Indigeneity and Land

One of the things that came to mind when reading the readings this week was what it means to be indigenous. The reason that this is something that I thought about frequently was because of what we read in Now Peru Is Mine by Manuel Mitma Llamojha and Jaymie Patricia Heilman. Llamojha explains on pages 11-12 about how he prefers to describe himself as a campesino versus calling himself Indian, Quechua, Aymara, or even indigenous. Although, the author does say, “His understanding of what it means to be a campesino is one that melds ethnic, class, and historical identities, and he is both passionate and explicit about his indigeneity.”1 It’s interesting that he chooses to use a social-economic label to describe himself. Although, it’s worth noting that he denounces the word “indian”, Llamojha says:
“Discrimination began when the Spanish took America. They categorized all the natives of the continent as ‘Indians,’ as people of another country, another world. I always felt proud when they called ‘Indian.’ When Christopher Columbus came to America, he thought that all the inhabitants of America from India. So I was proud when they said ‘Indian’ to me, because that meant I was from India.”2
This reminded me of conversations with my father who spoke to me of the remnants of indigenous lifestyle in his home pueblo of Pomoca, Michoacán. While he also shared the same sentiments about the use of the word “indio” or “indian” to describe himself as someone who comes from indigenous descent, he preferred to call himself a “campesino”, but used the two terms fairly interchangeably. His rationale for this was that as a Mexican with indigenous roots, he also resonated with the idea that being called “indian” further carried on a legacy of colonialism. While my father never explicitly said this, he felt it was wrong to call his fellow indigenous Mexican people with the incorrect name because they indeed weren’t from India, and therein lies a form of belittling and taking away from the strength and pride there is in indigeneity, and having colonizers rename and stick a name onto a people.
On a different note, the reason he strongly resonated with the word campesino was the fact that he felt that as a farmer, he saw the agricultural component, the physical labor that came with the lifestyle, and the spiritual connection to the land, as a means to fulfill the needs of his people were far more important than what demarcated him as indigenous, or “indio”, in geographic and racial terms. Just because he was darker skinned than other people in his pueblo and just because he didn’t live in the urbanized parts of Michoacan wasn’t what deemed him indigenous or being of indigenous descent. I think this proves to be a very valuable insight as to what it means to be indigenous. There’s merit in the work of cultivating land and creating a lifestyle and whole community based around that labor. It weaves together societies, fortifies relationships, gives these communities capital and a means of creating and contributing to national commerce. While most of the customs, language, and religions of that my dad said were forgotten and lost over the years, the land they owned and cultivated over generations were their claim to a past that is out of reach.
I think the thoughts that my dad had about indigeneity also find themselves expressed in the thoughts that Llamojha’s words and beliefs as well. As a result of his upbringing on an hacienda and being of indigenous descent, he also lived a life of extraneous labor and knew that the land was an integral part of indigenous people’s lives and identities. A lot of the denunciations he made were always tied to land. Whether it was unfair treatment and unjust labor conditions/hours for campesinos or the acquisition and claiming of lands that belonged to campesinos; all these are rooted in the lands that were owned by the people.
Hence, why the preservation of land, and moreover, the owning of these lands by the people that have been there for centuries, is arguably the most important component to indigenous rights. While my father himself didn’t unfairly lose lands at any point, he often points to the injustices American settlers imposed upon the Mexican people through the taking of lands above the current U.S border. So, he used that often times to describe a more universal struggle of the indigenous people we have been reading about that often had their lands unjustly taken, by coercion or by force. It brings us time and time again to the discourse over land and the claims that indigenous people have to them outside of the jurisdiction of the law that is often created thereafter only to tear indigenous people from the lands.
Works Cited
1. Mitma, Manuel Llamojha, and Jaymie Patricia Heilman. Now Peru Is Mine: The Life and times of a Campesino Activist. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. 11-12.
2. Mitma, Manuel Llamojha, and Jaymie Patricia Heilman. Now Peru Is Mine: The Life and times of a Campesino Activist. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. 11-12.