In February 2027, Chola in a Choke Hold: Reimagining Indigenous Futures through Bolivian Lucha Libre will be available from University of Pennsylvania Press!

Chola in a Choke Hold grapples with understandings of indigeneity and their gendered aspects through an ethnographic investigation of women’s involvement in the world of Bolivian lucha libre. Performing as characters known as “Cholitas Luchadoras,” these women don costumes associated with urban Indigenous dress and engage in feats of athleticism and entertainment, but not without controversy. Anthropologist Nell Haynes examines how and why the Bolivian women who engage in this genre of wrestling entertainment divide public opinion, with some viewing the characters as empowering and others regarding them as offensive racial stereotypes. Haynes contends that the luchadoras promote the idea that a global- and future-oriented notion of Indigenousness is as “real” and “authentic” as a notion of indigeneity rooted in the past and tradition. In promoting this idea publicly, luchadoras both create the possibility of this future, and they do the work of helping to bring it into being.

This felt like the most inconsequential of stories, but it's one I don't want to forget.

I hadn't been to La Paz in 5 years. The summer of 2017 was too busy. In the summer of 2018 I realized I would have January 2019 free, and thought it better to visit during a time when the altiplano is in summer. But of course, then the election crisis of 2019 happened, making travel tenuous. Protests and violence, or food shortages at the very least, seemed like they might break out at any minute. I'll have to wait until summer 2020 I thought. But as I packed up my apartment in Maine to move back to Illinois in the back of my station wagon in the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, mid-March 2020, I said out loud to myself, I suppose that plan's not going to work either. 

And so, after 5 years, I returned. That first evening back, I walked into my favorite local bar. The bartender poured me a shot and said "welcome home." And the whole trip felt a little like that. I did no "research." I went to visit friends (and a friend's grave). I caught up on the local news. I drank gin & tonics in that bar, I watched movies in the tattoo studio across the street, and I went to Calle Rodriguez to buy weekly food with friends. I drank tea late into the night in friends' kitchens listening to stories from late 2019. I simply found a way to settle back in.

The day I left on an 8pm flight, I inevitably had too many errands to do. I bought some nice Bolivian chocolate bars for friends in the US, then went with Gus to go by my friends' restaurant to say goodbye. As we walked along Calle Illampu looking for a taxi that would take us back to my apartment to get my bag, and then to the airport, a particularly rough looking man walked toward us through the thin touristy crowd. As he got near enough that would could smell his faint stench, and without breaking stride, he used a finger to block one nostril and blew a visibly large and yellow booger out the other side. As he passed us, I realized he looked either to be a gringo or a criollo boliviano fallen on hard times. 

I was thinking to myself, "Don't react, Nell. Take this in stride," when Gus said "Pues, es un buen recuerdo de Bolivia para tu despedida" [Well, that's a nice memory of Bolivia for your departure]. The two of us laughed as we walked down the street which was still decorated with multicolored umbrellas hanging above for the city's founding day celebrations. In that moment everything felt good and right. I felt at home and surrounded by people I love and I didn't want to leave. But I know I won't let 5 years pass again, if I can help it. 
​

On November 25, 2019, Chilean feminist collective, Las Tesis, gathered in Santiago’s Plaza de Armas. Against a backdrop of anti-Piñera graffiti painted on government buildings, museums, and Catholic church properties, some 50 members of the collective wearing black blindfolds began to chant a rhythm now heard around the world.

The patriarchy is a judge
that judges us for being born
and our punishment
is the violence you don’t see…

The lyrics continue on to connect patriarchal state structures to femicide, disappearances, rape, the police, judges, the state, the president, and perhaps most importantly, impunity. The most powerful phrase, repeated twice, is:

The oppressive state is a rapist.
The rapist is you.

(lyrics from Women’s March 2020)

To read the full article, click here to go to Anthropology News
También se aparece aquí en español, después del inglés 

Baird Campbell and I have written a blog post, available on Platypus, the blog of the Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing. The blog details the ways we see Chileans distrusting traditional media outlets and using social media as an archive...yet an archive that is already assumed to be unstable. 

