assert an identity as "indigenous" holds the key to resources and land which are seen, at the local level at least, as ensuring the survival of the culture itself. Part of the

problem of understanding and describing cultural change while allow-

ing for an understanding of indigenous identity is rooted in a static notion of culture, instead of an understanding of culture that is dynamic, as people use cultural forms to adjust to changing social conditions (Jackson 1995, 1989; also Appadurai 1996, 12-15). In a case

study of the Tukanoans of Colombia, Jean Jackson finds that the effort of these people to retain an identity as Indian is made not only because they value tradition and autonomy, but because they increas-

ingly need to demonstrate "Indianness" to the government and to NGOs

(1995, 12). In particular, Jackson points to the difficulties inherent in



Occhipinti / Being Kolla 34 1

trying to incorporate new ideas and cultural forms while "remaining" Tukanoan. In accordance with the rhetoric and dominant politics of international agencies vis-à-vis indigenous rights, indigenous culture is encouraged - although the culture itself has become "simplified and folklorized to make it easier for outsiders to understand" (1995, 15).

Historically, the Kolla have not been seen as "authentically" indigenous, in the same way as the lowland tribes of Argentina. While they are surely a minority group oppressed by their interactions with and

marginalization from the dominant political economy, they have only recently begun to reconceptualize themselves as an "indigenous" group. This reconceptualization seems to be in direct response to the new

potential arising from that status. Previously, "being Kolla" was a re-

grettable fact, one that limited their interactions with the national so-

ciety but held little potential for political mobilization. Unlike the Tukanoans, the Kolla cannot take their status as indigenous for granted. The negotiations that this entails do not enable them to formulate a distinction: "This is traditional, this is Argentine; this is what we will

accept and this other we will resist." Instead, they have to demonstrate their status as indigenous in a situation where the markers are not seen as applying to them.

Iruyans are forced to define what it is to "be" Kolla, in a culture that has "lost," at least in a historic sense, both the visible markers and a strong internal sense of cultural identity. There is pressure on the one hand to "be" Indians, in order to claim the rights to which the

community is entitled, but there is a lack of a sense of what that means. Local people are in the position of creating and defining Kolla culture in order to demonstrate authenticity. To some degree this might ex-

plain the emphasis on the "local" as part of identity - "we can't say what it is to be Kolla, but we do know what it is like to be here." There is a reluctance to claim to hold the knowledge of the tribe, so to speak, to assert what it is that "the" Kolla believe. The problem of authentic-

ity is especially salient in two contexts: in the relationship between the local community and the state; and in the arena of claiming leadership and community representation.

Jeffrey Gould notes that in Nicaragua, "The denigration of indigenous authenticity was the most powerful weapon in the ladino dis- cursive arsenal, one that facilitated their use of state repression against their adversaries" (1998, 285). In this case, in order to be considered authentic, an Indian had to be submissive to local ladinos. To break




from submission, to be educated, eliminated indigenous identity as the

person lost that defining characteristic of submissiveness (Gould 1998, 76).

The parallel here, in the Argentine highlands, may be the idea of

"oppression" as a defining characteristic of Kolla identity. The theme of suffering and oppression resonates through discussions of Kolla

identity on many levels. It is a common expression of local farmers, who struggle against uneven market conditions and the isolation of their communities. It is a theme in sermons and materials of identity promulgated by the Church. Even in the resistance to Kolla identity expressed by many Iruyans, oppression is emphasized - the refusal to

accept an identity as Kolla is frequently a refusal to accept the oppression so closely linked to it. Yet as in Gould's Nicaragua of the nineteenth century, the trope of "oppression" creates a paradox: to break from oppression, to regain a sense of power, alienates a central characteristic of what it means to be Kolla.

