Citizenship in the Latin American Upper and Middle Classes: Ethnographic Perspectives on Culture and Politics 9780815353928, 9781351134316

Citation preview

Citizenship in the Latin American Upper and Middle Classes

The problem of citizenship has long affected Latin America, simultaneously producing inclusion and exclusion, division and unity. Its narrative and practice both reflect and contribute to the region’s profound inequalities. However, citizenship is usually studied on the margins of society. Despite substantial public interest in recent mass mobilizations, the middle and upper classes are rarely approached as political agents or citizens. As the region’s middle classes continue to grow and new elites develop, their importance can only increase. This interdisciplinary volume addresses this gap, showcasing recent ethnographic research on middle- and upper-class citizenship in contemporary Latin America. It explores how the region’s middle and upper classes constitute themselves as citizens through politics and culture, and questions how these processes interact with the construction of difference and commonality, division and unity. Subsequently, this collection highlights how elite citizenships are constructed in dialogue with other identities, how these co-constructions reproduce or challenge inequality, and whether they have the potential to bring about change. Citizenship in the Latin American Upper and Middle Classes will appeal to scholars, advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in fields such as Latin American Studies, Citizenship Studies, Political Science and Cultural Studies; and to a general readership interested in Latin American politics and society. Fiorella Montero-Diaz is a lecturer in ethnomusicology at Keele University. She holds an M.Mus. from Goldsmiths University and a PhD from Royal Holloway – University of London. Franka Winter is a political sociologist with a PhD from the University of Dublin.

Routledge Advances in Sociology

The Social Structures of Global Academia Edited by Fabian Cannizzo and Nick Osbaldiston Youth and the Politics of the Present Constructing the Future Edited by Enzo Colombo and Paola Rebughini Trade Unions and European Integration A Question of Optimism and Pessimism? Edited by Johannes M. Kiess and Martin Seeliger Globalization, Modernity and the Rise of Religious Fundamentalism The Challenge of Religious Resurgence against the “End of History” (A Dialectical Kaleidoscopic Analysis) Dimitrios Methenitis Urban Environments for Healthy Ageing A Global Perspective Edited by Anna P. Lane Citizenship in the Latin American Upper and Middle Classes Ethnographic Perspectives on Culture and Politics Edited by Fiorella Montero-Diaz and Franka Winter For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Advances-in-Sociology/book-series/SE0511

Citizenship in the Latin American Upper and Middle Classes Ethnographic Perspectives on Culture and Politics

Edited by Fiorella Montero-Diaz and Franka Winter

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Fiorella Montero-Diaz and Franka Winter; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Fiorella Montero-Diaz and Franka Winter to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-8153-5392-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-13431-6 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

From Fiorella: To my son, Adrian. May this book help you love and understand the world in all its complexity, Latin America with all its contradictions and your mamarella with her insatiable curiosity. From Franka: To my children, Edgar and Trond.

Contents

List of figures List of contributors Foreword Acknowledgements Introduction

ix x xiii xvi 1

FRANKA WINTER AND FIORELLA MONTERO-DIAZ

PART I

Culture9 1

From spectators to consumers: citizenship in the Latin American illustrated press (1880s–1930s)

11

MARIA CHIARA D’ARGENIO

2

“What will the respectable public say?”: protest musicianship and class in “Sexta” events in Mexico City

30

ANDREW GREEN

3

Filmmakers as “citizens of the world”: cosmopolitanism and global identities of the Chilean upper-middle class

46

MARÍA PAZ PEIRANO

4

Marginal like you!: constructing citizenship through fusion music in the Peruvian traditional upper classes FIORELLA MONTERO-DIAZ

62

viii Contents PART II

Politics81 5

“I would like citizenship to mean understanding the other”: relational notions of citizenship in a divided city

83

FRANKA WINTER

6

Digital alteration and the law against racism: conflicting models of citizenship among new Bolivian middle classes

99

MIRIAM SHAKOW

7

Banging the other side of the saucepan: changing political activism and performance of citizenship among Argentina’s middle class, 2001–2013

117

DANIEL OZAROW

8

Demonstrating ethnicity and social class: the ColombianLebanese in Bogota

134

ESTEBAN DEVIS-AMAYA

Afterword

150

FIORELLA MONTERO-DIAZ AND FRANKA WINTER

Index

152

Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 4.1 6.1 6.2 6.3

El Perú Ilustrado 1, 1887 Variedades 738, 1922 Variedades 457, 1916 Colectivo Circo Band Photo by author, La Paz, Bolivia, 3 January 2018 Vilca’s law school class graduation photo, original photo Vilca’s law school class graduation photo, altered version

17 23 24 70 103 106 106

Contributors

Michelle Bigenho (Colgate University), Professor of Anthropology and Africana & Latin American Studies, is author of two monographs: Intimate Distance: Andean Music in Japan (Duke, 2012) and Sounding Indigenous: Authenticity in Bolivian Music Performance (Palgrave, 2002). She plays the violin and has participated in many performances and recordings with the Bolivian orchestra, “Música de Maestros”. With Henry Stobart, she has organized, run and documented a National Science Foundation-funded workshop in Bolivia (2012), “Rethinking Creativity, Recognition, and Indigenous Heritage”. They received an ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship (2015), and on the basis of this research they have co-authored articles and are currently finishing a book manuscript on Bolivia’s heritage fever. (email: [email protected]) Maria Chiara D’Argenio (University College London) holds a BA in Literature, an MA in History of Film & Visual Media, and a PhD in Hispanic Studies. Between 2007 and 2009, she held a postdoctoral position at the University of Naples, where she also taught Spanish American literature. Since 2016, she has lectured on Latin American literature, cinema and visual culture at UCL. Her research focuses on decolonial approaches to indigeneity in contemporary Latin American cinema and on issues of identity, national belonging and ­citizenship-construction in Peruvian visual media. She has published in journals such as Post-Colonial Studies, Latin American & Caribbean Ethnic Studies, Studies in Spanish & Latin American C ­ inemas and Journal of Latin American Studies. She has edited a special issue on Illustrated Press (Revista Iberoamericana), a book on Latin American cinema entitled Toward a Decolonial Turn: Indigeneity in Contemporary Latin American Cinema and a monograph on Indigenous Representation in 21st-century Peruvian Cinema. (email: m.d’[email protected]) Esteban Devis-Amaya (Oxford Brookes University) holds a BSc in Politics and International Relations, and a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Southampton, as well as an MSc in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is currently a lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. His research looks at migration into Latin America, focusing

Contributors xi

on the way diasporic communities recreate and perform notions of social class, ethnicity, and cultural identity through their migrant organizations. His work is interdisciplinary, covering areas of cultural studies, political science, sociology, and anthropology. He has done research on a number of migrant communities, including the long-established Arab diaspora in Latin America (mainly Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian migrants), as well as more recent Venezuelan migration into Colombia. (email: [email protected]) Andrew Green (University of Glasgow) holds a bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies and Music, a Master’s degree in Rural Development, and a PhD in Ethnomusicology. After completing his doctorate at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2016, he spent a year as Early Career Fellow at the Institute of Musical Research, and 18 months teaching at the University of the West of Scotland’s School of Media, Culture and Society, before taking up a position as Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow’s School of Culture and Creative Arts. His research examines the music of Mexico, exploring music’s multiple intersections with politics, the anthropology of value, cultural policy, urban geography, activism and the creation of autonomy. He has published work in journals of music studies and anthropology, including Ethnomusicology Forum, Popular Music and Popular Music and Society. (email: andrew.green@ glasgow.ac.uk) Fiorella Montero-Diaz (Keele University) first trained as a classical pianist, went on to a degree in sound engineering, and then settled on ethnomusicology. She received an M.Mus in ethnomusicology at Goldsmiths  – University of London and a PhD in music from Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on music hybridity, race, class, the elites, and social conflict in contemporary Lima, Peru. Fiorella’s most recent publications include “Singing the war: Reconfiguring white upper-class identity through fusion music in post-war Lima” (Ethnomusicology Forum, 2016), “YouTubing the ‘Other’: Lima’s upper classes and andean imaginaries” (in Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media, 2017) and “Turning things around? From white fusion stars with Andean flavour to Andean fusion stars with white appeal” (Popular Music, 2018). Fiorella is currently a lecturer in ethnomusicology at Keele University in the UK, and is part of the board of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology. (email: [email protected]) Daniel Ozarow (Middlesex University). He received his PhD from Middlesex University, where he currently works as a senior lecturer. His doctoral thesis focused on middle-class resistance to pauperization in Argentina during the 2001 crisis. He is Co-chair of the Argentina Research Network and Co-editor of two books: Argentina since the 2001 Crisis: Recovering Reclaiming the Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and De la Crisis de 2001 al Kirchnerismo: Cambios y Continuidades (Prometeo, 2016). He has a forthcoming monograph The Mobilization and Demobilization of Middle-Class Revolt: Comparative Insights from

xii Contributors

Argentina (Routledge, 2019). He researches on comparative citizen responses to financial crises in Europe and Latin America, workers’ self-management, alternative production models, transnational labour movements, and how both personal and national debt is resisted. Daniel has recently published in academic journals such as Economy and Society, Sociology, Labour History and Latin American Research Review. He is Chair of Jubilee Debt Campaign’s Academic Advisory Network, and a member of Action for Argentina UK. (email: d.ozarow@mdx. ac.uk) María Paz Peirano (Universidad de Chile) holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Kent and is currently a Lecturer in Film and Cultural Studies at Universidad de Chile. Her research involves an ethnographic approach to film as social practice, focusing on contemporary Chilean cinema in transnational settings, film festivals, and the development of Chilean cinematic culture. She  worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Leiden University, studying the impact of international festivals on Chilean cinema, and is co-editor of the volume Film Festivals and Anthropology (Cambridge Scholars, 2017). She is currently the lead researcher of the FONDECYT 11160735 project “Festivals, educative experiences and the expansion of the Chilean Field”. (email: [email protected]) Miriam Shakow (College of New Jersey) She holds a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Swarthmore College and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Harvard University (2008). She is the author of Along the Bolivian Highway: Social Mobility and Political Culture in a New Middle Class (U Penn Press, 2014). From 2008 to 2012, she taught at Vanderbilt University. She is currently an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the College of New Jersey. Her research in Bolivia has focused on new middle classes and the contradictions of “new left” responses to neoliberalism. She has published in the Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR) and The Andean World (Routledge, 2018). She has an article forthcoming in American Anthropologist. (email: [email protected]) Franka Winter holds a degree in Sociology from the University of Hamburg and a PhD from the University of Dublin. Her research focuses on notions and practices of citizenship in the Latin American middle classes. The research published in this volume was carried out at Maynooth University, and funded by the Irish Research Council under the Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme. (email: [email protected])

Foreword

Eduardo Galeano’s (1973) vivid metaphor of open veins has shaped much of the scholarship on Latin America. For good reasons, the painful embodied trope carries weight where extractive enterprises, racialized exclusions and nested inequalities have left majorities of national populations excluded from a basic standard of living. Yet a volume like this one, focusing on citizenship of middle and upper classes in Latin America, has welcome counterintuitive streaks, precisely because it shakes up the usual topics of Latin Americanist scholarship. As I have written elsewhere (Bigenho 2012), the cultures of specific area studies predetermine many of the research questions we pose, something that becomes very clear as one does “interarea” ethnography – say, between Bolivia and Japan. With a few notable exceptions, Latin Americanists have not focused on upper and middle classes. Instead, we study peasants, Indians, working classes, Afrodescendants, and social movements (usually progressive ones) – all usually seen as coming from the margins or from below. We tarry with the above, usually in terms of an ever-elusive “state” or other institutions like non-governmental organizations, often while considering their corresponding articulations with marginalized populations. Citizenship became a primary conceptual apparatus to examine this node between those from below and institutions of power, particularly during a moment of expanding cultural rights regimes. But what about those persons and classes above, those who might occupy an upper-class position, or those who might be moving into a middle-class position? This volume takes us down that still novel path of inquiry for Latin American Studies. As early as the 1960s, Laura Nader (1972) called on anthropology to turn its critical ethnographic focus to those occupying positions of power. In general, anthropologists responded well to this call; today, we have ethnographies of investment banking, international institutions and scientific laboratories. Yet this studying “up” or “across” is still not commonplace in scholarship on Latin America. One prominent exception might be Lesley Gill’s (2004) ethnography on the School of the Americas. However, this crucial research on a US institution known for training those who would work closely with brutal dictatorships in Latin America still seems to cling to the open veins metaphor, albeit from a different angle. One also might point to research that portrays a middle class marked by indigenous difference. For example, Nico Tassi’s (2016) rich ethnography shows

xiv Foreword

how Aymara entrepreneurs and traders remain Aymara and do not reinvest their significant capital earnings in traditional bourgeois ways. Yet this intersectional analysis starts from and returns to indigeneity or the question of difference; its persistence or erasure remains the guiding theme (also see Colloredo-Mansfeld 1999). While not detracting from such crucial work, the present volume takes us in innovative directions, putting middle and upper classes at the centre of inquiries, with those actors who, for example, might join a professional class and who may express ambivalent feelings about their own indigenous family members, all with statements that make researchers cringe. In 1995, Sherry Ortner called out anthropologists for writing thin descriptions of the subaltern, and encouraged us to resist the easy language of resistance – that which too often depicted subordinate subjects as essentialized single dimensional beings who seemed a far cry from the complex and contradictory persons who inhabited these worlds. Just as there is no unitary subordinate (Ortner 1995, 175), there is no unitary subject of the dominant classes, even if social structures and institutions do a lot of work to make them seem so. This volume provides precisely the kind of “thick description” needed to comprehend those in dominant classes and/or those moving into such positions. Close depictions of the complexities that exist within Latin American upper and middle classes provide the antidotes to what has for too long been caricature. Citizenship may have provided the classic nodal connection between those from below and institutions of the state; yet the concept also remains a powerful analytic when considering middle and upper classes, precisely because of the contemporary moment in which collective social contracts are in crisis worldwide. The individual and the collective come into question, as discourses about the deserving and undeserving poor are all too pervasive. This volume analyzes an array of citizenship activities related to music performance and consumption, as well as to more “traditional” political engagements. While some sites of inquiry about middle- and upper-class citizenship may make one wince, others may suggest the potential for alliance and solidarity. Staunchly refusing to simplify, this volume goes far to maintain grounded tensions, complexities and ambiguities, as scholars analyze middle- and upper-class citizenship practices in Latin America. Michelle Bigenho October 14, 2018, Colgate University Hamilton, New York

Bibliography Bigenho, Michelle. 2012. Intimate Distance: Andean Music in Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Colloredo-Mansfeld, Rudi. 1999. The Native Leisure Class: Consumption and Cultural Creativity in the Andes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Foreword xv Galeano, Eduardo. 1973. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Translated by Cedric Belfrage. New York: Monthly Review Press. Gill, Lesley. 2004. The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Nader, Laura. 1972. “Up the Anthropologist: Perspectives Gained from Studying Up.” In Reinventing Anthropology, edited by Dell Hymes, 285–311. New York: Pantheon Books. Ortner, Sherry. 1995. “Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37 (1): 173–93. Tassi, Nico. 2016. The Native World-System: An Ethnography of Bolivian Aymara Traders in the Global Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the following individuals and organizations, without whose support this book could not have been completed: First and foremost, the chapter authors, whose research is presented in this book, were a delight to work with. We particularly appreciate Prof. Michelle Bigenho’s thoughtful Foreword. We would also like to thank Elena Chiu, at Routledge, for guiding us through the publication process. Barry Cannon offered invaluable support and advice in the early stages of the book’s life. The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Keele University generously supported the production of this book with a Research Support Grant.

Introduction Franka Winter and Fiorella Montero-Diaz

The problem of citizenship has been on the Latin American agenda since the first republican exercises in nation-building, simultaneously producing inclusion and exclusion, division and unity. Its narrative and practice have both reflected and contributed to the construction of profound inequalities in Latin American societies (Meltzer and Rojas 2013). However, citizenship has mainly been studied with respect to marginalized groups in society, such as indigenous rural (Garcia 2005; Yashar 1998; Greene 2009) and urban (Holston 2008; Lazar 2008) popular movements, women (Rousseau 2009) and other disadvantaged groups. While the global middle and upper classes are increasingly moving into the focus of ethnographic research (Freeman 2014; O’Dougherty 2002; Liechty 2003; Marsh and Li 2015; Freeman, Liechty, and Heiman 2012), they are seldom studied as political agents or citizens. There is to date no major English-language edited volume that explicitly and exclusively approaches middle- and upper-class people in contemporary Latin America as activists, citizens or agents of political and cultural change. This lacuna is both surprising and problematic, as middle- and upper-class people are not only crucial agents in the development of Latin American societies, but have also attracted substantial public interest in the wake of recent mass mobilizations across the continent and beyond. As the middle classes across the region continue to grow and new elites develop, their importance can only increase. On examination of the existing literature, there is also a striking scholarly emphasis on middle- and upper-class discourses and practices that oppose efforts to build more inclusive and equal societies, reaffirming and cementing existing inequalities and constructing new distinctions. Middle- and upper-class people in the region thus often appear essentialized as hostile to change and keen to hold on to the privileges their status affords them, reflecting, perhaps, the often precarious hold on middle-class status in particular in societies that offer few protections against downward mobility. For example, Hale (2005, 23) argues that middleclass Ladinos [mestizos] in neoliberal Guatemala get “anxious” over indigenous populations’ claims to cultural rights when their aspirations exceed “healthy and moderate” levels. Some of this can also be found in the articles in this collection;

2  Franka Winter and Fiorella Montero-Diaz

however, the research featured in this volume challenges this consensus in many ways, offering new insights and questions that deserve further enquiry. In some cases, existing research on the Latin American middle and upper classes contributes to a narrative of “zero contact”, whereby the spaces inhabited by middle- and upper-class people are presented as completely separate from those of other socio-economic sectors. For example, Caldeira, whose work on segregation in São Paulo is a core reference for students of geographies of class, argues that “since middle- and upper-class people circulate in private cars while others walk or use public transport, there is little contact in public among people from different social classes. No common space brings them together” (2000, 310). Similarly, writing about the Peruvian capital of Lima, Aranda Dioses claims that: In this enormous urban space, where millions of people live, each group moves within [and] knows limited areas for study, work, shopping, strolling, or leisure. These are small circuits compared with the entirety of the city, so that the integrated experience of the urban is lost, and the sense of belonging is based on bounded spaces, such as the neighbourhood or the residential district. (Aranda Dioses 2007, 115) Special spatial architectures and arrangements – such as the infamous dual elevator system and segregated domestic space in Brazilian apartment buildings – are cited as evidence of minimal, tightly controlled contact between middle- and upper-class people and those from the working classes, often limited to interactions between employers and domestic workers (Holston 2008, 276). The dominant ethnographic narrative of the Latin American middle and upper classes thus depicts these sectors as builders and defenders of boundaries and barriers, both symbolic and material (as in the case of gated communities (Caldeira 1999, 2000)). This consensus, while certainly grounded in reality, is still problematic, because it contributes to and cements a narrative of class and middleclass subjectivity that stresses segregation and division, obscuring and potentially undermining any instances of and potential for encounter, dialogue and integration. Moreover, focusing on segregation also obscures a very interesting question that informs many of the chapters in this volume: what happens when Latin American middle- and upper-class people meet “the rest”? This interdisciplinary volume seeks to address the significant gaps in literature previously outlined by bringing together recent ethnographic research on middleand upper-class citizenship in contemporary Latin America from a broad range of disciplines within the arts, humanities and social sciences, covering cases from Peru, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Colombia. In Latin America, the value and role of culture in the formulation of citizenship has been neglected by scholars and policy-makers alike. This volume asks how middle- and upperclass people in Latin America today constitute themselves as citizens through the

Introduction 3

interconnected fields of politics and culture, and how these processes interact with the construction of difference, as well as commonality, division and unity. Several of the chapters also touch on the role of consumption and consumerism in the construction of middle- and upper-class citizenship – a nascent field of research that deserves further attention. By addressing these questions, the volume not only highlights the ways in which upper- and middle-class citizenships are constructed in dialogue with narratives and performances of class, race, ethnicity and nationality, among others; it also asks how these co-constructions reproduce or challenge inequality, and whether they have the potential to bring about change. This latter question, in particular, challenges the dominant scholarly narrative that middle- and upper-class people in the region use their privileged citizenship status primarily to exclude others. While this is certainly part of the story, we hope that the ethnographic material compiled in this volume will help construct a more complex narrative and offer new insights and interpretations of contemporary processes in Latin American politics and society. Understanding how privileged citizenships evolve over time allows us to reflect both on the mechanisms that perpetuate inequality and segregation, and on the many confrontations and subversions to hegemony from within these classes. The eight individual chapters are broadly structured around these two main questions. In answering them in relation to distinct ethnographic case studies, their shared goal is to illuminate shifts and changes in traditional privileged citizenships. In order to promote dialogue across chapters, we also developed three common guiding questions, some of which are addressed in each chapter. These questions are: 1

2 3

Is “upper and middle class” an a priori economic and social status that exists outside of, and precedes, collective practices and expressions of citizenship in the public sphere? Or is the “middle and upper class” itself created and constituted by those practices and expressions of citizenship? Does or can the “upper and middle class” as an identity serve as an obstacle to the expression of collective demands or to the collective vindication of citizenship? Does or can “upper and middle class” as an identity serve as an enabler/facilitator of the expression of collective demands or to the collective vindication of citizenship? If so, how and why?

Chapter synopses The collection is divided in two parts: the first four chapters are concerned with the construction of citizenship through cultural practices, featuring studies on illustrated magazines, music and cinema; the second half addresses “politics” as a site of citizenship with chapters on narratives of citizenship and segregation

4  Franka Winter and Fiorella Montero-Diaz

among young middle-class people in Lima, struggles around the meaning of middle-classness in a changing Bolivia, middle-class protests in Argentina, and Colombian-Lebanese claims to citizenship in Bogotá. The first section starts out with a historical perspective on citizenship in the Latin American illustrated press. Focusing on two Peruvian magazines of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Maria Chiara D’Argenio examines how the illustrated press constructed an “imagined citizenship” consisting of ideal images of citizens, their values and behaviours. She furthermore asks if and how these images related to specific class identities and narratives of otherness, and how they were articulated visually. D’Argenio finds important differences between the two journals: on the one hand, the earlier EPI uses visual technologies such as the individual portrait and the generic “type” – two genres that are deeply intertwined with class and race and mirror the racial and social hierarchies of their time  – to construct visual representations of modern citizenship and its other; the later Variedades, on the other hand, employs a more inclusive gaze that “interprets society as separated in social groups, while offering ways of perceiving coexistence and porosity with the underlying aim of persuading its readers-spectators to consume visions of social mobility”. In this way, it validates a wider range of values, behaviours and class attributes than EPI, commodifying citizenship as “something that can be bought and adapted according to the reader’s needs and aspirations”. D’Argenio thus concludes that Variedades interpellates its readers primarily as “consumer-citizens” a subjectivity that is more inclusive than its more rigid predecessors but comes with its own problems. In Chapter 2, Andrew Green looks at music events in the context of the proZapatista “Sexta” a campaign convoked by the Mexican EZLN in 2006 to promote “autonomy” in Mexico and across the world. These events in Mexico City, he argues, provide opportunities for people from different backgrounds to come together and interact. Green’s chapter examines the complex class relations between marginalized and privileged groups at Sexta events with a view to “[writing] the middle classes back into the narrative” of the movement, which has presented itself largely – but inaccurately – as a movement of the disenfranchised. As he points out, performing in support of the Zapatista movement implies costs that can constitute a significant barrier to poorer artists, particularly as its anticapitalist ethos stigmatizes commercial success. Likewise, he argues, the rational ethos of the movement and its citizenship discourse discourage and subtly marginalize certain musical genres and styles that are perceived as too crude, but that are particularly popular among poorer demographics. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s critique of Habermas, Green argues that this underlying problem of inequality is obscured by a discourse and musical practice that “brackets”, and thus ignores, inequality within the movement, hiding power imbalances instead of addressing them. Green’s study thus shows that the practices and discourses of citizenship in the Sexta movement provide both opportunities and limits to the expression of collective demands across class boundaries.

Introduction 5

María Paz Peirano’s study (Chapter 3) examines subjectivities and discourses about art and citizenship among Chilean filmmakers who participate in international film festivals. Embedded in neoliberal cultural policies, contemporary upper-middle-class patterns of mobility and the demands of a global marketplace, she argues, these narratives reveal an aspiration for a cosmopolitan citizenship that is not restricted by the national, but offers access to a wide range of cultural elements. At the same time, Chilean filmmakers use their national belonging strategically to sell their films in a global marketplace. Peirano highlights that these new, individualist-cosmopolitan subjectivities mark a significant departure from a politically progressive tradition rooted in the 1960s: unlike the latter, which stressed cultural authenticity and lower-class social experiences and claimed to portray the Chilean people as a whole, the filmmakers studied by Peirano display a “politics of authorship” which expresses the “inner self” of the creative individual. This change in focus, as well as the upper-middle-class background of many of the internationally successful Chilean filmmakers, is contentious within the wider filmmaking scene in Chile. The filmmakers in Peirano’s study thus face multiple obstacles to the expression of collective citizenship, including their own values and sense of self as “cosmopolitan citizens”, their unease with taking on big national issues, and the suspicions levelled against them by other filmmakers based on their socio-economic background. In Chapter  4, Fiorella Montero-Diaz delves into the Peruvian fusion music scene, a sub-culture that is dominated by young artists from the country’s traditional upper classes. As she points out, this socio-economic sector is often perceived as detached and distant from the national community as a whole, a perception that bothers many of her informants. By engaging with “popular” music genres traditionally shunned by the upper classes, the musicians and audiences featured in Montero-Diaz’s contribution attempt to tackle these perceptions and expectations in order to achieve greater acceptance as not only legal, but also cultural citizens of Peru. Performance practice involves a gradual departure from the “allowed spaces” where upper-class people would traditionally gather and bands have become increasingly diverse in their membership; as Montero-Diaz notes, in a socio-spatially highly segregated society such as Lima, this represents a substantial transgression which is invariably reflected in changing subjectivities. She thus observes a double movement, whereby fusion musicians and their audiences both distance themselves from their traditional upper-class origins and seek inclusion into a wider national community perceived as “marginal” through a range of cultural practices. Montero-Diaz argues that the practices and discourses she observed among participants in the Peruvian fusion scene constitute a first step towards overcoming segregation, potentially facilitating the expression of collective demands across boundaries of class and race. The second section of the book addresses the construction of citizenship through more neatly political practices and discourses. In Chapter 5, Franka Winter explores a “relational” notion of citizenship, which she found among young middle-class people in the socio-economically divided city of Lima. Winter’s

6  Franka Winter and Fiorella Montero-Diaz

research challenges the widely held perception that paints middle-class people in the region as key-drivers of distinction and segregation. Similarly to MonteroDiaz’s chapter, it highlights emerging discourses among a new generation of middle- and upper-middle-class youth which identify segregation, division, and inequality as major social problems. In response to these issues, Winter’s research participants had developed utopian visions of a peaceful and integrated society and a notion of citizenship that combined awareness of the other with horizontality and respect for difference. However, Winter is cautious with respect to the potential for collective demands and the collective vindication of citizenship: her findings show that her participants often struggle to reconcile conflicted emotions about greater integration – supporting it in principle, but struggling to imagine it in practice. Winter’s research also speaks to the first shared question, showing that civic discourses and practices are intertwined with class identity in several ways – on the one hand, how her informants saw themselves in terms of class affected what they felt was “appropriate” for them to do; on the other, their civic practices and activism sometimes attracted ridicule from other sectors of society, who perceived them as “typically middle-class”. Chapter 6, by Miriam Shakow, explores conflicting models of citizenship and middle-classness among members of the new Bolivian middle classes. The context of her study is Bolivia under Evo Morales’ MAS [Movement Toward Socialism] government, which had promised to replace a traditional exclusive and racist notion of citizenship that frames indigeneity as incompatible with modernity or full participation in the nation with one that strongly emphasized the working classes and the indigenous. Shakow examines how her informants – young professionals from indigenous working-class homes  – negotiate the changing and intertwined meanings of both middle-classness and citizenship, highlighting “the relational nature of class and racial identity in Latin America”. As she points out, competing models of upward mobility and citizenship in Bolivia diverge on the issues of race and distribution of wealth: is indigenous identity (and its expression through dress) even compatible with being a modern “professional”, or is cultural assimilation a sine qua non of middle-classness? What  – if any  – role should indigeneity play in national identity and in the country’s future? And should wealth and power be a result of individual effort, or should there be redistribution to assist the poor? Shakow finds that there is no one answer to these questions, which were hotly debated and contested among her informants; in consequence, the question, “Do ‘upper- and middle-class’ identities obstruct or facilitate the expression of collective demands or the collective vindication of citizenship?” required a similarly measured response: Shakow’s informants’ views on citizenship included both egalitarian, inclusive approaches and others that were more divisive, and in many cases – similarly to Winter’s findings – they were ambivalent and contradictory. Daniel Ozarow (Chapter  7) discusses how political activism among middleclass Argentinians has changed between the country’s political crises of 2001 and 2013. He observes several important transformations: Ozarow argues that while

Introduction 7

the earlier movement had a strong anti-neoliberal ethos, a decade later more conservative demands dominated the protests. People’s understanding of their citizenship, which had been active and radical in 2001, had turned into what Ozarow calls an “occasional identity” reminiscent of liberal political theory. Relationships between different social sectors had also changed: the earlier protests had been characterized by extensive cross-class solidarity and middle-classness played no major role in identity politics; however, a decade later, many middle-class citizens had turned against their former allies, perceiving themselves as victims of unjust economic redistribution. In this context, new meritocratic and class-based notions of “good citizenship” emerged, which  – similarly to Shakow’s ­observations in Bolivia  – highlighted deservedness based on individual effort over equality of access to basic resources. Ozarow’s findings thus suggest that Argentinian ­middle-class identities in 2013 were based on meritocratic core values that clashed with wider demands for redistribution, thus constituting an obstacle to collective mobilization across class boundaries. Furthermore, despite the cross-class solidarity and low profile of middle-class rhetoric in the earlier movement, Ozarow also notes that there were subtle differences between the ways in which different social sectors participated in the protests: he thus identifies distinct class-based protest repertoires, including the very “middle-class” neighbourhood assemblies and cacerolazos. Echoing Winter’s findings on “appropriate” political practices in Lima, this observation in particular points to a strong relationship between social class and collective practices and expressions of citizenship. The collection closes with Esteban Devis-Amaya’s chapter on the ColombianLebanese community in Bogota, a group that consists mostly of upper- and middle-class families. He argues that the Colombian-Lebanese have been able to capitalize on their foreignness in order to maintain an elite position in society, while their class status allows them to maintain the community’s general status, promote its interests and perform their ethnicity on their own terms. DevisAmaya explores how this duality is expressed in the community’s activism and in its members’ expressions of citizenship, showing that upper- and middle-class Colombian-Lebanese are able to switch between different ethnic and national identities and perform belonging in different contexts at will – either adopting a minority identity or merging with wider Colombian society depending on context. However, Devis-Amaya’s research also shows that the community maintains strongly classed socio-spatial practices, choosing protest sites and routes within the wealthy areas of the city and near their social club. In this way, the community’s activism offers opportunities for socializing and serves to reinforce its ties with wider middle- and upper-class sectors, but creates barriers for the integration of less wealthy Colombian-Lebanese into the community.

Bibliography Aranda Dioses, Edith. 2007. “Las cambiantes formas de sociabilidad y de construcción de identidades en Lima metropolitana.” Debates en Sociología 32: 109–123.

8  Franka Winter and Fiorella Montero-Diaz Caldeira, Teresa P. R. 1999. “Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation.” In Cities and Citizenship, edited by James Holston, 114–38. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. ———. 2000. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Freeman, Carla. 2014. Entrepreneurial Selves: Neoliberal Respectability and the Making of a Caribbean Middle Class. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Freeman, Carla, Mark Liechty, and Rachel Heiman, eds. 2012. The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press. Garcia, Maria Elena. 2005. Making Indigenous Citizens: Identity, Development, and Multicultural Activism in Peru. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Greene, Shane. 2009. Customizing Indigeneity: Paths to a Visionary Politics in Peru. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hale, Charles. 2005. “Neoliberal Multiculturalism: The Remaking of Cultural Rights and Racial Dominance in Central America on JSTOR.” PoLAR Political and Legal Anthropology Review 28 (1): 10–28. Holston, James. 2008. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lazar, Sian. 2008. El Alto, Rebel City: Self and Citizenship in Andean Bolivia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Liechty, Mark. 2003. Suitably Modern: Making Middle-Class Culture in a New Consumer Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Marsh, Leslie L., and Hongmei Li, eds. 2015. The Middle Class in Emerging Societies: Consumers, Lifestyles and Markets. New York: Routledge. Meltzer, Judy, and Cristina Rojas. 2013. “Narratives and Imaginaries of Citizenship in Latin America.” Citizenship Studies 17 (5): 525–29. O’Dougherty, Maureen. 2002. Consumption Intensified. The Politics of Middle-Class Daily Life in Brazil. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Rousseau, Stéphanie. 2009. Women’s Citizenship in Peru: The Paradoxes of Neopopulism in Latin America. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Yashar, Deborah J. 1998. “Contesting Citizenship: Indigenous Movements and Democracy in Latin America.” Comparative Politics 31 (1): 23–42.

Part I

Culture

Chapter 1

From spectators to consumers Citizenship in the Latin American illustrated press (1880s–1930s) Maria Chiara D’Argenio

This chapter examines the ways in which fin de siècle Latin American illustrated mass press contributed to the construction of citizenship and the role played by visual technology and vision in this process. I  focus on two specific Peruvian illustrated magazines, El Perú Ilustrado (1887–1892) [The Illustrated Peru; hereafter, EPI] and Variedades (1908–1931) [Varieties], and trace some comparisons with other Latin American periodicals from the same period.1 I  argue that the illustrated press fabricated ideas and models of modern citizens, of their identities, values and behaviours, thus contributing, from the realm of commercial cultural production, to processes of citizenship (and nation-) making that were taking place through the governments’ policies concerning work, education, immigration, leisure and sport. The magazines used visual technology and images to display the values that should shape a modern citizenry while instructing their readership on ways of seeing. They operated a “pedagogy of spectatorship” (Labanyi 2005), training the readers’ practices of looking. Moreover, they participated in what Tony Bennett (1988) has called the “exhibitionary complex” and, due to their respective historical periods and formats, they articulated different relationships between vision, knowledge and power.2 EPI, Variedades and the other publications that will be mentioned were published between the 1880s and the 1930s, and belong to the field of illustrated press, which developed around the mid-nineteenth century in France and Britain following technological advances and rising literacy rates. Illustrated press presented a greater number of images and visual detail, new combinations of text and images, hence offering a new sensorial experience to their readers; as written in the Illustrated London News, “the public will have henceforth under their glance, and within their grasp, the very form and presence of events as they transpire, in all their substantial reality, and with evidence visible” (King and Plunkett 2005, 380). While different in terms of format, content and explicit aims, these periodicals shared important elements. Unlike previous publications, they were not addressing a small lettered community, but rather a wide anonymous readership, which, while gradually expanded to include larger social sectors, was still made up mostly of middle- and upper-class subjects. Funded by both subscriptions and advertising, these magazines followed the logics of market and capitalism in their

12  Maria Chiara D’Argenio

policy and insistence on prices and sales, but were also deeply concerned with the processes of modernization and nation building, something that was evident in the choice of the editors and journalists and in their contents.3 Magazines were sites of modernity: they were indexical signs of modernization, products as well as makers of capitalism, and symbolic artefacts that familiarized modernity for their readers by offering them ways to make sense of epistemological, political, conceptual and material transformations. Modernity, in this chapter, will be understood as an “experience” of time, place, the self and the other (Berman 1983) that is a response to modernization (the physical, technological, political, cultural and conceptual changes); furthermore, modernity is also a discursive formation which elaborates modernization, textually and visually. I draw also on Nicola Miller’s (2008) idea of “technocratic modernity” and on William Rowe’s argument (2007, 121) on Peruvian modernity as a set of “moments” and “declarations” and not as a sequential and linear experience. In fact, I propose to understand magazines such as EPI and Variedades as heterogeneous spaces that hosted specific, even conflictive, “declarations of modernity”. The role played by print media in crafting nation-ness was signalled long ago by Benedict Anderson in his seminal study about nationalism: according to him, print capitalism “laid the basis for national consciousness” (Anderson 1983, 44) by creating “unified fields of exchange and communication” which articulated specific power relations through language; newspapers allowed to “create an imagined community among a specific assemblage of fellow-readers” (1983, 62) to whom the objects and people commented in the periodicals belonged. However, as pointed out by recent studies in visual culture (Mallart 2015), Anderson’s work failed to acknowledge two important ways in which periodicals engaged with nation making: first, the visual element and, second, those “routine forms” and “little ways” that fall within Michael Billig’s (1995, 8) notion of “banal nationalism”. As Billig claims, “citizenry are daily reminded of their national place in a world of nations. However, this reminding is so familiar, so continual, that it is not consciously registered as reminding” (1995, 8). Another key notion is the “everyday”: as Tim Edensor (2002, 1) noticed: “the nation has been subject to very little critical analysis in terms of how it is represented and experienced through popular culture and in everyday life”. Printed serially for a mass readership, published weekly, resuming, illustrating and commenting on the main events of the week and other actualities, illustrated magazines have the “everyday” at the core of their content. Placed at the crossroads of high and popular culture, art and commerce, instruction and entertainment, politics and the “apolitical”, they are examples of the many “trivial” ways in which feelings of collective belonging and shared values can be articulated through “beliefs, assumptions, habits, representations and practices” (Billig 1995, 6). Like nationhood, the notion of citizenship evokes feelings of collective belonging and shared values and behaviours. Unlike nationhood, however, citizenship defines legal status, rights and responsibility, it evokes hierarchies, issues of recognition and rules of inclusion and exclusion; it suggests verticality and

From spectators to consumers 13

prescription. This is even more true in historically heterogeneous countries, such as Peru, where definitions of citizenship have expressed specific “semantics of domination” and depended on real “social conflicts and relations of power”, as Andrés Guerrero argues in relation to Ecuador (Guerrero 2003, 272). In Peru, the issue of who were citizens and who would acquire the right to vote was central in the postcolonial political debate (Del Águila 2014). Legal citizenship, however, does not exhaust the debate on this topic. Recent scholarship has called for expanding the notion and study of citizenship beyond the political, focusing “less on legal rules and more on norms, practices, meanings, and identities” (Isin and Turner 2002, 4). Drawing on such scholarship, I discuss how graphic printed media crafted an “imagined citizenship” – by which I mean ideal images (visual and metaphorical) of citizens, of their values and behaviours – whether this was shaped around specific class identities and narratives of otherness, and how it was articulated visually and through vision.

El Perú Ilustrado The political and legal transformation of Peru from a colonial dualistic system to “one free and united republic of national citizens” entailed the construction of a genealogical historical narrative to narrativize “pasts for the civico-political task of turning “ex-colonial” subjects into republican citizens with a national future” (Thurner 2003, 141). The official national genealogy created in the ­post-independence period might be thought of as one aspect of the broader task of “educating” the republican citizens, a key endeavour of the newly formed Peruvian state. As Carmen McEvoy (1997) maintains, the process of state formation required a “cultural revolution” to create a legitimizing discourse around the new political entity and the republican ethos, a task to be carried out particularly through education. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the political discourse of the dominant civilista party, for example, imagined the ideal citizen as illustrated and valorous, participative and a productive worker and implemented these values through tools such as the school text Manual of the Citizen’s Duties and Rights. In the aftermath of the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), which left Peru destroyed physically, politically and morally, the notions of strength and regeneration became crucial in the discourse on citizenship: the moral and physical weakness of Peruvians was considered a main cause of the national defeat. During the post-war National Reconstruction (1886–1894), the ruling group’s positivist ideology identified science, education, European immigration and foreign capital as tools of political order and economic development (Cueto 1989); state policies promoted racial improvement and corporeal and social control. Despite the different governments that guided Peru from the National Reconstruction to the 1930s, the notion of modern citizens as rational, moral, healthy, strong and devoted to work and productivity was dominant and informed specific policies and laws from the realms of work to those of immigration and leisure.

14  Maria Chiara D’Argenio

EPI was a “semanario para familias” [weekly aimed at families] founded by the Italian-American entrepreneur Peter Bacigalupi in 1887 and directed by Peruvian intellectual Clorinda Matto de Turner between 1889 and 1892. Like other late-nineteenth-century illustrated magazines, such as the Colombian El Papel Periódico Ilustrado (1881–1889) [The Illustrated Periodical Paper] or the Venezuelan El Cojo Ilustrado (1892–1915) [The Illustrated Cripple], EPI gave centrality to visual technologies as demonstrated by their titles. By intertwining the meanings of “illustrated” (through images) and “enlightened” (through rationality), the word ilustrado links a visual tradition of knowledge to a Cartesian conception of reality (González Stephan 2009, 138). The second meaning of the Spanish word meant both “to make someone illustrious” and “to instruct” people (González Stephan 2009; Silva Beauregard 2006). Mirroring these meanings, magazines such as El Cojo Ilustrado or EPI hosted galleries of “illustrious” people, educated the citizenry on the values of the modern nation and operated as agents of national progress. Reflecting the ideology of Andrés Avelino Cáceres’ government and espousing Latin American elites’ ideology of “technocratic modernity” (Miller 2008) – the “promotion of an ideology of progress defined primarily in economic terms, driven by instrumental reason and technology, and implemented by a knowledge elite” (2008, 14) – EPI placed progress at the core of its editorial project: in its first issue, it claimed to be “an agent of advancement for the nation . . . to offer its humble contribution to the great deposit of universal progress” (EPI 1 1887). By including the word Peru in its title, the magazine establishes a stronger link between the notions of progress and education and that of nation, thus revealing its role in the process of national reconstruction. This national(ist) concern within the post-war context informs the ways in which the magazine constructed citizenship. In its texts and images, the magazine exposed and supported the Presidential policy of material progress, immigration and productivity. The new Peruvians needed to be, according to Cáceres, “robust, useful men, able to work for twenty hours like Edison” (EPI 156). EPI implemented specific visual strategies to mould Peruvian citizens: it displayed an “iconography of national heroes and types” (Silva Beauregard 2006, 373) which established examples to emulate (through portraits), as well as specific narratives of difference (through types); it visualized the values that constituted citizenship through images of Peruvian territory; it trained modern citizens in ways of looking at their country. In terms of race and class, the imagined citizenship was shaped around the criollo/mestizo middle and upper classes that would constitute most of its bourgeois readers (and writers), who were educated, healthy and devoted to work. Classes, as several scholars argue (Parker 1998; Adamovsky 2014), are not to be understood as rigid socio-economic categories, but rather as relational categories that vary according to the specific contexts and are defined by a variety of elements from education, origin and surname to “race” and by acts of naming and self-identification. EPI addresses specifically criollo/mestizo

From spectators to consumers 15

middle and upper sectors as the makers of Peruvian modern citizenry, whose “class” identity appears to be an a priori assumption that precedes the elaboration of a notion of citizenship in the public sphere. While bonded to certain social and racial sectors, however, it must be noted that citizenship in EPI appears also as a set of values that can be exported to and acquired from “other” sectors, a posture that is in line with the dominant positivist reformist ideology embodied by intellectuals such as Manuel González Prada and also with contemporary political projects such as the colonization of the Amazonian jungle. The gallery of national heroes consisted of portraits of illustrated subjects embodying the values that modern citizens needed to acquire. Each cover hosted a portrait of an important individual, and additional portraits were included in the other pages (Figure 1.1). In line with the dominant ideology, which saw commerce and productivity as the foundation of a new Peru, the magazines hosted portraits of politicians, lettered women and men, and individuals from the realm of industries. Furthermore, confirming the importance of economy in nation building, the magazine presented itself as a publication that aimed to combine the arts and commerce. Within the gallery of national heroes, a special role was played by the war heroes; through a patriotic rhetoric, EPI rewrote the defeat of the war as a moment of heroic regeneration.4 The making of modern citizens would happen not only through emulation, but also through specific narratives of difference articulated in the visual genre of the type. By type images, I refer to a visual genre that seeks to depict ideal subjects, “models” of larger groups of people (West 2004) as opposed to the search for individuality that characterizes the portrait; this typification mirrors the existing racial and social hierarchies between dominant and subaltern sectors. An examination of this visual genre in EPI would require a deeper discussion; however, for this essay, it is important to signal, first, that the use of type responds to a technical device of the period, the album, and, second, that it is possible to speak of the duality portraits vs. types throughout the magazine, a differentiation established by the very editors. The magazine announced that it would “publish portraits of important individuals from Peru and other countries of Latin America; drawings that represent monuments, populations, customs, types etc. of this country and other countries” (EPI 2 1887), pointing out that unlike the portraits, the type images would not offer people’s names in order to leave “to everyone the right to recognise the identity to which our drawings refer” (EPI 1 1887). The type images were diverse in terms of subjects represented: native groups from the selva, Andean indigenous groups, popular urban types including Asiatic and black subjects. These subjects belonged to subaltern sectors and would represent the lack of the values that characterized modern citizens (but also, in certain cases, the possibility to acquire them).5 The album, the origins of which are to be found in the nineteenth-century photographic albums and the costumbrista tradition, configured, alongside the gallery, the “exhibitionary” regime of the magazine. By this, I refer to Timothy

16  Maria Chiara D’Argenio

Mitchell’s (1989) and Tony Bennett’s (1988) notions of the “exhibitionary mode” and “the exhibitionary complex”, which address the combination of discipline and spectacle that informed the operations of separation, cataloguing, display of national territories, objects and human subjects in nineteenth-century museums and exhibitions, as well as the acts of looking of the beholders. The engraving (Figure 1.1) that headed the magazine’s cover during its first year allows an examination of all the issues discussed so far. The Peruvian nation is depicted through a tripartite territory: the sierra, represented by the Andean mountains and the llamas; the costa, represented by the ocean and sugar cane; and the Amazonian selva, represented by a hut, lush vegetation and the Amazonian Chuncho.6 The engraving presents a Peruvian epic journey towards progress and regeneration. The calm sea and rising sun in the background represent the peace after the war, while a zigzag path leads towards the horizon. Peru is framed in a linear narrative that goes from the past (the undomesticated territory, the Amazonian Chuncho) to the future (the territory controlled by nature through technology such as mine excavations and railway, as well as electric light and telephone cables). It is, then, a political notion of future that is proposed, one that coincides with the elites’ dominant ideology focusing on material progress and economy of exportation. While the notion of future is straightforward, the past is identified with both a lack of civilization and material culture: the latter being represented by a pre-Columbian pottery artefact and the former by the Chuncho, the Amazonian inhabitant who is denied coevalness. However, by including miners7 who would arguably be Andean indigenous individuals, it somehow complicates the chiasm between indigenous past and present that, according to Mark Thurner (1997), lies at the core of the post-independence historical imagination. The fact that Peru is represented mainly through territory is particularly important. First, it follows the visualization of Peru that was decided for the nineteenthcentury national emblems as a way of resolving the problems of the country’s heterogeneity: as Natalia Majluf (2006) explains, for the scientists and intellectuals in charge of the decisions regarding the national shield, for example, “nation was above all a place, a territory, and not a shared history and the territory was linked to scientific and technological progresses and representation of plants, and control and exploitation of local resources” (233). Second, the images of the territories participated of the construction of citizenship. In line with the magazine’s rhetoric of regeneration, the focus was not so much on the places destroyed by the war (nevertheless, this was present in some issues), but on signs and symbols of reconstructions: towns, industries and, especially, the building of a transportation network. Among the latter category, centrality was bestowed to the expansion of the “central railway”, which would link Lima with the mine region of La Oroya, whose construction had been interrupted in 1875, before the war, and restarted in 1889. The railway was a sign of civilization and domestication of territory and the magazine kept its readers updated on its construction. The images of monuments in graphic mass press are, according to Eduardo Hernández Cano

Figure 1.1 El Perú Ilustrado 1, 1887. Permission granted by the Biblioteca de la Universidad del Pacífico – Colección P. Benvenutto.

