Navigating Narrative: The Antinomies of “Mediated” Testimonios

Navigating Narrative: The Antinomiesof “Mediated” Testimonios

By

Benjamin KohlTemple University

Linda C. FarthingIndependent Scholar

R e s u m e n

En torno a la literatura testimonial latinoamericana ha surgido un aspero debate sobre

las cuestiones de legitimidad, representacion, relaciones de poder y posturas solidarias.

Nosotros, al escribir From the Mines to the Streets: A Bolivian Activist’s Life (Desde las

minas a las calles: la vida de un activista boliviano), enfrentamos ese tipo de problemas, en

la medida que nos toco afrontar la necesidad de tomar en cuenta tanto las expectativas

de los lectores del norte global como los requerimientos de los editores de esos paıses, y

de adoptar una forma acorde a la tradicion narrativa “occidental” para que sea mas facil

de vender en los mercados globales. En este artıculo discutimos como manejamos esas

tensiones durante el proceso de traduccion y elaboracion del libro. Al final la experiencia

nos convencio de que, a pesar de los desafıos y obstaculos, la literatura testimonial

puede contribuir a propositos educacionales y al activismo polıtico de investigadores

con compromiso social. [historia oral, testimonio, investigacion cualitativa, biografıa,

metodos de investigacion, Bolivia, Andes]

A b s t r a c t

Latin American testimonial literature has given rise to acrimonious debate on issues of

voice, legitimacy, representation, power, and solidarity. We grappled with these issues

in our recently completed book, From the Mines to the Streets: A Bolivian Activist’s Life,

as we faced the practicalities of production, the expectations of northern reviewers, and

the requirements of northern publishers that we reshape the original testimonio into a

more marketable western narrative. In this article, we discuss how we managed these

tensions. Our experience convinces us that even though problematic, testimonios can

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 90–107. ISSN 1935-4932, online ISSN

1935-4940. C© 2013 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/jlca.12004

90 J o u r n a l o f L a t i n A m e r i c a n a n d C a r i b b e a n A n t h r o p o l o g y

contribute to both educational and activist agendas of engaged social researchers. [oral

history, testimonio, qualitative research, memoir, research methods, Bolivia, Andes]

Since the postmodernist and feminist turns in social science began in the 1980s,scholars have debated the contradictions inherent in the recording and publishingof southern activists’ life stories by northern/western writers.1 Structurally unequalpower relationships, differing agendas and needs, cultural disjunctures and mis-understandings, as well as the predicament of representation and interpretationtogether create a messy, confounding narrative space.

The testimonio is one of the principal genres used to record and disseminatestories from the global south. It was established as a distinct literary form inLatin America when Cuba’s Casa de las Americas publishing house, in responseto the political rebuke of liberal novelists after Cuba’s support of the Soviet inva-sion of Czechoslovakia, granted it status as a separate category in 1970 (Sommer1995:914). The term refers to a narrative text with a particular discursive style,which Sklodowska (2001:253) calls a secular spiritual text, and Yudice (1991) de-scribes as a project of struggle against hegemony. Although hotly debated since itsrecognition, it bears witness (testigo) in first person form to social and economicinjustice, and reflects an instrumental use of literature that nonetheless minimizesthe use of directly persuasive rhetoric (Nance 2006). We agree with John Bever-ley’s observation that testimonio involves a relationship of solidarity and “mayinclude, but is not subsumed under, any of the following textual categories, someof which are conventionally considered literature, others not: autobiography, auto-biographical novel, oral history, memoir, confession, diary, interview, eyewitnessreport, life history, novella-testimonio, nonfiction novel, or ‘factographic’ litera-ture” (2004:31). Such a broad umbrella indicates the testimonio’s elasticity and itsongoing construction as a genre.

Prudent researchers may shy away from undertaking testimonio projects, pre-ferring not to act rather than be subject to inevitable accusations of appropriatingand exploiting a powerful story for their own personal and professional ends.However, exercising such caution results in the loss of compelling stories from theglobal south that can educate northerners, in favor of safer, more academicallyconventional, yet often less accessible, texts. As Pratt (2001) points out, examiningthe inevitable contradictions at the heart of testimonial literature can be produc-tive, as it illuminates the complexity of building different kinds of relationships,forcing us to unpack such concepts as political solidarity.

In contrast to much of the often caustic debate regarding testimonios, whichtends to be rooted in broader political and theoretical disputes, oral historiansmainly approach the topic in a less polemical manner. Despite recognition that

Navigating Narrative 91

life stories are both artificial and socially constructed (Portelli 1998; Tonkin 1995),historians rarely question the importance of oral histories per se, which are recog-nized as playing a crucial role in “getting a better history, a more critical history,a more conscious history which involves members of the public in [its] creation”(Grele 1991:xvi).

