Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage: Three Case Studies in the Americas [1 ed.] 9780813057842, 9780813066936

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Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage Cultural Heritage Studies

University Press of Florida Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee New College of Florida, Sarasota University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola

Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage Three Case Studies in the Americas

Jessica Joyce Christie Foreword by Paul A. Shackel

University Press of Florida Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers · Sarasota

Copyright 2021 by Jessica Joyce Christie All rights reserved Published in the United States of America 26 25 24 23 22 21

6 5 4 3 2 1

A record of cataloging-in-publication information is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8130-6693-6 The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 2046 NE Waldo Road Suite 2100 Gainesville, FL 32609 http://upress.ufl.edu

Contents

List of Illustrations vii Foreword ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Part I. Canyon de Chelly 15

1. Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time: The Archaeological Past 17 2. Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time: Heritage in the Present 36 3. Discussion 65 Part II. Coba 79

4. The Cultural and Political Landscape of Pre-Contact Coba 84 5. The Cultural and Political Landscape of Coba from c. 1950 A.D. to the Present 98 6. Discussion 121 Part III. Copacabana 133

7. The Cultural Landscapes of Pre-Inka and Inka Copacabana: An Archaeological and Ethnohistoric Reconstruction 137 8. The Cultural Landscapes of Colonial and Present-Day Copacabana 163 9. Discussion 189 Conclusions 197 Notes 223 References Cited 235 Index 251

Illustrations

Figures

1.1. Canyon de Chelly, canyon landscape 18 1.2. Canyon de Chelly, Ear Cave 21 1.3. Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, Blue Bull Cave 22 1.4. Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, Pueblo III architecture 24 1.5. Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, Antelope House 26 1.6. Canyon de Chelly, Slim Canyon, masked figures 27 2.1. Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, Potsherds present in 2013 39 2.2. Canyon de Chelly, panel with horses and riders, Navajo 40 2.3. Canyon de Chelly, ye’i and a black companion figure, Navajo 41 2.4. Canyon de Chelly, star ceiling, Navajo 42 2.5. Canyon de Chelly, Spider Rock 44 2.6. Canyon de Chelly, vase created by potter Darlene S. 47 2.7. Canyon de Chelly, Wide Rock 51 2.8. Canyon de Chelly, Things Flow around the Stone 57 2.9. Canyon de Chelly, Zig Zag Cave 59 2.10. Canyon de Chelly, Flute Player Cave with Kokopelli pictograph 62 2.11. Canyon de Chelly, Kokopelli Rock 63 3.1. Monument Valley, landscape 70 3.2. Navajo Mountain, abandoned school, and Greg H. 73 3.3. Navajo Mountain, southern and eastern foothills 74 4.1. Coba, site map 85 4.2. Coba, La Iglesia 86 4.3. Coba, Ball Court 86 4.4. Coba, Structure I or Ixmoja 87 4.5. Coba, view from Structure IX supporting Stela 1 87 4.6. Coba, one of the carved stelae 88 4.7. Coba, drawing of stela in Figure 4.6 89

viii · Illustrations

4.8. Coba, a sacbe “white road” showing sascab layer 90 4.9. Coba, Las Pinturas group 93 4.10. Coba, Ixmoja in the Nohoch Mul group 94 5.1. Hipolito of the tricycle transport business 106 5.2. Coba, tricycle shuttle service 106 5.3. Coba contemporary stela by Luis May Ku, front 117 5.4. Coba contemporary stela by Luis May Ku, rear 117 7.1. Island of the Sun map 138 7.2. Copacabana, carved rock of Intinkala 145 7.3. Copacabana, Intinkala, site plan 146 7.4. Copacabana, Horca del Inka at June solstice sunrise 148 7.5. Copacabana, Kusijata, “Baño del Inca” 149 7.6. Copacabana, Calvario hill 151 7.7. Copacabana, Santa Barbara platform and split stone 152 7.8. Copacabana, Copacati geometric rock carvings 154 7.9. Island of the Sun terrace systems 156 7.10. Island of the Sun Sacred Rock sanctuary 159 8.1. Copacabana, Basilica and Convent of the Virgin 164 8.2. Copacabana, June solstice celebration at Horca del Inka 167 8.3. Copacabana, decorated cars await blessing 172 8.4. Dionisio Sarmiento making my offering 176 8.5. Copacabana, Calvario, Boca del Zapo 178 8.6. Copacabana, Virgin of Lourdes during pilgrimage 180 8.7. Copacabana, Virgin of Lourdes, pilgrims hacking rocks 182 8.8. Copacabana, Virgin of Urkupina statue and apparition 183 8.9. Copacabana, Virgin of Urkupina, macho zapo shrine 184 8.10. Copacabana, Virgin of Urkupina, manifestations on boulder 185 Maps

1. Canyon de Chelly within the Navajo Reservation 18 2. Yucatan peninsula with Coba location 80 3. Copacabana 134

Foreword

Jessica Christie’s Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage: Three Case Studies in the Americas provides an important overview and synthesis of the history, heritage, and meaning of three distinct indigenous landscapes. Part I provides an in-depth examination of the Navajos’ claim to Canyon de Chelly in Arizona. Part II examines a Maya community in Quintana Roo, Mexico, and the Maya landscape after the Spanish Invasion. Part III grapples with the Inka cultural landscape among the Aymara in Copacabana, Bolivia. Each of these parts begins with a summary of the deep prehistory of the region. These overviews provide an uninterrupted continuum of the changing events in each region, and they furnish an outline of the diverse cultures that inhabit(ed) these areas. The deep histories serve as a background and context for understanding how contemporary issues of tangible and intangible heritage of indigenous groups relate to these landscapes. These parts embrace the concept of earth politics, which refers to the holistic practices and discourse that embrace land, territory, nation, faith, religion, rights, and indigeneity. I think Peter Howard’s (2003) definition of heritage is worth resurrecting. In Heritage: Management, Interpretation, Identity he states: “Heritage is taken to include everything that people want to save, from clean air to Morris dancing, including material culture and nature. It is all pervasive, and concerns everyone. Much of it divides people” (Howard 2003:1). While heritage can be divisive through the exclusion of peoples’ stories, it is also true that heritage can serve to unite people. It is this tension—between remembering and forgetting—that makes the preservation of indigenous landscapes an important issue and that is addressed throughout Christie’s work. Landscapes can constitute the physical setting of local memories. The meaning of cultural landscapes and intangible heritage among indigenous groups can be resilient and at times modified as indigenous groups confront

x · Foreword

and work to resist assimilation. The preservation and the telling of stories of traditionally marginalized groups is becoming even more important today as some indigenous groups are faced with the redevelopment of traditional places, while others are confronted with displacement. Christie explains that the cultural landscapes of indigenous peoples will persist as they continue to resist erasure. There is, however, a challenge to making traditionally subordinated histories part of the larger narrative. Nevertheless, with considerable effort, the heritage of indigenous groups can be re-inscribed into landscapes by incorporating local indigenous traditions and forms of intangible heritage into the public memory of each place. The incorporation of these stories often makes the creation of consensus histories much more complicated, yet the inclusion of traditionally subordinated histories helps to make a richer and a more textured past. Christie explains that there is a middle ground where indigenous and Western knowledge can coexist and shape a path to a sustainable planet. Archaeology sets the context for this work. It allows us to examine the material conditions of traditionally marginalized groups. Using the discipline in the context of heritage studies helps to transform the discipline to be more visible, relevant, and potentially transformational as we help create a more inclusive heritage for indigenous groups in their struggle to overcome outdated colonial systems. Paul A. Shackel Series Editor Reference Cited Howard, Peter. 2003. Heritage: Management, Interpretation, Identity. London: Continuum.

Acknowledgments

Work for this book began about 2015, when my son who had been companion and photographer in my fieldwork for many years, began to embark on his own life. He continues to be my backup for emotional support and intellectual interrogation for which I thank him very much. Going into the field alone, I was especially eager and open to engage in ethnographic fieldwork and build human connections in my research communities. I have found such connections, at times unexpected, on professional, intellectual, and more personal levels. Therefore, I dedicate this work to my friends, partners, consultants, and assistants in Chinle, Coba, and Copacabana. Most of my Navajo friends and consultants have asked not to be mentioned by name. I am indebted to the Historic Preservation Department of the Navajo Nation in Window Rock as well as to the Chinle chapter for granting me permits to conduct ethnographic research at Canyon de Chelly. Likewise, I express gratitude to Keith Lyons, park archaeologist at Canyon de Chelly, for facilitating my National Park Service permit. In Coba, my partner and dear friend Luis May Ku has contributed the contemporary stela to this book and we are currently planning new collaborations in partnership. In Peru and Bolivia, I have been blessed with the long-term friendship of Raul Ccorahua Quintana, owner of Royal Crown Adventures, who has advised and organized my field travels for over twenty years. We will work through the pandemic! Travel and time I could spend in my three communities was supported and partially funded by East Carolina University through a College of Fine Arts and Communication Research Award in 2016 and a University Research Award in 2017. Writing was financially supported with a monthlong fellowship stipend by and at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, D.C., in 2017. I am deeply grateful for the intellectual, collegial environment I could share at Dumbarton Oaks, in which we exchanged new ideas and received feedback from peers. Forever, I hold dear my conversations with

xii · Acknowledgments

Colin McEwan, the anchor and at the time Director of Pre-Columbian Studies, who passed from this world in 2019. At East Carolina University, I thank graduate assistants Epiphany Knedler and Josh Bigham for their invaluable help in formatting my numerous photos and maps to University Press of Florida standards and Lindsay Swan for outstanding indexing work. At UPF, I was supported and guided along the publication process by Meredith Morris-Babb, acquisitions editor, and Paul Shackel, University of Maryland, series editor. Without their encouragement and belief in me, I would have doubted my abilities to succeed in the evaluation processes. Many thanks for keeping me going! Meredith has since moved on into retirement filled with travel adventures and my best wishes for fun and joy. This book is taken to publication by the new acquisitions editor Mary Puckett, whom I thank for her patience when I cannot meet all deadlines perfectly. I also thank numerous readers for challenging and thus helping to improve my work. My deepest hope is that my book will have impact on a regenerative planet by merging indigenous ways of knowing with contemporary practices carried forward by readers. The pandemic is now confronting all of us with an unforeseen and life-threatening challenge; the future will show how indigenous and Western knowledge system in partnership will address it. New studies through the framework of Earth Politics of parallel case scenarios are in preparation.

Introduction

In 2008 I returned to Canyon de Chelly after many years of absence. As I drove out of Chinle toward the canyon, I first saw the professional brown wooden signs with the National Park Service logo directing me to the Visitor Center. I stopped and was given a nicely illustrated map as well as logistic and general cultural information by mostly Navajo park rangers. I began the South Rim Drive and stopped at one of the first overlooks at Tunnel Canyon to take in the breathtaking views. As I walked around, I found a trail leading down into the canyon. I followed it a short distance but was stopped by a locked gate with a damaged sign stating: “No visitors allowed beyond this point without an authorized Navajo guide.” This juxtaposition in the presentation of the canyon by the National Park Service and the Navajo people made me very curious about their relationships in the management of this rich cultural landscape with a stratigraphy of people who lived here long before them. John Dryzek (2013:3–13) raises awareness of how terms such as colonization, people, the environment, nature, or the Earth have shifted meanings during the last fifty years. He offers a discourse approach exploring the intersection of ecosystems and human social systems. Discourses are ways of apprehending the world shared by certain groups and are inextricably bound up with political practices and power relations. These intersections of discourses create Earth Politics driven by the understanding of Earth as a finite planet. Waskar Ari (2014:4) has expanded the notion in his ethnographic work in Bolivia to refer to holistic practices and discourse embracing land, territory, nation, faith, religion, rights, and indigeneity. Earth Politics is an aspect of critical theory that illuminates how individuals in a society are active participants in creating the reality of their social worlds. As people are actively constructing the world around them, ideas and facts become value laden and intertwined with power relations. Our values are reflected in what is considered “fact” in the world we create, and those in power control

2 · Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage

which values authenticate social reality. It follows that certain groups are privileged over others (see Kawelu 2015:5–6). Such inequalities are kept in place through ideology that includes the givens and routines of everyday life. Ideology becomes the means by which inequalities and oppression are repeated, normalized, rationalized, and go unnoticed so that society is reproduced intact. Knowledge and awareness of ideology can lead to illumination and—eventually—sovereignty (Leone et al. 1987:284). Through this theoretical framework, I have adapted the lens of Earth Politics to be applied to three case studies, involving the Navajo people at Canyon de Chelly in Arizona; the Yucatec Maya community of Coba in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico; and in the Andes the Aymara community of Copacabana, Bolivia, with the nearby sacred sites of the Islands of the Sun and of the Moon. The selection of these examples is guided by the unique scenario and challenges each case study raises in comparison to the others; it is also partly personal, based upon my prior studies and field experiences. The primary selection criterion is an archaeological site around which contemporary communities have grown. I am drawn to Canyon de Chelly because of its spectacular canyon landscape without the monumentality and complex cultural setting of Grand Canyon. The archaeological sites within the canyons have left evidence of succinct phases of occupation, which the Navajo reinterpret on their own terms. The juxtaposition and interlace of National Park Service and Navajo practices pointed out earlier present a setting that calls out to be explored, as it throws light on many similar relationships between U.S. government authorities and Native American nations. In the Maya area I returned to the Yucatan peninsula in 2012 after sixteen years of absence. While the Riviera Maya has been consumed by hotels and resorts, I was struck to notice little change in inland Maya communities, with the exception of Coba. I remembered Coba from the 1990s as the final destination of a two-lane paved road, with one beautiful hotel, the Villa Arqueologica, situated next to Maya houses whose roosters would wake me in the morning. In 2012 the Villa Arqueologica had been abandoned, and multiple widened roads lead to Coba and channel visitors to the large parking lot at the entrance to the archaeological site. At the parking lot the community offers various services to their visitors, including a zip line. I was intrigued to learn how this contemporary Maya town has restructured relations with the archaeological site by actively participating in the global world. Or would I find rupture with the past?

Introduction · 3

The Andean case study was chosen due to my long-term engagement with the town of Copacabana. I first visited Copacabana in the late 1990s when I began to write my Inka book Memory Landscapes of the Inka Carved Outcrops. Lake Titicaca constitutes the enduring pan-Andean creation landscape, where later in time the Inka ancestral couple emerged from a sacred rock outcrop. Whereas my Inka book stayed focused on the preEuropean context, here my interest has turned to the contemporary redefinition of cultural landscape as Christian Catholic and Indigenous Aymara. In this setting the focus is on how local altiplano people, loosely referred to as Kolla and Aymara-speaking, have resisted colonizing powers of the Inka, the Catholic Church, and the Bolivian nation-state by living a land-based identity. By weighing and evaluating the differing case studies and their past and present geopolitical networks, power players, and subaltern agents, I am looking for new ways of place-making where Indigenous and Western knowledge systems can live side by side and shape a path toward a regenerative planet with all its living beings for the future. Thus this book becomes a summation of my lifelong research interests and writing with the desire to leave a contribution toward a holistic regenerative future for these magnificent cultural landscapes, supported by Indigenous wisdoms. I wish to position myself as an engaged researcher, as opposed to a detached scholar striving for knowledge assumed to be “objective.” My theoretical framework navigates de-colonial approaches grounded in profound respect for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Many have treated me as friends in personal encounters and enriched and shaped my initial view of the world and understanding of life. I accept that relations between white and native peoples in the Americas historically have been sensitive and require much more respect from whites, who came to the American continent as military invaders and continue to act as cultural colonizers in many respects. I have also been trained as a scientist in the humanities and social sciences. I believe in the values of scientific knowledge and its tremendous contributions to the world linked to academic standards I am committed to practicing and upholding. Further, I view myself as the latest arrival on the scene of the long historical engagement with these cultural places (Magnoni, Hutson, and Stanton 2008:216–218): not simply to live in the landscape but to learn from the traces left by past occupants and created by today’s residents. Clearly my personal background and training have influenced my perceptions, choices, and priorities.

4 · Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage

Methods, Methodology, and Theoretical Framework

In this book I use methods from landscape studies, archaeology, and heritage studies. These disciplines have undergone profound changes during the past fifty years with regard to their theoretical approaches, which I briefly outline here. This timespan roughly coincides with the redefinition of Earth as finite (see Dryzek 2013). Landscape Studies Since the 1970s landscape has emerged as a topic of great interest in the humanities as well as in archaeology and other social sciences. In the course of these academic discussions, landscape has been theorized from something primarily physical and static to a social and dynamic entity with which people actively engage and which itself can take on the role of an agent. It has been emphasized that the term landscape was adopted into the English language from the Dutch landschap in the late sixteenth century (Hirsch 1995:3). It was initially a technical term used by painters. Hirsch (1995:3) cogently lays out that the etymological origins of the word anchor the landscape concept in the inherent contradiction between the painted and in some sense idealized image and its physical reality. This contradiction is performed in many cultural and social processes in which memory assumes an important function. Archaeology Similar shifts can be traced in the discipline of archaeology. From the 1960s to the early 1980s archaeologists in the United States and the United Kingdom produced important field studies that explored the dynamic interactions between human groups and their environments in terms of the economic and adaptive settlement or subsistence strategies adopted by people of the past. Primary examples are the many settlement pattern surveys and settlement system studies carried out in the 1970s and early 1980s (for an overview see David and Thomas 2008:27–39). Perhaps most authoritative were Lewis Binford’s investigations among the Nunamiut of Anaktuvuk Pass in Alaska, in which he undertook an “archaeology of place” focused on the relationships between human settlements and biological needs (Binford 1982). Binford’s work has become representative of processual archaeology focused on the reconstruction of societies and social systems viewed

Introduction · 5

as changing as a whole according to the steps expected in the model of social evolution, which individual studies aimed to confirm. This perspective formulated places shaped by economic strategies but devoid of social experience and stripped of their cosmological, symbolic, and spiritual meanings that clearly channeled ecological relationships. Changes in thinking toward a more socially oriented landscape archaeology arose from many fronts, beginning in the late 1970s and into the 1980s and 1990s and paving the way to the current thinking of post-processual archaeology. Sourcing studies began to include analyses of social exchange networks in addition to the purely economic aspects of trade. Iconographers and art historians have specialized in decorative styles of ancient material culture and have deduced social connections from demonstrable stylistic similarities. The influential work of Karl Taube, for example, has proven cultural links between Mesoamerica and the U.S. Southwest (1986, 2000; Schaafsma and Taube 2006). Heritage Studies Cultural resource or heritage management has become an interface between academic archaeology and society at large. It first brought to public attention the ongoing destruction of archaeological sites resulting in dwindling numbers of cultural sites as heritage places. As a result, new legal mechanisms were set in place whereby sites could be protected. Most important were the UNESCO criteria for the inclusion of places in the World Heritage List adopted during the World Heritage Convention in 1972 (https://whc.unesco.org/archive/convention-en.pdf). The UNESCO definition of heritage addresses cultural heritage and differentiates between Tangible cultural heritage—such as movable cultural heritage (paintings, sculptures, etc.); immovable cultural heritage (monuments, archaeological sites, etc.); underwater cultural heritage (shipwrecks, underwater ruins, etc.)—and Intangible cultural heritage (oral traditions, performing arts, rituals, etc.); see Resources at http://www.unesco.org. Thirty years later, in 2002, this list was updated during the United Nations Year for Cultural Heritage (see Resources at http://www.unesco.org) to include: C Cultural heritage sites, such as archaeological sites, historic buildings; Historic cities;

6 · Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage

Cultural landscapes; Natural sacred sites; Underwater cultural heritage; Museums; Movable cultural heritage, such as paintings, stone tools, machines, and any object that is movable and outside an archaeological context; Handicrafts; Documentary and digital heritage; Cinematographic heritage; Oral traditions; Languages; Festive events and the traditions they embody; Rites and beliefs; Music and song; The performing arts; Traditional medicine; Literature; Culinary traditions; Traditional sports and games. In short, we may say the term heritage can be used to describe everything from whole landscapes to tiny fragments of bone, stone, and charcoal in archaeological sites; from grand palaces to ordinary dwelling places; from wilderness areas to modern city landscapes. What is central to all these aspects of heritage is a process of categorizing, ordering, listing, and subsequently conserving and/or archiving (Harrison 2013:5). Historically this process has been linked with the colonial agenda of nation-states and of UNESCO, the global educational, scientific, and cultural body of such states. Mike Robinson and Helaine Silverman (2015:1) mine this “official” procedure of heritage construction that speaks to a moral agenda as well as to the paternalism of governance in the form of top-down mechanisms. More specifically, the making of heritage has been exploited by capitalist production, the economic system anchoring most nation-states (del Marmol, Morell, and Chalcraft 2015). In 2003 UNESCO organized a Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, resulting in a Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, “made up of those intangible heritage elements that help to demonstrate the diversity of this heritage and raise

Introduction · 7

awareness about its importance,” and the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, “requiring urgent measures to keep them alive.” Ethnography is the primary research method used to identify and learn about local perspectives on heritage. My three case studies aim to access heritage of and with Indigenous peoples who—at least initially—were excluded from heritage politics. Robinson and Silverman (2015:19–20) effectively question whether we want to preserve intangible heritage as unchanging, as it is born out of the living dynamics of popular culture. Change and spontaneous cultural production, free of state ideology, are key messages of popular cultures. Traditional mechanisms of heritage production are shifting from official, state-dominated, “top-down” approaches to more open, participatory “bottom-up” trajectories rooted in popular culture (Robinson and Silverman 2015:6–7). Del Marmol, Morell, and Chalcraft (2015) analyze how since its inception in the 1970s, heritage has been treated as a static conception but instead should be approached as practice. Heritage is a form of social production stemming from a society’s actually existing relations, which are dynamic and include those who live heritage from below. Following Lisa Breglia (2006), there is a shift in Heritage Studies from the perspective of “heritage-as-artifact” to “heritage-as-practice.” Rodney Harrison (2013:4– 5) proposes a new “dialogical” model in which heritage is seen as emerging from the relationship between people, objects, places and practices, and that does not distinguish between or prioritise what is “natural and what is “cultural” but is instead concerned with the various ways in which humans and non-humans are linked by chains of connectivity and work together to keep the past alive in the present for the future. (Harrison 2013:4–5) This book shares Harrison’s dialogical model of heritage and thus contributes to breaking down the bureaucratic divide between laypersons and experts and leads to new approaches to heritage decision-making and heritage respect in partnership with Indigenous peoples. Ethnography is my primary research method and tool to approach heritage issues since it has allowed me to build human connections and understand individual perspectives. Further, such global discussions of cultural heritage management have raised Indigenous critiques leading to the realization that academic notions

8 · Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage

of landscape archaeology often do not accurately reflect Indigenous peoples’ own views of their landscapes. From one side, many archaeologists have practiced more ethnography and initiated projects with increased engagement and collaboration with the communities whose lands they excavate. From the other side, Indigenous people have increasingly been dissatisfied with abstract archaeological concerns, which often seem far removed from their concepts of their own histories and lifeways (see Navajo case study of Canyon de Chelly). In the United States this conflict has become a political battlefield on many case-specific fronts surrounding the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) passed as federal law in 1990. This law provides a process for museums and federal agencies, such as the National Park Service, to return certain Native American cultural items—human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony—to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. Legal conflicts have centered on which cultural items fall under NAGPRA and how precisely to define lineal descendants and culturally affiliated tribes. These types of questions bring us to the starting point of this book: the fluid scale between the academic scholarly pole of an archaeology of cultural landscapes and the Indigenous pole of people’s own constructions of their land and history as tangible and intangible heritage; equally juxtaposed are their methods of excavating and classifying versus oral narratives. Memory—A Methodology That Links Landscape, Archaeology, and Heritage Together

It is this fluidity of discourses, as opposed to the essentialized categorizing of materials and data, that connects the shifts in landscape studies, archaeology, and heritage studies as well as the emerging concept of Earth Politics. This theoretical framework aligns with Postmodernism and strategies of de-colonization and guides my book. I use the methodology of memory to link the three disciplines together. To understand better how people memorize, construct, use, and imagine land, I apply the anthropological lens of landscape outlined by Hirsch (1995), which as described earlier is derived from the Western concept of a landscape painting. Hirsch (1995:3–23) distinguishes between a foregrounded reality anchored in the concrete spatial actuality of everyday social life and an imagined background setting, which may idealize space but

Introduction · 9

responds to our foregrounded existence; for example, people in Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca live their daily routines in town. When they look out onto the lake toward the islands, they remember that the Sun and Moon first emerged there and called forth their Inka ancestors and that Wiraqocha created the first humans at Tiwanaku. Cultural landscape then, as understood in this book, entails the dynamic relational network between this foreground and background of social life performed in space. Memory is the vital agent that binds foreground and background together. The past filtered through collective or social memory is a vital ingredient of such landscape constructions. During recent decades the role of memory in archaeology and social sciences has been addressed through many fresh approaches (e.g., Burke 1989; Canuto and Andrews 2008; Christie 2009b, 2016; Stanton and Magnoni 2008a, 2008b; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003). Still, rigorous archaeological analysis through the lens of memory remains in its infancy. The central question is how can archaeology that excavates physical materials deduce how ancient peoples felt and remembered? In which ways can the material record of occupational sequences in Canyon de Chelly or on the Island of the Sun reflect how newcomers engaged with their predecessors? Susan Alcock (2002:1–35) discusses limitations and potential of this approach in her chapter “Archaeologies of Memory.” A first question is whether people as societies can indeed “remember” or whether memory is a strictly personal act (see also Stanton and Magnoni 2008b:12). Would we return to essentialized categories when we discuss social memory (Alcock 2002:15)? She bridges the poles of individual and society with the concept of “memory communities.” A memory community unites people with a shared sense of belonging based in repeated actions and routines carried out in common space. Thus landscapes constitute the material or physical setting of a local memory community. Canyon de Chelly is the home of most Navajo people in the Chinle chapter jurisdiction (set apart from Navajo in other chapters). The shared remembrance of their history is brought into focus by the canyon landscape and unites the property owners and rim residents. Sacrifices they make in forgoing modern amenities connect them in the identity of canyon residents and separate them from those who choose to move into new public housing units offered by the Navajo Nation. But people are also integrated into dominant memory communities of the state and may join “countermemory” communities that challenge master narratives. At the same time, individuals have to negotiate other social identities. The Navajo of Canyon

10 · Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage

de Chelly are of course also part of the dominant memory community of the Navajo Nation seated in Window Rock and, in a more abstract sense, that of the United States. Societies remember and forget through oral narratives, writing, ritual performances, and social gatherings as well as material correlates. Literary and epigraphic evidence have been primary sources for reconstructing attitudes about the past; but they offer dominant commemorative narratives and leave out counter-memories and individual voices. Critical archaeology can be uniquely suited to penetrating to the spectrum of ancient memories by focusing on material correlates left by small groups and individuals. Processual archaeology used to focus on the broad patterns in the archaeological record or a top-down view. Instead, we can choose to look more closely at the “odd,” isolated features that do not match the dominant narrative. We can evaluate whether they constitute material evidence of individual action, perhaps counter-memory, if we switch to a bottom-up view. The top-down versus bottom-up perspectives parallel the social versus individual memory poles. This can be accomplished through household archaeology, as opposed to exclusive attention to center spaces (also in Ardren 2015:51–81). In Maya studies there has been a strong focus on household archaeology (Kintz 1990; Lohse and Valdez 2004) and related perspectives on burial analyses and gender. Uncovering individuals in the archaeological record is closely related to seeing commoners because both goals require a research focus away from traditional preconceived categories of social status and group behaviors to an interest in site- and case-specific locally negotiated scenarios.1 Of course, the rigor with which such local performances can be investigated is controlled by the layers of archaeological materials obtained. Traci Ardren’s enthusiastic studies in the Northern Maya Lowlands (2015) have succinctly shown that human actors can be identified in ancient communities. I practice a similar strategy in my case studies by giving brief summaries of the archaeological data but focusing on features suggesting individual activities. Laurent Olivier persuasively argued that archaeological studies cannot strictly separate the past from the present (2011; also in Ardren 2015:66– 67). Excavated artifacts become objects that belong to the present. Our reconstructions of the past from such objects are not neutral results; rather they describe our evolving memory of the past, a memory that only has meaning because it is situated in the present. The transition between past

Introduction · 11

and present is so permeable because the processes of inscribing material remains with memory are ongoing. Thus memory only exists because of the parts of the past that are lost and it becomes the living connector between what is gone and the here-and-now. Material objects, places, and cultural sites are inscribed with memories of a given moment over and over again until they become palimpsests of layered meaning in Olivier’s terms (also Stanton and Magnoni 2008b:5). Accepting this lens, memory is the omnipresent logical link between landscape studies, archaeology, and heritage studies as well as between the stratigraphy of past societies and us, as living interpreters and scholars, who add values and ideology of Western twentyfirst-century society. The potential in archaeology is to ask more rigorous questions regarding memories of the material record (e.g., Magnoni, Hutson, and Stanton 2008:194–195). I think that by critically analyzing material data (where available) of how newcomers interacted with remains of prior residents, we can outline some of the processes of how specific groups in the past chose to remember or forget their past. Remembrance is bound to cultural places and associated values as opposed to economic commodities; it appears justifiable to extend my model of Earth Politics back to pre-contact times even though Dryzek uses it for the post-1960s when the Earth was first seen as a finite planet, endowed with values, and not simply as a commodity resource. About This Book

This book is divided into three sections offering in-depth case studies of cultural landscapes and intangible heritage, in Native North America at Canyon de Chelly, in Mesoamerica at the Yucatec Maya cultural site of Coba in the state of Quintana Roo, and in the Andes at the Aymara community of Copacabana and the nearby sacred sites of the Islands of the Sun and of the Moon. As discussed earlier, the primary selection criterion is an archaeological site around which contemporary communities have grown. My goal has been to offer an “indigenous or community-based archaeology/anthropology” as outlined by Kathleen Kawelu (2015:17, 136–141): this is archaeology/anthropology done with, for, and by Indigenous peoples. Indigenous anthropology is not fixed in its format and allows for varied strategies. While this type of archaeology/anthropology may lack academic precision as defined traditionally, it does not lack the direction of

12 · Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage

negotiating a path between Indigenous and disciplinary values, rights, and responsibilities, toward the ultimate goal of empowering Indigenous peoples. Community-based archaeology/anthropology begins with a mindset of situating archaeologists/anthropologists among Indigenous communities and other stakeholders who value heritage. Such an approach is twosided and is grounded in interests and issues shared and negotiated between a researcher and Indigenous consultants. In my case studies each social scenario was different, requiring a multiplicity of approaches. Each of the three sections brings together the available archaeological information with the aim of reconfiguring the cultural landscapes of the successive occupation phases. Ongoing discourse between the ruins and the descendants of ancient inhabitants is interwoven to reflect how both shape and reshape each other as active agents. Methods have to shift in the pre-contact and post-contact analysis sections. The pre-contact occupation phases are reconstructed based on material data from available archaeological reports. One goal, clearly, is to contribute a scientific cultural history summarizing current knowledge. Within these parameters, special attention is directed to data that might provide insights into: 1. the agency of individuals as opposed to the overarching ideology of power structures—past and present—which bury individual actions, to probe whether a bottom-up perspective can be opened up within the confines of data limitations; and 2. how these individuals inscribed memory on material remains they encountered from prior occupations and upon the land. In the post-contact sections, twenty-first-century occupation and views of land as intangible heritage are presented through my ethnographic fieldwork. I began to return to Canyon de Chelly in 2012 with yearly return visits lasting one to three weeks. I met consultants and made friends with many people in Chinle, some of whom do not wish to be mentioned by name. In 2015 I received a permit from the Navajo Nation in Window Rock to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Canyon de Chelly. In 2016 I was granted a permit to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Canyon de Chelly from the National Park Service. I returned to Coba in 2012 and, as mentioned, was surprised by the impact of tourism there, in contrast to nearby villages where a rather traditional Maya lifestyle continues. Two years later, interviews in Coba were my research project as a member of the Open School for Ethnography and Anthropology directed by Quetzil Castaneda in Piste. This was when I met

Introduction · 13

Luis May Ku; we have discussed several partnership projects since then, which have involved return visits lasting one week each. I have been going to Copacabana since 1999, and it was the focus of a major chapter validating stone ideology in my book Memory Landscapes of the Inka Carved Outcrops (2016). Here the emphasis is shifted toward post-contact cultural heritage. Most of my ethnographic fieldwork was conducted during the weeks of the August pilgrimage to the Virgin of Copacabana in 2015 and 2017. As already explained and theorized, my ethnographic approaches and practices had to stay flexible and be adjusted to each local social setting. A note on names: many consultants are cited in this book with first name only or first name and first letter of last name. The main reason is that my ethnographic field time was too brief and informal to allow fully organized and transcribed interviews or collecting explicit permissions for mentions in a book. A few consultants reluctant to be named are cited as anonymous; a few at ease with having their names in print are named in full. Most—understandably uncertain in view of informality and limited interaction—are named in shortened form to respect their privacy. In the conclusions, an analytic comparison of the three American case studies unpacks results with practical applications in the twenty-first century. My findings: Archaeology provides the physical stage set of cultural landscapes— however, conventional science that solely reconstructs frozen and essentialized temporal slices does not participate in the dynamic reality of the twenty-first century. Archaeological ruins lie buried in the social memory of descendant communities and are inextricably cross-linked with the social construction of the present and future. Differences derive from the historical and local as well as legal circumstances of the individual case studies. The insights gained can provide building blocks for future cultural landscapes sustained economically and spiritually by a fruitful merger of scientific and Indigenous knowledge, truths, and identities, which will help to empower Indigenous peoples. Such future cultural landscapes should not be seen as static, idealized, and self-supporting but would have to be continually balanced out among interested parties as pieces of living human realities. Academic contributions from the sciences that include space for

14 · Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage

the empowerment of Indigenous peoples can provide solid foundations for improved understanding of changing lived human realities. Such findings are humanized through the three case studies. Readers should not expect clear-cut answers or formulaic recipes for a regenerative future. Rather, I ask readers to understand the data and results presented and to apply or connect these to our life experiences to foster change.

I Canyon de Chelly

Cultural landscapes begin in the past when human beings arrived and initiated changes to the natural setting. Thus a historical discussion of cultural landscapes has to start with archaeology, the major discipline in the production of historical knowledge. Archaeology provides vital and useful material data; it is the interpretation and dissemination of these data, first by the archaeologists themselves and then by textbooks and popular media, that have drawn the discipline into the de-colonial controversy (see Deloria 1997). Here the attempt to de-colonize archaeology is made by going back to original excavation reports to view all the features documented (Oland, Hart, and Frink 2012). For example, the whole inventory list of ceramics, textiles, basketry, lithics, food remains, etc., found in a house best reflects how its residents lived. These details get streamlined in academic interpretations and eliminated in textbook summaries and popular media broadcasts, feeding colonial stereotypes. Due to academic publishing restrictions, again colonial, I had to strike many such details that were viewed as “tangents.” The following sections maintain descriptions of some of the specifics from archaeological reports under colonial chronological headings, which I keep to provide clarity. The descriptions are clearly separated from any cited interpretations. This way readers can choose how much they wish to learn about pre-colonial people. Archaeological data provide the physical stage set for all mental encounters with the ancient sites. Local people who have come to

16 · Part I. Canyon de Chelly

live nearby have shaped new living encounters with the ruins. Canuto and Andrews (2008:270–271) characterize such engagements as “canonical” appreciation of abandoned contexts in which social groups recognize the importance of certain features without being able to recall the historical contingencies that resulted in their construction; a more distanced engagement in which abandoned loci are appreciated purely for their indexical significance—that is, monumentality, inaccessibility, exoticness, etc.; or an engagement of accessing abandoned loci for practical reasons, such as the mining of ancient sites for building materials. The method of ethnography is used to explore the relations between the contemporary residents and archaeological sites in all three case studies. Controversies as well as the potential for sustainable solutions arise from the interpretations of the archaeological past based upon the cultural background, political agendas, and ideological beliefs of those involved.

1 Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time The Archaeological Past

Canyon de Chelly abruptly punctuates the desert landscape of the Navajo Reservation. Driving west on Highway 264 from Window Rock, Arizona, the road climbs the Defiance Plateau and crosses high elevation pine forests for about 30 miles. Approaching historic Ganado, the road begins to descend and turn into Highway 191. At Burnside junction the 191 takes a sharp turn north, crossing the wide open desert landscape for approximately 40 miles. As the town of Chinle becomes visible in the distance, the road descends the long ridge of the Chinle formation and eventually enters the town that has grown alongside Highway 191. Driving through Chinle on the main road east, visitors are greeted by the brown sign of Canyon de Chelly National Monument Visitor Center. Past this point, the road divides into the North and South Rim routes, which climb the plateau. It is only at the first overlooks that the deep grandeur and magnitude of Canyon de Chelly open to visitors’ eyes (Figure 1.1). Canyon de Chelly (coordinates 36 degrees 08’01.00”N, 109 degrees 28’10.00”W) is situated today in northeastern Arizona, United States, and on the Navajo Reservation. Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, and several smaller tributary canyons are the result of spectacular geological formations created more than 200 million years ago. Canyon de Chelly National Monument was established in 1931 and is administered jointly by the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Navajo Tribal Council in Window Rock. Since then Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, and several tributaries have been managed under National Monument regulations.

Figure 1.1. Canyon de Chelly, canyon landscape. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

Map 1. Canyon de Chelly within the Navajo Reservation. Adapted Google Earth image.

Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time: The Archaeological Past · 19

Literature Review

It must be clearly stated that the great majority of published sources were written with the academic mindset to collect, preserve, and interpret data and disseminate new information about U.S. cultural patrimony. Many fieldwork projects were funded by the National Park Service, the mission of which is to “preserve . . . the natural and cultural resources and values . . . for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations” (https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/index.htm). With few exceptions (noted later), Navajo people, the present owners and inhabitants of the canyon system, were not employed as consultants but as guides and laborers. The first published excavations were performed in Mummy Cave in the 1930s by Earl Morris (1938). Academic archaeological work began in the 1950s with the surveys conducted by David de Harport, leading up to his unpublished doctoral dissertation (1951; 1953; 1959). De Harport’s surveys included thorough mapping and documentation of sites, but they only covered the main canyon, Canyon de Chelly. The comprehensive landmark study of Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, and most side canyons, with a special emphasis on rock art, was accumulated by Campbell Grant from 1969 to 1975 and published in 1978. He offers an overview of Basketmaker through Navajo occupations. Grant was the first researcher to devote scholarly interest to rock art in Native North America (1967) and remains an authoritative figure in the field. At the time of Grant’s fieldwork, Don Morris directed archaeological excavations at Antelope House in Canyon del Muerto, funded by the National Park Service and spanning the field seasons of 1970 through 1973. Morris (1986) published the results of his project in an extensive report covering settlement patterns, architecture, social organization, plant foods, animals, diet and health as well as artifacts including weaving, basketry, wooden items, ceramics, bone and stone artifacts. More recent studies of limited scope have appeared in articles and book chapters. As part of the Canyon de Chelly rock art recording project of 1999–2003, Larry Loendorf (2010) investigated relations between painted stick figures and Basketmaker II storage cists, which sometimes partially cover the paintings. He was able to obtain radiocarbon dates as early as c. 200 A.D. from organic material mixed with mud from a storage cist built over paintings of anthropomorphic figures. Polly Schaafsma (2014) discusses the sequences of rock art styles in the Canyon de Chelly system within the regional context of the San Juan River cultural area.

