Constructed Memory, Power, Politics and President Morales's Appropriation of Bolivia's Tiwanaku (original) (raw)

This article looks at the rise of indigenous political power in Bolivia over the last two decades, against the background of how Tiwanaku [formerly Tiahuanaco] has been appropriated by the Aymará people, Latin American modern artists and pseudo-archaeologists, and as a symbol of the state by post-colonial governments for different hegemonic ends. The indigenous movement has used the symbols of the past to strengthen, and give authority and meaning to the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement towards Socialism: MAS) party led by President Evo Morales, and its ideology. Such a move has required understanding the symbolism of cosmovision (a term borrowed from Spanish and German usage) through myth, drawing upon the anthropological insights of Mircea Eliade and other insights into mythization. 2 But Tiwanaku has also been used by the modern art movement to give it authenticity and legitimacy. In the case of the white Bolivian elite, it has been used as a symbol of the state through the pseudo-white prehistory of Tiwanaku. But the historical event which most clearly captures the dimensions of this new political force has been the inauguration of President Morales at Tiwanaku, after a series of defeats suffered by the neoliberal state imposed in the 1980s. Anthropologists and archaeologists, such as Alan L. Kolata and John Wayne Janusek, refer to the appropriation of Tiwanaku, 3 but what does this mean in relation to the object Tiwanaku? Since the 1980s, the term 'appropriation' in the visual arts has meant taking possession of an object to use its borrowed elements in the creation of a new work. Aspects of appropriation appear in nearly all areas of visual art history, if one considers the act of making art as the borrowing of images or concepts from the surrounding world and re-interpreting them. Inherent in the process of appropriation is that the new work recontextualizes whatever is borrowed in the creation of the new work. While in art the original remains accessible as the original―without change―the appropriation of Tiwanaku by the Aymará has dramatically changed its meaning through its appropriation, being no longer simply a collection of ancient ruins. 4 Anthropology and archaeology are based on cultural appropriation. By the very nature of their analysis they give the object analysed a new meaning, and therefore cultural appropriation is a process relevant to anthropologists and archaeologists as it involves exchanges between cultures and an expression of the power of one culture over the other. This forces anthropologists to rethink the definition of 'culture' in the Andes. 5