This article addresses debates about testimonial literature and, to a lesserdegree, oral history, through our experience of producing two books with FelixMuruchi, Minero con poder de dinamita: La vida de un ativista boliviano (Muruchiet al. 2009), and From the Mines to the Streets: A Bolivian Activist’s Life (Kohlet al. 2011).2 We share the perspectives of both oral historians, who recognizethe fundamental necessity and contribution of such work, and testimonial andfeminist scholars, who focus on issues of voice, power, and authenticity.

Here, we primarily address the practical and ethical issues that arose during theproject and transformed our original vision into a hybrid, “mediated testimony.”By describing the books this way, we recognize, as Bartow puts it, that “cedingspace to the subaltern originates in a middle-class initiative for privileged readers”(2005:77). While Felix played a crucial role in producing the final text in Spanish,which the three of us jointly molded into a narrative that we all sought to makeattractive to an audience comfortable with the western narrative tradition, Lindaand Ben changed the language of his story through editing and the translation toEnglish. We also provided the broader context to the issues raised by his life storythrough background materials in the English book, which further shaped the endproduct.

Beyond the polemics and hand-wringing among some academics, we foundthat the resulting book was formed less by the way we negotiated control overthe text and content with Felix than by the requirements and process of northernacademic publishers.3 We reflect on this process in this article for three reasons.First, we feel it important to discuss publicly how we carried out the project,which we considered an integral component of the story, but which our editorsdiscouraged us from including as an appendix to the book. Second, we thinkthat real-world practices of knowledge production are often ignored in theoreticaldiscussions. Finally, we hope that our experience may assist others to perseverethrough an often paradoxical process and continue to produce work that attemptsto be both ethical and self-reflective.

We believe that despite the fraught terrain, producing this kind of work hasthe potential to benefit southern storytellers, northern researchers, and multipleaudiences alike. Even in the face of the controversies and the clearly prematureproclamations that the era of the testimonio is over from writers such as BolivianJavier Sanjınes C (1996), testimonios continue to be produced (Fernandez Benıtez2010). They not only play an important role in history and affirm the importance ofsubjectivity in knowledge production but also have the potential to propel actions


for social and economic equity. By foregrounding knowledge gained by experience,as in much ethnography, testimonio challenges the bases of western epistemologyand comes far closer to giving voice to speakers from the global south than manytraditional interview-based sociological or ethnographic studies (Brabeck 2004).

The Origin Story

While books by researchers and academics often appear to result from consciousplanning and deliberate attention to theoretical, conceptual, and methodologi-cal issues, the genesis of our project was far more serendipitous and stemmedfrom personal interests and relationships as much as any specific, well-consideredintellectual agenda. This is commonly the case, as can be gleaned from the ac-knowledgments in many dissertations throughout the social sciences, although itis frequently erased from published work.

In late 2004, Dana Brown, then-coordinator of the Committee on U.S.–LatinAmerican Relations (CUSLAR), one of the oldest ongoing Latin American solidar-ity organizations in the United States, suggested to Linda, then serving on the Boardof Directors, that it would be interesting to organize a U.S. solidarity tour with aBolivian activist. The idea resurfaced when we were in La Paz in 2005 finishingImpasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal Hegemony and Popular Resistance (Kohl and Farthing2006). While we were pleased with the book, we were frustrated by our inability toconvince our editor to allow us to complement the formal analysis with stories ofindividuals who had been directly affected by the processes we described. We feltstrongly that such an approach would strengthen the book’s pedagogical value.

Jason Tockman, a writer-activist friend of Dana’s, arrived, and, as visitors oftendid, asked us for contacts he could interview in El Alto. We suggested he talk to ourold friend Felix Muruchi Poma. We knew that Felix had an interesting analysis ofevents, but after years spent in exile, he was also adept at interpreting local politicalprocesses for foreigners. Jason returned convinced that Felix would be the perfectperson for a solidarity tour. We were taken with the idea, as it would allow us thechance to show Felix our home after spending so many years in his.

In Philadelphia, on the first stop of a multi-city tour, Felix and Ben refined twovery different presentations. The first was on urban social movements, and thesecond, “From the mines to the prisons to the streets,” was his life story, which waseffectively a precis of 60 years of Bolivian history. He was born in 1946, the yearafter the abolition of pongueaje—bonded peasant labor—to a campesino-miningfamily; the family moved to Siglo XX after the 1952 revolution; Felix started schooland subsequently began working in the mines. He completed his military servicein 1964 and witnessed the coup d’etat that ushered in 18 years of military ruleunder General Rene Barrientos. He returned to the mines following his discharge


from the army and embarked on a long career as a union activist, which resulted inmultiple arrests, torture, and two periods of exile in Holland. When he came hometo Bolivia, he settled in El Alto and worked for many years in nongovernmentalorganizations. He was active in the social unrest of 2003 and 2005 that set the stagefor the election of Evo Morales in December 2005, when he was almost 60.