18  Maria Chiara D’Argenio

(2013), examples of banal nationalism. Just like monuments “are converted in moral examples” (387), in the same way the images of imposing oeuvres dominating on nature are conveying specific moral values for Peruvian readership. They articulate a technology of the sublime that, unlike pictorial sublime, does not aim to provoke feelings of speechless in their spectators but rather (national) pride and emulation. It is relevant to notice that EPI’s header adapts the layout of previous publications, specifically of the Spanish magazine La Ilustración Española y Americana. The replacement of monuments (in the Spanish periodical) with public works such as the railway (in EPI) renders the importance of technology, domestication of the territory, and civilization in the making of modern Peru. Through the header, the gallery of portraits and album of types and through the images of national territory, EPI represented the values that the elites were promoting as the basis of a modern notion for citizenship: progress, work, productivity and morality. It did so through the same strategies employed in nineteenthcentury exhibitions. As Andermann and González Stephan (2006, 8) state: The exhibition . . . would be the miniature or spatial synecdoche of a country which has been literally domesticated, where provinces, plants and animals would be represented, in an ordered manner: separated, classified and kept at a comfortable distance through the electrified wire, which ensured the spectacle of a scene to be consumed exclusively visually. EPI is not, of course, a three-dimensional pavilion that hosts specimens and objects representative of Peru; it does, however, share important aspects with the kind of project, work and experience that informed expositions. The magazine offered, on the one hand, a visualization of Peruvian territory and society informed by the creation of the visual archive for display, and, on the other hand, it offered to the bourgeois reader an experience similar to that of passing in and through exhibitions’ showcases. The exhibitions were spaces of “rational entertainment” (Boyer 1994, 257) for the spectator who would move between the halls consuming ordered versions on nations while “contrasting the difference between nations and gauging the distance between the past and the present, the so-called developed and the backward” (Boyer 1994, 257). This was something that the bourgeois readers of EPI would experience in their own country. Like the museum and the exhibitions, EPI allowed a combination of discipline and spectacle. Like the human types in the museums, the men and women depicted in the type images were “objectivised and exhibited before the gaze of the other, converted in specimen, prototype or curiosity” (Andermann and González Stephan 2006, 9). There is, however, an important element of the “exhibitionary complex” which is missing in EPI. While in the museums, exhibitions and department stores the subject observer is converted also in a subject observed by his/ her peers, in EPI there is an irreducible distance between the reader-observer and the objects and subjects that he/she gazes. The reader’s gaze is thus an operation of “ordering” through distance: as Andermann and González Stephan (2006, 9)

From spectators to consumers 19

explain, “The exhibition of the world is first of all that of an experience or perception of the world as ‘order of things’ that unfolds before the sovereign gaze of the subject who contemplates it ‘from a distance’ ”. Through its images  – and the texts that described them (in the sections Our Engravings/Our Material) – EPI operates as a “pedagogy of spectatorship”, borrowing the expression from Mark B. Sandberg and Jo Labanyi. Labanyi (2005, 64) applies this notion to nineteenth-century Spanish historical painting: just like historical painting, “by exposing the public to representations of the past organised in a particular way” EPI, too, is “school[ing] them in modes of viewing appropriate to modern citizens”; in our case, such instruction involved not only to the past, but also to the future. This notion allows me to argue that a further attribute of the modern citizen was to be vision, that is, the new bourgeois citizen was trained in a disciplinary practice of looking.

Variedades The relationship between the technology of vision, power and knowledge whereby an “imagined citizenship” was constructed differs in an early twentiethcentury periodical such as Variedades. This was the second magazine founded in Lima by the Portuguese photographer Manuel del Moral y Vega. A prominent figure of Peruvian print landscape, Moral y Vega imagined Variedades as the successor of his previous elitist publication Prisma (1905–1907). Variedades was a representative of the relatively recent international magazine format: a small publication with manageable pages and short texts that hosted a great variety of contents in sections devoted to actualities, politics, social events, scientific discoveries, amusements, humour and news from Peru, Europe and the United States, among others. Drawing on recent developments in the use of photography, photo-engraving and colour, images abounded on its pages as visual registers, as illustrations to written material and as visual content standing on their own. Magazines such as Variedades were characterized by a miscellaneous content not ordered hierarchically: photo-reportages of presidential trips coexisted with the news on the latest scientific invention, articles on avant-garde artists alongside those on local crimes, political and social caricature, and so on. Their editorial choices responded to the imperative of the “current” and the vocabulary of the “new” (Reed 1997). They recycled and remediated a hybrid viso-textual material, making it accessible to a non-specialized readership that was becoming progressively more heterogeneous socially, culturally and politically and that was, above all, a consumer to be seduced. If EPI aimed to be an agent of progress and instruct its readers, Variedades aimed to entertain, rather than educate, as demonstrated by the declaration in its first issue (Variedades 1, 1908): In Latin countries, and especially in America, magazines become popular when they concentrate mainly on the pleasant humoristic and spiritually satiric articles. The editor and director of Prisma therefore have decided to

20  Maria Chiara D’Argenio

transform this magazine so that it becomes more popular, more entertaining, more homemade, more interesting. As was the case with EPI, the type of format and the agenda set for the magazine informed the ways in which it constructed citizenship. This process, I argue, takes form around three main aspects: an inclusive notion of citizenship and class, what I call a costumbrista gaze and the idea of the reader-citizen as a consumer to be persuaded. Variedades was published during the periods denominated by Peruvian historiography the Aristocratic Republic (1899–1919) and the Oncenío Leguía (1919–1930), which saw the continuation of the state and societal modernization restarted after the War of the Pacific. Since Pierola’s government in 1895 and during the Aristocratic Republic, administrative and fiscal reforms reorganized the state apparatus while exports, foreign capital and European immigration led the Peruvian economy (Contreras and Cueto 2004, 211–12). The state assumed the role of society’s “moderator, promotor and integrator”, and the task of forming new citizens through education and public health (Contreras and Cueto 2004, 212). Public education, for example, became compulsory and free in 1905, and new public health institutions were created in 1903. Contrarily to traditional views of the Aristocratic Republic as a political period dominated by aristocratic values and lifestyle, more recent historiography has highlighted the bourgeois ethos and origins of the ruling elites, whose main activities were financial and commercial affairs and whose ideology was informed by scientific positivism rather than humanism (Contreras and Cueto 2004, 106). The modernization of Peru and Lima boosted under the subsequent government of Augusto Leguía, who opposed the previous oligarchic ideology and established a populist government supported by emerging middle urban sectors (professionals, students, white collars), who were also targeted as the agents of social and political change. The capital Lima, which is the centre of Variedades’ portrayal of Peru, underwent urbanistic and demographic transformations: new buildings, open spaces, residential areas and large avenues changed the shape of the city while its population tripled between 1908 and 1930. Despite the differences between the governments (especially in economy, social issues and foreign allies), the modernization of the state and the articulation of a notion of citizenship based on values of productivity, morality and health were elements of continuity throughout the early decades of the century. Thus, despite the long lifespan of Variedades, it is possible to make some proposals regarding the ways in which the magazine imagined citizenship and nation. Unlike EPI, the title of Variedades does not place the nationalist element at the core of its editorial project; the latter seems guided by the need to make an artefact appealing and “sellable” to a productive, moral and healthy reader. Nevertheless, the Peruvian nation and society were very key considerations. Rather than on Peru, the magazine focused mainly on Lima, as demonstrated by the amount of texts and images focusing on actualities, families, social events occurring in the capital. Within this hierarchical depiction, the rest of Peru was placed in a

From spectators to consumers 21

subaltern position often described as the picturesque part of the nation (as shown by the photographic sections El Perú pintoresco [the picturesque Peru] for example). The notion of banal nationalism is even more applicable to a magazine such as Variedades than to EPI, since Variedades, like other publications such as the Argentine Caras y Caretas, was filled with national imaginary through caricatures and photographs of politicians, patriotic events, presidential trips, visits of ambassadors, and so on. Variedades clearly embraced the dominant notion of citizenship: health, sport and European fashion abounded on its pages though advertising, articles and specific sections such as Notes on Horse Races and European Fashion. Health advertising was dominant, and the magazine actively supported specific prevention campaigns. It devoted a great attention to sports: football, turf, fencing, boxing and bullfighting, among others. It reported on public works and oeuvres, especially transportation networks, continuing the trend seen in EPI. Two of the key attributes it associated to Peruvian nation and citizenry were progress and cosmopolitanism (Muñoz Cabrejo 2001). The magazine articulated an image of the nation as a cosmopolitan country by hosting material related to foreign affairs and actuality in sections such as European Information, Caricature from Abroad and Parisian Frivolities. Unlike EPI, which constructed, as argued earlier, a notion of the future through the trope of a journey towards progress, Variedades articulated a notion of modernity as “contemporaneity” found in events, ways of life, points of view, behaviour and commodities. The Peruvian nation was depicted as up to date with what was happening in the world and in modern individuals’ lives: by leafing through its pages, Peruvians could be up to date with what occurred in the world. In such a way, the magazine reinforced the readers’ self-confidence of being part of a global and transnational modernity. Overall, however, the magazine seems to advocate for a more inclusive notion of citizenship than the one promoted by the elites; more, even, than that of Moral’s Prisma project. The ways in which Variedades remediates cinema is a good example of the ways in which the magazine hosted conflictive values and models of behaviour. In most of the articles devoted to cinema, the latter is presented as an epitome of modernity and progress because it is a technological advance that shortens the distances between Lima and Western countries. Nevertheless, the magazine also published conservative views that condemned going to the movies as a habit that promoted immorality and vice. The coexistence of conflicting values and models is indeed a feature of Variedades. As Muñoz Cabrejo (2001) explains, in order to forge healthy citizens who are morally and physically strong, the Aristocratic Republic’s ruling elites implemented specific policies regarding leisure and sport, promoting cultured and healthy activities such as opera, theatre and sports. The relaxed and unregulated Criollo lifestyle and related forms of sociability, such as cockfighting, whose origins traced back to the colonial times, were considered among the causes of the weakness of the population. As Juan Manuel Espinoza (2015) has argued, while Variedades promoted new sports and forms of sociability considered “civilised”,

22  Maria Chiara D’Argenio

it also devoted great attention to practices and traditions deemed immoral such as bullfighting. By supporting criollo traditions (as well as traditional gender stereotypes), according to Espinoza (2015), the magazine offered a discourse of modernity different from the one promoted by the ruling elites – a “negotiated” modernity, a more inclusive notion that would encompass different and conflicting models of behaviour. This inclusiveness (which Espinoza analyzed in terms of gender and sociability and I have analyzed elsewhere in relation to ethnicity and race (D’Argenio 2017)) is indeed an important characteristic of the magazine and a sign of its commercial nature and its will to reach a wide readership. The inclusiveness of Variedades helps us understand how the magazine constructs citizenship and “class”. Leafing through its pages, one gets the feeling that the magazine focuses mostly on Limeño upper and middle sectors. Indeed, the sections devoted to the weekly social events (Social Commentaries) and the photographic reportage on the Limeño recent events concentrate particularly on those sectors (from the news of weddings to the sporting or charity activities of the week, and so on). Peruvian society appears divided between the personas distinguidas [distinguished people] and the rest. This distinction re-elaborated the already well-established binary personas decentes – pueblo [decent people – populace] that was used to describe Peruvian and other Latin American societies at the time. As David Parker (1998) explains, the criteria that differentiated the two groups were a combination of origins, appearance, surname, education, profession and a lifestyle that involved honour and respectability, reflecting a notion of social identity more linked to the colonial blood lineage and castas than contemporary elements such as income or occupation. Thus, aristocrats in ruin might still be considered gente decente, while individuals from the rising middle sector might not necessarily be included in this group. The reportage “La novillada social del domingo” Last Sunday’s bullocks bullfight; issue 738, published in1922) is one of the many examples of reportages where this term is formally employed in an event that gathers both the modern and the traditional (Figure 1.2), and the caricatures of Figure 1.3 are an example of the use of the term decente. The duality gente decente/pueblo was problematic not only because of its ambiguous boundaries, but also because it depicted a static society failing to acknowledge the actual social mobility and social formations of early-twentieth-century Peru (Parker 1998). Interestingly, while Variedades, on the one hand, adopts this distinction, it also shows a much more dynamic social order through the presence of a variety of figures and social types. The first two caricatures of Figure 1.3, for example, depict a mocita decente (decent young lady) and a mocito decente (decent young man) hunting for a rich, although of humble origins and ugly, fiancé/e. By depicting, on the one hand, what could be either a declining upper class or a lowermiddle class seeking to ascend, and, on the other hand, a subject with capital but not ‘decencia’, the caricatures portray new rising social sectors and social mobility. The aspiring fiancé/e might be an example of new social actors who were identified by the literature of the period as nuevos ricos [new rich/new money] and huachafos. The latter term refers to social climbers who imitate the lifestyle and

Figure 1.2  Variedades 738, 1922. Permission granted by the Biblioteca de la ­U niversidad del Pacífico – Colección P. Benvenutto.

24  Maria Chiara D’Argenio

Figure 1.3  Variedades 457, 1916. Permission granted by the Biblioteca de la Universidad del Pacífico – Colección P. Benvenutto.

taste of the upper classes in the hope to acquire/be identified as having and moving within a different social status. He or she (la huachafita) is usually described as inauthentic and tacky. The identification of certain individuals as huachafos has been interpreted as an identity operation whereby upper classes reinforced their identity drawing on a non-acquirable notion of decency and rejecting any possibility of social change (Parker 2012). Variedades published many texts and images on these figures, including a manual del perfecto huachafo [manual of the perfect social climber]. In this way, while offering a portrayal of Limeño society as still bounded to colonial social divisions, it also presented a more dynamic and changing reality. The visual strategy that the magazine employed to depict society is not the disciplinary gaze that I have discussed in relation to EPI, but rather what I will call a costumbrista gaze. Costumbrismo was a literary and pictorial trend that developed in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America in the aftermath of the independence wars. Within the context of “the European Enlightenment’s search for authenticity, or. . . , ‘typicality’ ” (Ades 1989, 47, 53) and the rise of regional nationalisms and self-discovery, Latin American resident artists began depicting local environments, social practices and customs through escenas de costumbres

From spectators to consumers 25

[scene depicting typical customs and behaviours] and types. The cuadros de costumbres [scenes of customs] were also a type of journalistic pieces, often satirical, that focused on contemporary political and social issues. Both visual and verbal costumbrismo had a strong linkage with “the present” and the ephemeral in terms of narrative and technology (watercolours/sketches and periodical press). As Susan Kirkpatrick (1978, 29) points out, costumbrista articles aimed to forge an “image of reality which the reading public is interested in consuming”. They were ideological pieces that depicted a society in transition; by centring on the different social groups, writers exposed the limits of nations as a cultural construct while often acting as “bridges” between different sectors (Kirkpatrick 1978). By the illustrated magazine’s costumbrista gaze, I refer to a way of seeing that, through the depiction of people’s everyday customs and behaviours, interprets society as separated in social groups, while offering ways of perceiving coexistence and porosity with the underlying aim of persuading its readers-spectators to consume visions of social mobility. If we interrogate the ways in which this costumbrista depiction relates to the dominant values of citizenship, we do not find a clear answer such as in the case of EPI. Regarding the huachafería, for example, the magazine holds an ambivalent view on it. While the huachafos are depicted through caricature and satire and, hence, are generators of laughter, it would be all too easy thinking of it as a way of rejecting the social mobility that they represent in order to reassure the upper sectors. Instead, through caricature and humour, the magazine exposes and explores the limits of what can be said and what can be conceived, allowing representations and discourses that challenge the values of the dominant classes and the status quo. Variedades, then, appears less conservative than it might seem at a first glance. Further ambivalences are in place when we investigate the upper- and middle-class sectors in relation to the previously mentioned campaign against criollo forms of sociability. In the text “La novillada social del domingo”, the personas distinguidas are given absolute centrality through photography. In fact, the reportage is more about them as the subjects of the visual spectacle offered to the reader than about the journalistic news of the social event. Not only do the upper classes organize and attend events deemed immoral, such as the bullfighting, but the ladies wear clothes that are less in line with the latest French trends (advertised in the magazine) than with the colonial ‘usanza española’ [Spanish customs]. This raises questions such as: who are the citizens, first, who embody the values of modernity, progress and cosmopolitanism promoted by those who rule the country and the magazine; and, second, with whom the bourgeois reader of Variedades would identify. Furthermore, the reportage also depicts and makes comments on other social groups, such as those defined as “distinguidos aficionados” [distinguished fans] who are not necessarily personas distinguidas: they wear everyday clothes and not elegant traditional Spanish-style garments, and they watch the spectacle in the lower sectors, not seated but standing up. Finally, the previously mentioned caricature includes a third sector, which we could identify as that of the huachafos since it depicts a character who does not belong to

26  Maria Chiara D’Argenio

either of the two groups already mentioned, but rather wants to imitate them. The caricaturist creates a series of vignettes that work as a practical manual that illustrates what to do in order to act as personas distinguidas. In light of the “inclusiveness” that characterizes Variedades, I  would argue that this magazine contributes in an original way to the construction of an imagined citizenship. While it seems to support the dominant ideals promoted by the hegemonic ideology – and it also seems to address predominantly upper and middle social sectors – it offers, in fact, a catalogue of values, models of behaviour and class attributes that can appeal to a wide audience of readers-consumers. The magazine commodifies citizenship as something that can be bought and adapted according to the reader’s needs and aspirations. By doing this, it offers an experience to its readers that can be compared to walking through a department store, another invention of the time. In Lima, the first big department store (Oeschle) opened in the Plaza de Armas in 1917, selling a variety of products from clothes for the whole family to toys for children and homewares. According to Tony Bennett (1988, 81), department stores are another manifestation of the nineteenth-century exhibitionary complex, where the crowd went “to see and be seen, to survey yet always be under surveillance, the object of an unknown but controlling look”.

Conclusion EPI and Variedades dealt with a changing society characterized by social and racial tensions, conflicts and inequalities. Both magazines aimed to shape Peruvian citizenry through the display of the values, behaviours and social identities that should constitute a modern notion of citizenship. The visual played a key role in this endeavour: the images articulated those values and behaviours (as well as the lack of them), making the magazines showcases of exemplary individuals, objectivized types and attributes to acquire. Their exhibitionary regime was accompanied, in EPI, by a pedagogical intention towards ways of looking and, in Variedades, a costumbrista one; the former aimed to instruct and educate the reader-spectator, while the latter aimed to entertain and persuade the reader-consumer. While in EPI the bourgeois reader was not represented visually as a subject, his identity being constructed through displacement (emulation and differentiation), Variedades hosted images of different subjects and classes with which a more diverse readership could identify. EPI resolved the changing and heterogeneous state of the Peruvian nation by visually ordering it; there are moments and places in the magazine where counter-discourse and non-ordered elements come to surface;8 however, these do not undermine the strong hegemonic visual regime that the magazine articulates. Like EPI, Variedades does “order” society, offering an image of it that the public is interested in consuming; unlike EPI, however, it creates an inclusive space where citizens could recognize themselves, self-fashion and, thus, self-regulate; a space in which they were all equal in their status of consumers despite their differences in terms of

From spectators to consumers 27

lineage, social recognition and even civil rights and responsibilities, constructing a problematic notion of equality of citizenship through consumerism that sounds extremely current.

Notes 1 This article draws on an ethnographic archive research conducted in Lima at the Universidad del Pacífico (Colección Benvenutto), the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru and the Instituto Riva Agüero between 2010 and 2015. The images included have been taken by the author from the Colección Benvenutto. I wish to thank Prof Jorge Weisse and Lic. Rosa Dorival Cordova for the help and support provided. All translations from Spanish are mine, unless otherwise noted. 2 My discussion draws and expands on Paulette Silva Beauregard’s (2006) argument on the illustrated magazine as an example of Bennett’s “exhibitionary complex”. My argument on EPI has also benefitted from the conversations with Lucila Mallart and the reading of her work (Mallart 2015). 3 Among the editor-directors of EPI and Variedades were Clorinda Matto de Turner and Clemente Palma, two well-known intellectuals who consistently commented on national politics and social issues. The other collaborators of the magazines also included wellknown writers and cronistas. 4 On the topic of the War heroes in EPI, see Victorio Cánovas 2014. 5 The type genre had a disciplinary function; in EPI, however, there are interesting discursive and visual ambivalence that render the ongoing negotiations between old and new discourses. This is evident in the images and the commentaries on them. While some emphasized the “uncivilised” state of indigenous populations, for example, some other would stress their ingenuousness and grandeur mixing positivist discourses of degeneration, romantic perspectives and early indigenista postures. 6 The Chuncho was a Quechua word used to identify indigenous people from the Amazonian region. A  very similar drawing of the Chuncho appears in Guamán Poma’s illustrated chronicle Nueva corónica y buen gobierno. I thank Luis Rebaza Soraluz for sharing this information. 7 A different reading of the miners is offered by Luz Ainai Morales Pino (2015). 8 The counter-hegemonic discourse and visuality present in EPI would require an in-depth discussion which the limits of this chapter do not permit. An example the coexistence of ambivalent visual and textual discourses is my mention of different visions regarding the indigenous groups. A valuable contribution to this topic is that of Morales Pino (2015), who argues that the hegemonic imaginary articulated through the magazine’s cover is challenged by the images that appear at the end of each issue; these images, the scholar maintains, are ideologically problematic since they represent subaltern groups silenced by the dominant narrative of the magazine.

Bibliography Adamovsky, Ezequiel. 2014. Historia de la Clase Media Argentina. Buenos Aires: Booket. Ades, Dawn. 1989. Art in Latin America. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Andermann, Jens, and Beatriz González Stephan, eds. 2006. Galerías del progreso. Museos, exposiciones y cultura visual en América Latina. Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Bennett, Tony. 1988. “The Exhibitionary Complex.” New Formations 4: 73–103.

28  Maria Chiara D’Argenio Berman Marshall. 1983. All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. London: Verso. Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage Publications. Boyer, M. Christine. 1994. The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments. London: MIT Press. Contreras, Carlos, and Marcos Cueto. 2004. Historia del Perú contemporáneo. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Cueto, Marcos. 1989. Excelencia científica en la periferia: actividades científicas e investigación biomédica en el Perú 1890–1950. Lima: GRADE. D’Argenio, Maria Chiara. 2017. “A Picturesque Modernity in 1920s Peru and Argentina: Ruins, Cuzco and Americanism in the Photographic Reportages of Variedades and Plus Ultra.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 26 (2): 221–51. Del Águila, Alicia. 2014. “Constituciones, ciudadanía y población indígena en los Andes, s. XIX: los casos de Bolivia, Ecuador y Perú.” Politai: Revista de Ciencia Política 5 (8): 31–47. Edensor, Tim. 2002. National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday. Oxford: Berg Publishers. El Perú Ilustrado, 1887–1892. Espinoza Portocarrero, Juan Miguel. 2015. “Entre criollos y modernos: género, raza y modernidad criolla en el proyecto editorial de la revista Variedades (Lima, 1908–1919).” Histórica XXXIX (1): 97–136. González Stephan, Beatriz. 2009. “Forms of Historic Imagination: Visual Culture, ­Historiography, and the Tropes of War in Nineteenth-Century Venezuela.” In Building Nineteenth-Century Latin America: Re-rooted Cultures, Identities, and Nations, edited by William G. Acree Jr. and Juan Carlos González Espitia, 133–171. Nashville: Vanderbilt U ­ niversity Press. Guerrero, Andrés. 2003. “The Administration of Dominated Populations Under a Regime of Customary Citizenship. The Case of Postcolonial Ecuador.” In After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas, edited by Mark Thurner and Andrés Guerrero. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hernández Cano, Eduardo. 2013 “ ‘Solitarios refugios de efemérides viejas’. Monumentos y ciudades históricas como símbolos nacionales en la prensa gráfica (1918–1930).” Hispania 73 (244): 377–408. Isin, Engin E., and Brian S. Turner, eds. 2002. Handbook of Citizenship Studies. London: Sage Publications. Jacobsen, Nils, and Cristóbal Aljovín de Losada, eds. 2005. Political Cultures in the Andes 1750–1950. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. King, Andrew, and John Plunkett. 2005. Victorian Print Media. A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kirkpatrick, Susan. 1978. “The Ideology of Costumbrismo.” Ideologies and Literature ­ 2(7): 28–44. Labanyi, Jo. 2005. “Horror, Spectacle and Nation-Formation: Historical Painting in ­Late-Nineteenth-Century Spain.” In Visualizing Spanish Modernity, edited by Susan Larson and Eva Maria Woods, 64–80. Oxford: Berg. Majluf, Natalia. 2006 “Los fabricantes de emblemas. Los símbolos nacionales en la transición republicana. Perú, 1820–1825.” In Visión y símbolos. Del virreinato criollo a la república peruana, edited by Ramón Mujica, 203–41. Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú.

From spectators to consumers 29 Mallart, Lucila. 2015. “Illustrated Media, the Built Environment and Identity Politics in Fin-de-siècle Catalonia: Printing Images, Making the Nation.” Cultural History 4 (2): 113–35. Mc Evoy, Carmen. 1997. La Utopía Republicana. Ideales y Realidades en la Formación de la Cultura Política Peruana (1871–1919). Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Miller, Nicola. 2008. Reinventing Modernity in Latin America. Intellectuals Imagine the Future, 1900–1930. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mitchell, Timothy. 1989. “The World as Exhibition.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (2): 217–36. Morales Pino, Luz Ainai. 2015. “El Perú Ilustrado: las visualidades en competencia en la articulación de un imaginario de nación.” Decimonónica 12 (1): 151–71. Muñoz Cabrejo, Fanni. 2001. Diversiones públicas en Lima. 1890–1920. La experiencia de la modernidad. Lima: Red para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Perú. Ohmann, Richard. 1996. Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets and Class at the Turn of the Century. London: Verso. Parker, David S. 1998. The Idea of the Middle Class. White Collar Workers and Peruvian Society. 1900–1950. Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania University Press. ———. 2012. “Siúticos, huachafos, cursis, arribistas and gente de medio pelo: Social Climbers and the Representation of Class in Chile and Peru, 1860–1930.” In The Making of the Middle Class: Toward a Global History, edited by A. Ricardo López and Barbara Weinstein, 335–54. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Reed, David. 1997. The Popular Magazine in Britain and the America 1880–1960. London: The British Library Publishing. Rowe, William. 2007. “When Was Peru Modern? On Declarations of Modernity in Peru.” In When Was Latin America Modern? edited by Nicola Miller and Stephen Hart. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Silva Beauregard, Paulette. 2006. “Un lugar para exhibir, clasificar y coleccionar: la revista ilustrada como una galería del progreso.” In Galerías del progreso. Museos, exposiciones y cultura visual en América Latina, edited by Jens Andermann and Beatriz González Stephan, 373–406. Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo. Thurner, Mark. 1997. From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ———. 2003. “Peruvian Genealogies of History and Nation.” In After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas, eedited by Thurner Mark and Andrés Guerrero. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Variedades 1, 1908–1931. Lima. Victorio Cánovas, Emma Patricia. 2014. “El Perú ilustrado y los héroes de la Guerra del Pacífico.” Escritura y Pensamiento XVII (35): 59–76. West, Shearer. 2004. Portraiture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 2

“What will the respectable public say?” Protest musicianship and class in “Sexta” events in Mexico City Andrew Green In “Culture Above and Below”, a speech written for a roundtable on “Is Another Culture Possible?” held at the Universidad de Sonora in 2007, Subcomandante Marcos, the figurehead for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), makes a category distinction between “the culture of above” and “the culture of below”.1 Within this distinction, which is represented by two different voices, “the culture of above” becomes a “packaged, bound, canned, classified” commodity distinguished as “art” against “craft” through its association with elite society. Meanwhile, Marcos describes “the culture of below” from the perspective of a graffiti artist organizing, in a haphazard fashion marked by colloquialisms and vulgar language, the spray-painting of a wall. The voice of his graffiti artist is characterized by self-deprecation, but it also demonstrates a political awareness beyond that of the white, male elite voice that precedes it. Upon discovering that his friend has forgotten to bring yellow-coloured spray-paint, the graffiti artist exclaims, “Now what will the respectable public say – the people they call the ‘citizenry’ – when they look at our wall?” Marcos concludes this section by having this graffiti artist adapt a famous phrase attributed to revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata: “The wall belongs to those who spray-paint it”. This phrase transfers the working-class sentiments of Zapata’s original slogan – “the land belongs to those who work it” – to the field of cultural production. “Culture Above and Below” connects cultural production and class in a notably fruitful way, raising far-reaching questions about economic power, social behaviour and respectability. Issues of respectability and class repeatedly arise in the Zapatista movement, into which I  have conducted 18 months of ethnographic research since 2012, with particular focus on the creative practices of proZapatista musicians. In the context of Mexico City, the pro-Zapatista “Sexta” – a national and international campaign convoked by the EZLN in 2006 to promote the cultivation of “autonomy” in Mexico and across the world  – creates many opportunities for encounters between groups from different social and economic backgrounds. It is especially notable that this speech caught the attention of some of those activists I got to know who were living in most difficult circumstances. One group from Valle de Chalco, a deprived area on the periphery of the Mexico

“What will the respectable public say?” 31

City metropolitan area, echoed the language of “Culture Above and Below” when discussing a music-based activist project: If the culture from above does not have a place for us, then we’ll produce our own culture, our own spaces where we go to perform, our home studios . . . the culture from below doesn’t need big stages, nor big audio. (Coordinadora Valle de Chalco, 24/7/13)2 These words echoed “Culture Above and Below” not only in terms of language, but also in the way that it connected the notion of “autonomy” to the concept of ownership of the means of cultural production (see Green 2017). Yet as my research with activist musicians progressed, it became increasingly clear that this binary self-presentation, associating pro-Zapatista groups with lower or marginalized social classes and opposition to Zapatismo with social elites, could only partially make sense of the complex reality of pro-Zapatista activism in an urban context. In other words, “respectable citizenship” was not external to the Sexta; rather, pro-Zapatista activists often enacted certain forms of the same as they participated in this movement. There are, therefore, reasons to enquire critically into Marcos’ “respectable public – the people they call the citizenry” in this speech. For Cortez Ruiz (2010, 167–68), the EZLN’s approach since 2006 – including the creation of the Sexta – has been to foment participative, collaborative citizenship around the world, in which people become politically active subjects without the state. Yet, as Claudio Lomnitz (1999) has pointed out, in Mexico, the notion of “citizenship” has often been connected to the changing relationships between the national state and its “subjects”. Thus, “citizenship” has assumed special importance during moments of state weakness, such as “the era of political instability and economic decline” (1999, 292) following Mexican independence in 1821, or the period following Mexico’s mid-1980s debt crisis. By contrast, Lomnitz (1999, 287, 293) argues, the period after the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920 saw the emergence of a mode of citizenship that was “massified and sectorialized”, since it was predicated on collective action through unions and corporate groups that the state sought to assimilate. Not only does Mexican history provide multiple possible trajectories for “citizenship” in a conceptual sense, then, but this notion has gained increasing significance in the country’s post-1980s neoliberal era when the rights that Mexican subjects may demand from the state exceed its ability to provide them. It is therefore challenging to bridge the gap between context-specific experience and a hypothetical global “communitarian citizenship”, since citizenship is intricately intertwined with local questions of governance, class and economic power. While the Zapatista movement continues to figure as a global icon of the revolutionary Left, it has faced similar local challenges to many other political movements: how to provide incentives for participation in the face of repression, indifference, and economic precarity (cf. Granik 2005; Friedman and McAdam 1992). It was in these circumstances that I conducted 18 months of ethnographic

32  Andrew Green

fieldwork with Sexta participants – mostly musicians and organizers – in Mexico City between 2012 and 2017, conducting roughly 50 in-depth semi-structured interviews. These participants were not wealthy, but many enjoyed a degree of detachment from economic necessity, even as class tended to be “bracketed” for Sexta events (Habermas 1989). In turn, responding to this situation, I found that pro-Zapatista groups from marginalized barrios such as Valle de Chalco often found a “respectable public” of middle-class activists at cultural encounters held as part of the Sexta. That is, as Sexta events held in public spaces in Mexico City became the site for interplay between classes, disenfranchised groups saw an opportunity to present themselves before a new, unfamiliar audience. This chapter, therefore, follows the complex class relations at play between comparatively marginalized and comparatively privileged groups at Sexta events. I  aim to write the middle classes back into the narrative about this movement. Equally, this ought not to imply a straightforwardly empirical view of class. This chapter addresses the first of the themes of this book, by examining class at the intersection of (musical) performance and economic reality. Sexta activity was not just a question of the “below” expressing itself; there were complex class relations and forms of social prestige at play during pro-Zapatista artistic practice which created opportunities and difficulties for marginalized groups. Equally, these events highlighted the complexities involved in attributing socio-economic classes to individuals to begin with; class-connected perceptions of “respectability” emerged as a product of encounters between different groups. Musical performances, I argue, were a focal point for these dynamics of encounter.

The Sexta in Mexico City On 1 January 1994, a rebel army made up principally of indigenous people speaking Mayan first languages but led primarily by Spanish-speaking migrants from major cities, launched an uprising in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico (Harvey 1998). After several days of fighting, they retreated into the countryside, establishing a large number of so-called “communities in resistance”, which were declared to be autonomous of the Mexican government, and agreed to a cease-fire with the Mexican government that has held until the present (Barmeyer 2009, 109–35). Meanwhile, the EZLN’s anti-neoliberal discourse opened up points of confluence with a broader “alter-globalization” movement gaining traction across the world (Martínez 2007). The rebels managed to channel support for their cause within national and global civil society into explicitly pro-Zapatista groups within what could be considered a broader “Zapatista movement” advocating the creation of autonomy, indigenous rights and the end of capitalism. Twelve years later, in January 2006, the EZLN launched the “Other Campaign”, whose purpose was to support groups seeking to create autonomy in their immediate localities across Mexico and the world (Mora 2007). In 2013, this campaign was renamed the Sexta (after the “Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle”, a 2005 EZLN communiqué upon which the campaign was based). By the time

“What will the respectable public say?” 33

I began field research, in summer 2012, what had previously been a movement with mass appeal had become a series of fragmented, small-scale operations carried out by diverse groups of dedicated supporters. Although there were many factors behind the weakened position of the Zapatista movement across Mexico City at this time, some blamed the decision of Subcomandante Marcos to attack the leader of the centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) – which was close to victory in the 2006 national election – for a loss of support (Meyer 2017, 261). Equally during this period, challenges had emerged for activists based outside Chiapas who sought to affiliate with the EZLN. In the 1990s, pro-Zapatista ­activism – much of which coalesced around rock concerts (Anaya 1999, 33–41) – had been constructed around multiple goals, such as awareness raising, claiming public spaces, sending economic and physical resources to Zapatista communities, and travelling to Chiapas to work on projects to aid the development of these communities directly. Nonetheless, as difficulties emerged with outside involvement in Zapatista communities,3 the EZLN started to take a different approach, creating a series of increasingly independent community projects (Barmeyer 2009, 156–60). This approach culminated in the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, which decentred the terrain of Zapatista struggle; now, Zapatista supporters were expected to create autonomy in their own localities, rather than travelling to Zapatista communities. It was against this background that the predominant goal of pro-Zapatista activism in Mexico City became communication. Much of my research on this topic took place at Sexta events held in Mexico City public parks and squares, which featured much music, alongside theatre, storytelling and poetry (cf. Green 2016). Participants at such events often alluded to the importance of “spreading the word” – that is, the transmission of textual messages and information – in the face of a perceived “media siege” which had been established around the EZLN by mainstream media. This narrative created an important role for music as a vehicle for pro-Zapatista messages and information. For instance, El Chava, a longstanding pro-Zapatista activist and musician, told me that he performed in order “to carry a message . . . I want people to hear what I have to say” (Interview, 30/7/17). In a similar vein, singer-songwriter Ictus described music as “a vehicle, like medicine”. He said he felt that to effectively administer medicine, “we require a liquid to mix it in with, but that liquid shouldn’t harm you. So, Zapatista philosophy is penicillin. And any artistic practice is the liquid” (Interview, 27/12/12). Correspondingly, regarding music, at the Sexta events I observed highly textoriented genres, such as rap and trova,4 predominated. Yet the emphasis on dissemination of textual messages could be seen to serve another purpose. Durham Peters (1999, 52) points out that the notion of “dissemination” creates a perceived “gap between encoding and decoding”, rhetorically distancing speaker and hearer in space and time. Sexta events were small-scale events in which organizers frequently outnumbered audiences. Alluding to the importance of disseminating messages sidestepped this issue; it was Sexta participants’ role to continue

34  Andrew Green

to disseminate the Zapatista “word”, regardless of the relative success of this endeavour at the moment of performance. In other words, this meant that the moral economy of Sexta events tended to focus on intent and execution, rather than perceived outcomes.

Sexta events, performance and social class Participants in Sexta events in Mexico City incorporated both the middle and lower classes, although the groups represented had diverse experiences as activists, including students or former students who had participated in the 1999 strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM); participants in the hip-hop subculture, typically from the poorer outskirts of the city; and seasoned activists who had experienced the severe repression of Mexico’s regime in the 1960s and 1970s (cf. Gamiño Muñoz 2011). Here, connections arose between social class, economic freedom, and musical creativity. Almost all of the musicians who performed at these events were amateur, gaining income from employment elsewhere. Musicians were not paid to participate at Sexta events, and it was rare for musicians to pass around a hat for donations during or after performances, although musicians occasionally sold CDs to Sexta audiences. Conversely, the economic costs of being a committed Sexta participant were significant: not only did musicians have to pay to travel to Sexta events, but they often also felt obliged to attend activists’ meetings. Travel was a significant outlay of time in a city in which transport, while relatively inexpensive, was often inefficient. Furthermore, it was common for Sexta events to experience delays as musicians ran over time, meaning that musicians frequently had to wait for hours before getting to perform, impinging on performance opportunities that could have arisen elsewhere. This was especially inconvenient given that these events often occurred at the weekend, at the same time as a great deal of other musical activity. Finally, in the last few years, several opportunities to perform on Zapatista territory in Chiapas have arisen, first as part of the Zapatista “Escuelita” [Little School] in 2013, and then at Festival Comparte in 2016 and 2017. Travelling to Chiapas to perform at these events constitutes an emotionally significant act of pilgrimage – yet the financial cost of such a journey is significant.5 Given these costs, musicians sometimes stopped participating in the Zapatista movement if they began to experience economic precarity too severely. As García Canclini and Urteaga (2011) have discussed, the emergence of new subcultures in Mexico City – especially those with low barriers to entry, such as rap – must be understood within a broader context of poverty, precarity and unemployment among young people. Thus, Laiko, a rapper from Ecatepec, a community on the northeast margin of the city, recently informed me that he had dropped out of the Sexta, having previously performed at a number of events and contributing a song to the 2012 pro-Zapatista compilation album Rola la lucha zapatista. Laiko made a living by teaching folkloric dance in a school in Ecatepec. Partly in response to recently starting a family, he had made a decision to focus more time and energy

“What will the respectable public say?” 35

on his work as an educator, hoping to earn enough money so that he, his partner and their young daughter could move out of his parents’ house. Ultimately, he said, “de algo uno tiene que comer” – a phrase which may be loosely translated “one has to earn a crust somehow”. Laiko’s experience was indicative of the dual economy that lay behind Sexta events. Participants tended to bracket participation in pro-Zapatista activism from participants’ regular livelihoods. This was sometimes understood as a means of maintaining artistic freedom, which was under threat from capital; for instance, singer-songwriter El Chava told me that he refused to charge for his artistic work, and criticized a friend of his who did, saying: “I feel free because I don’t write for anyone . . . the day that I’m selling something and I owe an owner or employer, I  have to please them because they’re paying me. So I  write what I  like. I’m not interested in pleasing anybody” (Interview, 30/7/17). This activist, then, held onto the ideal that artistic endeavour should be vicariously funded: he supported his music by working as a trader. Meanwhile, Sexta events themselves tended to be organized around an economía solidaria [solidarity economy], whose central mechanism of exchange, in turn, was cooperación voluntaria [voluntary donations], usually framed as a means of covering costs. Organizers would often distribute food to participants for free at tables with a pot left out for cooperación voluntaria, but participants could also contribute to events by volunteering to bring equipment or helping to set up. While it was openly politicized within the broader ideological context of the Zapatista movement, this kind of arrangement resembles “baseline communism” – a practice of sharing which, Graeber argues, is simply the most efficient means of exchange in contexts in which people know and trust one another. This is to say that “unless people consider themselves enemies, if the need is considered great enough, or the cost considered reasonable enough, the principle of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’ will be assumed to apply” (2011, 98). The division between participants’ regular income and the solidarity economy reflected broader suspicions about individuals taking advantage of the movement  – and, in turn, the EZLN’s difficulty in controlling those purporting to represent Zapatismo outside of Chiapas. In 2007, Subcomandante Marcos had published a communiqué critiquing “solidarity coyotes” – individuals outside the EZLN who gain economic power and prestige by establishing themselves as its representatives.6 Correspondingly, participants in the Sexta could not risk being seen to benefit financially from their participation in this movement, lest they be accused of lucrando [feathering one’s nest, or profiteering]. Some organizers alluded to cases in which, when the Sexta began in 2006, individuals falsely declaring themselves to be Zapatistas went into public squares and parks begging for money (Interview, Coordinadora Valle de Chalco, 24/7/13). Yet equally, as the contrasting cases of Laiko and El Chava demonstrate, the boundary between personal livelihood and activism was highly porous in practice. Economic resources provided “the guarantees [which could be] the basis of self-assurance, audacity and indifference to profit” (Bourdieu 1993, 68). Participation in the Sexta required

36  Andrew Green

an investment of time and financial resources, thus requiring some degree of economic privilege. This reality was occasionally reflected in oblique ways within Sexta participants’ discourses about Mexico. For instance, it was common to hear activists ascribe a perceived lack of support for social movements in the country to most people’s need to work very long hours in order to survive, leaving them little time or energy to spare.7 There were good reasons, then, that the pro-Zapatista activists and musicians with whom I conducted research in Mexico City had more middle-class profiles than “Culture Above and Below” suggests. Gilbert (2007, 13) has argued that individuals may be understood to be middle-class if their income is significantly above the national average and their occupations allow for “greater autonomy” and may involve “the exercise of authority over others”, while requiring ­“relatively high levels of knowledge or training”. Many participants in Sexta events I got to know worked in the professions. For instance, Azcapotzalco-based trova artist Ictus taught in a preparatory school, while the two core members of ­Iztapalapa-based punk band The Páramos gave classes in psychology at a local university. The ­latter pair, however, both lived in Iztapalapa, a poor neighbourhood with high crime rates, while the former singer lived in a better-off community in the north of the city. These examples call attention to the multilayered realities behind “middle-class” as a category; it was not straightforward to categorize people according to class in this context. The difficulty in applying the simple label “middle class” to certain individuals is related to Mexico’s recent economic history. The so-called “Mexican miracle” refers to a period of high economic growth (at an annual average of 6%) in the country from the 1940s until the 1970s, driven by protectionism and so-called “import substitution industrialization” supported by government investment (Walker 2013, 6). Driving this economic growth was an expansion of the professions, which became synonymous with Mexican “modernization”: The middle classes came to represent the modern, developed Mexico, symbolizing the goal toward which all Mexicans ought to strive. Their role in maintaining the status quo was legitimated by the authority that their education and their political position gave them. (Walker 2013, 9) Nonetheless, in the 1980s and 1990s, Mexico’s middle classes saw changing fortunes amidst a series of economic crises, surviving the debt crisis of the 1980s, but seeing incomes fall in the immediate wake of the peso crisis of 1995 (Gilbert 2007, 21). Inequality exploded in the country during the 1980s and 1990s, reducing slightly in the 2000s, but still leaving Mexico as one of the most unequal countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (Esquível 2015, 12, 15). At the turn of the millennium, the Mexican middle classes constituted roughly one-fifth of the total population; the Mexico City metropolitan area is home to the largest concentration of middle-class households

“What will the respectable public say?” 37

in the country (Gilbert 2007 16, 18). Equally, “middle class” is a relative term; even well-qualified and highly educated individuals in Mexico often live in precarious economic conditions, especially among younger demographics. The feeling of precarious living has been undoubtedly exacerbated by the decline of the minimum wage in the 1980s and 1990s, and its stagnation in the 2000s (García Canclini and Urteaga 2011; Esquível 2015, 30). In this context, then, issues of class, status and economic power were never simple; judgments about class tended to say as much about the judgement’s subject as its object. Further, these issues were related in complex ways to the production of music. Many musicians understood the imperative to use music in an activist context to “spread the word” in diametric opposition to music’s use as a commodity within the entertainment industry. Activist musicians often found a more commercial musical “other” against which to define their own practice. For instance, many rap artists compared themselves favourably to reggaetón artists (one from a poor community to the southeast of the Mexico City metropolitan area said that “above anything else, many [rappers] use the reggaetón genre as an alternative to make money. . . . It’s more commercial” [Interview, Re Crew, 27/4/13]). Others defined their music in contrast to commercial songs about amor y desamor [love and heartbreak]; a member of Cienpies, a ska band, stated that they had been inspired by the politically themed songs of the 1990s Mexican ska-rock scene, but contrasted this history negatively with the present: “There aren’t new [bands] right now playing that role – the new ska groups are singing songs about love and other things” (Interview, 19/11/12). As in many other contexts, these musicians operated in a discursive field in which prestige was defined against commercial success (cf. Thornton 1995, 96–99); yet, of course, this situation was of little help to musicians who also had to manage the hidden costs of participating.