This rift in the types of videos that we received privately, rather than posted publicly indicates a particular understanding of the uses of Internet-based communication. In fact, it seems to indicate an anxiety about digital communication related to its potential ephemerality, a shortcoming that can only be remedied by widespread sharing and archiving across diversified social networks across the globe.

To read the full blog post, click here to go to Platypus.
O haz click aquí para leer en español 

​Chilean Media Amidst Protest

I woke up Saturday morning with a direct Instagram message from my friend Mateo. “Share please,” it said, with a formatted text with the title “State of Constitutional Emergency in Chile, October 2019.” In the 3 days since, he continued to send infographics and then videos of protests, each time asking me to share them.
 
“The media here is making it seem as if we are violent delinquents, but we are mostly peaceful. And the media outside of Chile isn’t showing anything. Please help us share the message.”
 
As Chile has recently erupted in protest, police violence, and other sorts of chaos, from the Atacama to Patagonia, media is taking on a central role in the tensions. From 2013-2016 I lived in Chile, in both the capital of Santiago, and the far north region. Coincidentally, Mateo lived in the north while I did, though he had spent most of his life in Santiago, and has since returned. His use, as well as criticism, of media, along with dozens of other Chileans in both the metropolitan region and the north, provide important insight to many protestors’ grievances and tactics in this historic moment.


Chile in State of Emergency
 
On Sunday 13 October, Chile’s Transport Ministry announced that the Santiago metro would raise fares by 30 pesos (about 4 cents in USD). This seemingly small increase, however, must be placed in the context of the average Chilean’s monthly salary around $450.
 
In response students started organizing fare-dodging acts all over the city. Fare dodging is not uncommon in Santiago where late-night bus drivers are often defenseless against crowds of young people pouring onto the bus or jumping turnstiles without paying. This coordinated effort however far exceeded previous levels.
 
Soon the protest spread beyond students, particularly when politicians made poorly calculated comments in response (link to The Minister of Economy, Juan Andrés Fontaine, indicated live on TV that workers should get up earlier to catch public transport when the fare is lower).
 
But these protests are not simply about a fare increase. As many hashtags and memes attest, it is not about 30 pesos, but about 30 years of inequality.
 
Chile is classified as a highly developed country by the World Bank, but also consistently ranks as having the very highest rates of social inequality among such countries. A meme which was first shared with me on Sunday October 20th, depicts an iceberg with “Increased public transport cost” above water and a long list of other effects of neoliberalism below the surface: poor but expensive education, deficient healthcare system, pension system crisis, inadequate salaries along with high disparity between general public and the political elite, precarious employment, police corruption, corporate corruption and collusion, and even the privatization of water. 

These grievances are attributed to the last 30 years—the time since the “No” vote which ended the brutal dictatorship of Agosto Pinochet. While “neoliberalism” is often a catch-all phrase for economics associated with the free market, post-1985, in Chile it is directly connected to Pinochet’s regime, who specifically brought Milton Friedman to the country in 1973 to impose economic “shock” theories as a test case. His policies privatized companies and resources, deregulated business, cut social services, and opened the country to unimpeded imports. Inflation then spiraled to 374% and unemployment reached 20% per cent. The government almost entirely defunded social services, the social security system was privatized, health care became a pay-as-you-go system, and public schools were replaced with charter schools. Pinochet’s government maintained these policies until 1982 when the Chilean economy crashed – debt exploded, hyperinflation took hold and unemployment rocketed to 30 per cent. Pinochet’s regime was finally defeated in a democratic election in 1989. However, many Chileans feel subsequent democratically elected administrations have only intensified the export-oriented neoliberal reforms, though with less violent and totalitarian control. 


Chilean Media
 
While Reporters without Borders gives Chile a favorable score for press freedom, they note that “pluralism and democratic debate are limited” by media ownership concentrated among the elite who share interests with those in political power. Community media, particularly in radio, has a long history in the country, but its ability to spread information widely is not always adequate.
 