20 · Part I. Canyon de Chelly

After 2000, Navajo people and their knowledge have been increasingly included as primary sources of information. The deep-seated feelings of a Navajo elder, Mrs. Mae Thompson from Canyon del Muerto, regarding Anasazi people were recorded in an interview with Navajo linguist Irene Silentman (2014). Stephen Jett’s (2001) book about Navajo place names and trails stays focused on Canyon de Chelly and connected canyons, whereas other studies cover the entire reservation and contain references to Canyon de Chelly (Linford 2000). Their linguistic focus is of great importance to my work since place names in the Indigenous language reveal relationships with the land. An authoritative study of Navajo landscape and places with a specific focus on aspects of the sacred was carried out by Klara Bonsack Kelley and Harris Francis (1994). They consulted with community members in thirteen chapters of the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico and Arizona on behalf of the Historic Preservation Department of the Navajo Nation in Window Rock. The goal of their ethnographic fieldwork carried out in 1987–1988 was to hear from local residents about culturally significant sacred places and create a list upon which the newly established department could direct their protection efforts. Although the Chinle chapter was not included, numerous statements made by Navajo elders about sacred places and more general discourse regarding sacred landscapes are applicable to Canyon de Chelly. In the early 1990s the two authors continued their ethnographic fieldwork regarding traditional places, specifically in Canyon de Chelly and Canyon del Muerto (Francis and Kelley 1990, 1992). This work is reported in two confidential manuscripts. In the following sections we mine the historical occupation layers of the main canyons, Canyon de Chelly and Canyon del Muerto, and investigate how succeeding groups have constructed their cultural landscapes in a physical or material sense but also on mental and spiritual levels. The main source materials are archaeological reports; however, they provide limited insights, since only a small percentage of canyon sites have been excavated and have had results published. Rock art studies have included a wider range of sites, and rock art iconography offers a magnifying lens for people’s notions regarding cultural landscapes. With the arrival of the Navajo at Canyon de Chelly in the late eighteenth century, source materials are augmented by historical documents and ethnography. The earliest inhabitants of Canyon de Chelly were Basketmaker people before A.D. 450 (Grant 1978:24–25).1 In Mummy Cave, Canyon del Muerto, Earl Morris excavated one storage cist containing 700 ears of corn; another

Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time: The Archaeological Past · 21

Figure 1.2. Canyon de Chelly, Ear Cave, Basketmaker anthropomorphs. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

one yielded gourds, and a third contained a more uncommon type of seed that is still known to the Navajo today (in Grant 1978:26). The quantities of agricultural products and especially of corn indicate that Basketmakers in Canyon del Muerto had mastered farming techniques. Regarding burial cists, Morris (1938) came across a significant male elite burial. These first canyon residents painted rock walls in some shelters with large polychrome human figures in frontal view, symmetrically balanced, and frequently accompanied by positive handprints (Schaafsma 2014:137– 140). Ear Cave (Figure 1.2; site CDM-123) features a fantastic array of such static anthropomorphs executed in white and dark red to purple pigments. Many stand out for their elaborate head ornaments, often appended to the left ear. At least two pairs can be distinguished, raising questions of binaries and perhaps even early social groupings into moieties.2 In Blue Bull Cave (Figure 1.3; site CDM-263), carefully drawn frontal anthropomorphs with angled arms can be made out with some later faded white overlays. They are white and yellow, sometimes outlined in red and indicating details of the body in red lines, and some show feather-like head ornaments from the top and sides.

22 · Part I. Canyon de Chelly

Figure 1.3. Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, Blue Bull Cave, Basketmaker II anthropomorphs with Pueblo overlays; Basketmaker III/Pueblo I and II birds/turkeys; red Basketmaker III/Pueblo I and II human figures. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

This type of subject matter suggests concerns for authority figures in worldly or spiritual realms. Surviving data are too scanty to provide more specific contexts, but the tall anthropomorphs may have been the products of shamanism. They may depict the shamans themselves, who interceded with supernaturals on behalf of their people, or they may represent the spirit-beings they encountered or a merging of the two, with the shamans turned into supernaturals. The Basketmaker male elite burial mentioned was probably of a shaman. I reason that early Basketmakers would have viewed the canyon largely as an economic resource and would have personified higher powers in rock art. The deeper implications of this argument can be highlighted through Hirsch’s model of daily lived foreground and idealized background spaces, already explained in the Introduction. For Basketmaker II people, the canyon system very much constituted the physical reality of daily social and economic lives. Compared to succeeding peoples, social memory was limited in the absence of ruins from prior residents. Perhaps social memory simply involved occasional interactions with other Basketmakers from the

Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time: The Archaeological Past · 23

Kayenta region. Idealized background spaces were probably imagined in the world of the tall and motionless human-like figures painted on the shelter walls. These early Basketmakers or Basketmaker II people were followed by a Basketmaker III presence in the Pecos system (Modified Basketmakers in Grant) with dates of A.D. 500–750 and the Pueblo I and II phases (Developmental Pueblo period in Grant) from c. A.D. 750–1150 (see Loendorf 2010:48). It has to be emphasized that by A.D. 1000 Ancestral Pueblo culture thrived in several regional variants: Mesa Verde in what is now southern Colorado, Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico, Kayenta in northern and northeastern Arizona, and Cibola (the modern Zuni area) in western New Mexico. Canyon de Chelly formed part of the Kayenta cultural area and did not develop distinct cultural patterns of its own (see Grant 1978:48). Don P. Morris and colleagues (1986:43–44) report Basketmaker III dates from Antelope House as just before 700 A.D. until 750 A.D. At Bat Cave in Canyon del Muerto, Morris found pens and turkey droppings, and Charlie Steen recorded turkey bones at Tse-ta’a (in Grant 1978:44), indicating that the turkey became a new resource. In the architectural record, early circular pit houses have been identified at Mummy Cave. They were quickly erased and/or integrated into unit-type dwellings fronted by kivas in the rock shelters. There is extraordinary evidence from Canyon de Chelly that spinning and weaving were done in kivas. (Stephens, in Morris et al. 1986:270) Morris’s excavations have positioned Antelope House as a veritable treasure trove of Basketmaker and Pueblo cultural materials. Its 616 basketry specimens constitute one of the largest and best controlled basketry collections ever recovered from a single site in the Greater American Southwest (Morris et al. 1986:306–397). With regard to fired pottery, Charlie Steen (1966:29) recovered 1,200 sherds of Lino Gray from the Basketmaker structures of Tse-Ta’a in Canyon de Chelly. At Antelope House, Morris and colleagues (1986:398–431) identified 36 decorated ceramic types grouped into eight wares, making this the largest collection in Canyon de Chelly. Rock art during Basketmaker III times (Pueblo I and II periods) differed significantly from Basketmaker II styles. The main topics of iconography were birds and human figures. The large anthropomorphs so characteristic of the Basketmakers grew smaller and their bodies were simplified, turned

24 · Part I. Canyon de Chelly

Figure 1.4. Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, Pueblo III architecture of Antelope House. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

monochrome red and brown, interacted with each other, were depicted pursuing activities such as playing the flute, and began to appear in profile views (see Figure 1.3). Thus the portrayal of human figures changed from static and timeless to active and more temporary agents. The following Pueblo III or Great Pueblo phase (c. A.D. 1150–1300) of Ancestral Pueblo cultures was a continuation of Pueblo I and II in certain aspects and marked a break in others (see Loendorf 2010:48). Construction sequences at Antelope House (Figure 1.4) were professionally documented and most of the associated cultural material was dated to Pueblo III (Morris et al. 1986:42–51). Researchers identified a structural division of Antelope House into a North Room Block, Central Room Block, and South Room Block. Morris and colleagues (1986:52–57) postulate that the North and South Room Blocks represent the residences of distinct but structurally similar social units. There is substantial ethnographic evidence for dual social organization among the Eastern Contemporary Pueblos and especially for the Tewa. Alfonso Ortiz (1969) documented a pervasive dualistic classificatory sys-

Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time: The Archaeological Past · 25

tem in Tewa society based upon moieties that are not localized and interweave kin relations, nonexogamous marriage patterns, and subsistence activities. Warfare was likely one factor influencing Pueblo III architecture and masonry styles, in addition to a broad variety of more peaceful movements and cultural interactions throughout the Southwest. In Mummy Cave, Canyon del Muerto (Morris 1938), the well-preserved three-story tower has yielded tree-ring dates of about A.D. 1284. Several bodies showing evidence of violent death were discovered within this tower (also in Grant 1978:61). Further, De Harport and Grant report the presence of possible defensive walls along the approaches to several sites (in Grant 1978:61). Other selected buildings in Canyon de Chelly and its tributary canyons dating roughly between A.D. 1150 and 1300 display masonry and ceramic styles borrowed from Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. Canyon de Chelly was probably most closely integrated into the Kayenta district with other population concentrations in the Marsh Pass area (note the detailed archaeological reports by Guernsey 1931; Guernsey and Kidder 1921; Kidder and Guernsey 1919). It appears that few records of portable material culture from the Pueblo III period in Canyon de Chelly and its tributaries have been published. Grant (1978:67–69) lumps Canyon de Chelly into the broader discussion of artifacts from the Kayenta district. The most representative form of material culture of the time frame from roughly A.D. 1150 to 1300 is pottery. Kayenta-style ware was thin-walled, black-on-white, showing complex geometric designs. Pueblo III rock art was simplified in comparison to Basketmaker and Pueblo I and II styles. Colors were restricted to white or buff, and most images were situated in the higher sections of rock walls (Figure 1.5). After 1300 Canyon de Chelly became a corridor between the Black Mesa area and the Chuska Mountains with way stations and water stopping points for migrating groups and traveling bands entering and crossing the Southwest. Most small nomadic and temporary agricultural groups cannot be ethnically identified. Conclusive archaeological evidence in the form of potsherds exists only for sporadic Hopi occupations; for example, Charlie Steen (1966:55–57) found Hopi ceramics at Tse Ta’a with dates ranging from 1300 to the nineteenth century, but concentrating between 1300 and 1700. A second and fundamental source of Hopi history is the extensive ethnography (see Mindeleff 1891), which references incessant and highly complex migration stories and movements of social groups (Fladd et al.

26 · Part I. Canyon de Chelly

Figure 1.5. Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, Antelope House, Pueblo III and Navajo paintings of animals. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

2019). Reconciling the physical archaeological record with the oral narratives constitutes challenging and ongoing research since the intention of Hopi consultants was not to reconstruct history in a Western academic sense.3 In 2016 with a Navajo guide, my son and I briefly explored Slim Canyon just to the north of Canyon del Muerto (Figure 1.6). We found two very neatly drawn masked figures filled in with dark red. Their style is distinct from Ancestral Pueblo styles in Canyon de Chelly and might be Hopi or come from another related migratory group. The Navajo

History Navajo origins and history have been discussed by linguists, archaeologists, and most directly by the Navajo people themselves. My delicate task here is to discuss all three perspectives in the framework of the cultural landscape of Canyon de Chelly.

Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time: The Archaeological Past · 27

Figure 1.6. Canyon de Chelly, Slim Canyon, masked figures, possibly Hopi or from a related migratory group. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

The academic linguistic paradigm has been that Navajo is an Athapaskan or Athabaskan language and should be grouped in the Na-Dene language family spoken widely in the northwest of the American continent from Alaska across vast areas in northwestern Canada. Therefore ancestors of the Navajo must have moved from the northwest to the Southwest at some point in history. In recent years this paradigm has been questioned. In the important Symposium Nat’aah Nahane’ Bina’ji O’hoo’ah: Diné Archaeologists and Navajo Archaeology in the 21st Century, at the 2019 Conference of the Society for American Archaeology, Diné archaeologists asked new and more rigorous research questions regarding how to integrate oral traditions in archaeology in more meaningful ways. Kerry Thompson (2019) points out that there has been no archaeological evidence of Athapaskans between the Southwest and Canada, nor have linguists found any linguistic evidence in the Navajo or Apache languages themselves that would indicate any pathway of movement between Canada and the Southwest. She proposes to separate the topic of Athapaskan migrations from Navajo origins. The topic of Navajo origin is better informed by oral traditions, which speak about many migrating clans. She argues that even though oral tradi-

28 · Part I. Canyon de Chelly

tions may not always be corroborated by archaeological data, they provide meaningful results by accepting ideas from outside the Western perspective and sharing the power of representation (Thompson 2019). New initiatives moving from collaboration to partnership between tribes and archaeologists are being undertaken throughout the Southwest, Pueblo-wide alliances are being formed, and Navajo archaeologists are getting involved (Duwe and Preucel 2019; Octavius Seowtewa, pers. comm., 2019). Here I theorize the migration model under Earth Politics. The migration model reveals a dynamic view of the Southwest in which populations shifted and were on the move notwithstanding that they were agriculturalists; it connects the past (at least back to the Basketmaker phase) and the present; it addresses land rights, indigeneity, and science; and it begins to bring oral traditions or ethnography and archaeology closer together. In sum, my consultants consistently perceive the Navajo/Diné language as a vital element of Navajo identity; however, language is not as firmly linked with a region as is Yucatec Maya to the peninsula (see later chapters). Most Navajo have learned in the school system about Athapaskan migrations from the northwest but use their language as anchored in the Southwest. Data from Western Science: Archaeology and History How to date Navajo migrations (Athapaskan and clans) is the primary debate in archaeology. Researchers have reported and also contested radiocarbon dates as early as the fourteenth century taken from temporary forked-stick wooden structures, culturally affiliated with the Navajo from Mariano Mesa and Chacra Mesa, and probably precursors of today’s traditional Navajo octagonal log houses called hogans (from Gwinn Vivian, cited in Correll 1979:21–22). After the Spanish entered the Southwest in the sixteenth century, archaeological data were complemented by historical reports by various Spaniards (Montgomery et al. 1949:xxii; and others). Many Spanish sources referred to the Navajo as Apaches del Navajo. The Apaches are groups ethnically related to the Navajo, as they also speak a Southern Athabaskan language. Curtis Schaafsma’s (2002) archaeological excavations in the Piedra Lumbre Valley near Abiquiu, New Mexico, present the case that Navajo groups lived near the Rio Grande Pueblos in the seventeenth century. Conflict with the Pueblos and the Spanish eventually pushed the Navajo out of the

Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time: The Archaeological Past · 29

Rio Grande Valley to the north and west, into southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico, an area now known and respected as Dinétah or “among the Diné people.” Some consensus has emerged in archaeology and ethnography that the Dinétah region in northwestern New Mexico became an empowered homeland to the Navajo in the seventeenth century (Grant 1978:73; Schaafsma and Tsosie 2009:15–18; Towner 1996; among others). Towner (1996) discusses the archaeological evidence for Navajo presence in the Dinétah based upon tree-ring dates of the seventeenth century taken from wood of forked-stick hogans. Diné or Navajo presence in the Dinétah was further marked by rock art eloquently discussed by Schaafsma and Tsosie (2009). Rock art concentrated in the upper San Juan drainage (including Dinétah) is ceremonial and portrays figures of Holy People including ye’i (discussed later) in pictograph and petroglyph techniques. It is highly significant that spiritual rock art depicting Holy People and ye’i associated with the beginnings of the fifth world and the origin of the Navajo people dots the Dinétah landscape.4 Archaeology through radiocarbon dates, rock art iconography, ethnography, and continuing oral traditions confirm Dinétah as the origin landscape of the Navajo in the Southwest. In the second half of the eighteenth century the Navajo left the Dinétah of northwestern New Mexico and moved west and south (Schaafsma and Tsosie 2009:18–19; Towner 2003:129–131). In these processes some groups came to Canyon de Chelly in northeastern Arizona and decided to settle here. During the second half of the eighteenth century Canyon de Chelly served the Navajo as a major agricultural center, since at that time it received abundant summer water and the valley bottom provided hothouse growing conditions for crops. J. Lee Correll (1979:37,82,99) lists several seventeenth- to early nineteenth-century historical and radiocarbon dates documenting Navajo people in Canyon de Chelly. By 1800 Canyon de Chelly had become known as a formidable Navajo stronghold and obstacle in military attempts to subdue the Navajo people fully. The massacre inflicted by Lt. Antonio Narbona in 1805 marked one of the earliest Spanish attempts to penetrate the canyons and curb Navajo resistance (Grant 1978:84–89). It would be succeeded by similar Anglo American attempts. In May 1846 the United States declared war on Mexico. The Mexican War lasted two years; its outcome was that the lands that are now California,

30 · Part I. Canyon de Chelly

Nevada, Arizona, parts of Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico were added to the union. For the Navajo, this meant their battlefront would now shift from facing Spanish-Mexican soldiers and militia to the United States Army. Periodic warfare notwithstanding, the first half of the nineteenth century seems to have been a period of prosperity for the Navajo. Their livestock of horses, sheep, and goats was thriving; Navajo women acquired high reputation and respect as weavers of fine quality colorful blankets throughout the Southwest (Grant 1978:91,94–95).5 The United States government in Washington equipped several expeditions and numerous negotiations were made to solve the “Navajo problem” (summarized in Grant 1978:96–119). The final surrender of the Navajo to Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson came in January 1864, when the Navajo people agreed to go to Fort Defiance. From there they were sent on a 400mile foot trek east to a Pecos River reservation near Fort Sumner, New Mexico. This new reservation, functioning from 1864 to 1868, was named Bosque Redondo by the New Mexicans. The U.S. strategy of establishing permanent reservations to which scattered groups of Native Americans were forcefully relocated had in part a humanitarian intent. These failed, however, due to miscalculations. Bosque Redondo was a grave failure, causing many more deaths, and instilling ongoing pain in the social memories of Navajo people. In May 1868 a new treaty was signed: it allowed the Navajo to return to their homeland, and the government committed to economic support of the tribe for ten years. The Navajo were given a new reservation of 3.5 million acres, which included the Diné, Chuska Mountain range, and Canyon de Chelly. As the Navajo rebuilt and populations rose, the size of the reservation was enlarged in four major increments to 18 million acres, which are maintained today. In 1923 the First Tribal Council was established and seated in Window Rock, which became the Navajo capital. After the reservation was established in 1868 the Navajo returned to and continue to occupy the Canyon de Chelly system. The town of Chinle has been established at the mouth of Canyon de Chelly near Chinle Creek. The name Chinle is derived from the Navajo word Ch’in[i]li meaning “It Flows Out [Horizontally]” (Jett 2001:43), describing the geographic location where Chinle Creek exits the canyon. The town grew from a singletent trading post in 1882 to a full-sized camp to which a government school was added in 1910. Since the second half of the twentieth century, it has taken on the function of a tourism gateway to Canyon de Chelly.

Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time: The Archaeological Past · 31

Tourism has offered many new economic opportunities to the Navajo people and is generally welcomed as long as respect is shown to the Navajo and their ancestors (www.discovernavajo.com). As a result, many Navajo people have left their homesteads at the canyon bottom and taken up primary residence in the town of Chinle. Other families reside along the canyon rim, but very few live permanently inside the canyon. Still, most families own land at the bottom of the canyons, and some maintain a private hogan. In economic terms Canyon de Chelly has changed from an agricultural to a tourist center: while some land continues to be used for crop cultivation and herding and grazing of sheep, goats, and horses, primary economic use is by Navajo tour operators who guide small groups of visitors into the canyons by jeep, on horseback, or on foot. Data from Navajo Oral Traditions The ethnography of Navajo oral traditions introduces a very different view of Navajo origins. The beautiful poetic description of how the world came to be at a place called To bil dahisk’id saw first the four directions (Zolbrod 1984:33–36). To bil dahisk’id was a center place from which waters flowed in four directions. There were dwellings along three of the streams. The people who lived in the first world were the Air-Spirit People, who were like insects. These Air-Spirit people violated moral codes and had to leave the first world to escape from a flood. Through a hole in the sky they entered the second world (Zolbrod 1984:37–39). Other problems arose, and the people from the second world were forced to ascend to the third world, and so on. The fourth world was also flooded, and at the last moment First Man and First Woman were able to climb up into the fifth world through a hole in the sky enlarged for them by the badger (Zolbrod 1984:78–79). Ethelou Yazzie (1971), under the auspices of the Navajo Curriculum Center’s Rough Rock Demonstration School near Chinle, elaborates on the First or Black World: The First World was small in size and was much like a floating island in a sea of water mist. . . . Man was not in his present shape, and the creatures living in the First World were thought of as Mist Beings. They had not definite form as we think of creatures today, and they were to change in later worlds to living things as we know them. . . . the Wolazhini Dine’e

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(“Insect” Beings) had developed a way of life because they recognized the value of making and carrying plans with the approval of one another. (Yazzie 1971:9) On the Second or Blue World he notes: Many other Beings already lived there—Blue Birds, Blue Hawks, Blue Jays, and Blue Herons. . . . The Second World contained a number of different chambers. . . . The Wolves lived in a white house in the east. The Wildcats lived in a blue house in the south. . . . The houses were all of different shapes and the Beings living in them were at war with one another. First Man killed some of the warring animals and then restored them to life. (Yazzie 1971:11) On the Third or Yellow World: In the Yellow World, there was no sun. Turquoise Boy lived beyond Dawn, or White Shell Mountain, to the east. White Shell Woman lived to the west. In this world lived Squirrels, Chipmunks, Mice, Turkeys, Foxes, Deer, Cat People, Spider People, Lizards, and Snakes. All the people were similar in that they had no definite form. (Yazzie 1971:13) And finally on the Fourth or Glittering World: In the Fourth World, First Man and First Woman formed the four sacred mountains from the soil that First Man had gathered from the mountains in the Third World. When the Beings had assembled the things with which to dress the mountains, they traveled by rainbow to the east to plant the sacred Mountain of the East, Sis Naajini. They put down a blanket of white shell. . . . Yoolgai Ashkii (White Bead Boy, or Dawn Boy) was told to enter the Mountain of the East. Tsoodzil (the Mountain of the South) was planted the same way, except that it had a turquoise blanket. . . . Dook’o’oosliid (the Mountain of the West) was made on an abalone blanket. . . . Dibe’ Nitsaa (the Mountain of the North) was made of an obsidian blanket. . . . First Man and First Woman fastened the various mountains to the earth. (Yazzie 1971:17–18)6 This account from the Fourth World beautifully anchors Navajo lands within the guardianship of the four sacred mountains, widely identified as Sierra Blanca Peak in the east, Mount Taylor in the south, the San Francisco

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Peaks in the west, and Mount Hesperus in the north. It is important to note that these mountains roughly define the four directions as seen from Navajo territory but not with mathematical precision. Kelley and Francis (1994:20–21) add the metaphor of a hogan: the entire pre-contact homeland was seen as a hogan, with a sacred mountain in each of the four directions compared to a pole in the hogan’s framework. Further, the boundaries drawn by these sacred mountains lie outside the legally defined reservation borders. But the lands watched over by the four Navajo mountains are perceived and often claimed as their homeland by most people with whom I have consulted. One person shared with me the following: when a family member prepared to travel to China, his family called in a medicine man who performed a ceremony that would guide and safeguard the traveler outside the protection zone of the mountains and assure his unharmed return (anon., pers. comm., 2017). Canyon de Chelly is securely enclosed by the four sacred mountains. Yazzie’s (1971) descriptions of the four worlds are significant through another lens: he explains different concepts of ontological being (as already described, people had no definite form, they were Mist Beings, there were Bat People, Cat People, etc.). I reason that these statements by a Navajo writer establish evidence that Navajo ontology links with the worldview of perspectivism as presented by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1998). The conclusions at the end of the book mine Navajo ontology more deeply as a manifestation of perspectivism. In abbreviated succinct terms, this is where I see a connection between Yazzie’s account and perspectivism: Viveiros de Castro argues that animals and spirits (in an Amazonian worldview) live by a “cultural” system structured by needs parallel to human culture, such as food, shelter, body ornamentation, and social hierarchies. The specifics of how each system is lived depend upon the species. What is crucial is that perspectivism proposes that humans, animals, and spirits share a similar structure of “culture” (physical provisions, communication, spirituality), but they are divided by the physicality of their bodies, which are not stable and may transform into another type of body. Viveiros de Castro (1998:471) uses the metaphor of the body as “clothing” that is removable.7 Yazzie’s (1971) description of Beings fits this definition; an additional confirmation is provided in the explanation of a Holy Person by Kelley and Francis (1994:20). The point to be made here is that traditional Navajo worldview was likely based upon an ontology different from the Western human-centered state of being. We have seen that the oral narratives posit a linear upward trail of the

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Navajo through various layered horizontal worlds, which stands in opposition to the land-based horizontal migrations archaeologically and historically documented. Many lines of evidence indicate that Canyon de Chelly is seen by Navajo people as a center place where the vertical and horizontal movements of the ancestors have intersected: Holy People from the oral traditions have been seen at or are said to have passed many locations in the canyon system, most specifically some pronounced stone formations with rock art and archaeological ruins, of which White House is most often referenced (Jett 2001:37–182). The official position of the Navajo people is that First Man and First Woman emerged into the fifth world in the Southwest and that the Ancestral Pueblos are their direct ancestors. Kelly Francis, cultural specialist in the Historic Preservation Department in Window Rock, explained to me in 2016: “Navajo were in Arizona with the Anasazi [not after them]; one third of Navajo clans are linked to Anasazi sites . . . because Navajo and Anasazi intermarried; the term Anasazi is derived from Navajo Nihi’nazaziih meaning ‘ancestral people’; white people misunderstood the word and gave it the connotation of ‘enemy’”(bracketed aside mine). There are clear parallels between the Navajo creation stories and Puebloan accounts, which also describe a climbing and emergence of people through vertically layered worlds (see the sipapu hole in Puebloan kivas as memory of locales of emergence). Social life in the lower worlds ended in disputes, followed by punishment, from which people escaped by climbing into a world above. Some traditionalists argue that the Anasazi were the main stalk or core population in the Southwest from which other groups, such as the Navajos, Apaches, Utes, Paiutes, and Havasupais branched off (Kelley and Francis 1994:24). Hosteen Klah, a greatly respected medicine man and a grandson of Narbona, explained connections between the Anasazi and Navajo in the context of the Navajo creation myth: The gods told them that they had made a beautiful world and that it was quite safe. . . . Begochiddy then said to the gods that all people in the future should have different languages and the gods agreed to this. They divided all the clothing so that each people should have a certain share, and the beasts also could choose which tribe they would join. The Navajos took the best seed of the corn while the Pueblos and Zuni took the poorer seeds. The birds chose their tribes, but only the turkey people [a link to perspectivism, noted earlier] chose to go

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with the Navajos. Estsan-ah-tlehay, the Changing Woman, took the turkeys and held them in her arms. Begochiddy and the gods said to the people: “You are all going to have different languages now, live differently, and do your hair in different ways.” The Navajos did their hair in a queue and the other tribes cut their hair across the front, and this is the way they do it to this day. (Klah 1942:106; italics and bracketed aside mine) Hosteen Klah’s version directly links with the southwestern migration model already discussed (Duwe and Preucel 2019; Octavius Seowtewa, pers. comm., 2019). Navajo accounts of history tend to emphasize fluidity with regard to chronology, spatiality, and ethnicity, in opposition to Modernist scientific groupings in terms of time, culture, and geographic distance. This is where the negotiations of Earth Politics between oral traditions and archaeology are rooted. Hosteen Klah also includes an alternative explanation of language as identity marker in the Southwest.

2 Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time Heritage in the Present

Canyon de Chelly as a Physical and Material Navajo Cultural Landscape

Cultural landscapes are rich layered systems in which natural land formations, human material constructions, and inner mental concepts and memories are interconnected. They exemplify a lived, foregrounded daily reality intermittently connected with an idealized background reality brought to life in storied memoryscapes (see Hirsch’s model, Introduction). Stated another way, landscape is more than physical—it is a social and dynamic entity with which people actively engage, reflecting the inherent contradiction between its physical reality and its idealized image, as enacted in cultural processes in which memory is key. I begin with an overview of selected physical cultural material present in the canyon systems, followed by a discussion of the intangible sacred landscape through oral narratives. From their arrival in the canyon system, the Navajo practiced settlement patterns very different from those of the Ancestral Pueblos and Basketmakers: they built their summer homesteads in the canyon bottom, cultivated crops where water was available, and used less productive land for grazing of their sheep, goats, and horses. Most families have had a winter second homestead on the canyon rim or—more recently—in Chinle. My ethnographic work confirmed that the residential pattern of a summer and winter house is a vital part of Navajo tradition. Cliff shelters with Ancestral Pueblo building complexes were primarily accessed for protection and defensive purposes and used as hideouts when Spanish, Mexican, and American expeditions penetrated the canyons. At some Ancestral Pueblo sites the

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Navajo added storage cists but never appropriated the houses as permanent living quarters. Most of my Navajo consultants expressed that tradition teaches people not to enter the ruins since the spirits of the ancients or the Navajo haashch’eeh (Kelley and Francis 1994:82) are still present, can be sensed, and should not be disturbed.1 We return to the issues of AnasaziNavajo relations in the discussion later in the chapter. Nevertheless, many archaeological sites display Navajo rock art with subject matter and in techniques markedly different from prior Basketmaker and Ancestral Pueblo styles (Grant 1978:216–236). This rock art was left by Navajo individuals at the houses of preceding groups, offering one perspective of how the Navajo have engaged with the tangible heritage of the Ancestral Pueblos in the canyon. Following the historical outline given earlier, most Navajo pictographs and petroglyphs date from after 1775 (Grant 1978:216). In contrast to Basketmaker and Ancestral Pueblo pictographs, Navajo paintings are realistic and depict subjects of their daily lives, such as horses and riders, antelope, and cattle. Few ceremonial pictographs have been documented, taking the form of: * Supernatural, mythological, and masked figures linked to ye’i, who may represent masked Holy People and are common in the Largo and Gobernador drainages of the Dinétah (see Chapter 1 for Dinétah); * Star panels called planetaria by De Harport (1953). These display star shapes in the form of crosses drawn with two straight lines of the same length on the flat surfaces of cave ceilings. Numbers of stars vary from a few in some panels to over ninety. Different researchers have recorded between eight and fourteen star ceilings. They have been interpreted as selected star groupings and constellations (Grant 1978:218–219). Representative examples of Navajo rock paintings can be seen at Antelope House and Blue Bull Cave. Both these sites are situated within Canyon del Muerto. Antelope House, or CDM-10 in Grant’s classification system (Grant 1978:258), is a complex of Ancestral Pueblo masonry structures built against the base of the northern cliff wall of Canyon del Muerto (see Figure 1.4). Slightly west of the buildings and above a narrow ledge are various paintings classified as Great Pueblo and Navajo (see Figure 1.5). The solid white four-legged animals and concentric circles are Great Pueblo, and the four realistic figures of antelopes in brown and buff are attributed to the Navajo artist Dibe Yazhi (Little Sheep), who lived at Antelope House in the early 1800s. Creating rock art as markers in the landscape is an unbroken

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activity. In 2013 Brandon T. showed us a human stick-figure scratched high onto a wall in Canyon del Muerto, “that his dad, Adam T., had made.”2 Furthermore, local youths from Chinle paint rock art–related imagery on small stone plates and sell them at the tourist stops in the canyon system. These are initiatives of popular heritage making that do not always follow the protocol of institutional heritage making set by the tribal government in Window Rock or the rules established by the National Park Service. We will return to these considerations in the conclusions to part 1 and to the book. Another significant rock shelter with architectural remains and wellpreserved rock art is Blue Bull Cave (CDM-263). It is a large site divided into two sections by natural rock formations. Architectural remains and wall foundations on ledges are seen in both sections. As seen when standing in front of the rock shelter, Basketmaker and Ancestral Pueblo pictographs are concentrated in the right section and Navajo paintings in the left. A painting of a large dark blue bull stands out in the lower right-hand corner, which has given the site its name. During each of my visits a pile of potsherds accumulated and added to by earlier visitors was documented near the cliff wall; however, in 2017 the potsherds had disappeared. The majority of these sherds were gray with black line decorations, and a few exhibited black designs on a white slip. I compared these specimens to ceramic analyses by David de Harport, Charlie Steen, and Harold Colton.3 One of the specimens in the Blue Bull Cave collection appears to be Lino Black-on-gray with a red smear. This is likely Fugitive Red, another common late Basketmaker feature created by rubbing or otherwise staining the surface with red ocher powder (Steen 1966:86). One distinctive black-on-white example in the Blue Bull Cave collection exhibits two inset rectangles drawn in thin lines and a black solid triangle with a dotted outline. These designs strongly resemble the Kana’a Blackon-white bowl from Tse-Ta’a illustrated by Steen (1966:87, Fig. 30). Kana’a Black-on-white is considered the diagnostic Pueblo I black-on-white pottery of northeastern Arizona and the middle reaches of the San Juan. It is reasonable to argue that the Blue Bull Cave specimens constitute a localized sample of Basketmaker III–Pueblo I or Modified Basketmaker–Developmental Pueblo ceramic styles and implicit human occupation (Figure 2.1). In the ceramic sequences as well as in rock art, transitions between styles appear to be fluid, suggesting a time frame of peak population and activities from about A.D. 500–1000.

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Figure 2.1. Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, Blue Bull Cave, potsherds present in 2013. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

Navajo presence in Blue Bull Cave is concentrated apart from the earlier remains in the left section of the cave and along the base of the cliff wall. The site features all three categories of Navajo subject matter in rock art: men wearing cowboy hats with horses, one ye’i, and a beautiful star panel on the shelter ceiling above the horse riders in the left section of the cave. The panel with horses and riders includes many mounted and unmounted figures and three antelopes to the left (Figure 2.2). Two of them stand out for their realistically painted fur colors in brown and white, resembling their counterparts at Antelope House. Careful inspection reveals that these images were executed in paint and charcoal in many layers. Grant (1978:261) dates them to the mid-nineteenth century. Blue Bull Cave was most likely a popular place where Navajo individuals practiced their drawing and painting skills to rest and refresh from their daily tasks of herding and agricultural work. The ye’i and a black companion figure were painted over Pueblo pictographs in the right section of the cave (Figure 2.3). Ye’i is a general Navajo word for spiritual beings and gods; Holy People form a subcategory of ye’i

40 · Part I. Canyon de Chelly

Figure 2.2. Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, Blue Bull Cave, panel with horses and riders, Navajo. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

and are considered benevolent and associated with the forces of nature (discussed later). This ye’i appears to be portrayed in profile view with an elongated body painted in a red and a yellow stripe. He dons a long black and white feather headdress and holds an elaborate black and white staff. He is partnered with a stylized and partly faded, fully black, frontal figure with a triangular head. The ye’i is identified based upon his elongated body and outfit in similarity with known figures in sand paintings. In 2015 our young Navajo guide Dennison J. identified the black figure as a “Skinwalker.” Dennison explained: The spirit world has a good and an evil side. Medicine men know both. Those who work in the good realm cure illnesses and curses. When an older person feels “gooshy,” they may be cursed. Some medicine men work in the evil realm and provoke curses and death for certain individuals. Those medicine men turn into animals and become Skinwalkers. You never know who are the Skinwalkers. When a Skinwalker’s identity is discovered, he will soon suffer harm and perish. Medicine men on the evil side continue to pass this knowledge on to their sons. (Dennison J., pers. comm., 2015)4

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Figure 2.3. Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, Blue Bull Cave, ye’i and a black companion figure, Navajo. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

This perception of the rock art figure evokes strong links with ontologies analyzed through Amerindian perspectivism (discussed in the preceding chapter). We return to this discussion later. The star ceiling looks over the horses, riders, and antelopes in the left Navajo section of Blue Bull Cave (Figure 2.4). During our 2015 stay Dennison J. did not recognize star panels as anything very special. He commented that they are “probably some sort of alignment with the stars” and friends had told him that “people put cross-shapes saturated with pigments on the tips of arrows and shot them on high ceilings. When you feel those high up, you will feel little depressions” (Dennison J., pers. comm., 2015).

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Figure 2.4. Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, Blue Bull Cave, star ceiling, Navajo. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

His second comment has particular merit as explanation of a pictograph technique that is still part of social memory. In 2016 Kelly Francis, Navajo cultural specialist with the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department in Window Rock, offered a different view: Stars are beings within themselves; stars are communicators; stars see what happens at night; stars are eyes of the night; Navajo diagnostic ceremonies diagnose ailments and witchery; you ask the stars why this occurred; star panels are star people. (Kelly Francis, pers. comm., 2016) He places his view of the stars into the wider realms of Navajo knowledge based on nature and knowing the earth; here the sacred is not disconnected from the profane, and the animate is not disconnected from the inanimate; and most important, “all objects/beings are spirit beings with bodies, eyes, legs” (Kelly Francis, pers. comm., 2016).

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These statements frame a worldview based upon perspectivism, briefly introduced above. I refer back to my ethnographic work in the conclusions to Part I. In the spatialized context of Blue Bull Cave, we must note that the Navajo images were placed in distinct wall sections, except for the yei’i and his companion. They generally do not merge with earlier paintings from other culture groups, as the Basketmaker and Ancestral Pueblo pictographs do. Abutting the base of the cave, several well-preserved storage bins must be noted. Their good condition suggests that they were built and used by the Navajo people. They match the description of above-ground Navajo corncribs found by Steen in Tse-ta’a, Canyon de Chelly (Steen 1966:59–60). My ethnographic work shows that local residents are divided with regard to land issues and ownership. The piece of land on which the site is located belongs to Mrs. T., and the property has been handed down in her family for generations. She cannot remember who would have owned the land with Blue Bull Cave beforehand. At the time of my interview with her on May 18, 2015, the property was in probate, to be transferred to her from her grandmother. She emphasized that her grandparents had lived in the crumbling hogan nearby. “We do not restore structures; we let them decay naturally, go back to the earth” (Mrs. T., pers. comm., 2015). At the time they were not using the land. Regarding Blue Bull Cave and other archaeological sites in the canyon, Mrs. T. stated that “the ruins were the houses of the ancients. We should not disturb them” (pers. comm., 2015). She believes that the archaeological sites belong to everyone and that the National Park Service works to restore and conserve them. Mrs. T.’s comments imply no conflict but rather a smooth division of rights to and responsibilities for the archaeological sites: the Navajo own the land and the National Park Service (NPS) maintains the ruins as heritage for the future.5 In 2017 I went on several hiking trips with another landowner, and he stated that “the land with Blue Bull Cave and the old hogan does not belong to Mrs. T.’s family.” Further, his view of the National Park Service contrasts with that of Mrs. T. This landowner expressed: “NPS is no good. They will come and mess with my property rights. When the sites are known, they come and fence them in.” This is why he does everything in his power to protect his land. He shared with me that a film crew offered him $250,000 to produce a film on his land, but he “turned them down not to interrupt his canyon” (anon., pers. comm., 2017). Most important, when I asked him,

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Figure 2.5. Canyon de Chelly, Spider Rock. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

“Do you own the archaeological sites [on your property, location omitted by request of consultant] or do they belong to the National Park Service or to all Americans?” He answered: “They belong to the canyon and to the Navajo Nation.” Does this imply that the canyon is alive? He answered: “Yes, the canyon is a living being” (pers. comm., 2017). I argue that this vision of the canyon and its lands as animated, alive, and frequented by numerous spiritual agents in human and non-human forms is the heart of the Navajo worldview. Older individuals very much

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sense the canyon like this; the younger generation are being taught how the canyon is alive and they carry this knowledge inside them. Their daily lives, however, are mostly absorbed and distracted by work and schooling as well as by Christian churches under the norms of white U.S. society. Moving from Canyon del Muerto into the main canyon, Canyon de Chelly, upstream, I select one rock shelter that faces the paramount land formation in the Canyon de Chelly system: Spider Rock (Figure 2.5). During my first visit in 2012 this shelter seemed small and inconspicuous. It was noted only because it sits at the turn-around point of tours to Spider Rock. The rock art site features abstract and stylized figures and many handprints, all in white and buff, which are probably Great Pueblo style. One geometric design drawn in crisp red lines stands out and fits into Grant’s (1978:197– 198) category of “elaborate rectilinear abstract patterns that reflect weaving and pottery designs.” Only during a return visit in 2016 did I see that the ceiling of this rock shelter contains a star panel. The Navajo stars typically look over Ancestral Pueblo pictographs and other physical remains, suggesting specific relations with the past that the Navajo may have implied. The whole shelter looks toward Spider Rock. Spider Rock is the physical landmark most widely illustrated and marketed in the tourism literature and deeply sensed by traditional Navajo as intangible heritage. It is well suited to be the entry point to the following discussion of the storied landscape or storyscape of Canyon de Chelly through oral narratives. Canyon de Chelly as an Intangible Sacred Navajo Landscape

Before turning to Spider Rock itself, I want to offer a brief introduction to Navajo cultural landscapes as they have been explained by Navajo consultants to prior ethnographers. Consultations by Klara Kelley and Harris Francis with community members in thirteen chapters of the Navajo Reservation focused upon culturally significant sacred places to create a list upon which the Historic Preservation Department could concentrate their protection efforts. Although the Chinle chapter was not included in Kelley and Francis’s published fieldwork (1994), their insightful reconstructions of Navajo cultural landscapes correspond with the narratives and comments I have documented from my consultants and therefore apply to Canyon de Chelly as well. In the traditional Navajo worldview, human life is rooted in the earth. Grace McNeley (in Kelley and Francis 1994:43) personifies this root as Asdzaan Nadleehi/Changing Woman, who is Earth Mother herself.