After Felix had recounted his story at Temple University, Art Schmidt, a historyprofessor and editor of the series Voices of Latin American Life, approached Benabout writing a book with Felix. Ben’s initial response was that he did not do thistype of work. Art reassured him it would not be that hard and gave him two booksfrom the series. Ben took the books home and started the first, Lucia: Testimonies ofa Brazilian Drug Dealer’s Woman (Gay 2005). As we considered the idea, we quicklyrealized that this project provided the opportunity to develop a more accessibleaccount of recent Bolivian history from the perspective of an active participant.Felix was willing, as he had long considered writing his life story. We all recognizedthat such a project had the potential to increase Felix’s income, not only during theproject but, we realized, as former directors of a study abroad program, it wouldalso increase the likelihood that he would be sought out to give talks to studentsand solidarity tours in Bolivia.

The project, rather than being an integral part of a well-developed researchagenda, grew out of a combination of our personal relationships, skills, histories,and contacts, which Greenwood and Levin (2007:57–65) illustrate is commonacross the sciences. Our privileged position within an academic community createdthe setting in which a series of unplanned events provided the opportunity toundertake a new project. We should point out that we had no formal trainingin conducting oral history or writing testimonios, although we knew some of theliterature and had read some of the classics, such as Rigoberta Menchu’s I, RigobertoMenchu (1984) and Domitila Chungara’s Let Me Speak (Barrios de Chungara andViezzer 1978). In fact, had we been more familiar with the difficulties these projectsentail, we may not have embarked on it at all. Our most important assets wereour deep friendship with Felix, our confidence that we could carry out the projecttogether in an ethical fashion, the rather naıve belief that we could complete itrelatively quickly, 20 years of experience working in Bolivia, and—perhaps mostimportantly—the interest of an editor.

Writing

After many discussions among the three of us, we decided to write different versionsfor English and Bolivian (Spanish) audiences. Fortunately, we found our personalinterests in the project were complementary: Felix was most interested in theSpanish version and we in the English one. As there are no standard rules governing


authorship in testimonios, as Burgos and Austin (1999) attest, we decided that Felixwould be first author on the book in Spanish (Muruchi Poma et al. 2009), Ben thefirst author on the English book, and Linda the second author on both (Kohl et al.2011).

We worked with three additional advantages: Felix is literate, which meant hecould review the Spanish text. He is closer to an organic intellectual interested in“elaborating hegemony,” as Beverley (2001:221) puts it, than an “informant” orinterview subject. While his first languages were Quechua (his mother’s language)and Aymara (that of his father’s community), he has primarily spoken Spanish formost of his life; at the time we wrote the book, he had returned to university tostudy law. Finally, we began the project with a considerable level of trust, and werecognized in Felix an active agent who assumes the right to tell his story as hechose and in support of the values we all share (Beverley 2001:233).

Nonetheless, we also recognized the enormous economic imbalances from thestart, and committed ourselves to finding funds—we were fortunately successful—to pay Felix for his time. We also ensured that the bulk of royalties (were there tobe any) would go to Felix. At the same time, as Linda works as a freelancer, weagreed that after Felix was paid for his time, Linda would receive an equal payment,even though by the end of the project, we estimate that Linda and Ben each haddedicated at least three times the amount of time to producing the book as Felix.

After his return home from the tour, Felix began to record his story in his ownwords, in some parts with the help of his university-educated daughter Khantuta.In hindsight we understood that this was critical: it allowed Felix to develop theoutline of the story on his own terms, reconstructing his memories largely byhimself. Because there was no external interviewer at this stage, we did not have toworry about how an interviewer might shape Felix’s responses from the beginning.Unintentionally, we achieved what Elisabeth Burgos sought in her interviews withRigoberta Menchu. Burgos drew on her training with anthropologist and psycho-analyst Georges Devereux, who emphasized minimal interviewer intervention inorder to provide room for free association and allow the unconscious to draw outthe story as much as possible (Burgos 2008:xv; Burgos and Austin 1999).

Our goddaughter Marlen Magne transcribed most of the tapes with somesupport from Khantuta, producing a text that was largely chronological and veryrepetitive. For example, the transcript of his description of learning to work inconstruction reads:

Despues de que el ayudante me ha ensenado para trabajar como ayudante es decir

mi ayudante me ha ensenado a mi he aprendido a ser ayudante y luego el maestro

obviamente me ha dado algunos trabajos para mi me ha dado algunos trabajos

vigilados por ejemplo revocado entonces, al maestro yo le he dicho: mira hace

mucho tiempo que he dejado de trabajar ya me he olvidado podrıas indicarme


como debo hacer y como era mi maestro joven entonces el joven me ha ensenado

con mucha facilidad me ha dicho: esto vas a hacer ası, me lo ha colocado las maestras

y sobre las maestras tenia que rellenar e igualar, he aprendido a ser albanil, ayudante

como trabajar la obra fina.4

(After the helper taught me how to work as a helper, or in other words my helper

had taught me I learned to be a helper and then the foreman obviously had given me

some tasks for me he had supervised me doing certain jobs for example stuccoing

then, I said to the foreman: look it has been a long time since I did this work and