The Sexta, openness and publicity The bracketing of individual economic power at Sexta events explored in the previous section was linked to perceived openness, rationality and egalitarianism within this movement. In this sense, as I explore during the present section, Sexta events might be understood in relation to what Nancy Fraser (1990) has termed the “counter-public sphere”, in response to Habermas (1989). Those participating in Sexta events saw them to support a high degree of freedom of expression. Set against a musical “mainstream” which participants perceived to be highly restrictive of political themes, the Sexta was lent value as an open forum for political opinions excluded from other spheres. When I asked Puebla-based rapper Nahua Tecuani to describe the mainstream media, for example, he told me that they were “sold out, manipulated, they sell you a false truth” (Interview, 16/12/12). Laiko said he felt that the Sexta provided a freer alternative to the mainstream media, which “throw everything at you, pretty much obliging you to think the same as they do” (Interview, 27/11/12). An organizer of Sexta events from the southeastern outskirts of the city highlighted that the

38  Andrew Green

face-to-face nature of Sexta events allowed opportunities for marginalized groups to self-­present, challenging negative stereotypes (Interview, Coordinadora Valle de Chalco, 19/11/12). These speakers – all of whom were in their twenties and thirties and experienced precarious economic circumstances – indicated that, as Sexta events were attended by people from a wide variety of backgrounds, they were understood to be highly inclusive. For many of the musicians I spoke to, the diversity that characterized many Sexta events made them attractive. Carlos Xeneke, a performer who lived in a comparatively middle-class area in the east of the city, summarized the prevailing view when he told me that, while Sexta events were socially and musically diverse, participants were treated equally, irrespective of background: “They have everything . . . yet they don’t treat you any different” (Personal communication, 26/7/17). Membership of the shared social circle of the Sexta was indicated in language. Participants most frequently referred to each other as compa [friend] – a term derived from the longer compañero which, in a similar manner to “comrade”, simultaneously functioned as a marker of respect, highlighted mutual adherence to a Zapatista worldview and indicated belonging within the broad social milieu of the Sexta. Just as in Habermas’ theory of the public sphere, Sexta events motivated the production and circulation of discourses which were focused and “rational”. This translated into modes of musical creativity in which clarity of expression was valued over poetic flourish. Luis Ángel Santiago contrasted his own compositional approach with the elaborate songwriting style of trova artists Silvio Rodriguez and Amaury Pérez: “I try to be more simple and clear in what I say” (Interview, 29/10/12). Another singer-songwriter, Ictus, told me that he had a tendency to be “too clear in my songs. Someone said to me when I was at university ‘why don’t you use more metaphors in your songs?’ ” (Interview, 24/4/13). Yet writing songs in this way – in which lyrics were pruned of ambiguity and uncertainty – suited the goals of the Sexta and a shared dream of universal, rational communication across difference. Nahua Tecuani felt that social and political progress was a question of “good communication”: [if we] spoke well, listened to each other, exposed our souls, we would all understand each other, and we would understand why we do things. (Interview, Nahua Tecuani, 16/12/12) In a similar vein, while hip-hop artist Laiko described his musical practice as a “tool”, he denied that pro-Zapatista activist musicians were “saying that we have access to the truth. It’s just our point of view, how we perceive things . . . the people that listen to us can apply their own judgement” (Interview, 27/11/12). Both musicians, then, understood their musical practices as contributions to a broader process of deliberation which built upon respect for subjective experience.

“What will the respectable public say?” 39

Habermas argues that democratic culture emerges through the “bourgeois public sphere”, which is formed by the expansion of rational, austere discourse; the cultivation of “inclusivity” as external social status is bracketed and disregarded; the expansion of literacy; and the delineation of certain topics of “common concern” which take precedence over private interest (1989, 35–37). The communities formed by those participating in Sexta events in Mexico City had several things in common with this “public sphere”. First, although these events included a great deal of music, alongside theatre and visual art, they placed a premium on discourse; even in these highly affective and rich means of expression, “political participation [was] enacted through the medium of talk” (Fraser 1990, 57). Such “talk”, as presented in communicative “vehicles” like songs, tended to be “rationalized” insofar as it was often purposely rendered austere, stripped of lyrical ambiguity (Fraser 1990, 59). Second, while participants came from a variety of backgrounds, a shared feeling of respect and equality emerged during Sexta events themselves, built upon an identity shared specifically within an activist context. Third, the communicative dynamic that emerged at Sexta events was predicated upon the idea that participants and hearers would “come to discover or create such a common good” (Fraser 1990, 72) upon exposure to the right information. From this perspective, it might be suggested that participants in Sexta events often embodied a middle-class mode of “respectable citizenship”. Yet, implicitly or explicitly, this form of publicity did not go unchallenged. Fraser’s response to Habermas used the example of late-twentieth-century feminism to illustrate the ways that the interactions between many different social actors, beyond the bourgeois social sphere, could be seen to form “counter-publics” that embodied some of these principles, yet were counter-hegemonic in intent (1990, 57–60). In developing a critique of Habermas’ “public sphere”, Fraser (1990, 67) presents “counterpublics” as a site for the production of “counterdiscourses” – something that was the raison d’etre of Sexta events. Equally, Fraser emphasizes, counterpublics also challenge the idea that privilege and subordination ought to be temporarily “bracketed” rather than directly challenged. Fraser’s (1990, 64) critique builds upon feminist writers’ observations concerning how “deliberation may serve as a mask for domination”. Bracketing social difference often serves to hide power at the point where it ought to be foregrounded; for example, in the context discussed by Habermas, the rational, austere citizen upon which it was predicated was associated with bourgeois masculinity, a reality which is obscured when differences in social status are bracketed (Fraser 1990, 59). In the following section, I examine how marginalized social groups used Sexta events to emphasize, rather than bracket, such differences. The possibilities for live, face-to-face encounters presented by Sexta events, I suggest, allowed for prevalent notions of “respectability” to be challenged.

Music, respectability and encounter One figure stood out as the obverse of Sexta respectability. Andrés Contreras was a trovador whose music was highly provocative, comical and vulgar. His

40  Andrew Green

song “El condón” [“The Condom”], for instance, criticizes the Catholic Church’s attitude toward contraception, gives the hearer information about safe sex, and provides a farcical, vulgar narrative which describes in detail the consequences of reusing the same condom for sexual intercourse (“the condom burst on me, because I was washing it so much . . . my partner told me ‘you’re not getting any action now. . . vete mucho a la chingada [go to hell]’ ”. Contreras’ taste for controversy even extended to writing a corrido [ballad] depicting Osama bin Laden as a heroic fighter resisting the imperial might of the United States (see McDowell 2007). Importantly, Contreras was one of very few activist musicians I  got to know who actually made a living from his music, principally through selling CDs. The singer had taken to dressing up as a Catholic priest in Mexico City’s Zócalo [central square] while throwing insulting gestures at the nearby cathedral, where the spectacle would attract small but enthusiastic crowds. Contreras’ songs, unlike those of any other musician from Mexico City I interviewed, were highly popular within Zapatista communities themselves, and the singer had been travelling to Chiapas to perform and promote his music since 1994; his highly provocative performances by the Zócalo also appealed principally to a working-class public. Contreras’ background was straightforwardly working class; he started to perform music, he told me, after finding himself out of work in the 1970s, repeatedly fired from jobs in circumstances which, he suspected, were related to his public participation in controversial political debates (Interview, 30/12/12). His subsequent years of experience performing in activist contexts, as well as frequent visits to Zapatista territory in Chiapas, could have made him an ideal candidate to perform at Sexta events. Yet although he summarized his attitude to the Sexta as “if they invite me, I go”, the singer was an isolated figure within the Sexta in Mexico City. I did not witness Contreras perform at any Sexta events in the city during the 18 months of my field research. In part, this reflected objections, on the part of Sexta participants, to the vulgarity of Contreras’ performances. One Sexta participant I  spoke to told me that this was behind several Sexta groups’ decision not to invite Contreras back (Interview, Luis, 26/12/12). Further, some became frustrated with what they perceived as his overarching focus on selling CDs when contributing to Sexta events – yet this reflected Contreras’ economic reliance on album sales as a key source of income, since the singer lacked stable employment outside music (Interview, Andrés Contreras, 30/11/12). Contreras himself insisted that such “vulgarity” simply reflected the fact that he was gente de campo [a person from the countryside], and his style was del pueblo [of the people]. Conversely, the singer characterized some Sexta participants as well-off “kids from the city” who “carry a little dog, they comb it, and spend thousands of pesos on making it look good, cutting its nails and that” (Interview, 14/2/13). I did not recognize these stereotypes among the Sexta groups with whom I conducted research. Nonetheless, Contreras’ contrast between his “country” identity and respectable Sexta urbanity was linked to his economic dependence on monetizing music; further, it exemplified the ways that musicians’ class judgements about others served to shape their own identities as performers.

“What will the respectable public say?” 41

One could therefore understand the tension between Contreras and various groups adhering to the Sexta as both an encounter between actors of different class positions, and as part of a broader negotiation over the ways that social class was to be understood. Equally, while in this case the result was one of disagreement, many participants from poorer backgrounds valued Sexta events precisely because they facilitated such encounters. A  number of scholars have explored ways in which the Internet presents opportunities for the development of counterpublics (cf. Dahlberg 2007; Salazar 2003). Yet the research conducted here suggested the enduring importance of live encounters  – and musical performances at such encounters  – for challenging preconceptions about respectability and marginalization. Many hip-hop musicians, in particular, told me that they found in Sexta events opportunities to perform to diverse audiences, presenting themselves in ways that these audiences might not expect. One member of the band XCHM, for example, was enthused by both the mixture of genres and the attentiveness of audiences at Sexta events: [T]here’s not only hip-hop, there’s trova, there’s rock, there’s ska, more genres. And it’s not just people that like our genre listening, it’s more open and even so, if they don’t like what we sing, well they [still] listen – because lots of people just listen to what they want to listen to . . . here the thing with the [Sexta] is that everyone listens to what we say, all of our ideas. (Interview, XCHM, 2/11/12) In a similar manner to the upper-class fusion artists discussed by Montero-Diaz in Chapter 4, many rappers perceived this encounter as an opportunity to represent the hip-hop movement in general, as well as to sing about “how life is lived in the streets”, the gritty “truth” of life in the poor barrios on the outskirts of the Mexico City metropolitan area (Interview, Re Crew, 11/12/12). After an event held to celebrate Día de los Muertos at the beginning of November  2012, one organizer and graffiti artist from Valle de Chalco emphasized that “we saw lots of older people, ladies, gentlemen, grandfathers, grandmothers, raising their fists and raising their hands to rap music” (Interview, Coordinadora Valle de Chalco, 19/11/12). While this audience thus had a different background than that of the rappers performing (and it is worth noting the intersection between age and economic status in a country with high levels of youth unemployment), this organizer felt that their experience was highly valuable, since they “had spent a long time luchando [struggling]”. This organizer concluded by emphasizing the importance of live encounter: “If it’s not direct, well you’ll continue to believe that rappers are  .  .  . delinquents, poorly spoken, poorly dressed, no?” In turn, some of the spaces in which these events took place had particular significance. Many Sexta events were held (typically without permission) in the esplanade outside Palacio de Bellas Artes, an icon of Mexican cultural nationalism which frequently hosted performances of Western classical music, ballet and opera and tended to attract a

42  Andrew Green

middle- and upper-class demographic. Nahua Tecuani spoke of an uncomfortable feeling, when entering to perform in this space: “how are we dignos de [worthy of] this?” (Interview, 27/7/17). One moment in particular, which was narrated to me by Reka xx, a rapper from the poorer outskirts of the city who performed with Valle de Chalco-based groups To Cuic Libre and Bandera Negra, seemed to encapsulate the opportunities for positive self-presentation that such encounters provided. Reka xx was an anarchist whose rap had a fiercely political message, and who told me that he sought to avoid both “grandiloquent” and “vulgar” language (Interview, 26/4/13). He told me that in 2012, he had been invited to a Sexta antipastorela (an alternative, often irreverent, version of the nativity) in the northeast of the city featuring rap and theatre, which attracted both individuals and families. Prior to his performance, he recalled that one woman walked up to him to ask whether he performed rap, to which he replied in the affirmative. When he had finished his performance, he told me, she approached him again to thank him, saying: I had never heard rap like you do it, with that kind of subject matter, with those sorts of lyrics, which address reality. . . . I thought you were going to do lots of swearing, insult women, things like that. (Interview, 12/8/17) The rapper used this anecdote to exemplify a middle-class public “accustomed to hearing rap with a sexist, misogynist message, where they talk of drugs, money, extremely banal things”. Reka xx reflected that: In concerts specifically for hip-hop you arrive [and] they already know who you are. But when you arrive at an event where it’s not the hip-hop community . . . what you’re there to do is represent hip-hop culture . . . so that they don’t think that hip-hop is just [. . .] doing rap battles, but instead something with quality, something [to which] you have to dedicate a lot of time. . . , something professional, a culture in its own right. (Interview, 12/8/17) Reka xx tended to frame his performances very differently for an audience of ­pro-Zapatista activists: at a Sexta event in December 2012, for instance, he introduced his performance as “street rap”, saying that “in the lyrics we talk about what we live, what affects us”. He went on to guide the audience in how to dance to rap, waving his arm from side to side in time with the beat and telling them “in rap, we do this”. Reka xx’s experiences illustrate how rappers perceived themselves to be doubly marginalized: both within the context of Mexico City, and within the social milieu of the Sexta, where middle-class participants could harbour negative preconceptions about the hip-hop movement. Yet they also suggest that live events carried out as part of the Sexta presented possibilities for these marginalities to be

“What will the respectable public say?” 43

openly addressed, rather than bracketed as participants assumed a shared activist identity. Building on the fact that a “multiplicity of publics” participated in Sexta events (Fraser 1990, 77), the encounter they facilitated provided a valuable opportunity for these marginalities to be contested – both explicitly and implicitly.

Conclusion Sexta events were the site of a rich negotiation between different pro-Zapatista publics, in which musical performance played a role. The underlying economic conditions of the Sexta, in a broader context of economic precarity, created difficulties for musicians of low financial means to participate. In turn, this meant that Sexta events were more middle-class than one might expect. Nonetheless, these were highly diverse events in which groups from a variety of backgrounds participated. As such, socially marginal groups were able, within the broader framework of this movement, to connect their own experiences to a broader narrative of struggle relating to the EZLN and pro-Zapatista groups. The “respectable citizenry” to which Marcos alludes in “Culture Above and Below”, then, was not entirely exterior to the Sexta. Musicians from marginalized groups perceived their performances at Sexta events as a means to present themselves as “respectable”, politically engaged subjects before middle-class groups. While music was lent value as a vehicle for communicating messages to an exterior public, the argument of this chapter is that it was especially valuable in ­relation to social processes that were interior to pro-Sexta groups. Live, ­face-to-face musical performances at a small scale were important for the construction of citizenship and class. In this context, such performances revealed these notions as always at stake, subject to continuous negotiation, relational and local.

Notes 1 The speech may be heard at http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2007/04/26/inter vencion-del-delegado-zero-en-la-mesa-redonda-otra-cultura-%C2%BFesposible/ (Last accessed 17/9/17). The persona of “Subcomandante Marcos”, it should be noted, has since been rechristened “Subcomandante Galeano”. 2 Some of the names and details of participants in this chapter have been changed. While I do not provide personal details, the members of Coordinadora Valle de Chalco were almost all in their 20s and 30s at the time of research. 3 See Barmeyer (2009, 153), who argues that in the 1990s and early 2000s autonomy was “achieved at the cost of new dependencies” on NGOs and pro-Zapatista activist groups. 4 Trova is a highly poetic genre of song most closely associated, in a Latin American context, with Cuba, and connected in the popular imagination with the mobile figure of the troubadour. Trova singers tend to perform solo, playing a guitar as accompaniment. 5 Festival Comparte took place in 2016 and 2017 on Zapatista territory in Chiapas, and took the form of an open-ended artistic encounter between the Zapatistas and their supporters. Something similar occurred as part of the 2013 Escuelita, during which roughly 2,000 Zapatista supporters stayed for a week in Zapatista communities, and concerts were held featuring Zapatista musicians and pro-Zapatista musicians from elsewhere in Mexico and around the world. One musician who had travelled from Mexico City, while

44  Andrew Green performing to an audience of Zapatistas on autonomous territory as part of the Escuelita, told those present that he had had a recurring dream about such a performance. Equally, the emotional significance of the occasion manifested itself in other ways; another Mexico City-based musician resolved after the Escuelita to become more directly involved in Zapatista activity, and relocated to Chiapas soon afterwards. 6 See http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2008/08/02/platica-del-sci-marcos-y-el-tte-coro nel-i-moises-con-los-miembros-de-la-caravana-que-llegaron-al-caracol-de-la-garrucha/ (Last accessed 6/10/17). 7 For example, Carlos Xeneke told me that “many people here in Mexico are more worried about continuing to survive, and it doesn’t give them time to support other movements” (Interview, 26/12/12).

Bibliography Anaya, Benjamin. 1999. Neozapatismo y rock mexicano. México, DF: Ediciones la Cuadrilla de la Langosta. Barmeyer, Nils. 2009. Developing Zapatista Autonomy: Conflict and NGO Involvement in Rebel Chiapas. México, DF: University of New Mexico Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Edited and Introduced by Randall Johnson. Cambridge: Polity Press. Cortez Ruiz, Carlos. 2010. “The Struggle Towards Rights and Communitarian Citizenship: The Zapatista Movement in Mexico.” In Citizenship and Social Movements: Perspectives from the Global South, edited by Lisa Thompson and Chris Tapscott, 160–84. London: Zed Books. Dahlberg, Lincoln. 2007. “The Internet and Discursive Exclusion: From Deliberative to Agonistic Public Sphere Theory.” In Radical Democracy and the Internet: Interrogating Theory and Practice, edited by Lincoln Dahlberg and Eugenia Siapera, 128–47. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Durham Peters, John. 1999. Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Esquivel, Gerardo. 2015. “Desigualdad extrema en México: concentración del poder económico y político.” Report for Oxfam México. Fraser, Nancy. 1990. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A  Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25–26: 56–80. Friedman, Debre, and Doug McAdam. 1992. “Collective Identity and Activism.” In Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, edited by Aldon Morris and Carol Mueller, 156–73. New Haven: Yale University Press. Gamiño Muñoz, Rodolfo. 2011. Guerrilla, represión y prensa en la década de los sesenta en México: Invisibilidad y olvido. Mexico City: Instituto Mora. García Canclini, Nestor, and Maritza Urteaga. 2011. “Estrategias creativas: Entre precariedad y redes.” In Cultura y desarrollo: Una visión distinta desde los jóvenes, edited by Nestor García Canclini and Maritza Urteaga, 129–41. Madrid: Fundación Carolina. Gilbert, Dennis. 2007. Mexico’s Middle Class in the Neoliberal Era. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Graeber, David. 2011. Debt: The First Five Thousand Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House. Granik, Sue. 2005. “Membership Benefits, Membership Action: Why Incentives for Activism Are What Members Want.” Journal of Nonprofit  & Public Sector Marketing 14 (1–2): 65–89.

“What will the respectable public say?” 45 Green, Andrew. 2016. “Activist Musicianship, Sound, the ‘Other Campaign’ and the Limits of Public Space in Mexico City.” Ethnomusicology Forum 25 (3): 345–66. ———. 2017. (Online ahead of print). “Producing an Other Nation: Autogestión, Tradition and Technology in the Digital Home Studio.” Popular Music and Society. Habermas, Jurgen. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Translated by Thomas Burger. Cambridge: MIT Press. Harvey, Neil. 1998. The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy. London: Duke University Press. Lomnitz, Claudio. 1999. “Modes of Citizenship in Mexico.” Public Culture 11 (1): 269–93. Martínez, Miguel. 2007. “The Squatters’ Movement: Urban Counter-Culture and AlterGlobalization Dynamics.” South European Society & Politics 12 (3): 379–98. McDowell, John. 2007. “Corridos of 9/11: Mexican Ballads as Commemorative Practice.” In Music in the Post-9/11 World, edited by Jonathan Ritter and J. Martin Daughtry, 225– 54. Abingdon: Routledge. Meyer, Lorenzo. 2017 [2013]. Nuestra tragedia persistente. La democracia autoritaria en México. Mexico City: Debolsillo. Mora, Mariana. 2007. “Zapatista Anticapitalist Politics and the ‘other campaign’ Learning from the Struggle for Indigenous Rights and Autonomy.” Latin American Perspectives 34 (2): 64–77. Salazar, Juan Francisco. 2003. “Articulating an Activist Imaginary: Internet as Counter Public Sphere in the Mapuche Movement, 1997/2002.” Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy 107 (1): 19–30. Thornton, Sarah. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press. Walker, Louise. 2013. Waking from the Dream: Mexico’s Middle Classes After 1968. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.

Chapter 3

Filmmakers as “citizens of the world” Cosmopolitanism and global identities of the Chilean upper-middle class 1 María Paz Peirano The Chilean field of film production has been considerably transformed in the last decade, moving towards the internationalisation of national cinema. This Chilean cinema “for export” has had a recent boost in the international film market, which can be explained by the specific positioning strategy of Chilean professionals, facilitated by internationalisation policies developed by both the centre-left and right-wing Chilean governments since 2005. The “neoliberal State” (Harvey 2007, 64–69) has created a cultural policy that relies on a market-oriented strategy, aiming to position films in the global market in order to develop a “Chilean cinema” brand abroad. A key element of this strategy is promoting the participation of film professionals in the international festival circuit, offering them special funds to attend international film festivals and film markets worldwide, including fiction, documentary, short film and animation festivals. At important film markets, such as the Cannes Marché du Film, film producers organise a collective Chilean Delegation or “Chilean Mission” financed by the Chilean government and organised by CinemaChile – a private agency that promotes national cinema, linked to the Association of Chilean Film and TV Producers (APCT, Asociación de Productores de Cine y Televisión de Chile) – and ProChile, the governmental institution promoting Chilean industries abroad. Chilean cultural policies reflect the aspiration of the state to promote cinema as a global creative industry, making a case for the internationalisation of this and other forms of cultural production, such as music and publishing (CNCA 2011, 53–54). Highlighting the fluidity of recent global film production (Cresswell and Dixon 2002), internationalisation and national branding at international markets has become a matter of major significance for cinema in the contemporary postindustrial economy (Grainge 2008). Like other small, peripheral cinemas, Chilean cinema aims to expand beyond its small national market (De Valck 2007; Falicov 2010). This process mainly occurs at film festivals, the nodal points of contemporary international film production (Stringer 2001) where diverse professional and institutional agendas converge, working as marketplaces and cultural showcase for alternative (or non-Hollywood) “world” cinema (Durovicová and Newman 2010). These events allow for the international circulation of certain types of non-mainstream

Filmmakers as “citizens of the world” 47

films, particularly contemporary global art cinema (Galt and Schoonover 2010) from countries at the periphery of the international market, which gain international prestige and economic value in the process. At film festivals, national cinemas are branded in order to fit the global market, and “nations” exchanged as sign values (Aronczyk 2009) in the international sphere. By looking at the Chilean case, we will see how these spaces articulate both local and global discourses, aiming to “mediate cosmopolitanism” (Tzanelli 2010) and thus attracting middle-class film professionals from all over the world, who share the values of a “global culture” embedded in contemporary creative industries (Aronczyk and Powers 2010). Internationally successful Chilean cinema has been mostly produced by a particular group of mobile, upper-middle-class filmmakers who are actively involved in this international film festival circuit. Their films tend to convey what I consider to be Chilean-cosmopolitan aesthetics, constructing images that play with both local and international imaginaries and visualities. The cinematic language of this Chilean cinema is consistent with recent international trends in independent filmmaking, avoiding classical structures, emphasising long takes, observational and minimalist shots, and little or no narrative. Chilean films such as El año del tigre ([The Year of the Tiger], dir. Lelio 2011), Bonsai (dir. Jiménez 2011), De jueves a domingo ([Thursday till Sunday], dir. Sotomayor 2012), Carne de perro ([Dog Flesh], dir. Guzzoni 2012), El Club ([The Club], dir. Pablo Larraín 2015) and Una mujer fantástica ([A Fantastic Woman], dir. Lelio 2018) tell intimate stories about everyday life, and generally aim to reveal deep internal conflicts through the use of both minimal stories and expressive atmospheres. These films do not aim to represent “the Chilean people”, but they are not fully delocalised, either, making implicit and explicit references to national and international imaginaries and local stories. Filmmakers play with the absence and presence of national references in their films. For example, despite their international look, some Chilean films are based on national politics, such as Carne de perro, about a former torturer of the military regime. Others portray Chilean peoples, landscapes, colours and textures: the road trip of De jueves a domingo takes place in one of the most iconic Chilean landscapes, the Atacama Desert, and El año del tigre explores the ruins of the South after the devastating earthquake of 2010. I think this trend expresses filmmakers’ attitude to their creative work, which is based on a free combination of different cultural elements that they consider their own, beyond any national borders. I  suggest that this aesthetic and their understanding of their creative work is grounded in their cosmopolitan aspirations, as well as their international experience, which has enabled them to position themselves as global citizens and part of an imagined international film community of art-oriented world cinema that meets every year throughout the festival circuit. Between 2011 and 2015, I conducted a multisited ethnography in Chile and Europe, following these filmmakers and other Chilean film professionals to the main film festivals that they attended. I carried out participant observation at the Cannes and Berlin Film Festivals and their international film markets (Marché du Film and European Film Market), as well as at the International Documentary

48  María Paz Peirano

Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and the Leipzig, London and San Sebastián film festivals, where I also conducted in-depth interviews with Chilean filmmakers and producers. Based on the findings of this long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this chapter discusses filmmakers’ new cosmopolitanism, associated with new practices and imaginaries of upper-middle-class mobility and their attitudes towards labour and citizenship. This chapter examines the articulation between Chilean cultural policies of a neoliberal orientation and filmmakers’ subjectivities and discourses about art and citizenship, embedded in both national belonging and cosmopolitan aspirations. I argue that these articulations show the intertwined processes of cultural production, social reproduction and citizenship involved in the recent transformations of the Chilean middle class. The ethnographic approach reveals how, in contrast to the “traditional” middle classes involved in national cultural production in Chile (meaning an intellectual group upholding the social responsibility of national filmmaking) this “new” middle class (Lange and Meier 2009) is organised around ideologies of global citizenship and individual entrepreneurial success. In a neoliberal context where, as Ong (2007, 5) points out, emerging countries outside the West have been advised to shift from a focus on the production of goods to the production of educated subjects, Chilean filmmakers have been driven to become self-actualising or self-enterprising subjects who can compete in the global market. We will see how their focus on professional recognition and personal selfoptimisation as successful cosmopolitan artists in the international film market complicates the traditional values and political aspirations of Chilean filmmakers, revealing some of the contradictions of the Chilean progressive upper-middle class to which they belong.

Chilean film professionals as a “creative class” The first impression I got in the field in relation to Chilean film professionals was that everyone knew each other, and that all the members of the professionals’ network shared certain social backgrounds. Every time I went to a film premiere in Santiago and to the social events afterwards (at clubs, bars and cafes, frequently located in privileged and/or gentrified neighbourhoods of this highly segregated city), I would see more or less the same people, and in their conversations they would normally refer to each other with a certain familiarity. Indeed, the majority of Chilean filmmakers belong to the upper-middle class, constituting a kind of “creative class” (Bourdieu 1984, 179) that comes from a bourgeois background and working in the service sector as professionals, technicians and teachers (Mac-Clure, Barozet, and Maturana 2014). Even when some of them work as employees in production companies (or, exceptionally, they own their own company), most Chilean filmmakers are independent professionals, working freelance and “by project” for the private or public sector or getting funding for their personal projects from annual state funds. In some cases, they also get international funding, particularly those filmmakers who have experience in the international film festival circuit.

Filmmakers as “citizens of the world” 49

Chilean filmmakers share a habitus (Bourdieu 1984) that reveals a certain status and constructs a sense of belonging to a “community of taste” (Gronow 1997, 98) along with other intellectuals and artists. Their similar social and cultural traits and dispositions are linked to a common background and comparable life experiences. Most of the generation of filmmakers currently participating in the international film scene (that is, individuals who are between 25 and 45  years old) were educated at local film schools, which first reopened in the mid-1990s, after the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973–1990), a period when an orthodox neoliberal system was imposed.2 After the country’s neoliberalisation, the higher education system was largely privatised (Brunner and Peña 2008); hence, Chilean film education tends to be exclusive and an indication of a privileged social background. Very rarely, some professionals come from a lower socio-economic background and have pushed their way towards upper socio-economic positions. Most film professionals also rely on encouraging families who fostered some kind of ‘cultural’ interest in their children when they were young, but even if their families do not seem to understand or to be particularly happy with filmmakers’ jobs, they were still often supportive of their career choices. This is not to say that jobs in the field of film production necessarily mean big salaries and the accumulation of economic capital. Although it is true that in order to belong to the group, a certain economic background is needed, film professions are not particularly rewarding in terms of average income, and the film business develops in quite precarious conditions (Brodsky, Negrón and Pössel 2014), with filmmakers often juggling different sources of income from film production and teaching. Thus, the privileged social position of film professionals is more related, following Bourdieu (2011 [1986]), to their accumulation of symbolic and social forms of capital and a particular “aspirational” way of life. Working in film production conveys a certain artistic-intellectual prestige, one that in Chile is strongly identified with a progressive branch of the upper-middle classes (as opposed to the more conservative, right-wing branch) and is reinforced by international recognition of their films. In addition, they share helpful social networks in the upper-middle classes beyond the film world – typically former schoolmates, kin, lovers and other friends – that indirectly allow them to do their personal film projects and move forward in their careers. Filmmakers are often close to people from other Chilean “art worlds” (Becker 1982) and social sciences and humanities professionals and scholars with whom they share certain common interests and political affiliations, usually identifying themselves with centre-left or left-wing tendencies. Their professional practice has traditionally been identified with an interest in cultural critique, inheriting the filmmaking tradition of the New Latin American Cinema of the late 1960s. This tradition emphasised an anti-imperialist political and cultural agenda, seeking to create authentic national films that resisted purely commercial cinema and made visible the real struggles of the Chilean people (see Martin 1997). However, as we will see in the following sections, this specific aspect of their identity has clashed with their international circulation and success.

50  María Paz Peirano

Given these filmmakers’ backgrounds, their interest in the internationalisation of their films comes from the possibility of obtaining both extra funding and international artistic prestige. Participating in the international film festival circuit has become one of the common aspirations among filmmakers, although only achieved by some. Those who tend to travel and participate regularly in the circuit are the ones with better socio-economic positions (for example, producers who do not depend solely on Chilean state funds for travelling abroad) and filmmakers with higher cultural capital, who have previous international travel experience and speak English or French, therefore finding it easier to move around international festivals and communicate with international agents. As Mau (2009, 66) suggests, transnationalisation is likely to be an unequal process, since higher status groups (especially those with higher education) are predisposed to transnational activities and the fostering of cosmopolitan values.

Chilean filmmakers as “cosmopolitan subjects” In February 2013, I was invited to the “Chilean Party” at the Berlin International Film Festival. Since parties are key to the branding and promotion of national cinemas at international film festivals, everyone in the Chilean Mission (the group of Chilean film professionals attending the festival) was invited to participate, along with the key figures in the international film business: sales agents, distributors, and film festival programmers, who expect to be entertained as well as offered networking opportunities with the filmmakers. The DJ was a Chilean alternative musician residing in Berlin who, according to the organisers, was one of the ‘coolest’ aspects of the event. After a couple of hours among Chilean filmmakers taking photos and selfies while dancing to electronic music, I was starting to miss a more “Latin” vibe in the event: “Maybe some cumbia would be more fun?” I mentioned to a young filmmaker dancing next to me, with a glass of sparkling wine in his hand. “Gosh, no! We don’t need to play the whole ‘Chileans in Europe’ thing, please. We already decided to make something more appealing . . . and a bit more fashionable!”3 Not that filmmakers do not appreciate a Latin vibe per se, but in this specific context, cumbia music would have meant performing a local, culturally specific taste, which was not deemed adequate for this international scene. Chilean missions at the international festivals I  attended often aimed to project this somewhat modern image of the group, which, as well as indicating some broad idea of national belonging (the “Chilean” event), would mainly target cosmopolitan cultural references, shown in their choices of music, their catalogues’ designs, and the film professionals “knowing how to” move around in international contexts. Most Chilean directors I encountered considered themselves both national and international artists, similarly to other “global” artists (see Schneider 2006). Without denying their national belonging, they loosen the constraints of being considered exclusively Chilean and move away from the historical obligation imposed on local filmmakers to represent a national image that fits previous

Filmmakers as “citizens of the world” 51

preconceptions of Latin American filmmaking. In the words of one of the film producers travelling the circuit at the time, there was no “Chilean cinema, there are Chilean films”; that is to say, films made by Chileans without constructing a shared national imaginary. This common narrative of a contemporary Chilean film “diversity” has helped filmmakers develop themes, aesthetics and narratives that liberate their work from the typical paths of Chilean cinema, such as the representation of poverty and popular culture. Part of their aim to belong to the world has to do precisely with contesting national stereotypes, and challenging the need to be “Latin American” and “Chilean” all the time. Filmmakers’ mobility patterns through the circuit reinforce an appreciation of universality and a certain consciousness of being part of something bigger than only the “national”. And while they travel using national labels in order to frame and sell their films in the cultural market, they also report feelings of liberation from the constraints of the national sphere (Peirano 2018). For filmmakers, a great part of the appeal of festivals resides in the opportunity to be in contact with people from all over the world and to learn from other countries’ cultures. They value watching films from different parts of the world, as well as learning from international professionals with other national experiences and being in contact with diverse national audiences, who, they imagine, represent different national cultures. Chileans’ aspirations have to do with the project of holding a symbolic “universal citizenship” (Rapport 2012, 2), beyond the constrained borders of the nation. This new cosmopolitanism is associated with new practices and imaginaries of transnational mobility in Chilean society. The increasing participation of the Chilean middle classes in the global economy, and the new favourable conditions for international travel in recent decades, have seen increasing patterns of mobility among the emergent Chilean upper-middle class, and travelling has become an aspirational goal. Anthropologist Noel Salazar correctly assesses that the dominant domestic discourse in Chile has traditionally stressed that not being on the move transnationally is “the quintessential characteristic of what it means to be a ‘real’ Chilean” (2013, 246). Nevertheless, travelling abroad has been used more recently as a social climbing tool, forming a class of the “cosmopolitan mobile” (Salazar 2013, 245) who participate in an international public sphere. We can read in this new cosmopolitanism the Chilean aspiration to belong to a flexible “global middle class” (Heiman, Freeman, and Liechty 2012) that actively participates in the film festival circuit, moving away from previous nationally oriented attitudes of the middle class. Still, at the time of my fieldwork, this new figure of a cosmopolitan mobile was a site of contradiction and debate among filmmakers. It was commonly associated, by more critical film professionals in Chile, with an aspirational practice of the nouveau riche showing off their economic success and adapting far too well to the ideal global imaginaries of the international market. “I  think your research is great,” a filmmaker back in Chile would tell me, “and travelling to the European festivals, good for them [other filmmakers]! But you have to think

52  María Paz Peirano

about this . . . who are those films really for?” (Field notes, Rengo [Chile], February 2012). Filmmakers’ transnational mobilities generated a certain suspicion back in Chile, particularly because they move away from traditional middle-class values and expectations that have been, until now, at the core of the production of national cinema. These were mainly normative values about national film production drawing from the aforementioned politically progressive tradition of the 1960s, which aimed to reflect Chilean cultural authenticity, often rooted in lowerclass social experiences, similarly to other upper-middle-class cultural producers in Latin America (see Montero-Diaz, Chapter 4). Chilean cinema, even when produced by the middle classes, was supposed to be for all Chileans and make the “people” (understood as the lower classes) visible – this was part of its political duty. Until the early 2000s, filmmakers considered themselves, above all, national citizens with social and political responsibilities with their country (Peirano 2006). It is likely that the previous predominant imaginaries of immobility and isolation, which worked as a form of cultural protection related to an “authentic” national identity, reinforced this imagination. By contrast, the cosmopolitanism of the new generation of Chilean film professionals, embodied in the regimes of value of contemporary art cinema and performed in film festivals as global assemblages (Collier and Ong 2005), reveals other subjectivities and expectations. International festivals embed and produce the “modern art-culture system” (Clifford 1988, 224), which Chilean directors embrace, making sense of themselves as modern “authors” who belong to the world – and hence, have the right to appropriate symbolic elements outside the borders of national culture. Chilean directors’ ideas of modern authorship sustain their position as individuals who express their inner selves in film, thus constructing their subjectivities through the creative process. This politics of authorship emphasises filmmakers’ individual performances, despite the political-aesthetic mission of their art. Thus, cosmopolitanism expresses their hope of finding themselves free from the social mission that is traditionally attributed to national cinema. In contrast to previous directors, cosmopolitan contemporary filmmakers do not attempt to fabricate totalising national images, and do not show a strong necessary sense of social responsibility. Instead, they have created national films that refer to intimate individual experiences, assimilate complex transnational exchanges and reconstruct fragmented and fluid Chilean imaginaries. Filmmakers’ work and expectations emphasise their individual agency in the large-scale flow of people, images and cultural forces across borders over their national belonging. Thus, as Ong (1999) suggests, these transnational subjects tend to identify with forms of flexible citizenship, consistent with the fluidity of the cultural logics of globalisation.

Filmmakers’ commodification at the international film festival circuit The marketplaces at film festivals such as the Cannes Marché du Film and the European Film Market at Berlin are structured as highly social and “international”

Filmmakers as “citizens of the world” 53

trade places. Each corner of the buildings represents a nation; that is, a national film industry ready to be exchanged. The Chilean stands in the biggest European film marketplaces I  attended, funded by the government through ProChile and CinemaChile, were small corners decorated with large posters of Chilean films and photos of Chilean filmmakers. They were meeting places for Chilean professionals and their international partners, and a point of reference for all the Chileans, who hang out there between business meetings and film screenings. These spots functioned as lived fragments of the nation within the larger film festival structure, and, used collectively by the entire Chilean Mission, allowed them to actualise a sense of community and to brand national cinema at the festival. Stands were packed with promotional items, including postcards from different films, the lineups of Chilean films being screened at the festival and the annual catalogue of Chilean cinema. All this promotional material was created by a young designer and, according to film professionals, was deemed to give a fresh, cool look to Chilean cinema and Chilean filmmakers. The promotion materials emphasised selling Chilean creative individuals and their talent and success (including their international awards), and so the annual catalogues gave a bit of information about the films, but also filled many pages with black and white photographs of the filmmakers’ and actors’ faces. The 2013 catalogue, for example, started with a long section with photos, called “The People from Chile”, a concept that was also reproduced on a large panel at both Chilean stands in Berlin and Cannes: a huge display of the faces of Chilean film professionals in fun, sexy and quirky postures, playing in front of the camera, which aimed to convey their world-class creativity, as well as their friendly and fun attitudes. This branding process of Chilean cinema was also embedded in social interactions at film festivals, with filmmakers promoting “Chilenity” through everyday practices, both at the stand and at the festival social events, such as cocktail events and parties. The marketing strategies used by these agencies interpret the overall communication strategy of the Chilean state, presenting the country’s “spectacular, diverse and transparent geography; the warmth and efficiency of its people; and the stability and strength of its institutions” (Jiménez-Martínez 2013). As we have seen from the previous description, instead of selling specific film contents, Chilean cinema branding alludes to “the warmth and efficiency” of Chilean filmmakers (who are presented as cool, successful and inviting) as both artists and businesspeople. The predominant narrative of Chilean national cinema emphasised the idea of films “made by Chileans”, making reference to a group of creative individuals. Thus, Chilean cinema did not refer to specific common national contents, being emptied of any concrete visual images. This strategic focus means that Chilean cinema is not a unified product, but a diverse group of novel, ground-breaking films that are suitable for international audiences, building on the aforementioned imaginary of cinematic unity in diversity that aspires to be cosmopolitan. In addition, parties and cocktail events, such as the one at Berlin, sponsored filmmakers’ self-branding, showing how creative, cosmopolitan, easy-going and

54  María Paz Peirano

trustworthy they were. The attempt through all these practices to signify “The People from Chile” as a group of “cool” professionals who build engaging and fashionable events enabled the reproduction of upper-middle-class aspirations and subjectivities, coded as cosmopolitan, educated and sophisticated (Warren and Campbell 2014). These events denoted the filmmakers’ self-perception as innovative global artists who constitute a distinct and cultured high-class community. Both social events and marketplace strategies tended to affirm their label as Chileans, but also their de-localised cosmopolitan subjectivities, corroborating their aspiration to be part of a global middle-class. As film festivals have turned more and more into business hubs for the global film industry (Peranson 2009), their marketplaces and social gatherings have also fostered some of the values of contemporary creative industries, particularly those that refer to flexible labour such as entrepreneurship, innovation, creative freedom and individual success – those often associated with the idea of modern authorship mentioned previously. Thus, the cosmopolitan attitude of filmmakers complements the values fostered by the global film industry, allowing for the legitimisation and expansion of an increasingly transnational business. Chilean practices at film festivals denote this process, particularly in the way they use their nationality as a form of branding in order to commodify themselves and their films at the international film markets. Film festivals’ goal of collecting all “the cinema of the world” makes them look for cultural particularities as much as innovative art, so films’ specific cultural origins do not just disappear, but are used to differentiate and brand them in the international film market. Consequently, Chileans’ cosmopolitanism is constantly negotiated in these events. The filmmakers’ cosmopolitan attitude I observed at the festivals did not completely dissolve their sense of belonging to a national community, but it was actualised in their social encounters at the Chilean stands and the Chilean parties, which aimed to represent national cinema. There, Chilean directors, producers and institutional representatives would either play up or play down their national belonging as considered appropriate, integrating two different sets of cultural references while interacting with international festival agents. As part of the global community of art cinema, they would talk on equal terms with other international professionals, displaying cosmopolitan tastes in music, films and forms of conversation, while at times disclosing their national differences, referring to Chilean culture and emphasising their local experiences. Filmmakers tended to accentuate these cultural specificities especially when asking for funding and searching for potential buyers, in order to get some international support. I suggest that the success of the Chilean cinema on the circuit is linked to these negotiations. As mentioned earlier, contemporary films convey a local, situated version of the cosmopolitan experience of filmmakers, who have learnt to make their own translation of what is acceptable for films to enter the festival circuit. They have created a cosmopolitan aesthetic that agrees with the standards constructed by the international film community and at the same time have retained cultural differences that add value to their films, as cultural specificity has

Filmmakers as “citizens of the world” 55

also become a fundamental value in a niche market where non-Western nations are precious goods. Thus, while it is true that Chilean films do not offer totalising images to represent the nation, filmmakers still use national particularities to brand their films and sell them in the international market. For these filmmakers, “being Chilean” was therefore an important part of “being in the world”, and their double positioning as Chileans and as global citizens was essential to their cosmopolitan professional experience. Following Hannerz (1996), they can be seen as cosmopolitan subjects that are on the move in the world, strategically engaging and disengaging with local and cosmopolitan discourses. Film professionals’ cosmopolitanism is both an attitude and an acquired skill for managing meanings in transnational contexts (Szerszynski and Urry 2006, 2002), and thus “an orientation, a willingness to engage with the other. . . , an intellectual and aesthetic openness toward divergent cultural experiences” (Hannerz 1996, 103) and a strategy to mark social inclusion and distinction. Chilean professionals’ transnational networks are grounded in the perception that they share some form of common national identity based on a place of origin, but as with other contemporary migrants, their identities are also negotiated within social worlds that span more than one place (see Vertovec 2001, 573–80).