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Growing from the main root is the complex web of kinship relations extending back to the ancestors. Linked to this system are material goods, livestock, and the surrounding landscape. Navajo stories recognize these interrelationships by illustrating how the land and everything in it are alive (Kelley and Francis 1994:1–2, 19–25, 42–46). Each “being” in this system, including landforms, individual plants, animals, natural forces, and more, has its own immortal humanlike “inner form” (to be visualized as a Holy Person), which interacts with the other “beings” in the system. The Holy People are the protagonists in Navajo stories about the origins of the world and Navajo life. In Chapter 3 I discuss further how this worldview connects with perspectivism. More specifically, the land-based extended family has functioned as the nexus of daily life, land use, ceremonialism, and stories. Directly or indirectly, the family has been the perpetuator of the Navajo way of life and stories. A family works the land to produce livestock and crops that each family member consumes. In such processes the land, water, air, and sunlight enter the family’s food and become the people’s flesh. These substances include the essences of immortal beings like Changing Woman. Thus by consuming the products of the land, traditional Navajo incorporate the essences of the immortal beings into their flesh (Kelley and Francis 1994:1–2, 42–43). My ethnographic work with potters at White House in 2017 confirmed that many rim residents deeply sense this unity between human lives and Canyon de Chelly. I bought a small vase from Darlene S., who illustrates in simple icons in all her wares the narrative of how her life is fused with the canyon: Spider Rock, trees, the clothes line, summer camp and the hogan, Grandma weaving, a wagon, a post to tie the horse, yucca shampoo, an outhouse and sheep corral, all within the Chinle Valley formation. The visual narrative unfolds in a wide band around the center of the vase (Figure 2.6). The remaining body of the vessel is turned into an abstract rendition of the Canyon de Chelly landscape expressed in colors: white for the canyon walls, green for trees down in the canyon, black for small plants at the canyon bottom, and blue for the sky in a wide band below the vase opening. Selected and reinterpreted rock art designs, including the stylized scorpion from White House where she keeps her stand, grace the white opening of her vase. My work with rim residents demonstrated a strong sense of place and the choice for living without running water in return for being close to their land parcels in the canyon. Thus we may conclude that land is the most profound value-based heritage in traditional culture.

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Figure 2.6. Canyon de Chelly, vase created by potter Darlene S. illustrating her life within the canyon landscape. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

Further, Navajo tradition includes a tremendous corpus of esoteric knowledge that only certain medicine men possess (Kelley and Francis 1994:21–25). This kind of knowledge is organized into repertoires or -ways of ceremonial procedures, paraphernalia, prayers, songs, and stories (also Linford 2000:18–22). Each way is directed at particular Holy People to engage their powers to mitigate and reverse illness or misfortune caused by natural phenomena and set in motion by improper human actions. Performance acts that connect ceremonies with the land are the placing of offerings outside the hogan in which the ritual is conducted; visits by the medicine person to the homes of Holy People whom the stories in the specific repertoire or -way engage; and collecting in selected places the plant

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materials required for the ceremony. Thus each repertoire or -way necessitates travel by medicine people through a range of environmental zones in Navajo land, during which they observe and assess plant and animal life and the ecosystem. The materials collected are then brought back to the patient and symbolically bring the resources of all Navajo land to benefit the patient, the family, and the community. Thus Navajo worldview and traditional life make sense and respond logically to the needs of the people: The daily activities of stockraising and farming (including individual and family prayers . . . ) root the Navajos in their family’s land base by turning the land into food, which becomes their flesh. Ceremonial performances bond Navajos to the whole of Navajoland by engulfing them with the diversity of the land’s natural products. (Kelley and Francis 1994:25) Particular places in the natural surroundings symbolize this relationship between the land and social groups. Navajo place names are highly descriptive and paraphrase stories. Kelley and Francis (1994:42–43) define culturally significant landscapes as systems of places where successive episodes of a particular story or activities related to a particular ceremony occurred just as the episodes make up the story and the activities complete the ceremony. The Canyon de Chelly system functions as such a culturally significant landscape. According to Kelly Francis, my consultant from the Historic Preservation Department, Navajo sacred landscape of Canyon de Chelly extends in a 10-mile radius around the canyons. His statement reinforces that traditional Navajo notions of their land and culturally significant landscape ignore legal administrative boundaries of the National Monument, chapters, and the reservation. Other aspects matter; for example, on our canyon tour with guide Oscar B, known as OB, he stopped at the confluence of Canyon del Muerto and Canyon de Chelly and explained that this “junction is sacred as one canyon is female and the other male” (OB, pers. comm., 2016; confirmed by Lupita McClanahan, 2018). Holy People are the main actors in Navajo stories. They may be encountered throughout Navajo territories, but some locations they visit more frequently than others, intensifying the potential for people to access higher powers. More specifically, with regard to Canyon de Chelly, after the gods under leadership of Begochiddy had cleansed the world with a flood and re-created it, they named and visited mountains and places, including Flat Rock and Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly (Klah 1942:101). Talking God

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spoke to White Shell Woman: “I come from among the cliffs at Tseyi [Navajo name for Canyon de Chelly], where many of the gods dwell” (Zolbrod 1984:284). The Canyon de Chelly system is clearly one location chosen by the Holy People, and according to Navajo consultants, Spider Rock with the adjacent Face Rock and Wide Rock as well as White House Ruins constitute the “most sacred places” within Canyon de Chelly proper (Jett 2001:101–102, 104, 106). In the following sections, the key content involves the enumeration of Holy People, their travels, and places of significance in the canyon system, rather than the logic of the narratives. Spider Rock Spider Rock (Tse Na’ashje’ii or Na’ashjee’tse, “Spider [literally It-SpreadsSomething-Sticky] Rock,” Jett 1999:104; Nashjeh-tseel, Klah 1942:101) is situated about eight miles upstream in Canyon de Chelly proper, where Monument Canyon branches off to the south. It is a bifurcated sheer sandstone pillar approximately 800 feet in height (see Figure 2.5). Spider Rock has become a landmark of Canyon de Chelly National Monument; to the Navajo it is sacred as the home of Spider Woman, who is said still to live there (Linford 2000:51). Spider Rock is closely associated with Face Rock a short distance to the southwest, which is another pinnacle attached to the north wall of the canyon by a fin of rock, and to Wide Rock. Spider Rock and Face Rock were known as The Monuments, or The Captains, and were seen as a female and male pair in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Jett 2001:102–104). Face Rock Face Rock (Tse Binii’I, “The Rock’s Face [i.e., The Rock with a Face],” Jett 2001:102) is a pinnacle of de Chelly Sandstone connected to the north wall of the canyon. High up on the canyon wall sits an Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwelling squeezed into a low shelter. Through binoculars, pictographs are visible next to the structures. When viewed in profile from a certain angle, the upper end of the spire resembles a human face looking toward Spider Rock. Jett’s consultants confirmed that Face Rock is included among the standing rocks perceived to be petrified Holy People; for example, one consultant noted that Face Rock is one of two “talking rocks” in the canyons, where medicine men go to pray (Jett 2001:102). Face Rock’s ability to converse is also reflected in the secondary names Speaking Rock, Talking Rock, or Whispering Rock. Much of this conversation is directed toward his female partner Spider Rock and Spider Woman. Further, Face Rock is

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mentioned in eight repertoire or -way myths and ceremonials, mostly in conjunction with Spider Rock (Jett 2001:102–103). The most important ones are paraphrased below. Wide Rock Wide Rock (Tsenteel, “Rock is Broad [or Flat],” Jett 2001:107–109; Tsentyel, Klah 1942:101) constitutes the third partner in this culturally deeply significant micro-landscape. It is a sheer-sided sandstone mesa standing between Spider Rock and the plateau point at the junction of Canyon de Chelly and Monument Canyon (Figure 2.7). Related names are Broad Rock and Flat Rock. It is known as the house of certain Holy People. Wide Rock is visited or the place of activities in eight repertoires or -way narratives, some of which overlap with those to be discussed for Spider Rock and Face Rock (Wyman 1957:45n3). What is important and different is that Wide Rock is entered by supernatural beings, and activities take place inside, whereas Spider Woman is always imagined as perching on top of her spire; for example, in the Excess-way myth, Scrap-Picker Boy seduces girls at a gathering inside Wide Rock (Jett 2001:108). Many local Navajo remember bahozhooni or Goodfellow, a famous medicine man who used Wide Rock to make prayers and offerings (Jett 2001:108). This is likely the reason why my consultants have referred to it as a place reserved for medicine men: “Wide Rock is a very sacred place. . . . Medicine men go close to it to pray” (anonymous consultant, pers. comm., 2017). Unlike the visually more suggestive forms of Spider Rock and Face Rock, Wide Rock stands out as an abstract, towering cube-like mass, inside which supernatural beings perform. Since it is imagined and respected as a place for medicine men, many traditional Navajo avoid it. Oral mythology surrounding Spider Rock centers on Spider Woman: she had her hogan at the foot of Spider Rock and climbed the rock every morning, creating many webs on it; the Navajo learned how to weave by copying these webs; some consultants identify the wall foundations on a basal ledge of the rock as the remnants of her home; many narratives emphasize that she prays for a rainbow and travels on it to the other side; some of these travels involve visits to other gods and human clans who live on nearby rocks and buttes in the canyon system; she lives atop the taller of the two parts of the spire, and Talking God lives on the shorter (although another story gives the home of Talking God on Black Rock). Spider Woman made twelve gods, among them gods for the earth, the sky, the moon, sun, stars, and all the plants, animals, humans, and rains. Children are warned

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Figure 2.7. Canyon de Chelly, Wide Rock. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

that if they misbehave, Spider Woman will wrap them in silk and carry them to the top of Spider Rock to devour them; whitish stone on the summit is said to be children’s bones. My ethnographic work has documented similar narratives: Spider Rock was first called Standing Rock. A small boy was getting water for a ceremony. He saw a spider web reflected in the water and looking up, he saw a big spider web between Speaking Rock who is male and Standing Rock who is female. The boy told his family and they saw it as well. Two ladies were walking to a ceremony when they heard banging at the base of Standing Rock/Spider Rock. The banging came from the construction of a loom. The rug in the loom had a spider web design and the woman who was weaving wore a dress also with a spider web design. Based on this story, Standing Rock became Spider Rock. Spider Woman and Spider Man lived on the two spires of Spider Rock. (OB, pers. comm., 2016) As I was walking with OB around the base of Spider Rock, listening to the stories he shared, I noticed a highly unusual potsherd on the ground. It

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was black on red with lines incised through the black creating a red pattern resembling a spider web. It does not compare with common Modified Basketmaker or Ancestral Pueblo ceramic styles and seems unique. This potsherd appeared to visualize in material form the spider web Navajo people continue to talk about.6 There is some ethnographic and linguistic evidence that Spider Woman has Hopi origins and was also shared with Zuni (Jett 2001:106–107). A consultant who wished to stay anonymous narrated in 2017 that a Hopi woman sat on top of the gigantic sandstone pillar and taught the Navajo people how to weave. Her woven designs resembled spider webs, which gave the stone pillar formation the name Spider Rock (anon., pers. comm., 2017). Further, Spider Rock is mentioned in Beautyway (Harris 1965:4, in Jett 2001:106) and Mountaintopway as well as in Nightway and related myths and the repertoire of Changing Woman. Jett (2001:71–71, 107) has diligently studied the primary sources and extracted episodes of stories that took place in locations of Canyon de Chelly. For example, in Mountaintopway/ Mountain Chant and Beautyway, the protagonists are Elder Sister and Younger Sister, who learn appropriate ceremonies in Canyon de Chelly. The girls face arranged marriage to two respected warriors: one groom is from “Wide Chokecherry Patch,” a location in Canyon de Chelly identified by Jett (2001:107; also in Wyman 1975 passim; Wyman 1957:62) and the other is from “Wide (Flat) Rock” (Wyman 1957:62, described later). The sisters do not wish to get married to the warriors; they flee and are pursued. In Mountaintopway, Elder Sister struggles with bears and illnesses related to bears because her prospective groom’s real identity is Bear Old Man. She finds herself separated from Younger Sister, and Big Fly in the guise of a strange man instructs her in the landscape: “Yonder canyon . . . is the canyon into which your younger sister went.” He names specific places in the canyon: Round Rock, Chinle, Wide Rock, “Blackrock . . . there your younger sister is now. . . . Songs will originate as she goes along and indications are that she will learn them, then return to you” (from Female Mountain-Top-Way by Yucca Patch Man, in Wyman 1975:199). Finally she has the ceremonial sung over her at Wide Chokecherry Patch (Wyman 1957:110) after an overnight stay at “Where-tobacco-stone-is-made” (corresponding to Pipe Caves in the canyon system). Both sisters travel throughout Navajo territories in their flight from the old grooms. At one point Younger Sister goes west to the Chuska Mountains; on the way she meets Braided Arrow Cactus People; past the Chuska Mountains she comes to Canyon de Chelly; the Arrowsnake People live at

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the top of the canyon; the Snake People tell her to go to White House in the canyon, where the ye’i live, and they tell her to go to the farm of Flat Rock, where some other Big Snake People live. After meeting with Older Sister on Mount Taylor, Younger Sister returns to Canyon de Chelly, passing White House and then entering the house at Flat Rock (Wyman 1957:139–140). Eventually Younger Sister receives her ceremonial Beautyway in the home of Big Snake, her prospective groom, at Wide Rock or Black Rock (narrative of Younger Sister at Black Rock in Wyman 1957:62–72). Specifics vary slightly in the accounts of different singers: Younger Sister learns Beautyway at the home of the Big Snakes at Wide (Flat) Rock. In Singer Man’s myth, Younger Sister enters the earth at the base of Black Rock, situated between Canyon de Chelly and Canyon del Muerto (Wyman 1957:37–39). Later Elder Sister visits Black Rock Trail Canyon. In Beautyway, cornmeal is ritually sprinkled at White House Ruins, considered a home of ye’is by most Navajo, and at Wide Chokecherry Patch. Finally Elder Sister settles at Wide Chokecherry Patch and Younger Sister at Wide Rock or Black Rock. The map of the journey of Younger Sister according to Wilito Wilson’s version and according to Singer Man visualizes that Canyon de Chelly was a center place in the culturally significant landscapes of Beautyway and Mountainway (Wyman 1957:36–37). Nightway, commonly called the Yeibichai, constitutes the curing ceremonial, which can be considered the summation of traditional Navajo belief and practice. Here I paraphrase an excerpt from one version of Nightway to highlight how many locations in the Canyon de Chelly system were visited and acted on by supernatural beings: the Visionary enters lower Canyon de Chelly via Cottonwood Trail, descends Cottonwood Canyon to Things Flow around the Stone (Figure 2.8) and to Conglomerate Wash to obtain fox skins from the Fox People there; then he goes up canyon past The Junction to White House, where he is cured by a ceremony performed by the cliff dwelling’s holy denizens. After his curing ceremony, he and the gods travel farther up canyon to Wide Rock for dances and then cross to Spider Rock, where The Visionary is taught to make string figures. Next they stop at Face Rock, where all the supernatural beings dance again. The Visionary leaves the canyon at its eastern end (Jett 2001:71). In this context the precise identity of all supernatural beings and the exact sequence of events and associated places do not matter. My ethnographic work shows that different consultants share differing versions of the core narratives; and details of these core narratives are rapidly being forgotten. One consultant who wishes to remain anonymous put it this

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way: “There are medicine men out there who know all these things [such as the heroes and the Holy People from the -way repertoires and their movements]. But we [the average Navajo] don’t have this education. You have to go way out there to find a medicine man” (anon., pers. comm., 2017). Nevertheless, most Navajo people acknowledge that Navajo land is alive and animated in a general sense. The Canyon de Chelly system clearly forms a culturally significant landscape in the sense that specific places, such as Spider Rock, Face Rock, Wide Rock, and White House Ruins, are linked in oral narratives and ceremonies (Kelley and Francis 1994:42–46). The notion that land is alive with spirits and Holy People comes up throughout my ethnographic work. On our drive to Navajo Mountain with Greg and Ella H. in 2017, Ella smiled and could not understand when I said I would feel lonely living in an isolated homestead in this very remote region of the reservation. For her, the land is full of life. Navajo Cultural Specialist Kelly Francis explained Navajo worldview to me like this: “Navajo is about spirit world; each spirit is a living body; everything has spiritual aspects and has eyes, a body, and legs” (pers. comm., 2016). Nobody can see Spider Woman; traditional Navajo just feel her. My anonymous consultant described a vivid example of what it means to feel the presence of gods: “One time, I was looking for a medicine man to help with a physical ailment. . . . I asked around and found a woman far out in a rural area. I went to her house, she was Cheyenne . . . but she knew all the chants and prayers. She was talking loudly and with force to gods I could not see but I could feel they were here in her house” (anon., pers. comm., 2017). Another prime supernatural personage is Changing Woman. She personifies fertility, the Earth, and its changing seasons, and she appears in the Emergence myth and in Blessingway (Jett 2001:127). When much of her work was done, she traveled from her home in Dinétah (northwestern New Mexico) to the Pacific Ocean, where she created the first Navajo clans. On this route she crossed Canyon de Chelly from east to west with stops at Wide Rock, where she left the Rock Girl Holy People; at Echo Rock, which is perhaps Rock People Turned Into; at Spider Rock; at Face Rock, where she left a Talking God and a Growling God; at White House, where she left a male and a female god; and at Things Flow around the Stone, on top of which she made footprints (discussed later). She left the canyon via Chinle (Jett 2001:106, 127; Klah 1942:110–111, 232). The narrative of Changing Woman thus establishes a culturally significant landscape that reaches from northwestern New Mexico in the east to the Pacific Ocean

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in the west via Canyon de Chelly (the entire journey is described by Klah 1942:108–122). White House Ruins are mentioned in many of the repertoires or -way myth ceremonials cited so far and are therefore an empowered place in the micro-cultural landscape of eastern Canyon de Chelly. White House is an Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwelling occupied between approximately A.D. 1060 and 1275. The lower section contained four kivas and about 60 rooms, some of them multi-storied, providing access to the 20-room complex in the cave above. The name White House refers to the conspicuous white gypsum-plastered room in the upper section (Linford 2000:47). The Diné name is Kinii Na’ igai (“There-Is-a-White-Strip-across-the-Middle-House,” Jett 2001:75). A bewildering number of Holy People are linked with White House Ruins in different ways: for example, “On her journey to the Pacific, Changing Woman went from Face Rock to here, leaving a Talking God, a male Growling God, and a Female God, then proceeded to Chinle.” White House is seen as the home of Holy People, including Talking Gods of Nightway, and is mentioned in the myth of Blessingway (Wyman 1970:427). In Singer Man’s account of Beautyway, “Talking God from the White House had been invited, and he arrived” and participated as one of the people “with their specialties” and a humanized performer (Wyman 1957:112–113). The site is the home of Puebloans in one version of Beadway (Levy 1998:99). In the Mothway myth, the Butterfly People, having come here from Chinle and on their way to Face Rock, encourage sibling incest near the ruin (Haile 1978:87)” (Jett 2001:75). Jett (2001:75–76) lists eight more supernatural figures and occurrences associated with White House Ruins. Unlike the natural formations of Spider Rock, Face Rock, and Wide Rock, White House is an Anasazi heritage site with which the Navajo engage by adding layers of their storyscapes. My ethnographic work shows that this engagement with Anasazi heritage is rather fluid and depends on social settings: there is the official position of the Navajo Nation and Navajo intellectuals that the Anasazi are direct ancestors; there is the social memory of avoiding Anasazi ruins because of the presence of spirits; the oral narratives of the Holy People seem to erase Anasazi memory by taking over their sites; and individual Navajo artisans painted images next to Anasazi rock art, at times on top (see Blue Bull Cave), as well as adding star panels overlooking Anasazi pictographs (see Spider Rock shelter). Another different individual view comes from an interview of Mrs. Mae Thompson,

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a resident of Canyon del Muerto, by Irene Silentman (2014). When Silentman asked whether she knew any stories of people who used to live in the canyons, Mrs. Thompson shared the following: Mae Thompson: Those homes in the canyon were not burned by the Dine. Those ruins are Anasazi homes. It is said that when the Anasazi lived there, a big tornado came and destroyed them. This tornado came into the canyon from Chinle. It was a big whirling wind with fire. It went up each canyon and burned all the people. One can see these burnt areas today. They are those black bands and streaks on the cliff walls. They became this way from the fire and smoke. Everything in the canyon was destroyed, even the animals and all the vegetation. . . . Irene Silentman: Why were the people destroyed? Mae Thompson: They began to do and learn things beyond the knowledge that was set for them. It’s like what is happening today. People began doing many abstract things, drawing and painting. Things became so abstract and intangible. This is why they were destroyed. Some of their paintings and drawings are still on the cliff walls. They made drawings of the wind, air, and all kinds of animals like cows, deer, buffalo, elk and birds. They obtained knowledge beyond what was set for them. (Silentman 2014:82–83, italics mine) Such diverging positions of official social memories, individual activities, and counter-memories enter the concept of Earth Politics at Canyon de Chelly. There is no essentialized Navajo policy with regard to history and origin, archaeology, land rights, or indigeneity of the kind we, as Western scholars, are trained to find. Instead, we find many viewpoints. It is the power of a de-colonized approach to let them speak. All positions are contextualized in the discussion in Chapter 3. Two more waystations warrant brief presentation as places that Holy People frequently used when they traveled Canyon de Chelly eastward toward Spider Rock. Things Flow around the Stone This physically inconspicuous place lies at the canyon entrance just upstream of the Del Muerto Road bridge. One Navajo name is Tse’Bina’az’eli (“Rock around Which Floating Took Place”) (Jett 2001:46–48) or Tsehbenazelleh (Klah 1942:111). It is an outcropping of de Chelly Sandstone that forms a small island now covered by cottonwood and Russian olive trees,

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Figure 2.8. Canyon de Chelly, Things Flow around the Stone. Google Earth image.

and it divides the flow of Chinle Wash (Figure 2.8). It lacks archaeological remains or rock art and seems unimportant when seen through a Western material-based lens; but in Navajo intangible heritage, it constitutes a highly significant site. In the Excessway myth, this island is called Water Washes around the Rock and the protagonist hides two captive Hopi maidens there. Then he continues his route to Petroglyph Rock, farther up in Canyon de Chelly. Places with very similar names, Tse’binaaselyi and Tse Bina’az’eli, are mentioned in Nightway and Upward Reachingway, respectively (Jett 2001:47). On her journey to the west, Changing Woman came here from White House and left footprints on the rock (Klah 1942:110–111). Coyoteway begins with Changing Woman (the earth goddess ‘Asdzaa Nadleehe) has arrived at her consort, the Sun Bearers home in the Pacific. From here she creates White Corn People and Yellow Corn People, whom she instructs to travel back to Dinétah. The leader is transformed into a white coyote. The White Corn People and Yellow Corn People separate in the Chinle Valley. With their white coyote leader, the Yellow Corn People go to Things Flow around the Stone. The leader camps at a distance from the rest and in the morning he resembles a ye’i. He walks atop Things Flow around the Stone, leaves his footprints, and tells his followers: “In times to come our people will pray there and make offerings when they are in distress or need. Help will be given them and will never fail” (Jett 2001:63). Jett (2001:47) could not detect any footprint-like markings on the rock. The

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consensus from various sources seems to be that Things Flow around the Stone once was a very sacred place where people left offerings and made prayers. Zig Zag Cave The Coyoteway narrative continues that the Yellow Corn People leave their camping area at Things Flow around the Stone, travel eastward into Canyon de Chelly, and spend the following night at Zig Zag Cave (Figure 2.9). In the morning, the white coyote leader makes a zigzag mark on the cave wall with an object called an Arrow Snake given to him by Changing Woman. While making the zigzag, he sings a Yeibichei (Nightway) song. He addresses the Yellow Corn People: “My children, the place is holy and I left my marks on it, and I left all that Changing Woman gave to me. In time to come, people are in trouble and need rain they should make offerings at this place and they will get what they need” (Jett 2001:63). Finally, the leader says farewell to his people and leaves them. He walks to and enters Wide Rock—the home of the Holy People (as earlier described)—to ensure that his followers will be given Coyoteway, and is seen no more (Jett 2001:64). The Coyoteway narrative strongly appropriates Zig Zag Cave, a rock shelter with Ancestral Pueblo rock art, as Navajo. Its Navajo name is Tsenii Nooltl’iizhi (“The Zigzag Rock Niche,” Jett 2001:64). The most conspicuous feature is a carefully executed white zigzag that thickens in the center and slims and fades at both ends. It was drawn over a variety of crude and faded figures. The zigzag thus matches the drawing said to be made by the white coyote leader with his Arrow Snake in Coyoteway. Other consultants have interpreted the zigzag as lightning or a flash flood; one has to keep in mind that in the Navajo worldview, there is a conceptual equivalence between lightning, water flow, arrows, and snakes, and a zigzag design may evoke any of these elements (Jett 2001:64; Brandon T., pers. comm., 2013; Darlene S., pers. comm., 2017). To the right and above the zigzag hovers a row of white, frontal humans with hanging arms. Farther to the right white birds in single file appear to be taking off in flight toward the zigzag. Grant (1978:244) assigns the rock art to Pueblo phases. An intriguing aspect of the Excessway is that—though now extinct—it was a curing ceremonial for ‘ajilee, meaning lust, madness, magic, or frenzy witchcraft (Jett 2001:46). It was also called Prostitutionway or Lustway. One version of the ‘ajilee myth includes travel down Canyon de Chelly. The protagonists are Beautiful Flower or the impoverished Scrap-Picker Boy and

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Figure 2.9. Canyon de Chelly, Zig Zag Cave. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

his grandmother, who is Vegetation Woman and mother of all plants. Both come to the First Mesa Hopi Village of Walpi, where Scrap-Picker Boy seduces and kidnaps two Hopi virgin sisters (“non-sunlight-struck girls”). He and his grandmother flee First Mesa and decide to live in Canyon de Chelly. Hopi men come looking for the girls and the fugitives hide them at Things Flow around the Stone. The four (Scrap-Picker Boy, his grandmother, and the two Hopi sisters) continue walking eastward up Canyon de Chelly: across from Black God’s home at White House a ceremonial is going on where Scrap-Picker Boy has sex with the women present; at Talking God’s home at Wide Rock, within which a gathering is taking place, Scrap-Picker Boy again has sex with the women present. Related to Excessway is the also now extinct Mothway. The Butterfly People encouraged sibling incest to avoid marriage with foreigners, after which their children would depart. Some of the episodes of this ceremonial again took place in Canyon de Chelly: people would travel from Black Mesa via Chinle to White House, where they mated with siblings. Then they went up the canyon to below Face Rock and exited at Black Rock Trail. Their

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offspring were marked by a certain “craziness” and required the Mothway cure (Jett 2001:46). It seems fruitful to mine the differences between ceremonials that primarily attest to the presence of certain Holy People at canyon sites and those that report abnormal and disapproved social behavior; I infer negative reception of the latter because Excessway and Mothway were curing ceremonials. These questions can be productively approached using Keith Basso’s (1996) perspective of sensing places observed among a group of Western Apache in east-central Arizona. Basso (1996:54–58) explores the dynamic relational networks between people and places. On the one hand, people create multiple lived relationships with places through which space acquires meaning. Places are animated by the thoughts and feelings of persons who attend to them, and they express only what their animators endow them to say. Such relationships are initiated whenever a place becomes the object of awareness; many are brief and transitory. But when awareness is seized and a place becomes an object of spontaneous reflection and resonating sentiment, the process of sensing places sets in. On the other hand, the places people sense and conceptually create are always reflections of the self and of evolving social and individual identities. Thus the mental state of sensing places is two-directional, reciprocal, and always dynamic. In Basso’s words, “When places are actively sensed, the physical landscape becomes wedded to the landscape of the mind, to the roving imagination, and where the mind may lead is anybody’s guess” (Basso 1996:55). Basso’s insights provide context for the bewildering and sometimes conflicting oral narratives and ceremonials linked to places in Canyon de Chelly. The temporal aspect of sensing places is crucial here: place-based thoughts do not stay the same; some are forgotten, and others are newly invented. Basso’s first example (1996:58–66) could have specific relevance to my case study at hand. The senior horsemen with whom Basso works accept back into their group a younger man who had spent the past weeks drowning in alcohol his grief over a woman who had broken his heart. The senior horsemen greet him “on his return from Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills.” This name describes an actual place outside their small town linked to tales of Old Man Owl. Old Man Owl was always lustful and so two sisters decided to trick him. They sat on two opposite hills and when Old Man Owl walked down the trail, one sister called him and offered her body. He started running up to her, but when he was halfway up this hill, the other

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sister called him, offering her body on the other hill. This went back and forth. Old Man Owl got ever more excited but only kept running up and down and never had sex. The beautiful girls just laughed at him. Basso learned that the principal reason why the senior horsemen welcomed the failed lover in metaphorical terms was that he would remember his social and moral lesson by attaching it to something concrete, fixed, and permanent: a place upon the land (Basso 1996:64). Although Excessway and Mothway reference immoral behavior, there are important variables compared to the Apache setting. First, the actors in the Navajo ceremonials appear to be more supernatural than the more humanized Apache protagonists. Second, I have found no indication that the Navajo narratives are used as social moral lessons among contemporary consultants—indeed Excessway and Mothway have gone extinct. This reinforces the vital factor of temporality. I can vividly imagine how elders, perhaps just one generation past, would tell younger family members in long winter nights or when they passed White House ruins and Wide Rock down in the canyon: you don’t want to become Scrap-Picker Boy, whose name used to be Beautiful Flower. His mind was guided by lust. Here, at White House and Wide Rock, he disrupted ceremonials to satisfy his sexual hunger. And the Butterfly People mated with their siblings! You don’t want to do this because if you do, you become sick and crazy! Let us review two more places with similar but more recent moral connotations. Flute Player Cave, Kokopelli Rock, and two Kokopelli Trails are conceptually related to Kokopelli, the Hunchback God playing a flute, known from Puebloan and especially Hopi oral traditions. From him, the Navajo have created their own Holy Person, Ghaa’ask’idii (“The One Humped on Top”) who may appear in the Nightway and Beadway (Jett 2001:50–51). In Navajo tradition, flutes were made of sunflower stalks and used as an instrument of courtship, played to seduce women. Some theories suggest that the hump is not a physical deformation but a black bag filled with the seeds of all vegetation, carried on his back. The Navajo gave him the nickname Chooyini, meaning “Hunchback or Humpback” but also “Menstrual-Blood-One,” based on their belief that contact with menstrual blood leads to physical deformation, especially of the back. Thus the Navajo version of Kokopelli, Ghaa’ask’idii Chooyini, has embedded warnings and moral lessons. Kokopelli or Ghaa’ask’idii is depicted in a white Pueblo III pictograph (Figure 2.10) next to the opening of Flute Player Cave, known in Navajo as Chooyini Sitani (which means “Hunchback [literally, slender,

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Figure 2.10. Canyon de Chelly, Flute Player Cave with Kokopelli pictograph. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

rigid Menstrual-Blood One] Is Lying Down,” (Jett 2001:51). This site is situated on the right bank below Cottonwood Canyon as one walks downstream in Canyon de Chelly. Kokopelli Rock, Chooyini Dah Sidahi (“Hunchback [literally, MenstrualBlood-One] Sitting at an Elevation,” (Jett 2001:52) is situated on the right side of Chinle Wash (going downstream), where the stream comes very close to the canyon wall. It is an irregular shaped rock with a knob-like top that could resemble a hunchback (Figure 2.11). It is disconnected from the

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Figure 2.11. Canyon de Chelly, Kokopelli Rock. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

canyon wall so that water can pass around it, depending on flow conditions of Chinle Wash. Ghaa’ask’idii is further evoked in the two sections of the cross-canyon Kokopelli (Hunchback Man’s) Trail, called in Navajo Chooyini Habitiin (“Hunchback’s [literally, Menstrual-Blood One’s] Trail up out, Jett 2001:51, 60–61). In the north it leads to Kokopelli Hill (Tsebaah Silahi, “They Lie on

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the Rock Face”–“Lay Down and Rest,” probably a reference to intercourse), identified as a ridge on the plateau north of the trail. North of the road to Antelope House lookout lies a conceptually associated mesa (Yoo Nii a, “It Extends Horizontally into Infinity”), interpreted by Jett’s consultants as a lookout against enemies. It was also said that in the old days, fires would be seen there in connection with the Excessway ceremonial curing ajilee (lust, magic). In the south, Hunchback Man’s Trail leads to a third hill south of the canyon, which is known as Jilghaa Deeshnini. Ghaa means “summit,” (perhaps hump), and is part of Kokopelli’s Navajo name Ghaa ask idii (“The One Humped on Top”). It is said that he is playing his flute on this hill and that all the women came to him in Anasazi times. It is significant that the Hunchback Man’s Trails extend the cultural landscape of Canyon de Chelly beyond the canyon system and validate that we cannot confine Navajo world- and landviews within the National Monument boundaries. One additional location must be added to this discussion of landscape places with moral lessons. It is Adultery Dune, Sei Adilehe (“The Adultery Sand,” Jett 2001:51–52), a long sand dune covered with cottonwood trees, which lies parallel to and near the left-hand wall of Canyon de Chelly just opposite Flute Player Cave. Jett’s consultants remembered that back in the days when people rode on horseback to Chinle, this dune was the first place that offered privacy on their return, and some men and women committed adultery behind this sand ridge. It is meaningful that Adultery Dune faces Flute Player Cave across the canyon and is in proximity to Kokopelli Rock and the Kokopelli Trails. Thus at some point in the past, the lower end of Canyon de Chelly was choreographed as a stage set with multiple episodes of moral lessons that people sensed and took in as they traveled back and forth between their homesteads and Chinle. This lesson was strengthened because it was cast into permanent landscape features as well as by the fact that this section of Canyon de Chelly lies downstream from the junction of the two main canyons, Chelly and Muerto, so that all canyon residents had to pass it on their way to Chinle. At the same time, my consultants are not aware of these stories; for example, potter Darlene S. draws Kokopelli as a simple frontal stick figure without hump or flute. They continue to sense “the canyon as a living being” (like my 2017 landowner consultant cited earlier) but in relational networks relevant to their lives in the twenty-first century.

