What Does the Sumak Kawsay Mean for Women in the Andes Today? Unsettling Patriarchal Sedimentations in Two Inca Writers

Abstract

Carcelén-Estrada examines four stories that reveal how patriarchal systems become sediments over time that determine the performance in translation of indigenous peoples’ modern gender identities. Patriarchal sedimentations impede their realization of Sumak Kawsay, an Andean constitutional right to live well in community. Following Julieta Paredes’s communitarian feminism, this chapter discusses translational acts that attempt to build communities that sustain life. Exiled Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Guaman Poma de Ayala construct identities that allow them to participate in a political community, yet their epistemic interventions fail to produce the Sumak Kawsay of their childhoods. Today, Reyna Maraz awaits her death in Argentina, while Manuela Picq from Brazil condemns her deportation from Ecuador; both women remain alienated from the Andes and from their Sumak Kawsay.