At the same time, about 78% of Chileans have Internet access and most are well-connected on social media. Yet as I found in northern Chile, many people shy away from discussing politics openly on social media, in part a lingering result of sixteen years of dictatorship. While many northern Chileans post funny memes about how politicians are disconnected from the lives of “real Chileans,” they shy away from direct criticism or analysis of politicians and policy. One exception I found was that during the April 2014 8.2 Richter scale earthquake in the region, northerners realized the world was paying attention and use primarily Facebook and Instagram as stages for calling attention to the lingering effects of the natural disaster and the national government’s slow and inadequate disaster relief.
 
Northerners also use social media to demonstrate the ways they differ from even regular people in Santiago. They see Santiago as a place of consumption, whereas the North, known for its rich copper deposits, is a place of labor. Santiago is a place of strangers and vulnerability to urban crime, while northerners watch out for one another. They see Santiago as the beneficiaries of their work, as wealthy and politically elite, even as they may know working-class people there. Overall, Santiago is framed as having very little in common with the northern region of the country.
 
Social media use in Santiago is more similar to the types of political engagement we see by those connecting online from countries in North America or Western Europe. Most people are forthright about their political stances and use social media as a space for criticism and at times, campaigning. While they do not take much time to compare themselves with those outside of the metropolitan region, northerners would use this fact as further evidence that those in Santiago hardly realize anyone else in the country exists. 


October 2019
 
Because Mateo has lived most of his life in Santiago, I was not particularly struck that his feed quickly filled with protest-related content. But just a day later I began to see photographs and videos of protests being posted by Chileans in the north of the country. People shouting in the street in Arica, Iquique, and Antofogasta appeared in my Facebook and Instagram inboxes with little comment other than “please share.” In my 18 months living in the region, I had only ever seen those sorts of crowds in the streets after the national football team won a championship.
 
This use of social media was a departure from the sorts of usual posts northerners shared. It reminded me of post-earthquake posts in the ways they attempted to address a global audience in order to bring an issue of injustice to attention. These posts differed from the somewhat apolitical posts after the earthquake. The social media content of northerners in the last few days has been highly political, often accompanied by hashtags calling for the president to resign.
 
Thus, it is clear that northerners see these calls as legitimate and possible. They are not apt to share such sentiments as a pipe dream, but rather save their political calls to action for moments in which they believe they are justified, possible, and aided by international attention. Essentially these posts demonstrate that northerners sense a real possibility of change. 

​We are united
 
On October 20, President Piñera, flanked by almost 2 dozen military leaders, declared on national television, “We are at war against a powerful enemy, unrelenting, that doesn’t respect anything or anyone, and that is apt to use violence and delinquency without limit, that is apt to burn our hospitals, the metro, the supermarkets, with the only purpose to produce as much damage as possible.”
 
In response, Chileans throughout the country took to social media, asserting “We are not at war, we are united.”
​
While nationalist discourses in Chile are common, they are usually colored by equally powerful senses of regional belonging, that may just as easily highlight difference among Chileans as call for unity. Yet, social media is now showing this slogan to be quite true. For a moment, Chileans throughout the country are seeing “the people” of different regions, including those of Santiago, as united against politicians, corruption, and inequality. If tweets demanding that Piñera resign or that Chile has awoken are any indication, Chileans from all over the 2600 mile long coastline are coming together with a common message, that they are united against the inequalities they have faced for the last 30 years. 
​

Photo courtesy of Bolivian wrestler, Mr. Atlas
​

Lucha libre, or freestyle/exhibition wrestling in Bolivia is similar to "exhibition-style" or professional in much of Latin America, including Mexico. 

As part of this increased visibility of Mexican wrestling in the 1950s, luchadores began traveling throughout Latin America putting on events. Huracán Ramirez and Rayo de Jalisco were among those who spent time in Bolivia. They also trained new wrestlers in the cities they visited. Some early Bolivian wrestlers included: Mr. Atlas, Principe [The Prince], SI Montes, Medico Loco [Crazy Doctor], and Diablo Rojo [Red Devil].