3 Discussion

Finding 1—Local/Closed Versus Open/Regional/National/Global Cultural Landscapes

The data I have assembled cast a scenario of the cultural landscape of Canyon de Chelly, seen through the lens of longue durée, that began as a localized, by and large self-sufficient center during Basketmaker times (c. 0–750 A.D.). Basketmakers lived from locally available resources, under some form of leadership, and interacted with higher powers personified in paintings on the rock shelter walls of their living areas in rituals. Cultural materials, and in particular rock art, of the Ancestral Pueblo people (c. 750–1300 A.D.) reflect an intensifying interest in the natural world of the canyon and beyond, fueling trade and exchange. Social organization was quite possibly less hierarchical than before and largely based upon moieties (see Antelope House detail, Chapter 1). Canyon de Chelly became one station in a growing regional network, and when Ancestral Pueblo culture declined, the canyon system was occupied only sporadically by migrating groups. In the eighteenth century Diné or Navajo were one of these groups, on the move from the Dinétah in northwestern New Mexico. They settled in the canyon to stay, using the bottomlands for agriculture and the Anasazi rock shelters for protection against marauding bands and the Spanish and later U.S. armies, who searched the canyon to eradicate them. In the framework of current research on migration models conducted in partnership by white and native archaeologists, the methodologies of archaeology and ethnography are paired and have rediscovered the Southwest as a landscape in motion with continuous migrations, possibly going back to Basketmaker times (Duwe and Preucel 2019). Such movements were multi-directional and include the vertical movement through the

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prior worlds into the fifth world of today. Most likely any localized sense of place in the canyon was brief. These geopolitical networks define Earth Politics in Canyon de Chelly. Here I summarize my results of today’s cultural landscape of Canyon de Chelly, especially in terms of connections with and disconnections from the other two case studies in this book. While the discourses are complex, my academic contribution can lay them open as a first step toward untangling the many problems and thus begin to empower local people to seek pathways out of poverty and sustain their value systems. This discussion is best framed by the poles of the local and more closed versus global and more open, while much of the daily reality is lived in the gray area in between. The consensus I have heard from my consultants in Chinle is that the canyon is vitally important as “a living being.” People are attached to their properties on the canyon bottom or along the rims: many live in Chinle but have second houses on the bottom or the rim and go back and forth frequently; one family decided to leave Chinle and build a home on their property on the north rim. Such choices involve personal sacrifices in amenities: many residents do not have running water or electricity in their houses. In June 2017 I met a family on White Sand Trail who were descending into the canyon to plant corn with their hands on their property. Most of the potters who sell at White House Ruins have their pottery workshops at their houses on the rim. I have given rides to young men, or talked to them at the Basha store, men who take temporary construction jobs in any part of the United States but always return home to their families and their land. Of course, some of these decisions are not solely based upon values for family ties and the canyon but are simply driven by poverty. Poverty is heart-shaking in some of the rim houses. At the same time my ethnographic work demonstrates that residents of the canyon and Chinle do not form a united homogenous group. Bloodrelated family ties continue to be strong and paramount. But families argue against each other and contest boundaries and even titles of their canyon properties. Many are reluctant to participate in chapter activities or associations, and it takes the hard work of a few committed individuals to get them organized. Why is this so? My consultants explained to me that they feel alienated from the tribal government in Window Rock. Navajo politicians as well as the National Park Service pass too many regulations that only impede local businesses (see Simonelli and McClanahan 2015). It is essential to realize that existing Navajo government structures from the chapter system to the Tribal Council have been imposed in various ways by federal pressure and oversight, beginning in the 1930s, and that the

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Navajo or Diné people did not design their current government (see Lee 2017:3–5). This explains much of the alienation felt by canyon residents. Whereas prior to colonization, Navajo authority and autonomy were located in extended family networks and clans without one central leader controlling all Navajo families, canyon residents now have to abide by rules and laws passed and enforced by more or less abstract government structures that were never part of Navajo tradition. I think herein lies the core of the challenges and spatial dimensions Navajo people are confronted with today: by tradition, their flesh is part of the land grown from the products they plant and raise; but this land has been increasingly regulated and infringed upon physically and legally by legislation made by U.S.-structured government bodies; families can no longer simply return to their lands because these are netted into a global market economy driven by a capitalist system, in which they have to participate in some form to survive economically. Colleen Gorman has phrased this dilemma in the elegant words: “Diné must consider global issues as individual, sovereign, independent Diné and as a collective, sovereign, dependent Nation” (2017:142). At Canyon de Chelly poverty is still a cruel reality; many families participate in tourism and produce arts and crafts for sale to gain additional income. Young people obtain their guide’s license and families organize to form tour operator businesses. Others set up their arts and crafts stands at the tourist overlooks and at White House Ruins inside the canyon. Social contacts with national and international tourists are formed, and global networks are being created via digital media. These can be framed as the most significant steps to move from the local and more closed pole to the global and more open end of the spectrum. On the other hand, tourism and arts and crafts sales are again regulated by the National Park Service and the Navajo Nation; for example, guides have to pay fees to obtain their license, and tourists have to pay fees for a Canyon de Chelly entry permit, but local people working in tourism are not aware of receiving any benefits from the fees and do not know how the tribal government invests these funds (Simonelli and McClanahan 2015). Many family tour operators and artists do not maintain professional websites; tours and guiding as well as art and craft production are not their fulltime occupations, and some fail. One example I followed closely is that of Changing Woman coffee shop, which was part of a family horse tour company located at the canyon entrance across from the turn to Thunderbird Lodge. When I started coming

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back to Canyon de Chelly in 2012 and 2013, Changing Woman coffee shop in its small, pink hogan-like structure and advertised by the painted sign of Changing Woman, stood out as a unique business venture by a female in the Western capitalist sense of profit-making: there are no espresso drinks on the reservation, and tourists certainly miss gourmet coffees, teas, and healthy snacks. Inside the owner offered tee-shirts and coffee mugs with her logo, and she was open most of the time during the hours advertised. There were usually tourists inside when I came to get my coffee. In 2017 her painted sign was gone, and the business was discontinued with the exception that espresso was still included on the written sign for horse tours. These examples illustrate that Western capitalist business practices are not part of the local Navajo tradition nor of their twenty-first-century identity. Another significant factor that pulls Navajo people forcefully from the traditional local to the open global pole of the spectrum is Christianity. Numerous small church buildings have sprung up in Chinle; most notably, the Catholic Church Our Lady of Fatima takes on the form of a large hogan constructed of wooden logs with a modern roof. Most, if not all of my consultants are Christian but remain anchored in Navajo tradition to varying degrees. One woman told me that her church held an Easter morning sunrise service in Canyon de Chelly, signaling that churches are beginning to infiltrate the traditional Navajo cultural landscape of the canyons. I discuss under Finding 3 how the Christian religion constitutes the most powerful outside influence to make Navajo forget their traditional worldview. Finding 2—Cultural Landscapes and Outside Economic Interactions

To put the cultural landscape of Canyon de Chelly into perspective, following are two brief comparisons with the cultural landscapes of Monument Valley, a tribal park straddling the Arizona-Utah state line about 25 miles north of Kayenta, and Navajo Mountain, farther west on the Arizona-Utah state line. Monument Valley (Tse Bii Ndzisgaii “Stretches of Treeless Areas” or “Clearings Among the Rocks,” Linford 2000:295) is best known to the world as the stunning scenic backdrop of seven western movies directed by John Ford, who established a base camp for his crew at the Goulding’s Trading Post. Among these films were Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956), which made John Wayne a star and made the landscape of Monument Valley known to the world. This landscape features isolated mesas and sandstone pillars of various sizes and shapes (Figure 3.1). These fantastic

Discussion · 69

geologic formations were sculpted by wind erosion in beds of compacted sandstone left by a vast inland sea that had covered the entire region. Navajo have been living in the general area since perhaps the 1500s. After Navajo people returned home in 1868 from their forced relocation to Bosque Redondo, permanent settlement is documented in the valley. However, Monument Valley was not included in the reservation boundary drawn by the treaty of 1868. It lay on the reservation’s northwestern fringe, in an area used by the Navajo, Utes, and Paiutes, who fought each other. At that time it was left as public land. In 1931 Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly were under consideration for federal protection by the National Park Service; but Monument Valley was excluded, and Canyon de Chelly became a National Monument. Eventually the area became the property of the Navajo by Act of Congress in 1934 (Linford 2000:296). As the western movies became widely popular, tourism dramatically increased. Conservation groups revived the proposal to turn the valley into a national park, but the Navajo Tribal Council objected. Their primary interests were to protect the valley’s Navajo residents and preserve scarce grazing land. In July 1958 the Tribal Council voted to set aside 29,817 acres of Monument Valley as the first-ever realization of a Tribal Park, to be administered by the Navajo following the national park model, and they allocated $275,000 to upgrade roads and build a visitor center. In December 2008 the park’s first hotel, The View, opened, designed to harmonize with the valley landscape and to reduce its environmental impact, offering 96 rooms to visitors from all over the world. What is important here is to emphasize that it is being leased by a Navajo-owned company from the Navajo Nation and that it was built and is now staffed mostly by Navajo (http://monumentvalleyview.com/the-view-hotel/). However, some residents in the Tribal Park share a critical view: they say the family of Armanda Ortega, president of ARTSCO, Inc. and introduced on The View website, invested a lot of money in the hotel but then went bankrupt. Promises to prioritize Tribal Park residents for jobs were broken so that most of the Navajo employees come from other parts of the reservation (Gwen, pers. comm., 2017). In 2009 a renovated Visitor Center opened, featuring exhibits on local geology, movie history, and Navajo culture as well as numerous stalls for Navajo handicraft vendors and tour operators. On the Utah side of Highway 163 is Harry and Mike Goulding’s property, which they acquired in the 1920s and turned into a small trading post. The Goulding’s Trading Post has consistently expanded into the base camp of John Ford’s film crews and is

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Figure 3.1. Monument Valley, landscape. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

now a sprawling complex with 73 motel rooms. It is non-Navajo owned but offers employment for Navajo people. Monument Valley lacks the occupational stratigraphy of Canyon de Chelly due to the absence of water. The majority of Ancestral Pueblo ruins found throughout the area are small; many served as storage sites. Mystery Valley features the most significant ones as well as two petroglyph sites. Monument Valley is its own Diné storyscape kept strictly separate from outside economic transactions. Tourists know the English names of the buttes and mesas assigned by Harry Goulding. They also carry Navajo names, which valley residents do not share with outsiders because they are sacred. The most widely known landscape reference is that the region is a giant hogan, with Gouldings as its center and fireplace and Sentinel and Gray Whiskers mesas being doorposts (Linford 2000:291,296). In 2018 I consulted with Mary, a middle-aged woman, at the first vendor pullout. When I asked whether Holy People live in the valley, she shared: “Some people say this land is very sacred, you can feel spiritual higher powers, . . . some people see images and figures in the buttes and rocks” (Mary, pers. comm., 2018). She then described in detail how one can recognize a man sitting and a woman holding an infant as well as two cows and a horse in the surface texture and black streaks along the side elevation of a mesa extending horizontally in the distance.1 It is clear from my ethnographic work beginning in 2016 that valley residents deeply value their land. Mary explained that “the east is bad and scary [possibly due to crime], the west has earthquakes; both east and west are

Discussion · 71

too scary for me, to stay here is best for me” (pers. comm., 2018). Notwithstanding the investments by the Navajo government, living conditions have not improved for all; for example, valley residents have no running water or electricity service. So Navajo living inside the Tribal Park have formed their own group: they set up tables at the loop drive pullouts to sell arts and crafts, most commonly jewelry, to tourists. At John Ford’s Point, they have begun to offer traditional foods. They try to control traffic and the flow of people. Some of the concerns are that the loop road and car traffic accelerate erosion; that climate change is leading to noticeably drier conditions; who is allowed to give tours in the valley; and that Navajo living outside are not permitted to sell within the Tribal Park. Grandma and mother Gwen with daughter Raquel and her boyfriend Ian are residents and vendors in Monument Valley Tribal Park. The women are self-taught jewelry artists. Gwen told me: “We are different from the people who live outside the park and have running water and electricity. I get up at sunrise every day and drive my children to school [outside the park, near Highway 163] in our 4×4 pickup. I attend to any errands and return to the park to sit at my vendor table.” While waiting for customers, she creates more jewelry, tries to connect with tourists, and hopes to sell something. When school is out, she and Grandma pick up the children, and “by 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. we pack up the vendor table together and return to our house for supper and sleep when it is dark.” Eighteen-year-old Raquel said she wants to study to become a nurse and then return to the valley and help her people. Another young woman who works at The View told me that she always returns to her family in the valley. These observations reinforce that traditional cultural landscapes can be regenerative if value-based even when interactions with the outside world are available and practiced. In Monument Valley the contrast between the luxury of The View hotel and the simplicity of life in the valley is so stark that I am inclined to think outside tourism somehow invigorates and drives traditional life. Of course most Navajo would want contemporary amenities, and poverty subjects them to severe limits. On the other hand, though, many have options to relocate to family members outside, to a better serviced part of the reservation or to the nearest cities. Still, based on social value the park residents make the decision to stay on their land and in their homes in the valley, where they give and receive family support. The second cross comparison is Navajo Mountain, its Navajo name Naatsis aan (Linford 2000:299), a high, rounded elevation situated south of Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah state line. It forms the predominating

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landmark in the northwestern part of the reservation and a chapter community named Navajo Mountain has been established on its eastern slopes. In contrast to Canyon de Chelly or Monument Valley, Navajo Mountain has not had much outside contact. Ancestral Pueblo people used to live throughout northern Arizona and southern Utah, and three of their large dwelling units have been restored and protected in Navajo National Monument. Known as Betatakin and Keet Steel situated in Tsegi Canyon and Inscription House in Nitsin Canyon, they were occupied at least from 1250 to 1300 A.D.; Keet Steel provided dates as early as 950 A.D. Driving from Navajo National Monument farther toward Navajo Mountain, many small Ancestral Pueblo ruins can be found as well as rock art panels. Hopi and Zuni oral traditions express strong ties with the ancient sites of the Tsegi Canyon system now included in Navajo National Monument. Hopi traditionalists claim that their ancestors built these cliff dwellings and they have identified pictographs on canyon walls as Hopi clan symbols. Some specify that Fire, Flute, and Bighorn Sheep clans lived at Keet Steel and Deer, Fire, Flute, and Water clans at Betatakin. Inscription House is claimed as a Rattlesnake, Sand, and Lizard clan village. Zuni traditionalists remember that Tsegi Canyon was one of the stops the Zuni people made as they traveled through the Southwest in search of their “Middle Place.” They also claim that several of their clans originated here, and Betatakin and Inscription House are celebrated in Zuni culture (Navajo National Monument brochure, National Park Service). Here again the notion of origins and migrations reminds us that their ideology lies at the core of Earth Politics in the Southwest, past as well as present. Today Navajo families live in homesteads spread throughout the wider Navajo Mountain landscape. Several Navajo oral narratives and ceremonials activate and personify this vast open land: Blessing Side stories say that Navajo Mountain represents the head of the female and pollen figure of Navajo land, named Tadidiin Dzil (“Pollen Mountain”) or Ni’go Asdzaan (“Earth Woman”). Black Mesa would be her body and Balakai Mesa her feet. Comb Ridge forms one arm and a monocline near Marsh Pass the other. Tuba Butte and Agathla Peak would be her breasts. Further, Navajo Mountain is a home of the Bear People in the Rounded Man Antway Myth and occurs as a setting in Coyoteway. Two Navajo sacred places are said to sit atop the mountain: Taa’neiya (“Place of Raising”) and Beesh Bee Hooghani (“Flint Hogan,” Linford 2000:300). Traditional Navajo are reluctant to climb above the lower elevations and respect the mountain as a spiritual empowered place.

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Figure 3.2. Navajo Mountain, abandoned boarding school with Greg H., who was forced to attend it. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

In June 2017 I had the pleasure of a day tour of the Navajo Mountain area with Greg H., born here in 1946, and his wife Ella, born here in 1951. They shared that their mothers gave birth in their rural homesteads in the traditional way, by which they had to squat and hold on to a rope tied to a tree. Greg was taken from his grandparents’ house by government agents and forced to attend boarding school in the community of Navajo Mountain, where the chapter offices are established today. The boarding school still stands as a ruin (Figure 3.2). We drove from Kayenta on Highway 160 towards Tuba City, turned into Navajo Mountain National Monument, and continued on a dirt road. We conducted interviews in three traditional homesteads: Ella’s mother lives by herself in her house situated close to Highway 98. One daughter looks after her daily. Most houses in the Navajo Mountain region have electricity, some from their own solar panels, but water must be hauled in. Much farther out, an elderly couple lives in their isolated hogan attending their animals and land. Periodic shopping trips to Kayenta or Tuba City fulfill their needs. Their children have moved away to the cities and are present only through photographs attached to the hogan walls and through memories. A daughter has graduated from college and now has her own children. They rarely visit, and when the parents and the rest of the older generation die, many children do not use their homesteads, and so the houses decay and the rural areas of Navajo Mountain become depopulated. Today the southern and eastern foothills of Navajo Mountain

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Figure 3.3. Navajo Mountain, southern and eastern foothills. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

are vast, awe-inspiring expanses of semi-desert land visibly untouched by Western civilization (Figure 3.3). Should we perceive this landscape with environmentalist groups as one realization of the utopian ideal of pristine and pure land or as an untouched commodity that so far has escaped the capitalist exchange market in the booming West? Finding 2 has demonstrated how cultural landscapes are created, managed, sustained, interpreted, and destroyed by people. Navajo families feel for their land not as a market value commodity but as a vital part of their subsistence, their ancestors and family histories, and of themselves. I refer to this perspective as traditional cultural landscape. Canyon de Chelly and Monument Valley also illustrate that in the twenty-first-century traditional cultural landscapes cannot live and survive without outside contacts and economic exchange, generally in the form of tourism and arts and craft sales. Without such ongoing, dynamic, and reciprocal interactions, people leave, and the land returns to a semi-pristine state. Earth Politics uncover the mechanisms that make this happen. Although this latter process might be an essentialized goal of environmentalists, it disregards the social and economic struggles of the Navajo people.

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Finding 3—Christianity Redefines Cultural Landscape

In the preceding presentation of data I have made several references to multinatural perspectivism. In a concise summary, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s model (1998) introduces Amerindian perspectivism as an ontology different from that taken for granted in Western civilization. In Western societies we perceive a unity of nature and a plurality of cultures; this means we recognize an objective universality of body forms based upon species and a subjective particularity of spirit and meaning grounded in culture. Amerindian perspectivism reverses the nature-culture binary and sees a spiritual unity implying that culture or the subject would be the form of the universal and a corporeal diversity in which nature or the object would be the form of the particular. Some of the implications of this ontology are that spirits, humans, and animals share the same spiritual realm structured by culture-based needs and conditions, in which they participate as subjects and agents; what distinguishes them are the forms of their bodies, compared to “clothing,” which can be taken off and changed (Viveiros de Castro 1998:471). Animals are people, not intended in the sense of the human species but in the sense of sharing the human condition. This implies they act as subjects and agents, and they impose the same categories and values on reality as humans do: they live in houses and villages, they have cultural food preferences based upon their bodily condition of prey or predator, they treat their bodily attributes (fur, feathers, claws, etc.) as decorations, and they interact in organized and often hierarchical social relations. Thus animals see in the same way as we do, and they do different things because their bodies are different from ours. We could summarize: Between the formal subjectivity of souls and the substantial materiality of organisms there is an intermediate plane which is occupied by the body as a bundle of affects and capacities and which is the origin of perspectives. (Viveiros de Castro 1998:478) It seems reasonable to argue that aspects of multinatural perspectivism are solidly represented in Navajo oral narratives, in particular the ceremonials referenced: they speak of numerous “other people” (Bear People, Ant People, Butterfly People), in contexts quite similar to those documented by Viveiros de Castro among Amazonian societies; the stories of Skinwalkers shared by my young guides; and the presence of talking gods strongly felt by my 2017 consultant during a curing ceremony.

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I think the principal reason why most Navajo with whom I have consulted do not view the world in these terms any longer is the spreading influence of the Christian religion. Christian teachings that people were created in the image of God and were therefore set hierarchically higher than all other living beings are simply irreconcilable with the worldview of multinatural perspectivism. It is in these deeply anchored aspects that Christianity fundamentally changes Indigenous cultures. The other two case studies document different changes brought on by Christianity and the Catholic Church. As noted, Christianity is further linked with colonial government structures, centralized administration, laws, and humanitarian standards now implemented by the Navajo Tribal Council in Window Rock. Greg H. observed succinctly: “There is a deep clash between the Navajo Nation, i.e., government in Window Rock, and the Navajo people. The government offers cheap, standard subdivision housing (for example, the apartment blocks in Chinle) with a lot of rules attached: you cannot bring pets or animals but you have easier access and use of digital technology. This lures people away from our traditional lifestyle. This clash is worse than the earlier fight between the Navajo and the U.S. Government” (Greg H., pers. comm., 2017; italics mine). What Greg means is that the military invasion killed the bodies of Navajo people, and the ongoing cultural colonization perpetuated by their very own Navajo government institutions and by Christian churches is taking their hearts and souls. Such sentiments also link with Mae Thompson’s narrative that the Anasazi were destroyed by a natural cataclysm because, as she put it, “they learn things beyond the knowledge that was set for them.” The vital question then emerges of how Navajo cultural heritage can help prevent such a cataclysm and contribute to a regenerative future. Navajo cultural leaders and scholars share new visions of being Diné in the twenty-first century, and Canyon de Chelly is included as a living Navajo cultural landscape (Lee 2017). For instance, Colleen Gorman, an artist and teacher from the Chinle area and now living in Albuquerque, created a new prayer song when she was starting her school for media arts: Mother Earth, Father Sky, Grandpa Dawn, Grandmother Darkness, Mountain Woman, Water Woman, White Shell Woman, Changing Woman, Male Talking God, Female Talking God, Sun, The Evening Yellow Light on Top of the Earth, White Corn, Yellow Corn, Corn

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Pollen Boy, Corn Beetle Girl, Corn Pollen Path. Walk with us and help us. Take care of our children. I sing to you a prayer for the children to learn a circular understanding of the universe. You see in dreams, releasing gravity allows one to become a multidimensional being. Using symmetry, from Chaos comes balance and life, and a visual language of Sacred Geometry. I sing to you a prayer for the children to learn a circular understanding of the universe in motion. I sing to you a prayer for the children to learn a circular understanding of the universe and all creation. Our children will grow up on this earth in a good way. With beauty before us, behind us, above us, below us, from our mouth/words and all around, it will be beautiful. (Gorman 2017:150) She feels and we read that the Holy People continue to be present in this prayer song and give her strength. In her art, Gorman links sacred Navajo geometry with the 260- and 365- day calendars of Mesoamerica. Her view of the present and future is: Our role as Diné, as Indigenous people, is to help bring everyone into the next world. We have to teach our children to save seeds, to plant, to harvest, to store water, and seek balance. Like the Diné Twins, Spiderwoman, and Holy People, we will fight the new monsters that have been created. . . . If our children are challenging to raise, that is a good thing. They will need to be strong to fight and challenge a system and paradigm that destroys, rather than creates and exists in balance. (Gorman 2017:157) I see this as a strong statement that the role of Diné and Indigenous peoples is to prevent exactly the type of cataclysm of our present world that Mae Thompson visualizes for the Anasazi. In order to accomplish this, Gorman emphasizes that Navajo tradition should not be mummified but is a vital part of a dynamic living culture and that heritage can be remade and newly created; as such, Navajo traditions must adapt and respond to changing historical circumstances. The General Assembly of the United Nations addressed related issues in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples passed in September 2007, which firmly states: Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, protect, control, and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional

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cultural expressions. . . . In conjunction with indigenous peoples, States shall take effective measures to recognize and protect the exercise of these rights. (Article 31, italics mine) Since land has been the heritage endowed with deepest values in traditional culture and many Navajo do not live on their land today, the process of making new heritage may have to explore other spaces, venues, or techniques. Local examples of remaking and renewing heritage are documented in my ethnographic work with Navajo artists at Canyon de Chelly. During my first return visits in 2012 and 2013 I engaged in long conversations with young Navajo men who sat at the lookout points and at White House ruins, selling fine drawings of rock art motifs, landscape references, and cultural symbols executed on thin sheets of rock from the canyons. With enthusiasm, they elaborated for me the stories they were depicting. Each work placed traditional symbols, figures, and sites into new contexts. In 2017 I looked for the young rock artists without success. I asked one man who offered similar scenes painted on floor tiles at Tsegi Overlook and he explained to me that the National Park Service no longer permits removal of rock material from the canyons for any purpose. Thus this flourishing artistic initiative of reinventing heritage has turned into another challenge for Navajo people, who have to find more strength to circumnavigate a new obstacle put in their way by a federal authority. My analysis has demonstrated that the land base, including Canyon de Chelly, will remain the foundation of living Navajo traditions. In terms of Hirsch’s (1995) and Basso’s (1996) models, which I have used as leitmotifs, I have shown how historical circumstances, in which people’s daily foregrounded lived experiences take place, continue to change and evolve; social memory responds to these circumstances but reflects and senses background idealized memories in which it stays anchored. I now turn to the Maya case study in Mexico to investigate parallel questions.1. It will require more human time spent and friendships made in Monument Valley to see more of its rich intangible heritage. It would be of great academic interest to compare whether oral narratives in the valley refer to migrations of Holy People as they do in Canyon de Chelly.

II Coba

The second investigation takes us to the pre-contact Maya settlement of Coba and its contemporary Yucatec Maya community, Ruinas of Coba, located in the state of Quintana Roo in the eastern Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. I have selected Coba because Quintana Roo was historically a remote, “savage,” and isolated state, but the present community has undertaken more drastic changes than most other Maya towns. Indeed, Ruinas of Coba remained fairly isolated until about 1990 but had fully embraced tourism on local terms negotiated by strong community leaders when I returned in 2012. These contrasts and rapid changes make Coba an attractive case study and set it apart from the other two. They beg the question of how the lens of memory stratigraphy will be applicable in this case scenario. In which ways can Earth Politics link the past with the present? What are the origins of seeming “disconnects”? Literature Review of the Archaeology The earliest notes on Coba come from explorers who ventured into the Yucatan peninsula during the Caste War in the middle of the nineteenth century. Coba was first mentioned by John Stephens (in Benavides 1981a:30–31), who wrote while staying in Chemax in 1842 that a priest had informed him about ruins, with building groups two stories high and with stone vaults, buried in jungle and situated around lakes about 32 km east of Chemax. At the time, Stephens was at the end of his expedition and did not venture further.

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Map 2. Yucatan peninsula with Coba location. Adapted from Folan and others (1983:Figure 1.1), redrawn by Anthony Naimo.

Coba was first visited by J. P. Contreras and D. Elizade in 1886 (Folan, Kintz, and Fletcher 1983:2, hereafter cited as Folan et al. 1983). These two Yucatecos traveled into the border zone of the Caste War (discussed later), apparently little concerned about their safety. They composed a brief report as well as four drawings, two of which appear to illustrate La Iglesia and one showing Nohoch Mul (reproduced in Benavides 1981a:31–32). Five years later in 1891 and still during the Caste War, Teobert Maler, an explorer using scholarly methods, vis-

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ited to Coba. He recorded information about the architecture of the largest building complexes—La Iglesia, Nohoch Mul, and La Gran Plataforma—and about the local flora and fauna (Benavides 1981a:33; Folan et al. 1983:2). Additional reports were compiled by Don Rafael Regil of Merida in 1897, another Yucateco traveling in the border zone during the Caste War, and by Thomas Gann after his site visit in 1926 (Folan et al. 1983:3). Scientific archaeological work with the Western mindset of producing new “objective” knowledge began in 1926 when the Carnegie Institute of Washington sponsored a four-year project of mapping the central core area, including the causeway or Maya road (sacbe) system as well as the recording of stelae under the direction of John Eric Thompson, Harry D. Pollock, and Jean Charlot. The results of their work were published in 1932, including detailed descriptions of the sacbeob (plural of sacbe) and standing architecture by Pollock, descriptions and decipherments of the stelae by Thompson, and professional maps. In 1933 Alfonso Villa Rojas followed and documented the 100 km sacbe linking Coba with Yaxuna. Villa Rojas and his Maya team recorded numerous structures, small ancient and modern settlements, and stone monuments along the causeway. He published a report illustrated by photographs and a detailed map (1934). Villa Rojas must be mentioned further for his extensive ethnographic work with the Maya people in Yucatan. Most notably, his focused study of the Maya of east central Quintana Roo provides vital context for Coba (Villa Rojas 1945). The 1970s and early 1980s became the decades during which the most thorough and far-reaching archaeological projects were carried out. In 1974 the Centro Regional del Sureste of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia initiated the Coba Project with the goal of obtaining a full understanding of the site in its socio-political, religious, economic, and regional contexts. As part of this project Antonio Benavides Castillo focused upon the road system (1981a). In the same year William Folan, his wife, George Stuart, Laraine Anne Fletcher, Ellen Kintz, and their Maya consultants from Coba began their comprehensive work at Coba (1983). Most significant was the Coba Archaeological Mapping Project, intended to define the settlement pattern of this Maya metropolis. Folan and colleagues surveyed thirteen zones in the urban area and further investigated households

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in Zone I, the northern test zone of Coba. They also produced a detailed sketch map of approximately 30% of the urban area. The targeted household studies in Zone I resulted in a number of publications of particular interest to my topic, which aims to juxtapose political landscapes orchestrated by the ruling classes with the bottom-up cultural landscapes lived by commoner individuals on a daily basis. In one study Folan, Fletcher, and Kintz (1979) analyzed spatial relations between certain tree species, their quantity and locations, and high-status vaulted architecture. The dissertations by Ellen Kintz (1978) and Laraine Anne Fletcher (1978) provided in-depth analyses of household units in the northern Zone I. Kintz’s topic focused on the social organization of Coba as reflected in household units, which she compared according to platform area, platform height, and associated structures. She found great variability in the households examined and associated social status and concluded that the residential zone was stratified with regard to individual households as well as households clustered into neighborhoods. Fletcher (1978) analyzed stone linear features of Coba, which she categorized in terms of technique as single- or double-faced houselot walls and sacbe-like features. She demonstrates that households on more elaborate platforms and with more structures typically have more land enclosed in their houselot walls. Her work confirms Folan’s concentric core model that high status dwellings with a larger number of superstructures, more vaulted architecture, and more garden land cluster in proximity to the city center. All the archaeological projects in the 1970s and 1980s were driven by the Western scientific mindset and funded by the Mexican government or foreign U.S. institutions. Cobaneros were employed as workers and guides. Here and there archaeological reports paraphrase a story a Maya consultant shared with the investigators or a brief description of a new building group consultants had seen in the uncleared rainforest. No partnerships in the sense of a communitybased archaeology were built (see Kawelu 2015:134–141). The only project member who engaged more closely with the people of Coba was Ellen Kintz. Her research interests in households and gardens led her to consult more extensively with the local Maya about the ecology of their gardens, milpas (corn fields), and the rainforest. Her follow-up book (1990) brings the pre-European Coba cultural

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landscape to life. While her narratives are speculative from an academic perspective, her work provides solid insights into the ecology and associated economic aspects through a bottom-up approach. My contribution continues along parallel lines as Kintz’s fieldwork ended before 1980.

4 The Cultural and Political Landscape of Pre-Contact Coba

The Late and Terminal Classic Maya City of Coba (c. 600–800/900 A.D.)

The Late and Terminal Classic were the periods with the most intense building activities during which Coba took on the urban design we know today, structured by the main building groups—Coba or Group B, Nohoch Mul or Group C, and Macanxoc or Group A—in the center and surrounding residential zones (Figure 4.1, adapted from Benavides 1981a:25). The location was chosen because the natural environment provides the lakes as unusual permanent water sources in the Yucatan peninsula and offers fertile soils for agriculture.1 The seat and “brain” of the Late Classic (c. 600–800 A.D.) cultural landscape of Coba was housed in Group B, or Coba, between Lakes Coba and Macanxoc. The residence and court of the ruler were likely situated in the building complexes behind the Iglesia temple and north of the Coba Group B ballcourt (Figures 4.2–4.5). The principal plaza to the west of La Iglesia allowed for large convocations of people. Sculpted stelae memorializing the ruler were erected (Figures 4.6, 4.7). Eric Thompson documented 24 sculpted stela monuments, eight of which were found in Coba or Group B, eight at Nohoch Mul, and eight in Macanxoc (Thompson, Pollock, and Charlot 1932:131; see also Benavides 1981a:23; Folan et al. 1983:81; Peniche and Folan 1978:49).2 Epigraphers have reconstructed approximate Maya Long Count dates from 9.9.0.0.0. or 613 A.D. to 9.17.10.0.0. or 780 A.D. (Thompson, Pollock, and Charlot 1932:182; Benavides 1981a:22; Stuart c. 2010; Gronemeyer 2004).

Figure 4.1. Coba, site map. Adapted from Benavides (1981a), redrawn by Anthony Naimo.

Figure 4.2. Coba, La Iglesia in the Coba group (Group B), c. 600–800/900 A.D. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

Figure 4.3. Coba, Ball Court, c. 600–800/900 A.D. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

Above: Figure 4.4. Coba, Structure I or Ixmoja in the Nohoch Mul group (Group C), c. 600–800/900 A.D. Photograph by Jessica Christie. Left: Figure 4.5. Coba, view from Structure IX supporting Stela 1 toward southeast and approaching Sacbe 9, Macanxoc group (Group A), c. 800/900 A.D. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

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Figure 4.6. Coba, one of the carved stelae, c. 600–800/900 A.D. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

In the suburban zones surrounding the downtown or core zone, elites and commoners settled and built their household platforms surrounded by gardens. Ellen Kintz (1990:63–67) reconstructs that families in the neighborhoods maintained garden areas where they grew chiles, medicinal herbs such as apazote and chaya, tobacco, achiote, tomatoes, cotton, cilantro (coriander), and nal (fast-growing corn). They also cultivated stingless honey bees in stacked tree trunks. Such garden products were shared and exchanged among nuclear families in a reciprocal fashion. In the framework of Earth Politics the salient point is that Coba families lived a close

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Figure 4.7. Coba, drawing of the stela in Figure 4.6. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

connection with the land. By maintaining gardens, cultivating corn and honey bees, hunting, and operating a free exchange system based upon reciprocal needs among related families, they were by and large self-sufficient. The extensive agroecological fieldwork by Anabel Ford underscores that the milpa forest-garden cycle was flexible and regenerative throughout the Maya area (Ford and Clarke 2019:159–163, 175–177). Folan and colleagues (Folan et al. 1983:49–54; Kintz 1978:164–169) have applied to Coba urban design the model of concentric zonation, which is well known from other Classic Maya cities, such as Dzibilchaltun,

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Figure 4.8. Coba, a sacbe “white road” with the sascab layer clearly visible. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

Lubaantun, and Tikal. In this model the central building groups constitute the downtown zone (also Benavides 1981b:210–215). The surrounding area was divided into an inner suburban zone, with some administrative and ceremonial structures among a great number of habitational and utilitarian units on platforms, and an outer suburban zone characterized by a noticeable thinning of all architectural features (Kintz 1978:165). Vital links between downtown, the suburban zones, and the region were provided by the sacbeob or roads. A sacbe is an elevated roadway (Villa Rojas 1934: Plate 9a; Benavides 1981a:70; Folan et al. 1983:81–87). The light color of the sascab infill led to the name sacbe, “white road” (Figure 4.8). The people of Coba built close to 50 sacbeob that divide the city and its surrounding area into multiple sections (see Figure 4.1). Coba people can be given life through colonial sources left by the Spanish. They describe social divisions and titles according to which the Yucatec Maya were organized in the sixteenth century, which broadly match settlement patterns documented at Coba. I adopt the titles and positions—halach uinic, batabob, ah cuch cabob, al hol pop, and ah kin mai—used by Folan

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(Folan et al. 1983:55–58), which are mostly drawn from published works of Ralph Roys (1943) and Alfred Tozzer (1941). Populations increased and the city grew into the Terminal Classic (c. 800–1100A.D.; Benavides 1981a:14). The Late and Terminal Classic political landscape of Coba does not reflect a strict top-down organization. The halach uinic or ruler likely did not get involved in neighborhood issues. Local administrative, judicial, and tribute matters and calendrical calculations were handled by the officials called batabob, ah cuch cabob, and ah hol pop as well as by the ah kin mai, priests. Neighborhoods were managed by strong bottom-up organization. The power base of the commoners lay in the intimate knowledge of the land and use of its agricultural and forest products. Earth Politics evolved between the political landscape of the elite, which reached through much of the peninsula and south into the Peten through trade, and the local landscape cultivated as food base by the commoners. Through the essential mechanisms of reciprocity and redistribution (Kintz 1990:62), trade and agricultural and forest goods were circulated within the greater Coba cultural landscape. Folan (Folan et al. 1983:13–14) reconstructs that Coba was a major regional capital during the Classic period in the Northern Lowlands, together with Tizimin in the northeast, Izamal in the north, Dzibilchaltun to the northwest, Oxkintok to the west, and Edzna. Regional capitals in the Northern Lowlands had surpluses of honey, wax, cloth, and slaves, surpluses that they exchanged for cacao and precious feathers, probably from the Gulf of Mexico, and jade and obsidian, likely from Guatemala and Honduras. I reason that the supervision and coordination of long-distance trade was likely a major responsibility of the halach uinic of Coba, whereas his batabob, ah cuch cabob, and ah hol pop coordinated local redistribution of products. The Terminal Classic, in particular the ninth century, is a poorly understood time of transition. Folan (Folan et al. 1983:11–12) documents several references to the Itza and Mexicanos. It appears that the Classic city of Coba was not abandoned but was intermittently and partially occupied by migrating groups. Kintz (1990) strongly confirms the migratory nature of Maya people throughout history.

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The Post-Classic (c. 900–1450 A.D.) Maya City of Coba and Transitions into a Colonial Landscape

According to Benavides (1981a:23–24; 1981b:14–15), the transitions from the Terminal Classic to the Early and Late Post-Classic appear smooth, without major disruptions in occupation. Coba turned into a primarily religious ritual outlier of the major Post-Classic economic centers on the coast, such as Tulum. It seems to have been remembered and used for ceremony, particularly directed to Muzen Cab, a god associated with the local stingless honeybees, and the Diving God as well as to ancestors. The remote location of Coba under jungle canopy reinforced this context. Whereas Late and Terminal Classic Coba functioned as a centrifugal regional polity with trade connections to the west (Yaxuna, Puuc) and south (Peten) as well as to the East Coast, materialized in the infrastructure of the sacbeob system, the direction of influences dramatically changed during the Post-Classic, with Coba turning into the receiver of cultural inspirations in architectural, sculptural, and religious canons from the East Coast (Las Pinturas group, Figure 4.9: see Peniche and Folan 1978:58–67, Folan et al. 1983:71–75; Fettweis 1988; and upper levels of Structure I/Ixmoja in the Nohoch Mul group, Figure 4.10). Meanwhile, the local cultural landscape of the forest and agriculture changed little. Commoners continued to provide daily subsistence from the land and within their social webs of kinship. Following Kintz (1990), their sense of place was not tied to the tangible and intangible heritage of Coba as the Late Classic city but rather to the resources of the land they knew (including soil types and water supply) and to the kin connections of reciprocity they had forged there. When their social networks, which included elite members, changed, they were open to moving within the ecological zone with which they were familiar. Similar migratory patterns probably guided the lives of Yucatec Maya people throughout history. Summary of the History of Coba from c. 1500–1950 A.D.

Coba and its few remaining people were not immediately impacted by the Spanish Invasion (Benavides 1981a:28). The first Europeans who entered the Yucatan peninsula in 1511 were survivors of the shipwrecked Santa Maria de la Barca, who sought refuge among native groups along the eastern coast.

Figure 4.9. Coba, Las Pinturas group, Post-Classic, c. 900–1450 A.D. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

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Figure 4.10. Coba, Ixmoja in the Nohoch Mul group, summit temple, c. 900–1450 A.D. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

After 1527 Francisco de Montejo and his son subjugated the northeast of the peninsula as well as Tabasco. During the 1530s battles were fought between the Spanish and Maya groups in multiple locations with temporary victories, retreats, and always losses on both sides. The lords of the western provinces first accepted Spanish rule and the Roman Catholic religion in the early 1540s. Coba is mentioned in a number of historical documents, most importantly the handwritten Books of Chilam Balam, which explain Yucatec Maya spiritual life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the eyes of the legendary author Chilam Balam or Jaguar Priest. The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel contains several references to Coba (Thompson, Pollock, and Charlot, in Benavides 1981a:26–27). The Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin presents a documentation of K’atun or Katun seating events. Two of these Katun seatings were conducted by or at a Kin Chil of Coba (Edmonson tr. 1982:21).3 They were Katun 13 Ahau in 1539 and Katun 13 Ahau in 1800 in the Itza count. The Coba Katun dates mark the beginning and end of one may or thirteen-katun-cycle celebrated at Coba.