I’ve forgotten how would you show me how to do it and as my foreman was young

then the young man easily taught me he said: you do it like this, he had me install

the guides and over the guides we needed to fill and level, I learned to be a laborer,

a helper, and also how to do the finish work.)5

The first task was to transform this narration into a basic text, and Lindadistilled about 50 thousand words from the initial 165,000-word transcript, double-checking with the original recordings as necessary for precision and clarification,working the text into a coherent story. Burgos and Austin (1999) describe a similarprocess with I Rigoberta Menchu, insisting—accurately in our experience—thatwriting a testimony is far more than a simple transcription of cassettes. Thechallenge at this point was to produce a text that allowed Felix’s voice to comethrough but that was also interesting and dynamic to the future reader. We thensent the edited narrative to Felix with comments and requests for clarification.

Inevitably parts of the text were ambiguous, based on Felix and Linda’s“schematization of real events for the sake of fitting them into a coherent story”(Sklodowska 2001:260). As well, Felix’s story reflected a deployment of and shiftsbetween episodic and semantic memory, permitting his diverse experiences tomerge into one. The very act of asking Felix to tell his life story meant that all ofus were imposing a structure and modifying it as we asked for various retellingsof Felix’s experience, which, as Patai (2001:276) argues, is the inevitable outcomeof such an act. We were engaged in the ambivalent terrain Portelli (1998:23) de-scribes as inherent in the expression of oral history, which refers both to what theinterlocutors hear (the oral sources) and what they write.

By June 2007, Felix had reviewed the draft and we had a basic manuscript. Felixand Ben then spent a month reviewing the text line by line to clarify ambiguities andenrich the narrative. Rather than trying to attain some form of “objectivity,” Benput himself in the midst of the process, setting up what Grele calls a “conversationalnarrative” (1991:viii), or what Brooks refers to as “testimonial acting” (2005:191),aware that what he observed was influenced by the very act of observation. Theprocess involved clarifying and ordering, with Ben constantly requesting stories togive an idea of what it was like to work as a herder or a miner, or be engaged asan activist, asking what became a standard refrain: “How did that make you feel?”


This was an intense, often difficult process, as Felix sifted for material and walked afine line between the emotional depths we all agreed were needed for a compellingstory while retaining the limits he had established in relation to his willingness torelive and record certain painful events.

As we progressed, Felix began to reveal stories that to him appeared secondary,but which he came to understand we believed would interest our (imagined)audience. These stories increasingly emerged after he and Ben had worked througha section of the text. Often they surfaced in the morning when Felix would say overcoffee, “I remembered this story last night”; others came out as we talked casuallyover lunch. In fact, it was during these informal moments that some of the mostinteresting pieces emerged, including, for example, the accounts of his first trip tothe mines with his father, and his attempts to understand urban life as a campesinochild (Kohl et al. 2011:24–26). At first he was a little resistant to the idea of includingthem in the text, wanting to tell less of his personal story and more of the storyof the movement and his political analysis of the different factions within unionand campesino struggles. Through the process of the telling, however, he was notonly retrieving long dormant memories, but he was also learning the form of thewestern narrative and biography, a genre that, as Hoberman (1987) discusses indetail, has been shaped by the English novel since the beginning of the 20th century.

This was not a seamless process, as it was over the course of weeks of ongoingdiscussions that Felix decided he was comfortable adapting his story, if that waswhat it took to win an audience. At this time we returned to the beginning,adding stories, which included, for example, the trial his father presided overas a community authority (Kohl et al. 2011:23–24), that we have not seen inother ethnographic literature. Felix also became more comfortable adding personalanecdotes, which he originally felt would be of no interest as they dealt with hispersonal rather than political formation. The resulting narrative not only reflectedthe medium we were employing, but the structure of remembering also lent itself,as Patai observes in other settings (2001:276), to the creation of a subject whowas represented as largely constant over time and consistent with Felix’s currentself-image.

We are aware of gaps in the narrative. There were certain stories that Felixdecided to remove from the final manuscript, including powerful criticism ofseveral union and movement figures. Various forms of (self-)censorship are com-mon throughout ethnographic studies, given researchers’ ethical responsibilitiesto protect participants, which may result in an attempt, sometimes unsuccessful, todisguise place and personal names.6 Additionally, when we were finishing the text,Felix separated from Emilse Escobar, his wife of over 25 years and the daughter ofFederico Escobar (the founder of Bolivia’s Marxist–Leninist Communist Party).Almost the entire story of their relationship, which was critical to his personal andpolitical development, was wiped from the final text because Emilse insisted that


we erase her from the book. The result is that Felix’s family, which was the centerof his life for over 20 years, is largely absent.

