Search

Socio-economic and environmental changes are well known causes of demographic collapse of agrarian cultures. The collapse of human societies is a complex phenomenon where historical and cultural dimensions play a key role, and they may interact with the environmental context. However, the importance of the interaction between socio-economic and climatic factors in explaining possible breakdowns in Native American societies has been poorly explored. The aim of this study is to test the role of socio-economic causes and rainfall variability in the collapse suffered by the Aymara people of the semiarid Andean region of Tarapacá during the period 1820–1970. Our motivation is to demonstrate that simple population dynamic models can be helpful in understanding the causes and relative importance of population changes in Andean agro-pastoral societies in responses to socio-environmental variability. Simple logistic models that combine the effects of external socio-economic causes and past rainfall variability (inferred from Gross Domestic Product [GDP] and tree-rings, respectively) were quite accurate in predicting the sustained population decline of the Aymara people. Our results suggest that the depopulation in the semiarid Tarapacá province was caused by the interaction among external socio-economic pressures given by the economic growth of the lowlands and demands for labor coupled with a persistent decline in rainfall. This study constitutes an example of how applied ecological knowledge, in particular the application of the logistic equation and theories pertaining to nonlinear population dynamics and exogenous perturbations, can be used to better understand major demographic changes in human societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the various forms in which indigenous practices and worldviews articulate with the modern, leading to the formation of a distinct indigenous modernity. It reveals that the construction of indigeneity in terms of purity and distance from the modern is being challenged by urban Aymaras (indigenous people of the Andean region of South America) who affirm their Aymara identity without enacting purity. This explains why modernizing and developmentalist assumptions are part of their discourse of indigenous liberation. This new indigenous political discourse stands in tension with a postdevelopmentalist indigenous politics, which is the product of a different engagement with modernity. Different encounters with colonialism and modernity have created multiple indigenous modernities with contradictory perspectives on indigenous political liberation and well-being. The article is a product of 22 months of ethnographic research in the city of El Alto between 2010 and 2014 that included participant observation in multiple neighborhoods of El Alto, 85 semistructured interviews and 5 focus groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Khipus are knotted-cord devices once used in the Andes for communication and recording information. Although numbers can be read on many khipus, it is unknown how other forms of data may have been recorded on the strings. Scholars currently debate whether elements of cord construction, such as the direction of ply, signified meaning on khipus and, if so, how. Testimony from an Aymara-speaking khipu maker, collected in 1895 by Max Uhle and recovered from Uhle's unpublished field notes, combined with the analysis of his actual khipu provides the first direct evidence that ply was a signifying element in khipus. Moreover, the evidence suggests that ply signified through a principle of markedness in which S ply corresponded to the unmarked (more valued) category while Z ply corresponded to the marked (less valued) category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An article discussing the author's experience of traveling and studying in Lima, Peru is presented. Describing his time in Lima, which is located in South America's Andes Mountains, the author cites the prominence of Andean scholarship and recounts interactions with members of the native Quechua and Aymara cultures. Commenting on the prevalence of visitors and tourists to the region since the 1980s, the author discusses his interaction with the Chimborazo, a local evangelical organization. The expansion of Christianity in the region and the dynamic between indigenous groups and the Peruvian government are also included.