Memories, Identity, and Indigenous/National Subjectivity in Eastern Peru

Abstract

In Latin America the forging of national identities has beenproblematic, especially in countries where large indigenouspopulations have remained marginalized through colonial ideologiesof exclusion. This is changing, however, as processes ofglobalization are reshuffling old orders and indigenous peoplebecome active participants in new social movements of their ownmaking. Founded on shared experience and emergent feelings ofsolidarity, a new political body is created, defined by indigeneity andshared interests vis-à-vis the state. Based on autobiographicalnarratives from Asháninka leaders in the central Amazon of Peru,the paper looks at the memory-identity nexus and the way it isreflexively tied to the process of forging new political subjectivity asAsháninka and Peruvian citizens. Even if indissolubly linked with averifiable past, Asháninka memories are also the products ofsignifying processes associated with the present, with hopes anddreams, and with the production of meaning in the context of decolonization.