This is a small list of different language learning tools collected by students of the class. Language is an important aspect of culture, however, many of the indigenous peoples sometimes struggle linguistically. The population who speak indigenous languages is few, so sometimes they are not able to communicate. The dominance of Spanish and the forced learning of it affected communities. We compiled links with access to language learning tools for indigenous languages to increase their visibility.
Oswaldo Guayasamín (1919-1999) was an influential Quechua painter from Ecuador. Guayasamín used art to communicate the violence, oppression, and poverty of which he was witness. Guayasamín often depicts human figures. His work probably gained such a wide scope of recognition because it feels both highly personal and universal. It communicates universal human emotions of pain, grief, anger, and love — but also the unique conditions and experiences of indigenous Ecuadorians. His style is identified as a part of the Expressionist and Cubist movements. Guayasamín was born in 1919 in Quito, Ecuador. His father was Quechua and his mother was Mestiza. He was the eldest of ten children. Guayasamín was interested in painting from a young age. He started to watercolor when he was 6 and shifting to oil when he was 10. “As he had already been expelled from six different schools for what his teachers considered a lack of academic talent, he enrolled in the School of Fine Arts [in 1932, at age 13] against his father’s wishes.” His early was characterized by these artistic developments, and at the same time, it was marked by personal loss and political violence. Guayasamín’s mother died a premature death during his childhood years. Later, in 1932 (the same year he started art school) an armed conflict exploded between then president Neptalí Bonifaz Ascázubi’s far-right base and leftist paramilitary groups who sought to overthrow him. This coup sparked a four-day period of intense violence. During this time, Guayasamín witnessed a stray bullet hit and kill one of his best friends. This event would inspire the painting below, Los niños muertos (The dead children). Los niños muertos, 1941 This painting was featured in Guayasamín’s “first exhibition in 1942 [which] stirred considerable controversy in the artistic community, as the majority of his works contained critical social and political undertones.”
Having graduated from The School of Fine Arts in 1940, Guayasamín’s career was already in full speed ahead. Soon after graduating, “Nelson Rockefeller visited Quito and was so impressed with Guayasamín’s art that he extended him an invitation to visit the United States, where the artist spent seven months visiting museums.” Soon thereafter, in 1943, Guayasamín traveled to Mexico where he met Diego Rivera and studied under José Clemente Orozco. As we can see, from the beginning of his artistic career, Guayasamín was recognized internationally for his talent, and through his travels gained a broadend international perspective. On his way back from Mexico to Ecuador, Guayasamín traveled through Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. The injustices that he witnessed during this tour inspired the first peiod of his artistic career, called Huacayñán (A Quechua word that roughly translates to “the trail of tears). It spanned from 1946 to 1953. The two paintings below were produced during this period of his artistic production, during which he created one mural and 103 pictures. He “depict[s] the misery and injustices suffered by racial and ethnic groups, particularly indigenous people, in Latin America. The works portray the cultures, feelings, traditions, identities and religions of these people and attempt to give them a voice.” The figure of Prisonero (1949) is fairly typical of the bodies that Oswaldo renders: thin, showing signs of poverty, with both the face and hands showing the anguish of the figure. Quito Ecuador (Green Quito), 1947 Prisionero (Prisoner), 1949
The next period of his artistic production is referred to as La edad de la ira, or The Age of Rage, which spanned roughly from 1953-1993. The art that Guayasamín created during this middle period of his career was extremely politically and emotionally potent. He expressed his outrage and grief at many of the horrors of the 20th-century, such as the series of dictatorships that sprung forth in Latin America, the disappearings, the continued repression of indigenous peoples, the Vietnam War, and more. Lágrimas de sangre (Tears of blood), 1973
For example, the image to the left, one of Guayasamín’s most famous, was painted in 1973 in direct response to the assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile. Guayasamín admired Allende greatly and dedicated this painting to Allende, and to “the theater director and musician Víctor Jara as well as Guayasamín’s close friend, the poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda.” Guayasamín not only dedicated some of his paintings to specific political events and figures, but he also tried his hand at portraits. In 1996, he painted a portrait of Rigoberta Menchú, the famous K’iche’ activist from Guatemala. Rigoberta Menchú, 1996 Photo courtosy of Fundación Guayasamín, 1996.