Tensions of the global middle class As we have seen, the transnational mobilities and the internationalisation of Chilean cinema have been intertwined with the cultural transformation of the Chilean creative and “progressive” upper-middle class, while also reinforcing those transformations. As has been the case for other emergent middle classes around the world (Heiman, Freeman and Liechty 2012, 12), the attitudes and aspirations of the new generation of Chilean filmmakers involved some tensions and contradictions with the traditional values of this branch of the Chilean middle class. Participation in the international circuit and the national cinema branding process at the markets were the source of much criticism and conflicted feelings among some Chilean filmmakers I met, especially those who were more politically committed or had more radical views about film as art. The commodification of art cinema and a national branding with an emphasis on coolness, awards, prestige and competitive individual success were seen as an essential contradiction to many of the artistic and political values that filmmakers had traditionally embraced. Moreover, filmmakers’ cosmopolitan attitudes also complicated previous conceptions of film as a decolonising art when they embraced the universalistic epistemologies of citizenship that, as Meltzer and Rojas (2013, 527) point out, have historically operated to exclude Latin American actors from the global arena and that have been much criticised in the tradition of Latin American cinema. Professionals’ international negotiations over their films’ aesthetics and themes were often contested by some filmmakers and film critics back home, who considered that the films’ distance from both Chilean imaginaries and local audiences revealed a lack of authenticity. For their detractors, Chilean “festival

56  María Paz Peirano

films” were nothing but elitist, a pure performance for European audiences that skipped the main aim of “real” national filmmaking. Thus, the field’s transformations have been simultaneously praised and feared, given not only the emergence of Chilean cinema in the international scene and the new forms of funding and circulation, but the progressive commoditisation of art cinema. During my fieldwork, this was particularly true regarding older Chilean filmmakers, who were experiencing these transformations first hand, but had also inherited a clear set of political values from the local filmmaking tradition. Placing a central importance on cinema’s potential as cultural and social critique, progressive left-wing Chilean film professionals tended to be highly suspicious of each other’s work and to bring up the social origin of their peers in their discussions. For the most ‘committed’ Chilean intelligentsia, the fact that cinema is mainly a product of the upper-middle class continues to be highly problematic, for the particular doxa of the field (Bourdieu 1977, 164) leads them to think that film professionals are inevitably imprisoned by their social class and the conditions of the international market, and are thus incapable of making really political films in line with the struggles of the Chilean people. As a result, filmmakers were often under surveillance regarding the political intentions expressed in their films, especially when these were successful with Chilean and international audiences. This surveillance, conducted by their peers, was particularly severe if directors were from the highest socio-economic positions in the field, and led to harsh criticism. Forms of surveillance and criticism of local cinema have a great impact on the construction of directors’ subjectivities and their professional experience in the national field. Being exposed to collective political and ethical criticism is an ever-present source of tension, and affected the focus of their films. For example, several upper-middle-class filmmakers abandoned the idea of filming the Chilean lower classes in order to tell stories they were familiar with, in line with the focus on intimate stories and cosmopolitan aesthetics they have embraced. However, other film professionals dismissed these films, even when they were successful on the international circuit, precisely because they do not seem to represent the real Chilean society. During my fieldwork, film professionals even came up with the term drama cuico [posh drama] to informally refer to these films, making fun of their futility. Nevertheless, upper-middle-class filmmaking was also contested even when it referred to social issues, particularly if the films were aimed at international audiences. In political terms, the images produced always seemed problematic based on who was creating those images. Thus, the social constraints on filmmakers, especially those in the highest positions on the social scale, were quite difficult to overcome.4 Not only should national film be politically engaged and challenge hegemonic images and discourses, it should also have a social impact. Cinema should appeal to local audiences, but hopefully not appeal to mass audiences. It should be successful at international festivals, but should not give itself away to the international market. These conflicting expectations marked the trajectories and subjectivities of film

Filmmakers as “citizens of the world” 57

professionals, who at times expressed the anxiety of having an impossible task, and the need to surrender some of their values. These conflicting expectations reveal some of the contradictions involved in the recent transformations of the middle class. We can see how two middle-class sets of values (national social responsibility and cosmopolitanism) overlapped in filmmakers’ everyday experience, creating uncertainty about their artistic, economic and political role. Their experience highlights some of the unresolved problems of their own habitus, including the difficulties of reconciling the accumulation of symbolic, cultural and economic capital with their traditional belief in their social responsibilities – which, as Bourdieu (1984, 397–465) suggests, also shows the contradictory character of attempting to create modern political art. Filmmakers seem trapped in middle-class expectations of accumulating forms of capital that help to distinguish them as part of a progressive middle class: as successful professionals, both artists and entrepreneurs, both politically involved and citizens of the world. We can see that the experience of this Chilean global middle class is subsumed into the broader socio-economic and political contradictions of the contemporary global art filmmaking and the international film scene. For example, films for international circulation may try to accomplish the political aims of national filmmaking, but the fact that they are branded in international film markets as commodities seeking economic success and circulate in a system enabled by neoliberal expansion calls into question their potential as critical or political. And of course, it is not only the value of the films that is exposed to contradictory assessments, but also the value of the filmmakers themselves, challenged by other film professionals in the field. Boltanski and Chiapello (2007, 419–73) have analysed how modern values of creativity, freedom and authenticity, embedded in artistic aspirations of cultural critique, are central to the construction of contemporary artistic subjectivities. However, the emancipatory project of modern art, captured and commodified in the post-industrial economy, has involved resignifying these values as signs of freedom, success, and work flexibility, which tends to neutralise the possibility of artistic critique and complicate the construction of political subjectivities and committed citizens (Boltanski and Chiapello 2007, 451). The sense of self-achievement to which the middle classes aspire seems an impossible endeavour, for deciding what is correct and desirable for Chilean professionals’ practices and trajectories is far from straightforward. Political commitment, artistic prestige and economic success are conflicting values for the progressive left-wing members of the Chilean film community. This conflict challenges their creative practices, and their personal fulfilment can be experienced as an illusion, as an unachievable “success” intertwined with the unresolved paradoxes of the field.

Conclusion This chapter has looked at a new generation of Chilean filmmakers belonging to an upper-middle class that is undergoing a transformation. Considering “class”

58  María Paz Peirano

as not only a socio-economic status, but also as intertwined with a set of cultural values and collective practices of citizenship that define its nature, the chapter shows some of these transformations, highlighting the contradictions of these upper-middle-class ideas of citizenship and nation-building in the global economy. Filmmakers have assumed the expectations of the international field of film production, managing to get global recognition sponsored by the Chilean state’s internationalisation policies that promote national cinema as a flourishing international business. Chilean professionals have embraced overlapped sets of values and expectations regarding their class position, creating cosmopolitan subjectivities that are in tension with traditional predispositions of the progressive local middle class. Chilean filmmakers in the international circuit, aiming for artistic freedom, sophistication and international success, seem to fulfil the expectations to build a modern and cosmopolitan cinema, which also aims to become a sustainable business within the precariousness of artistic and cultural labour in Chile. On the other hand, the traditional aspiration to build cinema with a social drive, achieving a significant role as “authentic” local art, appears inconsistent with the practices of upper-middle-class Chilean filmmakers participating in the festival circuit. Fulfilling the expectations of the global art film business tends to clash with previous conceptions of cinema as a political tool for social change, reflecting not only the tensions between art and the commercialisation of global cinema, but also those at the core of the emergent, creative middle class behind its production. Filmmakers’ attitudes towards national cinema indicate broader tensions in the production of their own subjectivities as global filmmakers who, given the configuration of the international field of film production, should at the same time be artists and entrepreneurs. Their transnational experience, the production of new mobile and cosmopolitan subjectivities and their pursuit of prestige and self-improvement as world-class professional artists can complicate Chilean filmmakers’ traditional values and political aspirations. Their new upper-middle-class values and identities can serve as an obstacle to the expression of collective citizenship, mismatched with previous ideas of national belonging and civic responsibility associated with their work, which used to follow the openly political aims of the Latin American film tradition: specifically, its understanding of national cinema as a committed duty, which affirms the collective identity of ‘the people’ and addresses their struggles, aiming for social transformation. Through an ethnographic approach to this particular group of the Chilean upper class, we can grasp the experience of the recent transformations of the new middle classes. Looking at their mobile practices, cosmopolitan values and social expectations allow us to understand the complexity of this process and the contradictions underpinning it. It also sheds light on the particularities of the experience of the new creative economy in peripheral contexts, highlighting some of the paradoxes of neoliberalised cultural production and the challenges filmmakers face as both national artists and aspiring citizens of the world.

Filmmakers as “citizens of the world” 59

Notes 1 This research was co-funded by the Postgraduate Research Scholarship, University of Kent, and both Becas Chile and FONDECYT n. 11160735, Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT) Chile. 2 Today, there are a total of 17 universities and 15 professional institutes and technical training centres that offer undergraduate film courses or courses in the audio-visual field (Parada 2011). The increasing number of film schools in Chile is related to the broader expansion of higher education and the increasing number of private educational institutions. 3 Extract from fieldwork notes, Berlin (Germany), February 2013. 4 Film professionals seen as “truly” political have lower socio-economic backgrounds and have partially excluded themselves from the professionals’ network, looking for alternative spaces of production, distribution and exhibition, without participating in the transnational professional networks. Films in this line, such as El pejesapo (dir. Sepúlveda 2007) and Mitómana (dir. Sepúlveda and Adriazola 2009), are cherished by many film professionals, and are considered some of the few recent examples of Chilean political cinema.

Bibliography Aronczyk, Melissa. 2009. “Research in Brief How to do Things with Brands: Uses of National Identity.” Canadian Journal of Communication 34 (2): 291–96. Aronczyk, Melissa, and Devon Powers, eds. 2010. Blowing Up the Brand: Critical Perspectives on Promotional Culture. New York: Peter Lang. Becker, Howard. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Boltanski, Luc, and Eve Chiapello. 2007. The New Spirit of Capitalism. London: Verso. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1984. Distinction: A  Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ———. 2011 [1986]. “The Forms of Capital.” In Cultural Theory: An Anthology, edited by Imre Szeman, 81–93. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Brodsky, Julieta, Bárbara Negrón, and Antonia Pössel. 2014. El Escenario del Trabajador Cultural en Chile, Proyecto Trama. Santiago: Observatorio de Políticas Culturales. Brunner, José Joaquín, and Carlos Peña. 2008. La Reforma al Sistema de Educación Superior: Claves para el Debate. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales. Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. CNCA, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes. 2011. Política Cultural 2011–2016. Santiago: Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y de las Artes. Santiago: Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y de las Artes. www.cultura.gob.cl/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/politica_ cultural_2011_2016.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2018. Collier, Stephen, and Aihwa Ong, eds. 2005. “Global Assemblages, Anthropological Problems.” Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, 3–21. Cresswell, Tim, and Deborah Dixon, eds. 2002. Engaging Film: Geographies of Mobility and Identity. Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

60  María Paz Peirano Durovicová, Nataša, and Kathleen Newman, eds. 2010. World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives. New York: Routledge. Falicov, Tamara. 2010. “Migrating from South to North: The Role of Film Festivals in Funding and Shaping Global South Film and Video.” In Locating Migrating Media, edited by Greg Elmer, Charles Davis, Janine Marchessault and John McCullough, 3–21. Lanham: Lexington Books. Galt, Rosalind, and Karl Schoonover, eds. 2010. Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grainge, Paul. 2008. Brand Hollywood: Selling Entertainment in a Global Media Age. London: Routledge. Gronow, Jukka. 1997. The Sociology of Taste. London: Routledge. Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge. Harvey, David. 2007. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heiman, Rachel, Carla Freeman, and Mark Liechty, eds. 2012. The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press. Jiménez-Martínez, César. 2013. “Chile’s Quest to Improve Its Image Abroad.” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 9 (4): 279–90. Lange, Hellmuth, and Lars Meier, eds. 2009. The New Middle Classes. Globalizing Lifestyles, Consumerism and Environmental Concern. Heidelberg: Springer. Mac-Clure, Oscar, Emmanuelle Barozet, and Víctor Maturana. 2014. “Desigualdad, clase media y territorio en Chile: ¿clase media global o múltiples mesocracias según territorios?” EURE 40 (121): 163–83. Martin, Michael, ed. 1997. New Latin American Cinema. Vol. 2. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Mau, Steffen. 2009. “Who Are the Globalizers? The Role of Education and Educational Elites.” In The New Middle Classes. Globalizing Lifestyles, Consumerism and Environmental concern, edited by Hellmuth Lange and Lars Meier, 65–80. Heidelberg: Springer. Meltzer, Judy, and Cristina Rojas. 2013. “Narratives and Imaginaries of Citizenship in Latin America.” Citizenship Studies 17 (5): 525–29. Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ———. 2007. “Neoliberalism as a Mobile Technology.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32 (1): 3–8. Parada, Marcela. 2011. “El estado de los estudios sobre cine en Chile: Una visión panorámica 1960–2009.” Razón y Palabra 77. www.razonypalabra.org.mx/. Accessed 21 March 2018. Peirano, María Paz. 2006. “Chile en el Imaginario Cinematográfico del Boom.” Revista Chilena de Antropología Visual 8: 121–42. www.rchav.cl/2006_8_art09_peirano.html. Accessed 1 June 2018. ———. 2018. “Film Mobilities: Circulation Practices, Local Policies, and the Construction of a ‘Newest Chilean Cinema’ in Transnational Settings.” In Envisioning Networked Urban Mobilities. Art, Performances, Impacts, edited by Aslak Kjærulff, Sven Kesselring, Peter Peters and Kevin Hannam, 135–47. New York: Routledge. Peranson, Mark. 2009. “First You Get the Power, Then You Get the Money: Two Models of Film Festivals.” In Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals, edited by Richard Porton, 23–37. London: Wallflower.

Filmmakers as “citizens of the world” 61 Rapport, Nigel. 2012. Anyone, the Cosmopolitan Subject of Anthropology. Oxford: Bergham. Salazar, Noel. 2013. “Imagining Mobility at the ‘End of the World’.” History and Anthropology 24 (2): 233–52. Schneider, Arnd. 2006. Appropriation as Practice: Art and Identity in Argentina. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Stringer, Julian. 2001. “Global Cities and International Film Festival Economy.” In Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context, edited by Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice, 134–44. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Szerszynski, Bronislaw, and John Urry. 2002. “Cultures of Cosmopolitanism.” The Sociological Review 50 (4): 462‑81. ______. 2006. “Visuality, Mobility and the Cosmopolitan: Inhabiting the World from Afar.” The British Journal of Sociology 57(1): 113–31. Tzanelli, Rhonda. 2010. “Mediating Cosmopolitanism: Crafting an Allegorical Imperative Through Beijing 2008.” International Review of Sociology 20 (2): 215–41. Valck, Marijke de. 2007. Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Vertovec, Steven. 2001. “Transnationalism and Identity.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 27 (4): 573–82. Warren, Caleb, and Margaret Campbell. 2014. “What Makes Things Cool? How Autonomy Influences Perceived Coolness.” Journal of Consumer Research 41.

Chapter 4

Marginal like you! Constructing citizenship through fusion music in the Peruvian traditional upper classes Fiorella Montero-Diaz

The urban white upper classes have historically topped Lima’s socio-ethnic hierarchy and kept distant from those outside their hegemonic circles (Durand 2007; Kogan 2009; Bruce 2007; Ardito Vega 2010). Contemporary studies on this stratum are scarce, but most describe them as racist, distant citizens, without a culture of their own, hostile towards marginal communities and largely responsible for the conditions leading to Peru’s internal conflict (1980–2000) – a conflict so violent and widespread that, years later, its repercussions show up everywhere, including in music. In the wake of war, a subculture within the upper-class youth, which I called the ‘alternatives’, got involved with previously marginalised genres (music perceived as of low taste or for the working classes, such as chicha, cumbia, huayno, etc.), a subversion of traditional markers of upper-class taste and distinction (see more in Montero-Diaz 2016). With new music interests came a newfound appreciation for fused cultural elements such as fusion music, hybrids between traditional Peruvian and foreign music (e.g. Afro-jazz, huayno-rock, electro-cumbia, etc.). After the mid-2000s, intercultural fusion music groups proliferated, and with them the fusion audience grew in numbers, fostering a dynamic fusion scene. At first, fusion groups would perform at venues within sheltered ‘allowed spaces’,1 visibilising intercultural interaction, which for many was a first step towards valuing Andean musicians’ artistry and music while sharing the same space. Later, musicians would transcend their usual performance venues to reach a wider audience, and the upper-class audience would follow the musicians, blurring previous imagined restrictions of place generated by phenotype and class. This ­transgression, first of racialised taste then racialised space, gave rise to hybrid self-representations as ‘white upper-class cholos’2 and a desire to experience and embody marginality as a form of social validation.3 There is abundant literature on music genres and social activism linked to political expression and protest (Ballinger 1995; Barret 1988; Ellison 1989; Eyerman and Jamison 1995; Frith 1987; Frith and Street 1992; Garofalo 1992; Peddie 2006), which focuses on music and social protest that seeks the inclusion of vulnerable and subaltern groups. However, there are almost no studies focusing on music as a tool for the social and political articulation of the wealthy, the white,

Marginal like you! 63

the hegemonic. Furthermore, to date there are no major publications that explicitly and exclusively approach upper-class people in contemporary Latin America as activists, citizens, or agents of political and cultural change. This chapter has at its core one of the book’s red threads; the question of whether an ‘upper-class’ identity obstructs or facilitates the expression of collective demands and the vindication of citizenship. Based on ethnography conducted in Lima, Peru in 2010 and 2011, it examines how the upper classes use music to approach previously rejected genres through fusion as an opportunity to construct a different and more active upper-class citizenship with access to cultural and political participation beyond the music context in a plural Lima. It centres on case studies of fusion musicians singing and representing political protest and change, such as La Mente, La Sarita, Bareto, and Colectivo Circo Band, and on their white upper-class audience. The first part of the chapter will discuss music consumption and music venues as alternative spaces of political participation, the second section will deconstruct, through specific case studies, the relationship between music, culture and citizenship, and the final section identifies links to other important issues discussed in this book, while also tracing how the topic connects to relevant areas in culture and policy, as they both have a strong nexus with citizenship. In previous works I have discussed in detail how the ‘alternative’ fusion scene, as an elite subculture, brings together people who want to differentiate themselves from the historically distant mainstream elites (c.f. Montero-Diaz 2016). In these fusion music spaces, difference is not ignored or forced to merge through mestizo aesthetics, but appreciated and meant to be seen and heard (Montero-Diaz 2018a). Through their subcultural capital and fandom, ‘alternatives’ seek to escape their historical “exclusion in exclusivity”,4 acquire and validate access to local popular culture and construct belonging to a micro community (‘alternative’ white upper classes) and macro community (as part of Peru) (Montero-Diaz 2018b). Searching for belonging via the fusion scene has enabled them to reflect on the self, their whiteness, their historical guilt, their role in society and their national belonging (Montero-Diaz forthcoming). Using the language of citizenship allows us to dissect how white upper-class youth use culture and the arts in order to construct alternative citizenship practices and new spaces for political participation. Especially, since most Peruvians will perceive the elites as civic, but not cultural citizens, white upper-class identity is often considered culturally impoverished. As one of my collaborators put it, “we might have the resources, but we are culturally naked” (male, 28, focus group March 2011). Stevenson (2003, 346) reminds us that deep interrogations and evaluations of the self through cultural praxes are essential for building cultural citizenship, as new narratives of the self enable individuals to imagine, create and choose different ways of practicing connections, dialogues and interactions between ‘self’ and ‘other’. Furthermore, music can act as a mediator of social class and race, offering utopian spaces where different identities, ethnicities, and geographies kept distant by post-colonial legacies are allowed and encouraged to interact (c.f Moehn 2007,

64  Fiorella Montero-Diaz

183). For most of my upper-class collaborators, fusion fandom and consumption is a space to recreate themselves as emotional and political beings. It provides opportunities for self-reflection and transformation when feelings of guilt about their historical social role make them reflect on their responsibility towards their country and their fellow countrymen and -women; borrowing Moehn’s words, it offers “a refuge following reflection” (2007, 185) and an invitation to mobilise. It is where they can reimagine the citizen.

The role of music consumption in the transformation of music venues into alternative spaces of political participation Political scientist Alberto Vergara (2013) argues that as a consequence of Peru’s economic growth, citizenship has come to be viewed as a commodity acquired and consolidated through consumption; therefore, more consumption equates to more citizenship. This argument goes hand in hand with other existing theorisations of the ‘whitening’ effect of money (Bruce 2007, 101; Garner 2007, 91–92). These theoretical tropes argue that phenotype is secondary to wealth in the construction of whiteness, and that wealthy individuals are more likely to be perceived and accepted as ‘white’. According to Vergara, money not only ‘whitens’ an individual, but also validates citizenship. I would argue that cultural consumption contributes to activating citizenship, protest and activism among white upperclass youth. Their citizenship is not validated by money, but by integration in a cultural sphere and by active political participation through culture. Some of the main reasons for this political reactivation is their frustration and disappointment with the political class, particularly following the internal war (Montero-Diaz 2016, 205); regret and guilt stemming from belonging to a social group that has distanced itself from the reality and struggle of others (Montero-Diaz 2016, 199); and frustration that their opinions are invisibilised because of their age, socioeconomic background and phenotype. This last reason will be examined in depth in this chapter. One of the consequences of ‘exclusion in exclusivity’ is the disempowerment of the young white upper classes in their pursuit of cultural citizenship.5 The literature on cultural citizenship mainly theorises on issues of inclusion and exclusion from the perspective of the excluded. The young white upper classes have not been deprived of their rights, voice or social representation. However, in Lima, this sector of society has remained on the margins of political action and real involvement in their own society’s improvement, an attitude encouraged by family, school and society at large. After a long period of political apathy and disempowerment, there is now an awakening to their political voice in the midst of generalised mistrust of the motivations behind white upper-class enactment of citizenship. The young white upper-class ‘alternatives’ in Lima who participated in my study do not feel recognised as equal members of the community. They are routinely

Marginal like you! 65

dismissed as not belonging to Peruvian culture. In a discourse that conflates ‘the authentic’ with marginality, their experiences of the country are often devalued. Therefore, a broader Lima outside privileged circles recognises that they have ‘power’ but does not validate their experiences as part of the Peruvian reality, claiming that they do not have ‘real knowledge or culture’. ‘Alternatives’ feel excluded from the broader Lima experience, which they seek out through music. As citizenship is achieved through intersubjective participation (Crossley 2001), empathy in our everyday life enables us to understand the attitude of ‘the other’ and to attempt to construct collective understanding. Music generates an opportunity to listen and perform with the once perceived ‘other’, normalising new social behaviours and social relations, challenging the status quo and enacting subversion from within. Culture seems to be an ideal vehicle for self-­transformation, which resonates with other scholars’ examination of the role of music as a technology of conflict transformation and change, and as a vehicle for a political voice (Turino 2008; Longhurst 2007; Montero-Diaz 2016 among others). The fusion scene is what scholars such as Mark Chou, Jean-Paul Gagnon and Lesley Pruitt (2015) would call a ‘mini-public scene’, where music is performed for small numbers at intimate venues. Though it may be small in terms of numbers, it has the power to rally youth and exercise political pressure. ‘Mini-public scenes’ constitute contact zones for interaction where disparate identities, cultures and geographies kept and mapped separately are allowed to interact (Moehn 2007, 183), and where music spaces are politically occupied, conquering the ears and then the minds of a class that could be more engaged with their fellow Peruvians – first through empathetic interactions, and then through active participation as allies in civil causes.

Music, culture and citizenship Some of Lima’s fusion groups, such as La Mente6 and La Sarita,7 were from the outset conscious of their political message, while others, such as Bareto,8 became aware of their political role after the audiences reacted to what they perceived as a political message and demanded even more explicit political music material from them. These groups all constructed a ‘street’ performance style (e.g. La Mente performing bare-chested with t-shirts wrapped around their heads, evoking the style of construction workers in Lima; Bareto in colourful cumbia shirts and later in t-shirts with political messages)9 and once their message reached the audience, it was the audience which disseminated the political message and gave feedback to the musicians, strengthening the social impact. This, for Nicolás Duarte of La Mente, is ‘cultural violence’: This country, after what happened in the conquest and the two wars we have had and the internal war we experienced, has not undergone violent change. We are a society which has rather shunned those violent changes, shunned that occasional need for violence in order to generate changes, and what has

66  Fiorella Montero-Diaz

not happened in the streets, what has not happened in politics, is happening in culture. . . . What I do think, I think that whatever might happen, it will be violent, because technology allows it. And with violent I am not referring to there being blood but that there be changes. (Nicolás Duarte, interview, November 2010) As part of this ‘cultural violence’ expressed in imaginary reconfigurations, La Mente invited Laurita Pacheco, an Andean harpist, to play with them in concert, creating a fusion between dub, ska and huayno. Bareto invited Wilindoro Cacique, lead singer of Amazonian psychedelic cumbia band Juaneco y Su Combo. La Sarita went from six core group members to 11 members from different socio-economic and racial backgrounds. This in itself was a way to visibilise a particular citizenship practice and encourage, through music, turning these practices into action.10 Many of La Mente’s young upper-class followers perceive their songs as allegories for changing political attitudes and defending one’s personal ideologies. For example: Somos la Mente . . . Básicamente . . . De tus ideas los remitentes Y de repente Ya no es urgente Ser tan decente ni tan valiente

We’re la Mente . . . basically We send your ideas quite simply And suddenly No urgent necessity For great decency or bravery

Tus brazos no te oyen Tus pies no quieren avanzar Nada en tu sistema te va ayudar a regresar Ya eres parte de la Mente Y aunque mucho te lamentes Aquí te vas a quedar

Your arms won’t obey Your feet aren’t’ making way Nothing in your system will help you return You’re part of La Mente from today And no matter what you say You’re here to stay

Excerpt: “La Mente” – La Mente (Electropical 2007). Composers: Ricardo Wiesse Hamann and  Nicolás Lucar Soldevilla.11 In this song, Nicolás and Ricardo seem to be inviting their upper-class listeners to join them as “part of La Mente”. After this, they assure their audience that “nothing in [their] system will help [them] to return”. They will stay and defend their mentes [minds], where “nobody can enter”. Audience members often quoted excerpts from La Mente’s lyrics when I  spoke to them, highlighting a ‘music revolution’. There are references to change in other examples of La Mente’s lyrics, from different albums and years, reproduced ahead. The first example refers

Marginal like you! 67

to the upper class embracing previously rejected music as part of their ideological change, the second invites the audiences to join their protest against the government as a diverse – but united – Peru and the final example lambasts Peru’s media and those who just accumulate expensive formal education but know nothing about Peruvian reality and so do not act to change it. They also stress the need to learn from the ‘street’, from everyday life experiences. Música que no sonaba, música que no radiaba, Música que se prendía justo cuando tú te apagabas. Suena una radio en el techo y mancha el pecho de tu ploma ciudad. Tus hijos se enajenan y los hijos de tus hijos nacen presos de esta vieja nueva novedad. Los años regresan calcinados pero ahora son nuestros aliados, tu tiempo se va acabando y afuera se está escuchando música degenerada, música desempleada, música que se maquillaba . . .

Music that wasn’t playing, music that wasn’t radiating. Music that switched on just as you were switching off. A radio playing on the roof staining the chest of your grey city. Your children grow apart, and your children’s children are born trapped by the same new story. The years return burnt to the bone but now they are our allies, your time is running out and outside it’s playing degenerate music, unemployed music, music that was putting on makeup . . .

Excerpt: “Radio Funeral” – La Mente (Electropical 2007). Composers: Ricardo Wiesse Hamann and Nicolás Lucar Soldevilla. Digo basta ya, aquí ya llegó. Ahora se le salió el indio a la Mente, si eres de los nuestros alza la bandera, en tiempo de paz, en tiempo de guerra. Escucha la sangre que te está llamando, laten con la bulla que ahora mismo estás bailando: Ritmos africanos, cuerdas del oriente, vientos de los andes, bombos de la mente, cortos son los pasos y muy larga la distancia pero cada paso dado tiene mucha relevancia . . . Excerpt: “El indio de la Mente” – La Mente (Para los Muertos y los Vivientes 2009). Composers: Ricardo Wiesse Hamann and Nicolás Lucar Soldevilla.

I say enough, it stops here. We’re done playing nice, if you’re one of ours raise the flag, in times of peace, in times of war. Listen to the blood calling you, throbbing with the racket you are dancing to: African rhythms, oriental strings, Andean winds, bombos of the mind, the steps are short and the distance very long, but every move matters . . .

68  Fiorella Montero-Diaz

El mundo es mucho más grande de lo que piensas tú. ¡Cuánta gente educada que no sabe nada! ¡Cómo abunda en el mundo la ignorancia ilustrada! No funciona el cerebro sin el corazón, así tenga título a nombre de la nación. ¡Cuánto tarado educado con maestría y postgrado! Hay que graduarse en la vida, aprender de la calle la vieja saliva. A mí no me convence la prensa porque dice muchas cosas pero nunca lo que piensa, a mí no me entretiene el entretenimiento que se hace millonario con el sufrimiento. A mí no me convence la crítica de corazón seco y alma raquítica, a mí no me convencen los medios porque son la enfermedad y se creen el remedio . . .

The world is so much bigger than you think. How many educated people who don’t know a thing! The world has an abundance of enlightened ignorance. Without a heart the brain doesn’t function, no matter your diploma from a fancy institution! How many educated idiots with a masters and postgrad! You have to graduate in life, learn from the street the old saliva. I’m not convinced by the press, because it says many things, but never what it thinks, I’m not entertained by entertainment making multi-million gains on others’ pain. I’m not taken in by dry-hearted soul-stunted criticism, I’m not convinced by the press, because it’s an illness that thinks it’s medicine . . .

Excerpt: “Sabiduría Popular” – La Mente (Música 2012). Composers: Ricardo Wiesse Hamann and Nicolás Lucar Soldevilla. The venues where this music happens are small alternative spaces where people from different backgrounds come into contact. In this setting, the songs’ messages acquire another level of undertones and urgency. According to my field observations and interviews with audience members, it seems that a section of the young white upper class becomes aware of their self, their role and their responsibilities through contact with the other in shared music practice. This ‘experiencing’ the other becomes an attempt to blur the boundaries of identity/difference in order to find themselves as the ‘common citizen’ and to build a commonality, initially of temporal experience, subsequently through the reproduction of behaviour and normalisations (“sub-politics” for Anthony Elliot 2001, 54), and finally through social movements created and generated through cultural points. In these music spaces, people interact, challenge the limits of social imagination and build a new citizenship that contests the traditional upper-class idea of ‘decent citizenship’. Bareto’s music in Cumbia was perceived by some as a utopian creation for comfortable and fashionable celebration of diversity. It was in 2012, with Ves Lo Que Quieres Ver, that Bareto acquired a clearer political message beyond the

Marginal like you! 69

music symbolism of playing the music of the rejected ‘other’ and enacted a sonic protest in a new album. With its own compositions and lyrics, Bareto undoubtedly transformed its music into a class critique from the inside. For example, the following song critiques the ruling class’ ambitions of money, real estate and mining: Y hablas y háblame de la tierra, como si fuera de tu propiedad. Y cuentas y cuentas en tu billetera como si nunca fuera a cerrar. Pobre la gente que no lo vio, pobre la gente que le creyó. Ahí donde había mucho más brillo, tanto brillo los deslumbró. Ahí donde sonaba tantísimo ruido, tanto ruido los confundió. ¿Y en dónde te aplicamos la anestesia? Porque ya es hora de extirpar esa idea en tu cabeza que no te deja ya ni enfocar.

And you talk and talk to me about the land, like you own the lot. And you recount and count [the money] in your wallet, like it’ll never close up. Poor people who didn’t see it, poor people who believed them. It was all so shiny there, all that shine dazzled them. It was all so noisy there, all that noise confused them. So where do you want the anaesthesia? Because it’s time for the excision of that idea in your head, that blurs even your vision. 

Excerpt: “La Anestesia” – Bareto (Ves lo que Que Quieres Ver 2012). Composer: Rolo Gallardo.12 Since 2007, new fusion bands have appeared on the scene, which mix chicha, cumbia and huaynos in order to make the audience dance but not necessarily to convey any explicit political message. This is the case of Colectivo Circo Band (CCB) (Figure 4.1), created by a group of upper-class friends who met each other doing theatre and released their first album (Pawaun!) in 2010. Band members consciously linked their music to the circus concept: it is eclectic, and their costumes theatrical. They describe it as “Global Party World Music, Rock N Roll Tropical Collage” (Band’s Facebook profile) and frequently include huayno and cumbia in their fusions. With a tuba player in their band, who is also a member of a banda patronal,13 their emblematic song is Entrando a La Noche (‘Entering La Noche’), a huayno that indexes an orquesta típica.14 In 2010, the group was made up of eight members. Most of them came from the same socio-economic background, but were very diverse in age and gender.15 We have gender diversity, which is extremely important. We have very different cosmovisiones [worldviews], because the worldview a man like Pancho

70  Fiorella Montero-Diaz

Figure 4.1  Colectivo Circo Band. Source: Alfonso Silva-Santiesteban, Photographer: Alejandra Devescovi. Used with permission of Alfonso Silva-Santiesteban, Jorge Miranda, Luigi Valdizán Cassinelli, and Alejandra Devescovi.

can have, a man who is an agricultural engineer, Dutch, who lives in Peru married to a woman from Carhuaz [Andes], who plays in bandas patronales, compared with the worldview Alejandra Pizarro [trumpet player] can have, who is from the Opus Dei and very boldly confronts a band full of strange men and plays the trumpet, which very few women do.  .  .  , I  think there is diversity, perhaps not in socioeconomic strata, but in how the world is perceived. (Luigi Casinelli – CCB, interview, October 2010) CCB does not have any stated political position comparable to those of groups such as Bareto, La Sarita or la Mente. Nonetheless, CCB’s members are keenly aware of Peru’s social problems and that their choice of genres might be interpreted as a political stance. As upper-class musicians performing for upper-class audiences, the band explains its adoption of genres associated with indigeneity and choledad [choloness]16 in terms of encouraging their audiences to look beyond their ‘allowed spaces’. This is perceived and embraced by their white upper-class audience: Colectivo doesn’t seem very political, but I see it as highly political. They celebrate unity, happiness, love . . . remind us that, well, now we can celebrate.

Marginal like you! 71

In the 1980s and 1990s we were fucked, but now we’re not experiencing the same things. And singing those lyrics to the rhythm of a buen huayno (‘groovy huayno’) reminds us that now we can believe in an inclusive social project, which unites Andeans and people from the Coast. (Mauricio 32, focus group, March 2011) In a post-war country, the concept of celebration is perceived as a peace metaphor: If this mentality of freedom from prejudice, of carnival with the masks, of not seeing the other person, if you translate that into a sentir de vida [perception of life], which is what we try to express, and more people do that, things will improve. (Alfonso Silva Santiesteban – CCB, interview, October 2010) At the same time, the members of CCB state that they are making this kind of music and celebration because they like the aesthetics but that they are not interested in vindicating Andeanness or Peru’s mystical past or even feeding the nation’s optimistic frenzy surrounding the gastronomic boom.17 They play huaynos because they like them, and some of them feel they do not need to take a political stand in order to disseminate a message of unity and celebration: I’m against the image of “I am Peruvian because I eat papa a la huancaina [traditional Peruvian dish], but I treat the waiter who brings it to me like a nobody”. So, that is the [corporate] social responsibility discourse in which we are all good, where the mining company is good because it built a canteen for the children and threw them a chocolatada [Christmas hot chocolate party]. There comes a point when you have to take a stance. We have not taken one yet, or it’s still inclusion, but I do have a very clear position in this aspect. I do not want to be that willing stooge, part of “we are all good” and “oh how nice”. (Alfonso Silva Santiesteban – CCB, interview, October 2010) For several scholars, participation is an essential component of citizenship and democracy (Dalton 2008; McCaffrie and Akram 2014; Chou, Gagnon, and Pruitt 2015). Through fandom participation, publics are invited to reimagine the self (politically, empathetically and spiritually), their geographical spaces and their individual/communal place (c.f. Fredericks 2014). For example, La Sarita’s concerts are often referred to by upper-class youths as a religious ceremony, a place where they congregate, sing together, connect, learn from others and are motivated to act politically and socially.18 Can music participation trigger social conversion? Many white upper-class youths say they feel directionless and have no local and national identity. Could fusion music provide an answer to what it is to be a Peruvian citizen? These are the words Julio

72  Fiorella Montero-Diaz

Pérez, lead singer of La Sarita, used to address the audience during a concert in 2012: Thank you music for guiding us, being with us, for giving us the possibility to share and celebrate our diversity. . . . We thank you all for being here today and it is our hope that we have made you feel a little of what a real homeland is. Beyond marketing campaigns, which are only that, a homeland is built with bonds of affection, bonds of respect, of equality. The day someone wants to take advantage of your countryman from the Amazon, your countryman from the Andes, your countryman far, far from where you are and you become indignant and make demands of the authorities and call for justice, that day you will be Peruvian, that day you will be a patriot, that day you will be a Peruvian citizen. (Julio, lead singer, La Sarita – 2012)19 Music offers room for more than entertainment, it is also a place of reflection and action (spaces where people turn into “spect-‘actors’ ” [Chou, Gagnon, and Pruitt 2015, 609]). In the case of La Sarita, this band takes the spiritual dimension beyond concert venues to audience minds with a call to reflection, soul-searching and the internalisation of new beliefs and attitudes: My religion is in me, my conversion is the new Peruvianess, a more individual one, more real, with more solidarity, more transformative. I am a new person, my mind is Peruvian, it becomes indignant and dances. (Xaviera 26, personal communication, March 2011) Members of several fusion bands (Bareto, La Mente, CCB and La Sarita, among others) highlight the importance of having a political presence through their music, of going beyond performance. They are particularly aware that their style of fusion makes the audiences “look outside their own box” (CCB, October 2010), in a way “resensitizing while presenting the unfamiliar” (Abi-Ezzi 2008, 100). Music fandom is crucial in this process, as research has shown that “highly identified people internalise the values of the groups to which they belong” (Chou, Gagnon, and Pruitt 2015, 61), and here we find the link between fan-group participation and potential activism. Music fandom can have a significant impact on our future values, identity, and actions. We can’t be apathetic anymore, we can’t only join other people’s protest. We are conscious citizens, we can start our own rebellion, our own protest . . . an elite protest! One beyond the music scene and dialogues. We are now in the streets, some people don’t believe in us, but we are expressing a political posture, we are demanding justice, and what is better, we are changing the

Marginal like you! 73

elites, at least part of them. If more people with economic power joined us, the future would be different. (Alberto 25, Skype communication, January 2013) Given its trans-global nature, fandom has been associated with cosmopolitan and global citizenship (e.g. Plante et al. 2014). Global citizenship is an identity based on values and behaviours that aim to better the world as a whole rather than focusing on the self and specific communities (Reysen, Larey, and Katzarska-Miller 2012). The betterment of the world should not be interpreted only as the territory outside Peru, but also the spaces outside the subject’s own community and direct benefit. For example, most white upper-class youths live on the coast, in Lima, but they ally with Andean inhabitants of towns threatened by big mining corporations; they might also denounce state violence against protesters in the Amazon.20 However, such political upper-class voices have also been discussed in the context of post-citizenship (Jasper 1997) or a type of middle-class radicalism (Parkin 1968). They are depicted in public discourse as engaging only for ‘the pleasure of protest’, as post-citizenship movements composed of people who possess the benefits of standard citizenship and benefit from a good education and socio-economic background. They are viewed with disbelief as their protest or activism does not arise from marginal experience (see also Peirano, Chapter 3), and they are only joining as allies to achieve benefits for others. These views, of course, undermine upper-class motivations and actions regarding political activism, while at the same time invalidating their willingness to join forces in protest, reducing this act to a sort of charity work, a privileged leisure activity, not a fight for survival. What is noteworthy is the link between the actors behind the activation of the upper-class fusion music scene, the proliferation of interclass and interethnic empathetic collaborations from 2006 onwards, the transformation of music venues into spaces of dialogue and discussion for musicians and audiences, and the promotion of social action, fan involvement and leadership in diverse collectives, such as Ni Una Menos [Not one (woman) less],21 Yo Apoyo al Matrimonio Igualitario [I support equal marriage], Alerta Contra el Racismo en Perú [Alert against racism in Peru], Los Nuevos Peruanos [New Peruvians],22 Contra las esterilizaciones forzadas [Against forced sterilisations], No a Keiko [No to Keiko (Fujimori)]23 and Parió Paula [Music Activisim Percussion Group], among others. Several of the collaborators I  interviewed highlighted that in a country like Peru, where politics are so corrupted and lack credibility, it is culture that is driving social change, particularly music as audiences can engage with political messages and stances. I liked La Sarita for its staging, the political aspect was not very important to me, the band in itself entertained me. But as I  started liking the music

74  Fiorella Montero-Diaz

more and more, the message got into my head, it made me think. My friends who were fans of La Sarita discussed other things, not just the staging, and that’s when it clicked; there was something deeper, which my superficial side refused to acknowledge. I feel that the music entered first and the message afterwards. (male, 26, no more information provided by request of the collaborator) Allowing for a different reading, could these upper-class manifestations of citizenship and protest perhaps be a way to unite people from different class perspectives through everyday resistance to achieve a shared objective (c.f Moehn 2007; Ni Mhurchu 2016)? Perhaps they do not only benefit the marginal, but also young upper-class youths as they finally find a way to belong to a polity. Can they provide a way to forge a relationship with the state and build a relationship with others within the same state and in the same geographical space (c.f. Tubino 2008)? If so, it would indicate a consolidation of the greatly desired unity and an expression of a confidence to demand changes from outside and within the elites by bringing political pressure to bear from different sides.

Final thoughts Culture, everyday life and, by extension, music are intrinsically related to emotions and belonging, the imagination of oneself and the other, and the negotiation of a social role. Music is constitutive of agency and a medium for shaping the self. “It is not about life but is rather implicated in the formulation of life; it is something that gets into action, something that is a formative, albeit often unrecognised, resource of social agency” (De Nora 2000, 152–53). I have argued in previous articles that music links people’s dreams and desires to their ordinary lives, and as dreams of a different life translate into a real change in habits, a normalisation of different lifestyles and relationships occurs (c.f. Montero-Diaz 2016, 207). While it is true that the likes of Aristotle, Locke, Hobbes and Marshall did not consider culture a valuable or active element of citizenship, in Latin America, it is culture that is contributing to generating and shaping notions of identity, citizenship, representation and resistance. Music practices illustrate how culture is lived and how culture may be reshaped over time. The change in ordinary life imaginaries and attitudes can contribute to challenging systemic prejudices and stigmas and, subsequently, can normalise different values and ways of perceiving others. Hall (1990, 225) argues for the fluidity and dynamism of cultural identity: it is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as ‘being’, cultural identity is in constant flux. The white upper classes in the Peruvian capital are an example of this: the interplay between their class, their cohorts and a broader Lima gives rise to different ways of performing citizenship.

Marginal like you! 75

Through the consumption of fusion music, the upper classes reflect, confront, dream, and activate their citizenship while finding ways to ‘do’ by making a difference in their own lives, families and communities. Peruvian scholars Vich and Lescano (2016, 220) have argued that cultural policies articulate ‘doing’ and ‘dreaming’, connecting public administration with political imagination. Examining fusion consumption can enhance our understanding of the attempts of the young white upper classes to activate their cultural citizenship; first in cultural circuits and then in public spheres. Applying this understanding to the design and implementation of cultural policies might enable the government to harness the transformative potential of truly inclusive policies by framing culture as an active agent against discrimination, exclusion and racism and a powerful vehicle to discuss and perform – and thereby activate – citizenship.

Notes 1 I use the term “allowed spaces” for places perceived by the upper classes as sheltered from difference and poverty, where they can allow themselves to experience the city comfortably. 2 Cholo was originally a pejorative term in Peru used to refer to people of Andean ethnicity, background, phenotype or cultural traits. More recently, this term has been used to vindicate marginalised identities by projecting non-assimilation. 3 For more on “white upper class cholos” and discussions on whiteness and class, please see Montero-Diaz (forthcoming). 4 “Exclusión en la exclusividad” [exclusion in exclusivity] is a phrase used by several of my young collaborators to express the contradictions of having an exclusive lifestyle, while feeling excluded and distant from the shared urban experience of the majority for the same reason. 5 Cultural citizenship has been aptly theorised as the enactment of the right to be different while belonging through democratic participation (Rosaldo 1994, 402), coupled with the satisfaction of demands for full inclusion in a social community (Pakulski 1997). 6 La Mente, a much favoured band among the white upper-class “alternatives”, released its first album in 2007: Sonidos del Sistema La Mente – Electropical. It was founded in 2006 by Nicolás Duarte and Ricardo Wiesse, who sought a “liberating space for their lyrics and communication” (Nicolás Duarte, interview, November  2010). La Mente plays ska, rock, reggae and cumbia, and uses electronic sequences on stage. 7 La Sarita, one of the most iconic fusion bands, embodied young middle- and workingclass protest against President Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s. After the war, it grew into a very diverse 11-piece ensemble which openly promoted social inclusion and political reflection through the celebration of diversity. 8 Bareto was formed in 2003 as a reggae, ska and rock cover band. In September 2008, it released its album entitled Cumbia, a tribute to chicha and Amazonian psychedelic cumbia. With Cumbia, Bareto came to symbolise interclass and interethnic integration and collaboration, as it brought previously marginalised music genres to the attention of the white upper classes. In 2012, the band released Ves lo que quieres ver [You See What You Want to See], which featured more political lyrics. 9 For more on fashion and visual representations of fusion performance see MonteroDiaz (2018b, 112–13).

76  Fiorella Montero-Diaz 10 Over time this has contributed to a shift in power dynamics from white upper-class fusionistas to empowered indigenous music leads. For more on this see Montero-Diaz (2008a). 11 All material by La Mente used herein has been included with the permission of Ricardo Wiesse Hamann and Nicolás Lucar Soldevilla (Duarte) on behalf of La Mente. 12 This material has been included with the permission of Rolo Gallardo and Jorge Olazo on behalf of Bareto. 13 A musical ensemble typically comprised of brass instruments, saxophones, bass drum and snare drum. Fiestas patronales (Catholic patron saint festivals) across the Andes are often animated by these ensembles, which are usually smaller than orquestas tipicas. 14 An orquesta típica is a musical ensemble of saxophones, clarinets, a harp and a violin (see Romero 2001, 170). 15 The youngest member of these bands was 21 and the oldest almost 60. It is worth noting that most Lima fusion bands are all-male, including Bareto, La Sarita and Uchpa. Similarly, cumbia bands such as Grupo 5 and Hermanos Yaipén, and the successful upper-class salsa band Sabor y Control, are made up of men. Women are present in the fusion genre, but virtually only as soloists. This makes Colectivo Circo Band an unusually diverse fusion band. 16 Belonging to a cholo culture (see definition of cholo in Note 2). “Choloness” in contemporary Peru is seen as a form of celebratory non-assimilative mestizaje. Many upper-class fusion bands say that they are embracing their lost “choloness”. 17 Since the mid-2000s, fusion music and fusion gastronomy have been used to express a modern identity based on traditional elements of culture and as a means to boost national pride, especially in the aftermath of the internal war and economic crisis. 18 For more on the sacralisation of music fandom, see Montero-Diaz (2008b, 113–15). 19 www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mqqmetcFoQ (4.10). This quote first appeared in Spanish in the journal Anthropologica (Montero-Diaz 2018b, 114) in a discussion of discourses around fusion by fusion musicians in Lima. 20 E.g. Bagua and the forceful eviction of Awajún and Wambis protesters by the government causing the violent death of many police officers and natives (see more in Montero-Diaz 2016, 205). To hear the opinion of former President Alan García Pérez about the Bagua incident and his concept of modern Peruvian citizenship please see: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ekPeb6nMnw (Last accessed 8 May 2016). 21 An activist collective against femicides and violence against women in Peru. 22 A collective which promotes new citizenship attitudes and habits in Peru. www.facebook.com/LosNuevosPeruanos/ (Last accessed 1 June 2018). 23 According to its website, No a Keiko (NAK) is a citizen collective that has as its main objective to defeat Fujimorismo, as NAK considers it an antidemocratic movement which vindicates prisoner Alberto Fujimori, condemned due to severe crimes against humanity and corruption www.noakeiko.pe (accessed 1 June 18).