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After 1539 there were two seats of the cycle, Mayapan (archaeological work by Masson et al. 2014) linked with the Itza and Merida linked with the Xiu, dividing the peninsula along a north-south line running through Mayapan (Edmonson tr. 1982:42). Each major city was the center of a province, ruled by a governor (halach uinic). Coba appears to have been in the province of Ecab, with the capital Ecab in the eastern, Itza-affiliated half of the peninsula (Roys 1957, in Edmonson tr. 1982:42–43). Rani Alexander (2015) frames such networks and processes of reorganization of Maya socioecological systems on the Yucatan peninsula through the lens of resilience theory. Resilience theory can be demonstrated by means of a graph in which the y axis is potential, defined as a system-specific measure of external accumulated resources, productivity, knowledge, or biomass. The x axis is connectedness, defined as the degree of internal control that a system exerts over external variability. Changes between internal and external interconnections cause shifts in system stability, leading to cycles of release or collapse, reorganization, exploitation, or conservation, eventually starting another release or collapse cycle. What is relevant here is that Alexander shows how land is a determining asset in the release and reorganization phases during the end of the Post-Classic and the Spanish Invasion (1450–1700) and then again in a new release cycle during the Caste War and the Mexican Revolution from 1847 through 1910, followed by the reorganization phase of President Lazaro Cardenas’s agrarian reform (1910–1946; see Chapter 5). Land ownership and use rights, communal and private, emerge as a critical variable that underwrote landscape change, agrarian strategies, and also transmission of local ecological knowledge and oral narratives or intangible heritage (Alexander 2015:332). We will see how changing forms of land ownership define the cultural landscape and constructions of Maya heritage in post-contact and contemporary Coba. The area of Coba continued to lie at the periphery of major political events, as it had from about 1500 to 1800. In 1810 the Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla ignited the Mexican War of Independence with his famous Grito de Dolores. The war lasted more than ten years until Mexico became a constitutional monarchy independent from Spain. Historically, Mexico’s independence ended the colonial period (Hervik 1999:41). Finally in 1823 the monarchy was turned into a republic with Guadalupe Victoria as its first president. Yucatecos joined the federal Mexican government as the Federated Republic of Yucatan but continued to demonstrate strong currents for independence as well as ethnic factionalism. Such sentiments unleashed the Caste War of Yucatan (1847–1901), which

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began as a revolt of native Maya people of Yucatan against the Europeandescended population, called Yucatecos. A lengthy war ensued between the Yucateco forces in the northwest of the peninsula and the independent Maya centered in the southeast. The largest independent Maya community was Chan Santa Cruz, which became the political and religious center of Maya resistance. They followed the apparition of the “Talking Crosses” and created new forms of social organization and military, political, religious, and cultural practices centered on the crosses. Followers of these miraculous crosses believed themselves to be the “true Christians” and self-identified as Cruzob (Juarez 2002:114). The Chan Santa Cruz Maya achieved recognition as an independent state by the United Kingdom in the 1850s partly because of their economic importance in the trade with British Honduras (present-day Belize). Loss of this trading connection in 1893—when the United Kingdom signed a new treaty with the national government in Mexico City, recognizing its control over the entire Yucatan peninsula—contributed to the defeat of the Maya independence movement and to the end of the war in the early twentieth century. The Coba area was situated in the sparsely populated border zone between Yucatecos to the west and north and independent Maya forces to the southeast. The sparsity of academic information feeds the colonial construction of complete rupture between the Post-Classic and the Spanish Invasion and the ensuing shaping of modern Mexico. From the bottomup Maya perspective, this was probably different: local Maya people well knew their forest environments and have always practiced traditional subsistence-based lifestyles. Such lifestyles do not leave scientific evidence but are brought to attention by Kintz (1990) and Martínez-Reyes (2016). Laura Matthew (2012:3–4) calls on us to displace Europeans from the center of the historical narrative. For the Coba case study, this means foregrounding the continuities in traditional subsistence-based lifestyles as a vital asset Maya people have resorted to, notwithstanding whether top-down control lay in the hands of Late Classic Maya rulers, the Spanish, the Mexican nationstate, or the State of Quintana Roo. I emphasize that this is the de-colonial cultural landscape that has been linking the past with the present and shaping Maya identity constructions and intangible heritage. As the Caste War drew to a close, the Mexican Revolution broke out in Mexico City in 1910. Armed conflicts over leadership positions and governing structures lasted until about 1920. It is not apparent that the Yucatan peninsula was directly impacted by warfare associated with the revolution.

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The most important outcome for the entire country was the establishment of the Mexican Constitution of 1917, which claims to implement some of the revolutionary demands for better economic conditions and social justice. Returning to the Coba region, in the mid-twentieth century camp sites used by chicleros (men who collect the gum or resin called chicle from sapodilla trees) and hunters, who also knew the archaeological ruins, have been reported on the north side of Lake Coba, from which grew the present town. Oral narratives about the ruins have been passed down, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century Maya speak of them and their builders with awe. They shape the tangible physical heritage and many spoken traditions into new cultural landscapes of what it means to be Yucatec Maya today.

5 The Cultural and Political Landscape of Coba from c. 1950 A.D. to the Present

Coba as a Physical and Material Maya Landscape Since the MidTwentieth Century

While archaeological data from the colonial period are sparse, local histories attest that the modern community of Coba began to be formed in the 1950s by families from the Yucatan communities of Kanxoc, Tixhualatun, Chemax, and Valladolid as well as from the small settlement Chulutan, who migrated east to cut chicle (gum resin), hunt, and eventually plant milpas (cornfields; Kintz 1990:41). The families from Kanxoc settled on the south side of Lake Coba and the people from the town of Tixhualatun on the north side (Kintz 1990:105). Thompson (1932:3) attests that at the time of his fieldwork no permanent settlements existed farther than about 35 km east of Valladolid and that the activities of those families who went to the Coba area were temporary. Eventually they settled, like the ancient Maya, because of the four lagoons, which offer permanent surface water supply, whereas in most areas of the peninsula water has to be retrieved from cenotes (sinkholes). Governance of this first settlement lay in the hands of elders from various families. They formed a village and designated the first delegado, who, according to Kintz, was Don Fernando Cen (Kintz 1990:105). These early settlers came with memories of their nomadic encounters with the ruins, the monuments, and with the land of Coba. They conceptualized this place as “rippling water of the lake,” from cob (clouded or turbid) and ha (water) in Yucatec Maya (Thompson 1932:5). In the 1970s local residents explained the popular etymology of the word Coba as coh translated as tooth and bah meaning mole, or “tooth of the mole”; another

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resident insisted that the name Coba is composed of cob (abundance) and ha (water; Benavides 1981a:29–30) leading back to the unique geographic features of the lakes for which Coba was so well known. Stelae Villa Rojas (1995:587–589) reports that in the nineteenth century hunters left offerings in front of stelae they encountered in the dense jungle. He was also told that the Maker and Protector of roads traveled east on a principal road to Coba and was turned into stone by the rising sun. This deity is believed to be present in a carved stone stela. Thompson (1932:3–4) is more specific, noting that hunters burned candles, copal resin, or puk ak (a resin obtained from a liana with the same name) before Stelae 9 and 10 at Coba and sometimes in front of Stela 1 at Macanxoc. They believe that the stelae are the guardians of the forest. Special stones, which can be stelae or stones with an unusual form in general, are known as tzimin tun, which originally signified “stone tapir” but now means “stone horse.” Special stones are said to be alive (Kintz 1990:38); by day they keep still but by night they wander around. When they receive food, copal, or a candle, such stones will protect one’s milpa, aid in hunting, and keep families healthy; without offerings, they may send sickness. Special stones can be brought to life by h-men (Yucatec Maya shaman; Thompson 1932:3–4). In early 2016 one Coba guard at the archaeological site shared with me that “some people have said the Virgin is present in the stelae.” This intriguing comment reflects the concept of a cyclical progression of history in which each cycle carries essential features from the past forward while melding them with new ones, as discussed later. Folan and colleagues (Folan et al. 1983:11) reference a local tradition that pus’ob, or dwarfs, erected the stelae, and these pus’ob later drowned in a self-inflicted, mythical deluge that brought an end to the fourth creation of the Maya world. Thus the stelae are seen as belonging to an era preceding the world we inhabit today. As shown and as will be developed further, they materialize the Classic Maya past and continue to be referenced, reinterpreted, and reshaped in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this manner the stelae bind the intangible heritage of evoked oral narratives to the physical and tangible heritage of place and the land. Here it is important to assess a number of crucial theoretical points: the twentieth-century settlers of Coba knew and explored the ruins and were much intrigued by them. Primarily the stelae became springboards

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for new oral narratives or invented traditions. The stories paraphrased earlier may be judged as “invented,” as opposed to “true and correct,” by colonial Western scholars because they do not match with the academic data reconstructed by epigraphers and archaeologists for the Late and Terminal Classic Maya. This—precisely—is the dialectic through which identity constructions and notions of authenticity evolve on the Yucatan peninsula. Colonialism is ingrained in the academic definition of who the “Maya” were and are “supposed to be.” Of course, this definition is based upon documented scientific data; it is the rigid categorizing, labeling, and manners of public dissemination of these data that have generated “Maya” stereotypes. Through the lens of the Coba settlers, their oral narratives make perfect sense, since they explain the stelae and abandoned jungle-covered buildings through the cultural logic of twentieth-century Yucatec Maya people and their collective memories. This socio-historical memory was not focused on Classic Maya hieroglyphic languages but on the shared and lived experiences of colonization, their lands and territories, and the Caste War (see resilience theory above). Practical implications of these processes were that the direct control of Classic Maya rulers was gone and never replaced, which meant first and foremost that the Coba people could continue their local subsistence-based lifeways and associated cosmological and religious beliefs. Even though in the twentieth century, they were integrated into the Mexican nation state, the supervision by federal authorities in Mexico City, D.F., is geographically distant and often weakly enforced by administrative subdivisions in Tulum in daily lived experiences of the Coba Maya. Therefore the Yucatec Maya in Coba and in other communities have maintained certain freedoms to construct their cultural landscapes and aligned intangible heritage so that they meet their needs and reflect their shared experiences of recent history and social memory. From this perspective, communities were strengthened by a high degree of connectedness among families and with their assigned lands (see Alexander 2015 and resilience theory, preceding chapter; and 1930s agrarian reform, later in this chapter). This curve continues in the twenty-first century with increasing openness and economic potential through global interactions, as discussed later.

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Ejido and Land Management The chiclero camps grew into the small contemporary town of Coba with approximately 1,300 inhabitants (see Litka 2013:352) and growing. Following the agrarian reform begun in 1934 under President Lazaro Cardenas, Coba became an ejido (communally farmed area) in the early 1970s, and community lands were parceled out to approximately 60 original ejidatarios (Kintz 1990:105–107; Litka 2013:353–354; individual consultants report slightly divergent numbers of original ejidatarios).1 Land redistribution, tierra y libertad (land and liberty), had been one of the primary demands of the peasants in the revolution. The implementation of the ejido system under President Cardenas was intended to meet this demand. The concept of an ejido grew from an understanding of the Aztec calpulli, an organizational unit of communal landownership below the city-state, and the medieval Spanish ejido. To establish an ejido, landless farmers who leased land from wealthy landlords would petition the federal government for the creation of an ejido; the federal government would consult with the landlords. If the government approved the ejido, the land would be expropriated from the landlords; an ejido would be established and entered into Mexico’s National Agrarian Registry; and the original petitioners would be designated as ejidatarios and assigned land grants. Ejidatarios do not actually own the land as private property but are allowed to use their parcels indefinitely as long as the lands do not lie fallow for more than two years; they can pass these rights on to their children. Initially, ejido land grants were protected and could not be divided or sold. In the 1980s world economic agencies increasingly reprimanded the Mexican government for low productivity of its ejidal system. The Agrarian Law of 1992 grew out of major reforms required for Mexico’s participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The most important changes impacting ejidos were the following: no additional lands would be expropriated for ejidos; ejidatarios now have permission to rent, sell, buy, or lease land; ejidatarios may work with private investors; and ejidatarios receive individual land titles. A new Program for Certification of Ejidal Rights and Titling of Urban Plots began approaching ejidos to encourage them to go through the certification process. The fundamental consequence is that once all land in an ejido has been titled, the assembly can vote to move into private ownership and can maintain its ejidal status only if at least 20% of the ejidatarios wish to keep the ejido (Taylor 2018:71).

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In other words, the land reforms favoring privatization over community management, and free trade required by NAFTA, have now brought ejidos to the brink of dissolution. But let us begin with the forming of Coba’s ejido in the 1970s. The ejido petition was made under delegado José Isabel Cocom decades after the agrarian reform had passed in Mexico City. Cocom and other elders took great care in discussing the spatial extension of the proposed ejido and cut trails to demarcate proposed boundary lines in the forest. In the case of Coba, ejido lands were not expropriated from Yucateco landowners but cut from federally owned national forest. Ana M. Juarez (2002:115) makes the important argument that the establishment of ejidos hurt milperos (farmers of milpas) more than it benefited them in the state of Quintana Roo. Whereas the intent of Mexico’s land reform in the 1930s and 1940s was to even out social inequalities by granting ejidos as communal lands to landless peasants, this policy was detrimental in Quintana Roo because Maya people already had use rights and de facto control of communal lands, and population density was lower than in most other Mexican states. Thus ejidos ended up replacing the Maya’s autonomous access to large amounts of land with bounded tracts of state-controlled land. Further Mexican and Yucateco immigrants flocked to Quintana Roo in the early and mid-twentieth century to take advantage of federal policies subsidizing economic development (Juarez 2002:115). This is the broader socio-economic context in which the creation of the Coba ejido should be assessed. The first settlements around Lake Coba by families from the neighboring state of Yucatan in the 1950s were already the outcome of influx by outside people. During the succeeding decades, population increased, and linked with it were pressures on land, leading to the communal decision to petition for ejido designation in the early 1970s. The importance of marking ejido boundary lines by cutting jungle trails reminds us of the care Late and Terminal Classic Maya residents took in marking their houselots with stone walls (see above in Part II). However, in the ejido context the concern for boundary markers was more directly a response to the ubiquitous land disputes and contesting of territories during the colonial period. Native parties disputed among themselves and measured their lands, established boundaries, transferred properties, and renegotiated agreements over a period of three centuries (Alexander 2015:331–332). Given this longue durée pattern of land negotiations on a local level, it seems reasonable to argue that such land disputes would already have played out among Late and Terminal Classic elites and perhaps

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commoners on a local scale and likely independent from the oversight of Coba’s ruling institutions. Through this lens, recent and colonial political landscapes are projected back to pre-contact times. These considerations begin to frame my argument of Earth Politics that land as asset and value, land as intricately linked to social groups and hierarchical institutions, constitutes the pervasive and long-term element that defines tangible heritage in the Coba region. It is clear that ownership and territorial dimensions kept changing throughout periods in history, but heritage and what it means to be Coba Maya always lead back to identity associations with local ecology and lands. As founded in 1972, Coba ejido lands (terreno) encompass around 3,800 acres used for milpa (cornfield) cultivation and chicle production. The ejido is overseen by the comisario ejidal, who is elected and serves a threeyear term. He collects taxes from the ejido businesses (discussed later) and transfers them to the Municipio in Tulum, which assumes jurisdiction over Coba. In addition, the ejido has a treasurer and the Casa Ejidal on the south side of Lake Coba, where the offices are located and members meet every few months. The ejido constitutes the voice and de facto government of the community. In addition, the position of the delegado municipal continues to be filled; this is the official who directed the community before the ejido was founded. His original responsibility was to keep the village calm as a quintessential leader above reproach; he personalized justice (Kintz 1990:105). Today his duties concern the urban zone and its communal resources. He coordinates petitions to the Municipio in Tulum to request funds for public amenities, such as repair of street lights or repair of the basketball court or spraying against mosquitoes. If the Municipio grants approval, these services are free. Further, the delegado and his office mediate in family and personal issues. It is noteworthy that the work of the comisario ejidal and of the delegado municipal is mostly pro bono. During their terms they have to support their families through their regular line of work (ethnographic consultations, 2014–2017). Most families have at least one relative who is an ejidatario; non-local community members have to rent or buy a piece of land from an ejidatario to build their homes. At the time the ejido territorial limits were defined, nobody was too concerned that tracts of Coba ejido lands lay on top of a large archaeological site. According to Mexican laws of cultural patrimony passed in the 1980s—that is, after establishment of the Coba ejido—all archaeological monuments belong to the nation, represented by the Instituto

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Nacional de Antropología y Historia (INAH). Coba, like many other Indigenous towns in Mexico, faced a dilemma: the ruins were the property of the government and INAH, whereas the land belonged to the ejido. Unlike other communities who have engaged in tug-of-war exchanges with authorities, ranging from protests to land condemnations, the Coba ejidatarios unified and negotiated mutually beneficial relations with INAH, which we will mine in depth.2 The first negotiations with INAH approximately coincided with the rise of tourism in Coba. In the early 1970s the town did not count many more than 100 people, did not have a potable drinking water system or electricity, and was connected to the Riviera Maya and east coast by an unpaved road. Since then changes have been dramatic: in the mid-1990s the road from Tulum to Coba was paved and tourists could stay in the four-star Villa Arqueologica Hotel on the shore of Lake Coba; Pi-Sunyer and Thomas (1997:55) and Walker (2009:19) estimate that now from 60 000 to more than 70 000 tourists visit Coba annually; approximately 40% of working Cobaneros depend upon tourism for their livelihood (Pi-Sunyer, Brooke Thomas, and Daltabuit 1999:130–132), numbers that have probably gone up since the publication dates of these sources. Coba ejidatarios quickly realized that securing ejido lands was linked to the booming tourism industry and that they could shape it to their advantage if they participated. Since the tourism destination was the ruins, the ejido’s involvement with tourism had to start there. The outcome of the INAH negotiations was that INAH collects entrance fees to the archaeological site, but community members maintain the right to operate several businesses within the archaeological zone. This is a unique arrangement since INAH typically has full control over federally recognized archaeological sites. Most notable among these community enterprises is the tricycle transport business, which offers shuttle services to visitors who do not want to walk the long forest trails between the far-flung sectors of the site. My ethnographic work has accumulated the following data about ejido business ventures in and around the archaeological zone. The tricycle operation started around 1990 when a local resident by the name of Hipolito first spread the idea of organizing and building a transport business. When I met Hipolito at the bicycle rental stand in 2014, he was a middle-aged man around 50 years old, with a calm smile, who seemed to enjoy overseeing the growth of ejido enterprises within the archaeological zone (Figure 5.1). His friends who gave me most of the information about the tricycle business

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told me he only speaks Maya, but then he looked me in the eyes and said loudly and clearly: “Ser Maya es un orgullo!” (To be Maya is a matter of pride!) Hipolito’s motivation was to offer work opportunities in town to curb the out-migration of young people. He and some friends started out by purchasing a couple of bicycles with their own funds. Now the enterprise runs about 130 tricycles assigned to an approximately equal number of registered operators, who are overseen by an administrative committee (Figure 5.2; ethnographic consultations, 2014–2017). This committee issues licenses to the tricicleros, provides maintenance services on site, and secures income for the tricicleros at a level that roughly doubles the nationally set minimum wage; it exempts community employees from paying income tax but does not give them benefits. A business tax is paid to the Municipio in Tulum by the ejido tricycle organization (ethnographic consultations, 2014–2017). In addition, the ejido built a thatched house near the site entrance, where bicycle rental is offered to tourists who do not wish either to use the tricycle shuttle service or to walk along the Maya causeways or sacbeob. As the visitor arrives at the Nohoch Mul plaza, cold drinks are sold in another thatched house. This service caters to the thirst for an ice-cold sparkling drink, experienced by most tourists who climb up and down the Ixmoja temple in the hot and humid jungle conditions. The case of the Nohoch Mul group with the public climb of the Ixmoja temple constitutes another special deal the ejido has worked out with INAH. In the tourism business, Coba and Ek Balam advertise the only Maya pyramids on the peninsula that visitors are still allowed to climb. This attraction clearly bestows a marketing edge for Coba and Ek Balam when beach tourists decide which site to visit on their one-day inland cultural tour. One guide told me that INAH threatened twice to close the pyramid for security reasons, but the ejido stood up for the climb, spoke against closing the pyramid, and has so far prevailed.3 INAH may try it again “but our halach winik will stand firm” (anon., pers. comm., 2014). At the entrance to the archaeological zone the Coba community runs the Ki-Hanal restaurant, the largest and most attractive eating venue at the parking lot for the site. The menu offers international and local food options, and the ejido-trained personnel have mastered the use of an espresso machine to prepare professional cappuccinos. The restaurant fills up during lunch hours and has added a second level. Since approximately 2015, upstairs seating has been offered to tourist groups as part of a package

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Left: Figure 5.1. Hipolito, founder of the tricycle transport business, pictured in 2014. Photograph by Jessica Christie. Right: Figure 5.2. Coba, tricycle shuttle service between site sectors. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

including a lunch buffet and cultural entertainment, performances of the Classic Maya ballgame and associated rituals. We further investigate reenactments of Classic Maya culture later. The point to be concluded here is that Ki-Hanal provides secure jobs linked to professional training for a large number of waiters, cooks, and cleaning personnel as well as supplying a stage with a miniature ballcourt where regional cultural groups perform on a contract basis. The most untraditional attraction on the parking lot is a zip line spanning Lake Coba from the north to the south shore. After a long and sweaty day exploring the ruins, tourists may glide over the waters in the afternoon sun and look down, perhaps getting a glimpse of the famous cocodrilo (crocodile) inhabiting the lake. In 2014 Joel, a staff member at the zip line who helped me put on the harness for my flight, explained that a wealthy Argentinian who owns another zip line in Tulum, put up the initial capital and keeps both zip lines on an inspection schedule. Coba community members built it and staff it, and all income belongs to the people of Coba.

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Joel and other staff confidently project that the zip line is viewed as property of Coba. Leaving the town on the road to the south, visitors can find turn-offs to three cenotes situated on ejido lands. Cenotes are sinkholes with icy cold and crystal clear groundwater, features formed in the characteristic karst terrain of soluble limestone in the Yucatan peninsula. Ejidatarios have built changing rooms, showers, some drink stands, and small ticket offices for collecting entrance fees around the cenotes. Thus the full-day package for Coba includes an early departure from the Riviera Maya, a full morning exploration of the ruins with the climb of the Ixmoja pyramid, a midday swim in at least one of the cenotes, a late lunch, and an hour or so of free time riding the zip line and buying artesanías (handicrafts). The ongoing ethnographic work by Stefanie Litka (2013) with the Coba ejido has highlighted a number of important points: • Today most Cobaneros no longer work in the milpas. In 2014 Amairani, the daughter of Modesto, who owns the Sac-Be Hotel, estimated that approximately 10% of Cobaneros were agriculturalists. Most—or about 40%—of working Cobaneros depend upon tourism for their livelihood (Pi-Sunyer, Brooke Thomas, and Daltabuit 1999:130–132, see above). As Amairani put it: “Sin turistas, no hay Coba!” (ethnographic consultations, 2014). • Most ejidatarios have sold portions of their ejido lands to Yucatecos; or to Maya from other villages, such as school teacher and artist Luis May Ku (discussed later), who owns a house with his studio on the main road to the ruins facing Lake Coba, while he and his family reside in another village; or to foreigners. Most significant among these sales has been the purchase of lakefront property on the south shore by an Argentinian couple to construct one of their exclusive Coqui-Coqui boutique and spa resorts. Coba’s Coqui-Coqui is not very conspicuous as it is situated off the main road. One has to know it is there except at night, when its sea of lights create a focal point on the south shore. It is a five-star luxury hotel offering rooms for several hundred dollars per night, depending on the season, a gourmet menu featuring local products, and a store selling oils, fragrances, and candles made from Yucatan flowers. The managers are hired from Cancun and Valladolid, but the other personnel are local people from Coba. In 2014 Erandy G. and her husband, the local Coqui-Coqui managers at the

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time, emphasized that the hotel is very good business for Coba because it provides jobs. Nevertheless, most or all original ejidatarios have kept a section of their ejido terreno (Litka 2013). Modesto, the owner of the Sac-Be Hotel, told me that his ejido land is being worked by other family members, since according to ejido laws it has to be worked and used for some subsistence purposes. Litka (2013:360–361) notes that whereas the primary economic activities lie in tourism-related businesses and relations with outsiders, ejidatarios hold on to a section of their land as backup, or Plan B, in case all the new business ventures brought in by outsiders and a global market system may fail one day. This strategy is significant in the context of Earth Politics. Cobaneros continue to hold onto their land base as a security rooted in tradition. Even though most people do not work in the milpa anymore, the knowledge is still there and practiced by some. In addition, most houses maintain solares or garden plots behind their street fronts, where families grow fruit trees and spices of the species registered by Kintz (1990). We can see a bridging of tradition, the past and innovations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries based on traditional Maya cyclical understandings of time. Anchored in the pre-contact Mesoamerican 260-day and 365-day counts, history and the world pass through cycles; each cycle carries forward elements of the prior cycles and adopts new things. In this manner, the past and traditions are being integrated into the present and made useful for the future (Litka 2013:355–356). Ana M. Juarez (2002:119) highlights the importance of Maya prophecies about the wutz of the world, which is seen as an end to this world in the sense of a turn-around point to the beginning of a new era (Sullivan 1983). It was predicted to occur shortly after 2000 and coalesced with the end of the 13 Bak’tun cycle in 2012 (Stuart 2011). Christian Maya align the wutz with the coming of the Lord; but Maya elders had long made similar predictions: that fields would no longer be productive, humans would lose the desire and the ability to procreate, people would wear gold shoes and clothes, they would be surrounded by people speaking many languages, they would have to buy water, etc. (Juarez 2002:119). Thus many traditional Maya view the tremendous changes brought by the tourist era as the fulfillment of their prophetic traditions, which also imply resilience. This kind of cultural resilience means carrying beneficial innovations forward while maintaining an anchor in essential assets of the past and most specifically in community ties. This model—if fully applicable—points in

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the direction of making Maya heritage in general regenerative in the future. However, it is idealized in the sense that it disregards social inequalities resulting from the turn to a capitalist market of commodity consumption (Juarez 2002:120). It is a key concept observed by several ethnographers in different Maya villages (Hostettler 2001; Carlsen 1997:50–54 as the JalojK’exoj), a concept to which I refer later. With Litka (2013:360–361), we can conclude that the Coba ejido is the essential structure that defines and manages heritage in land-based as well as socio-political terms. So far it has been able to assimilate many outside influences, most importantly tourism, by participating via ejido-run local businesses. It is vital that ejido involvement in tourism is grounded in social cooperation and community ties, as opposed to capitalist individual interests and self-advancement. This organization has been so successful that certain fund surpluses from parking fees, bike rides, the zip line and the cenotes, as well as from the restaurant, are distributed among the ejidatarios, resulting in an extra income of approximately 2,000 pesos per member every two months (according to two non-ejidatario consultants in 2017). Both consultants also commented on deepening social hierarchies and an incipient class system among ejidatarios. Needless to say, the first to feel adverse effects from rising ejido-based social stratification are nonejidatarios, like my two consultants. While social cooperation should never be idealized, and Litka (2013) emphasizes that there have always been internal conflicts and rivalries, the ejido seems to be taking baby steps in a more capitalist direction, where individual interests for profits outweigh community well-being and land is managed as a commodity. This is most evident in the increasingly lucrative opportunities offered to individual ejidatarios of selling their terreno to outsiders. Most conspicuous are two sale transactions to hotel and resort chains: Coqui-Coqui, just discussed and Coba’s Villa Arqueologica Hotel, mentioned earlier. During the 1990s Coba featured one resort hotel from the Club Med–Villa Arqueologica chain, located on the northern shore of Lake Coba where the main road makes its turn toward the archaeological zone. Sometime around 2010 it closed down, and as of 2017 it stood as a closed-off ruin slowly being reclaimed by tropical vegetation. Employees at the Ki-Hanal restaurant told me that there were all kinds of financial troubles and that the bank foreclosed on that hotel disregard my strike ethnographic consultations, 2014–2017). Today most visitors who spend the night stay at the Maya-owned Hotel Sac-Be at the town entrance, built by Modesto and his family. My interviews

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with him over several years show that he is one of the ejidatarios and personifies the adaptable structure of the Coba ejido system: he owns terreno, but his primary source of income to support his extended family is his hotel, restaurant, and convenience store business. I met Modesto in 2014 when he owned two buildings with restaurants and stores. The principal building offered hotel rooms, a few with air conditioning, and the second building had thatched huts with hammocks. By 2017 he had replaced the huts with another wing of air-conditioned hotel rooms and a swimming pool. At the same time the convenience store of the principal building continues to be an important social stop for locals on their way in and out of town, where they stock up on drinks and snacks and share news and laughs with Modesto; most of the time he or one of his sons is there. The final assessment is that the ejido system lies at the heart of the notion of Maya heritage in Coba today with regard to land and control of space. The ejido system has been bent according to the traditional Maya cyclical concept of time: it has opened up to embrace tourism but stays anchored in community lands. At the same time, Cobaneros do not maintain personal connections with the ruins themselves, begging the question of whether we observe a rupture with the past. Through the lens of Earth Politics, I argue that what connects the neighborhoods of Classic Coba with today’s ejido are the values endowed in land managed through social cooperation, milpa agriculture, and forest gardens. This perspective of continuity contrasts the academic and colonially sanctioned temporal division into pre- and post-contact. Coba’s Intangible Heritage of What It Means to Be Yucatec Maya Intangible heritage is not physical; it is mobile and anchored in people’s minds and their collective memories. In the Maya area, intangible heritage is tightly linked with identity questions of what it means to be Maya in today’s world. For most ethnic groups, language is a primary marker of identity. It is important to clarify that the Maya—past and present—have formed subgroups who speak related but different languages. Yucatec Maya is spoken throughout the peninsula. It is a vital element of identity and is bound by the geography of the peninsula and not by national legal divisions, such as the states of Yucatan, Quintana Roo, and Campeche. Coba has to be positioned in the regional context of Yucatec Maya. Any discussion of Coba intangible heritage, identity construction, and what it means to be Maya has to address the complex and overlapping

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layers of Coba-specific, Yucatan-wide, national, and representative of the Maya area. Review of Literature on Maya Identity

During the past decades a wide corpus of literature has been published by anthropologists exploring identity issues with different Maya groups, especially in the highlands of Guatemala, highlands of Chiapas, and the Yucatan peninsula (for example, Armstrong-Fumero and Hoil Gutierrez 2017; Beyyette and LeCount 2017; Fischer and McKenna Brown 1996; Freidel, Schele, and Parker 1993). The starting point of this debate for the Yucatec Maya has been Matthew Restall’s 2004 article in which he lays out a compelling argument that the term Maya in the sixteenth century was rarely used to designate people; that the name began to take on a stronger ethnic identity during the Caste War; and that a Maya ethnogenesis with the current implications of the term was the product of ethnopolitics in the 1960s. While this is not the place to delve into that debate, my standpoint is that although constructions of Maya identity appear to be fairly recent, Classic Maya people must have perceived regional cultural bonds linked to shared ethnic identities. As an archaeologist and art historian, I emphasize that shared styles of monumental architecture, stela sculpture with hieroglyphic writing, and associated geo-political networks reconstructed by epigraphers overwhelmingly speak for a form of cultural unity, especially in the southern lowlands. Clearly such arguments impact our discussion of cultural landscapes and intangible heritage in Coba. So what does it mean to be Maya in Coba today? Language Most people immediately self-identify as Maya because they speak the Yucatec Maya language, were born on the Yucatan peninsula, and own land there. Peter Hervik (1999:23–57) investigates the deeper layers and historical evolution of the two social categories mestizo and catrin in Oxkutzcab, applicable to Coba in a wider sense. Today “mestizos” are those who speak Maya, wear distinct regional dress, dance jarana, know how to cultivate the soil, and celebrate the patron saints. “Catrines” are individuals, mostly women, who speak Maya but choose to wear Western-style clothes. Hervik’s ethnographic work confirms my consultations reflecting that people

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who self-identify as Maya refer to the use of language. Most native Maya speakers do not consider themselves “legitimate” Maya because “true” Maya fought in the Caste War and preceded them (Hervik 1999:26). In Coba the practice of Yucatec Maya is undermined by Spanish as the preferred language in business transactions and tourism encounters; the schooling I saw was also in Spanish. Huipil Most adult women self-identify as Maya by wearing white huipiles with colorful embroidered flower designs, a strong visual cue. Hervik (1999:39–40, 47–50) explores Yucatec dress code in depth. The full female outfit consists of the jipil or huipil, an underskirt, a shawl, and jewelry. From approximately the 1880s to the 1930s a “mestizo” woman had one style of huipil for daily use and another style referred to as terno for festive occasions. The terno has many more hand embroidered floral patterns than the ordinary huipil at the top, in the middle, and at the bottom, and it is narrower than the ordinary huipil. Men wore knee-length pants, short- or long-sleeved shirts, a type of apron, and sandals made of animal skin and, later, used tires. Today men signal a Yucatec identity by wearing the loose-fitting guayabera shirt. Mary Katherine Scott (2017:221) shows that Maya women adopted the flowery designs on the dresses of Spanish women, who looked to Europe for the latest fashion trends precisely to differentiate themselves visually from the Indigenous population, who ended up copying them after all. Hervik (1999:39, 56) adds the important point that the huipil constitutes a Spanish-imposed dress code designed by the Catholic friars but that it most likely resembled a type of huipil Nahuatl and Maya women wore before the Spanish Invasion. Efforts to retain and regain hand embroidery techniques are under way in some towns, for example in Muna, but in Coba the women I watched embroidering huipiles all used Singer sewing machines. It is important to specify here that with regard to language and dress code, the modern town of Coba participates in a regional, Yucatec-wide identity. Craft and Art, Artisano versus Artista Another question related to Coba and Yucatec identity and being Maya is whether there are specific art and craft styles. In comparison, it should be

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recalled that the Late Classic Maya at Coba used the same style and stela format as Late Classic Maya cities in the Peten, northern Guatemala. My ethnographic work reconstructs the following nationally based commodity market: sales personnel in the Cooperativa Maya explained that the gallery spaces at the tourist parking lot next to the archaeological site are owned by wealthy Cobaneros. They purchase bulk commodity artesanías (handicrafts) from traveling middlemen who traverse Mexico, buying and selling local arts and crafts and those that are mass produced. This commodity art market has clearly nationalized in the sense that miniatures of the Chichen Itza castillo and colored wooden masks from Piste are sold in central Mexico, ceramics from the Puebla region are offered in Coba, blankets from Oaxaca are sold in Yucatan, and so on.4 What makes the Cooperativa Maya different from most of its competitors is that some of its art producers are from pueblos in the region. When they come to Coba to wholesale their work to store owners, the Cooperativa prioritizes them and offers extra benefits. This model of a cultural landscape that arises through the lens of visual culture is strictly outward oriented. Coba clearly participates in this national commodity network and, in a sense, unifies Mexico in its art market; but so does any other place in the network, be it on the Riviera Maya, Chiapas, or in central Mexico. Further, the local store owners hire salespeople who work for them on commission. This means they earn zero if they sell nothing; such days are common due to the abundant competition and especially during low season cycles. I talked to women who have begun to embroider their own fabric items for direct sale by them while waiting for customers to come to the gallery (ethnographic consultations, 2014–2017). The economic condition of the salespeople is a salient example of how commodification and redistribution of culture in a national capitalist market creates new social inequalities. It must be noted that these are processes outside the ejido system; and ejidatarios can create counter-incentives through local social cooperation—local ejido-run businesses such as the tricycle transport and restaurant offer local income. Can any Coba-specific artwork be identified in the overcrowded gallery spaces? From my first visits to Coba in the late 1980s and mid-1990s, I remember a specific style of wild animal sculptures, made of wood, medium-sized and brightly painted, carved by many Coba artesanos (artists). In 2014–2017 I found only very few and isolated examples of these colorful creatures in the corners of one or two galleries.

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After consulting with numerous residents, I met artesano Vincente Chimal, who continues to produce the animal figures. Vincente owns a compound of several small houses in open space south of the lake. One of these houses functions as his studio, and a long table in front displays rows of his colorful creations. He says he decided to carve animals simply because he likes wild animals (Vincente Chimal, pers. comm., 2014). He further explained that middlemen come to his house and purchase bulk quantities of his figures to sell in various places. Some are sold by vendors in Coba. Adding to the complexity of the arts and crafts issue is the fact that a similar type of animal sculptures, carved from wood in more complex positions than those from Coba and also brightly colored, has become a well-known art style from Oaxaca, further nationalizing and globalizing the Mexican art market (Chibnik 2003). The first conclusion to be drawn is that with regard to artesanía, Coba has been drawn into a national market. Its cultural landscape has opened up to be integrated into national economic networks. As we have seen in the art forms, this brings with it some loss of local identity. Jonathan Katz (2017:89) rigorously clarifies the difference between an identity and identification. Identity is passive, whereas an identification is active. An identity is primarily a sense of who one is that echoes the worldview of the dominating class in society, which is the essence of colonization. An identification, in turn, is deconstructive at its core, as it inquires into the conditions through which particular forms of social dominance and submission have become naturalized. I will return to this important distinction. Luis May Ku An active, agentive identification as Maya is practiced by artist and school teacher Luis May Ku (see Figure 5.3). As mentioned, Luis owns a house with his studio and lake view on the main road to the ruins, where he lives during the weekdays of the school year. Weekends and vacations he spends at home with his family in the village of Dzan, near Ticul. Luis May Ku has taken on three roles in his life: that of a committed husband and father; that of a school teacher driven by his mission to instill Maya heritage in his students through curricular and extra-curricular activities; and that of an international artist and cultural broker. First, we have to clarify what “artist” means in the context of Maya heritage and identity. Carolyn Dean (2006) has argued convincingly that the terms art and artist in themselves are colonizers’ tools framed in the

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nineteenth century to give Western, mostly male artists practicing certain media, such as painting and sculpture, a higher rank than Indigenous producers of ceramics and textiles. Scott (2017:216–219) discusses the distinction between artista and artesano (those who make the artesanías already discussed) as it is practiced on the Yucatan peninsula. Artesanos make tourist art and qualify for financial support from organizations like Fondo Nacional para el Fomento de las Artesanías (FONART), established in 1974 to offer funding and publicity to cultural and touristic art events. Its mission is to support artesanos, defined as those who come from “situations of poverty” and who “are looking to develop artisanal activities as a means to generate income, stimulating the quality, competitiveness and commercialization of their products” (Scott 2017:218–219). Funding organizations like FONART drive the national arts and crafts market described earlier. In the reality of practice, the distinctions between the two words are not clear to all; for example, Roberto, an obsidian sculptor from Central Mexico, told me that artesano equals artista, and they are interchangeable terms. In my interview with Wilberth Abelain Serrano, Wilberth elaborated on the difference in poetic words: “an artesano sobrevive. . . . He is driven by an instinct to survive; he sells to alleviate his poverty; . . . an artista supervive. . . . He seeks to go beyond the material realm and transcends to a higher level; he has learned this through meditation; his mind, heart, and hands work together” (my translation). He also stated that an artista may absorb ideas from any culture, and recently he himself has created arte sacro (sacred Christian art; Wilberth Abelain Serrano, interview, 2014). Luis May Ku self-identifies as an artista in quite similar terms. From Carolyn Dean’s perspective (2006), both artists have clearly adopted the Western concept of the fine artist who holds powers to transcend reality.5 At the time of this writing, Luis had an offer to exhibit his sculptures in Paris in July 2018. Even though the notion of the “fine artist” has Western historical roots, it opens doors to drawing inspiration from ancient Maya heritage, in whichever way an individual artist may perceive it, and to a public identification as a Maya artist. The artesano, on the other hand, surrenders creative potential to the commodity market, and the work mirrors a national Mexican identity (Katz 2017). Luis also qualifies as a cultural broker or local Mayanist, as defined by Peter Hervik (1999:101–104). They are native Maya speakers who live in the community as an integrated part of local culture, but in addition they have

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acquired further knowledge of the history and culture of the Maya people from literary sources and from interactions with national and international visitors, tourists, and scholars. Many cultural brokers are school teachers and cultural promoters in government institutions and make a substantial and conscious attempt at heritage preservation. Indeed, the role and mission of Luis May Ku in Coba closely matches the position of Carlos Armando Dzul Ek in Oxkutzcab, another school teacher and Maya activist. He obtained funds to build a bilingual, bicultural primary school in the town of Mani; he founded a cultural center in Oxkutzcab; and he founded Sac Nicte, a theater and dance group who performed the powerful “The Auto-da-Fe or Shock of Two Colliding Cultures,” a one-act play also written by Dzul Ek (Hervik 1999:111–130). The following reports my ethnographic work regarding Maya heritage in Coba in true partnership with Luis May Ku. I met him in front of the Casa de Cultura in Coba in early July 2014. He informed me that he uses the Casa de Cultura for extra-curricular activities with his school children, practicing Maya music, dance, and hieroglyphic writing. The actual school building displays a large and colorful mosaic made of ceramic tiles, depicting life in Coba from somewhat of a bird’s eye perspective. Luis explained that it was created as a partnership project between his school and a university in Florida. His school children and the U.S. university students made the tiles together in Coba. They were fired in Florida and then sent back to be assembled and displayed at the Coba school. He expressed interest in similar partnerships. In 2016 we started talking about a contemporary stela project. After initial funding rejections, the stela project became reality with a low budget set by Luis and several private donations from U.S. scholars and Maya enthusiasts (Mayanists). Our stela was officially unveiled on March 21, 2017. It is an over life-sized concrete slab standing on the property line of the school, near the south shore of Lake Coba (Figure 5.3). The front displays the crocodile deity rising up, and the rear exhibits a hieroglyphic text (Figure 5.4). With regard to our stela, three perspectives on heritage need to be discussed, relating to (1) techniques and material, (2) the stela concept, and (3) content and message. (1) Techniques and material: The image of the crocodile and the glyphs are ceramic reliefs Luis created in collaboration with a pottery workshop in Ticul. Luis and the Ticul potters believe they continue working with the clays and techniques the ancient Maya used.