Through the winter of 2008, we translated the text to English in turns, takingpains at this stage to make sure the translation was as true as possible to Felix’soriginal words. When we first sent the English manuscript out for comment,however, it bombed. We were told the language was flat and that Felix did a betterjob of telling the broader story of Bolivian history than he did of positioning himselfas an agent within those processes. This tendency was a constant for Felix: fromthe initial recordings he included lengthy sections assessing Bolivia’s politics, and,when asked to evaluate the process of writing of the book in a July 2009 interview,he said that he most regretted that he could no longer update the political analysis.

Even after another round of editing, the first set of reviewers selected by thepress insisted on yet more emotional detail to engage the reader. These responsesseemed to us, in part, a reflection of the tendency of “northern” readers to privilegethe individual actor, in stark contrast to an indigenous narrator who had embarkedon a different type of narrative that emphasized the collective. Nonetheless, thethree of us increasingly recognized that to make the text viable and marketable fornorthern audiences we had to foreground the personal rather than the collective inhis story, and we cut more of his political analysis and added more personal details.

By this point we all had a great deal of time and effort invested in the projectand abandoning it was unappealing. Felix agreed not only to do a second round ofchanges in June and July 2008, as we finalized the text in Spanish, but he also wasmore than willing to allow us to edit his words in the process of translation if thatwould make the text marketable. At about the same time, we wrote introductions,found photographs, and arranged for Bolivian publication in June 2009. We thenwrote an additional 25,000 words to provide background and context to Felix’sstory for the English edition, and after additional reviews, edits, and clarifications,the University of Texas published the book in April 2011. What we had by the end,for better or worse, was a hybrid—a western narrative grafted onto testimonialroots.

Challenges of Voice and Authority

While we initially intended to produce a text loyal to Felix’s original words, onlyordering the story so that people, places, and things were introduced when firstmentioned and clarifying inconsistencies, publishing the book in English forcedchanges on the manuscript that transformed it. Without doubt, the narrative voiceis mediated through us as interlocutors, similar to what Gelles (1996) describes inhis English translation of Andean Lives. Felix’s story was constructed and recon-structed by us to the point that we decided in consultation with him that it was


appropriate for us to claim joint authorship of the English edition, recognizing, asone insightful reviewer of this article suggested, that we had made “a detective storyout of a documentary.” Practical considerations also played into this decision:making Felix coauthor in the English version would have meant translating the25,000 words of context, contracts, and changes into Spanish as the manuscriptmoved through the multiple steps to publication. By that point, we all wanted tomove onto other projects and cared more about completion than perfection.

In our initial proposal, we suggested a “collaborative,” rather than a “mediated”narrative. As Felix is university educated, and revised and reviewed the Spanishtext with us, we thought we might reduce some of the problems raised in critiquesregarding the appropriation of voice and the imposition of western (or modern orcolonial) sensibilities. In reality, through the editing, re-editing, and translation,we moved from a testimonio to something closer to a (first person) biography,structured for a modern, literate, urban, largely non-Bolivian audience. In addi-tion, while Felix approved the Spanish version, he was unable to do so with theEnglish version.

In fact, the process of moving the manuscript through to publication reinforcedthe appropriation of Felix’s story. As middle-class white northern scholars, webenefit from the dominant political and cultural structures that gave us power overthe negotiations involved in the text’s publication (Bartow 2005); yet in practicalterms, to get the book published in English, we had little choice but to performour prescribed role. While we did not actively seek authority over Felix’s story,he granted it to us because of our access to publishers, and our understandingof what they needed and of how to get the book produced.7 The structure ofthe publishing industry, the need to market books, and the cultural assumptionsunderlying narrative structure all shifted control northward. Ultimately, we hadto choose whether to publish or not. With Felix’s knowledge and approval that wewere making changes, and his trust that we were not distorting his original story,we decided to move forward.

By the end, we (along with the editors from the press) controlled the Englishversion of the story. In a case where the relationship between the storyteller and theeditor was not longstanding but rather built on the book project alone, this couldhave generated considerable tensions. In our case, Felix respected our judgment,but his decision to permit us to move forward was an indication of his desire tosee his story, which he also viewed as part of Bolivia’s story, reach the broadestpossible audience.

An example should clarify how we modified his original work. The earliesttranscript, referring to his escape after being picked up in Toledo in 1969, read

cuando llegamos a la policıa a golpes a culatazos limpios los metieron a mis

companeros y a mi no me dijeron nada entonces ese momento era en en que


yo despues de bajarme del auto inmediatamente escape fui con cuidadito hasta la

esquina, de la esquina emprendı una carrera hasta la proxima cuadra, en la proxima

cuadra venia un taxi, tome el taxi y me fui.