Discography Bareto. 2008. Cumbia. CD – Label: PlayMusic&Video. ———. 2012. Ves Lo Que Quieres Ver. CD – Label: PlayMusic&Video. Colectivo Circo Band. 2010. Pawaun! CD – Label: Phantom Records. La Mente Sonidos del Sistema. 2007. Electropical. CD – Label: Descabellado Discos del Perú.

Marginal like you! 77 ———. 2009. Para los Muertos y los Vivientes. CD  – Label: Descabellado Discos del Perú. ———. 2012. Música. CD – Label: Descabellado Discos del Perú.

Bibliography Abi-Ezzi, Karen. 2008. “Music as a Discourse of Resistance: The Case of Gilad Atzmon.” In Music and Conflict Transformation. Harmonies and Dissonances in Geopolitics, edited by Olivier Urbain, 93–103. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Ardito Vega, Wilfredo. 2010. “La experiencia de la mesa contra el racismo” (Draft). www.up.edu.pe/ciup/siteassets/lists/jer_jerarquia/editform/ardito.pdf. Accessed 28 September 2015. Ballinger, Robin. 1995. “Sounds of Resistance.” In Sounding Off! Musicas Subversion/Resistance/Revolution, edited by Ron Sakolsky and Fred Ho, 13–28. New York: Autonomedia. Barret, Leonard E. 1988. The Rastafarians: Sounds of Cultural Dissonance. Boston, MA: Beacon Press Books. Bruce, Jorge. 2007. Nos habiamos choleado tanto. Psicoanalisis y Racismo. Lima: Universidad de San Martin de Porres. Chou, Mark, Jean-Paul Gagnon, and Lesley Pruitt. 2015. “Putting Participation on Stage: Examining Participatory Theatre as an Alternative Site for Political Participation.” Policy Studies 36 (6): 607–22. Crossley, Nick. 2001. “Citizenship, Intersubjectivity and the Lifeworld.” In Culture & Citizenship, edited by Nick Stevenson, 33–46. London: Sage Publications. Dalton, Russell. 2008. “Citizenship Norms and the Expansion of Political Participation.” Political Studies 61 (1): 76–98. De Nora, Tia. 2000. Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Durand, Francisco. 2007. “La cultura criolla ha muerto.” La Primera, 29 January. www. laprimera.com.pe/noticia.php?IDnoticia=37958. Elliot, Anthony. 2001. “The Reinvention of Citizenship.” In Culture & Citizenship, edited by Nick Stevenson, 47–51. London: Sage Publications. Ellison, Mary. 1989. Lyrical Protest: Black Music’s Struggle Against Discrimination. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers. Eyerman, Ron, and Andrew Jamison. 1995. “Social Movements and Cultural Transformation: Popular Music in the 1960s’.” Media Culture & Society 17 (3): 449–68. Fredericks, Rosalind. 2014. “ ‘The Old Man is Dead’: Hip Hop and the Arts of Citizenship of Senegalese Youth.” Antipode 46 (1): 140–48. Frith, Simon. 1987. “Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music.” In Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance, and Reception, edited by Richard Leppert and Susan McClary, 133–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frith, Simon, and John Street. 1992. “Rock Against Racism and Red Wedge: From Music to Politics, from Politics to Music.” In Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, edited by Reebee Garofalo, 67–80. Boston: South End Press. Garner, Steve. 2007. Whiteness: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. Garofalo, Reebee. 1992. Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements. Boston: South End Press.

78  Fiorella Montero-Diaz Hall, Stuart. 1990. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford, 222–37. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Jasper, James M. 1997. The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Kogan, Liuba. 2009. Regias y conservadores: Mujeres y hombres de clase alta en la Lima de los noventa. Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Peru. Longhurst, Brian. 2007. Cultural Change and Ordinary Life. Maidenhead, UK: McGrawHill, Open University Press. Marshall, Thomas H. 1992. Citizenship and Social Class. London: Pluto. McCaffrie, Brendan, and Sadiya Akram. 2014. “Crisis of Democracy? Recognizing the Democratic Potential of Alternative Forms of Political Participation.” Democratic Theory 1 (2): 47–55. Moehn, Frederick. 2007. “Music, Citizenship, and Violence in Postdictatorship Brazil.” Latin American Music Review 28 (2): 181–219. Montero-Diaz, Fiorella. 2016. “Singing the War: Reconfiguring White Upper-Class Identity Through Fusion Music in Post-War Lima.” Ethnomusicology Forum 25 (2): 191–209. ———. 2018a. “Turning Things Around? From White Fusion Stars with Andean Flavour to Andean Fusion Stars with White Appeal.” Popular Music 37 (3): 424–43. ———. 2018b. “La música fusión, ¿verdadera inclusión? Una exploración de la escena fusión en Lima.” Anthropologica 36 (40): 97–119. ———. Forthcoming. “White Cholos? Discourses Around Race, Whiteness and Lima’s Fusion Music.” In Cultures of Anti-Racism, edited by Peter Wade and Ignacio Aguiló. London: ILAS. Ní Mhurchú, Aoileann. 2016. “Unfamiliar Acts of Citizenship: Enacting Citizenship in Vernacular Music and Language from the Space of Marginalized Intergenerational Migration.” Citizenship Studies 20 (2): 156–72. Pakulski, Jan. 1997. “Cultural Citizenship.” Citizenship Studies 1 (1): 73–86. Parkin, Frank. 1968. Middle Class Radicalism: The Social Bases of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers. Peddie, Ian, ed. 2006. The Resisting Muse: Popular Music and Social Protest. Aldershot: Ashgate. Plante, Courtney N., Sharon E. Roberts, Stephen Reysen, and Kathleen C. Gerbasi. 2014. “ ‘One of Us’: Engagement with Fandoms and Global Citizenship Identification.” Psychology of Popular Media Culture 3 (1): 49–64. Reysen, Stephen, Loretta W. Larey, and Iva Katzarska-Miller. 2012. “College Course Curriculum and Global Citizenship.” International Journal for Development Education and Global Learning 4 (3): 27–39. Romero, Raúl R. 2001. Debating the Past: Music, Memory and Identity in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press. Rosaldo, Renato. 1994. “Cultural Citizenship and Educational Democracy.” Cultural Anthropology 9 (3): 402–11. Stevenson, Nick, ed. 2001. Culture & Citizenship. London: Sage Publications. ———. 2003. “Cultural Citizenship in the ‘Cultural’ Society: A  Cosmopolitan Approach.”Citizenship Studies 7 (3): 331–48. Tubino, Fidel. 2008. “No una sino muchas ciudadanías: una reflexión desde el Perú y América Latina.” Cuadernos Interculturales 6 (10): 170–80.

Marginal like you! 79 Turino, Thomas. 2008. Music as Social Life. The Politics of Participation. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Vergara, Alberto. 2013. República Sin Ciudadanos. Lima: Planeta. Vich, Victor, and Gloria Lescano. 2016. “Politicas culturales en el Perú del nuevo milenio: avances, retrocesos y compromisos pendientes.” In Panorama da gestão cultural na Ibero-América, edited by Antonio Albino Canelas Rubim, Carlos Yañez Canal and Rubens Bayardo, 219–47. Salvador de Bahia: Edufba.

Part II

Politics

Chapter 5

“I would like citizenship to mean understanding the other” Relational notions of citizenship in a divided city Franka Winter Students of the middle classes in Latin America, and the Global South more broadly, have long been interested in the ways in which middle-class people relate to other socio-economic sectors and to themselves. These enquiries narrate the middle sectors in emerging economies primarily through their practices of distinction and segregation (Caldeira 2000; O’Dougherty 2002; Jones 2012; Zhang 2010), framing middle-classness as “a shared project of locating oneself in a new and legitimate space between two devalued social poles” (Liechty 2003, 67). Existing research thus overwhelmingly focuses on dynamics that separate the middle class from other classes (or construct these different sectors in the first place) and that drive them apart. Middle-class people are furthermore often portrayed as key drivers of distinction and socio-spatial segregation. In the Peruvian case, this argument is pervasive. For example, in a study of university students at Lima’s top private universities, Portocarrero (1993) reports that many of his participants were worried about the influx of poor internal migrants into the capital and perceived this as an “invasion” (a term that was suggested to them by Portocarrero) from which they needed to protect themselves. Sanz Gutiérrez (2014, 135) finds that emerging middle-class parents in contemporary Lima prefer private to state schools, in part because they allow them to avoid the “wrong kind of heterogeneity”, namely “children from the poorest and the most-at-risk and socially excluded sectors in Peruvian society”. In a study of maps drawn by students at one of Lima’s leading private universities, González Cueva (1995, 33, my translation) reports that for those from upperand upper-middle-class backgrounds, “knowledge of areas associated with lower social strata is not particularly desirable or appreciated”. He concludes that, “Having all the positive affective and practical referents within reach, they do not need it and furthermore consider visiting them incorrect and dangerous”. Gandolfo, in her ethnography of Lima, explains that growing up in the Peruvian capital implies growing accustomed to rules and restrictions that maintain boundaries between people of different socio-economic standing and accepting them as natural and sacred (2009, 4). As an opportunity to challenge these boundaries presents itself at a family dinner, she cannot find “the courage to unleash and then deal with the disturbance this transgression would set off” (2009, 35). These works paint a bleak

84  Franka Winter

picture of the Latin American middle classes and their ability to contribute to the task of building a more just, equal and integrated society. In this light, it seems that middle-class identities obstruct, rather than facilitate, a collective vindication of citizenship. While such doubt is partially justified, I hope that my own findings will offer cause for cautious optimism. My chapter draws on 47 extensive semi-structured interviews conducted in Lima in 20151 with university students and young professionals aged between 20 and 35 years – young “middle-class” people, as I call them, in accordance with their self-identification.2 While all but two of my informants located themselves somewhere on the middle-class spectrum (from “lower-middle class” over “middle class” to “upper-middle class”), their individual biographies varied substantially. For example, one of my informants was the daughter of a single mum who had migrated to Lima from the Andes and worked as a cleaner. My interviewee had completed a humanities degree at a renowned private university with the help of relationships, scholarships and her own hard work, but struggled to find appropriate paid employment. At the other end of the socio-economic spectrum, my sample featured a few individuals who others might describe as closer to the “traditional upper classes” (see Montero-Diaz, Chapter 4) – people with “good” (European) surnames, whose wealthy parents occupied positions of influence and who were successfully building impressive careers for themselves. Most, however, found themselves somewhere in between, and their individual biographies were too variegated and too interesting to fit neat categories and definitions. In this respect, they were representative of the Peruvian middle classes today, which are ever diverse, precarious and multidirectionally mobile. These interviews explored a range of issues surrounding the city, politics, activism and citizenship. Among other things, I asked my informants to describe their city and its biggest challenges and what “being a citizen” meant to them in this specific context. Drawing on these two questions, this chapter discusses my informants’ narratives of their city and a related citizenship discourse which I call a “relational” notion of citizenship (discussed later in this chapter). These discourses were inextricably intertwined with narratives of difference, commonality, division and unity. The young people I  spoke to in Lima perceived their city as a highly divided, unequal and conflict-prone place in which they acted as privileged agents. They dreamt of a future where divisions could be overcome and diverse citizens would respect each other and live together peacefully, although they sometimes struggled to imagine themselves as part of this process in practice. Their notions of citizenship clearly reflected both their critical and utopian narratives and the limitations resulting from their own involvement in an unequal reality. What does this add to the ethnographic debate on the middle classes in Latin America today? While existing contemporary ethnographic works in the field highlight important issues, their overwhelming focus on distinction and segregation makes it hard to see practices and discourses that contest these patterns and foster encounter, dialogue and integration instead.

“Citizenship to mean understanding the other” 85

My informants’ narratives of the city and their notions of citizenship will challenge this consensus and highlight the complexity of middle-class subjectivities and desires in their relationship with difference, commonality, division and unity. While my research recognizes the reality of increasing levels of urban segregation and fortification (Bensús 2016; Plöger 2007), and the role middle-class people play in these processes, it shows that the opposite is also true and has yet received very little attention in ethnographic middle-class research to date. Space, class and incivility are central to my informants’ narratives of their city, their civic and political discourses and practices. However, my informants’ accounts often differ from those described in the literature in surprising and unexpected ways, shedding new light on middle-class youth around the world.

Narratives of the city By exploring how middle-class people narrate their city and how they identify and frame its problems, we can learn a great deal about their values, fears and dreams. A common theme in my informants’ narratives of the city refers to difficult relationships between the inhabitants of Lima, painting a picture of a deeply divided and unequal city where citizens interact in violent and hostile ways. Division, segregation and “everyday incivilities” (Holston 2008, 275) between citizens worried many of the young people I interviewed. These widespread critical narratives reveal a profound yearning for greater integration, trust and reconciliation (see also Montero-Diaz 2016). Bubble talk: narratives of segregation and middle-class isolation Research on the Peruvian middle classes and their relationship with wider society has largely concentrated on socio-spatial segregation, constructing and reproducing a discourse I call “bubble talk”. This discourse highlights boundary work (Lamont and Molnár 2002) and seclusion, and deemphasizes contact and interaction. Several studies of the city and its more privileged sectors highlight how middle- and upper-class people in Lima limit their own experience of the city by adhering to strict boundaries and hierarchies, both in their spatial movements and in their interactions with people from other socio-economic backgrounds. For example, in her ethnographic account of Lima, Gandolfo reflects on her own lack of familiarity with large areas of the city. She describes these as “regions of denied experience” which are “surrounded with all sorts of limits and prohibitions” (2009, 4). In his study of maps, González Cueva (1994, 1995) shows that upper- and upper-middle-class students in particular adhered to spatially and socio-economically limited circuits of the city and knew little about the less affluent areas, which they associated with dirt, chaos and danger. He argues that imagined boundaries guide the wealthier inhabitants of Lima in their use of the city and define where they feel able or unable to go. Montero-Diaz (2014, 48; see

86  Franka Winter

also Montero-Diaz, Chapter 4) similarly argues that the traditional white upper classes of Lima practice “self-exclusion in exclusivity”, confining themselves to “allowed spaces”, or “safe, poverty-free places for the upper classes to live in and transit ‘comfortably’ ”. This scholarly narrative of the Peruvian middle and upper classes is compelling and resonates with the experience of many in the more privileged upper sectors of the middle-class spectrum. Several of my informants who self-identified as “upper-middle class” produced similar accounts of their own socio-spatial biographies. Recalling their sheltered upbringing and expressing befuddlement at the vast areas of the city they did not know, they used graphic terms such as “bubbles” or “bunkers” to describe their isolation. Likewise, several of my ­upper-middle-class informants referred to the prohibitive character of sociospatial boundaries in ways that evoke Montero-Diaz’s (Chapter  4) notion of “allowed spaces” and Gandolfo’s (2009) “regions of denied experience”. For example, one of my informants critically described middle-class childhoods (albeit not her own) as “cloistered” and “locked-up” (Chaska, 30). Another, who self-identified as “upper-middle-class”, recalled that when she was a child, her parents would “never allow me to leave the neighbourhood, because it’s dangerous, you might be hit by a car, whatever” (Daniela, 25). In contrast to the consensus that middle-class people approve of segregation (discussed earlier), however, most of my informants were highly critical of what they perceived as a detached lifestyle where the middle and upper classes “turn their backs” on the rest of society, as one of them put it. For many of my informants, “life in a bubble” was particularly problematic because of its impact on citizens’ knowledge of each other’s reality, and in consequence on their ability to form positive relationships and develop a shared identity. They were thus keen to “pop these bubbles a bit and allow for a little more dialogue and for people to get to know more of reality” (Tomás, 23). Narratives of encounter: (in)civility in public space The dominant scholarly discourse and my upper-middle-class informants’ reflections discussed previously give the impression of a highly segregated city where, as Caldeira (2000, 310) describes in her seminal analysis of urban segregation in São Paulo, “middle and upper-class people circulate in private cars while others use public transportation [and] there is [thus] little contact in public among people from different social classes. No common spaces bring them together”. Nevertheless, this impression does not stand up to closer inspection: while the literature tends to ascribe this type of boundary work to the “middle classes” as such, my research (and indeed, González Cueva’s study before me) shows that this is not a universal experience that affects everyone in the “middle classes” in the same way, but is particularly pronounced in the traditional upper-middle classes. Following the massive internal migrations starting in the middle of the twentieth

“Citizenship to mean understanding the other” 87

century, it is generally recognized that the Peruvian middle classes have become highly diverse (Arellano 2010). As I explained earlier, this diversity is reflected in my sample. González Cueva shows that his middle- and lower-middle-class respondents’ realm of movement was much broader than that of their upper-middle-class and upper-class peers, reflecting the need to use a more diverse range of spaces for consumption, study and recreation and to travel between these spaces using public transport. This observation matches my own findings, as those of my informants who came from less privileged backgrounds tended to have more variegated biographies of class and space. For most of my informants, their experience of the city was thus characterized more by interaction and encounter than by segregation. These experiences have to date received much less scholarly attention. On the following pages, I shall address my informants’ narratives of encounters with strangers in public space and show how these are intertwined with a notion of civility that revolves around relationships between strangers. Most of my informants perceived public spaces, such as public transport, traffic, and “the street” in general, as intensely aggressive and hostile. The following excerpts from my interviews with Alejandra and Gabriela, both of them social scientists, are representative of many of my informants’ experience of interactions in public space, in particular in traffic and public transport: I think that driving in this city exactly shows everything that’s wrong with this country. Everything, right? I mean . . . the transport system, the driving, the cars. . . . It’s exactly everything that’s wrong. People always want to be first, they always push you, they always just squeeze their car through. They don’t think about you, they only think about themselves, about “I need to get to wherever I want to go first”, right? They don’t respect the pedestrian, they don’t adjust their power, [they don’t think] “I  could kill this person”, but [instead] they think “I don’t care, I want to get there!” Right? . . . So everything that’s bad/ It’s like an analogy! . . . Like, I want, I like, I’m going to do this, because I like it, right? The traffic lights have barely changed to green and behind you it’s already “BLOOOOOT!” right? They honk without even thinking, gosh, this is a problem for the rest, it makes people uncomfortable – waiting for just one second, not even two seconds, won’t keep you from using the road. (Gabriela, 26) [On my way here today], I took the micro [bus] . . . and there was a lot of traffic. . . . And what was the reason for the traffic jam? It was because on a bridge/ I am not sure . . . either a person fell from a building, or decided to . . . harm themselves, or they were hit by a car or something. In any case, there was a person on the road, right? And I was so shocked by all the people who

88  Franka Winter

were watching this like a show, right? . . . It’s hard to understand that, right? How one can sometimes be so removed from other people’s empathy. I mean how people find it so hard to be empathetic. (Alejandra, 27) My informants’ experience of public space will come as no surprise to many readers, as anthropologists have long argued that middle- and upper-class people in Latin America perceive shared, public spaces (and the poor who populate them) as uncivilized (Pow 2007; O’Dougherty 2002, Chapter 7; Srivastava 2012; Caldeira 2000). Caldeira in particular offers a striking account of São Paulo, whose street life she describes as “uncivil” and “aggressive”. Her theorization of civility is useful for an interrogation of my informants’ accounts of interaction and encounter in Lima. Drawing on Jane Jacobs and Iris Marion Young, Caldeira defines civility as “dignified, formalized, and reserved relationships  .  .  . kept separate from people’s private lives” (Caldeira 2000, 300) and highlights the modern key values of openness and heterogeneity, where “differences remain unassimilated” (Young, quoted in Caldeira 2000, 301). Her theoretical references (in particular, Young) explicitly reject communitarian approaches and their homogenizing and exclusionary tendencies. The incivility of public life in Latin American cities, in Caldeira’s approach, is thus a reflection of their closed character and their inability to accommodate difference (Caldeira 2000, 304). My informants’ narratives and the notions of civility and incivility expressed in them simultaneously resonate and clash with Caldeira’s account. The order and calm implied by Jacobs’ emphasis on “dignified, formalized, and reserved relationships” would appeal to many of them (it is hardly surprising that a public transport reform under former mayoress Susana Villarán, which emphasized orderly, “civilized” behaviour, such as queuing and adherence to designated bus stops, was embraced enthusiastically by many young middle-class people). In fact, at a different point in our interview, Gabriela complained about a lack of respect for personal space: Here, personal space doesn’t exist, right? So, people rub against you, and I have really learned to appreciate my personal space. . . . When I’m on a bus, for example, it’s like, go away! OK? I mean, we don’t have to be like this [standing very close to each other], right? (Gabriela, 26, insertion added) However, civility – understood as “dignified, formalized, and reserved relationships” – can easily be mistaken for a very basic requirement of acceptable behaviour  – of leaving others alone and not causing any trouble  – akin to the rather conservative and apolitical notion of “civil sociality”, focused on orderly behaviour and “going about [one’s] business in a responsible, civil way and not disturbing public order”, that Stack (2012, 877) found among his Mexican informants.

“Citizenship to mean understanding the other” 89

While I did come across such notions,3 they were rare among my informants. Among the young people I talked to, Viviana’s notion of “good citizenship” was closest to Stack’s concept of “civil sociality” in its emphasis on orderly behaviour. She defined the “good citizen” as: Someone who won’t turn their back on somebody else who needs help in the street, [someone] who will help you. Someone who is capable of helping any stranger. . . . Then, someone who queues, who contributes to their community. Who doesn’t bother others, doesn’t litter, doesn’t drive badly, doesn’t steal.  .  .  . Someone who keeps themselves to themselves, doesn’t beat his wife, basically that’s it. (Viviana, 26) Although Viviana claimed that she was not “interested in getting involved in other people’s reality” and indeed preferred her own “bubble”, it is striking how much weight her notion of “good citizenship” gives to reaching out to and helping a stranger in need. This emphasis is reminiscent of a Christian ethics of sympathy and charity (although Viviana’s relationship with religion was complex), which is inherently hierarchical. However, my other informants took a slightly different, more horizontal approach: as I highlighted in the interview excerpts quoted earlier (in italics for emphasis), many of my informants’ narratives strongly emphasized “empathy” as a guiding principle of civilized interactions in public. While sympathy and charity imply a relationship that stabilizes hierarchies, empathy implies a levelling of difference, recognition of shared humanity and, in my informants’ case, a recognition of “being in it together”. This is evident in their explanations of incivility in public space, as in the following examples. People do not identify with the other very much. . . . We need to start thinking of the other as our companion, or our ally in taking this forward, right? And I think this is also reflected in traffic. Everybody is very overbearing, right? In everything, all the time people are very overbearing. I  think that this has to do with the inability to feel empathy, OK? But, I mean, humans are empathetic, right? It’s not like we are animals! It’s like you really can’t picture the other because . . . because you are the most important! Because you have been taught since you were little, since you were born, that the only important person is you and if you don’t advance yourself, others will pull you down. Right? (Paulina, 33, scientist) Lima is a very cold city. People are very stressed, pretty indifferent, super individualistic. . . . People simply want to get home or see their friends, but the rest of the people . . . it’s like they don’t notice them, right? You simply

90  Franka Winter

explode for the sake of it, and you don’t pause to think that the other person has a long history, too. (Juan, 25, political scientist) We, as Peruvians, don’t often think about the fact that we are not alone and that there is someone else who also wants to get onto the bus, who also wants to get home. So I think that if we became a little more conscientious of the fact that we are not alone and that the others also want the same as you we could live a little more peacefully, right?  .  .  . We need to take notice that we are not alone in the city and that we all deserve respect. And well, once we internalize that we are one community, then we can grow together. (Ramiro, 26, engineer) The weight given to empathy, and its ubiquity in my informants’ discourse, implies much more intimate and involved relationships between strangers than either Jacobs or Young would allow for. Merriam-Webster (2016) defines the concept of empathy as “the action of [or capacity for] understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another”. A notion of civility based on empathy is thus inherently relational and a long shot from Jacobs’ “dignified, formalized, and reserved relationships”. Indeed, this relational character and the strong emphasis on close ties between members of a community and community cohesion suggests that my informants’ notions of civility were closer to the communitarian approaches Caldeira and her theoretical references reject. And indeed, many of my informants attached great importance to fostering a sense of shared identity and argued that it was necessary to “build a nation”. However, empathy does not feature particularly prominently in communitarian theories; furthermore, my informants’ notions of empathy strongly emphasized diversity, while communitarian theories are often criticized for their homogenizing tendencies and their inability to accommodate difference. Crucially, for the young people I spoke to, in the context of a divided and highly conflict-prone city, empathy does not simply mean being sensitive to any other person’s experiences, but specifically being sensitive to the “other”. Or, to put it in Alejandra’s words, empathy means “understanding that [other people’s] realities are different from one’s own”.

A relational notion of citizenship These narratives of a segregated and divided city also informed my informants’ notions of citizenship and of the “good citizen”. While I encountered a diverse range of citizenship discourses, in this chapter, I shall focus on what I call a “relational” notion of citizenship. By this, I  mean a notion that defines citizenship primarily as a relationship between citizens (rather than between citizens and the state) and which stresses the duty to reach out to and engage with your fellow citizens, build bridges across divides and construct a peaceful and harmonious

“Citizenship to mean understanding the other” 91

community. Mutual respect and recognition of fellow citizens as equals as well as empathy for and awareness of the “other”, often imagined as different in terms of class and ethnicity, are key civic virtues related to this notion of citizenship. Many of my informants referred to mutual respect and recognition as important basic elements of citizenship. As engineer Ramiro (26) put it, “being a citizen is respecting the other, because the other is also a citizen”. Another of the young people who defined citizenship in this way was philosophy graduate Camilo (24). He told me that in order to build a city that worked for all, Lima first needed to realize, accept and recognize its fundamental diversity and to abandon an outdated self-conception that emphasizes the prosperous but demographically relatively insignificant central districts. In addition to this indispensable identity work, Camilo argued that the people of Lima needed to improve their “performance as co-citizens”. His explanation refers to the “uncivilized” relationships discussed previously and highlights mutual respect and recognition as key virtues of citizenship: We need to stop being so disrespectful to each other all the time. This is particularly visible in the streets, right? In how we move, how we accept to be treated on the bus, how we treat others on the bus, on bikes, on whatever, right? But the central element is about us recognizing each other as co-citizens. I think this doesn’t happen yet. . . . I would like a city that looks after itself better, starting from how it treats its co-citizens. Eduardo (30), who works in a creative profession, also stresses respect and recognition as key to citizenship. He particularly highlights recognition and respect for diversity as crucial elements of citizenship as it should be taught in schools: I think that school should also educate in relation to respect for diversity, in the broad sense of diversity. I am not only talking about diversity in terms of gender and sexual orientation, but I’m also referring to racism, I’m referring to classism and to so many differences that exist in this country. . . . [So it’s important that school should] provide a space where pupils can be educated on a level of knowledge and skills, developing their intellectuality, but where their citizenship is also developed, so that they respect diversity, respect the other; so that they know that I and the others are not the same, we are different, and this must be respected. . . . Recognizing the citizenship of the other [is an important challenge for Lima]. I mean, recognizing the other, recognizing that we live together in a country where we are different, right? The positive recognition of diversity and of differences. Camilo’s and Eduardo’s notions of citizenship as respect and recognition of equality in difference is an obvious response to the narratives of incivility explored above. However, expanding on Camilo’s and Eduardo’s very basic demands of respect for and recognition of difference and equality, some of my informants

92  Franka Winter

argued that citizenship also meant making the additional effort of getting to know and understanding the other. This demand echoes the “bubble talk” discussed earlier and the conviction that relationships could only improve based on a better understanding of the other. For example, Matías, a 22-year-old philosophy student from an upper-­ middle-class background, defined citizenship as “not sticking only to your own vision, because committing to others means stepping away from your own perspective and also trying to understand the differences between our respective visions and how we can live together”. Similarly, when I asked Rafael (32) what “being a citizen” meant to him in the Peruvian context, he argued that it was fundamentally about understanding others who were different from you. At the time of our interview, he and a friend were in the process of setting up a new school with a distinct pedagogical approach that revolved around understanding the “other”. Rafael was very worried about growing schisms in society, and explained that one of their goals in founding the school was to educate children to become “the type of citizen who has this bond with the other” and who was tolerant of difference. In his response to my question about the meaning of citizenship in the Peruvian context, it becomes clear that this understanding involves significant effort and investment and is a skill to be learned and thus a very active form of citizenship: I would like [citizenship] to mean understanding the other. I mean, I imagine that first one has to learn to understand oneself, and one has to learn to understand others at home, and then to understand others in your neighbourhood, and continue to widen this understanding until you get to the level of the city, right? . . . I understand that we may have thousands of differences, but there has to be something that unites us in the end, right? I would like the guy from San Juan de Lurigancho [a poor district of Lima] to feel comfortable going to La Molina [a wealthy district of Lima] and vice versa, and that there needn’t be any issue of discrimination or hassle, right? These things that we sometimes can’t understand. For me, [being a citizen] would be one citizen understanding the other; understanding the other and, based on that, building what needs to be built so that this can grow, so that we can construct a basis on which to generate a calm city to live in, right? Some of my informants took this requirement of understanding the other even further by demanding that citizens should try to put themselves into the other’s shoes. For example, Gabriela (26) told me that citizens are “people who understand that everything they do has repercussions for the other person”, linking it to her complaint that drivers fail to think about the impact their honking has on other road users, quoted earlier. Juan (25) was unsure how to define a “good citizen”, but told me that a “bad citizen” would be someone who “cannot put themselves into the other’s place, who only lives for their personal goals and ideals or those of their family”.

“Citizenship to mean understanding the other” 93

Finally, several of my informants combined the relational virtues discussed earlier with an educational imperative, arguing that citizenship meant educating others in relational citizenship virtues but doing so in a way that was coherent with these values. The following quote from my interview with Javier (33), who runs a small company in the education sector, exemplifies this discourse: Citizenship also means trying to build a citizenry of Lima. . . . I mean, it’s not only about following the rules, you see? For example, in Lima you can be a good citizen if you don’t litter, OK? You do that, and that’s already a lot – trying not to make the place dirtier. But there are so many people who litter and so many people have good reasons for littering, I mean it’s so common to think that “Aaaah, it doesn’t matter! It’s all broken anyway, the city is dirty anyway”. So being a citizen also means fighting against that, right? And not just fighting like when you see someone litter, tell them “hey!” – you also need to know how to do this in a way that contributes to building a kind of knowledge that helps us all fight less. When you see someone litter, or a rough driver, or someone who turns up their music really loud and just doesn’t care, maybe you feel like simply calling the police or insulting the person or confronting them; but in the end that won’t help either. So, being a citizen is . . . acting how you believe you should act so that everything works better, intervening in other people’s actions where you think that they are public issues for the city and intervening in an intelligent manner in order not to create more division, but to [tell them] “Look, it’s better if you don’t litter. It’s better if you don’t make a lot of noise”. It’s all that. It’s like taking on the role of an educator, of a pedagogue, right? One of my informants in particular linked this educational imperative with the problem of inequality. Conscious of a history of paternalism in upper-class radicalism, Nicolás (31), a public-sector worker from an upper-middle-class family, stressed that this education had to be aimed at other upper- and uppermiddle-class citizens in the first place: The big problem in Peru is that even progressive groups have always come from above. . . . Any attempt to change Peru always implies that a group of people, who may come from progressive universities or from the progressive side of the city, try to lift up those who are weaker. But this only reinforces the division in access to power that already exists in Peru. . . . So I think that my role as part of this powerful group which has access to all benefits in this country is [not to represent Indigenous people, but] to try to make society less hard towards the demands that come from below, right? It’s more an issue of sensitizing those above than of representing those below, right? Because in the end what happens is that all their demands hit a brick wall because there is no way of getting through. And being part of this intransigence, I think that

94  Franka Winter

I can do interesting things in order to introduce some cracks to allow this to happen. On a discursive level, the relational notions of citizenship discussed here and their supporting narratives of the city were widely embraced among the university students and young professionals I interviewed in Lima.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have described a “relational” discourse on citizenship and the city which criticizes inequality, segregation and the resulting incivilities and emphasizes the need to build bridges and promote integration between different socio-economic sectors in society. In doing this, I  hope to contribute to a necessary revision of a dominant social sciences and humanities discourse on the global middle classes – in Latin America and beyond – whose overwhelming focus on distinction and segregation often obscures the emergence of practices and discourses that run counter to these negative tendencies and foster encounters, integration and dialogue instead. The narratives described in this chapter certainly point in this direction. However, I am wary of replacing one simplistic narrative with another equally incomplete story. I shall conclude this chapter by addressing some challenges resulting from my informants’ relational citizenship discourse and by critically exploring the implications of my findings for the shared guiding questions outlined in the introduction to this volume. Several of these challenges were brought up by my informants themselves, and my discussion draws on their reflections. The first challenge emerges from the intersection of discourse and practice, and highlights the complexity of competing desires. The depth of my informants’ longing for integration is of course a product of the aggressive everyday relationships they describe and in which they are inevitably implicated and emotionally invested. Several of my informants thus told me about their struggles to reconcile competing and contradictory feelings and thoughts brought about by the prospect of closer relationships with an ethnically and/or class “other”. For example, Alejandra, whom I  quoted earlier in this chapter, told me that she felt attracted by working-class culture and organization, but that she could not imagine living with it herself – in her own words, she found these features of working-class culture “colourful” and “very attractive from afar”, but told me that in all her life she had not been “able to figure out how I could live with all this”. When I asked her to elaborate, she sighed and suggested that: Possibly, maybe an apparent coexistence might happen. There is a small hope that things might change. We have to live together, whether we like it or not, because together we might build something better in the future. It’s an idea that I have to keep reminding myself of everyday [laughs] in order to be able to leave the house. But the truth is that everyday life here in Lima is very, very hard.

“Citizenship to mean understanding the other” 95

Alejandra’s reflection reveals a very genuine struggle to reconcile two competing and ultimately incompatible desires, and shows that the divisions that characterize the society of Lima are inextricably woven into people’s emotional fabric (see also Gandolfo 2009 for personal examples of similar struggles). Even where the desire for integration is genuine, these emotional barriers are very difficult to overcome. I believe that recognizing this struggle and the inherent limitations and partialities of my informants’ citizenship discourse will result in a much more interesting and adequate picture, and can show that practices and desires, habits and hopes are not always as clearly aligned as much of the literature suggests; rather, they are often much more ambivalent and sometimes contradictory in themselves. A second challenge asks if relational notions of citizenship can be more than ‘just’ a reflection of middle-class concerns. Are they at all relevant to less affluent citizens, whose basic needs are not yet met? Michaela, who defined citizenship as “consciousness of the other”, felt that her own critical ideas might not be relevant to others at all, and worried that she failed to take other people’s priorities into account: Sometimes I feel that I am only conscious of my own ideas, my own principles, and I end up leaving out for example this lad or that girl, or the person who lives . . . who doesn’t think any of the things I am thinking about and, what’s more, who isn’t interested [in them]. So therefore I do not live up to my role as a citizen, because I am not conscious of this other who is different from me. (Micaela, 30) As my research focused on young middle-class people, my data does not allow me to answer this question. However, it is worth mentioning that the link between class and citizenship discourse and the perceived “luxury” of worrying about consciousness and empathy were concerns that several of my informants raised and that are valid in the face of large sectors of society who continue to live in poverty. For example, law student Stephanie (22), who was very involved in university politics, thought that defining citizenship was complicated by inequality and discrimination: It may be relatively easy for me to tell you that I think we should learn [about the internal armed conflict], that I  think we should get involved [in politics], right? But there are so many different realities in this country, and in truth there are other people who are really thinking about their private lives because they need to eat and so on, right? Michaela put this criticism in a humorous way, recalling a protest march where students from the publicly funded university of San Marcos (attended generally by poorer students) and wealthier private university students marched together: Many were making fun [of us], because while those from San Marcos were shouting “Fuck the government, to hell with it!” and I  don’t know what, they were teasing us like “listen, you have been shouting ‘Peace  – peace

96  Franka Winter

– peace – we want peace!’ ” [Laughs] You see, this is how they perceived us, right? Like super correct. That was the perception that some told me they had. The issue of partial vision and situated discourses has implications for our first shared guiding question: “Is ‘middle and upper class’ an a priori economic-social status that exists outside of, and precedes, collective practices and expressions of citizenship in the public sphere? Or is ‘the middle and upper class’ itself created and constituted by those practices and expressions of citizenship?” My research design used an a priori definition of middle class, based on education and occupation, which was validated by my informants’ overwhelming selfidentification on the middle-class spectrum (with one exception at either end). However, Michaela’s comment quoted previously suggests that civic discourses and practices at the very least have an impact on how diverse citizens perceive each other, and are thus a marker of class distinction – whether this is intended or not. This is also in line with Daniel Ozarow’s findings (Chapter 7) on classed protest repertoires, such as cacerolazos, in Argentina. Based on my informants’ experiences and reflections, it also seems that a relationship of mutual influence exists between collective and individual practices and expressions of citizenship on the one hand and middle-class subjectivities and their underlying material conditions on the other. This was evident from several of my informants’ reflections on their own roles in society. Many of them located their contribution in the academic and professional realm, rather than as an activist “on the ground”, and a few of them explicitly linked this to their class background. As I discussed earlier, Nicolás saw his role in changing his own socio-­economic sector and did not think that “it’s for me to organize the poor”. Alejandra said she felt that political activism was traditionally associated with the working classes, and that her own more privileged background had been an obstacle in finding a role for herself. She told me that she had come to “accept myself” as someone who could never be a working-class leader or “organize” her neighbourhood, as she did not come from a “popular” background. She found it “tough to understand this, firstly to understand what class position you find yourself in and, based on that, what one can do” and explained that she was “still in this process of understanding what my situation is and also in consequence accepting what my capacities are”. She concluded that becoming an academic, “understanding what is happening and developing a proposal” was “the best I can do” and the most appropriate contribution for a middle-class citizen like herself. Overall, the reflections I have offered in this article and its conclusion point to a cautious response to our shared question whether upper- and middle-class identities can serve as an enabler/facilitator to the expression of collective demands or to the collective vindication of citizenship, or if they instead obstruct this goal. The discourses discussed in the main body of this chapter point to changing attitudes and a growing interest in integration across class divides – at least in theory. These are positive developments which deserve greater attention by students

“Citizenship to mean understanding the other” 97

of the Latin American middle and upper classes than has been the case so far. However, as I  have argued in the conclusion, many obstacles still remain, and several of these are intimately related to middle- and upper-class selves. In my informants’ cases, changing middle-class selves have thus opened up new, critical perspectives on citizenship and inequality; for some of them; however, this introspection has also brought to the fore conflicting sentiments rooted precisely in the narrow line between valued “diversity” and alienating “difference”. These emotions are profoundly intertwined with identity itself, and will thus be much more difficult to overcome.

Notes 1 This research was generously funded by the Irish Research Council under the Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme. 2 All names have been altered to protect informants’ right to anonymity. Pseudonyms appear together with the participants’ ages. 3 A number of Facebook groups in Peru have amassed a substantial following based on a similar discourse. See for example the group “Los Nuevos Peruanos” [“The New Peruvians”], which claims to address “bad habits in Peru”, and had over 18,000 followers at the time of writing. The smaller “Campaña Yo CEDO El PASO” [“I GIVE WAY Campaign”], which campaigns for respecting pedestrian crossings, but has also taken on a broad range of issues around respect and good behaviour in public places and traffic, had close to 3,000 followers.

Bibliography Arellano, Rolando. 2010. Al Medio Hay Sitio. El Crecimiento Social Según Los Estilos de Vida. Lima: Planeta. Bensús, Viktor. 2016. “Efectos Del ‘Boom Inmobiliario’ En El Área Metropolitana de Lima: No Planificación y Segregación Socioespacial.” In LASA2016 Congress Papers. New York: Latin American Studies Association. http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/auth/ prot/congress-papers/Current/lasa2016/files/50245.pdf. Caldeira, Teresa P. R. 2000. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gandolfo, Daniella. 2009. The City at Its Limits: Taboo, Transgression, and Urban Renewal in Lima. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. González Cueva, Eduardo. 1994. “Ciudades Paralelas: Imaginarios Urbanos En Lima.” Tesis de Licenciatura. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 1995. “Ciudades Paralelas: Una Investigacion Sobre El Imaginario Urbano.” In Ciudad de Jovenes. Imagenes y Cultura, 11–39. Coleccion Temas En Sociologia 5. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Perú, Fondo Editorial. Holston, James. 2008. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jones, Carla. 2012. “Women in the Middle. Femininity, Virtue, and Excess in Indonesian Discourses of Middle Classness.” In The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography, edited by Carla Freeman, Mark Liechty and Rachel Heiman, 145–68. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press.

98  Franka Winter Lamont, Michèle, and Virág Molnár. 2002. “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology 28: 167–95. Liechty, Mark. 2003. Suitably Modern: Making Middle-Class Culture in a New Consumer Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Merriam-Webster. 2016. “Empathy.” Merriam-Webster.Com. www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/empathy. Accessed 15 April. Montero-Diaz, Rita Fiorella. 2014. “Fusion as Inclusion: A Lima Upper Class Delusion?” PhD diss., Royal Holloway, University of London. ———. 2016. “Singing the War: Reconfiguring White Upper-Class Identity Through Fusion Music in Post-War Lima.” Ethnomusicology Forum, March, 1–19. O’Dougherty, Maureen. 2002. Consumption Intensified. The Politics of Middle-Class Daily Life in Brazil. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Plöger, Jörg. 2007. “The Emergence of a ‘City of Cages’ in Lima : Neighbourhood Appropriation in the Context of Rising Insecurities.” Cybergeo : European Journal of Geography June. Portocarrero, Gonzalo. 1993. Racismo y Mestizaje. Lima: SUR Casa de Estudios del Socialismo. Pow, Choon-Piew. 2007. “Securing the ‘Civilised’ Enclaves: Gated Communities and the Moral Geographies of Exclusion in (Post-)Socialist Shanghai.” Urban Studies 44 (8): 1539–58. Sanz Gutiérrez, Maria Pilar. 2014. “ ‘We Don’t Need the State’ – A Study of the Habitus Formation Process, Through School Choice, in the Peru’s Rising Middle Class – A Qualitative Study of School Choice.” PhD diss., University of Bath. Srivastava, Sanjay. 2012. “National Identity, Bedrooms, and Kitchens: Gated Communities and New Narratives of Space in India.” In The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography, edited by Carla Freeman, Mark Liechty and Rachel Heiman, 57–84. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press. Stack, Trevor. 2012. “Beyond the State? Civil Sociality and Other Notions of Citizenship.” Citizenship Studies 16 (7): 871–85. Zhang, Li. 2010. In Search of Paradise. Middle-Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Chapter 6

Digital alteration and the law against racism Conflicting models of citizenship among new Bolivian middle classes Miriam Shakow In February of 2011, two law students in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba digitally altered a classmate’s image without her permission in their class graduation photo. They removed their classmate’s pollera and braids, a skirt and hairstyle that signify the deliberate presentation of indigenous, working-class, or mestiza identity. They reinserted her image with a gown and her hair loose, to match her classmates’ attire. The young woman then denounced her classmates to the police on the charge of racism, under the Bolivian government’s recently enacted Law 045 Against Racism and All Forms of Discrimination. The plaintiff, Amalia Laura Vilca, said she had intentionally worn braids and a pollera to signify her identity as a chola,1 to express her pride as an indigenous leader graduating with a professional degree. Vilca’s case became a national sensation. In fact, many people in my field site, a nearby town named Choro, joyfully credited Law 045, and particularly Vilca’s notorious case, with having “eliminated” racism from Bolivia. Yet some new members of Choro’s middle class disagreed with Vilca’s cause.2 They maintained, like the Photoshopping law students, that it was wrong to wear a pollera when graduating from a law school: indigenous identity, they argued, was incompatible with middle- or upper-class status and devalued the hard-won professional status of her classmates. The disagreement among members of the new middle classes about models of social status traced larger fault lines between competing models of citizenship, including how – and even if – redistribution of power and wealth should occur in Bolivia. In this article, I trace this debate among new members of the middle classes in central Bolivia. I argue that Vilca’s case and its public reception highlight conflicting models of citizenship in Bolivia today, conflicts that are particularly salient for members of Bolivia’s new middle classes. I draw on ethnographic field research conducted since 1995 in and near the community of Choro, where I conducted more than 200 interviews. Though historically a ‘peasant community’, the opportunities afforded by Choro’s location astride a major highway close to the major city of Cochabamba had supported social and economic stratification. Members of a rising middle class there include professional teachers, doctors, agronomists, merchants and truckers, as well as wealthy campesino [peasant] farmers.