Left: Figure 5.3. Coba contemporary stela, front side, with artist Luis May Ku and his school children during the erection and unveiling ceremony on March 21, 2017. Courtesy of Luis May Ku. Below: Figure 5.4. Coba contemporary stela, rear side, with artist Luis May Ku and his school children during the erection and unveiling ceremony on March 21, 2017. Courtesy of Luis May Ku.

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Dean Arnold (2018) has intensively investigated all aspects of pottery production in Ticul and its history. Arnold confirms that pottery production in Ticul is ancient and likely extends back into the Terminal Classic (about A.D. 800–1200). His evidence comes from archaeological data he obtained from the sources of Ticul’s ceramic raw materials. For clay, samples from a collapsed tunnel within the clay mine at Hacienda Yo’K’at indicate that clay was mined there during the Terminal Classic. An archaeological site at the temper mines Yo’Sah Kab was likely in use for mining pottery temper and palygorskite, used in the production of Maya Blue, also during the Terminal Classic (Arnold 2018:195). Since the 1970s Ticul potters have been supplying the tourist market in Merida and on the Riviera Maya with vessels made of local raw materials and painted with designs copied from books illustrating Classic Maya pottery, presented according to colonially sanctioned academic priorities. The most widely disseminated polychrome figurative compositions on Classic Maya pots, for instance the Codex Style, originated in the southern lowlands, perhaps as far north as Calakmul (see Reents-Budet et al. 2010). Therefore they are intrusive for Ticul in the northern lowlands. What we see is a new and more popular form of heritage production and its commodification by the Ticul potters, who continue to work with local time-honored raw materials and in largely traditional techniques. Trained painters add the finishing touch of an aesthetic figurative scene to the pieces, copied from Classic Maya imagery created in northern Guatemala. Thus a notion of what is Maya emerges that selectively links local resources and production techniques from the northern Yucatan peninsula with iconography from the southern lowlands to be displayed in the tourist market as the finest materialization of Maya culture past and present. Luis participates in this construction of Maya heritage, and this is why he went to the Ticul potters. He prepared plaster molds of sections of the crocodile god and of each glyph, filled them with clay obtained from the Yucatan peninsula, and had them fired in Ticul. Before firing, the reliefs had to dry in the shade for several days. A wood-fired kiln was used, and the temperature was raised to approximately 700 degrees Celsius over an eight-hour period. The sculptures slowly cooled off in the kiln before they could be used. Luis and the Ticul potters believe that “this is the same technique of modeling and firing that the ancient Maya practiced more than 1,000 years ago and which they passed on to the people of today” (Luis May Ku, pers. comm., 2017). Our donations mainly funded the concrete, pouring of the over-life size

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slab, and its erection. Luis assembled the sections of the crocodile god and the glyphs and attached the image to the front and the text to the back of the concrete slab. A fluid dark band with a blue irregular edge frames and undulates around the figure and text. The dark band consists of glued-on mirror fragments, and the blue edge was added by gluing on broken blue tile pieces. Reflective snakes of mirror fragments coil up the short sides. (2) Regarding the stela concept: It is clearly an imitation and reinterpretation of Late Classic Maya stelae from the archaeological zone of Coba and other Maya sites in the southern lowlands. During recent decades, and especially in 2012 at the occasion of the 13 Bak’tun ending in the Classic Maya Long Count calendar, Maya revitalization movements have erected a number of stelae throughout the Maya area; for example, Mayas for Ancient Mayan (MAM) report two stela erections, one in Mani, Yucatan, and the other in Iximche, in the highlands of Guatemala.6 In Piste, Yucatan, a stela was erected as part of the 13 Bak’tun celebrations on December 21–22, 2012. It is a large cast monument positioned on a radial platform made of concrete in the central plaza of Piste. Its message is a glyphic text on the front, simply stating that on 13.0.0.0.0. 4 Ahaw 8 K’umk’u 13 Bak’tuns were completed. The text is framed by a border consisting of glyphic elements reminiscent of the border along the famous sarcophagus lid of Pakal in Palenque. Luis May Ku’s stela is the only example in the Coba region. (3) Content and message: These are also unique to Coba. They constitute the material rendering of Luis’s artistic vision. The crocodile god ayiin and its blue frame are a direct reference to the famed crocodile deity living in Lake Coba and its habitat. The text was chosen by Luis May Ku and translated into Maya hieroglyphs by epigrapher and former MAM president Bruce Love. It reads: On March 21, 2017, deep in the land of Coba, the Crocodile God in the water settled down and opened his mouth and [from it] wisdom flowed over the school. Our stela rigorously spatializes local Maya heritage and notions of what it means to be Maya in the Coba landscape, in the sense that it narrates the local landscape (and not the Yucatan peninsula as a region). It is a unique

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and most eloquent agentive identification of Maya intangible heritage made physical on the stela monument, which in itself evokes Maya past, and anchored in the natural setting of Coba. As a sideline, the following observation exemplifies how Maya heritage, social relations, and concepts of land and land management are being dissected, reframed, and commodified. I have argued that the ejido organization as a whole represents Maya heritage with regard to land issues and socio-political ties. Influential ejidatarios have spread distrust against Luis May Ku, rumoring that he would do business with foreigners and enrich himself from his work at the school, completely ignoring the powerful message the stela sends (ethnographic consultations, 2017). This underscores how capitalist thinking patterns are threatening and undermining traditional community relations grounded in reciprocity and sharing. Returning to Coba visual culture as intangible heritage, the stela revelation ceremony was dramatized by Maya dances and music from drums (see Figures 2.13 and 2.14). Part of Luis’s chosen curriculum is to instruct his students in Maya dances and music and fabricate corresponding costumes. Dancers representing a jaguar, bird, and some hard to identify masked characters performed, and traditional Maya wooden drums provided the rhythm. The data for these dances, costumes, and masks come from academic books and are not Coba specific. In the students’ minds, they become Maya and Coba, all in one. Luis’s modest efforts at Maya cultural performances at the school level should be seen as parallel to the professional dramatizations at the Ki-Hanal restaurant. As indicated earlier, the recently added second level features a stage with a miniature setting of the ballcourt with the rings in the archaeological zone. During lunch hours, professional performers reenact the Classic Maya ballgame and associated rituals wearing lavish costumes. These are contracted groups, with few participants from Coba, who travel to multiple venues in the region. Their performances are also learned from academic books about the ballgame and costumes and are thus representative of academic colonial notions of Classic Maya culture in general; only the micro-ballcourt is a specific reference to Coba. Unlike Luis’s school children, these cultural actors personify broad Maya revitalization movements but do not personally identify with Coba.

6 Discussion

Finding 1—Coba as a Node in a Regional Maya Landscape and in National Geo-Political Networks

The cultural landscape of Coba and its history are grounded in the natural environment of its setting. In more specific terms, the geological base of the Yucatan peninsula is limestone, offering a karst topography with pockets of soil, granular limestone deposits, and limestone sinkholes (cenotes). A fault line traverses the peninsula from northeast to southwest and has created the unique lakes in the Coba area (Kintz 1990:23–30). Soil analyses conducted by Folan and colleagues (Folan et al. 1983:25–31; Folan, Fletcher, and Kintz 1979:700; Kintz 1990:24) identified soil types that the Maya have classified and named according to their fertility. Near the Coba lakes are found rich deposits of the highest quality, black-colored soils, which the Maya call box luum or ek lu’um (Folan, Fletcher, and Kintz 1979:700). A few kilometers farther out in all directions extend less fertile red soils (chac luum). Interspersed with box luum and chac luum are pockets of yellow soil (k’an luum). Each of these soil types interacts differently with specific crops, and the Maya cultivate accordingly, choosing plants adapted to each soil’s fertility and, most important, its ability to retain water. Folan, Fletcher, and Kintz’s tree survey (1979) identified tree species that produce fruit, bark, resin, and fiber. The Classic Maya planted such trees in the black box luum soils, where they thrived, so that descendants of the original plants could still be found in the late twentieth century. Thus the tree survey demonstrated (1) the abundance of the natural setting, and (2) that the Classic Maya modified their cultural landscape with hierarchical control: the lords, priests, and high-status elites in the civic-ceremonial core owned more trees than the lower elites in the inner suburban zone and

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significantly more than the commoner families living on the outskirts of Coba, even though as described, the black soil extended through all social zones (Folan, Fletcher, and Kintz 1979:699–700). Coba is situated in an area of tropical wet and dry climate with vegetation of semi-evergreen seasonal forest (Kintz 1990:24). The tropical rains come in May and last through October. The period November to May marks the dry season. Mean annual rainfall averages 1,500 mm, but there is considerable year-to-year variation (Kintz 1990:24). The instability of the rainfall cycles greatly influences harvest yields and calls for social cooperation among families, on the one hand, and economic diversification, on the other. Kintz (1990:23–30) sensitively analyzes the microenvironmental zones available to the Coba Maya past and present: 1. Rainforest, divided into monte alto, which can rise up to five stories of woody plants forming a closed canopy, and monte bajo [or] overgrown milpa plots, both of which provide game animals and useful tree species discussed above. 2. Milpa: milpas are agricultural plots cut out of the high rainforest/ monte alto where possible in a slash-and-burn method. The milpa becomes a temporary miniature model of the rainforest. It is man-cut and cultivated and the part of the cultural landscape most intimately tied to social relations. Maize, beans, squash, jicama and other root crops, chile peppers, and fruit trees are grown. 3. The solar or yard is the smallest segment of the natural environment and physically integrated into people’s living spaces. It is typically enclosed by walls and acts as another micro-replica of the rainforest in the sense that the diversified ecological resources found in the forest and replicated in milpas are artificially duplicated again in the yard area of kitchen gardens. (Kintz 1990:29) Kintz’s work highlights the enormous abundance of the natural setting and the great potential for self-sufficiency among early settlers in the pre- and post-contact phases. This high level of sustainability of the milpa forestgarden system has been documented for the wider Maya area by Ford and Clarke (2019). It is difficult to assess to what extent the micro-models of the solar and milpa within the macro-model rainforest have been used throughout time. What matters in Earth Politics is that the nourishing potential and associated values of the land were always there and were understood by the

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commoners and campesinos who worked in the gardens, milpas, and the forest, whereas rupture has been noted in many forms of material culture. In this regard, I point to a parallel with the Navajo: “the land, water, air, and sunlight enter the family’s food and become the people’s flesh” (Part I). This line of thinking is relevant today as ejidatarios safeguard at least a portion of their terreno as backup security. Finding 1 emphasizes that Formative and Early Classic settlements, and then again the returning settlers in the form of chicleros and hunters from about 1950 to 1970, formed local, independent, economically self-sufficient communities that were relatively closed to the outside. Applying Alexander’s model, I reason that the Formative and Early Classic inhabitants found themselves in initial (re)organization and exploitation stages, exploring local potential as well as social connectedness. In the Late and Terminal Classic, they moved into the conservation stage as the rulers (halach uinic) imposed a rigidly connected, top-down political economic structure (Alexander 2015:327). An essential aspect of this system would have been the centralized collection and redistribution of food, as opposed to kin group management of food resources. At this point, the localized cultural landscape dramatically opened up to regional trade, the material evidence of which is well documented in the sacbe constructions and the ceremonial offerings encountered by Folan and colleagues (Folan et al. 1983:68–69, 71; Kintz 1990:66–67). The pearl, shells, and snails came from the nearby eastern coast. The origins of hematite, jade, and obsidian are not entirely clear; obsidian is not native to the Yucatan peninsula. Ceramic styles show connections with the Puuc region and Chichen Itza. As discussed in Chapter 5, the stelae document strong ties with the Peten. Local economic self-sufficiency was no longer satisfactory; leaders and elites desired outside interactions, prestige status items, and exposure to peers. The Terminal Classic ended in some form of collapse or release, leading to reorganization in the Post-Classic, solidly documented in archaeology by population decline, changes in architectural styles, resetting of the stelae, and a cultural reorientation from the Peten to the East Coast. As outlined earlier, the Spanish Invasion slowly but firmly constructed new geo-political networks from roughly the middle of the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century, into which Coba was legally integrated. However, the social impact of national politics appears to have been minimal since the Coba area lay relatively isolated. The region continued to be

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inhabited by families practicing subsistence-based lifestyles using the milpa forest-garden cycle. This lack of historical information is linked to colonial ideology, which invested no interest in rural and poor Maya farmers. As described, Coba was resettled and reorganized by immigrant families in the mid-twentieth century and formalized as an ejido in the early 1970s. Ejidatarios have redefined Coba’s cultural landscape under the ejido structure set by the national government in Mexico City, albeit applied in local terms, which place high values on allocated land managed according to traditional kin-based and reciprocal social relations. Herein lies the key to heritage analysis in this case study: according to pre-contact Mesoamerican and Maya cyclical concepts of time, each new phase or era carries forward defining or fundamental elements, the “kernel” of a culture, and adapts them to incoming innovations. In the case of Coba these foundational elements are the role of land and its intimate connectedness to Yucatec Maya identity and a time-honored social system grounded in community values. These time-honored elements and values of Maya culture are increasingly threatened by capitalist sales opportunities of ejido lots to foreigners and by the changing goals of personal profits among ejidatarios. They struggle over whether the traditional land-based system or accelerated participation in Western capitalism will empower them more. As long as the traditional ejido system as created in the 1970s prevails, I describe the contemporary cultural landscape of Coba as relatively closed and local, characterized by strong social connectedness balanced by the commitment to explore and slowly integrate new potential (see Alexander 2015:327, Fig. 13.1). Finding 2—Maya Identity and Self-Identification: What It Means to Be Coba Maya in the Global World of the Twenty-First Century

Intangible heritage is directly tied to notions of Maya self-identification (see Katz 2017). Maya ethnogenesis in the Yucatan peninsula—and probably in the entire Maya area—was a process immersed in colonial politics. Matthew Restall’s (2004) analysis of Spanish colonial dictionaries and other sources from approximately the 1560s to 1800 demonstrates that native inhabitants of the peninsula, whom modern scholars identify as “Maya,” did not consistently call themselves that or any other name that would indicate seeing themselves as members of a common ethnic group. When the term Maya is mentioned, it refers to the Yucatec language and native material items with sacred and historical associations, and when

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applied to people, it indicates small groups defined by region or class, possibly connected with the toponym and city “Mayapan.” Restall (2004) further shows that the basis of native self-identification consisted of two fundamental units of social organization: the cah or municipal community, and the chibal or patronym-group. The cah was a geographical entity, including its residential core as well as its agricultural and forested land base. But it was also a socio-political entity and the locus of native political activity and social networks. The chibal (pl. chibalob) was an extended exogamous family. Identity and social activity were generated at the meeting point of cah and chibal (Restall and Gabbert 2017:101–102). My ethnographic work confirms that Yucatec speakers continue to use cah and chibal affiliations. The Coba ejido described has surely absorbed notions of the traditional cah and chibal and integrated them into the ejido structure imposed from the outside. I reason that this effective integration has empowered the Coba ejido to carry Maya heritage and identity forward as a cooperative, community-based organization of land management. When did the name Maya begin to be used? In the mid-sixteenth century the Spanish established the first colonies, and grouping their subjects by assigning names was an essential strategy of the colonial enterprise. The first blanket name category and blanket racial identity Spaniards imposed upon hundreds of native groups was that of indio, which Indigenous people never shared or embraced. As the construction of a colonial order proceeded, naming and categorization slowly took on a more scientific nature and considered geographical regions, such as Yucatan, and cultural characteristics, which the Spanish imagined as bases for a regional sense of identity. Spaniards thus assigned the Yucatec Maya an ethnic identity bounded by regionalism and perceived cultural characteristics (Restall and Gabbert 2017:109–110). In the nineteenth century after Mexico’s independence, many more social categories were born and applied in varying regional and social contexts. Hervik (1999:26–36) investigates various contemporary social categories in Oxkutzcab, from mestizo to catrin and ts’uul, none of which includes the word Maya. He contrasts them with constructions of “the Maya” in the world external to and socially distant from the Maya themselves (Hervik 1999:59–90). These are the Euro-American popular and academic discourses, such as Diego de Landa in the sixteenth century and the National Geographic today, which use the name Maya without questioning and position the modern Maya in relation to archaeological sites and traditional Maya practices. They are about the Maya, not by the Maya.

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Self-identification as Maya by Cobaneros and Yucatec Maya in general is the result of a historical development dubbed “ethnopolitics” that coalesced in the 1960s. Ethnopolitics mobilizes ethnicity for the political purpose of “altering or reinforcing . . . systems of structured inequality” between groups, and in doing so, it “stresses, ideologizes, reifies, modifies, and sometimes virtually re-creates the putatively distinctive and unique cultural heritages of the ethnic groups that it mobilizes” (Rothchild 1981, cited in Restall 2004:81). In other words, ethnopolitics fosters ethnogenesis (Restall 2004:81). In the case of Coba a modern Maya identity that yields economic benefits has been forged by Cobaneros in complex networks with their nonMaya friends, anthropologists, tourism operators, and tourists, ultimately mobilizing the mostly Maya underprivileged. These complex historical processes may have been concealed from many Coba Maya who have been born into, raised, and lived in a social environment of ethnopolitics. They self-identify as Maya instinctively and for their own reasons. Linking back to the spatial model framed by Eric Hirsch (1995; see Introduction to the present volume), that landscape is a cultural process between foregrounded actuality (place/inside/image) and backgrounded potentiality (space/outside/representation), with the foregrounded daily routine in Coba centered on the commercial life in town, based on economic interactions with tourists. Cobaneros readily present themselves to this outside world as Maya, with blanket statements such as “because I speak Yucatec” and “I am proud of my heritage.” The ejido maintains a strong presence in this daily lived routine and controls most political decisions regarding land management. At the same time, there is a background space filled with stories of memories in the consciousness of many Coba Maya, which is partly a reflection of the historical processes discussed. It is a collective memory of oral traditions very specific to the local landscape of Coba with its lakes and ruins. As such, memories are not found in the external construction of the Maya by National Geographic or in textbooks. I begin by paraphrasing some of the stories reported by William Folan and Ellen Kintz in the 1970s and 1980s and then add a few from my ethnographic work between 2014 and 2017, so that they will not get lost. Folan documents that the Iglesia temple is associated with Chibirias or Chiribias (Ix Chebel Yax in Maya), a goddess of regeneration. She was characterized as the contemporary patroness of the village in the 1970s

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and needed to be consulted on important decisions. When she was not informed, she could bring illness to those involved (Folan et al. 1983:71). As Ix Chebel Yax, she is the wife of Itzamna, the pre-contact Maya Creator God, who may be represented in Coba by the crocodile residing in Lake Coba (Folan et al. 1983:12). This is an important comment linking this oral tradition with the local Coba landscape. Other traditions connect Coba with the Cenote Sagrado at Chichen Itza as well as connecting it with central Mexico with an underground sacbe. For other areas not connected to Coba by a real or mythological stone sacbe, local beliefs imagine an aerial sacbe in the form of a blood-filled tube resembling an umbilical cord, symbolizing consanguineal kinship links (Folan et al. 1983:12, 53). This signals a significant extension of the local cultural landscape in the intangible heritage construction of modern Cobaneros. The spatial dimension of umbilical cords has been solidly established in Classic Maya iconography.1 Another pre-contact Maya god, the Merchant God known as Ek Chuah in Yucatan, is represented in murals and on ceramic figures. He is often depicted as a traveler carrying a bag of copal as well as cacao, which was traded at Coba (Folan et al. 1983:12). A more recent story imagines a prehistoric market that would surface in Lake Macanxoc every New Year after dark (Folan et al. 1983:52). In 2014 Amairani, the daughter of Modesto, owner of Hotel Sacbe, shared with me several stories from her grandmother: Strange beings rise from the ruins and its lakes at night; the lake outside the ruins turns upside down at night; on its nightside, there is a beautiful market; ancient Coba was a market—you know—with strong people, Maya people; and there is gold in its center. (Amairani, pers. comm., 2014) José, a non-Cobanero in a managing position at Coqui-Coqui, also told me stories he had heard: Maya rise from the lake; strange beings come out of the ruins at night [not confirmed by night guards at the entrance to the site]; people living near the ruins hear drumming at night. (José, pers. comm., 2014) Ellen Kintz (1990:36–41) documents numerous oral narratives widely shared on the peninsula. The following ones appear to be well known in Coba. A figure called xtabai is the spirit of a beautiful woman who can be encountered at night. She seduces men and leads them astray in the forest.

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The alux are dwarf-tricksters who live in milpas. Kintz (1990:38) describes the U-hanli-col ceremony carried out in the milpas to petition these spirits to safeguard the fields from pests and animals. People know that harvests will be poor if they do not hold this ceremony and provide the ceremonial corn drink saca for the alux. Interestingly, Kintz illustrates the head, one foot, and a sandal of the ceramic figure of an alux found in the archaeological zone. Robey Callahan (2005:60) states that the plaza in front of La Iglesia has been the site of the village’s ch’a’ah chaak rain ceremony held annually in July. The tun are spiritual forces living in large limestone blocks. It is significant that tun links back with the Classic Maya hieroglyph tun, meaning “stone” as well as “year.” Tun surely inhabited the stelae and stone blocks that form the ancient buildings. A particular story comes from the chicleros. If a chiclero was unable to collect sufficient sap to make a profit, he would call to the spirit of Juan del Monte, the guardian of the forest and owner of the chicle. At times Juan del Monte would magically increase the flow of sap, but at other times, he could send death (Kintz 1990:39–40). On a peninsula-wide level, Coba Maya people share, have, and use h-menob, the Yucatec Maya keepers of knowledge and priest-curers. These individuals are trained to carry out curing ceremonies and to communicate with supernatural forces. This background storyscape of collective memories reflects a largely local identity construction by Coba Maya but rarely circulates outside. It is anchored in the local landscape and explains people’s roles and relations within the community. Most of the narratives were recorded in the 1970s and early 1980s, when William Folan, Ellen Kintz, and colleagues conducted their extensive fieldwork. As already pointed out, this was the phase of the dissemination of ethnopolitics. Based upon my ethnographic consultations in 2014 through 2017, few individuals remember such narratives. Luis May Ku, the local Mayanist and cultural broker, could not offer immediate feedback on Chibirias/Chiribias but had to ask around (pers. comm., 2018). I posit that this part of Coba Maya identification stands at the crossroads between being passed on orally by Mayanists like May Ku and being eclipsed in the minds of the younger generation by global economic interactions in the businesses of tourism and land management, increasingly shaped by capitalist motivations. Time will tell if the latter prevails, and if so, the lively background reality sketched out above will become academic science written down in books like the one at hand.

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Here it is vital to refer back to the strong and fundamental Maya concepts of cyclical time explained earlier. According to Maya understandings of time, specific stories may be relegated to written academic texts, but their inner wisdom, truth, and seed will be carried on orally to the next generations. Carlsen (1997:50–54) explains this process as Jaloj-K’exoj among the contemporary Tz’utujil Maya in Santiago Atitlan and likens it to the maize plant. Jal is the change manifested by living beings as they evolve through their life cycles; it is change on the outside, at the husk of the maize plant. By contrast, k’ex occurs inside, at the seed of the maize plant, and refers to generational change. It maintains ancestral wisdom and transfers it into the future, establishing continuity of life. In other words, k’ex is the process of making the new out of the old, which is the quintessence of adjusting cultural traditions to the present and future. As the single maize plant produces multiple seeds or offspring, k’ex is change from one into many. In the words of Carlsen (1997:51), “together jal and k’ex form a concentric system of change within change, a single system of transformation and renewal” in which the individual is embedded within the community. Carlsen’s JalojK’exoj is parallel to Juarez’s wutz of the world, discussed in Chapter 5e. I have emphasized these ideas because they are vital concepts of making heritage useful in the present and future, and they will inform the conclusions and contributions of this book. Finding 3—Impact of Christian Churches on Religion and Worldview

So far, no background data have been presented on the spread and numbers of Christian denominations in Coba. Nevertheless, some of the deeper philosophical levels of life and human identity in differing denominations impact people’s relations within the community as well as with their natural setting. The role of churches is also a major point in comparison with the other case studies in the conclusions to follow. Therefore a brief assessment is necessary. In my observations from 2012 through 2017, I found the Coba urban landscape dotted with small Protestant houses of worship that competed in decibel levels during their nightly services. A small Catholic chapel stands next to the Hotel Sac-Be. Most Cobaneros belong to one of the Protestant denominations and believe in one god (Amairani, pers. comm., 2014).2 Hervik (1999:82–88) approaches his religious assessment of Oxkutzcab from the perspective of perceived threats to traditional Maya culture by the advance of Protestant sects. At the time of his writing in the early 1990s,

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Catholics maintained a large majority, hovering around 80%, compared to Protestants, up to 15%. Hervik cites Mexican academics and official Catholic commentators who claimed that foreign political interests supported the sects; that their strategy was to target the most vulnerable indigenous Maya part of the Yucatecan population; and that “the primordial element of Mexican cultural identity is the Catholic religion” (Hervik 1999:84). Mexican politicians have constructed traditional Maya culture as part of national patrimony, which linked with the Catholic religion, was a cornerstone of Mexican nationalism as well as cultural colonialism. How do Protestants threaten the values of Mexican patrimony? This is clearly not the place for an in-depth discussion of Protestant theology. But a few salient points impacting traditional Maya culture are these: Protestant denominations in general are against wearing traditional Maya dress, such as the huipil, and against alcohol consumption and participation in Maya ritual and dance. Hervik (1999:87) vividly describes the lived gray reality of conversion with the visit to his house of a young man who had changed his Maya name Juan Ek to Jorge Estrella after joining Jehovah’s Witnesses. He wears a suit and tie except when he works in his milpa. Estrella claims that Jehovah’s Witnesses respect the Maya and demonstrates his knowledge of ancient Maya stories to prove his point. He has also improved his social and economic positions through his conversion. It is left open whether this conversion was a tool for socioeconomic mobility or the result of a deeply felt religious conviction. What matters is that the rising numbers of Protestant groups have given Maya people more choices; that is, a growing space for agency and empowerment. And Maya people make their choices and are active agents, just as Americans join Protestant denominations in growing numbers. They choose what they feel empowers them economically and socially. Greater freedom to choose must surely be seen as a statement of independence against the long and brutal history of subjugation and oppression by higher colonial powers including the Catholic Church. On the other hand, the long-term impact of individual choices continues to be observed. At the extreme poles of the academic binary, primary individual-based decision making opposes community structure with regard to religion as well as the ejido. Through such a distanced scientific lens, expanding individual choices feeds into Western-style capitalist, individual-driven mindsets and will likely cloud values and autonomy seated in

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land. However, as shown, the lived reality in Coba is much more complex than this simplified structure, and it is the gift of the Coba people to us that we can share and participate in these processes as tourists, visitors, and friends. There is strong confidence that the deeply rooted concepts of Jaloj-K’exoj or wutz (described earlier) will carry Maya self-identification and associated wisdoms of their land into the future.

III Copacabana

The third case study leads us into the Andes of Bolivia to the small town of Copacabana, situated on the southern shore of Lake Titicaca. I have selected Copacabana and the cultural landscape of the southern Titicaca Basin because Lake Titicaca constitutes the primordial site of creation in pan-Andean myth. More narrowly, this includes the town of Copacabana, the peninsula northeast of Yunguyu, and the Islands of the Sun and of the Moon with their ritually magnetic sanctuaries. The primary ideological and ritual orientation point has been the Sacred Rock and its man-made sanctuary on the northern end of the Island of the Sun. Over time, many stories and legends have been connected with the lake, with these islands on which the origin places are located, and with special places in the surrounding landscape, beginning possibly as early as 1100 B.C. and continuing into the present (Salles-Reese 1997:50–52), thus constructing a stratified cultural memory landscape.1 Because it was the pan-Andean origin place where the god Wiraqocha formed human beings, people kept returning to the region in pilgrimages over time. They left a dense record of material remains and passed on oral narratives, which make Copacabana the Andean case study par excellence to link archaeology with ethnography or memories of the past with daily lived reality. I show how the Inka appropriated the Islands of the Sun and Moon for their specific statedirected stone ideology, which was effectively redirected by the Spanish friars into Christian worship of the Virgin of Copacabana in the

Map 3. Copacabana: Kollasuyu road linking Cusco with the Titicaca Basin. Adapted from Guijarro and Cardelus (2009:341).

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mainland town of Copacabana after the invasion. The Indigenous people residing in the area today speak Aymara and have been the colonial subordinates of multiple regimes of power. In academic discourse Aymara is treated as an identity marker for Indigenous highland people in southern Peru, Bolivia, northern Chile, and northern Argentina, who speak the language. Thus local Copacabana people participate in an Aymara linguistic and cultural identity that encompasses sections of multiple countries on the continent. I further document how Inka stone ideology, Aymara rituals, and Christian beliefs intensify in dynamic live performances during the annual pilgrimages to the Virgin of Copacabana, for which thousands of Bolivians and Peruvians and some foreign tourists fill the town to capacity. It is through this popular religion that the Inka and ancestral Aymara memory landscapes are bound together with the present Christian sites; this kind of Earth Politics shapes new and vital popular heritage, including new shrine or wak’a sites that connect residents with their cultural landscape in ways consistent with their beliefs and needs in the twenty-first century. In the following sections I briefly reconstruct the cultural landscapes of Copacabana, chronologically divided into pre-Inka and Inka, and then focus in on the colonial and present time periods. Archaeology is the primary methodology for exploring pre-Inka and Inka landscapes. Ethnohistory enters as a significant secondary methodology for the late Inka and colonial periods, continued by my ethnographic fieldwork during the August 6 Independence Day pilgrimages to the Virgin of Copacabana in 2015 and 2017. Literature Review To position the literature regarding Copacabana in the context of a de-colonizing Indigenous archaeology, it must be noted that the great majority of published sources focus on Inka presence in the southern Titicaca Basin. They document projects conducted by foreign, mostly U.S. and Peruvian scholars and funded by foreign institutions. The literature leaves a general impression that the material culture of the local Aymara people has not been significant. This chapter is intended to correct such a view. In archaeology the most recent and most comprehensive research

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program on the Islands of the Sun and Moon was conducted by Brian Bauer and Charles Stanish from 1994 to 1996. In the 1994–1995 seasons they surveyed both islands and identified more than 180 pre-contact sites. The survey was followed by test excavations and archaeo-astronomy research during the second season. Their investigation of the Island of the Sun and its Sanctuary and of the Island of the Moon was thoroughly documented and contextualized by Bauer and Stanish (2001). Yet their research area was limited to the two islands, and they did not investigate Copacabana and its immediate surroundings, which are the focus here. The islands and Copacabana were included in the broader study of the development of complex societies in the southern Titicaca Basin by Stanish (2003). Ongoing surveys (as of 2010) on the mainland in the Copacabana area conducted by Jose Maria Lopez Bejarano (2009) are bringing to light the historical layers of occupation. The most pertinent ethnographic writings covering the mainland as well as the islands were composed by Alonso Ramos Gavilán (1887; 1988[1621]; see also MacCormack 2008:559–563) and Bernabé Cobo (1990 [1653]; see also Hamilton 2008:152–155). Ramos Gavilán was born in what is now the Peruvian city of Ayacucho. He visited different regions on the coast and in the highlands of Peru and arrived at Copacabana in 1618. There he began writing his books, interviewing many elders of Copacabana and personally visiting the Island of the Sun. The resulting works are known as Historia de Copacabana y de la Milagrosa Imagen de su Virgen as well as Historia del celebre Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana, completed and published in Lima in 1621. Cobo lived near Lake Titicaca from 1616 to 1617. He arrived at the town of Juli, sailed around the lake, and visited the Island of the Sun. Unlike Ramos Gavilán, he did not begin to write immediately. Cobo continued to travel and collect information and did not complete his extensive project, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, which originally contained 43 books divided into three parts, until 1653. In his chapters on the Islands of the Sun and Moon, he copied from Ramos Gavilán and added his own personal observations.

7 The Cultural Landscapes of Pre-Inka and Inka Copacabana An Archaeological and Ethnohistoric Reconstruction

Small and dispersed human settlements have been documented in the Copacabana cultural landscape, going back several thousand years before Christ (Stanish 2003:89–90). It was not until the Upper Formative (Late Titinhuayani on the Island of the Sun, 500 B.C.–A.D. 400) that populations began to concentrate on the northern end of the Island of the Sun where the Sacred Rock is situated. This is where our discussion of Earth Politics and values associated with the land begins. Comparing Early and Late Titinhuayani settlement patterns, a decrease in numbers but an increase in site size can be detected, resulting in a nucleation of the existing population into fewer but larger settlements. Four large centers, covering three or more hectares, were registered: Titinhuayani, Wakuyu, Kurupata, and Chucaripupata (Figure 7.1; see Bauer and Stanish 2001:145–147). Political organization on the Island of the Sun and the Copacabana mainland can be characterized as emergent elite centers competing for subjects, labor, land, and prestige items by means of intense feasting and ceremony. Chucaripupata emerged as the largest settlement on the northern half of the island and within view of what would become the Sacred Rock. Tiwanaku-style ceramics were found, and the upper portion of the hill-top site became a ritual area and an empowered locale in its own right (Seddon 1998:247, 253–254). Seddon (1998:256, 468–469) argues that the local elite enhanced their prestige through selected contacts with the Tiwanaku polity, but Chucaripupata was not integrated into the Tiwanaku state.1 We can conclude that the cultural landscape of Copacabana oriented toward the island sacred sites as defined in this study began to form in the Late Titinhuayani period or c. 500 B.C.–A.D. 400. We have to be careful

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Figure 7.1. Island of the Sun. Upper Formative/Late Titinhuayani map with Chucaripupata as emerging center in the northern sector, c. 500 B.C.–A.D. 400. Adapted from Bauer and Stanish (2001: Map 6.4), redrawn by Anthony Naimo.

though and emphasize that these are archaeological data. We do not know whether the people living at Chucaripupata at this time viewed the Sacred Rock as their origin site (paqarina). The associated oral narratives (to be discussed) developed later and were manipulated, reinforced, and turned into state ideology by the Inka state. By and large the Spanish wrote down Inka versions of the Andean origin mytho-histories. Sometime in the middle of the first millennium A.D., Chucaripupata was fully integrated into the Tiwanaku state. Whereas the Tiwanaku occupation underlying the present town of Copacabana is complicated to analyze (Casanova 1942:383–391), the excavations of Chucaripupata conducted by Matthew Seddon (1998) provide unique insights into the relational net-

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works by which the Island of the Sun as part of the Copacabana cultural landscape became aligned with the Tiwanaku state. In the later part of the Tiwanaku occupation between A.D. 750 and 850, a thick wall was erected to enclose the open ritual area on the upper level. Inside the walled area a large temple was built, which mimicked the Kalasasaya temple at the site of Tiwanaku in form and construction technique. The amount of precious material and turquoise artifacts increased steeply, and the ceramics show very close parallels with Tiwanaku. Chucaripupata residents did not have long-distance contacts other than with Tiwanaku. Tiwanaku-style vessels were also documented in households; they were produced locally as well as imported. Chucaripupata had essentially become a Tiwanaku affiliate (Seddon 1998:360–368, 469–470). The survey and excavation work directed by Bauer and Stanish (2001:147–149) located 28 Tiwanaku sites on the Island of the Sun and two on the Island of the Moon. They interpret their findings as strong evidence that the islands were a single unified political entity. Bauer and Stanish (2001:149–154) and Seddon (1998:462–475) present compelling arguments that this cultural landscape began to be structured and oriented toward the Sacred Rock under Tiwanaku rule. Survey data show several Tiwanaku sites along the northwest island road—later traveled by Inka pilgrims—leading from the southern end to Chucuripupata. There is astounding evidence from underwater archaeology that the cultural landscape included not only the surface and spatial extent of Lake Titicaca but also the physical nature of its waters and the lake bottom. Underwater research by Ponce Sanguines and colleagues and by Johan Reinhard (in Bauer and Stanish 2001:150) as well as by Peter Eeckhout, Eric Rieth, and Christophe Delaere (2016) has discovered several Tiwanaku and Inka offering places in the lake. On Khoa reef just north of the Island of the Sun, they retrieved Tiwanaku incense burners, finely engraved metal sheets, spondylus shell, beads, and bones as well as numerous stone boxes containing Inka metal figurines of humans and llamas. At Punku, the landing spot on the island’s southern end where pilgrims arrived by reed boat, they found Tiwanaku and Inka ceramics and bone material (Eeckhout et al. 2016). It can be suggested that the Tiwanaku people and then the Inka were seeking beneath the lake surface the complementary half of the lakeshores, puna, and distant snowy mountains. Offerings deposited in the lake would have sunk and found their way to the bottom, just as offerings to the apus (mountains) were carried up high altitude trails. The islands, perceived as

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floating on the lake surface, became the nexus between the extreme points, high and low, on the vertical axis. Seddon (1998:479) reinforces this pointedly: “By appropriating this site [Chucaripupata and the Island of the Sun], Tiwanaku effectively required those seeking to establish a reciprocal relationship with these deities [mountains and water] to do it through Tiwanaku intermediaries.” The substantial investment of labor and worship at the site by the Tiwanaku state implies that it began to gain regional importance. How far did this regional importance reach, in which the Copacabana mainland would certainly have been integrated? Seddon (1998:473–475) explains that it probably did not extend beyond the Titicaca Basin. It should be emphasized that the cultural landscape of Copacabana under Tiwanaku rule included other regional centers, few of which have been investigated; one exception is Mocachi, identified by Eduardo Casanova (1942:338–340, 351–364) on the southeastern side of the Copacabana peninsula. After the collapse of Tiwanaku (c. A.D. 1100), the altiplano landscape became segmented into politically independent units known locally as Aymara señorios. The largest señorios in the southern Titicaca Basin were Colla and Lupaqa, with their respective capitals in Hatuncolla and Chucuito. The Copacabana cultural landscape may have belonged to the Lupaqa señorio (Bauer and Stanish 2001:155). The Altiplano Period (c. A.D. 1100–1400) between the fall of Tiwanaku and the conquest by the Inka is characterized by dispersed fortified hilltop sites surrounded by smaller, undifferentiated settlements (Bauer and Stanish 2001:154–157). There was little political ranking, and populations decreased. At the northern end of the Island of the Sun, there is no evidence of Altiplano occupations in the area of the Sacred Rock. Chucaripupata was abandoned at the collapse of Tiwanaku and remained unoccupied during the Altiplano Period. Thus during the 300-year interlude of the Altiplano Period, the Copacabana cultural landscape temporarily lost its orientation toward the Sacred Rock area, to be regained only with the arrival of the Inka. Inka Copacabana

After the Inka had established Cusco as the capital of a new expansive state rationalized by a new ideology, they began to conquer new territories and spread their influence from the heartland into the four directions to create Tawantinsuyu, the “Land of the Four Quarters.” During the mid-fifteenth century the Titicaca Basin was brought under imperial control as part of

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the region known as Kollasuyu, the southeastern quadrant of the empire. The southeast expansion was part of a well thought-out strategy based on stone ideology (Christie 2016): the Inka had settled in the Cusco heartland only recently, whereas the history of the Copacabana cultural landscape reached back as far as the creation of the world with the first rising of the Sun. Wiraqocha, the pan-Andean creator god, appeared in the Lake Titicaca region when it still lay in darkness because neither the sun nor the moon had been created. He came to Tiwanaku, where he fabricated giants, people, animals, and all other things. Wiraqocha set certain rules of conduct, but people disobeyed. In response Wiraqocha sent a flood that destroyed almost everything. When the flood receded, Wiraqocha traveled to Titicaca, where he created the sun, the moon, and the stars. He formed the different lineages of humankind with the clay of Tiwanaku and gave each group its clothing, language, songs, agricultural systems, and religion. Wiraqocha sent some of the individuals he created to the mountain tops, others to the rivers and springs, and still others into caves. They were to emerge from those liminal locations, turning them into paqarinas of their ayllus and themselves into the founding ancestors (paqarinas = origin places; ayllus = corporate lineages). When his mission on earth was finished, Wiraqocha disappeared into the sea (for more specifics see Salles-Reese 1997:45–88). The Inka linked Lake Titicaca, Wiraqocha, and the Inka (see Urton 1999:39) by adding the creation myth of their dynastic ancestors. On the Island of Titicaca, the Sun—personified as a man in a shining costume— summoned the Inka, represented by Manqo Qhapaq and his wife/sister Mama Oqllu, from the Sacred Rock and adopted them as his children. This rock marks the center of the Sanctuary area and constitutes one of the most empowered stone wak’a in the Andes. Since the rest of humankind was living in a state of barbarism, the Sun conferred a civilizing mission upon the Inka. These divine emissaries traveled to the north and emerged from a cave at Pacariqtambo near Cusco. These original Inka were four brothers sharing the name Ayar and four sisters. One brother, Manqo Qhapaq, carried a golden rod that would sink into the ground at the exact place where, according to the wishes of the Sun, they should settle. The rod was thrust into the ground at either Pacariqtambo or Cusco. Three of the original four brothers were turned into wak’a. The remaining brother, Manqo Qhapaq, had a son with one of his sisters, Mama Oqllu, thus becoming the progenitor of the Inka dynasty (Salles-Reese 1997:93). By absorbing the Lake Titicaca Basin, the Inka gave themselves a history

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that would be recognized by all Andean peoples. These connections between the state, the Sun, and selected rock wak’as were called up at many sites throughout the empire, a tactic I have abbreviated as stone ideology (Christie 2016). Stone ideology was a form of Earth Politics performed through rock wak’a. It was practiced in state-directed pilgrimages from Cusco to the Island of the Sun along the Kollasuyu road. Such pilgrimages probably reenacted the travels of Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu as well as those of other ayllu ancestors in order to bestow a new Inka order upon the empire. The road followed the extended ninth zeq’e line of Kollasuyu from Cusco possibly on to Tiwanaku. Zeq’e lines were conceptual lines marked by wak’a or shrines radiating out from the center of Cusco primarily to define the cultural landscape of the capital (see Stanfield-Mazzi 2013:38). Copacabana and its cultural landscape with rock wak’a were important stations on this pilgrimage route (see Map 3), which is reconstructed here after Bauer and Stanish (2001:213–232), Stanish and Bauer (2004), Cobo (1990:91–99 [1653: Bk.13, Ch.18]), and Ramos Gavilán (1988 [1621]). To my knowledge Spanish writers never described the complete pilgrimage from Cusco to the Island of the Sun or its precise socio-political role. The accounts referenced become prolific only for the last section from the Copacabana area to the main Sanctuary. Who Were the Inka Pilgrims?