We originally translated this to:

When we arrived at the police station they put my companeros inside beating and

kicking them but no one said anything to me. So I got down from the truck and

immediately escaped. I carefully went to the corner, and, once around it, I ran

around the next corner and, in the next block, I took a taxi and left.

By the final version, the text had become:

When we arrived in Oruro, I quietly climbed down as they pushed and beat the other

captives, shoving them out of the truck. While they were focused on controlling

their prisoners, I snuck silently and slowly to the corner so as not to draw attention,

but then sprinted as fast as I could around the next corner and jumped in a taxi.

(Kohl et al. 2011:87)

The language has become more dramatic and action-oriented. Does thischange the underlying meaning? Yes—the stylistic changes repackage Felix’sperformance—and no—the events are the same.

The political and social analysis throughout the narrative is Felix’s, not ours,although we talked at length to clarify his political opinions. As a political activist,Felix became steeped in Marxian theory and discourse. Some northern readersmay find it strange to read a peasant or a miner reflecting on social relations ofproduction or on the historical division of labor—indeed, one of our first reviewersquestioned whether we were putting words into Felix’s mouth—yet this type oflanguage and analysis is common among activists (and even cab drivers) of Felix’sgeneration. In a 2009 interview about writing the book, he also recognizes how hisunderstanding of his identity changed over time:

Being a miner is being a proletariat, a worker who has a primary commitment to

fight against capitalism. If you read Lenin and Engels, you see the primacy of the

role of the working class in overthrowing capitalism. Our goal is to be the point of

the spear. But when I went to Europe, I saw how socialist governments were still

oppressing miners and other workers. And then at some point we realized that our

origins were indigenous, and that we had to fight colonization while understanding

we still have to fight capitalism. (Muruchi Poma 2009)

Yudice (1991) contends that the testimonial form reduces the role of theintellectual mediator in telling the story of the poor. In our case, however, asBurgos and Austin (1999) note, channeling access for voices from the global southinto western publishing houses is almost impossible to achieve without a northern


interlocutor. Our commitment was to assist Felix in gaining access to a broadaudience and engage him, as Brabeck (2004) suggests, as a participant in ratherthan an object of academic research.

We also thought a methodological essay, which would clarify our roles whilealso allowing readers to position us as real people with concrete interests (Harding1987), should have accompanied the text, but we failed to convince our editors.We recognized that the problem created by our invisible authoritative voice wascompounded as we also provided the context to Felix’s story—an element weconsidered crucial in order to create a salient and accessible frame for readersoutside Bolivia. Omission of the methodological essay prevented us from sharingour debates about the role we had assumed in shaping the story.

Challenges of Representation and Veracity

A testimonio, like any historical work, is a socially constructed representation ofthe past, without a universal standard for truth. Testimonios are different, however,given their dependence on memory, which, as Tonkin (1995:113–114) points out,has been proven to be an imperfect research tool. Individuals inevitably constructdifferent understandings of the world and historical memory from the same setof facts (Beverley 2001:226), and the interlocutor’s interaction with the storytellerhas an impact on the way the tale is told (Sommer 1995:914); in addition, theprocess of producing the testimonio itself, as Yudice (1991) maintains, also affectsthe narrator’s understanding of the past and, therefore, the constitution of theiridentity. While we were working on the book with Felix, Bolivia was in the throes ofa resurgence of indigenous identity that has blossomed from Chiapas to Chile overthe last 20 years (Lucero 2008). Increasing numbers of Bolivians now self-identifyas indigenous, mirroring the fluidity of indigeneity in modern Bolivia, which haslong been a social as well as a racial category, as discussed at length by Postero(2007) and Albro (2006).

While common cultural practices are shared among Bolivians—for instance,celebrations during Todos Santos (All Saints) or the ch’allas (ritual blessings thatmark the start of new enterprises, which are practiced in middle-class urban as wellas indigenous rural communities)—significant differences play out in how theseare expressed among individuals, communities, and neighborhoods. Differenthistories have created considerable variations in the construction of indigenousidentity among the highland Aymara, the valley Quechua, and the lowland peoplesas well as among urban and rural populations, and across generations (Kohland Farthing 2006). As Rivera Cusicanqui (2003) observes, these differences havealso led to a range of synergies between class and race relations and discoursesthroughout the country that vary over time.


Felix’s analytical framework evolved not only through the process of interpret-ing his past, but also as the political atmosphere in Bolivia changed. Felix discussesthis shift in the 2009 interview when asked about the book’s focus:

Five years ago, we were struggling to figure out how to fight against neoliberalism . . .