100  Miriam Shakow

Members of this new middle class diverged from each other about the righteousness of Vilca’s claim and of the national government’s platform of anti-­racism and redistribution of wealth. Their disagreement and, at times, ambivalence suggest that there are multiple answers in Bolivia to the question, “Do ‘upper- and middle-class’ identities obstruct or facilitate the expression of collective demands or the collective vindication of citizenship?” Scholars of more established middle classes in both Global South and North frequently find that self-defined middle classes vigorously distinguish themselves from the working classes and the destitute, frequently on the basis of moral superiority and individual hard work (e.g. Ozarow, Chapter 7; Dickey 2000; O’Dougherty 2002; Caldeira 2000). My findings support these cases, but also demonstrate the variability in middle-class ideals of citizenship, including significant egalitarian principles, in keeping with Winter’s essay (Chapter 5). The national context of Vilca’s criminal charge, in which the government claims to be led by indigenous people, legally outlaws expressions of racism, and claims to be actively redistributing wealth, is highly unusual. Bolivia, where up to 66% of people are registered as indigenous in the census (Canessa 2007), has long been a racially and economically stratified society.3 Bolivia’s indigenous and subaltern social movements mobilized in the 1990s and 2000s, demanding economic and social citizenship. In the wake of these mobilizations and the 2005 election of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first self-identified indigenous president, the national government began a series of economic reforms that purported to radically redistribute wealth. It increased taxes on transnational companies exporting natural gas from Bolivia and launched cash payment programmes to pregnant mothers and schoolchildren. It also passed a series of laws that, like Law 045 Against Racism, claimed to “decolonize” Bolivia. Despite significant limitations to the MAS government’s self-styled “process of change”, most Bolivians agree that Bolivia has become a more equal country.4 This political context contrasts starkly with that of other countries with large indigenous populations, such as Guatemala, Peru, or even Ecuador. While vibrant indigenous movements have emerged in each of these, and in Ecuador, the government has, like Morales, celebrated the mantle of a plurinational ‘new Left’, in none of these countries have the highest political offices been held by indigenousidentified people, nor has the government declared the country an “indigenous state” (see, e.g., Hale 2005, 2007; Bebbington and Humphreys Bebbington 2010). In Guatemala, as Charles Hale has found, a majority of working-class and middleclass ladinos [self-identified mestizos] fear that cultural rights for Maya will allow indigenous people to pull ahead of them socially and economically. In Bolivia, the lines of ethnicity, race, and class are less clearly drawn. The government’s rhetoric of indigenous pride and the resources channelled to many indigenous people provoke different questions and sources of disagreement. In the face of omnipresent state claims to be carrying out economic redistribution and social equality, Bolivians of impoverished origins who have entered the middle class contend with conflicting models of citizenship that bear on their

Digital alteration and the law against racism 101

self-identification. Colonial legacies have for centuries shaped ideals of upward mobility, in which becoming middle class required shedding indigenous and peasant identities. The pan-Latin American ideal of individual upward mobility [superarse], often through professional education, has long required ethnic assimilation into the mestizo social category. In Bolivia, this meant that rural women who sought upward mobility overwhelmingly adopted straight skirts or pants to become de vestido [dress-wearers, as opposed to wearers of indigenous dress] (See the rich literature on mestizaje in Bolivia, including Albro 2000; Paulson 1996; Gotkowitz 2003). Until 2006, in fact, young women who wished to enter high school, an important gateway to upward mobility, were expressly prohibited from wearing polleras. This meant that thousands of girls changed category from cholita to de vestido before or during middle school. That pollera-wearing was legally proscribed illuminates the ways in which the chola category has been deeply bound up, far beyond individual girls’ and women’s life choices, in the definition of Bolivian citizenship. The proscription of cholas in the professional middle class represents one among many exclusions from full citizenship in Bolivia. The meaning of the chola social category has expanded over time in Bolivia, however. In the late nineteenth century in Bolivia, rural and working-class people who achieved economic mobility by becoming prosperous urban merchants sought social mobility by becoming cholas. They attempted to claim Bolivian citizenship by marking their distinction from denigrated indigenous people (Gotkowitz 2003). Cholas wore expensive petticoats, voluminous silk skirts, elegant hats, and gold earrings; Indians, meanwhile, wore ragged homespun. As historian Laura Gotkowitz has shown, with their costly, elaborate clothing and jewellery, cholas asserted that their moral decency and wealth made them the racial and social, as well as economic, superiors of “Indians” (Gotkowitz 2003). Yet, by the mid-1990s, when I began fieldwork in central Bolivia, rather than a burgeoning indigenous middle class, the term chola had come to frequently signify indigenous, rural, peasant, or working class, what Albro terms a “popular” social category (Albro 2000). Like other scholars, I found diverse and sometimes contradictory meanings (see also Weismantel 2001; de la Cadena 2000; Seligman 1989). Susan Paulson, for example, has also shown that, although frequently in Bolivia “the chola” is spoken about as if monolithic, identities and social status are diverse, and Bolivians recognize different meanings in practice. Paulson describes the shift in status for one woman in the course of one day. When wearing a worn, ragged pollera while harvesting potatoes, she was identified as a poor indigenous woman. After she changed into a short, fashionable, sparkly pollera and tight-­ fitting blouse to sell her crop in Cochabamba city, her chola identity signified wealth, sex appeal and business acumen. At the same time, her symbolic association with rural indigenous agricultural fertility helped sell her wares (Paulson 1996). Rob Albro has also shown how during the “neoliberal multiculturalism” wave in the 1990s and early 2000s, as government leaders promoted indigenous folklore and dance uncoupled from redistribution of wealth or political equality, populist politicians promoted their association with cholas to win votes (Albro 2000).

102  Miriam Shakow

In my own fieldwork between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, when Morales first took office, people frequently contrasted cholas and chotas, young women who wore pants or de vestido straight skirts. Cholas were described as harder workers, more humble, and more sexually available, yet more innocent, more attractive, more feminine, less educated, less wealthy (but sometimes more wealthy!), less “civilized”, less “cultured”, more culturally authentic and more personally loyal to rural and indigenous roots. A woman in the 1990s and early 2000s might, depending on the context, encounter “chola” as a racist epithet, as a derogatory term for the less-favoured sexual partner of a married man or as an admiring tribute to her wealth, personal pride, and fashion sense. These numerous, often contradictory, meanings of “chola” reflected the rapid social change occurring in Bolivia, the relational nature of class and racial identity in Latin America, and the relational identities of middle classes more broadly (see de la Cadena 2000). By the 1990s, the overdetermined meaning of chola as a social category indexed shifting, relational and contradictory ideas in understandings of what it meant to be working class, indigenous and upwardly mobile. Layered on top of these already diverse meanings, social movement activists and members of the Morales administration have fostered the “revalorization” of cholas as an important element of the “decolonization project” of Bolivia (see, e.g., Maldonado 2017; see also Haynes 2013). Morales and other political leaders have attempted to promote new ideals of both citizenship and upward mobility, by emphasizing the notion that cholas can enter the highest strata of society, described at times as a process of achieving “development with identity”. Alongside social movements promoting indigenous and working-class pride and redistribution of wealth, government leaders have argued that cholas embody beauty, pride, indigenous self-identification, intelligence, modernity, and competence. They have promoted women de pollera to government and movement leadership positions. Four ministers of justice have been de pollera, as is the former Minister of Rural Development and Land. With the 2010 passage of Law 045 Against Racism and All Forms of Discrimination, the Morales administration and its allies in Congress have also promoted similar messages in public spaces. Airlines, retail stores, and government offices now feature signs that state “All people are equal before the law”, citing Law 045 (Figure 6.1). Anti-racist public service announcements now permeate many TV and radio stations’ broadcasting. In one recent public service announcement, for example, chubby toddlers with diverse skin, hair, and eye colours play peacefully together on a bed. A voice-over states, “We are born without hatred for or fear of other people.” The scene shifts to children and adults wearing a variety of ethnically marked clothing, including a woman de pollera, a girl wearing a shift dress identified with lowland Bolivian indigenous groups, a man in military uniform, and a man in a business suit. The narrators continue: “When we grow up, they teach us to say ‘Indian’, ‘Chola’, ‘Black’, ‘lesbian’, ‘fag’ [marica] . . . But if you look under the skin, all are equal before the law.” An identical cartoon heart appears

Digital alteration and the law against racism 103

Figure 6.1  Photo by author, La Paz, Bolivia, 3 January 2018.

superimposed upon each person’s chest. The narrators conclude: “Racism and discrimination are crimes” and the screen flashes with those words, followed by a hotline to call and a website to visit if one witnesses or experiences discrimination. The national government has carried out some steps toward a more equitable economic redistribution of wealth, as well, since Morales entered the presidency

104  Miriam Shakow

in 2006. The government raised taxes on natural gas exports, a mainstay of the Bolivian economy, greatly increasing state spending. With these funds, the central government has instituted a variety of cash transfer programmes to, among others, the elderly, pregnant women, and parents of schoolchildren; sponsored a rural electrification programme; and built hundreds – perhaps thousands – of soccer fields, roads, sports stadiums, schools and health clinics. In part owing to the expansion of government infrastructure and funding, several important human wellbeing indices have dramatically improved. For example, malnutrition dropped from 30% of the population in 2005 to 16% in 2015 (FAO 2018). Other indices, such as life expectancy and infant mortality, have continued a trend of improvement begun in the 1980s. The competing definitions in practice of the chola social category, however, index the competition between multiple models of upward mobility and citizenship in Bolivia, which incorporate ideas about race and distribution of wealth. While many Bolivians fervently support the Morales administration’s platform, many members of the new middle class, even those born to very impoverished families, have never supported the discourse and policies of redistribution. Still others agreed with the platform of anti-racism and equality, but have become disenchanted with the government’s rhetoric in the face of apparently widespread public sector corruption and increasing unemployment, following the decline in primary product prices after several boom years. Furthermore, many members of the new middle class oppose Morales’ attempts to run for a third full term despite the two-term limit in the Constitution of Bolivia. Amidst these contradictory processes, some new members of the middle class oppose MAS political leaders’ model of modern, egalitarian, prosperous indigenous citizenship symbolized by the figure of the chola. Instead, they favour the assimilation model of citizenship, in which a person must divest oneself of indigenous, rural, and peasant identity in order to enter the middle class; and that of individualism, in which people who gain prosperity and status do so owing to their individual talents and willingness to work hard. From the perspective of these ideals of citizenship, the MAS government’s promises to redistribute wealth and power favour the morally unworthy who have been unwilling to work hard by completing professional studies or establishing a successful business – and even some new middle-class Bolivians who support the government platform of wealth redistribution are deeply sceptical of the MAS assertion that chola identity  – and indigenous identity more broadly – can be coterminous with modernity and class upward mobility.

Rejection of cholitas from spaces of prestige Amalia Laura Vilca’s widely publicized legal case brought into relief the clash between the model of citizenship based upon divesting one’s self and the nation of indigeneity as part of an individual process of upward mobility and the model based upon the promotion and valorization of indigenous identity and redistribution of wealth and power. According to news reports, Vilca, a law student at

Digital alteration and the law against racism 105

the public university of San Simon in the city of Cochabamba, had been a rural community leader from the North of Potosi highlands (Ejú 2011; Mena 2011; La Razón 2011). She made the unusual decision to continue as a cholita as a university student, one of only two cholitas among hundreds of students in her law school class, despite encountering pervasive discrimination throughout her years of study. It was after she refused several classmates’ request that she wear a cap and gown that they then went to a photography studio and removed her pollera and braids from the group photo (Figures 6.2 and 6.3).5 This case garnered widespread news coverage, as well as online commentary. For example, an online commenter, “Zenobia”, took the side of the classmates who had altered the photo by expressing the assimilationist model of citizenship and middle-class upward mobility: All such a ridiculous theatre.  .  .  . Identity is not something that clothes or braids determine. In a graduation celebration . . . in the whole of the civilized world, there are codes and rituals that normally are respected. . . . In a graduation photo, her chola outfit (it could also be everyday or normal clothes. . .) is simply inappropriate. She could have had a tiny bit of solidarity. Surely her classmates didn’t do the montaje [digital alteration] with bad intentions, but simply to integrate her into the group. They are celebrating having finished their studies, NOT [the question] of whether you are native or not. Yet Laura is using this event to put herself in the situation of a martyr. (La Razón 2011) Zenobia maintained that wearing a pollera reflected Vilca’s lack of “solidarity with her classmates”. Zenobia’s comments illustrate the way in which cholitas represent uncivilized, working-class, or peasant indigeneity, incompatible with the status of university graduates. The reference to “civilization”, the statement that clothing and hairstyle are utterly disconnected from indigenous identity, and the argument that indigenous identity is irrelevant to professional identity illustrate the continued currency of assimilationist models of citizenship based upon the elimination of indigeneity in the process of attaining upward mobility. Other online commentators supported Vilca, however, suggesting that the counter model, in which modern citizenship requires celebrating indigeneity, is also widespread. One such commenter, “Italo”, responded to “Zenobia”: “It’s a shame how some people’s mentality continues in Bolivia, who are ashamed of their origins. Bolivia is an indigenous country and [we] should be proud to demonstrate that. Hiding your roots means denigrating your future” (La Razón 2011). From this perspective, not only should Vilca be celebrated for wearing a pollera to her graduation as an expression of indigenous self- identification, but all Bolivians should identify as indigenous. This incident, therefore, is not merely one moment of interpersonal racism, but also a microcosm of widespread struggles to define citizenship in Bolivia today. And the struggle to define middle-class identity was at the core of this struggle to define citizenship.

Figures 6.2 and 6.3  (together). Vilca’s law school class graduation photo, original photo (top) and altered version (bottom): La Razón, 4 February 2011. Permission granted by Ruben Atahuichi (La Razón).

Digital alteration and the law against racism 107

Conflicting ideals of citizenship among new middle classes These conflicting citizenship models are reflected in the village of Choro, where many day-to-day conversations focus on upward mobility and cholita identity. Before Evo’s election as president, most teenage girls wore de vestido regardless of whether they had attended high school. Yet the category of chola still contains meaning in everyday life. People often ask each other about someone they’ve not yet met, “Is she a chola or a chota?” and tease young women for being fickle if they alternate between wearing polleras and de vestido. And those who watch the news, use Facebook or other social media, or attend meetings of community councils or community-based organizations engage with government and social movement leaders’ messages. The diverse opinions I heard among Choreños (many of them similarly impoverished peasant farmers) in 2017 and 2018 about the government’s attempts to promote indigenous and subaltern identity, including that of cholitas, reflected contrasting reactions to their own upward mobility. In many cases, their ideas are ambivalent, tentative, or seemingly contradictory. These apparent contradictions can be understood if we think of ideals of citizenship, middle-class identity, and the chola category in Bolivia today through Raymond Williams’ (1977, 128–35) concept of a structure of feeling: the complex and dynamic webs of ideas that emerge during periods when new regimes of state or political movements promise (or threaten) to transform a society. During these periods of flux, people debate the justice of new ideals, trying to figure out where they stand and where they aspire to be in social and economic hierarchies. Most Choreños had observed a dramatic decline in racism in Bolivia. They told me delightedly that they had witnessed a reversal of the state’s previous model of citizenship that privileged European and mestizo ancestry. During Evo’s first presidential election campaign in 2005, many in Choro explained their vote for Evo and his MAS party as a direct blow against city people who wore “ties and suits” and discriminated against them for wearing polleras and speaking Quechua in offices and banks. By 2017, many Choro residents declared – astonishingly – that the entrenched racism in all sectors of Bolivian society had been eliminated. “Ya no hay racismo” [“There is no more racism”] told me more than a dozen people I interviewed in 2017 and 2018; all but two people affirmed that “discrimination” had declined dramatically, and most suggested that it had “disappeared”. Some of those people thrilled with this “disappearance” of racism and the valorization of cholas were part of the region’s upwardly mobile, new middle class. They were overjoyed at the government’s anti-racism campaigns and the new recognition of cholas as full citizens. For example, Doña Rosa, a woman whose common-law husband and his family rejected her in part because she was de pollera, told me in 2017 that she was delighted that “there is no longer that discrimination” that there used to be, thanks to a “cholita” who had been interviewed on TV (i.e., Vilca). Doña Rosa affirmed to me that she was proud to wear a pollera and to speak to her children in Quechua.

108  Miriam Shakow

Given her precarious wealth and income, however, her perspective on redistribution of wealth was mixed. Doña Rosa had told me in 2009 that she did not like the Morales and MAS platform promise of “redistribution” [redistribución] of wealth. She was also concerned that the government would use its “redistribution” policies to confiscate a small plot of land she had just bought as an investment and transfer the title to someone more impoverished. Meanwhile, Doña Rosa lived in a one-room house with electricity, but no bathroom or latrine, while she built a two-storey house next door. Her concerns that “redistribution” of wealth by the state would threaten her own nest egg had dissipated by 2017, when she focused on her elation at encountering less discrimination in her daily life. Another upwardly mobile family of several young adult sisters talked in even more glowing terms about their prospects for middle-class achievement and lauded the MAS government’s discourse of social equality. They had worried in the past about their precarious employment – one worked as a security guard; another, Rossmery, played in the municipal band while she completed secretarial school; the third worked with her husband as a carpenter’s apprentice. The sisters had undergone years of hardship after their father died in a car accident, leaving their mother with four young children. But by 2018, they had replaced their roof and built a kitchen with tiled countertops and a sink – amenities only found in the upper half of Choro’s households. The sisters remarked that they were delighted with the MAS and Morales administration’s anti-racism campaigns and cash transfer programmes; if schoolchildren had enjoyed access to such programmes when they were little, they would have been the butt of fewer insults by their classmates about their ragged clothes and shoes. They also firmly agreed with Vilca’s decision to denounce her classmates’ “racism”, affirming that Vilca had the absolute right to wear a pollera in her graduation photo: “It’s her culture!” exclaimed one of Rossmery’s sisters. Rossmery thought that the students had Photoshopped the image because they felt “ashamed” [p’enqakunku] and feared that a cholita’s presence in their graduation photo would cheapen their achievement of middle-class status. But, Rossmery maintained, contrary to this belief, many cholas had become successful professionals – lawyers, real estate agents, and government leaders. A third family, whose members were even more affluent than Rossmery’s, agreed that both the redistribution of wealth and the anti-racism campaigns were essential for the country. Don Felipe, born to impoverished peasant farmers, had built a thriving business since the 1990s selling used Toyota Corolla station wagons imported via Chile. His de pollera wife, who grew up in a similarly poor family, cared for their architect-designed, three-storey home in the town of Sacaba, which boasted several bathrooms (a distinct luxury). One of their sons was a medical student, while the other two were school teachers. They, like Rossmery, firmly supported the MAS platform of redistribution of wealth and anti-racism. When I asked them what they thought of the Vilca case, they exclaimed that of course she was correct – “it’s her culture” – and that Vilca had been right to celebrate her “roots”.

Digital alteration and the law against racism 109

Their agreement that women could or should maintain their chola identity while pursuing professional careers frequently coexisted with previous associations. It was the subject of a January 2018 conversation I witnessed between the mayor of Choro’s municipality, city council members, municipal employees and community leaders. Immediately following the Mayor’s inauguration of a new water reservoir in Choro, female community leaders served us a festive meal of baked guinea pig [cuy], a classic Andean delicacy. Amidst the polite small talk around the table, one of Choro’s community leaders – a veteran political operator – leaned in and said very deliberately and loudly: “Mr. Mayor, I have a suggestion: You should hire a cholita as your personal secretary.” The table erupted in cries of approval, as well as sniggers and chuckles. The city council members (both women, but not de pollera themselves) exclaimed that it was an excellent idea and the mayor should begin searching immediately. The mayor, Don Humberto, was a stalwart ally [chupa] of President Evo Morales. Don Humberto had dropped out of school after fourth grade because his family was very poor and had campaigned heavily on his identity as a “campesino”. He smiled faintly and said, “we’ve already looked everywhere; there are no cholitas”. No young secretaries in the region had decided to keep wearing a pollera. The group continued to laud the idea, however, while joking repeatedly that the reservoir construction engineer would run off with any pretty cholita the Mayor hired. The older notion that cholitas are more sexually attractive and more sexually available than other women persisted alongside the new model of citizenship in which a chola could be, and was encouraged rhetorically to be, a middle-class professional. Furthermore, the scarcity of secretaries and other professional women de pollera in the region reflected the reality that this was a distinctly new model of citizenship. In fact, many new members of the middle class strongly disagreed with the government’s promotion of “development with identity” and even with the platform of todo por igual [everyone equal], even when they shared similar education and income levels with supporters. In early 2018, this group’s concern about the discourse and policies of social and economic equality was heightened by widespread opposition to a recently enacted penal code that mandated significant prison time for doctors accused of malpractice. Within this polarized atmosphere, anger at the penal code and opposition to the president’s decision to run for a third full term despite constitutional term limits fused with longstanding concern that some first-generation professionals and prosperous merchants had shared with me since the early 2000s when Evo was entering national politics. Though sometimes ambivalent, they frequently opposed the ideals and policies of social and economic equality because, they argued, it devalued their own hard work, “sacrifice” and higher status they had attained through their professional studies. Some declared emphatically that economic equality in Bolivia would be an unfair imposition by the state and that the state’s promotion of indigenous or subaltern identity was ill-considered because cholas symbolized the remnant of an “uncivilized” past for rural Bolivians, best forgotten or, at most, relegated to parades and school dress-up celebrations.

110  Miriam Shakow

For example, Susana, a rural school teacher who was the cousin of Don Felipe (mentioned earlier), told me about her opposition to the new models of citizenship in terms that were similar to those used by a dozen Choro first-generation professionals I knew, including teachers, doctors, nurses and pharmacists. Her primary concern appeared to be that the government was treating “professionals” [profesionales] as enemies, in the process devaluing her entire lifetime built around striving toward a professional career. Her father had been a destitute farmer and truck driver’s assistant; she was one of 12 children, six of whom died in infancy or early childhood, a child mortality rate in keeping with the average in rural Bolivia through the 1980s. Since early childhood, the six living children had imbibed their parents’ fierce desire to “get ahead” [salir adelante] through professional education. This dream built on that of several generations of peasant farmers in this area, who had long cherished it as they doggedly bought farmland “with [our] sweat”, plot by plot, from large landowners. Three of her siblings had earned professional degrees in law, teaching, and medicine, respectively. It was clear that being a profesional – and a member of a family of profesionales – was at the core of their sense of self. When I  asked Susana in a January  2018 interview how she felt her country was doing (a question that people often asked me about Bolivia and about my own country), Susana immediately launched into an hour-long litany of concerns. Bolivia was moving “backwards” in large part because the President, Evo Morales, did not value profesionales like herself: [T]he development of each country depends on education . . . but our education  .  .  . is moving backward  .  .  . because our current president doesn’t value profesionales . . . he says ‘We [political and government leaders], without being profesionales, come to occupy [high] positions’. Yes, they occupy high positions. But the problem is that they lack knowledge of what they are doing. By contrast, a profesional knows what they have to do. Looking at it from this perspective, we aren’t progressing at all. (Interview with author, 15 January 2018) Susana said that many Bolivians were migrating to other countries because of the government’s economic mismanagement. The government’s “socialist” redistribution of wealth, which she summed up as the principle of todo por igual, unfairly privileged the lazy and the unmotivated.6 After lamenting that political leaders at all levels were stealing public funds (a common concern, even among the government’s supporters), she explained that the government’s motto of todo por igual was particularly unappealing because it meant that teachers and other professionals employed by the state would no longer be eligible for merit raises. Susana thus tied together her concern that the president’s personal disrespect for Bolivian professionals stifled national progress by promoting disrespect for professional expertise with her concern that government policy proposals would stifle opportunities for professionals like herself, already in the workforce, to receive raises and

Digital alteration and the law against racism 111

move up the professional ladder via seniority and continuing education. She was concerned in practical ways about the stagnation of her wages, but she also worried, more deeply, about the loss of status afforded to people like her: professionals from very impoverished families who had dedicated their entire lives to the idea that, via professional education, a person could shake off one’s indigenous racial and class stigma, gain “education” as a moral and practical good, and secure a prosperous livelihood. The phrase todo por igual thus crystallized for her these multiple, profound threats to her livelihood and sense of self. Susana shared a story to illustrate her fear that government leaders’ devaluation of education had taken root among her own pupils. A former eighth grader, Linette, had dropped out of school several years before to migrate to Argentina. Linette returned just a few years later with enough savings to buy a grand new house and a tractor-trailer truck. Susana had greeted her in surprise, “Linette, you’ve become a cholita! Aren’t you going to go back to school?” Linette replied, “Look, Teacher, to be honest, today profesionales can’t even [afford to] buy a truck or a house . . . it’s a waste of time [to study]”. Susana repeatedly told me that this conversation had dismayed her deeply. That her young student had chosen to become a cholita was bad enough. That she claimed that attaining wealth was preferable to a professional education and social status was a heavy blow indeed. Susana’s opposition to government measures to increase social and economic equality – with the model of professional cholitas as poster children – reflected fear of losing both wealth and social status as a striving professional.7 Susana’s opinion about Vilca’s court case was congruent both with her assertion that the government’s promotion of social equality threatened her own social status and with her disbelief that the pre-existing model of citizenship, based upon ethnic assimilation, could be transformed. She said she hadn’t heard about the incident (unlike many others in Choro, who had paid avid attention). After I had told her the outlines of the case, Susana ruminated further: [F]or me, it’s not a big deal [no es mucha cosa] that they wear a pollera or that they wear de vestido but, yes, I would say, a professional, mmm, shouldn’t wear a pollera because  .  .  . hmm, more than anything because of foreign countries. Because of the pollera we are viewed badly, even though it is [valuable] as a typical [traditional] form of dress. . . . So [the government] mostly wants to revalorize the use of the pollera. In reality, I like the pollera . . . and I have liked it since I was little, I always wanted to be a cholita, but after, little by little, mmm students . . . maybe they can’t [wear it] any more. Future generations who study [e.g. her high school students], they will be the ones who would most criticize the pollera. They would complain “How can it be that a cholita is going to be my teacher?!” Even though, yes, it’s not prohibited, but it’s an image that they [high school age students] may be holding on to. . . .” Susana, unlike her school teacher cousin, Don Felipe’s son, thus affirmed that professional identity was irreconcilable with chola identity. She later speculated

112  Miriam Shakow

out loud that Vilca had pursued her case precisely in order to gain notoriety and earn a political patronage job. In Susana’s conflicted reflection about the status “a cholita” or “the pollera” should hold in Bolivia today, she echoed those of a sociologist I knew, a much more established member of the academic uppermiddle classes firmly rooted in urban Bolivia. She had exclaimed in both bemusement and alarm in 2017: “Today in Bolivia we don’t know who is who!” Susana stated that she herself found polleras attractive and had herself identified as possibly a cholita as a child. But like Vilca’s Photoshopping law school classmates, her words suggest that she felt her own recent rise in social status threatened by Vilca’s visible attempt to redefine professional status as congruent with workingclass and indigenous social identity. Susana’s opposition to the idea of government-sponsored wealth redistribution was shared by other first-generation professionals born in the campo [countryside] I spoke with. Many of them used similar terms to Susana’s to argue that the government’s discourse and policies promoting economic equality were unfair because they rewarded laziness. When I asked how they thought the country was doing in general, they frequently launched spontaneously into a denunciation of “socialism” and the government’s motto of todo por igual. Yet some of them, unlike Susana, admired Vilca and expressed less threat in the ideal of chola cultural identity being congruent with professional status. For example, as Jhoselin, a paediatric nurse who was completing a Master in Hospital Administration, told me in 2018 that Bolivia was becoming “worse”, failing to progress. Like Susana’s family, Jhoselin’s parents had been very poor farmers. And like Susana, Jhoselin immediately expressed her opposition to the motto of todo por igual. She said, “I  sacrificed so much [me he sacrificado]” to become a profesional. And then someone “who isn’t anything [que no es nada], for them to earn the same as me” was completely unfair, she exclaimed. Jhoselin and other first-generation professionals, including Susana, appeared to view the Morales government as threatening their professional, middle-class identity in moral, as well as economic and social ways. Unlike Susana, however, Jhoselin had voted for Evo for president – three times. She was more concerned than Susana about Bolivia’s high levels of poverty. Since Evo was from a poor highland family, she, like many others, had assumed that he would address poverty more effectively than previous governments had done. And yes, she said, the many schools, sports fields, and hospitals he had built were an important start. But many Bolivians remained poor, proving his promises to have been empty. Corruption was rampant. And what’s more, now he was becoming power-hungry, like “Hitler”, and the penal code that would punish doctors (and perhaps nurses) for malpractice “after they have studied for so many years” seemed utterly unfair. Another way in which Jhoselin’s perspective differed from that of Susana, despite their shared dislike of the concept of todo por igual and Evo’s devaluation of middle-class profesionales, emerged when I  asked her about Vilca’s charge under Law 045. Jhoselin was well-versed in the incident and burst out

Digital alteration and the law against racism 113

immediately in admiration, “She [Vilca] made everyone respect her!” [Ella se ha hecho respetar]. “She was the one” who made racism unacceptable in Bolivia, Jhoselin repeated with fervour. Jhoselin seemed to be arguing that Law 045 itself was a rather modest act by the government – just a piece of paper – but that the real protagonist of the struggle against racism in Bolivia was Vilca. It was only through Vilca’s public denunciation of her classmates that many Bolivians heard about the law, came to realize that racism and discrimination were wrong, and reduced, at least outwardly, their racism toward women de pollera. In contrast to Susana’s statement that indigenous or subaltern culture was so irredeemably devalued in Bolivian society, so tainted with backwardness that assimilation was the only viable option for women who wished to attain upward mobility, Jhoselin fervently admired a lawyer for standing up for the right to “become a professional” [salir profesional] de pollera. The ideal of assimilation and the hatred of the economic goal of todo por igual were therefore not necessarily inextricably intertwined for all members of this new middle class. In fact, some people reversed Jhoselin’s equation, arguing instead that ethnic and racial assimilation was good in and of itself while lauding the idea of economic discourses and policies of redistribution. One of these was Don Remigio, an elderly, wealthy farmer, one of the few Choro men of his generation to complete high school, to which he had walked 10 miles down torturously steep mountain paths. Like many people of his generation, like Susana, and as he had said several times throughout the previous ten years, Don Remigio agreed that girls needed to stop wearing polleras in order for “civilization” [civilización] to arrive in Bolivia. This message had been taught to him by his elementary school teachers in the 1950s, and remained true. Don Remigio’s family history and aspirations reflected conflicts and ambivalence, like Susana’s and Jhoselin’s. One son was an engineer living in Brazil who owned his own construction business. A  daughter, though she had never completed high school, had founded a booming business importing home appliances from China. She frequently begged Don Remigio and his wife to come live with her in her spacious city home. Don Remigio longed to accept her offer of a private apartment for them. But his wife preferred to stay here in Choro, cooking in their dirt-floored kitchen with its adobe wood stove and guinea pig corral – local signs of poverty and distinct lack of civilización. So their daughter hired a maid from the city to look after them in their house several days a week. Don Remigio said he was very pleased with the MAS government’s economic redistribution policies, particularly the infrastructure boom that had yielded Choro new irrigation canals, a small hospital and a new high school. He also argued that people from very impoverished origins were more qualified to occupy positions of power than professionals, in keeping with MAS and social movement activists’ pronouncements. Thus, although Don Remigio embraced the citizenship model of ethnic assimilation, maintaining that chola identity was irredeemably “uncivilized”, he, unlike Susana, viewed less educated people as more honest politicians and as more responsible to their rural brethren.

114  Miriam Shakow

Conclusion In this chapter, I have shown how new members of central Bolivia’s middle class invoke contradictory and, at times, ambivalent models of citizenship. In response to a central question of this volume – “do ‘upper- and middle-class’ identities obstruct or facilitate the expression of collective demands or the collective vindication of citizenship?” – the answer for the new Bolivian middle classes is both yes and no. The competing models of upward class mobility in Bolivia today are tied to competing models of citizenship. The definition of the nation, of what it meant to be a Bolivian, is up for debate, as is the definition of middle-class identity, particularly for new entrants to the middle class. Bolivians are debating not simply the question of what a person must earn or what career she should pursue to enter or remain in the middle class  – a government job, a thriving used-car business, a law degree – but also whether she should identify as indigenous and emphasize her lower-class origins while occupying that role. The reasons why some new members of the middle class, including Susana, Jhoselin, and Don Remigio, reject some of the ideals of social and economic equality currently circulating in Bolivia are multiple. Susana and Jhoselin rejected the government’s motto of todo por igual out of frustration at getting edged out of consideration for political patronage jobs given to MAS supporters; concerns about increased legal liability for profesionales under the penal code; identification with profesionales as a class and cultural group, eliding the difference between themselves and long-established urban middle and upper classes. They also expressed concern that their “sacrifice” to attain a professional degree in order to rise economically has been in vain, as they were outcompeted in status and wealth by people who had not chosen education as a route to upward mobility. These are multiple and weighty concerns that cut to the core of many people’s senses of self. Meanwhile, Susana and Don Remigio rejected the possibility that the long-stigmatized chola and indigenous social categories could or should change meaning. That some newly middle-class people, including Susana, express a strong sense of membership with profesionales as a class and resent the idea of equality on moral grounds is in keeping with the findings of anthropology about longer-­ established urban middle classes in Latin America and other places in the Global South (Cahn 2008; Dickey 2000; O’Dougherty 2002). What is notable is that even those Bolivians who explicitly reject the notion that wealth should be redistributed or equality fostered, including Susana and Jhoselin, nonetheless also claim subaltern identity and the ethic of equality in other moments or in other registers.

Notes 1 The social category chola, because it is frequently used as an insult, is often substituted with its more respectful diminutive “cholita” or “mujer de pollera” (woman who wears a pollera) when speaking of a particular woman. In this article, I use the term chola to

Digital alteration and the law against racism 115 refer to the social category, but “cholita” and “de pollera” to refer to particular people who occupy that category. 2 People in this group rarely referred to themselves as “middle class”. Instead they used terms like profesional [professional] and salir adelante [getting ahead]. For a fuller description of the range of self-identification in central Bolivia, see Shakow (2014). 3 As Canessa (2007) and Shakow (2014) have described, indigenous identity is far from straightforward in Bolivia. Native speakers of indigenous languages frequently identify as “mestizo” rather than “indigenous” and vice versa. Many people express indigenous identity in only some contexts. 4 It is critical to emphasize the significant gap between MAS rhetoric of economic equality and actual economic parity in practice. From the continued privileges afforded to mining firms that marginalize the rights of local communities, to the government’s plans to build a major highway through indigenous collective lands, to persistent joblessness and low wages in Bolivia’s large informal sector, poverty and inequality remain significant in Bolivia (see Bebbington and Humphreys Bebbington 2010; Fabricant and Postero 2015). In this chapter, I am focusing on the reception of government discourse and policy, rather than aiming to assess the actual redistribution of wealth. 5 Students and scholars based in the U.S. have remarked to me that they see lighter skin in the digitally altered image of Vilca and have asked whether the law school classmates deliberately lightened her skin. In fact, the issue of skin tone never came up in the media, commentary, or my discussions with Bolivians about the case. This is likely because, although skin colour matters deeply in Bolivia and light skin is often favoured, the chola category is not defined relative to phenotypic features such as skin or hair colour. 6 I found that all public references to “todo por igual” were used by the political opposition, rather than by MAS government leaders. 7 Although MAS supporters circulated Evo’s high school diploma during his 2005 election campaign, political opponents continue to assert that he was a high school dropout.

Bibliography Albro, Rob. 2000. “The Populist Chola: Cultural Mediation and the Political Imagination in Quillacollo, Bolivia.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 5 (2): 30–88. Bebbington, Anthony, and Denise Humphreys Bebbington. 2010. “An Andean Avatar: Post-Neoliberal and Neoliberal Strategies for Promoting Extractive Industries.” Brooks World Poverty Institute Working Paper 117. Brooks World Poverty Institute, April. Cahn, Peter. 2008. “Consuming Class: Multilevel Marketers in Neoliberal Mexico.” Cultural Anthropology 23 (3): 429–52. Caldeira, Teresa. 2000. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley: University of California Press. Canessa, Andrew. 2007. “Who Is Indigenous? Self-Identification, Indigeneity, and Claims to Justice in Contemporary Bolivia.” Urban Anthropology 36 (3): 195–237. de la Cadena, Marisol. 2000. Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Dickey, Sara. 2000. “Permeable Homes: Domestic Service, Household Space, and the Vulnerability of Class Boundaries in Urban India.” American Ethnologist 27 (2): 462–89. Ejú. 2011. “Abogada Amalia Laura: No deben tener miedo a estudiar con su identidad propia.” http://eju.tv/2011/02/abogada-amalia-laura-no-deben-tener-miedo-a-estudiar-consu-identidad-propia/. Accessed 26 February 2011.

116  Miriam Shakow Fabricant, Nicole, and Nancy Postero. 2015. “Sacrificing Indigenous Bodies and Lands: The Political-Economic History of Lowland Bolivia in Light of the Recent TIPNIS Debate.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 20 (3): 452–74. FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization), United Nations. n.d. “FAOSTAT: Bolivia (Plurinational State of).” www.fao.org/faostat/en/#country/19. Accessed 2 February 2018. Gotkowitz, Laura. 2003. “Trading Insults: Honor, Violence, and the Gendered Culture of Commerce in Cochabamba, Bolivia, 1870s  – 1950s.” Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 83–118. Hale, Charles. 2005. “Neoliberal Multiculturalism: The Remaking of Cultural Rights and Racial Dominance in Central America.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 28 (1): 10–28. ———. 2007. “Rethinking Indigenous Politics in the Era of the ‘Indio Permitido’.” NACLA Report on the Americas 38 (2): 16–21. Haynes, Nell. 2013. “Global Cholas: Reworking Tradition and Modernity in Bolivian Lucha Libre.” The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 18 (3): 432–46. La Razon. 2011. “Cambiaron sus polleras por una toga.” http://www.la-razon.com/index. php?_url=/sociedad/Cambiaron-polleras-toga_0_1346865327.html. Accessed July  20, 2018. Maldonado, Stephanie. 2017. “Festipollera 2017 premiará al ganador con Bs. 4.000.” Los Tiempos, 18 September. www.lostiempos.com/actualidad/cultura/20170918/ festipollera-2017-premiara-al-ganador-bs-4000. Mena, María M. 2011. “Discriminan a estudiante y montan su foto en mosaico de graduación.” Somos Sur, 23 February. www.somossur.net/lucha-de-mujer/622-discriminan-aestudiante-y-montan-su-foto-en-mosaico-de-graduacion.html. O’Dougherty, Maureen. 2002. Consumption Intensified: The Politics of Middle-Class Daily Life in Brazil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Paulson, Susan. 1996. “Familias que no ‘conyugan’ e identidades que no conjugan: la vida en Mizque desafía nuestras categorías.” In Ser mujer indígena, chola o birlocha en la Bolivia postcolonial de los 90, edited by Silvia Rivera, 85–154. La Paz, Bolivia: Ministerio de Desarrollo Humano. Seligman, Linda. 1989. “To Be in Between: The Cholas as Market Women.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (4): 694–721. Shakow, Miriam. 2014. Along the Bolivian Highway: Social Mobility and Political Culture in a New Middle Class. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Weismantel, Mary. 2001. Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 7

Banging the other side of the saucepan Changing political activism and performance of citizenship among Argentina’s middle class, 2001–2013 Daniel Ozarow Between May  2012 and April  2013, Argentina’s urban centres bore witness to several enormous anti-government protests. Led by sectors of the middle class,1 these actions marked the return of this historically important and mobilised political actor to the nation’s centre stage on a scale not seen since the 2001–2002 social uprisings. This chapter explores changes and continuities in patterns of middle-class citizens’ political activism and their performance of citizenship, class, race and nationality between these two moments. Based upon an ethnographic study, including observation and interviews with primarily non-activist citizens in 2011 (during the months leading up to the following year’s protests), it seeks to comprehend how research participants made sense of their citizenship and the rights it bestowed. It explores their perceptions of their own position vis-à-vis other social sectors, and how they believed that aspects of their rights were being violated. How these understandings influenced their political engagement and how these potentially informed the 2012 mass anti-government protests is examined, drawing out comparisons with the literature on those who participated in the 2001– 2002 protests.

The middle class and the 2001–2002 protests The 2001–2002 uprising occurred within the context of Argentina’s most serious economic and political crisis in history. This included a debt default, mass unemployment of 25% and the pauperisation of seven million middle-class citizens (INDEC). Whilst it was a popular, multisectoral revolt, it was characterised by widespread participation from the middle class.2 Citizens’ faith in the institutions of representative democracy collapsed, and the demand ‘¡que se vayan todos!’ [get rid of them all!] encapsulated the zeitgeist of the time. There was widespread recognition that the neoliberal model of Presidents Carlos Menem’s (1989–1999) and Fernando De La Rua’s (1999–2001) governments had been a disaster, and that the corruption-ridden, representative democratic system had been exhausted. Bourgeoning protest movements sought to replace this model with a fairer, more participatory society based on social solidarity (Adamovsky 2009). Millions of

118  Daniel Ozarow

middle-class citizens engaged in radical, self-organised, non-party political collective experiments in participatory democracy and horizontal decision-making, such as neighbourhood assemblies, participatory budgeting, cultural movements and barter clubs. Through these actions, a concerted attempt was made to transform society for the benefit of all. Narratives of contention and the performance of class were represented in popular chants, cacerolazos [saucepan protests] and in the neighbourhood assemblies’ discourses. These focused on solidarity with ‘the other’, in particular between progressive elements of the middle class and structurally poor and working-class movements, including the piqueteros3 [road-blockers] (Svampa and Corral 2006). Historically, Argentina has enjoyed the largest, most politically influential middle class in Latin America. Several waves of European immigration established an upwardly mobile and aspirational population during the early twentieth century. General Juan Perón’s government (1946–1955) introduced income redistribution policies and free university education, which aided the sentiment of belonging to the middle class at the time. The legacy is that almost nine in ten Argentinians believe they are so today (Universidad de Palermo/TNS Gallup 2015). Yet this proportion falls to 49% if income is taken as a measure of class using the World Bank’s US$10 per day criteria (World Bank Database, n.d.)). If a Marxist definition is applied (managers, property owners and the supervisors of exploitation), the figure is a fraction of this. “Born out of politics” in reaction to the rise of Perón and his Justicialista (Peronist) movement (Adamovsky 2009, 265), elements of the ruling elites took fright at how this anti-clerical, nationalising president strengthened labour rights and wages, and encouraged the industrial working class to strike against large employers. In response, elites attempted to co-opt sectors of the working class and dilute the subaltern resistance by imbuing in them a middle-class identity, using their influence in mass media and cultural institutions. Modernisation theory promoted ideals of ‘progress’, ‘whiteness’ and ‘decency’. Peronism was conveyed as creating indiscipline, immorality, laziness, violence and backwardness, similarly to the anti-egalitarian discourses discussed by Shakow (Chapter  6). Following the Revolución Libertadora [Freedom Revolution] civil-military uprising, which eventually overthrew Perón in 1955, the state expanded its attempts to create the idea of the ‘middle-class Argentinian’. Underlying racial prejudices were seized upon to invent the ‘threat’ of the mestizo shantytown-dwelling poor (Guano 2004). Symbolic violence began to permeate everyday language and elite culture. Simultaneously, the nineteenth-century ‘civilisation vs. barbarism’ dichotomy, immortalised by the writings of former Argentinian President Domingo Sarmiento, was evoked to pit the national project of ‘progress’ against the forces of ‘backwardness’ among this newly conscious middle class (Adamovsky 2009). Curiously, as with the 2012–2013 protests, this fervent opposition to Peronism emerged among many who had gained economically from its governments. Here lay the origins of a deep social fissure [la grieta] that pitted Peronism vs. radicalism, ‘barbarism’ vs. ‘civilisation’, Europeanism vs. Latin Americanism and the

Banging the other side of the saucepan 119

‘mestizo’ vs. the ‘white’, representing two distinct visions of national projects that continue to prevail today. Several arguments have been forwarded to explain middle-class participation in the 2001–2002 protests. Schamis (2002, 83–86) argues that the legacy of a weak post-dictatorship “delegative democracy” allowed 1990s Menemismo4 to bolster subnational authoritarianism via provincial caudillos. By 2001, flourishing corruption and nepotism had led to anger around the failures of political representation (Schamis 2002). Onuch (2014) argues that the infringement of civil rights in the context of politicoeconomic crises crossed a collective threshold of political patience, together with the internal division of elites, involvement from foreign actors and the intensification of activist protests in general. Others posit that middle-class mobilisation was strongly influenced by the national imaginary (Ozarow 2014; Armony and Armony 2005). During the 1990s, the meaning of ‘belonging to the middle class’ was reconfigured as citizenship became more closely associated with capacity for consumption (rather than occupation or education) when the government’s 1991–2001 convertibility model tied the value of the peso to the US dollar. This made it relatively much more affordable to purchase imported consumer durables, cars, computers and mobile phones, and to take foreign holidays. The government and media claimed that Argentina had become a ‘middle-class country’ with the population able to enjoy purchasing power on a par with their European and North American counterparts. Yet following the country’s debt default and currency devaluation when convertibility suddenly ended, these myths of being middle-class and of the country having fulfilled its ‘historic destiny’ of national greatness were exposed. Purchasing power was decimated, and mass unemployment and impoverishment expanded into the middle class. The disparity between raised material hopes and the inability to fulfil them in practice is arguably what sparked the outbreak of mass protest in 2001 and is described by James Davies in When Men Revolt and Why (1971) as a prime factor in explaining social uprisings. That movement sought to ‘indict’ those in the political elites who had deceived them. But what of the notion of ‘being middle-class’ and its ability to advance collective demands in Argentina? In reality, both in 2001 and historically, it has proven to be more of an obstacle to collective action and has rarely been used as a framing mechanism to mobilise this class. Some analyses understood 2001 to be a defensive response to rapid downward mobility for fear of social descent and eventual proletarianisation (Ollier 2003). Under this interpretation, action in solidarity with other social actors was purely to avoid sinking into the working class. Yet contrary evidence suggests that much of the cross-class solidarity at the time was not defensive but idealistic, extending far beyond and outliving the collective protests. Many lower-middle-class neighbourhood assemblies were precisely those that most vehemently defended the poor and workers’ resistances (Svampa and Corral 2006). A study by Nueva Mayoría (Centro de Estudios Nueva Mayoría

120  Daniel Ozarow

2006) showed that 40% of assembly members hailed from the middle class. Yet they never specifically called for the defence of their own class, instead supporting all sectors who had suffered since the crisis. As a collective identity, middle classness is usually expressed covertly in public protest, as explicit attempts at promoting the defence of the ‘middle class’ have proved disastrous. For instance, the Middle-Class Movement in 1956 only ever had 300 members. It was run by members of the upper class, failed to make any impression and folded within a year (Adamovsky 2009). In 2001–2002, assemblies and movements largely avoided referring to the middle class in communiqués and discourse, with appeals instead more often being made to ‘the people’. Participants self-identified as “neighbours” (Svampa and Corral 2006, 30). This distinction between the public performance of class, which was expressed through association with ‘the people’ in 2001, and the strong private attachment to a ‘middle-class’ identity which endured the crisis (two-thirds of Argentinians maintained such self-identification despite their unemployment or pauperisation [Grimson and Kessler 2005]), seems contradictory. However, to understand it, we must return to the intersectionality between nation and class in Argentina. Dating back to the time of General Juan Perón, ‘the worker’ was extolled along with the mythological pueblo argentino [Argentinian people], and this became embedded in the national psyche. Political parties of all descriptions have since tended to avoid directing their campaigns at any one specific social group or class. The notion of the ‘middle class’ has since adopted anti-popular connotations. Nevertheless, during the 2001 crisis, for the first time since the 1950s there were some explicit attempts to both mobilise and placate the middle class as a collective entity. At the level of elite politics, (Peronist leader) Eduardo Duhalde began defending the middle class in his 2001 speeches. In Mendoza, the Middle Class Housing Plan was enacted. The Argentinian Confederation of MediumSized Companies (CAME) began to openly call for a rebellion “in defence of the impoverished middle class” in December 2001 (Adamovsky 2009, 449). The short-lived Middle Class Defence Front was formed in Rosario and in the leading daily Página 12, the cartoon strip Rep openly called upon readers to join a middleclass revolt (Adamovsky 2009). This return of ‘the middle class’ as a mobilising identity can only be explained by the overwhelming fear many citizens felt when faced with an enormous scale of proletarianisation. Social movements and elite actors were confronted with choices about whether this fear outweighed the risks of using an ‘anti-popular’ discourse. Those like the CAME decided in favour of explicitly promoting their own perceived class interests, whilst the assembly movements tended to opt against. Whether the middle class was capable of achieving transformative change through their demand-making at the time is doubtful if one refers to a community psychology approach, as it highlights differences in how struggling middle-class and structurally impoverished communities confronted their respective situations (Saforcada et al. 2007). Among shantytown and working-class barrio residents,

Banging the other side of the saucepan 121

internal solidarity and their associated movements, like the piqueteros or assemblies in poorer neighbourhoods, outlasted the crisis. Yet those in the middle class who suffered rather sudden pauperisation after the initial few months of political revolt tended to slide back towards private coping strategies, and social solidarity broke down. This was due to a deep-rooted individualism and belief in selfsufficiency and individual freedom, as well as growing preoccupations about crime and the sanctity of private property. Their contingent demands for ­systemic change also rapidly faded and most eventually capitulated to supporting the reformist Kirchner government of 2003 (Mazzoni 2008). The conservatism of many in the middle class was highlighted by a wave of high-profile kidnappings, including the murder of student Axel Blumberg, concerns which generated a sizable protest movement during the Blumberg demonstrations of 2004 and 2006. These attracted a strong middle-class presence around authoritarian demands for harsher penal laws, a transfer of power to the police and security forces and a repressive clampdown on crime. This prevented those outside the progressive wing of the middle class from creating an organised and sustained political response to the crisis of political legitimacy (Ozarow 2019). Mazzoni (2008, 219) describes the struggling middle class as “low-impact citizens” due to their advanced political critique and the intensity of their verbal demands, yet limited expectations of their social and economic citizenship (what the state should provide for them). This minimalist understanding of citizenship limited their commitment to actually taking transformative political action to voting. Despite the crisis of representation, they continued to demonstrate subordination towards their political representatives. Class was an important factor in the performance of contentious politics during 2001–2002, determining which repertoires of protest were adopted. Among the range of movements, the piqueteros were perceived as a movement of the unemployed, who demanded food, work, housing and social welfare plans. The worker-recovered companies’ movement were largely blue collar, and trade union marches were often stigmatised due to their bureaucracies’ complicity with or capitulation to previous neoliberal governments. However, the neighbourhood assemblies were a more attractive proposition for many in the middle class, seen as a more acceptable and sophisticated form of subversion. Through this tool of direct democracy, the nation’s political, economic and social problems were discussed and intellectualised in mass gatherings in open public spaces as an affront to the delegitimised national ruling class. The performance of middleclass discontent in 2001–2002, often in the form of cacerolazos, was depicted by the media and academic studies as ‘spontaneous’, ‘autonomous’ of political parties, ‘peaceful’ and territorialised in the neighbourhood vicinity. Thus, the ‘pots and pans’ protests soon came to also symbolise middle-class resistance during subsequent protests in Argentina, like the 2004 Blumberg demonstrations, the 2008 ‘Countryside Conflict’ and again in the 2012–2013 anti-government demonstrations, as they did in Iceland, Spain and Greece in their respective middle-class-led uprisings in 2011–2012. Through the cacerolazos, middle-class citizens could

122  Daniel Ozarow

enunciate their personal class identity through a distinct protest repertoire which distinguished them from trade union, blue-collar or unemployed citizens’ groups. Carrying saucepans during protests thus allowed them to express their anger with the government whilst saving face regarding any personal financial difficulties they were experiencing.