Our primary ethnographic writers, Ramos Gavilán and Cobo, were both Spanish clerics. With little understanding of Inka religious, social, or political practices, they must have made the Inka pilgrimage Christian. Archaeologists have given this important point insufficient consideration. Here I offer one cautious answer. Inka state strategy was to calm and integrate subjected territories by relocating large population segments into climatic zones similar to their homelands and replacing them with loyal groups. Known as mitmaq policy, this strategy fundamentally uprooted traditional Andean social organization. Copacabana was particularly affected: 42 nations were relocated here. Ramos Gavilán’s list (1988 [1621]:84–85) of mitmaqkuna groups spans the entire Andean region, from the Quitos, Pastos, Chachapoyas, Canares, and Cayambis in the far north to the Caxamarcas, Yauyos, Quichuas, and Chancas in the central highlands to the Aymaras, Chumbivilcas, Lupacas, and Yungas in the southeast. The relo-

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cated families were allowed to travel back and forth if anything important was left behind in their homeland (Ramos Gavilán 1988[1621]:85). These large-scale population movements most likely provided the social context of what the Spanish misinterpreted as Christian-like pilgrimages. Viewed through the mitmaq lens, it is consistent that these new settlers had to bring offerings and confess to state priests sins that consisted in failing to give their services to Inka idols and in particular to the Sun god and the Inka ruler (Ramos Gavilán 1988[1621]:87). Their travel and visit to the Sun sanctuary on the Island of the Sun were intended to renew them as Inka citizens. Upon their return, they were directed to found their ayllus (Andean corporate lineages) anew in the Copacabana region as members of an Inka order (Kosiba 2015:170–173), perhaps re-performing the wanderings of Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu, who were sent out by the Sun to found the origin sites of their lineage (discussed later). In sum, Spanish writers left very specific accounts of Inka pilgrimages to the Island of the Sun, which have been confirmed in great detail by archaeology. Spanish sources leave out the identity of the pilgrims and a clear ideological context. I argue that the “pilgrims” might have been mitmaqkuna, meaning the thousands of colonists forcefully relocated by the Inka state. Inka Pilgrimage from Yunguyu to the Island of the Sun: An Archaeological and Ethnohistoric Reconstruction

Inka-period pilgrims entered sacred ground at the town of Yunguyu, which marks the access point to the peninsula on which Copacabana is located. At Yunguyu the two sides of the lake come so close together that a land bridge or isthmus is created. Cobo (1990 [1653]:94, 96) states that the Inka had this entrance closed off with a wall extending from one beach to the other. There were gates in this wall, staffed with watchmen and guards, to control the people who came to visit the sanctuaries. Prospective visitors were sent to confessors (see Bauer and Stanish 2001:214–215).2 Ramos Gavilán (1988:127 [1621: Bk.1, Ch.20]) adds that pilgrims were well provided for by the Inka state. At Copacabana they received food and drink, and those who were very poor were given clothing. All the supplies were collected in storehouses or colcas dotting the hills around Copacabana. The physical appearance of Copacabana is poorly understood. The chroniclers tell us that it had at least one temple and that the pilgrims made another confession (Cobo 1990:96 [1653: Bk.13, Ch.18]). Ramos Gavilán is

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more specific in his description (Ramos Gavilán 1988:171–172 [1621: Bk.1, Ch.28]). Since the Inka settlement is overlaid by the modern town, it will not be feasible to explore its full extent any time soon. Bauer and Stanish suggest that “the town of Copacabana served as the regional administrative center for the peninsula and was responsible for guarding and controlling access to the sacred islands” (2001:216). Ramos Gavilán and Martín de Murúa confirm the high standing Copacabana held in the Inka empire.3 Its importance remained unchanged in the colonial period, when families from Copacabana attempted to regain their noble social status as well as their possessions by submitting probanzas (testimonials) to the Spanish Crown in which they tried to prove descent from the Inka royalty (Santos Escobar 1981). The high position of Copacabana is further implied by the contrast between the large number of small settlements on the Island of the Sun and the data from the mainland, where several large sites have been located (Bauer and Stanish 2001:160). This type of evidence suggests that the regional center or brain from which the pilgrimages were coordinated and supervised was not situated on the islands but on the mainland. Copacabana is the most likely candidate because it is past the wall of Yunguyu, and according to Ramos Gavilán and Cobo, it functioned as a major station on the pilgrimage route (Ramos Gavilán 1988:84–85 [1621: Bk.1, Ch.12]; Ramos Gavilán 1887:13). This empowered role of Copacabana within the Inka state is also reflected by parallels in the rock art. No other Inka settlement outside the Cusco region and Urubamba Valley exhibits such a large number of sculpted boulders in a style very similar to the Cusco examples (Hyslop 1990:121; Christie 2016). The carved rock complexes of Copacabana are conceptually linked to the Sacred Rock on the Island of the Sun and stone ideology to legitimize the Inka state (Christie 2016). I now briefly investigate five places (1–5) in the Copacabana area with empowered rocks that are connected with pilgrimages. (1) Intinkala: The best known site within the city limits is Intinkala (Figure 7.2), situated near the cemetery on the road to La Paz. According to Portugal and Ibarra (1957:25), the Aymara spelling is Intin Qala, and according to Aymara tradition, it was the place “where the sun sat.” The Aymara continue to place offerings on the rocks on June 21, which marks the beginning of their new year.4 The site consists of a group of finely carved boulders. The carvings are primarily vertical and horizontal cuts forming

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Figure 7.2. Copacabana, carved rock of Intinkala. Photograph by Brian Garrett.

platforms and seats. The boulders are associated with several walls, one of which leads in the direction of a wetland. The drawing documents the spatial relations of all the features noted on the surface (Figure 7.3). In 1975 cleaning and excavation conducted by the Instituto Nacional de Arqueología (INA) uncovered walls built directly on the rocks, traces of a paved floor, and a system of drainage canals (Rivera Sundt 1978). In 2015 the Aymara elder Dionisio Callisaya Mamani (discussed later) told me that there had been more large table and bench formations at Intinkala to perform ceremonies; some of these carved rocks could be seen in the church cemetery above; and ancient stones were used in the construction of the cemetery church (Dionisio Callisaya Mamani, pers. comm., 2015). A short distance farther on the road to La Paz sits a second group of smaller boulders sculpted into seats and platforms. Local people call this second group Orcohawira, Rio Macho, or Rio Fuerte. The cuts are straight, forming full ninety-degree angles, and demonstrate high quality of craftsmanship. In between the rocks is a wetland, which appears to receive water from the higher slopes. Perhaps this water source is the reason why the site

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Figure 7.3. Copacabana, Intinkala, site plan. Plan by Jessica Christie and Brian Garrett.

is referred to as “Rio.” These carvings were first documented by Roberto Mantilla in 1968 (Mantilla 1972). INA as well as Elizabeth Arkush (2005) report scatters of fine Inka ceramics at and around both rock art sites. Hermann Trimborn (1967:19–23) argues that the boulder with the largest number and best executed carvings at Intinkala functioned as a solar observatory. Another possibility is that the carvings of the main boulder might have been used as counting devices. I have argued elsewhere (Christie 2016) that rock complexes with grid-like carvings functioned not only as places where offerings were presented but also as locations where such offerings were accounted for and perhaps transcribed and recorded on khipu (counting devices made of knotted cords). The main boulder at Intinkala could have registered three types of objects in quantities up to three decimal units (singles, tens, and hundreds).5

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Such a context could have been the primary function of the whole site of Intinkala; a very large number of pilgrims passed through Copacabana, and they all brought some type of offering for the local shrines. Pilgrims and offerings could have been counted on the carved platforms. As has already been pointed out, there were numerous storehouses in the surroundings of Copacabana (Ramos Gavilán (1888:127 [1621: Bk.1, Ch.20]). The Inka must have kept track in some form of the supplies being handed out to pilgrims, warriors, and priests and of new supplies coming in. All these counting activities may have been conducted at Intinkala. It is further possible that Intinkala was the location where the idol of Copacabana was on display. Ramos Gavilán describes it and reports on its setting (Ramos Gavilán 1887:45). This passage is intriguing because Gavilán suggests that the idol was placed near carved rocks on the road to Tiquina. Today Intinkala and Orcohawira are indeed next to the main road to La Paz, which passes through Tiquina, and more than likely represent the location to which Gavilán refers. (2) “Horca del Inka”: On a hill above Intinkala/Orcohawira sits a site nicknamed “Horca del Inka” (Gallows of the Inka). According to Portugal and Ibarra (1957:26), local Aymara people continue to call this hill Seroqa, which is derived from siri oqha and means “voice of the hung.” Such nicknames came from the description by Ramos Gavilán (1988:175 [1621: Bk.1, Ch.28]). Although there are no rock sculptures at Horca del Inka in the style of Intinkala or Orcohawira, the natural stone was clearly modified, and this site is part of the cultural landscape of Copacabana. Modifications are visible in two natural stone pillars that have been cut to support a lintel between them (Figure 7.4). The bedrock at the base of the pillars has been carved to provide the footing for a stone wall, of which only a few blocks remain. Looking through the Horca del Inka to the west, the viewer takes in the wide blue expanse of Lake Titicaca, while the view east is blocked by natural rock formations. The astronomical alignments of the Horca del Inka were not fully understood until 1978, when Oswaldo Rivera Sundt documented that a hole in a crag to the northeast casts a well-defined spot of light onto the center of the lintel on the morning of the June solstice. At sunrise on the September equinox, the crag casts a shadow on the lintel, while the vertical pillars are illuminated (Arkush 2005; Bauer and Stanish 2001:207–209; Rivera Sundt 1978:79–80, 1984). Thus the Horca del Inka together with this hole were probably devised as a solar observatory.

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Figure 7.4. Copacabana, Horca del Inka at June solstice sunrise in 2012. Photograph by Brian Garrett.

The Inka use of the Horca del Inka highlights the importance of the sun cult in Inka ideology. This site is linked thematically with the Sacred Rock on the Island of the Sun, known as the birthplace of the Sun and the final destination of the pilgrims. (3) “Baño del Inca,” Hacienda Kusijata: The third site is mentioned by Gavilán as the “handmade tank where the Inca relaxed and bathed.” This description appears to match a pre-contact monument known as “Baño del Inca,” and situated in the former Hacienda Kusijata, a couple of kilometers

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Figure 7.5. Copacabana, Kusijata, “Baño del Inca.” Photograph by Jessica Christie.

to the north of Copacabana (Figure 7.5). According to Javier Escalante Moscoso (1997:371), the Hacienda Kusijata was built over the foundations of an Inka palace to which the Baño del Inca belonged. Rivera Sundt (1978:82) concurs that the royal family lived there, for which the Department of Ethnohistory of INA supposedly has evidence. Only the Baño was documented by E. George Squier (1877) in the nineteenth century and by Trimborn in the 1960s. Trimborn (1967:29–31) reproduced Squier’s drawing and added a plan and section view created by his team.

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This monument consists of a large and open cylindrical basin that was carved out of a single piece of rock and now exists free-standing in the garden of Kusijata. The inner surface is smoothed, and the edge is recessed. Today water enters through one gap via a sloping stone-constructed canal and exits through a second gap where it drips into a canal diverted to a field. In 2015 the elder Dionisio Callisaya Mamani added interesting commentary. According to his account, Kusijata is situated at the foot of the hill on which Manqo Qhapaq was born (Dionisio Callisaya Mamani, pers. comm., 2015). He demonstrates an interest in localizing the sacred landscape of the Island of the Sun on the mainland just outside Copacabana. Additional sources reinforce this point, as shown later. Dionisio continued that the Inka bath served to ferment chicha (corn beer); the bath was called llata; the two gaps for inflow and outflow are called q’asi; and together they compose the name qasallata or Kusallata: thus kusa stands for chicha and llata for tank. He explained the name Copacabana as Kopha Kahuaya, meaning “foam of the lakeshore” (pers. comm., 2015). Dionisio shows how he views his cultural landscape in local Aymara terms, reinforcing the importance of language as agentive local identification. Kusijata and the Baño del Inca are not specifically mentioned in the accounts of the pilgrimages by Ramos Gavilán and Bernabe Cobo. Nevertheless pilgrims passed them and must have known them on their walk from Copacabana to Yampupata, the transfer station to the Island of the Sun. (4) Llallagua hill: Site 4 was surely visited by pilgrims during their stay in Copacabana. It is the hill Llallagua, mentioned several times by Ramos Gavilán. His spelling varies slightly (Llallagua, Llallinaco), but I suspect he is referring to the same hill that corresponds today with the Calvario hill and its slightly lower peak (Figure 7.6).6 We will revisit both hills in the contemporary heritage section. A visitor climbing up along the stations of the cross arrives at a platform where the path divides; the main trail turns toward Copacabana and winds up to the top of the hill occupied by the large Christian sanctuary. From the opposite site of the platform, a small trail leads up a second and lower hill, the top of which is covered with stone foundations that appear to be pre-contact. Local people call this hill the Calvario of Santa Barbara. A surface investigation revealed the low walls of a rectangular platform with rounded corners, facing toward the Christian sanctuary (Figure 7.7a). Natural rock outcrops are integrated into the rear façade of this platform. In June 2003

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Figure 7.6. Copacabana, Calvario hill with Calvario and Santa Barbara peaks. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

one prominent rock was covered with flowers and burnt offerings. One shaman showed me a crack on the rear side of this boulder (Figure 7.7b) and explained that it had been struck by lightning and is therefore a place for brujería (black magic). A doll and burnt black candles in a niche constructed in front of this rock signal such a function (June 2012). What the Inka did on the platform is far less clear. There is one passage by Ramos Gavilán that may be addressing the hill with the platform.7 Following Gavilán, I think the pre-contact platform with the rounded corners could have marked the endpoint of the races where the young elite runners were rewarded or punished, and that its hill was Llallinaco. A similar event seems to have taken place in Cusco. Pedro de Cieza de León (1959:34–35 [1553:ii, VII]) states that Ayar Kachi appeared to his brothers on the hill of Huana-cauri and gave instructions of how puberty rites for young noble men and preparatory accession ceremonies for Inka rulers were to be conducted. In one episode of the accession procedures, the prospective ruler had to run up “a hill known as Anaguar” so that onlookers could see how fast he was and how brave he would be in war. The similarity and context of these state-sponsored competitions, the interest the Inka ruler took in them, and the high awards he gave out further reinforce the superior role and privileged position Copacabana held in Inka politics and its ideological links with the cultural landscape of Cusco. (5) Copacati: Included in the cultural landscape of Copacabana is Copacati, a carved rock complex situated on a steep, rocky hill near the road

Figure 7.7. Copacabana, Santa Barbara platform with Calvario peak in the distance. Inset (right) shows stone wak’a/ shrine split by lightning. Photographs by Jessica Christie.

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between Copacabana and Kasani, the Bolivian border control. It probably served as one of the waystations pilgrims had to pass when walking from Yunguyu to Copacabana. Carvings are distributed at various levels of altitude (Figure 7.8). Approaching the site, the visitor passes a single, slightly rounded triangular seat below a pictograph portraying red geometric patterns. It has been likened to the Kollasuyu flag, and hence the painting as well as the whole site of Copacati has been nicknamed Banderani. The pictograph is most likely not Inka, because it was not an Inka custom to paint on rocks (see also Escalante Moscoso 1997:371).8 Farther uphill there are large cut stone blocks and a number of walls, which I tried to identify as well as they can be observed on the surface without excavation. One significant feature is a rectangular stone block with three carved steps descending from both upper corners.9 A series of seat-like carvings is situated farther up along the foot of the steep outcrop. Porfirio Huanca Sanchez, a local guardian and guide at Copacati, pointed to a rounded depression in the wall above the upper seat and explained that during the rainy season in February and March water seeps out of this depression, trickles down the carvings, and collects in a crude canal that terminates in three deep cavities. While there was no water coming out in June 2003, water stains on the rocks confirmed Porfirio’s statements. Most intriguingly, he referred to a small and shallow square carving on the lowest step, which is clearly defined by four ridges, and said that once another idol in the form of a monolith stood there, facing Lake Titicaca. Although there is only the formal evidence of the square depression to substantiate his interpretation, it identifies a possible location for the Copacati idol (see later description). Farther along, the trail leads straight up to the top, which forms two peaks. Between these peaks a small stream trickles downhill. It irrigates a series of cultivated terraces and eventually collects in a deep depression on a lower level before it runs down the cliff wall. The largest number of carvings, and technically the most superb, can be found in the upper sector on top of the two peaks. On the higher peak is a group of seat-like carvings. These are examples that resemble the prototypes in the Cusco region. I believe the most important features of rock art are the two levels of finely cut platforms and shallow planes forming what the naked eye perceives as 90-degree angles, and I reason that all or some of the sculpted grids were not only places where offerings were deposited but also places where such offerings were counted (as noted in the preceding Intinkala description).

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Figure 7.8. Copacabana, Copacati, geometric rock carvings. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

On the lower peak, more seat-like carvings, steps, platforms, and shallow planes produced by vertical and horizontal cuts can be found. Along the edge of the outcrop toward the present road are two parallel rows of shallow rectangular carvings providing footing for two rings of walls. While we can only guess the height of these walls, they would have concealed the carvings, and any kind of activities performed there, from public view. The road is, of course, a modern construction, but it follows the ancient pilgrimage route closely.10 Copacati has been reported on by Portugal Zamora (1977), Rivera Sundt (1978), Escalante Moscoso (1997:371–373), and Arkush (2005:220–222). Furthermore, Ramos Gavilán mentions Copacati in the context of an idol that must have been similar to the Copacabana idol mentioned.11 Gavilán’s description of the location of the Copacati idol is so specific that he mentions the rock carvings. There can be little doubt that one of the functions of the Copacati rock sculptures was to serve as a setting for this idol, and the guide Porfirio Huanca Sanchez may have identified its location(s).12 In sum, the primary function of Copacati in the pilgrimage context had to do with the counting of pilgrims and their offerings at the sculpted rows of seats, platforms, or steps. Given the fact that Copacati overlooks the pilgrimage route and is situated very near the first control station at

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Yunguyu, Inka administrators could have controlled how many pilgrims passed through, what kinds of offerings they carried, and how many. From Copacabana the pilgrims walked approximately three hours to the port of Yampupata on a well-made road, sections of which can be seen parallel to the present road (Ramos Gavilán 1988:127 [1621: Bk.1, Ch.20]). At Yampupata there are still the remains of a small Inka site, which may have served as a place for pilgrims to spend the night before crossing over to the Island of the Sun (Bauer and Stanish 2001:217). Yampupata is situated at the end of a land formation that projects out from the Copacabana Peninsula toward the Island of the Sun (see Bauer and Stanish 2001: Map 8.1). The pilgrims went in reed boats on this one- to two-kilometer trip and landed at the southeastern tip of the island, which was simply called Punku, meaning entrance. Ephraim George Squier (1877) crossed the strait in a reed boat in 1864 and described the landing place and the associated port. Most interesting is his plan of the small site of Punku, which marked the beginning of the pilgrimage road on the Island of the Sun (reproduced in Bauer and Stanish 2001:219, Fig. 8.1). Today the walls of Punku are barely visible, but the flattened plaza area in front stands out. The road itself remains well defined, while the rocky landing spot is abandoned and isolated. From this landing place the road climbs, and the pilgrims began their trip to the Sanctuary on the opposite end of the island. From Punku to Yumani the ancient road is easy to follow and leads through well-made terraces. The pilgrims soon came to the site of Pilco Kayma, located below the road and nearer to the water.13 It is an imposing two-story, multichambered structure nested within the terrace system, which the pilgrims in all likelihood visited. At Yumani, they probably passed by the Fountain of the Inka to replenish their water supplies. It is a three-spout fountain that still provides abundant water, and today it overlooks the primary port of Yumani. Near Yumani the pilgrims climbed the slope, and the road continued along the ridge of the island. On this route they passed the site of Apachinacapata, which was one of the largest Inka villages on this island. Today one can see the walls of several rooms standing in agricultural fields. The masonry is crude, and the door openings are surprisingly low. Past Apachinacapata the road divided: travelers could continue along the ridge to the Sanctuary area, or they could take another road that led through several Inka villages along the northeast lakeshore. The ridge route is straight and

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Figure 7.9. Island of the Sun, extensive terrace systems. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

very well defined, and still today one can make a leisurely walk from Yumani to the Sacred Rock in approximately three hours. On the island routes, pilgrims would have traversed ecological landscapes shaped and manipulated by the Inka state. Gavilán and Cobo (in MacCormack 2010:59) report that special plants were introduced and cultivated, including coca, maize, molle, and aliso trees. Extensive terrace systems, now abandoned, bear witness along the east side of the Island of the Sun (Figure 7.9). The potential agricultural yield of these terraces greatly exceeds the amount needed to feed the island population. They and their harvests were likely the property of Inti, the Sun deity, and in political reality administered by the Inka state and priesthood. In broader terms, the evidence seems to suggest that the Inka also attempted to manipulate the ecology of the islands by planting an idealized landscape that reflected the diversity (MacCormack 2010:59) and totality of the empire by bringing together plants from the four suyu (suyu are the four quarters of the Inka empire, Tawantinsuyu) in these paramount island locales. That ideology weighed more heavily than biology is reflected in Gavilán’s comment that coca would not grow, since it thrives only in warm, moist climates.

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As the pilgrims approached the Sanctuary area, they had to pass several more checkpoints. It should be noted that they were led away from the remains of the Tiwanaku ceremonial and pilgrimage center, Chucaripupata, nearby. Inka pilgrimage planning appears to disallow any memories of the earlier site. Here I paraphrase the reconstruction offered by Bauer and Stanish (2001:224–231, 179–212) closely, because their work brings together current archaeological data and ethnographic sources about the Sacred Rock (see also Bauer et al. 2004). Cobo reports only one entrance to the Sanctuary area, which was called Intipuncu. Ordinary travelers were not allowed to approach the Sacred Rock itself but could view it from the Intipuncu gateway. There they had to hand over their offerings to the shrine attendants. Cobo describes the location of Intipuncu with enough detail that it can be identified on the ground today (1990:97–98 [1653: Bk.13, Ch.18]). Ramos Gavilán presents a colorful account of three gateways, and at each one the pilgrims had to meet with priests.14 Bauer and Stanish (2001:225–229) have identified the remains of the three gateways. The eastern outer limit of the Sanctuary area is defined by a low wall through which the lakeside route passes. From the point where this wall and the road intersect, the traveler gains a first view of the Sacred Rock. This entrance may be Pumapuncu, which Ramos Gavilán describes as the first of three gateways. Non-elite pilgrims may not have been allowed to advance any further; but they may have been permitted to gather and observe certain ceremonies performed at the Sacred Rock from a platform that Bauer and Stanish documented along the wall and near the ridge of the island. Those who were allowed to go on descended a series of large stone steps. At the end of this descent lies the site of Mama Ojlia. Bauer and Stanish mapped and partially excavated this site. They conclude that the Inka erected these structures as living quarters for shrine personnel. Their findings are consistent with Cobo’s and Ramos Gavilán’s reports (cited earlier). As the road rises again toward the Sacred Rock, it crosses an expanse of bedrock on which there are two large, natural marks resembling giant supernatural footprints. Both Ramos Gavilán and Cobo refer to them, and as noted, Cobo points out that they should be attributed to natural causes. Bauer and Stanish (2001:227) observed the remains of a wall running perpendicular to the road just before the footprints. A gap in this wall, where the road passed through it, and three stone steps clearly indicate the location of a former doorway, most likely corresponding to the entrance named

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Intipuncu by Cobo and Kentipuncu by Ramos Gavilán (already cited). Beyond the footprints the road levels off and enters the plaza of the Sacred Rock. Although there are no visible foundations of another gateway, Bauer and Stanish interpret the entrance zone to the plaza as representing the third gateway, which Ramos Gavilán calls Pillco-puncu. The immediate area of the Sacred Rock consists of the rock itself and a plaza adjoining it to the southwest. Bandelier (1910:214–225) has provided us with the earliest academic investigation and interpretation of this site. The Sacred Rock does not contain any carvings. One side of the rock descends toward the lake, while the other side forms a vertical front facing the plaza. This vertical rock front rises nearly 5.5 meters and lines the north side of the plaza. The west side of the plaza is defined by an Inka wall that runs from the Sacred Rock to a smaller, isolated outcrop. Bauer and Stanish (2001:196–199) reconstruct this wall with a central trapezoidal doorway and 11 small trapezoidal windows. The east edge of the plaza was marked by the third gateway, while the south side remains open and is crossed by the Inka road that leads from the main entryway of the Sanctuary in the east to the Chincana in the west (discussed later). The descriptions of the Sacred Rock provided by Ramos Gavilán and Cobo (1990:96–97 [1653: Bk.13, Ch.18]) are truly impressive.15 At principal ceremonies the concave front of the Sacred Rock was covered by sheets of gold and silver, and its other sides were hung with the finest cumbi cloth (a tight tapestry weave in multiple colors) produced in the empire. The lavish use of such restricted precious materials indicates that the Sacred Rock of the Sun, Manqo Qhapaq, and Mama Oqllu was surely one of the most potent places in the pre-contact Andes. As we will see, textiles covered with embroidery in gold and silver colors used to dress sacred figures continue to be of great importance in contemporary pilgrimages. Although the cumbi cloth and the gold and silver are long gone,16 Bauer and Stanish (2001:196–206) were able to verify some of Ramos Gavilán and Cobo’s descriptions archaeologically. The cut andesite blocks in the plaza may be the remains of an elaborate construction that once stood in or near it. There is no source of andesite on the island, and therefore they must have been brought by boat from the mainland. The present arrangement of andesite blocks and a large slab of white sandstone forming a table surrounded by seats is recent, but the original construction could have been the temples of the Sun, Thunder, and Lightning mentioned by Ramos Gavilán (1988:93 [1621: Bk.1, Ch.13]) and Cobo (1990:97 [1653: Bk.13, Ch.18]). The test units excavated by Bauer and Stanish in the plaza provided

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Figure 7.10. Island of the Sun, Sacred Rock sanctuary, as it appears today. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

offering materials, such as fragments of miniature Inka bowls (2001:203). Most significant were the remains of a small stone canal that ran from the concave section of the Sacred Rock past the west wall of the plaza. Since there is no natural source of water in the plaza area, the canal must have been built by the Inka to drain liquid offerings from the plaza. Both Ramos Gavilán and Cobo speak of a stone basin in front of the Sacred Rock into which local people poured chicha for the Sun to drink. Bauer and Stanish (2001:208–212) complemented their archaeological work with astronomical research. As seen from the Sanctuary area, the sun sets over a ridge, called Tikani, to the northwest. Together with David Dearborn, they identified two structures on this ridge that flank the position at which the Sun sets on the June solstice, as viewed from the plaza (Seddon and Bauer 2004). Their findings indicate that part of the June solstice celebrations involved watching the sun set between these structures, which so conspicuously marked the event. The elite stood in the plaza in front of the Sacred Rock, while the non-elite gathered on the platform outside the Sanctuary wall at the first gateway described. The most elaborate architecture in the Sanctuary area stands roughly two hundred meters to the west of the Sacred Rock and has been called the Chincana or labyrinth. Ramos Gavilán (see endnote) and Cobo (1990:97– 98 [1653: Bk.13, Ch.18]) give similar accounts, describing the structures as a storehouse of the Sun and a house of the mamacona (attendants).17

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Today the Chincana is relatively well preserved, and its walls stand two to three meters high. The whole building complex may be divided into two architecturally different sectors. The east sector consists of small rooms, narrow passageways, and two small central patios. This type of architectural layout suggests private use. The western sector has larger rooms and more open spaces, in particular the plaza. A number of walls display large niches. The spring Ramos Gavilán and Cobo mention still exists in a room on the west side of the plaza, but there are no more trees. The trickle of the spring water can be followed to the south end of this sector, where it runs down a slope next to a crudely carved rock, forms a wetland, and slowly filters into the ground. This carved rock was likely part of the baths mentioned by Ramos Gavilán and Cobo. Bauer and Stanish’s surface collections and excavations recovered only Inka pottery. They conclude that the Chincana was built as a state installation by the Inka. Following Ramos Gavilán and Cobo, they propose that the eastern sector served as the storehouse of the Sun, while the mamacona and other attendant personnel lived in the west sector with its spring and tree garden (Bauer and Stanish 2001:195–196; Bauer et al. 2004:51–63). When pilgrims returned on the northeast lakeshore road, they passed through Kasapata. This site lies approximately halfway between the community of Challapampa and the Sanctuary area, between two large hills (Bauer and Stanish 2001:173; Bauer et al. 2004:74–81). The site is of great interest because early excavations by Bandelier (1910:203–214) and recent excavations by Bauer and Stanish (2001:173–179; Bauer et al. 2004:74–81) have brought to light material evidence of the kinds of activities that took place here and bring the cultural landscape to life. The architectural remains, artifacts, and one carved rock are evidence that Kasapata was a complex settlement. The site has been interpreted as “a village where Topainga Yupangue had his royal palace constructed” (Ramos Gavilán 1988:86 [1621: Bk.1, Ch.12], translation miner), “a tambo or inn for the pilgrims to stay in” (Cobo 1990:93 [1653: Bk.13, Ch.18]). The principal building with five doorways has been interpreted more specifically as “as a place of worship . . . a residence of the Inga, and . . . one of the many pleasure grounds which he possessed throughout the island” (Pentland, cited by Bauer et al. 2004:74); as the Temple of the Sun by Squier; and as the palace of Thupa Inka Yupanki by Bandelier (see Bauer and Stanish 2001:178). Bauer and Stanish emphasize public use of the large structure with five trapezoidal doorways and liken it to kallanka, which are long rectangular

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buildings with multiple doorways where festivals were held during rainy weather (Gasparini and Margolies 1980:196–219). They conclude that the principal building “served as a public gathering place in which ritual feasting and drinking took place” (Bauer and Stanish 2001:179). Furthermore, Bauer and Stanish note an account of the Capac Raymi festival in which Ramos Gavilán may be describing the site of Kasapata.18 The “temple” with five doors referred to by Gavilán matches the principal structure of Kasapata closely. It is also relevant that Ramos Gavilán calls the plaza “Aucaypata.” This is the name of the central plaza in Cusco and thus establishes a link between the layout of Kasapata and Cusco, the Inka capital. Most pilgrims crossed over from the Island of the Sun to the Island of the Moon, where they worshipped at a temple staffed by women. This temple was dedicated to the Moon and Qoya, the queen and wife of the Inka, and its remains correspond with the archaeological site of Inak Uyu (see Bauer and Stanish 2001:64–131). From there, the pilgrims returned to Copacabana. Analysis of the Cultural Landscape of Inka Copacabana

The reconstructions presented demonstrate that the Inka cultural landscape of Copacabana was not so much local but Cusco centered. Cusco was the capital of the Inka empire, the center of the world as the Inka defined it (Tawantinsuyu or Land of the Four Quarters), the seat of the state and the brain of stone ideology instituted as a tool to aid in the validation of Inka authority throughout the Andes. The pilgrimage from Cusco to Copacabana and the Island of the Sun should be seen as the social performance of these strategies and their metaphorical connections. I have discussed the specifics elsewhere (Christie 2016); here I restate the most salient links between the Copacabana cultural landscape and Cusco. By appropriating the Titicaca creation narrative, the Inka constructed three important ideological links with the Sun, the underworld, and the material and essence of stone. The Inka version explains the father-child relationship between the Sun and Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu, the first mythohistorical Inka king and queen. Second, Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu were called forth by the Sun from openings in a rock outcrop (the Sacred Rock). This setting evokes symbolic links with stone, caves, and the underworld. The Inka version of the origin myth continues by telling us that the ancestors hiked underground, to re-emerge from the caves at Pacariqtambo. Thus, clearly, the ancestral Ayar brothers and sisters have ties

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with the underworld, which Andean people envision as streams of water circulating to the upperworld. Third, both emergence sites are rock outcrops. Stone is the material par excellence, which the Inka reshaped and rebuilt into meaningful places, taking on various forms and constituting a new order defined by statecraft. Inka rulers engaged with their stony creations as interdependent social actors who personified empowered locales in the landscape (Swenson and Jennings 2018). The origin sites laid the foundation of the strategy of stone ideology. Another aspect of Inka appropriation was that they excluded from their cultural landscape the nearby Chucaripupata, the Tiwanaku ceremonial center, which had thrived five hundred years earlier. Walls would have been visible and local people would have been aware of its presence; but state ideology did not allow people to build memories around them. Salles-Reese points out an important change in the two creation master narratives. Wiraqocha created the natural order represented by the hills, stars, plants, animals, and humankind as equal elements within a whole. In turn, humankind produced the social order, consisting of lineages, who again relate to each other on an equal and horizontal level. Only the Inka myth of origin introduces hierarchies in both orders: within the natural order, the Sun is now privileged and reigns supreme. In the social order, the Inka hold the highest status because of their very association with the Sun (Salles-Reese 1997:97–98). We return to this point later. The Inka cultural landscape of Copacabana can thus be characterized as a dynamic interplay of a centripetal drive toward the Sanctuary overlaid by the centrifugal forces implied by the origin narrative, which emphasizes that first Wiraqocha and then the Sun sent the ancestors out and away to found their ayllus and panaqas (royal corporate lineages). This dynamic interplay of spatial movements was coordinated from Cusco and integrated into the zeq’e system of the capital city. Zeq’es were conceptual lines marked by wak’as or shrines, radiating out from the city center and structuring its cultural landscape. The pilgrimage route was one such extended zeq’e and turned Copacabana into a center of travel and population movements after the model of Cusco. Both Copacabana and Cusco fall under the Aymara toponym Taypi Qala, meaning a central stony place, transforming panAndean ideas into Inka stone ideology (Christie 2016:140–145).

8 The Cultural Landscapes of Colonial and Present-Day Copacabana

While we have acknowledged the Christian lens used by Ramos Gavilán and Cobo, church documents (Concilios Limenses 1551–1772, in MacCormack 1984: notes 45,51) do register overlaps between Inka and Catholic ritual practices of fasting, confessing, and repenting sins during pilgrimages—albeit directed to very different higher entities. Such commonalities in performance greatly facilitated the gradual merging of the two religious traditions after the Spanish Invasion of Cusco in 1535. The spread of Catholicism was inextricably linked to the advance of European culture and reached all parts of the Inka empire in the succeeding decades. The southern shores of Lake Titicaca were first evangelized by a group of Dominicans, and a church was erected in Copacabana. In 1589 the Augustinians assumed oversight and built their first chapel between 1614 and 1618. The present Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana was begun in 1668, inaugurated in 1678, and fully completed in 1805 (Figure 8.1). This monumental building houses the famous statue of the Virgin of Copacabana sculpted by the Inka Francisco Tito Yupanqui in 1582–1583. She is the destination of passionate pilgrimages by Bolivians and Peruvians each year on February 2, her feast day commemorating the arrival of Tito Yupanqui’s completed statue in Copacabana in 1583 (see Ramos Gavilán 1887:65–68, capítulo V), and on August 6, Bolivia’s Independence Day. Through these actions the Catholic Church founded a new Christian landscape under the order of God. The Augustinian friars did not contest the Island of the Sun but carved out their own protected and controlled space of the Convent and Basilica of the Virgin of Copacabana in mainland Copacabana. The faithful who enter this space come into the presence of their beloved Virgin and are purified and renewed by the holy water the padres dispense.