During the 1960s lucha libre events took place in the Perez Velasco, a commercial area just outside of central La Paz, popular among working class and middle class people. Luchadores usually wrestled in a makeshift ring and set up seating in a fútbol field. The costumes during this time were not particularly flashy and almost everything was improvised. But by the mid-1970s, the Coliseo Olimpico [Olympic Coliseum], a 7500 seat sports arena, was built in the central neighborhood of San Pedro, leading to more visibility.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, interest in lucha libre waned in La Paz. But in the late 1990s, a major shift occurred when Bolivian lucha libre first appeared on television. In 1998, a group of luchadores calling themselves Furia de Titanes [Fury of Titans], who were regularly putting on shows at the Coliseo Olimpico, noticed TV personality Adolfo Paco in the audience. They approached him about beginning a lucha libre program on Asociación Televisión Boliviana (ATB) channel 9, and he agreed. The program was filmed in the Coloseo de Villa Victoria, in a more peripheral neighborhood of La Paz, and was an immediate success. In addition to large television audiences, the group began attracting long lines of people hoping to see the shows taped live. Luchadores gained notoriety and were featured in local newspapers and magazines. With the addition of several corporate sponsors, luchadores earned about $200 per event.

But this success was fleeting, because not all were highly skilled, and Paco was undiscerning. This caused bitter arguments among the wrestlers. By 1999, Furia de Titanes had split in two. Those who kept the name Furia de Titanes remained on ATB, while others adopted the name Lucha de Campeones [Champions’ Wrestling] and began wrestling on the Uno network, channel 11. The rupture ultimately resulted in smaller audiences, in response to which sponsors terminated their support and thus luchadores in both groups took home significantly less pay. Lucha de Campeones, for example, offered free entrance to their live shows to encourage larger audiences, but as a result luchadores made only 250 to 350 Bolivianos ($35-50 US) per event. In the year 2000, several luchadores complained to Paco that they had never received the health insurance he had promised them. Paco ignored their requests and in retaliation, the luchadores refused to put on their event the next Sunday. They never appeared on television again. However, the end of lucha libre on Bolivian television was quickly followed by the beginning of what might be considered the current era of Bolivian lucha libre, which includes a number of groups in La Paz: Titanes del Ring, LIDER, and Super Catch, among them. Each of these groups also include "cholitas luchadoras," otherwise known as "cholitas luchadoras" [fighting cholitas].
​

High Tech Knitters

In 2015, news began circulating globally about Bolivian women creating occluder devices used to correct certain heart defects. As may be expected, news reports framed their involvement as anomalous. While occluders are mass produced for adults, infants with the defect require a device too small to be made industrially. Instead, Aymara women in La Paz have been recruited to knit the devices from fine wire. One BBC article began “The Indigenous Aymara women have centuries of experience of knitting and weaving distinctive woolen hats, sweaters and blankets. Now, they are applying their expertise to a hi-tech medical product – which is used to seal up a ‘hole in the heart’ which some babies are born with.” The article goes on to note that such innovations are especially welcome given that Bolivia is the poorest country in the continental Americas, and thus lacks advanced hospital resources.

The knitters, who usually remain nameless, serve as eye-catching introductions to these articles, which then shift focus to the technology’s creator, Franz Freudenthal. Though Freudenthal is also a Bolivian national, he carries a name indicative of his German ancestry, and has looks to suit his name. Freudenthal is portrayed as innovator while the women are described as “an army” under his direction. Their knitting skills are framed as a form of knowledge inherent to Indigenous women, which has been repurposed and mobilized, not through their own innovation but transformed into a technological advancement only through association with a non-Indigenous leader. This type of reporting capitalizes on the anomaly of Indigenous women to attract readers, then reverses the aura of unexpectedness through focus on a non-Indigenous person as the true innovator.
​

Campesina Iventors

Not long before reports of the knitters began to circulate, Erika Mamani (aged 11) and Esmeralda Quispe (aged 12) constructed a hydraulic arm, which won the Scientific Olympiad of La Paz. Bolivian newspapers picked up on their story, marveling at their ability to achieve the feat at such a young age and using only recycled materials. These newspapers also focused on their residence in a town of 550 people on the shores of Lake Titicaca, providing short narratives of Mamani and Quispe’s daily lives. They detailed their 90-minute bicycle ride to school, their joy in perfecting written Aymara, the Indigenous language of the area. The articles also mention their after-school activities, like herding sheep, and describe in detail their clothing—the pollera style associated with rural Indigenous women.