The fieldwork study Six months of fieldwork in Argentina were conducted from March to August 2011. Several research methods were triangulated. The author conducted participant observations in middle-class citizens’ local communities, their working and social lives, noting and interpreting the systems of meaning participants attached to a variety of research themes mentioned in the introduction. Concurrently, interviews were conducted with 30 middle-class citizens (12 men and 18 women) in Spanish. Six were aged 20–29, six 30–39, four 40–49, ten 50–59 and four 60 or older. Only three were political activists. Because of the timing of the research, we cannot be sure if these individuals went on to participate in the 2012 protests. Rather, the opinions and attitudes they expressed are assumed to provide clues to the underlying individual and collective grievances that provided the grounds for the anti-government protests that followed a few months later when the largely middle-class protestors were able to mobilise sufficient resources to take action as argued in resource mobilisation theory (McCarthy and Zald 1977). The interview responses and observations were then analysed thematically and comparisons drawn with the literature on middle-class citizens’ activism and performance of citizenship during the 2001–2002 protests. Participants were selected for interview from a market research agency database if they (a) held a professional qualification, owned a small business or had a university degree (or were currently studying for one); (b) owned their home (or were adult children of those who did) and (c) worked in a profession or highly skilled job, or ran a business (or were adult children of those who did), indicating their middle-class status based on a pre-interview questionnaire. Self-selection problems were largely avoided as only one qualifying participant declined to be interviewed. Home visits were made to gentrified districts of five large cities – Buenos Aires, La Plata, Rosario, Santa Fe and Posadas – and to Piedras Blancas, a rural village in Entre Rios Province. This helped to inform some observations about regional and urban/rural differences.

The middle class and the 2012–13 protests In contrast to the 2001 rebellion, middle-class participants in the mass protests of 2012 had abandoned the hope of achieving a wide-ranging societal transformation. The movement goals of solidarity and of new democratic, participatory and horizontal economic and political structures were replaced by a narrower focus on indicting reformist-Peronist President Cristina Kirchner, whom they accused

Banging the other side of the saucepan 123

of corruption and authoritarianism. Internal enemies, such as ‘the poor’, were blamed for the nation’s problems, replacing the entire political establishment, globalisation and the IMF, who had been deemed responsible in 2001–2002 (Ozarow 2019). Materialistic concerns, such as ending inflation and currency controls, became key demands in 2012. As with 2001, the protests themselves remained non-party political, self-organised, and centred on the cacerolazos. However, this time they occurred during a period of comparative economic stability and low unemployment, and amidst acute political polarisation. While the objectives were very different, the protests symbolised that many of the preoccupations of 2001, such as a perceived lack of democratic accountability, corruption, and lack of faith in the political establishment, had remained unresolved (Svampa 2012). Whilst middle-class participation in both sets of protests was significant, there was a higher presence of upper-middle-class citizens in 2012 compared to 2001. As a heterogeneous actor, both socio-economically and politically, there were of course many within the middle class who supported the objectives of both movements, neither of them or one or the other. However, some generalisations can be inferred.

Citizenship as an ‘occasional identity’ Certain parallels can be drawn in the interviewees’ 2011 dominant discourses, which suggest continuities with those reported in 2001–2002. Almost all participants expressed disdain for politicians, parties and politics in general, understanding them to have violated their sense of political citizenship and associating them with ‘corruption’ and ‘dirt’. Among the over-40s, this tended to engender a sense of powerlessness. Eight confessed that although they had supported the idea of ‘¡que se vayan todos!’ in 2001, the fact that many of the same faces had returned to the political scene and corruption continued made them feel resigned and actually demobilised them from political activity. For younger Argentinians, this acted as a motivator to engage in political activism, such as protest blackouts, or to participate in social movements, such as the Frente Popular Darío Santillán, or in political parties, like the Socialist Party. Another important continuity was the perceived ongoing crisis of representation since 2001. Most (22) interview participants struggled to mention a current politician they felt represented them. Only a handful did so, citing Cristina Kirchner or then-opposition deputy Elisa Carrió, among others. More often, historical figures like Perón, Che Guevara or radical presidents like Alfonsín (1983–1989) or Frondizi (1958–1962) were referenced. The lack of faith in political institutions extended to the trade unions, which half the sample viewed negatively. They were often described as ‘mafias’. A minority of five expressed that they felt represented by charities, the church, media or their trade union. An interesting paradox was observed. Despite the near-universal sense of anti-politics, the act of voting continued to be central to middle-class citizens’

124  Daniel Ozarow

understanding of their citizenship. This was true even among those who were the most scathing of politicians or could be categorised as ‘apolitical’. The liberal model of political citizenship tends to be hegemonic in contemporary constitutional democracies. Citizens restrict themselves to entrusting the business of law-making to representatives rather than engaging actively (Walzer 1989). This notion was found to be almost universally accepted among the sample. With the exception of three cases, collective protest engagement was minimal, and the widely-advocated 2001 notion of participatory democracy was now deemed unworkable. I  therefore term how participants relate to their citizenship as an ‘occasional identity’. To some extent, the Kirchner governments since 2003 had attempted to implement some of the demands of the 2001 uprisings, especially for more active citizen participation in political and economic decision-making in the nation’s institutions. The application of more republican notions of citizenship to policymaking through their national-popular project is exemplified by the creation of the 2004 National Institute for the Associative and Social Economy, support for worker-recovered enterprises and cooperatives (Ozarow and Croucher 2014) and the 2014 National Programme for Participatory Budgeting. However, these republican conceptualisations of citizenship had little resonance among my interviewees, and only a couple of them mentioned participation in such projects. Historical factors, such as the legacy of the dictatorship (meaning they valued the act of voting, even if there was no candidate or party they believed in), were commonly cited, as was the fear that not voting would lead to anarchy (understood as a breakdown of order and threat to their property). Twelve participants described voting as the “least worst option” (el mal menor). The political class is a necessary evil, because when all is said and done, yes, there is corruption, but they bring a certain order to things. Even the way they are corrupt is orderly! Without them, well, we would be halfway towards anarchy, no? [Laughs]. (Brian, 37, Rosario) Half of the sample (15) mentioned that, although they always made sure that they voted, they doubted that voting would change anything. Abstention or ballotspoiling was seen as maintaining the status quo, in contrast to 2001 when onefifth of voters spoiled their legislative election ballot papers and a further quarter abstained (despite compulsory voting). I am going to struggle to vote this year. . . . We have to vote for somebody . . . Spoiling my vote? That’s not the solution either. In reality we shouldn’t vote for anyone but we haven’t done that en masse since 2001 so we are not going to change things that way. (Lucía, 63, Posadas)

Banging the other side of the saucepan 125

Six participants were somewhat conspiratorial, explaining that in elections the winners were predetermined: But I don’t really care who I vote for. That’s the most pathetic thing. I don’t care . . . because it’s all fixed anyway. (Jorge, 36, La Plata) There was a general feeling that they were poorly represented and that most politicians of all persuasions were corrupt and self-serving. The only participants who spoke positively about politics were Matias (21) from Posadas, who was the son of a politician, and Martin (50), a resident of the rural village of Piedras Blancas, who described politics as “beautiful”. In this village, national politicians were generally held in higher regard. Labels such as “corrupt”, “dirty” and “thieves” were less frequently used here than among interviewees in the urban centres. Mazzoni’s notion of ‘low-impact citizens’ (2008) still widely applied in 2011. Participants’ radical analyses of how society functions (often critical, anti-­ systemic, even Marxist) and their damning condemnations of their own subjugation were not matched by engagement in action to contest it. Indeed, some of the government’s fiercest critics, like the two quoted ahead, actually expressed the very anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist views that one can find in Kirchnerist discourse. Somehow, the government was failing to win over those who should have been its natural allies. The main problem we have is one of dependence. All our riches are being stolen by the Americans . . . by the English. (Luis, 57, Santa Fe) The world’s wealth is owned by just 270 powerful men. Via their minions, the rest of us are exploited day after day. They will only stop us from rising up by giving us just about enough of the crumbs to survive. (Carlos, 78, Buenos Aires)

From passive dissidence to mobilisation Despite interviewees’ wholesale disdain for the political class, the act of ‘doing politics’ was limited to giving opinions. Among the two-thirds of participants (19) who held negative views of the current Kirchner government, it was as if a cauldron of grievances was heating up that would explode at any moment. Given the lack of political opportunities to join collective protests, assemblies or other contentious actions, many harboured feelings of resignation. Dissidence only manifested itself passively.

126  Daniel Ozarow

I do not believe that the people have any power. . . . They do not have it. We have to make do with a system that grants us elections to vote for people who do not represent us. (Franco, 35, Posadas) In addressing the question of what it would take for them to convert their citizenship from ‘passive’ to ‘active’ through participation in collective actions, interviewees insinuated that they lacked the belief that things could change. To rebel without a critical mass would be pointless, but also potentially risky. This participant used the following analogy: My relatives in the USA always ask me why I don’t rebel. Well, there is a certain degree of impotence. Imagine that you are herding cows, sheep or whatever with dogs and whips. You bring them along with you and they all follow. None of the animals rebel, because they know that the consequences of doing so would be immediate and dangerous. (Carlos, 78, Buenos Aires) Self-sufficiency appeared to be embedded in my interviewees’ belief systems. They appeared reluctant to transform any economic grievances into action, but said that they would be more likely to do so if civil or political rights were attacked or if motivated by a deep sense of injustice or moral cause. For instance, Laura was critical of those who, in her opinion, protested for “financial self-interest” (even citing the middle class in the 2001 cacerolazos), but then conceded that she would protest: if it were a question of human rights. . . . Anything to do with the AMIA,5 and I’m not even Jewish. . . . Or for the ‘Disappeared’.6 I believe in the right to life . . . and human rights most of all. (Laura, 49, Buenos Aires) The exception to this, where the violation of social rights did ignite particular anger, was perceived intersectional gender and age discrimination. This was mentioned by all of the seven middle-aged women (ages 50–65) in the sample. In a country where the gender pay gap was 30% in 2011 (INDEC n.d.), these grievances were justified. But curiously, they were not transformed into collective action until the enormous Ni Una Menos [Not One Less] protests in 2015–2016, when the gruesome femicides of teenagers Chiara Paez and Lucia Perez shocked the nation, galvanised activists and non-activists and raised awareness of the extent of domestic violence and other elements of gender inequality in society. According to resource mobilisation theory, the conditions required for a social movement to emerge are where a shared understanding of grievances is combined with the belief that they can be overcome (McCarthy and Zald 1977). In daily interactions with middle-class citizens, it was evident that there was growing

Banging the other side of the saucepan 127

awareness of the first part of this equation  – widespread discontent. Dissident conversations in shops, on public transport or at social events about the declining state of society would be sprinkled with phrases such as “Well, with the government we have. . . .” However, during the research period, incumbent President Cristina Kirchner was leading by far in the polls and then actually won 48% of the vote in the August 2011 presidential primaries, some 35% ahead of her nearest rival (Dirección Nacional Electoral 2011). Neither had there been any major antigovernment protests for the preceding three years. For this reason, the second element of the theory was virtually absent among critics of the government – the belief that they could bring about change. Thus, the fieldwork period seemed to mark a time of ‘testing the water’ for many of those interviewed, who were experimenting with how far their feelings were tolerated or shared through subtle comments in public exchanges – until such time that this became well-established on the streets in the following year. The other factor that transformed this passive dissidence into mobilisation was that by 2012, oppositional actors had established diagnostic framing processes (Benford and Snow 2000) that blamed the president for middle-class citizens’ underlying sense of political neglect. For instance, Jorge Lanata’s fiercely antigovernment TV show Periodismo Para Todos (Journalism for Everyone), principally watched by a middle-class audience, launched in 2012 and quickly gained millions of viewers just weeks before the first anti-government mobilisations. His show launched several investigations into alleged government corruption, and mocked and demonised the president and her aides. It thus helped such citizens to understand that their grievances were shared by millions of others, legitimised their discontent and gave them the confidence to join collective action organised via social media in 2012.

Victimisation as ‘neglected citizens’ and retreatism In seeking to answer the demands of the 2001–2002 uprisings and of social movements such as the piqueteros, Kirchnerismo used state benefits and workfare programmes to extend social and economic citizenship rights to previously excluded sectors, such as the unemployed, informal workers and the poorest sectors of society. This post-neoliberal ethos (Wylde 2016) distinguished them from traditional Peronist governments, which had focused social coverage on formally-employed labour. However, an unintended consequence of these policies was that many of my middle-class interview participants (who fell outside the scope of these plans) felt abandoned or neglected, and thought that the values they held dear were under attack. Many also expressed a yearning to recover the material prosperity that they had enjoyed under convertibility in the 1990s. Of these eroding values, almost half the participants (14) complained that it was impossible to use socially acceptable means to achieve their desired living standards, although this was less pronounced among the young adults (two of the six under 30 years old). Older participants

128  Daniel Ozarow

felt futility and despair, as their values of honesty and hard work were deemed to hold little currency in 2011. This had politically demobilising consequences. Almost all (23) mentioned how they felt Argentina’s meritocratic society (another strongly-held middle-class conviction) had been replaced by one which rewarded laziness, violence or corruption. Nicolas (49, Buenos Aires) exclaimed: “It’s as if here there is a mentality whereby an honest person is seen as a fool while the one who screws everyone else is admired”. Responding to this Durkheimian anomie and a perceived breakdown of social norms, several adopted what Merton (1968, 241) described as “retreatism” (rejecting the cultural goal of success and socially legitimate means of achieving it). “Retreatism” had a distinct political dimension among research participants because such reactions linked their fates to perceived discrimination against ‘middle-class citizens’. About two-thirds of participants insinuated that traditionally excluded sectors of society were favoured by the existing Peronist government as its traditional and natural electoral constituency. They criticised the supposedly ‘generous’ welfare and unemployment benefits and governing politicians’ impunity despite alleged crimes. As Shakow (Chapter 6) explains, similar views were held by emerging-middle-class Bolivians, who believed that the governments’ egalitarian social policies in support of the poor devalued their own efforts to build a career and instead rewarded laziness. If they insist on giving the poor social plans, I do not understand why they do not also look to support the middle class, or say we shall do all we can to find you work. Because unlike them [the poor] we do not sit here with our arms crossed, waiting for money from above. (Sofia, 31, Santa Fe) Carolina echoes this sentiment and ominously predicts a social revolt: Something is going to explode at any moment. This government is giving out money left, right and centre; take, take, take from the hardworking taxpayers. They are the ones who will rebel sometime soon because they are fed up with paying so that others can live for free. (Carolina, 23, Piedras Blancas) Feeling their social position increasingly threatened ‘from below’ as traditional markers of social distinction (income, value of educational qualifications, recent job status, savings) had eroded since the 2001 crisis, interviewees found it difficult to describe how they were distinct from the ‘working class’ or the traditional poor. The blurring of interclass boundaries is not a new phenomenon, but it intensified after 2001, when the real-terms salaries of those with university degrees fell by 26%, yet those with only primary education increased by 5% (INDEC n.d.). Cross-class social trust had diminished since 2001 and two-thirds (20) of research participants saw themselves as ‘victims’ of the Kirchner (Peronist)

Banging the other side of the saucepan 129

government that was historically supportive of the non-European, mestizo and descamisado.7 Respondents evoked deep historical social fissures in Argentinian society that manifest themselves in the form of symbolic racialised violence against internal ‘enemies’ – the poor and the piqueteros, the same groups with whom many had marched on the streets a decade earlier.

The ‘other’ as the bad citizen Interviewees framed themselves as ‘good citizens’, whilst the crime-committing, road-blocking, ‘work-shy’ poor were characterised as ‘bad’. Of the 30 interviewees, 14 identified “insecurity” (crime) caused by the poor as their main preoccupation. Surveys at the time indicated that over a quarter of Argentinians had been victims of crime or violence. However, the perception of insecurity was up to three times higher than the reality (Observatorio de la Deuda Social Argentina 2010). Television news, talk shows and newspaper headlines emphasised ‘insecurity’ in society, and research participants referred to a combination of these stories and experiences of friends and family members, or (less commonly) their own experiences, when discussing their fears. Media usually depicted poor, dark-skinned immigrants from surrounding Andean countries or local shantytowns as perpetrators. These tapped into deep-seated fears of ‘the other’ among many middle-class residents. Other researchers (Guano 2004; see also Shakow, Chapter  6) have explored how middle-class citizens seek to counter the fading social differences between themselves and the structural poor by articulating a consensus on how national modernity is threatened by the illegitimate incursion of the mestizo poor into middle-class districts and the unjust extension of unearned civil rights. However, by 2011, the notion of the ‘bad citizen’ appeared to have become uncritically accepted (or what Gramsci terms “common sense,” 1998, 327) by those in the interview sample. Consent to be ruled by the existing order could therefore be perpetuated, as even those who had once allied with the indigent poor during the 2001–2002 rebellion now viewed them with suspicion. It is terrifying these days. Maybe it is due to all the foreigners in the country. There are loads here from Paraguay, Bolivia and Colombia. It is full! (Julieta, 86, La Plata) Today there is a struggle between social classes. You cannot take anything new with you without someone pulling a gun on you and threatening to kill you for two pesos. Today that is how things are. You have to keep your wits about you. There is complete insecurity. (Vanesa, 26, La Plata)

130  Daniel Ozarow

Participants often applied ethnic (immigrant/race) and class-based (poor/lowerclass) characterisations interchangeably to describe this group which they felt threatened them. This was perhaps unsurprising, given the conflation between class and racial origins in Argentina. A handful used overtly racist language about mestizo shantytown dwellers, which was typical of this confusion. Open xenophobia was expressed in equal measure, regardless of age or gender. This country is made for either those who have lots of money or those blacks [negros] who have nothing. The guy who works hard and wants to progress in life does not stand a chance. (Jorge, 36, La Plata) The characterisation of the bad citizen also extended to protest movements. Nine participants had been sympathetic or supportive of the piqueteros during the 2001 crisis, but felt that their methods had lost “legitimacy”. Framed in citizenship terms, there was general agreement that the unemployed had the right to have their basic needs covered and to be provided with work but not to receive state handouts. However, interviewees’ concern for the rights of piqueteros had since been superseded by anger that their own ‘right’ to move around the city freely in order to exercise their right to work was being violated by constant roadblocks. One participant described the piqueteros’ protest methods as “a revolutionary car tax against the middle class”. All but two participants were critical of them, this one being typical: What the piqueteros do . . . and I am not saying that their demands are not just but the way that they make them . . . they annoy so many people who are working. . . . What you are restricting is the right to freedom of transit. (Graciela, 50, Buenos Aires)

Conclusion: it’s all just a little bit of history repeating Argentinian history since 1955 testifies that change, be it in the dominant political ideology or economic model, has only been possible with the tacit majority consensus or even mass mobilisation of the middle class, from the 1955 Revolución Libertadora uprising to the civil-military coup in 1976 to Menemismo in the 1990s to the 2001–2002 revolt. Middle-class involvement in the 2012–2013 anti-government protests was significant, although less multisectoral than in 2001–2002. The ethnographic study conducted here several months prior to their commencement suggests that some of the underlying grievances held by broad middle-class sectors became politicised and soon transformed into active mobilisation. Whilst these protests were not officially organised by any political party and did not bring about immediate change, they did set in motion a series of events in high politics which culminated in an attempt to answer many of their demands.

Banging the other side of the saucepan 131

Electoral opposition was completely divided in 2011, but the 2012–2013 mobilisations revealed the existence of an oppositional grassroots movement that needed to be united at the ballot box. Headed by one of the protest movements’ most outspoken advocates, Elisa Carrió, initially a Broad Front (UNEN) alliance formed between the Civic Coalition (CC-ARI) and other parties that enjoyed significant middle-class support (including its historic electoral outlet, the Radical Civic Union [UCR], and the Socialist Party). When this project was dissolved in mid-2015, enough head wind had been generated for CC-ARI and UCR to join Governor of Buenos Aires City Mauricio Macri’s Republican Proposal party to form Cambiemos [Let’s Change]. This alliance then came to power in December 2015 and presented the demands of the 2012–2013 protests – ending corruption, inflation, crime and currency controls – as its flagship manifesto pledges. To this extent, Argentina’s middle class remains an important agent in the process of social change, provided its demands resonate with broader sections of society. The multisectoral alliance between the lower-middle class, organised labour, the indigent poor and the unemployed on the streets in 2001–2002 eventually provided the electoral basis for Kirchnerismo. This began to disintegrate after 2011, and the 2012–2013 movement, led by the upper-middle class and supported by much of the non-progressive middle class and pockets of the poor, morphed into Macrismo. The study also revealed Argentina’s middle class’ understanding of citizenship to be limited to political and civil rights. The strong middle-class belief in selfsufficiency minimised expectations of social and economic rights for themselves and others. In terms of political mobilisation, their liberal, rather than republican, understanding of citizenship made them much more sensitive to allegations of corruption, authoritarianism, human rights abuses and anti-liberalism than to poverty, unemployment or even macroeconomic performance. The Kirchner government was performing well on all these latter indicators. Perceived political neglect linked to their middle-class identities held greater weight in generating mobilisation against the government than economic wellbeing brought about by a decade of successive annual macroeconomic growth (bar 2009) of 6–10% (IMF n.d.) had in preventing it. Failing to recognise this was a strategic error of Cristina Kirchner’s government. Kirchnerismo enjoyed substantial popularity from broad sectors of the middle class early on, when it was viewed as fulfilling individual and collective political demands in correspondence with cherished liberal and civil rights values: removing the Menemist judges, arresting former military leaders accused of genocide, promoting equal marriage, etc. Whilst their expectations of social protection from the state remained weak, the growing belief that structurally impoverished, unemployed, ‘non-deserving’ and for some frankly ‘racially inferior’ ‘bad citizens’ were being lavished with state support, whilst ‘hardworking’, ‘decent’, white, ‘good’ middle-class citizens were politically and socially neglected, prompted many to take collective action. These mobilisations were fuelled by the resurrection of historic prejudices and political fault lines that aggravated existing anti-Peronist

132  Daniel Ozarow

sentiment and opposition to a national project, embodied by the president, which they perceived to be diametrically opposed to their own vision of the country. This perceived injustice was understood well by Mauricio Macri, who was able to construct an alliance of political forces to form Cambiemos. Alongside a heavily supportive media, the way Macri tapped into these sentiments and values with subtle and covert imagery and messaging, seducing the middle class without alienating the rest of society or adopting an ‘anti-popular’ discourse, was key to his 2015 election success. Notions of emprendedorismo [entrepreneurism], ‘decency’ and of ‘returning to the world’ (meaning the ‘First World’ from which their immigrant grandparents came) by ending the Latin American regionalist policy and developing closer ties with the white European and North American businesses and government also attracted middle-class voters. Social movements and political parties on the left, meanwhile, have failed to capitalise on this framing in the same way and must learn this lesson if they are to return to power themselves.

Notes 1 By ‘middle class’, I refer to highly educated professionals, middle managers, small business owners or skilled white-collar workers, or people who are homeowners. 2 One in five of those in the struggling middle class participated in the protests in the first six months of 2002 alone (World Bank 2002; Ozarow 2014, 199). 3 Unemployed workers’ movement. 4 Refers to the government of Carlos Menem who was President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999. 5 The Jewish community centre that was blown up in a terrorist attack in 1994. 6 The 30,000 victims of the 1976–1983 civil-military dictatorship. 7 The term descamisado, literally meaning ‘shirtless’, refers to the traditional poor from whom Peronist governments built their support base.

Bibliography Adamovsky, Ezequiel. 2009. Historia de la Clase Media Argentina. Buenos Aires: Planeta. Armony, Ariel, and Victor Armony. 2005. “Indictments, Myths, and Citizen Mobilization in Argentina: A Discourse Analysis.” Latin American Politics and Society 47 (4): 27–54. Benford, Robert, and David Snow. 2000. “Framing Processes and Social Movements.” Annual Review of Sociology 26: 611–39. Centro de Estudios Nueva Mayoría. 2006. “La desaparición de los cacerolazos, las asambleas populares, y el fenómeno del trueque, tras la salida de la crisis 2001–2002.” www.nuevamayoria.com/GO/?main=/ES/INVESTIGACIONES/socio_laboral/061221. html. Accessed 21 December 2006. Davies, James Chowning. 1971. When Men Revolt and Why. New York: The Free Press. Dirección Nacional Electoral. 2011. “Elecciones presidenciales.” https://recorriendo.elecciones.gob.ar/presidente2011paso.html#/3/1. Accessed 10 April 2018. Gramsci, Antonio 1998 (1929–1935). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Grimson, Alejandro and Kessler, Gabriel. 2005. On Argentina and the Southern Cone: Neoliberalism and National Imaginations. Abingdon: Routledge.

Banging the other side of the saucepan 133 Guano, Emanuela. 2004. “The Denial of Citizenship: Barbaric Buenos Aires and the Middle-Class Imaginary.” City & Society 16 (1): 69–97. IMF. n.d. “IMF Data.” www.imf.org/en/Data. Accessed 23 April 2018. INDEC. n.d. “Base de Datos.” www.indec.gov.ar. Accessed 10 December 2017. Mazzoni, Maria. 2008. “Ciudadanos de bajo impacto.” Universidad Nacional de Comahue Revista de la Facultad 14: 211–25. McCarthy, John, and Mayer Zald. 1977. “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory.” American Journal of Sociology 82 (6): 1212–241. Merton, Robert. 1938. Social Structure and Anomie. Theory and Social Structure. New York: The Free Press. Observatorio de la Deuda Social Argentina. 2010. “Encuesta de la Deuda Social Argentina.” www.uca.edu.ar/uca/common/grupo68/files/Microsoft_Word_-_INSEGURIDAD-1-.pdf. Accessed 10 April 2018. Ollier, Maria. 2003. “Argentina: Up a Blind Alley Once Again.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 22 (2): 170–86. Onuch, Olga. 2014. “ ‘It’s not About the Economy Stupid’: Why Economic Crises Do Not Cause Mass Mobilization, Lessons from Argentina.” In Argentina Since the 2001 Crisis, edited by Daniel Ozarow, Cara Levey and Christopher Wylde, 89–114. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ozarow, Daniel. 2019. The Mobilization and Demobilization of Middle-Class Revolt Comparative Insights from Argentina. New York and London: Routledge. Ozarow, Daniel. 2014. “When All They Thought Was Solid Melted into Air: Resisting Pauperization in Argentina During the 2002 Crisis.” Latin American Research Review 49 (1): 178–202. Ozarow, Daniel, and Richard Croucher. 2014. “Workers’ Self-Management, Recovered Companies and the Sociology of Work.” Sociology 48 (5): 989–1006. Saforcada Enrique, Victor Giorgi, Anntonio Lapalma, Susana Rudolf, Alicia Rodriguez, Ana Ferullo, and Sali Fuks. 2007. “Community Psychology in the River Plate Region.” In International Community Psychology, edited by Stephanie Reich, Manuel Riemer, Isaac Prilleltensky and Maritza Montero, 99–116. Boston, MA: Springer. Schamis, Hector. 2002. “Argentina: Crisis and Democratic Consolidation.” Journal of Democracy 13 (2): 81–94. Svampa, Maristella. 2012. “Negro sobre blanco.” Diario Perfil, 16 September. Svampa, Maristella, and Damian Corral. 2006. “El análisis de la dinámica asamblearia: las asambleas de Villa Crespo y Palermo.” In Movimientos Sociales en la Argentina de hoy. Piquetes y Asambleas, edited by Maristella Svampa, 21–46. Buenos Aires: CEDES. Universidad de Palermo/TNS Gallup. 2015. 4° Estudio sobre Felicidad. Entorno y pertenencia de clase. Universidad de Palermo/TNS Gallup: Buenos Aires. Walzer, Michael. 1989. “Citizenship.” In Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, edited by Terrance Ball, James Farr and Russell Hanson, 211–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. World Bank. 2002. Impact of the Social Crisis on Argentina Survey. Washington, DC: Opinión Pública, Servicios y Mercados. World Bank. n.d. World Bank Open Data https://data.worldbank.org/ Washington DC. Wylde, Christopher. 2016. “Post-Neoliberal Developmental Regimes in Latin America: Argentina Under Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.” New Political Economy 21 (3): 322–41.

Chapter 8

Demonstrating ethnicity and social class The Colombian-Lebanese in Bogota Esteban Devis-Amaya The Colombian-Lebanese community has existed in Bogota since the turn of the twentieth century, a time when many Lebanese and Middle Easterners in general were migrating to the Americas. This group of migrants was not homogenous, and its members’ background, settlement, and development in the host countries took them through different paths. Whilst some assimilated into the local societies, losing their connection to their ancestral homeland, others maintained their Lebanese identity, forming a dual home-host sense of belonging. The active ColombianLebanese community in Bogota is made up of first- to fourth-generation individuals, of upper- and middle-class families. As seen ahead, the socio-economic composition of the community is due to the societal structures in Colombia and to the community’s own exclusionary practices, and members’ organisations, events, and activities are conducted within the channels provided by their elite position. The Colombian-Lebanese have created different types of organisations in order to promote their ethnic identity, strengthen their sense of belonging within the community, and reinforce their social status in the local society, a pattern that exists in similar form in other Lebanese diasporic communities in Latin America. This chapter looks into the visible and active Colombian-Lebanese community, its organisations and events, and draws on ethnographic research carried out in Bogota from 2008 to 2013, including interviews conducted with members of the community1 and participant observation of their events. It focuses specifically on the participation of the Colombian-Lebanese community in two public demonstrations  – events where these upper- and middle-class Colombian-Lebanese were able to play with their ethnic and social class identities, within specific elite spaces. I build on Alfaro-Velcamp’s (2013) argument that these elite individuals have used their Lebaneseness as a mark of foreignness to strengthen their position in society. I demonstrate that the Colombian-Lebanese have multiple expressions of citizenship, which they see as complementary to each other. They actively portray their foreignness as a way of maintaining their privileged foreign status in society – the more they connect their ethnicity with aspects of upper-middle-class status, the stronger claim the community has to keep their privileged status; and, in addition, their elite status allows them to make collective demands that benefit the community as a whole. Moreover, by keeping their events and organisations

Demonstrating ethnicity and social class 135

within elite spaces, the Colombian-Lebanese are also restricting the participation of non-elite individuals and effectively creating an obstacle to their potential expressions of citizenship. These arguments can be extrapolated to other Latin American countries where elite Lebanese/Arab diasporas exist.

‘Foreign citizens’ and desired immigrants The Lebanese have migrated to the Americas since the late 1800s, with the largest waves being registered until the 1930s and during the Lebanese Civil War (1970s and 1980s), and continue to do so in smaller numbers. Large numbers settled in Latin America, with countries like Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia receiving the largest share. The reasons for their migration are varied and include economic hardship, avoidance of military conscription, the search for new opportunities, and the influence of friend and family networks (see Salibi 1965; Hitti 1967; Klich 1992; Issawi 1992; Humphrey 1998; Traboulsi 2007). It is difficult to know the exact number of Lebanese who travelled to Latin America or to Colombia, as there are no reliable migration records. Estimates of the current population of Lebanese descendants in Colombia vary from around 50,000 in 1992 (Fawcett 1992) to over one million in 2011 ( Carrillo and Cuevas 2011). Regardless of the exact number, they were numerous enough to allow them to sustain local communities, but not to create a minority group in the country. The previously mentioned authors, and my own participants, relay similar stories about the settlement and development of these Lebanese migrants, where many were economically successful and upwardly mobile. Friend and family networks made it easier for them to earn money and set up businesses. The profits made allowed them to send their children to university, and a large number of wealthier second-generation Lebanese descendants became lawyers, doctors, and engineers. Many of them married into wealthy local families, further influencing their upward social mobility – in some cases reaching the top of the economic and/ or political elite. Indeed, examples of their rise and success socially, financially, and politically have been documented by several authors in different geographical contexts in Latin America, including Colombia (Fawcett de Posada and PosadaCarbo 1992; Vargas and Suaza 2007), Brazil (Karam 2007), Mexico (AlfaroVelcamp 2007), Chile (Bray 1962), and Ecuador (Bejarano 1997). An example of this is the political influence of individuals of Lebanese descent in Colombia, including Gabriel Turbay, a former senator and presidential candidate in 1946; Julio Cesar Turbay, a former minister, ambassador, and 25th president of Colombia (1978–1982) (Vargas and Suaza 2007); as well as many other city mayors, senators, congressmen, and government ministers (Di Ricco 2014). Indeed, Fawcett de Posada and Posada-Carbo (1992) estimate that in 1992, at least 11% of Colombian senators had Lebanese ancestry. Individuals of Lebanese, and generally of Arab descent, also reached the highest positions of power in other Latin American countries, including Carlos Menem in Argentina (1989–1999), Abdala Bucaram and Jamil Mahuad in Ecuador (1996–1997 and 1998–2000, respectively), Carlos

136  Esteban Devis-Amaya

Flores of Honduras (1998–2002), Antonio Saca of El Salvador (2004–2009), and Michel Temer of Brazil (2016–2018). It is important to note, however, that these individuals did not reach these positions by playing on their ethnic heritage, but rather through political, ideological, and policy means. As time passed and the diasporic community developed, some families retained close connections to the ethnic community throughout the years, some families kept faint links, and others lost them completely. Alfaro-Velcamp (2013) explains this by theorising that different groups of migrants were considered as more or less desirable by the receiving Latin American countries. As such, white European and North American migrants were considered more desirable than black or East Asian migrants. She argues that the former ‘desirable’ migrants found it easier to maintain their ethnic identity and foreign status, and even to share elite spaces with the local middle and upper classes. However, the latter ‘undesired’ migrants were more likely to be discriminated against, found it hard to succeed, and were forced to assimilate fully into the local society in order to diminish their undesirability, losing their ties with their ethnic and cultural identities. According to Alfaro-Velcamp, the Lebanese migrants found themselves in an ambiguous position, as their precedence and phenotype did not clearly place them in either category – instead belonging to an ambivalent category, which she terms ‘foreign citizens’, framed by their socio-economic success and that of their ancestors. She argues that the first generation of Lebanese migrants had to show signs of acculturation into the local society in order to succeed, and the results of this acculturation affected the later generations. The descendants of those who were financially successful were able to create a hybrid identity between their Lebanese cultural ethnicity and the local identity, felt more comfortable publicly performing their hybridity, and similarly to the ‘desired’ migrants, began sharing spaces with the local elite. However, the descendants of those who were not financially successful had to assimilate into the local society, just as the descendants of the ‘undesired’ migrants had to do, eventually losing their ties and belonging to their Lebanese identity. These ideas of selected acculturation, assimilation, and economic success link to the notion that in Latin America ‘whiteness’ is connected with wealth, where the elite centres of power are considered as more ‘white’ (Wade 2000), where whiteness is seen as coming from a “good family” (Chua 2003, 69), and where “the poor are often identified as non-white” (Alcantara 2005, 1667). Just as the European and North American migrants benefited from the racialisation of socio-economic status due to their phenotype, the descendants of successful Lebanese migrants, whose phenotype was not necessarily white nor non-white, benefited from the wealth their ancestors created, as it made them ‘whiter’ and more ‘desirable’ than their less wealthy counterparts. As the Lebanese migrants and especially their descendants became part of the local elite, their social circles, the locations of their homes, the schools and universities they attended, and their spaces of socialisation became the same as those of other members of the elite. They also set up a number of social, economic, political, charitable, and religious organisations, which worked alongside

Demonstrating ethnicity and social class 137

with – and sometimes rivalled – the already established elite organisations. These Lebanese organisations have helped them reinforce their common identity as well as maintain their elite status, validating their position as ‘foreign citizens’. As it is explained ahead, participation in the Colombian-Lebanese community and its events and activities, including those of a political nature, is tightly connected to particular socio-economic status. This is the case not only for Colombia, but elsewhere in Latin America, too, as similar attitudes can be seen in Mexico  – where Alfaro-Velcamp’s study was based – as well as in Brazil (Karam 2007), Chile (Agar-Corbinos 2009), Ecuador (Bejarano 1997), and Peru (Bartet 2009), among others. Indeed, by portraying their ethnic identity within elite spaces, these wealthy Colombian-Lebanese are highlighting their ‘desirable foreignness’ to the local society, validating their citizenship from an elite position, whilst distancing themselves from ‘less desirable’ status and segregating themselves from non-elite individuals. In Bogota, there are a number of Colombian-Lebanese organisations, including a social club, a political and cultural organisation, a charitable association, a chamber of commerce, and a Christian Maronite parish. Of importance for this chapter are the former two: the social club, called Club Colombo-Libanés [Colombian-Lebanese Club], and the political and cultural organisation, called The World Lebanese Cultural Union – Colombia Chapter (or ULCM for its acronym in Spanish). They help set the context to explain the political participation of the Colombian-Lebanese in public protests, including their initiatives to meet their collective demands, their exclusionary practices, as well as the importance of the interaction of their socio-economic status and their ethnic identity, for their positioning within Colombian society.

The Club Colombo-Libanés Mostly referred to by my participants simply as ‘the Club’, the Club ColomboLibanés is a relatively small, private social club located in a prestigious upperclass neighbourhood in the north of Bogota. The Club has been the ethnic and social centre of the Colombian-Lebanese community since its foundation in the 1950s, and the other Colombian-Lebanese organisations use its facilities2 for their events. It is a constructed Colombian-Lebanese ethnic and social space, where the Colombian-Lebanese often perform their ethnic and social identities. In theory, the Club is a members-only establishment; however, many of its facilities are available to non-members, as well, as they can be invited as guests and the spaces can be privately rented for events. In this sense, the Club has a dual capacity, as a social and ethnic space for the Colombian-Lebanese, and as a business space for private hire. Even though its name has an ethnic connotation, its exclusivity makes it practically inaccessible to any working-class Lebanese migrants or descendants, and it is more likely to see middle- and upper-class non-Lebanese Colombians visit the Club, as guests of Colombian-Lebanese members or as private renters.

138  Esteban Devis-Amaya

There may be different reasons for the foundation of the Club. First, Wade (2000, 68) states that in Colombia, “class identity was expressed powerfully through the creation of elite social clubs”, so the Colombian-Lebanese could have been trying to live up to their ‘foreign citizen’ status by founding a social club. However, Fawcett and Posada-Carbo (1998, 27) argue that the Lebanese migrants founded their own social clubs after being denied membership at more established elite social clubs. If they were denied entrance, it means that some sectors of society may not have accepted them at the time as part of the elite. At the same time, my participants stated that the Club was created to provide a gathering space for Lebanese migrants and their families, but that its small size is because it has to compete with other elite social clubs in terms of membership. In fact, many Colombian-Lebanese are members of other social clubs in Bogota, country social clubs and city social clubs. Therefore, the reasons for its foundation are likely to combine these sentiments. It is possible that the club was founded in a period when the Colombian-Lebanese were still hanging in the balance between being considered ‘desirable’ or ‘undesirable’, so were not accepted into already established elite social clubs. The community then decided to create a place of gathering to foster a sense of belonging and a safe space for ethnic identification, whilst also actively portraying their rising socio-economic status. Then, as time went by and the Colombian-Lebanese climbed the social ladder, they became more ‘desirable’ – and as such were able to join those other elite social clubs that their parents or grandparents were not able to join. The Club relocated to its current premises in 1967, from the socio-economically mixed city centre into the wealthier north of the city, a move that further suggests its transition into ‘desirability’. It moved into a large house in the prestigious Chicó neighbourhood, surrounded by other large traditional houses and nearby traditional and international schools (the Lycée Français is less than 200 metres away). From the outside, there are few clues as to the nature of the place: it is surrounded by a white wall and fence, with tall trees peering over from the inside garden, and patrolled by security guards (like most buildings in the area). The Club looks like a traditional Chicó mansion from the 1960s. The only clues to it are a small sign on the entrance displaying the Club’s name and a cedar tree; and the Colombian and Lebanese flags, which are hoisted high within the walls. Only a careful observer would notice these clues, and for the most part, it blends in with the neighbourhood. Some of these houses have disappeared from the area, and stylish modern buildings stand in their place. Therefore, from the outside, the Club stands more as a reminder of the traditional past of the neighbourhood than as an ethnic Colombian-Lebanese space. All of these factors suggest that the Club can be described as an “allowed space” (Montero-Diaz 2014, 53) for the Colombian-Lebanese, where they feel “safe and comfortable, where they can avoid being discriminated against and can distance themselves from people ‘not like them’, who they consider different ethnically, socially, culturally or by class”. Indeed, this ‘allowed space’ is used both to generate a sense of security for the group, and as a tool for segregation from

Demonstrating ethnicity and social class 139

others ( Montero-Diaz 2014). They can meet, behind closed doors and inside high walls, where they are not disturbed or questioned if they perform their ethnicity, and where they can feel safe. At the same time, the club is also an exclusionary space, not easily accessible to those without the socio-economic means or connections, who would be unlikely to access it and could be barred from entering by the security guards. It is both an ‘allowed space’, where the elite ColombianLebanese can perform their ethnicity without needing to explain it, and a space that perpetuates the segregation between the classes by ensuring that participation remains within the elite. As mentioned earlier, other Colombian-Lebanese organisations also use the Club for their activities, either as a base or as the main centre for their events. One such organisation is the ULCM,3 a worldwide organisation with a set of specific rules surrounding the promotion of Lebanese culture and the defence of Lebanese political sovereignty. Their events are of interest for this chapter and are here discussed – all of them have a strong connection to the Club.