Conclusion

The internal debate about what it means to be Kolla has accelerated in

large measure as a result of land claims. Kolla identity is a continual subtext in ongoing negotiations with a state and a dominant society that persistently question the authenticity of an indigenous Kolla iden-

tity. It is in this context that self-identification as indigenous becomes an economic issue as well as one of identity. The material ramifica- tions of ethnic identity have highlighted and underscored the issue,

bringing it to the forefront of community life and making it a topic of

frequent conversation. Although the land claim issue has been a key factor in revitalizing Kolla ethnic identity, I would not want to suggest that this somehow makes claims to indigenous status spurious or self-

seeking. Rather, the land claims have rekindled an issue that has been

significant for generations, and have done so in the context of a shift-

ing legal and cultural landscape in contemporary Argentina. Land has

emerged as a key issue, not only because of its instrumental economic

value, but as a fundamental symbol of identity in a discourse of rights and cosmology. Land has acted as the symbolic centre in prolonged efforts on the part of the indigenous communities of Argentina to define themselves in relation to the national society (Nostro 1992).




Lacking an alternative mestizo identity as a means to assimilate into Argentine culture, the conflation of indigenous identity with land

rights can also be interpreted as a process that intrinsically connects material well-being with cultural continuity. Kolla land rights activists and their supporters have linked the struggle for land with the ability of the largely rural Kolla population to continue to exist. In the process, land has been emphasized as the means to material survival and touted as the key to cultural survival. Enabling people to continue to

practice traditional subsistence agriculture, these advocates have ar-

gued, is the way in which the Kolla will overcome centuries of coloni- alism and oppression, the key to their ability to resist the dominant

capitalist culture. In this way, Kolla identity can be understood as a site of resistance. Land rights have been constructed as a way to dis- solve the association between poverty and indigenous identity that has dominated the rural landscape in northern Argentina as in much of Latin America, even though, from a strictly economic point of view, the ability of land ownership to spur such a transformation is highly problematic.

Ironically, the emphasis on land rights, and the accompanying prominence that has been given to subsistence farming as a key aspect of Kolla identity, has deepened the resistance that can be found in

highland communities to the idea of calling oneself Kolla. Individuals within the community who do not want to practice subsistence agriculture, those who would like to pursue commercial farming or other

entrepreneurial enterprises, have been alienated from an ethnic identity as Kolla. Because subsistence agriculture has been made so central to Kolla identity, many simply feel that they are not "Kolla" because they are not subsistence farmers. While Kolla advocates emphasize the material benefits of land ownership to subsistence farmers, others, daily exposed to the material standard of living of the global consumer culture, see poverty and hardship. A long history of racism and dispossession that encourages the suppression of indigenous identity has not been overturned.

Denial of indigenous identity is not simply a reflection of one's putative ancestry. Ethnic identity is created, invested with meaning, and enacted in a context of larger social issues, politics, and econo- mies. It is small wonder that some highland villagers, with access to urban styles and lifestyles, reject "being Kolla" along with "being in-




digenous": the stigma of "being indigenous" overwhelms any positive associations. An understanding of indigenous identity as a social con- dition casts the ambivalence of many Iruyan and other highland villagers about "being Kolla" in a different light. "Being Kolla" has been linked with rurality, with suffering, with subsistence agriculture, and with an impoverished standard of living. These strong associations are made by proponents of Kolla identity, who emphasize the continuity of the rural culture, its strengths, and its traditional lifestyle.

Events like the copla festival encapsulate the ways in which Kolla

identity is being invested with meaning and creativity. It is remarkable that the event was a new creation within Kolla culture and, perhaps more importantly, it was enacted for a local audience - not for tourists or officials, but for neighbours and friends. Participants and spectators alike celebrated what it means to be "local," a shared culture and traditions. The event itself was new, but its components were rec-

ognized as part of what it means to be Kolla. In Iturbe and Iruya, these

symbols of culture were transformed and invested with new meaning, even as they held symbolic connection to the past. For generations, offerings to the pachamama and singing coplas have been part of local culture but were largely out of public view, performed quietly, in pri- vate, much like Kolla identity itself. As a metaphor, the festival stands as a palpable sign of a cultural reawakening and personal renewal for the people of these high valleys.

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Documents

BEING KOLLA: INDIGENOUS IDENTITY IN NORTHWESTERN ARGENTINA