Even before the Bolivian government could recognize the girls with medals and a reception, Facebook’s campaign for Internet.org (now named Free Basics) portrayed Mamani and Quispe as poster-children. Free Basics aims to “bring Internet access and the benefits of connectivity to the portion of the world that doesn‘t have them.” They produced a video depicting Quispe and Mamani, much as Bolivian newspapers had, walking in the Andes, in their simple classroom, holding the Wiphala (Andean Indigenous peoples’ flag), and riding over Lake Titicaca on a totora reed boat. The video’s narrator highlights that the girls did not have access to the Internet while building the arm. “And the Internet would have helped, big time” the male voice emphasizes. “That’s why we need to connect them…The more we connect, the better it gets.”
​
Many around the world have criticized Free Basics as an affront to net neutrality (The Guardian referred to it as “digital colonialism”), and in Bolivia enough people protested that the service was discontinued for the country in 2016. But more specifically, as with many North Atlantic representations of Global South Indigenous peoples, the video resorts to Indigenous symbolism (the girls’ clothing and the Wiphala), traditional technologies (the reed boat), and pristine landscapes (the Andes mountains and Lake Titicaca) in order to portray Mamani and Quispe’s foray into technology as anomalous. It makes no mention of global inequalities, poverty, or neo-imperialist policies (both on the part of the United States and regional adversaries such as Chile) which have fostered circumstances in which so many Bolivians live with little to no Internet access. For a global audience who may only understand Bolivia as a place with “barefoot children,” the portrayal of Mamani and Quispe confirms reductive understandings of “third world” people’s lives, while offering a simple redress to the problem of global inequalities through a technical solution.

Toward a Better Understanding of Indigenous Peoples and Technology

Achieving a balance between portraying the culturally specific aspects of Indigenous peoples’ technological engagement without exoticizing is no easy feat. But representations that do not rely on such exoticization will foster greater understanding that Indigenous people are capable of, interested in, and already engaging in technological growth. Indigenous engagements with technology are key to raising standards of education, health, and basic living quality. To imagine Indigenous people as contrary to technological advancement frames them as not necessitating high quality of life. By ignoring the historical, economic, and neocolonial underpinnings of these misunderstandings, we naturalize discrimination and implicitly justify further global inequalities. But through greater acknowledgement of Indigenous technological engagement, and normalizing its treatment in media, we can move toward a world in which Indigenous peoples are better able to use technology toward communication, economic ventures, education, healthcare, language revitalization, development projects, and social renewal on their own terms. This would, in part, enable an autonomous response to their own needs, rather than always being subject to others’ solutions for them.

In the wake of movements hashtagged and referred to as (in that order, I’d contend) “Me Too,” “Ni Una Menos,” and “Time’s Up,” I find myself asking a long-standing question in a new context: What is my commitment to anthropological interlocutors who have treated me with what I consider to be less than the respect I deserve?
 
I am surely not alone in this question (see examples one, two, three, and four). Most women, and plenty of men that I know who have done ethnographic fieldwork for extended periods of time have been treated, in one way or another, on the spectrum of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Especially doing fieldwork that involved spending time with several men, and even touching them on a regular basis—sometimes placing hands in places that would be entirely inappropriate outside of wrestling—I thought a lot about how to keep myself safe and how to negotiate the issues of trust that are essential to engaging in lucha libre. I carefully considered my trainer. He was younger than I, an enthusiastic and respectful person. He could be demanding. He would yell when I didn’t move my leg in quite the right way to hook it around my opponent’s neck. And he could be jealous. He once told me that I should never accept an invitation to wrestle with a particular other group, because they would be hard on me. They wouldn’t respect and protect me like he did. I took this warning with a grain of salt, but it was one of those negotiations that all anthropologists encounter. The people we gain close rapport with in the field often begin to feel a bit of ownership over us, and don’t like it when we run off to hang out with their rivals. This may be compounded by gender dynamics, but certainly exists beyond issues of gender, as well. The little things aside, I trusted my trainer to take care of me as a wrestler, and as a human being. During my time training and performing, I never had reason to question this trust.
 