Once we won this we turned to new issues. What are the questions now? . . . The po-

litical transformations in the country in the last three or four years mean that I have

continued a process of reflection that has changed some of my conceptions about

the past . . . For example, we are now more deeply talking about indigeneity and

about different models in the country, such as the theme of the ayllu which we didn’t

talk about in the book . . . In the conclusion, I would have included a suggestion

about the ayllu. In fact, if I was going to do it over, the whole book would have been

more oriented towards promoting this model of the ayllu. (Muruchi Poma 2009)

Despite a testimonio’s appearance of spontaneity, given complex construc-tions and reconstructions of the past, a fluid understanding of identity, history,and agency can combine to make any story appear contrived. The appearance ofspontaneity is not limited to testimonies: it is particularly evident in documentaryfilms. Linda’s experience as a field producer taught her that documentary films arealso highly constructed, involving a constant negotiation between an event and itsrepresentation, as Bruzzi (2000:13) also finds. The issue of veracity, therefore, isone that scholars have discussed widely in relation to writing about testimonies(see also Beverley 2004:39; Pratt 2001:43).

While Felix’s memory and interpretation of events generally converge withthose who shared his various journeys, they are an accounting of his experiences,not a compilation of a collective experience. We always perceived that Felix’slife story could serve to illustrate historical processes. But we also recognized,as Brooks argues, that testimonio is a “performance based collaborative formof writing” (2005:182). We used text boxes in the English text to reinforce thelegitimacy of our joint performance, even as we avoided claiming that we werepresenting a precise accounting of events. Throughout his performance, Felix,rather than speaking for or representing a community, claims his membership ina number of diverse, somewhat fluid “communities” engaged in struggles that areboth personal and collective.

This observation resonates with Gugelberger’s contention that the differencebetween biographies and testimonios lies in the fact that in the latter, “the selfcannot be defined in individual terms but only as a collective self engaged in acommon struggle. The erosion of the central authority assigned the first personauthor by a collective ‘we’ effects a displacement from the bourgeois individualtoward the community of the witness” (1996:9). In Felix’s case, in order to producethe book, the three of us reversed this process: his story moved from its emphasison the collective self toward one that privileged the individual. This was influenced


by the orientation of the press. A graphic example is the book’s cover: for theSpanish edition, Felix chose a group of miners in front of a mural; for the Englishedition, we proposed a painting, in “Soviet Modernist style,” of a miner strainingto push a cart of minerals. The editors insisted on a photo of Felix the individual.

Any narrative emphasizes some elements to the detriment of others, and isformed as unevenly as memory. Inevitably there are distortions and omissions,some of which troubled Felix, as he revealed in the July 2009 interview whendiscussing his family’s response to the Bolivian edition:

My brother Max asked me why I didn’t talk about certain things. He said, “You

didn’t talk about what happened to us in the house after you were arrested. We

were beaten and attacked. They put spies around the house. When you came back

from exile, we didn’t tell you much about it. But if the history is about the family,

you should have included these things.” But to do that, we’d have to do another

book. (Muruchi Poma 2009)

Sklodowska (2001) sees these as evidence of processes of the screen memo-ries that Freud described, where the unconscious mind blocks or favors certainmemories in order to resolve internal conflicts. But just as important for Felixwere other reasons for holding back information: the fear of putting others inawkward situations and of aiding repressive forces, should they return to dominateBolivian society. We all recognized that differing accounts of the same events couldundoubtedly emerge, and that as White, cited in Sklodowska (2001:232), explains,“truth remains captive of the linguistic mode.” However, we agreed that Felix hadthe right, ultimately, to decide what to include and exclude. We understood andaccepted that just as with other autobiographical accounts, the story would be truebut not necessarily accurate.

By insisting on making it Felix’s uncontested, although clearly mediated, ver-sion of events, we understood that the manuscript would clearly conform to thehagiographic nature of testimonial literature. The format was faithful to this: be-ginning with his birth to an impoverished family, following him through a life ofstruggle and advancement against enormous odds. He is shown in a positive light:a portrait that has been airbrushed of the blemishes, inevitable contradictions, andweaknesses that make us human. Unlike a biography, such narratives are not vehi-cles for self-criticism (Nance 2006). From our perspective, part of minimizing ourappropriation of his story was to accept this as an inevitable part of the package.

Parameters of Solidarity

As this book originated in political solidarity, an explicit comment about theframework of the shared values that shaped it seems in order, as we believe a


strong ethical framework is fundamental in undertaking this type of endeavor. Acommitment to a political project has driven most Latin American testimonies,including the most famous I, Rigoberta Menchu, as Burgos (2008) explains.The principal question for us is clearly articulated by Brabeck (2001: no pagenumber):

What does it mean to stand in solidarity, and how can that common stance yet allow

for the multiplicities and differences that exist between us? How can we, as “first-

world” researchers validate another’s reality and, in bearing witness, authorize voice

and denounce oppression, and yet recognize our limitations—our own positions

in power hierarchies and our cultural positions as outsiders?

