Folklorisation mirages. The reconfiguration of indianness in Eduardo Nina Quispe´s National project

Abstract

   In the early twentieth century, elites from La Paz deployed a series of speeches and cultural policies designed to advance the integration of indigenous peoples into the nation that made of their folkorization the tool to forge a stereotypical “native Indian” that allowed to define the singularity of the Bolivian identity facing the international community, while empowered to establish hierarchies within the nation. This deployment, however, was not without conflict. During this period, the indigenous population -far from presenting as a folkloric element- organized the movement of “caciques apoderados” which, combining litigation practice with open rebellion, challenged the national project of the elites. In this article we analyze the concepts of nation and indianness built by Eduardo Nina Quispe, indigenous lead of the legal struggle in the early decades of the twentieth century, as a way to address the way the elite´s project was structured, in opposed or confluence, with some sectors of the indigenous movement.