The July War of 2006 During the summer of 2006, the Lebanese group Hezbollah – a long-time foe of Israel and labelled a terrorist organisation by numerous countries – attacked some Israeli border towns and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Israel retaliated by attacking Hezbollah positions in Lebanon and bombing several towns and cities, including the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The war lasted just over a month and resulted in the deaths of more than 1,100 Lebanese people, mostly civilians (Ruys 2007, 266; Hamieh and Ginty 2009). At that time, a large number of Colombian-Lebanese were in Lebanon, visiting friends and family, claiming they were ‘reconnecting with their roots’ or simply visiting the country as tourists. They were caught in the middle of this conflict and, with the airport shut down, were unable to leave. As a result, the Colombian-Lebanese community in Bogota mobilised, calling the international community for an immediate cease-fire and the Colombian government for a rescue operation. The calls for a cease-fire involved producing anti-war materials, including stickers, pins, and posters with the slogan “Cese al fuego en el Medio Oriente” [Cease-fire in the Middle East], and organising a public demonstration. These actions gathered a large number of Colombian-Lebanese individuals and led to the revival of the ULCM. At the time of the events, Colombian national newspaper El Tiempo ran a number of stories highlighting the plight of the Colombian-Lebanese stranded in Lebanon and even quoted prominent Colombian-Lebanese individuals in their newspaper. One of them was a participant of my study, a first-generation Colombian-Lebanese male in his 80s who was in Beirut at the time: [The Israelis] are savagely destroying the country. I pray to God that they have a consciousness and that they stop this. It’s not fair. I hope the killing stops. (Quote of the Day, El Tiempo Newspaper 2006)

140  Esteban Devis-Amaya

The newspaper published at least five different articles focusing on the impact the conflict was having on the Colombian-Lebanese community in Lebanon and Colombia, with quotes and photos, suggesting the community was seen as significant enough to have time and space dedicated to it in an important national publication. This was not surprising, as not only several prominent journalists are Colombian-Lebanese, but also as the community is composed of upper- and middle-class individuals, it has connections with important media outlets. As mentioned earlier, the community also organised a demonstration calling for a cease-fire. One of my participants explained: It was an apolitical march.  .  .  . The philosophy was to ask for support to cease the bombardment because it was an almost unilateral attack – because a group such as Hezbollah, regardless of how well-armed they are, cannot counter a regular army. [The march] was done firstly, in order not to stain with politics that opposition to the bombing, so the march would not lose strength; secondly, to not exclude the Lebanese Muslims; thirdly, to get as much support as possible. Those were the criteria. . . [It went] well, because many people went and it had a certain echo, as it was reported in the national media – briefly, but it was reported. . . . We gathered outside [the area of the protest] and then walked back to the Club. (Second-generation Colombian-Lebanese, male, 40s) His account is somewhat contradictory, as the demonstration and his own words do seem to have a political motive, i.e. just protesting against the conflict is a political statement, and my participant’s argument that the conflict was “almost a unilateral attack” is already taking sides. Rather than apolitical, the demonstration was planned to be as inclusive as possible, to include those supporting Arab causes in the Middle East, as well as peace activists in general, and Lebanese nationalists in particular. Interestingly, the demonstration did not take place near any embassy or Colombian government building, but in front of the UN mission to Colombia. The mission has its offices in the wealthy northern neighbourhoods of Bogota, and this particular one was only 2.1 kilometres away from the Club. In fact, the demonstration started at the social club and participants walked the 2.1 km to the UN offices. By comparison, the Israeli Embassy is over 8 km away from the Club, the main Colombian government buildings are over 9 km away, and neither is situated in a wealthy area. The Colombian-Lebanese decided to keep their protest within the comfort of the wealthy neighbourhoods of Bogota, and near the social club. In this sense, they made a deliberate choice regarding the space to stage their demonstration and display their discontent with the events in Lebanon. The location of the demonstration was also an ‘allowed space’, this time not physically behind walls, but in a wider wealthier area that not only reflected their socio-economic status and granted opportunities for social interaction, but also reinforced that elite status by making a statement about their social standing. According to a

Demonstrating ethnicity and social class 141

Colombian newspaper article, around 600 people participated in the demonstration (El País Newspaper 2006), including several of my research participants. One of them recounted her experience in this way: I went to the demonstration and I kept the [cease-fire] pins and everything. I got my friends involved as well, told them to buy the pins and support me. I explained that it was a really serious situation for my community . . . I was there in front [of the UN offices] and there were people who were not Lebanese, people who one would say to them come and support us. And I love the solidarity in those kinds of things. It was, like, to make the Lebanese community be felt, even though we weren’t there [in Lebanon] it affects us that the country one can identify with is in such a conflict. . . . It is something incredible . . . I said “wow, there’s a lot of solidarity for those kinds of things”, and I liked that it wasn’t just us but that people here also felt affected, as it was terrible. . . . My uncle asked me to go and I said yes, and then we could go to the Club for lunch. The Club is the meeting point. (Fourth-generation Colombian-Lebanese, female, late teens) My participant’s words stress the significance of the event in terms of increasing solidarity both within and for the community, and highlight the importance of the Club, socially and practically. Even though a large number of individuals attended the event, only Club members and their guests were able to meet up at the Club afterwards to “have lunch”. The wider public was not invited to participate in this social activity, and those who did were ‘friends’ with middle- and upper-class backgrounds (whether they were Lebanese or not). Access to their ‘allowed space’ was conditional on socio-economic status, not on the expression of solidarity or ethnicity. My participant’s words underline how the social aspect influences other objectives the events may have. Something similar happened with the 20th of July march in 2008, which I discuss ahead, when a number of Colombian-Lebanese community set off from the Club to join the march, and many of them returned there again after it finished in order to have lunch. Performing their ethnic identity was made even more attractive by the social activities connected to it, even as an excuse to meet up socially. At least in my participant’s case, the lunch seems to have been an expectation connected to the participation. These activities also heightened the visibility of the Colombian-Lebanese community as it was making itself felt. Indeed, the conflict led many ­Colombian-Lebanese to make their ethnicity more visible, either by attending the demonstrations, carrying Lebanese flags, or portraying the anti-war merchandise. The July War generated a sense of solidarity among some Colombian-Lebanese, and this led them to take action. Another one of my participants, a second-generation Colombian-Lebanese in her mid-50s, saw the event as a “beautiful” memory to be remembered, with a large congregation of Colombian-Lebanese carrying Lebanese flags and displaying their ethnic identity. My participant connects her memories of the protest not

142  Esteban Devis-Amaya

with the suffering of those caught up in the conflict, or with the urgency of rescuing those in Lebanon unable to leave, but with the imagery it created in Bogota and the sense of belonging it generated amongst the participants. The demonstration was a kind of “in-between” space (Bhabha 1994, 1) for the ColombianLebanese, created by the encounter of their identities (their Colombian socioeconomic status identity and their Colombian-Lebanese ethnic identity), where factors such as political goals, convenience of location, and a social gathering combined to generate a common feeling of belonging. The heightened feelings of belonging generated by the demonstration and the conflict in general had longer lasting repercussions for the community, as they led to the revival of the cultural and political organisation, ULCM. My participants retell this process as a tale of reencountering old friends and old feelings of belonging: Unfortunately the [July] War comes . . . and has an effect on those people who felt Lebanese before and had left that feeling to the side. . . . That moment renewed/stirred that love and that pain, that complete rejection [of the war]. A  lot of feelings that above everything made people come together to see what could be done. . . . From that we started to remember things we had forgotten, we started to sing, started to dance, we began the meetings amongst the Lebanese . . . and as someone said – a phrase that I love: the [blood] cells find each other again. (Second-generation Colombian-Lebanese, female, early 50s) We understood that we loved each other very much, that we had met again and that we wanted to stay together. So we thought of the possibility of creating something . . . and someone mentioned to me, why don’t we think again about the ULCM? (Third-generation Colombian-Lebanese, female, early 50s) My perception is that because of the July War in 2006 people started getting back together. People didn’t use to go to the Club much. . . . We [her family] weren’t members. . . . After the war, people started to unite again, to look for one another, and went to the Club to an event thanking those that helped during the war, including the Colombian government . . . I think that because of the war a lot of cool things have been developing. (Fourth-generation Colombian-Lebanese, female, mid-20s) Indeed, what my participants explain is that the events of the July War not only led to the revival of the ULCM, but they also allowed them a space where they could display both their socio-economic and their ethnic identity. Many of these individuals had been members of the ULCM in their youth, and remembered its social gatherings and events, with other Colombian-Lebanese families of similar

Demonstrating ethnicity and social class 143

socio-economic standing – and they also wanted their own children to experience this. The revival, therefore, was not just political or cultural, but also significantly an agency for the maintenance of their community through social events. Most of my participants focused heavily on the importance of social events, not just for the community but in general. In a sense, the political agenda seems to take a back seat to the opportunities to socialise and strengthen their ethnic identity through their elite channels. In political terms, the demonstration did not achieve much – which is not surprising seeing that it only took place once and was geographically removed from most actors who were directly involved. However, the community was successful in pressuring the Colombian government through their personal contacts and networks into sending a military plane to rescue the Colombian-Lebanese who were accidentally stranded in Lebanon. One of my participants who was evacuated from Lebanon at the time, the same individual who was quoted by the newspaper, commented that a group of Colombian-Lebanese in Colombia worked as a network to organise their rescue, using their influence and contacts: The community here, my family, and people I know [got together]. And I particularly thank Minister Juan Manuel Santos for his concern to pick up the Colombians who were there [in Lebanon]. . . . The Colombian government and its Embassy in Lebanon helped a group of over 100 Colombian people get out of Lebanon, and the Colombian Air Force sent a big military plane and got us out from the north of Lebanon and took us to Zaragoza. It was a very sad and painful odyssey for me. (First-generation Colombia-Lebanese, male, 80s) After the successful rescue operation, the community leaders organised a reception at the Club to welcome back the Colombian-Lebanese who had been stranded in Lebanon and to thank those officially involved with the rescue, including the military commanders who led the mission, and then Defence Minister Santos, who later became president. It is unsurprising that the way to celebrate the achievement of their collective demand was through a social event in the Club, with members of the political elite. In this sense, the Colombian-Lebanese used their connections and political influence to ensure their collective demands were met – even if that meant leaving a country they professed to feel a belonging to. It was their social and political connections that allowed them to achieve their aims connected to their ethnic identity. The success of their collective pressure on the Colombian authorities demonstrates that they are seen, and see themselves, as worthy citizens of the nation  – and of course as part of a community that is powerful enough to get their way when organised. Fittingly, the success of the mission was celebrated at the Club, where the Colombian-Lebanese were able to thank those involved, whilst simultaneously portraying their socio-economic status. The July War was,

144  Esteban Devis-Amaya

therefore, a catalyst for the community as it increased the active participation of Colombian-Lebanese within the community, both by providing spaces to reengage their dormant feelings of belonging to their ethnic identity, and by the revival of a cultural and political association. It reconnected members of the community and allowed for future events and activities to take place – one of which is explored below.

Peace March against the FARC A significant political event in Colombia took place two years later, on 20 July 2008, with a march against the now mostly disbanded Colombian left-wing terrorist organisation, the FARC. There were protests in different cities in Colombia and around the world, which focused especially on the kidnappings of both civilians and members of the armed forces by the FARC. The most common slogan was “No Más FARC” [No More FARC]. The event was also a display of Colombian patriotism by the general Colombian public and supported by the government, both to raise patriotism and to increase its political support – coinciding with Colombia’s National Independence Day. The day, usually celebrated by the government with military parades and taken as a holiday by most Colombians, was this time celebrated with ‘peace marches’ and concerts across Colombia. “Millions of people” attended in over 1,000 towns and cities (El Universal Newspaper 2008). The event had a detailed organisation of logistics, with demarcated routes, timetables of the events at the different locations, concerts by famous Colombian artists, video screenings of other events around the country, and active participation from the government and the military, as well as politicians from different political parties. The government was able to capitalise on the previous efforts and get millions of Colombians to wave flags in a patriotic atmosphere. The ULCM participated in this demonstration and encouraged ColombianLebanese individuals to join them under the ULCM banners, with flyers and announcements posted at the Club and emails sent to all members. A  group of around 30–40 Colombian-Lebanese met at the Club for this purpose. There were a number of arranged routes and centres of congregation in Bogota for this protest, and the Colombian-Lebanese chose to march to one just less than 2 km away from the Club. Once again, convenience and pragmatism prevailed, as they stayed in the wealthy north of Bogota marching to the congregation centre that was closest to the Club. It is likely that many would have taken this route anyway, even if they had not been part of the group leaving from the Club, as some live near that area; however, others also travelled from further away in order to join the group. Indeed, this was also the same route taken by many other Colombians of similar socio-economic characteristics. Once again, an “allowed space” was chosen for participation, in this case a specific route that allowed them to mingle with individuals of similar socio-economic status and segregated them from others. My participants left the club wearing white t-shirts, as the event demanded, as well as carrying a large ULCM banner, and Colombian and Lebanese flags. As the

Demonstrating ethnicity and social class 145

group joined the march from a side street, they were received with applause from other participants, and as the march progressed, my participants often greeted friends or colleagues, and welcomed other Colombian-Lebanese who joined the group. Under the ULCM banner, the Colombian-Lebanese were proactively presenting themselves to the general public as Colombian-Lebanese, i.e. as Colombians of Lebanese descent who had joined in a portrayal of Colombian solidarity with a combination of Colombian and Lebanese national symbols. They were sharing a space where Colombianness was being performed and appropriating it to perform their dual Colombian-Lebanese identity. This was a fluid deterritorialised space, not bound to a particular location but rather to the performance of their ethnicity (De Certau 1984; Faist 1998). The Colombian-Lebanese ethnic space moved along the streets of the wealthy north of Bogota, permeating the Colombian space, making their ethnic community more visible and reproducing it within a context, as a specific ‘niche’ within the upper and middle classes of Bogota. Some of the slogans used during the demonstration by the public evoked the coming together of all Colombians to reject the FARC and to call for the freedom of the kidnap victims. Others, such as “Colombia soy yo” [I am Colombia], aimed at boosting patriotic feelings towards Colombia at an individual level whilst expressing that the FARC were in this case ‘the other’ and did not represent Colombia. Some Colombian-Lebanese wore t-shirts with the slogan “Colombia soy yo”, whilst at the same time carrying Lebanese flags and ULCM banners. Their actions suggested that the Colombian-Lebanese were at ease with the performance of their dual ethnic identities, which allowed them to simultaneously claim to embody Colombia and carry Lebanese symbols. This demonstrates the multiplicity and fluidity of their identities (Hall 1996), which are able to switch and mould into different particular contexts. Indeed, their ease with the dual portrayal of Colombian and Lebanese symbols suggests that they do not see their ethnic identities as contradictory and that they ‘are’ also Colombia. This is connected to Alfaro-Velcamp’s (2013, 100) idea of “foreign citizens”, who identify as being born in the local country whilst portraying their Lebanese heritage. The fact that the Colombian-Lebanese are able to actively demonstrate their dual identity within elite ‘allowed spaces’ further confirms and reinforces their own elite position, both to themselves and to the public around them. It is worth noting, however, that as soon as the march ended and people began to disperse, the leaders of the ULCM group were keen to have the flags and banners folded before walking the 2 km back to the Club. It is unclear why this action was taken – maybe to speed up the walk and get to the Club more quickly to have lunch – but regardless of the reason, during the way back, my participants were simply another group of Colombians wearing white t-shirts, dispersing after having protested against the FARC. They were indistinct from those around them. By doing so, the Colombian-Lebanese demonstrated that they are able to decide when to perform their Lebaneseness and, just as easily, when to stop performing it. In this sense, the Colombian-Lebanese can easily switch from being Colombian to being Colombian-Lebanese, and vice versa. After the demonstration, a large

146  Esteban Devis-Amaya

number of participants went once again to socialise and eat at the Club, just as they had done following the July War protest. It must be noted that not all Colombian-Lebanese who marched and who are active in the community did so with the ULCM group and under its banner. Some marched carrying only Colombian symbols, portraying only their Colombian identity. A number of factors may have contributed to this: the group was led by the ULCM, and not all Colombian-Lebanese are involved with the organisation or share its beliefs; a few may have chosen to march through a different route if it was more convenient to them; and others may have chosen to march with their non-Lebanese Colombian friends. Significantly, the fact that the ColombianLebanese have this choice of when to portray certain aspects of their ethnicity suggests a high level of flexibility within their identity. Moreover, they are also able to choose how to perform their identities (Colombian or ColombianLebanese), and are able to switch between them with ease  – even at political events promoting Colombian identification. This level of flexibility is closely connected to their upper- and middle-class status in society, and several authors have suggested that individuals must be in a privileged position in society, be upwardly mobile, and not suffering from discrimination in order to be able to choose how and when to perform their ethnic identities (Gans 1979; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Sullivan 2012). For example, Gans (1979, 8) introduced the idea of “symbolic ethnicity”, which helps explain how newer generations “have some choice about when and how to play ethnic roles”. He argues that symbolic ethnicity is about the individual’s sense of belonging. The Colombian-Lebanese are part of the Colombian elite and their ethnicity is enhanced by the different activities and events they participate in. More importantly, they have a choice of when to portray it and are not obliged to assimilate, making their ‘symbolic ethnicity’ also about practicing and expressing their socio-economic and their ‘foreign citizen’ statuses.

Conclusion Throughout this chapter, I  have analysed the Colombian-Lebanese community in Bogota, and specifically its members’ participation in public demonstrations. The similarities between the marches must be highlighted: they were for common causes, in the same wealthy areas of the city, and projecting a Colombian-­ Lebanese identity. They combined politics, convenience, and the promise of a social gathering with similarly upper- and middle-class individuals to make them more appealing. They have simultaneously created “in-between” spaces (Bhabha 1994, 1), where a sense of belonging to an ethnic identification can be performed and recreated. These performances suggest that the Colombian-Lebanese are able to choose when to display their Colombian-Lebanese identity and when not to. They can decide whether to join in a particular activity, to wear clothing or carry items that can identify them as Colombian-Lebanese, and even the location of these performances. In addition, they can also manage the visibility of their

Demonstrating ethnicity and social class 147

performances and are able to portray their dual identity with Colombia and Lebanon seemingly without discomfort. What allows them this flexibility is their elite socio-economic status: it vindicates their Colombian citizenship as they simultaneously claim identity to another nation, whilst letting them confidently portray their dual ethnic identity and pursue their collective demands. As ‘foreign citizens’, the Colombian-Lebanese play with both of these identities, socio-economic and ethnic, in order to maximise the perceived needs of their collective. At the same time, by setting their organisations and marches within elite spaces, the Colombian-Lebanese are reinforcing their belonging to the upper and middle classes, whilst creating a barrier for the vindication of citizenship of those that do not fit with the ideals of that perceived status. In this way, ColombianLebanese individuals who are not middle or upper class will find it more difficult to access the spaces the community uses to portray their ethnic identity and duality of belonging. Therefore, they simultaneously create avenues of vindication of citizenship for upper- and middle-class Colombian-Lebanese, whilst creating barriers for those who do not form part of the elites. Finally, their practices and expressions of citizenship, through participation in public demonstrations, help them establish their position within the socioeconomic elite and affords them a special ‘niche’, based around their ethnicity and their ‘foreign citizen’ status. These marches, which combine their ethnic and political agendas, reproduce the community in ‘allowed spaces’ within the wider elite social sphere of the city. They are public statements and portrayals that display the strength of the ethnic community, and its socio-economic status, within the already established elite. Their participation in these two protests further strengthened their voice as a community, both to make demands and to reinforce their social standing, but also made it more difficult for less wealthy individuals to participate. The Colombian-Lebanese have managed to use both their ethnic and socio-economic statuses to complement and balance one another, making the most out of them for the benefit of the community, whilst simultaneously keeping their ‘allowed spaces’ exclusive for the elite.

Notes 1 I conducted over 50 interviews with members of the Colombian-Lebanese community, the youngest being in their late teens, and the eldest in their 80s. My data includes individuals from every age group; however, the most common ages were 40s–60s, those who in general were more active in the community. This was due to a variety of reasons, from wanting their children to have a belonging to the community to having the time to participate actively due to retirement, among others. All of the names of my participants have been omitted and are presented as anonymous following the ethics approval forms signed by them. Their gender and generation are given, but only their approximate age, as an exact age would make them more recognisable. 2 The Club’s facilities include a large restaurant, a bar, several meeting rooms, squash courts, a multipurpose salon, a children’s playground, and an activity room. 3 The ULCM has ‘chapters’ in many countries, including Colombia, where it operates mainly from within the Club. It has been greatly affected by Lebanese politics – including

148  Esteban Devis-Amaya its hiatus starting with the Lebanese Civil War until the early 2000s, and its revival during the 2006 July War in Lebanon.

Bibliography Agar-Corbinos, Lorenzo. 2009. “Inmigrantes y descendientes de árabes en Chile: adaptación social.” In Los árabes en América Latina: Historia de una emigración, edited by Abdeluahed Akmir, 99–170. Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores. Alcantara, Manuel. 2005. “Politics and Society in Latin America at the Start of the New Millennium.” Social Forces 83 (4): 1659–70. Alfaro-Velcamp, Teresa. 2007. So Far from Allah, So Close to Mexico: Middle Eastern Immigrants in Modern Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press. Alfaro-Velcamp, Teresa. 2013. “From ‘Baisanos’ to Billionaires: Locating Arabs in Mexico.” In Between the Middle East and the Americas: Cultural Politics of Diaspora, edited by Evelyn Alsultany and Ella Shohat, 96–107. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bartet, Leyla. 2009 “La inmigración árabe en Perú.” In Los árabes en América Latina: Historia de una emigración, edited by Abdeluahed Akmir, 171–233. Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores. Bejarano, Ingrid. 1997. “La emigración árabe al Ecuador.” Anaquel de Estudios Árabes 8: 57–70. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bray, Donald W. 1962. “The Political Emergence of Arab-Chileans, 1952–1958.” Journal of Inter-American Studies 4 (4): 557–62. Carrillo, Adriana, and Angelica Cuevas. 2011. “La fiesta de la comunidad árabe.” El Espectador, 7 September. www.elespectador.com/impreso/nacional/articulo-297650fiesta-de-comunidad-arabe. Chua, Amy. 2003. World on Fire: How Exporting Free-Market Democracy Breed Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. London: Arrow Books. De Certau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Di Ricco, Massimo. 2014. “Filling the Gap: The Colombo Árabes Emergence as Political Actors in Barranquilla and the Caribbean Region.” Revista de Derecho de la Universidad del Norte 41. El País Newspaper. 2006. “Colonia libanesa marcha en Bogotá y pide fin a ataques de Israel.” El País, 23 July. http://historico.elpais.com.co/paisonline/notas/Julio232006/ protes_libano.html. El Tiempo Newspaper. 2006. “Frase del día” El Tiempo, 20 July. www.eltiempo.com/ archivo/documento/MAM-2107872. El Universal Newspaper. 2008. “Millones marchan en Colombia por la paz.” El Universal, 21 July. http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/internacional/58451.html. Faist, Thomas. 1998. “Transnational Social Spaces Out of International Migration: Evolution, Significance and Future Prospects.” Archives of European Sociology 39 (2): 213–47. Fawcett, Louise. 1992. “Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians in Colombia.” In The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration, edited by Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi, Chapter 14. London: The Centre for Lebanese Studies, I.B. Tauris.

Demonstrating ethnicity and social class 149 Fawcett de Posada, Louise, and Eduardo Posada-Carbo. 1992. “En la tierra de las oportunidades: los sirio-libaneses en Colombia.” Boletín cultural y Bibliográfico 29 (29). Fawcett, Louise and Posada-Carbo, Eduardo. (1998). “Arabs and Jews in the Development of the Colombian Caribbean 1850‑1950.” In Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Images and Realities, edited by Ignacio Klich and Jeffrey Lesser, 57‑79. London: Frank Cass & Co. Gans, Herbert. 1979. “Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 2 (1): 1–20. Hall, Stuart. 1996. “Politics of Identity.” In Culture, Identity and Politics: Ethnic Minorities in Britain, edited by T. Ranger, Y. Samad and O. Stuart, 129–35. Aldershot: Avebury. Hamieh, Christine, and Roger Ginty. 2009. “A Very Political Reconstruction: Governance and Reconstruction in Lebanon After the 2006 War.” Disasters: The Journal of Disaster Studies, Policy and Management 33 (3): 103–23. Hitti, Philip. 1967. Lebanon in History: From the Earliest Times to the Present. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Humphrey, Michael. 1998. “Ethnic History, Nationalism and Transnationalism in Argentine Arab and Jewish Cultures.” In Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Images and Realities, edited by Ignacio Klich and Jeffrey Lesser, 167‑88. London: Frank Cass & Co. Issawi, Charles. 1992. “The Historical Background of Lebanese Emigration: 1800–1914.” In The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration, edited by Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi, Chapter 1. London: The Centre for Lebanese Studies, I.B. Tauris. Karam, John Tofik. 2007. Another Arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Klich, Ignacio. 1992. “Criollos and Arabic Speakers in Argentina: An Uneasy Pas de Deux, 1888–1924.” In The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration, edited by Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi, Chapter 9. London: The Centre for Lebanese Studies, I.B. Tauris. Montero-Diaz, Rita Fiorella. 2014. “Fusion as Inclusion: A Lima Upper Class Delusion?” PhD diss., Royal Holloway University of London. Portes, Alejandro, and Ruben Rumbaut. 2001. Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. London: University of California Press. Ruys, Tom. 2007. “Crossing the Thin Blue Line: An Inquiry into Israel’s Recourse to SelfDefense Against Hezbollah.” Stanford Journal of International Law 43: 265–94. Salibi, Kamal. 1965. The Modern History of Lebanon: London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Sullivan, Thomas. 2012. “ ‘I want to be all I  can Irish’: The Role of Performance and Performativity in the Construction of Ethnicity.” Social & Cultural Geography 13 (5): 429–43. Traboulsi, Fawwaz. 2007. A History of Modern Lebanon. London: Pluto Press. Vargas, Pilar, and Luz Marina Suaza. 2007. Los árabes en Colombia: del rechazo a la integración. Bogotá: Planeta. Wade, Peter. 2000. Music, Race, and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Afterword Fiorella Montero-Diaz and Franka Winter

We are living in an era of growing socio-political discord. The discourse of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ is gaining ground as an insufficiently challenged worldview. Displacements, migration and poverty driven by gross inequalities within and across borders are demonised and blamed on the powerless in the context of neoliberal, individualistic world power systems that seek to skew and deflect fact-based debate in order to preserve the concentration of the world’s riches in few pockets. It can, at times, seem hopeless to attempt to contest these discourses, even from within the gilded upper echelons of that global power system. Though they may be riddled with contradictions, nascent efforts among the middle and upper classes to articulate forms of citizenship that contest the simplistic ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ in imaginaries, discourses and actions deserve scholarly attention, on their own merits, but perhaps more so, for their potential to generate change in the current context. In this book, we have proposed breaking with the academic habit of only focusing on middle- and upper-class people as politically inactive and distant protectors of inequality and wealth, and have argued for greater emphasis on dissecting efforts to achieve personal transformation and bring about wider social change. A critical in-depth approach to the nuances of citizenship and political action in these classes will contribute to preventing these imaginaries of the middle and upper classes from being cemented as the status quo, ‘just the way it is’. Asking how middle- and upper-class people in Latin America today constitute themselves as citizens through politics and culture, the authors of these chapters have documented the continuities, resistances, contradictions and challenges the middle and upper classes encounter when activating their citizenship, exploring narratives and performances of class, race, ethnicity and nationhood. It is impossible to address citizenship without referring to culture and, in some measure, consumption. This volume looks at how culture becomes instrumental in the activation of citizenship and asks how consumption plays a role in the validation of taste, fandom, political voice and the enactment of citizenship. The foregoing chapters discuss the many ambivalent notions of citizenship among the upper and middle classes in the region: there is no one clear definition of citizenship, or common path to the activation of citizenship. Likewise, the

Afterword 151

contributions to this volume demonstrate that exclusionary narratives and practices coexist with others that aim to transform relations between classes: imaginaries of decency, values and distinction constructed by the media and through music (Chapters 1 and 2), expectations to meet cosmopolitan models of artistry (Chapter 3), and portrayals of power, wealth, social influence and strong ethnic communities in protests contexts (Chapter 8) point to dynamics that reaffirm patterns of inequality or preserve them throughout transformation; in contrast, other authors have highlighted upper- and middle-class people’s desires to achieve social integration and peace (Chapter 5), to alter discourses and cultural practices in order to influence how citizens perceive each other (Chapters 2, 4 and 5), and to activate cultural citizenship (Chapter 4). Importantly, we learn that these two perspectives are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as several of the authors point to contradictory and ambivalent discourses, affording middle- and upper-class agents’ selves the complexity they deserve: Chapter 5 highlights the importance of examining the contradictory feelings and thoughts that arise from the possibility of closer relationships with the ethnic or class ‘other’; Chapter 6 stresses the ambivalences of new middle-class Bolivians who reject notions of redistribution of wealth, while claiming subaltern identities in other moments. It would appear that middle- and upper-class values and identities indeed, at times, constitute an obstacle to the expression of collective citizenship; however, this perception is challenged by a growing desire to renegotiate class identity and contemporary roles in society, especially among the young. Upper- and middle-class acts of citizenship are often met with distrust and dismissal. Such reactions, doubts and challenges are documented in this volume, with a particular look at the perceived middle- and upper-class ‘luxury’ of worrying and protesting for others who do not belong to the same class (Chapters 4 and 5). Nonetheless, this does not deny that they do have a key role in processes of social change when their demands dovetail with those of broader sections of society (Chapter 7), owing to their influence on and access to those in political power. Several of the chapters also touch on the role of consumption and consumerism in the construction of middle- and upper-class citizenship (i.e Chapters 1–4). This is a field of research that deserves further attention. This is particularly true for cultural consumption, because culture can serve as a bulwark against discrimination, exclusion and racism, as well as a powerful vehicle to discuss, perform and thereby activate citizenship. The essays included in this volume raise a range of conceptual, ethnographic and methodological questions on contemporary citizenship and point to the urgency of focusing on the still understudied privileged sectors of society. We hope that this book may contribute to a contemporary examination of citizenship in such a diverse region as Latin America, by offering fresh perspectives on the relationship between citizenship, politics and culture; a framework for documenting acts of citizenship by the middle and upper classes; and a way to visibilise emerging fields of study in the area. Uncovering intersections, convergences and dialogue is paramount in complementing approaches to the global study of citizenship.

Index

Alerta Contra el Racismo en Perú (collective) 73 Amazon 15 – 16, 66, 72 – 3 Anderson, Benedict 12 Argentina 2, 4, 6, 7, 96, 111, 135; antipolitics 123 – 5; citizenship as occasional identity 123 – 5; composition of middle class 118; consumption 119; corruption 123, 125, 128; dictatorship in 124, 130; economic and financial policy 119, 126, 131 – 2; formation of middle class 119 – 21; forms of protest according to class 121 – 2; gender relations 126; globalization 123; liberal and republican notions of citizenship 124; modernity 118, 129; neoliberalism 7, 117, 127; perceptions of crime 129 – 30; race 118 – 19; social mobility 113 – 14, 119; workers 118 – 21, 124, 127 – 8 Argentinian Confederation of MediumSized Companies 120 Aristocratic Republic (Peru) 20 – 1 Aristotle 74 Association of Chilean Film and TV Producers 46 Azcapotzalco 36 Bacigalupi, Peter 14 Bandera Negra (musical group) 42 Bareto (musical group) 63, 65 – 6, 68 – 70, 72, 75n8 Beirut 139 Berlin International Film Festival 47, 50, 52 – 3 Bogota 4, 7, 134, 137 – 40, 142, 144 – 6 Bolivia 2, 4, 6 – 7, 128, 129; clothing and citizenship 99 – 102, 105, 107 – 9, 111 – 13; colonial legacy 101 – 2;

demographics 100; economic policy 104; mestizaje 101; modernity 6, 102, 104; neoliberalism 101; social mobility 101 – 2, 104 – 5, 107 – 8, 113 – 14; social programs 104; wealth redistribution 6, 108, 110 – 12, 114, 151 Brazil 2, 113, 135 – 7 Broad Front (Argentina) 131 Bucaram, Abdalá 135 Buenos Aires 122, 125 – 6, 128, 130 – 1 Cáceres, Andrés Avelino 14 cacerolazos 7, 96, 118, 121, 123, 126 Cacique, Wilindoro (artist) 66 Cambiemos (political coalition) 131 – 2 CAME see Argentinian Confederation of Medium-Sized Companies Cannes Film Festival 46 – 7, 52 – 3 Carrió, Elisa 123, 131 Casinelli, Luigi (artist) 70 Catholic Church 40 Chiapas 32 – 5, 40 Chicó (neighbourhood) 139 Chile 2, 5, 108, 135, 137; contemporary themes in cinema 47; film and authenticity 5, 51 – 2, 55, 57; film and neoliberalism 5, 46, 48, 57 – 8; internationalization of cinema 50 – 5, 58; middle class and politics 55 – 8, 59n4; participation in international film festivals 46 – 8, 50 – 6; promotion of film industry 46 – 7; social background of filmmakers 48 – 50; social mobility 48 – 52 China 113 chola 104 – 5, 107 – 9, 111 – 12; definition 99 – 102, 115n1; modernity 102, 104 cholo 62, 70, 75n2 Choro 99, 107 – 11, 113

Index 153 chuncho 16, 27n6 Cienpies (musical group) 37 CinemaChile 46, 53 citizenship: civility 86 – 91, 94; clothing 99 – 102, 105, 107 – 9, 111 – 13; consumption 3, 4, 19 – 20, 25 – 6, 63 – 5, 75, 87, 119, 150 – 1; cosmopolitanism 5, 21, 25, 46 – 8, 50 – 8, 73, 151; cultural 63 – 4, 68, 75; economic definition 121; education 91 – 3, 135; exhibitionary complex 11, 15 – 16, 18; fashion 21, 26; foreignness 134, 137; imagined notions 4, 12 – 13, 19 – 20; impact of geography 16; impact of migration 13 – 14, 83 – 4, 86 – 7, 118, 134 – 5, 144 – 6, 150; legal definitions 5, 12 – 13; liberal and republican notions 124; modernity 6, 12, 14, 16, 20 – 2, 25 – 6, 36, 102, 104, 118, 129; neoliberalism 5, 7, 31 – 2, 46, 48 – 9, 57 – 8, 101, 117, 127; occasional identity 123 – 5; political activism 5, 7, 31, 34 – 5, 37 – 40, 42 – 3, 48 – 9, 52, 55 – 8, 63 – 74, 96, 119 – 32, 139 – 47; post coloniality 13; print capitalism 12; relational notions 5, 84 – 5, 90 – 4, 102; relation to nation-building 12 – 13, 15 – 16, 18; respectability 30 – 2, 38, 39 – 41, 43; social mobility 1, 4 – 6, 22, 24 – 5, 48 – 52, 101 – 2, 104 – 5, 107 – 8, 113 – 14, 119 – 32, 135; sport and leisure 21 Civic Coalition (Argentina) 131 Civilista Party 13 Clorinda Mato de Turner 14 Club Colombo-Libanés 137 – 9, 141 – 6, 147n2 Cochabamba 99, 101, 105 Colectivo Circo Band (musical group) 63, 69 – 72 Colombia 2, 129; citizenship and foreignness 134, 137; internal conflict 144; migration and formation of class 134 – 6; migration and social mobility 134 – 7; migrants and domestic political protest 144 – 6; migrants and international protest 139 – 44; political influence of migrant communities 143 – 4; press 139; social clubs 137 – 47; social mobility 135 Contra las esterilizaciones forzadas (collective) 73 Contreras, Andrés (artist) 39 – 41

costumbrismo 15, 20, 24 – 6 criollo 14, 21 – 2, 25 de la Rúa, Fernando 117 descamisado 129, 132n7 Día de los Muertos 41 Duarte, Nicolás (artist) 65 – 6, 75n6 Duhalde, Eduardo 120 Durkheim, Émile 128 Ecatepec 34 Ecuador 13, 100, 135, 137 El Chava (artist) 33, 35 El Perú Ilustrado 11, 13 – 21, 24 – 6 El Salvador 136 El Tiempo 139 Entre Ríos 122 EPI see El Perú Ilustrado EZLN see Zapatista Army of National Liberation FARC see Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Flores, Carlos 135 – 6 France 11 Frente Popular Darío Santillán 123 Frondizi, Arturo 123 globalization 32 González Prada, Manuel 15 Gramsci, Antonio 129 Great Britain 11 Greece 121 Guatemala 1, 100 Guevara, Ernesto “Che” 123 Habermas, Jürgen 4, 37 – 9 Hezbollah 139 – 40 Hobbes, Thomas 74 Honduras 136 Iceland 121 Ictus (artist) 33, 36, 38 illustrated press 4, 11 – 12; consumption 25 – 6; cosmopolitanism 21, 25; depiction of upper and middle and upper classes 22 – 6; exhibitionary complex 11, 15 – 16, 18; geography 16 – 18; modernity 14, 16, 20 – 2; nationalism 14 – 15, 20; race 4, 14 – 15; social mobility 22, 24 – 5; sport and leisure 21 ilustrado 14

154 Index International Monetary Fund 123 Israel 139 Iztapalapa 36 Juaneco y Su Combo (musical group) 66 July War of 2006, 139 – 44 Justicialismo see Peronism Kirchnerismo 121 – 28, 131 ladino 1, 100 Laiko (artist) 34 – 5, 37 – 8 La Mente (musical group) 63, 65 – 8, 72, 75n6 La Molina 92 Lanata, Jorge 127 La Oroya 16 La Plata 122, 125, 129 – 30 La Sarita (musical group) 63, 65 – 6, 70 – 4, 75n7 Lebanon 139 – 43, 147 – 8 Lima 2, 4 – 5, 7, 16, 19 – 22, 26, 62 – 5, 73 – 4, 83 – 9, 91 – 5 Locke, John 74 Los Nuevos Peruanos (collective) 73 Macri, Mauricio 131 – 2 Mahuad, Jamil 135 Manuel del Moral y Vega 19 marginality: cultural authenticity 65, 71; respectability 32, 38 – 9, 41 – 3; upper classes 62, 65, 73 – 74 MAS see Movement Toward Socialism Mendoza 120 Menem, Carlos 117, 119, 130 – 1, 132n4, 135 mestizo 1, 14, 63, 100 – 1, 107, 115n3, 118 – 19, 129 – 30 Mexican Independence 31 Mexican Revolution 31 Mexico 2, 4, 135, 137; changing notions of citizenship 31; citizenship and respectability 30 – 2, 38 – 41, 43; competing notions of culture 30 – 2, 41 – 3; demographic changes 36 – 7; economic crisis 31, 36; economic growth 36 – 7; indigenous rights 32; migration 32; modernity 36; music venues 32 – 3, 41 – 2; neoliberalism 31 – 2; social class and cultural performances 32 – 7 Mexico City 4, 30 – 42 Middle Class Defence Front 120

middle classes: as creative class 48 – 50; attitudes to wealth redistribution 6, 108, 110 – 12, 114, 151; citizenship and consumption 3, 63 – 5, 75, 87, 119, 150 – 1; clothing and citizenship 99 – 102, 105, 107 – 9, 111 – 13; cosmopolitanism 5, 21, 25, 46 – 8, 50 – 8, 73, 151; cultural authenticity 5, 51 – 2, 55, 57; cultural performances 32 – 7; fashion 21, 26; formation 96, 119 – 21, 132; illustrated press 22 – 6; inequality 93 – 5, 97; notions of civility 86 – 91, 94; political activism 5, 7, 31, 34 – 5, 37 – 40, 42 – 3, 48 – 9, 52, 55 – 8, 96, 119 – 32; public transport 86 – 90; race 99 – 114, 129 – 30; relational notions of citizenship 84 – 5, 90 – 4; social mobility 1, 4 – 6, 22, 24 – 5, 48 – 52, 101 – 2, 104 – 5, 107 – 8, 113 – 14, 119 – 32, 135; toleration 90; urban spaces and segregation 2, 4 – 7, 84 – 90 Middle Class Housing Plan (Argentina) 120 migration 150; assimilation 135 – 6; internal 83 – 4, 86 – 7; international 13 – 14, 118, 134 – 5; patriotism 144 – 6; reasons 135 modernity 6, 12, 14, 16, 20 – 2, 25 – 6, 36, 102, 104, 118, 129 modernization theory 118 Morales, Evo 6, 100, 102 – 4, 108 – 10, 112 Movement Toward Socialism 6, 100, 104, 107 – 8, 113 – 14, 115n4 music: afro-jazz 62; chicha 62, 69; cumbia 50, 62, 66, 68 – 9, 75n6; electro-cumbia 62; fusion 41, 63 – 6, 69, 71 – 3, 75; huayno 62, 66, 69, 71; huayno-rock 62; publicity 37 – 9; punk rock 36; rap 33 – 4, 41 – 3; reggaetón 37; rock 33, 41, 62, 69; ska 37, 41, 62; trans-globalism 73; trova music 33, 36 – 7, 40 – 1, 43n4; venues 32 – 3, 41 – 2, 64 – 5, 68 Nahua Tecuani (artist) 37 – 8, 42 National Institute for the Associative and Social Economy (Argentina) 124 National Reconstruction (Peru) 13 negros 130 neoliberalism 5, 7, 31, 57 – 8, 117, 127; cultural policies 46, 48, 57 – 8; education 48 – 9; multiculturalism 101; rejection of 31 – 2

Index 155 Ni Una Menos (collective) 73, 126 No a Keiko (collective) 73 Oncenío de Leguía 20 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 36 Pacheco, Laurita (artist) 66 Página 12 120 Palma, Clemente 27n3 Paraguay 129 Páramos, The (musical group) 36 Parió Paula (collective) 73 Party of the Democratic Revolution 33 Pérez, Amaury (artist) 38 Pérez, Julio (artist) 71 – 2 Perón, Juan see Peronism Peronism 118 – 20, 122 – 3, 127 – 8, 132 Peru 2, 5, 100, 137; citizenship and civility 86 – 91, 94; citizenship and consumption 19 – 20, 25 – 6, 63 – 5, 75; cosmopolitanism 5, 21, 25; cultural citizenship 63 – 4, 75; European influence 19, 20; geography 16; imagined citizenship 20 – 2; inequality 93 – 5, 97; internal conflict 62, 64; legal citizenship 5, 12 – 13; migration 11, 13 – 14, 83 – 4, 86 – 7; modernity 12, 14, 16, 20 – 2, 25 – 6; music venues 64 – 5; nationalism 14 – 15, 18, 21; positivism 13, 20; public transport 86 – 90; race 13 – 15, 21 – 2, 25, 62 – 3, 65, 70, 75, 84, 93; railways 16, 18; relational notions of citizenship 5, 84 – 5, 90 – 4, 102; social mobility 22, 24 – 5; sport and leisure 21; state formation 13, 151; technocracy 14; urban spaces and segregation 2, 4 – 7, 84 – 6 Piedras Blancas 122, 125, 128 Piérola, Nicolás de 20 Pinochet, Augusto 49 piqueteros 118, 121, 127, 129 – 30 Pizarro, Alejandra (artist) 70 Posadas 122, 124 – 6 Prisma 19, 21 ProChile 46, 53 public sphere see Habermas, Jürgen Puebla 37 Quechua 107 Radical Civic Union 131 Reka xx (artist) 42

resource mobilisation theory 122, 126 Revolución Libertadora 118, 130 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia 144 – 5 Rodríguez, Silvio (artist) 38 Rosario 120, 122, 124 Saca, Antonio 136 Sacaba 108 San Juan de Lurigancho 92 Santa Fé 122, 125, 128 Santiago 48 Santiago, Luis Ángel (artist) 38 Santos, Juan Manuel 143 Sao Paulo 2, 86, 88 Sarmiento, Domingo 118 Sexta 4; audiences 39 – 43; background of members 34 – 8, 40 – 1, 43; creation 30 – 2; economic difficulties 34 – 6, 40; mainstream music 37; venues 32 – 3, 41 – 2 Silva Santiesteban, Alfonso (artist) 71 Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle 32 – 3 Socialist Party (Argentina) 123 Spain 121 Subcomandante Marcos 30 – 1, 33, 35, 43 Temer, Michel 136 To Cuic Libre (musical group) 42 Turbay, Julio César 135 ULCM see World Lebanese Cultural Union – Colombia Chapter United States 19, 40 upper classes: citizenship and consumption 3, 63 – 5, 75; cultural authenticity 65; cultural citizenship 63 – 4, 68, 75; cultural performances 32 – 7, 64 – 5; formation 96; illustrated press 22 – 6; inequality 93 – 5, 97; marginality 62, 65, 73 – 4; migration 132, 136 – 7; political participation 63 – 74, 139 – 47; race 62 – 3, 65, 70, 75; social clubs 137 – 9; toleration 90; urban spaces and segregation 2, 4 – 7, 84 – 90 Valle del Chalco 30 – 2, 35, 38, 41 – 2 Variedades 4, 11 – 12, 19 – 26 Villarán, Susana 88 War of the Pacific 13, 20 whiteness: cultural authenticity 65, 71; cultural citizenship 64, 68, 75; cultural

156 Index impoverishment 63; exclusion 63 – 5, 71, 129 – 31; hybrid representations 62, 70; migration 13, 20, 136; national project 118 – 19; political participation 62 – 3, 65, 73; wealth 63 – 4, 136 Wiesse Hamann, Ricardo (artist) 66, 75n6 Williams, Raymond 107 World Lebanese Cultural Union – Colombia Chapter 137, 139, 142, 144 – 6, 147n3

XCHM (band) 41 Xeneke, Carlos (artist) 38, 44n7 Yo Apoyo al Matrimonio Igualitario (collective) 73 Zapatista Army of National Liberation 4, 30 – 2; activists 30 – 42; anti-capitalism 32; organization of sexta events 33 – 7