It is important to distinguish charity from solidarity, which has deep politicalmoorings, even though the psychological and socially constructed mechanismsof altruism underlie both (Passy 2001). Largely a product of the new left po-litical movements in Europe and North America during the 1970s and 1980s,which were formative for both of us, political altruism draws on humanist, social-ist, and Judeo–Christian master frames that reflect participants’ goals, relation-ships, and sense of community (Fetchenhauer 2006). While constructing testi-monios, editors assume the role of allies to those with less access to resources:they seek, through their engagement with a text, to create a larger support-ive (and ideally active) community. The focus is on learning from the speaker,“thereby becoming closer while respecting the distance that remains” (Brabeck2004:52).

It was in this spirit that we worked to bring Felix’s story to a broader audience. Inconcrete terms, we ensured Felix was paid and that his book was distributed free toover 250 libraries in Bolivia. We recognize that we were able to do this because of oureconomic privilege, but it also reflects an ethical and political position. Importantly,we share Felix’s broad political and nonpartisan commitment to human rights,and to social and economic justice. We have long lamented the extractive natureof much northern research and documentary filmmaking that leaves or returnslittle, and serves primarily to build careers for northern professionals. An ethicalframework is fundamental to working in a low-income country or neighborhood;without it we almost inevitably repeat colonial patterns or produce neo-colonialones.8

We recognize that contradictions persist, and that there are no perfect ways tobalance the tensions, even as we are aware that we also may be subject to criticismfor promulgating neocolonial relationships. We hope that we have successfullymade a contribution to a process so well described by Brabeck (2001:n.p.): “Toread testimonio, then, is to lessen the tension between the first world self and thethird world other—not to deny difference, but to understand distance as a lessonin the possibility of coalition politics.”


Final Comments

As with any project, outcomes are often hard to predict, and in many cases, theunanticipated impacts are significant. As we finish this article, the paperbackedition of the book has just come out in English, and while we have receivedpositive, even enthusiastic, comments and reviews, we have no idea of what typeof impact it will have. We have seen, however, that the project affected Felix in anumber of ways. We were happy that after working with us he gained the confidenceto express his own voice more fully. As he explained in a July 2009 interview:

My biggest insight while writing the book was I discovered that it is easy to express

your perspective in writing. This is important as the real history of our country—

of the poor, of the oppressed, of the indigenous—has not yet been written. It

has always been written by others, by elites who don’t share our interests. Doing

the book opened my eyes to looking at problems differently and taught me the

importance of bringing these stories to light and into writing . . .

The book gave me the motivation and the experience to engage with writing. The

process of us sitting down and talking and you interviewing me taught me a lot

. . . I am now working on my third book . . . about community justice. (Muruchi

Poma 2009)

The process of writing the book also affected Felix as an individual, as he notedin the same conversation:

One of the biggest contributors to changing my understanding of my identity was

the process of reflection that I engaged in by doing this book. I grew up in an

educational and social process that formed me in a certain mold that deformed my

sense of who I am, of my identity. I didn’t develop a sense of myself as an indigenous

person. It was the process of the book that made me reflect on my identity and

recognize myself as indigenous. (Muruchi Poma 2009)

We are aware that interpretive ideologies of narrative production and functionvary significantly, and readers may criticize the story or our actions in its productionon a number of levels. Regardless of the broader response the work may receive,we are gratified that Felix expresses that the process was positive for him on bothpersonal and professional levels. His success in continuing to find an audience forhis ideas may be the most important judge, if not of the work itself, then of how itwas undertaken.


Notes

1While the use of terms such as “global north,” “global south,” and “western narrative” is prob-

lematic and contested, we use them as shorthand to identify dominant and subaltern populations and

narrative forms.2To avoid confusion, throughout the article “we” refers to Benjamin Kohl and Linda Farthing,

unless otherwise noted.3The revised manuscript was accepted at a university press but we pulled it when the editor was

unwilling to commit to a paperback edition, which we thought important; we wanted to increase the

possibility that the book would be used as an undergraduate text. Our editor at the University of Texas

Press, who was wonderful to work with, guaranteed asynchronous paperback publication.4The quality of the initial transcript, faithfully reproduced here, was due in part to the limited

instructions that we gave to the transcriptionists. As a result they may not give an accurate impression

of his speech.5All quotations whether from the original transcripts or the July 2009 interview with Muruchi

Poma are our translations from Spanish.6In a personal communication, Seena Kohl told of placing a book in the local library of a field site

in the 1970s, and learning that within a month most of the fictitious names had been crossed out and

the real names inserted in the margins.7The Bolivian edition of the book in Spanish (Muruchi Poma et al. 2009) was funded through a

grant from Temple University, given the paucity of publishing resources in Bolivia, so these issues did

not arise in the Spanish text, and, as a result, the text remains far closer to Felix’s original language.8We have used the American Anthropological Association Code of Ethics (AAA) to guide our

research.

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Documents

Navigating Narrative: The Antinomies of “Mediated” Testimonios