I also count myself fortunate that none the other wrestlers I’d consider my “official interlocutors” (those whose pseudonyms and quotations appear in my writing) placed me in situations in which I feared for my safety. That, unfortunately is is a designation reserved for my “friends of friends” in the field. None of the wrestlers touched me inappropriately, unlike the dozens of men and the two women who touched my ass or crotch while walking down the streets of La Paz. However, some of the men with whom I worked managed to make me uncomfortable.
 
Most of this discomfort was intangible, or at least difficult to explicitly demonstrate. This discomfort stemmed from strange invitations to dinner or weekend trips to a festival in another city, pet names to which I did not consent, or proclamations about my physical attractiveness. It happened in 2011-2012 when I was in the field for 18 months and spending time with wrestlers every day, as well as through social media after I left. There were moments I felt as though I owed it to my interlocutors to respond to “Hola nena.” I had after all, relied on their generosity to get a Ph.D. And as time went on, I developed strategies. Wait a full week before responding. Only respond to direct questions, and never return the question-even if it’s an innocent “como estás?” Never use emojis. Use as few words as possible. When will you be back? “No sé.” 
 
This worked (and continues to work) well enough, but things changed about a year ago. A particular wrestler, who I met a few times but never worked closely with, sent me a Facebook message. I'll call him "Rey"* here. I was flattered, as he is one of the “greats” of Bolivian wrestling (if such a thing can be said to exist). A second generation wrestler, son of the man who is likely the best known and most skilled Bolivian wrestler of all time (with “all time” meaning a tradition of 50-60 years). He asked if I was still training, and if I’d be back to wrestle in Bolivia. This time my “no sé” was honest. I hadn’t planned to wrestle more, but with the right sort of invitation, I might consider it. I had gone back once after a year out of training to participate in an event to raise money for children with cancer. If this wrestler, now more a trainer than participant in matches, invited me to something enticing, I just might say “sí.”
 
Instead he responded asking if I was married to the older or younger Pantera*-a father and son who had both wrestled under the same gimmick. I responded clearly, I don’t have a husband. “El pequeño no es tu amigo con derechos?” [roughly friend with benefits] “That’s what they told me.” I responded by questioning why he was interested in my private life, and that I didn’t feel comfortable discussing my relationships with him. In retrospect I now contemplate if a better approach would have been flat out telling him that the “Little” Pantera was my trainer, nothing more. This was the absolute truth. The only time we had ever been alone together was once when he walked me to my apartment after a late night event, and I only allowed him to go as far as the corner. I didn’t feel I owed any details to Rey, who I had only ever met on a few occasions. I knew his wife, also a wrestler, well. But I wondered what his motives were.
 
I ended the conversation quickly after this exchange, half lying in the way that many women feel such mixed feelings about—I told him I was living in Iquique [that part was true] and engaged to a Chilean man [not true]. I sent him a picture of myself, a male Chilean friend, and his cat. “Ésta es mi familia ahora.” He responded, “Perdón, saludos.” That was November 2014. I haven’t heard from him since.
 
At first I was offended by Rey's question. Why would he ask this, or perhaps, why would he make this assumption. In many ways, the question or assumption reflected what I had written about the dynamics of gender in Bolivian wrestling. Women are seen as a gimmick (for good or for bad). They are assumed to have some sort of male relative involved in wrestling. They get involved in wrestling either in order to, or as a consequence of a relationship to a man. This didn’t excuse his questions, but it explained them.
 
But I also thought about my trainer. Maybe he really had been telling people he and I had a relationship. I wanted to confront him. But I took a breath and waited. What would the result be? He could admit it. But if he did, would he appologize or laugh it off? Either way, an admission didn’t seem likely. And even if he did admit this, what would I accomplish? The trust we shared was broken.
 
More likely he would deny it. If he had actually said such things, and then denied it, my question would accomplish little. I’d get no closure or satisfaction, and again, our trust was already broken. The best case scenario was that he hadn’t actually said these things. But if I asked, I knew he would take offense. If I asked, no matter what his answer, or what the truth was, I would breaking the trust we shared by even considering that it might be true. Shouldn’t I trust him enough to know that he wouldn’t say this about me?
 