The later period of Guayasamín’s career is called Ternura (Tenderness). Between the years of 1988 until 1999 when Guayasamín passed, he created about 100 paintings all belonging to this collection. These paintings were all dedicated to his deceased mother. Most of them depict a mother and child embracing. During these later years, Guayasamín shifted his focus, creating these more personal paintings. Like the paintings from earlier in his career, these paintings are centered around people and have his recognizable emotional potency. However, the emotions that Guayasamín conveys shift from angry outrage to a loving melancholy. Madre y niño (Mother and Child), 1989
The term that has been the hardest for me to understand throughout the term is indigenous. At the beginning of this course, I heavily attributed this term to the word native, meaning originating from, as I mostly commonly associate this term to plants and herbs. However, as the term has gone on I have noticed that the meaning of indigenous varies within different countries and peoples, especially in the case studies of Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, and Chile we have focused on. The piece by Andrew Canessa, “Who Is Indigenous? Self-Identification, Indigeneity, And Claims to Justice in Contemporary Bolivia”, further explores the meaning of indigenous by analyzing the complexity of indigeneity in Bolivia in terms of identification of self and entire communities. Canessa describes how the term indigenous is heavily associated to the ideas of hunter-gatherers and nomads. Most notably the word indigenous is thought closely to stand for “primitive” in relation to the ancestors of humankind. Although this is the initial thought when discussing the term indigenous, Canessa acknowledges that who is indigenous and what it means to be indigenous throughout Latin America is complex and variable among different individuals and time. An aspect of indigeneity could include language, specifically the language of Quechua in the case of Bolivia, but many indigenous languages throughout Latin America also contribute to this. Although language is an important factor to indigeneity, it is not a binding requirement since there are many individuals who do not speak Quechua, such as the president Evo Morales, and still identify as indigenous. Indigeneity can also be identified through jobs worked, such as that of farming and agriculture, that also reflect social class. Plus, geographical setting was a key role to some individuals who identify as indigenous through their ties to land pre- and post-colonialism. However, it is not always the case or required as seen through the cases of migrants who have been forced off their land. One of the biggest challenges that comes with self-identification when it comes to indigeneity is the relevant political issues that rise up, since many take the identity of indigenous as a political position. As Canessa points out in this article, this brings up the question of who gets a say when discussing indigenous needs and rights if those who identify as indigenous do it in varying ways. Defining this term is also a bit subjective in many cases, as one may wonder if the term indigenous is meant to be an inclusive or vastly exclusive term. In some areas, this word is very exclusionary since it requires the individual to be, look, live, work, and identify a certain way in order to be able to identify or be accepted as indigenous. This may leave those who do not fit these standards exactly, or at all, to be unacknowledged. The piece “Transnational Settler Colonial Formations and Global Capital: A Consideration of Indigenous Mexican Migrants” by Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera and Korinta Maldonado attempts to describe and understand the relationship between the migration of indigenous communities into spaces influenced by settler-colonialism. The authors discuss the underlying question of how settler-colonialism influences indigeneity in terms of social order and relations to the land. The article mentions how the migration led to a sort of “Indigenous Resurgence” among the Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Mixes people from the state of Oaxaca, Mexico into the surrounding area of Los Angeles. Specifically, the Zapotec people have been noted to have left a big impact in the city of LA, in a space that has become known as “Oaxacalifornia”, through the formation of enclaves, restaurants, and stores. Also, they even formed local organizations such as bands, basketball teams, dance groups, and festivals or parades of cultural celebration. This specifically reflects how the indigenous communities of migrants from Oaxaca, Mexico were able to develop their indigeneity even in this transnational space they found themselves in. The article analyzes the question of indigeneity through migrants who are no longer in the land their culture and way of life contributes to. But despite this, the indigenous communities of the Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Mixes people show how their indigeneity can be lived, practiced, embraced, and supported despite the distance and space they live in today. Also, this term can serve to be inclusive in other areas, as there is no exact definition of the word, leaving it to be more general including everyone who wishes to identify this way. However, there are even some homologous terms in other countries, such as our current case study of Peru where the people prefer the term campesino, which in a sense implies indigenous descent but more importantly acknowledges a socioeconomic status. Although, there is no straightforward or single definition for the term indigenous, the themes and complexities that its understanding entails is important in order to begin, or continue understanding indigeneity as a whole.
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