So, I didn’t confront El Pequeño Pantera. I complained to my friends in Chile and the U.S. and when he wrote to me a few weeks later, I answered cordially. We now exchange a few words once or twice a year, always cordial, always superficial. I still have no idea if he directly mentioned a relationship when speaking to the older wrestler, if he might have indirectly implied it, or if the relationship was entirely of the older man’s conjuring. At this point, I’d like to assume the latter, but I don’t really care. I do care that all of this created a situation in which I felt I had to extract myself from communication (and certainly from continued longer-term direct research) with the group as a whole. I care that being a woman has placed me in a position in which I have to balance things like personal safety and reputation with disciplinary concerns related to long term research and the researcher’s commitment to their interlocutors. These are never easy questions. But the gendered dynamics of my research, along with it's position somewhere between “studying up” and a “preferential option for the poor” have made these particularly difficult dynamics to negotiate. In the end, I see no option but to privilege my own well-being. But I can’t help but wonder if others will interpret that choice as lacking in anthropological commitment to social justice. 

​*Names have been changed

​Being on the job market is a frustrating process no matter what type of job one is looking for. This is exponentially true in academia (or at least we’d like to think so). If your particular subfield is not “hot” at the moment, you may find yourself with either a very small number of potential jobs, or the existential crisis-invoking task of attempting to fit your work into boxes that you never intended to fill. We all go through this. We all despise it. We all hope that it is worth it in the end.
 
But there are times in which the very job descriptions we encounter are precisely what our research and writing are working against. I study media, performance, and pop culture produced and consumed by indigenous peoples in the Andes. My work is often described as “cool,” and “fascinating,” yet it is not taken as seriously as I would like by colleagues who follow centuries old traditions of studying the language and “customs” of indigenous people as an easily defined and fairly static entity. More recently, anthropologists have begun to pay attention to social movements of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas (and elsewhere), with particular focus on environmental concerns. And these are incredibly important works, particularly as climate change seems to have worse effects by the day. And not surprisingly, many departments have picked up on the significance of this work, as indicated by the number of job postings related to expertise in Latin American indigenous peoples, almost always focused on environmental or ecological anthropology.
 
And yet, as I comb through the websites and wikis, I find myself at times wanting to shout
 
“Indigenous people do more than care about the enivironment!”
 
In such imbalanced attention to indigenous peoples’ environmental concerns, we have recast them as the very one-dimensional characters we are striving to complicate. In this era of critical race studies, queer studies, intersectionality, urban anthropology, and ontology, why can we not extrapolate to place importance on the ways indigenous people understand their race/ethnicity divorced from explicit politics of race? Or the ways they enact gender and sexuality that take into consideration not only traditional third gender categories, but also the global forces or media and music? Why are the particular negotiations of indigenous peoples who live in urban areas not of any interest? And perhaps most poignantly, why are we not placing importance on the reasons that indigenous peoples sometimes DO NOT engage in environmental activism or even highlight their indigenous identities?
 
A line from my standard job letter reads: “I ask my students to question how those who identify as indigenous, institutions that categorize others as indigenous, and even academic conventions themselves define what is considered “authentically” indigenous.” Yet how can I hope to encourage students to push this line of thinking when these academic conventions structure who is even eligible to apply for a job? Perhaps the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house, but if you can’t even get on the property, you’re not going to make much difference either.
 
I know I am not alone in my frustration. People who study indigeneity outside of continental North America are often at a disadvantage based on the frequency with which indigenous studies jobs are based in American Studies departments which ask new hires to teach introduction to indigenous studies courses. And of course the academic job market is imbalanced to the extent that search committees can pretty much come up with whatever improbable combination of regional expertise, population, method, theoretical orientation, and secondary focus they might conjure, and they will still have a few applicants who fit their mold. This is all deeply entrenched in a system that benefits very select groups, and perhaps there is no easy solution. I have heard job-seeking colleagues call out the proliferation of medical anthropology jobs as a surrender to the administrations’ neoliberal valuing of medicine and STEM fields over humanities and social sciences. These are not the only way to create meaningful scholarship and curriculum. And neither are job criteria that reinforce passé notions of who indigenous people are and what they do.
 
So, in the mean time, I’ll keep applying and maybe some forward thinking search committee will open their minds to a different kind of indigenous studies.