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Figure 8.1. Copacabana, Basilica and Convent of the Virgin of Copacabana, built 1668–1678. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

How the Virgin of Copacabana came to replace Inka pilgrimages to the Sanctuary of the Sun is an interesting tale well mined by Sabine MacCormack (1984). In the sixteenth century many of the Inkas remaining in Copacabana were allied to Inkas supporting the Spaniards in Cusco and maintained a position in the upper moiety or Anansaya, according to the traditional pan-Andean social system. The Indigenous Aymara-speaking inhabitants of Copacabana comprised the lower moiety or Urinsaya. When a drought hit the region in 1582, discussions arose to nominate a patron saint and form a confraternity. Anansaya wanted the Virgin and Urinsaya opted for Saint Sebastian. The choice of the Virgin by the Anansaya Inka was well thought out because the Virgin had facilitated the victory of the Spaniards in the siege of Cusco and would serve as a political tactic by the Anansaya Inka to align themselves with the new Spanish conquerors over the native Aymara. The Virgin was indeed selected over Saint Sebastian, and the Anansaya Inka Francisco Tito Yupanqui carved the cult image in 1583.1 Even in 2015 the elder Dionisio Callisaya Mamani still told me that Francisco Tito Yupanqui was Urinsaya (Aymara) and not Inka. He added that Francisco’s statue replaced the Copacabana idol, which

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was thrown in the lake (Dionisio Callisaya Mamani, pers. comm., 2015). The cultural landscape of colonial Copacabana now became centered in the Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana and personified by Francisco Tito Yupanqui’s statue of the Virgin; this process implies a spatial shift from the Island of the Sun to the mainland. The Cultural Landscape of Present-Day Copacabana

Today the Municipality of Copacabana is a modest tourist town with about 6,000 inhabitants situated in the Province of Manco Kapac and the Departamento La Paz. It is still a kind of thoroughfare for travelers coming from Peru and headed to La Paz. Most tourists stop for a couple of nights to visit the Islands of the Sun and Moon on their route to La Paz (see Map 3). The Catholic religious center is the Basilica and Convent of the Virgen of Copacabana, enclosed by a perimeter wall in the middle of town. The primary entrance through this wall opens towards the main plaza, adjacent market areas, and transportation terminal, which form the secular commercial centers. A secondary religious focal point is Mount Calvario with its double peaks; the shoreline and beach area of Copacabana constitute another commercial and social node. The Inka sites already discussed lie inside the urban fabric or near the transportation route from Peru to La Paz. These sites and the entire town come to life in religious celebrations that interlace Aymara heritage, Catholicism, and contemporary political economy. I discuss eight sites at which local Aymara people from the Copacabana region build their contemporary cultural heritage landscape by selectively choosing and drawing from the past what responds to their present needs. These sites and their meanings are performed in colorful and passionate religious events. Horca del Inka (Described in Chapter 7)

I begin with my narrative of the New Year’s celebration at the Horca del Inka in 2005. It is important to understand that in the Aymara calendar New Year’s is on the winter solstice, June 21, and does not correlate with our Gregorian calendar.2 One consultant explained to me that the Aymara calendar is based upon the activities and needs of the earth. The three months from approximately the September equinox to the December solstice signal the rainy season, when the rains slowly begin and become heavier, when the earth drinks, and when it is time to sow. From the December solstice

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to the March equinox, it continues to rain; water is still abundant, and it is the time of agricultural growth. The earth produces its new offspring. Between the March equinox and the June solstice, the dry season sets in; the crops have matured and are being harvested. After that, beginning on June 21, the earth rests after giving birth to the products the Aymara have by now collected. During the three months until the September equinox, the earth remains dry and sterile and has to generate new strength for the next agricultural cycle. This is why the Aymara celebrate and begin their New Year on the June solstice. They present and burn offerings which are intended to feed and nourish the earth as well as the Sun, so that both will be strong and will provide in abundance during the next agricultural year. Following is a detailed account of the New Year’s celebration in 2005. People began to gather at the site of the Horca del Inka in the dark, very early in the morning of June 21. Before 6:00 a.m. local people sat in groups on the rocks, laughing and chatting; ever more people arrived. A few individuals unpacked bundles and quickly assembled offerings on paper trays, which they advertised to last minute buyers. Activities began to concentrate around an eastern ledge in the rocks, which offers a wide view of the eastern horizon. A line of people was forming, who all deposited their offerings in a growing pile at the easternmost point. Such offerings or misas typically consisted of a paper tray filled with small fruits, coca leaves, colorful paper, resinous incense, pieces of wool, and colored candy molded into representations of things petitioners were asking for, because the earth likes sweet things. By 7:00 a.m. sunrise was approaching, and the pile of offerings was sprinkled and moistened with beer and other alcohol. Two ritual specialists or yatiris wearing Aymara ponchos and hats began to make alternating speeches in which they invoked the Sun as the powerful force that binds humankind together globally. One of them aimed a magnifying glass positioned in front of dried grass toward the rising sun, and the first rays indeed ignited the grass. This fire was transferred to a piece of wood, which set the offerings on fire. As the sun climbed fully above the horizon line and the offering pile burned, all participants stood facing east with their eyes closed and their arms raised and hands open (Figure 8.2). In this way they felt the Sun’s warmth and also attempted to absorb the new energy provided by the Sun. Sunrise on June 21 simultaneously marks the end of the longest night in the year, and man-made fires have to regenerate heat. After such moments of meditation, the celebration continued more informally. Many people lit cigarettes to increase the fires and heat, and

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Figure 8.2. Copacabana, June solstice celebration at the Horca del Inka, 2012. Photograph by Brian Garrett.

shook hands and hugged one another, wishing their companions, “Feliz año nuevo.” More large beer bottles were shaken and then opened, with people spewing and splashing the liquid onto the earth before starting to consume the beer. Other people unpacked food and gathered for a picnic. By 8:00 a.m. most participants had moved to the actual site of the Horca del Inka and eagerly awaited the well-known light and shadow formations (described in Chapter 7). On the June solstice the first beams of sunlight pass through a hole in the rocks and illuminate the center of the lintel of the Horca del Inka, but in 2005 the first light fell on the left side of the lintel (when seen from the front), and many people commented that it had moved since the year before. Yatiris observe closely how the light pattern descends the southern support of the Horca, and from its movements, they predict the degree of productivity of the next agricultural year. Meanwhile the spraying and consumption of beer and the speeches by one of the yatiris continued at the Horca del Inka monument. Some people began to leave while others stayed, ate, and socialized as the Sun now illuminated and heated up the entire hillside. This constitutes the official New Year’s celebration of the Aymara in the Copacabana area, which is organized by Copacabana authorities. In 2005

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it was advertised and promoted by means of a color poster, and it attracted a number of tourists. According to Javier Escalante Moscoso (pers. comm., 2005), director of the Instituto de Arqueología in La Paz, it is also an effort to create a local copy of the famous Inti Raymi in Cusco, mostly to promote tourism. He emphasizes that it is a recently invented tradition, growing in popularity, and should not be confused with a cultural continuity maintained from the past—a point to which we will return. To some extent the New Year’s observation summarizes the public image of local culture and beliefs that Copacabana wants to portray.3 Yet not all Aymara stand united behind such official strategies. In 2005 I spent some time with Ramon Calle, who was at the time chief guardian of the archaeological sites in Copacabana, a paid assignment through the Instituto de Arqueología in La Paz. Calle is a native of Copacabana and describes himself as a guide and ritual specialist. He told me that he did not like the official ceremony because Pachamama, Mother Earth, the female spiritual force of the earth, was fed too much at one time. In order to make an offering which she receives well, one has to go to a quiet and more remote place and allow her to consume it undisturbed, which we did the following day. Calle said everybody visits the Horca del Inka, but the really sacred sites where the ritual specialists go lie farther up. He gave me a different tour of the Horca del Inka hill, and the following description is based upon his account. Slightly above the site of the celebration is an arrow-shaped opening in the rock. He explained that the Inka had this arrow filled with copper and that it marked the path of the priests descending toward the Horca. At the side facing toward the town sits a large rock, which Calle identified as a frog. “Frogs bring luck,” he said. “When a frog comes into your house, it is a good sign” (see the discussion of the Boca del Zapo site later). It may be significant that Bouysse-Cassagne and Harris (1987:26–28), in their analysis of Aymara worldview, situate the frog in the liminal realm of the underworld waters of the Puruma or primitive era, localized in Lake Titicaca, and that according to Ramos Gavilán people would set out idols of frogs on rock outcrops in order to attract rain. This rock appears to have been partly modified. Its back exhibits a weathered seat-like carving where, again according to Ramon, “the Inka” sat and bathed his feet in a cradle-like basin below, where water collects. Between the frog stone and the drop of the hillside, there is a flat stone surface with a depression where the Copacabana idol may have stood (as described earlier). Hearths with burned remains below the head of the frog

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and at an adjacent boulder attested to the fact that indeed it is a location used by local ritual specialists or yatiris. On the way back we stopped at the so-called “balcony” overlooking a small flat area. This stone balcony faces toward the bay of Copacabana, and its edge quite literally retraces the shoreline, inducing Calle to call it a model of the landscape. Copacati

In 2003 Porfirio Huanca Sanchez, the local vigilante (guardian) of Copacati, gave me a tour of this Inka site. Porfirio says he grew up at Copacati and has learned a lot about Aymara history and traditions from his grandfather. At the ascent to the site he offered an interesting interpretation of the triangular seat-like carving. He suggested that an idol was placed upon it, and people would have knelt in four depressions in the rock below the triangular carving to worship it. He may have pointed out one possible location of the Copacati idol (discussed earlier). At midlevel altitude, the first feature is a rectangular stone block with three carved steps descending from both upper corners (contextualized in the preceding site description). According to Porfirio, this carved rock marked one of the gates at which visitors had to confess and repent before they were allowed to enter Copacati. His suggestion recalls the three gateways visitors had to pass on the Island of the Sun before reaching the Sanctuary of the Sacred Rock. Farther along at midlevel altitude, Porfirio explained that his ancestors would fill the round depressions forming an approximate Southern Cross with water from the upper source (see earlier description) and would observe the reflection of the night sky to make prognostications about the agricultural seasons. Looking up to the top with its two peaks and the terraces and stream in between, Porfirio said that in the rainy season the water will roar inside before it comes out of the ground. Porfirio’s grandfather told him that above the terraces, on the ridge between the two peaks, there were at one time twelve structures. The stones of such buildings were reused to create and delineate the agricultural fields. If this were archaeologically verified, then it would probably have been the only settlement at Copacati where a number of people may have lived. On the other hand, Escalante Moscoso (1997:371–373) has suggested that the settlement associated with Copacati was Pasankallani, situated to the east. According to Porfirio, a number of man-made cave-like openings above Copacati are called Pasankallani. In the upper sector on the higher peak is a group of seat-like carvings to

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which Porfirio referred to as “Seven Astros” (Stars). Supposedly, this was a place where seven council members convened. In 2005 Ramon Calle explained the multiple features of Copacati in a remarkably similar way. In the upper sector below the council seats, which he also identified, he pointed out a shallow platform defined by traces of a quatrefoil frame that was used as an observatory, since the shadow of a person standing in the middle defines the cardinal directions over the course of one day. The grid-like carvings, which I have interpreted as a possible counting device (Chapter 7; see also Christie 2009a), marked the foundations of a wall that formed part of a palace, in Calle’s view. It is interesting that Ramon Calle’s overall interpretations were so similar to those given in 2003 by Porfirio Huanca Sanchez, yet differed in details. I was left with the impression that both would see a carving or a special rock formation and connect it with an explanation or a story derived from their cultural as well as personal experiences. This would explain the individual variations, but the consistent context is best approached through Hirsch’s model of idealized background settings adopted in this book, according to which people share memory and identity valued by all, and this connects them with places and one another. I do not think they told me stories conveniently invented to impress outsiders. Rather, their accounts form part of “invented traditions” by means of which Aymara speakers forge and define identities in today’s world (see, for example, Friedman 1994; Hobsbawm 1983; Janusek 2004:8–9). Such invented traditions are not disparate from Aymara past or heritage. Though invented, they build upon existing social practices and cultural conventions. In this manner, invented traditions reinterpret and adjust established ways of doing and understanding things, which often have a long history, to meet current needs. Thus they perpetuate traditions at the same time as they change and reinvent them. Therefore the New Year’s ceremony and the storied explanations of rock formations all mark the multiple and dynamic relations of the present Aymara cultural landscape. One specific point must be emphasized here regarding the ritual role of the Sun: the preceding account implies that the presence, absence, and strength of the Sun constitute elemental catalysts of the Aymara calendar of the agricultural year. This would have been so since time immemorial. The point I wish to bring to attention is that the Inka disrupted this tradition by appropriating the Sun for their state cult and ruler ideology and separated a state-anchored ritual solar calendar from the agricultural one. Today, for

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traditional Aymara people, the Sun plays a role similar to that in pre-Inka times. The following six sites are discussed in the context of the pilgrimage to the Virgin of Copacabana, which takes places twice every year, on February 2, the Catholic festival day of the original Virgen de la Candelaria on Tenerife Island, Spain; and on August 6, the national Independence Day of Bolivia. My narrative and discussion are based upon my field observations made during the week of August 6, in 2015 and 2017, when thousands of pilgrims arrived in private cars, buses, and trucks from many parts of Bolivia and Peru to pay homage to the Virgin of Copacabana timed with the Bolivian Independence Day. The selected sites that follow are places where pilgrims go in their momentary experience of the Christian pilgrimage, yet at the same time, they are also places that reflect shared and idealized memories of an Inka as well as Aymara past, or intangible heritage. Basilica of the Virgin of Copacabana and Extending Catholic Space of the Padres

The first and paramount stop for pilgrims is the Basilica of the Virgin of Copacabana (see Figure 8.1), the Catholic as well as spatial center of Copacabana, where the original statue carved by Francisco Tito Yupanqui is on display. The Augustinian padres maintain copies and dressed substitute sculptures, which are placed in public space within the church and in the outside courtyard and are taken out in the main procession. Most people do not know which one is the original image, but this does not matter since everyone pushes to be close to the Virgin figure and to touch her, believing her divine blessing agency is present in any of her representations. Religious devotion is intense as crowds cluster around the Virgin statue and individuals work their way within arm’s reach of the figure so that they can attach personal gifts to her gown and take smartphone photos. This is the space over which the Augustinian padres exert full control. The main doors of the basilica open onto a large courtyard surrounded by perimeter walls, within which secular commercial activities are banned. The Christian Catholic context of the pilgrimage is maintained within the protection of these church walls. As soon as one exits the courtyard and steps into the central plaza of Copacabana, one is submerged in the colorful world of commercial and social market interactions. Streets have been closed off and filled with temporary

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Figure 8.3. Copacabana, decorated cars waiting to be blessed by the Padres. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

vendor stands covered by blue plastic tarps. Items most commonly offered are household wares, clothing, shoes, and street food. It must be noted that the commercial field is shared by a second group of religious ritual actors, the Aymara shamans (yatiri).4 There exists a local shaman (chamán) organization in Copacabana, but many others have arrived as pilgrims to offer their services. The realm of performances conducted by Aymara shamans is wide and highly visual; for example, on the plaza side of the convent walls, decorated cars line up to be blessed by shamans (‘cha’lla, meaning blessing of any property). The shamans utter ceremonial invocations in the clouds of incense burners and then cover the car to be blessed with confetti, brightly colored paper ribbons, and showers of alcohol. On August 9, 2015, the line of cars waiting for their benediction was so long that they impeded traffic and transportation buses could not enter the town (Figure 8.3). I consulted with drivers, who told me that they had been waiting in line for three hours because the padre would come out of the church that day and bless their cars. Thus it appears that the Church is beginning to compromise in the sense that padres venture outside their protective walls and take on the competition of shamans, by conducting non-Catholic ritual, such as the car blessings.

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Indeed, in 2017, this compromise had extended to the beach area. I observed several padres from the Basilica who had walked down to the waterfront to challar (bless) adorned cars with holy water. They carried a bucket and a brush, which they dipped in the holy water and then used to splash it upon cars and people who asked to be blessed. There was noticeable competition for the padres as people crowded around them, begging them to come to particular cars and bless the vehicles in person. Other families engaged Aymara shamans to perform a traditional sit-down ceremony over their car and family members. The cultural landscape of the beach area during pilgrimages has become a colorful scenario of lovingly adorned cars and trucks parked in an ever growing row facing the lake. Most families spend the nights in their cars or in makeshift tents and eat their meals in the family kitchens lining the inland side of the main street along the beach. They come here to garner all the blessings they can accumulate from the Catholic priests as well as from Aymara specialists. On August 7, 2017, I spoke with two Peruvians, a middle-aged woman from Arequipa and a young man from Moquegua, who were waiting for the padre to come down from the church. Both expressed that they prefer blessings from God over those from the shaman. I asked: “What is the difference between the padre and the shaman blessing your car?” They explained that the padre represents God, the realm above, and the shaman deals with Mother Earth, the realm below. Here we reiterate that the traditional Catholic space of the Basilica and Convent is opening up into commercial areas, where the padres increasingly compete with shamans for services to the people and ultimately for souls. Calvario and Santa Barbara

The main domain of the shamans is at the double peaks of Calvario and Santa Barbara overlooking the town from the lakeshore. This prominent mountain was the locale of races between noble Inka youths, which were mandated during their initiation rites (see above). Sometime in the colonial period Catholic Stations of the Cross were constructed, from a small church at the foot of the steep climb up to the higher summit of the two, and the name Mount Calvario most likely originated then. The lower peak bears the remains of an ancient platform. Somehow this summit has been affiliated with Santa Barbara, but social memory holds that this has always been the space of Aymara rituals.

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During pilgrimage week, more people than at any other time take the shorter pilgrimage of the Stations of the Cross to Mount Calvario as well as the lower peak from morning to night. Exploding firecrackers can be heard from the top of Calvario at least until midnight. Here the religious and the secular, shamanism and business negotiations increasingly intertwine and eventually merge as one climbs up. Growing numbers of vendors line the ascent from the little church at the bottom all the way to the summit of Mount Calvario. In contrast to sales items around the central plaza, the focus of sales offerings here is on miniature copies and fake versions of what pilgrims ask for in ritual and hope to obtain from saints: toy cars, miniature house models, fake dollar bills, and fake university degrees, to name the most common. The faithful purchase a small material reproduction of what they have come to request from the divine powers as well as buying ceremonial paraphernalia, such as confetti, candles, and alcohol. Fully equipped, they climb to the midlevel platform from where the trails to Mount Calvario and Santa Barbara part. This is the place where Copacabana shamans gather behind a row of stone tables, and individual ceremonies can easily be negotiated. Blessing and petition ceremonies take place on the tables, in the grassy areas toward the lake, and on the summit of Mount Calvario. Most shamans cense the material object of the desired outcome with their incense burners; they call on various Christian authorities, such as saints and Jesus, and on Andean deities and landscape features, such as prominent mountains and Lake Titicaca as well as Pachamama, the Earth; and they spray confetti and alcohol. Interestingly, the central object on each stone table is a case with a Christian cross, and many shamans wear a cross necklace. Aspects of Christian worship and Andean Aymara ritual practices continue to intertwine as all ceremonies are performed in the midst of the Stations of the Cross, and under the umbrella of a figure of the Sacred Heart of Christ, who greets all visitors as they reach the midlevel platform and before they access the shamans’ tables, as well as under the umbrella of the Virgin of Calvario, whose domain is the summit platform. On pilgrimage days hundreds of people stand in long lines in front of her shrine, waiting to touch her. The Virgin of Calvario represents the physical peak and the emotional culmination of the shorter pilgrimage. Past her shrine, the atmosphere seems to relax somewhat. Many more vendor stands filled with thousands of colorful ceremonial items line the narrow pathway. But now people take time to socialize and sit down, viewing the blue silk-like surface of Lake Titicaca, which the endpoint of the summit platform overlooks. At

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the same time, shamans for hire are available here and blessing and petition ceremonies continue. The rocky end of the summit platform is the area where petitions for landownership are conducted. It might be meaningful that this happens beyond the shrine of the Virgin of Calvario and where she has turned her back. Families construct miniature gardens of natural materials on the ground, imagining what their piece of land would look like. Shamans preside over these ceremonies. In a sense, the summit of Mount Calvario becomes a place where personal landscapes are imagined and empowered by shamans. The opposite physical as well as spiritual half of Mount Calvario is the hill of Santa Barbara, accessed by turning the opposite way at midlevel (see Figure 7.7). Its physical elevation is lower than that of Mount Calvario, which likely endows it with the spiritual qualities of the lower moiety, understood as hurin in Quechua and Urinsaya in Aymara.5 The summit of the Santa Barbara hill is somewhat uneven, with some large boulders.6 A platform has been defined by a crude retaining wall on the side looking toward Mount Calvario, and a wooden cross stands at this edge of the summit facing the Christian peak. During pilgrimage days, many more people visit the hill of Santa Barbara than on an ordinary day. Still, the atmosphere remains quieter than on the Christian side as people gather in groups around various shamans to participate in ceremonies. These social groups appear closed and private; it is difficult to connect with people, and taking photographs is problematic. For example, in 2015 I was able to initiate a conversation with a shaman wearing a Christian cross necklace; he negotiated a gallon bottle of soda for allowing me to photograph him. In 2017 I asked several people in what ways this hill, Santa Barbara, is different from the taller one, Calvario? One consultant answered: “They are really the same, the same ceremonies are held.” Another said: “Calvario is longer and steeper to walk. Santa Barbara is easier.” I met Dionisio Sarmiento, one of the Maestros Curanderos Llallahua–Santa Barbara Copacabana, the official local shaman organization. He responded to the same question that the taller one, El Calvario, is macho (male) and Santa Barbara is hembra (female): “Together they make a whole.” After more talking, I contracted Dionisio to perform a ceremony for me. We bought offerings in the value of 100 Bolivianos (approximately $14) from two of the vendors on the Santa Barbara summit, and I paid 50 Bolivianos (approximately $7) to Dionisio for his service. We found an unused spot at the back of the summit platform. Dionisio

Figure 8.4. Copacabana, Santa Barbara hill, Dionisio Sarmiento making my offering during the August pilgrimage in 2017. Photographs by Jessica Christie.

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cleaned away the leftovers from prior ceremonies and then spread his cloth on a stone. He folded firm sheets of paper to make a paper box and began to fill it with the offerings I had purchased: herbs, some llama fat, fake paper Euros, and candied sugar objects in the form of the sun, the mountains, and a car. He gave me small sugar sticks. I had to dedicate each one to a friend or family member and add them to the growing offering in the paper box (Figure 8.4). Dionisio marked the four directions with confetti, by means of which he centered my offering in the cultural landscape of Santa Barbara and Copacabana, and then crowned it with colored paper ribbons. Next he prepared a fire with pre-treated wooden sticks. I had to kneel down on his cloth, and he invoked my well-being and benefits with references to safe travels, money, work, and my family, while holding the completed offering in the paper box over and on my head. After Dionisio had completed his invocations, he placed the paper box on top of the wood stack and lit a fire with alcohol. We watched it burn, observing the sugar objects melting into bubbling liquids. In these more or less lavish ceremonies performed by the Maestros Curanderos Llallahua–Santa Barbara Copacabana association members (and by other ritual specialists who are not locally authorized), invocations to the mountains, Lake Titicaca, el Señor and the saints, as well as to the cardinal directions, connect the local place of Mount Calvario and Copacabana with the pan-Andean spiritual landscape.7 Boca del Zapo

One other highly active ritual site is situated at the foot of Mount Calvario, literally where it touches the lake waters. It is well known as Zapo or Boca del Zapo (Frog, or Mouth of the Frog).8 This popular place can be reached by descending Mount Calvario from the midlevel platform where the paths to Mount Calvario and Santa Barbara separate, by following the shoreline from the beach area, or by catching a short boat ride costing 2 Bolivianos from the docking area on the beach. The physical form of el Zapo is a rock formation directly at the water’s edge, which when viewed from the land side resembles a frog’s head with an open mouth. It is encrusted with old and covered by new offerings of ceremonial alcoholic liquids (mostly beer) and brightly colored confetti and paper ribbons. An attendant rakes away old offerings and broken beer bottles to make room for new ones (Figure 8.5). On August 6, 2017, people

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Figure 8.5. Copacabana, Calvario, Boca del Zapo. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

patiently stood in long lines, long enough to form various zigzags up the mountainside. They held their offerings and waited their turn to break and spray and thus challar (bless) the Zapo with the beer but also to dress him with their paper ribbons and confetti. It is significant that a short distance up stands a concrete shrine resembling a cave, in which a small Virgin statue is on display. A metal plaque identifies her as a private donation. Devotees standing in line pass by her and leave her some of their offerings. In addition, above the Zapo rock there is a colorful rock painting on the smooth side of a rock formation rising from the water’s edge. It depicts Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu welcoming visitors. In a cumulative manner, the ritual place of el Zapo merges Aymara customs, Catholic religion, and the Inka past. Sacred Rock, Island of the Sun

The remaining sites of interest are situated outside town in the environs of Copacabana. Another location that is exclusively the realm of Aymara shamans or yatiri is the Inka sanctuary on the Island of the Sun (see Figure 7.10). Boat rides to and from the Island of the Sun are offered continuously

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from the Copacabana beach. Few if any pilgrims to the Virgin of Copacabana set out for the Island of the Sun, nor do the padres go there, to the best of my knowledge. The visitors to Sanctuary of the Sun during pilgrimage days were mostly tourists. One lonely Aymara shaman offered his services to conduct petition ceremonies in the altar area composed of Inka stone blocks during modern times in front of the Sacred Rock. The Inka sanctuary becomes the focus of Aymara ritual activity at sunrise on June 21, when the beginning of a new agricultural year is celebrated.9 Cave of the Virgin of Lourdes

Continuing beyond the borders of the town of Copacabana, we see the active construction of new Christian pilgrimage sites in an expanding cultural landscape. About 2010 the Virgin of Lourdes had a statue in a small cave on the side of the road leading from Copacabana to Yampupata. As far as I know the only reason why the Virgin of Lourdes is being referred to here is the fact that the original Virgin of Lourdes in France appeared in a grotto (Eade 2000:55–59). By 2015 access to the statue had become more formalized and on August 6, the Bolivian Independence Day, hundreds of people formed a long line to approach and touch this Virgin. The faithful waited patiently to step close to her and decorate and dress her with colored paper ribbons and confetti (Figure 8.6). There is a smaller Virgin statue below her in a rock niche. People explain that this is her daughter looking up to her. This should be seen as a Christianized setting of Andean spatial complementarity: large versus small, older versus younger, Anansaya versus Urinsaya. On the side of the mountain with the cave, multitudes of other people labored to hack stone pieces off the wall (Figure 8.7). In 2017 more sections of the hillside were used to extract stones. The extent of rock removal has begun to impact the stability of the slope, so that some areas have been marked as dangerous for hacking. Consulting with some of the pilgrims here, who are mostly Peruvians, I learned that people are not allowed to use modern tools to remove rock and must use another stone. The hacking is equated to a search for oro (gold): the rocks constitute oro in a symbolic sense, because they bring people closer to the Virgin of Lourdes and the benefits she has to bestow. I wonder whether the gold metaphor is a reflection of Inka connections between gold, the Sun, and the ruler? Further, I was told that when taking home rocks from this sacred mountain, pilgrims enter into the commitment to return to the Virgin of Lourdes

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Figure 8.6. Copacabana, Virgin of Lourdes during annual pilgrimages. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

for three years. On their third visit, families leave the rocks they have collected in a bag in a pile of other bags that is accumulating in front of the mountain wall. Shamans sprayed these bags and the mountain wall behind with a locally produced sacred alcohol referred to as cidra and said to be only good to drink for Pachamama (the Earth) and Pachatata (the Mountain). These rocks should not be confused with Euro-American souvenirs, but some parallels can be unpacked. Hillary Kaell (2014:177–187) provides a wonderful list of souvenirs as religious mementos from the Holy Land:

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pilgrims transform commodities into religious gifts through the addition of natural objects, such as pressed flowers and leaves, pebbles, or twigs. Sometimes wood, rocks, or water from the Sea of Galilee constitute the gift. Such souvenirs are parts and pieces of the Holy Land, water in which Jesus walked, and therefore open channels for divine presence long after pilgrims have returned home. But unlike the rocks and water from the Holy Land, the Andean rocks come from the mountain with the cave of the Copacabana Virgin of Lourdes, which emanates directly from the matrix of the living Andean landscape; it is a special instance of the chthonic powers of the terrain, which are traditionally managed by mountain lords, yet here the Virgin has taken their place (Eade and Sallnow 1991:6). In the traditional Andean worldview, the edges of the terrestrial world correspond to the edges of the celestial world. Mountains and places where spiritual beings have turned into rocks or are placed into caves bind the two worlds together. There are no borders, no crossing over or trespassing, only immense powers vested into mountain peaks and rocks inhabited by spiritual beings, who, through the substance of stone, maintain the world as a livable regenerative whole (Cuelenaere 2009:85–86; Christie 2016). Following this line of thinking, it is not surprising that I have not found citations of the original Virgin of Lourdes in Copacabana. Shamans continued to offer their services to conduct ceremonies assuring that their clients would acquire desired material objects. Their numbers had increased in 2017. Within this colorful turmoil of traditional traje (garb), bright paper decorations, rocks, and spraying liquids stood the elevated figure of the Virgin of Lourdes at the highest point in her cave as well as three tall crosses as static tranquil poles. Caves of the Virgin of Urkupina

On the car ride back to Copacabana I noticed a makeshift banner announcing the Virgin of Urkupina. There were several vendor stands offering ritual items, leading up to two open cave-like concrete shrines underneath a rock overhang. One shrine exhibits the statue of a Virgin and the other is said to memorialize her apparition (Figure 8.8). People dress and decorate both cave shrines. Nearby below, another smaller Virgin figure is on display on a rock wall that functions as the rear side of a covered room. This room is referred to as Capilla de Velas. Many devotees leave burning candles and colored paper decorations at both Virgin images.

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Figure 8.7. Copacabana, Virgin of Lourdes, pilgrims hacking rocks. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

In 2017 the site appeared to have grown, with more vendors and more local visitors. A group of middle-aged men sat on makeshift benches, drinking beer and enjoying one another’s company. When I consulted with them about this site, one named Vicente Mamani Almonte led me farther up the hill to two rock formations identified as a male and female frog or toad, macho and hembra zapo (Figure 8.9). He explained that the macho is always bigger and that they form a pair. Both are decorated with colored paper ribbons. During my first visit in 2015 I asked one of the vendor women how this sacred place came into being; she told me that her mother used to walk by

Figure 8.8. Copacabana, Virgin of Urkupina, niche with her statue and niche with her apparition. Photographs by Jessica Christie.

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Figure 8.9. Copacabana, Virgin of Urkupina, macho zapo shrine. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

here at night and saw a brilliant light. She kept seeing this light in the same place for consecutive nights. When her mother reported her experience, it was verified or officially accepted that the Virgin appears here. The vendor woman’s family has been claiming and promoting this sacred site in recent years. In 2017 shrine attendants informed me that the property owner has now donated the land to the community because this Virgin provides what people are asking for. The vendor woman who sold me paper ribbons and confetti for the Virgin said that shamans (chamánes, yatiris) evaluated the presence of the Virgin at this site and have deemed that she is real. I felt slightly confused and asked her how the chamánes were able to determine the presence of the Virgin? Now it was her turn to be confused, because she did not see a contradiction between the Catholic divine powers of the Virgin and the Aymara ritual powers of the chamánes. This conversation made me realize that local Aymara people in the Copacabana region access, pray to, and implore as many supernatural resources as they can to alleviate their severe poverty. When word is circulated that a spiritual being has appeared in a new place, a Christian shrine or Andean wak’a, usually a mixture of both, is quickly and informally created, and a new layer is added to the

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memoryscape of the cultural landscape. This scenario demonstrates the second aspect of Andean sacred landscape identified by Eade and Sallnow: “the consecration of . . . territory via random apparitions by external, foreign divinities, whose power is sui generis but who choose to channel it through particular sites to particular populations” (Eade and Sallnow 1991:6), populations who in consequence feel chosen and blessed. The last two examples of the Virgins of Lourdes and Urkupina vividly illustrate how people in Copacabana actively multiply sacred sites in continuance of precontact practices of wak’a shrine making. This point was further reinforced by the conversation I began with Vicente Mamani Almonte, one of the men who drank and socialized on the makeshift benches. Vicente describes himself and is acknowledged by his friends as an amauta, meaning a wise man with intellectual and spiritual knowledge in a general sense.10 He showed me three additional apparitions or manifestations on the upright boulders enclosing the site of the Virgin of Urkupina next to the road. These manifestations are darker formations on the lighter-colored upright boulders. Vicente identified one as the Virgin of Guadalupe and the other two as a woman with a child, appearing slightly smaller than a man with beard next to her (Figure 8.10). Vicente spoke

Figure 8.10. Copacabana, Virgin of Urkupina, manifestation of a woman, child, and man on boulder. Photograph by Jessica Christie.

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about the necessity and vitality of complementarities. He sees a landscape complementarity in the previously discussed Horca del Inka, an observatory and shrine to the Sun, and Kusijata, a shrine to the Moon. The connection of Kusijata with the Moon was new to me but might spring from a general Andean practice of observing reflections of the night sky in pools of water, such as the Baño del Inka, for prognostications of the future. Analysis of the Cultural Landscape of Present-Day Copacabana

In broad terms, Andean wak’a were personified, agentive objects and places where local people engaged with features and powers in nature ritually, by pouring chicha and making sacrifices and offerings. A lengthy corpus of literature has delved into questions of what exactly wak’a were and are, from the Spanish writers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to twenty-first-century archaeologists and anthropologists. A comprehensive and critical assessment of current understandings of wak’a are presented in the chapters of T. Bray’s The Archaeology of Wak’as (2015). Bray (2015:5–9) frames the concept wak’a as follows: in the latter half of the sixteenth century, a wak’a was usually described as or associated with an idol and statue or an oratory and shrine-like place. The notion of wak’a-as-oratory implies immobility, whereas wak’a-as-idol entails portability and a degree of movement. Such combining of opposing qualities, fixed and mobile, materiality and agency, in one entity defies categories of conventional Western ontology. Writers have struggled with this partible nature of wak’a: the ability of a material entity to be simultaneously fixed in space and spatially as well as temporarily distributed and distributable. S. Kosiba’s model (2015:167–212) of looking at wak’a applies well to Copacabana. He reasons that the Inka founded vast new landscapes of an Inka order entailing new definitions of people, places, and land as they expanded from Cusco. The mitmaqkuna resettlements to Copacabana and local population movements constitute such a new social organization under Inka direction. Likewise, the pan-Andean Sanctuary on the Island of the Sun was redefined as the Inka origin place, and as it was ontologically the place where the Sun first rose in the Andes, claims of a new Inka order were smoothly validated. Ritual practices conducted at this wak’a personalized relationships with the new mitmaqkuna, establishing parallels with homeland wak’a in their social memory and thus naturalizing the new land. The Christian shrines on Mount Calvario, the Virgin of Lourdes, and Virgin of Urkupina have absorbed aspects of wak’a in the sense that they are fused

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with the local landscape and at the same time, can be distributable and move. This is the underlying context of the ritual act of taking and returning rocks from and to the hillside of the Virgin of Lourdes. Furthermore, wak’a could apply their agentive powers to intercede for communal benefits in ways very similar to the blessings bestowed by the Virgins (Garcilaso, in Bray 2015:7). There is yet a wider frame of intangible heritage in present-day Copacabana, which ignores the busy ritual-commercial places where the pilgrims go and the shamans officiate. In 2015 I received the gift of spending one day with the elder Dionisio Callisaya Mamani. He is from a village behind the hill of Kusijata and describes himself as a man del pueblo Qollasuyu (same as Kollasuyu), implying a self-identification with the southeastern quadrant of the Inka empire and with the Qolla or Kolla people. He shared with me a local history quite different from what archaeologists and anthropologists publish. It was not a comprehensive account but rather disconnected sections woven into the landscape by Aymara names and etymologies. I will paraphrase those sections I deem relevant here: The oldest civilizations [in the Copacabana region] were the Zapilla and the Cari. The Zapilla were good people and lived in peace but the Cari were a bad group and they stole. They destroyed the Zapilla. . . . Then there were the Huancaranes and Chiripas. There are remains of their grave sites and burials all over Copacabana. They spoke Puquina and Aymara, two languages which are very similar. Manqo Qhapaq [the Inka ancestor], whose real name was Mallku Kapac, was born and raised in a cave on this hill [seen from Intinkala, Dionisio pointed to the hill above Kusijata]. Manqo Qhapaq was the son of a single woman, and she gave birth on this hill. His mother wrapped him in a manta (blanket) and breastfed him on this hill. There were five types of camelids; one type, the taruja, helped breastfeed him. Manqo Qhapaq found his spouse, Mama Ocqllu. Both moved to the Island of the Sun. There Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Ocqllu lived in Pilco Kayma; then they returned to Copacabana. . . . There were many conflicts between local people. Manqo Qhapaq rounded up and killed for food many camelids, thereby extinguishing the taruja. . . . Manqo Qhapaq founded Copacabana and from here went toward Cusco. While he was living at Pilco Kayma, the Sun gave him a golden

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staff. With this marker, he founded the empire. (Dionisio Callisaya Mamani, pers. comm., 2015) Dionisio has here shared a subtle re-write of Inka history. The role of the Island of the Sun and the Sacred Rock as primary locations where the human and divine or supernatural realms touch is diminished: Manqo Qhapaq was born on the Kusijata hill overlooking Copacabana; he founded Copacabana. This way the cultural landscape of Copacabana has become increasingly localized. This spatial redefinition is materialized in the painting of Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu above the Boca del Zapo site as well as in the placement of a number of statues: Manqo Qhapaq is seated at the entrance to Copacabana; more recently statues of Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu were erected on the beach, coming out of the water, as if they were returning from the Island of the Sun; at Yumani on the Island of the Sun, figures of Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu have been greeting visitors at the main boat docking area for many years. Further, today Copacabana is the capital of the province Manco Kapac, covering an area of 141.7 square miles within the Bolivian department of La Paz. I reason that it is an Andean predilection to adapt and localize timehonored oral narratives and mytho-histories; for example, at Pacariqtambo, the second place of emergence for Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu, I learned that people in the town of Pacariqtambo link a nearby cave with Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu, as opposed to the more distant carved rock outcrop identified in the Spanish accounts. It is an effort to bring the idealized background spaces, alive and active in social memory, closer to the social world of daily lived routine (see Hirsch’s model). I do not think this is an act of physical laziness about visiting more distant places; rather it is driven by the psychological need to connect lived everyday experience with the ancestral past in a balanced cultural landscape.

9 Discussion

Finding 1—State-Centered Cultural Landscapes

The chronological survey of the southern Lake Titicaca Basin and the Island of the Sun have demonstrated that populations were spread fairly evenly throughout the region until the Upper Formative/Late Titinhuayani (c. 500 B.C.–A.D. 400), when site hierarchies and emergent elite centers can be documented on the Island of the Sun. Most significant is the rise of Chucaripupata (Seddon 1998) slightly south and in sight distance from the Sacred Rock on the northern end of the Island of the Sun. Archaeological data show that it became a Tiwanaku public ritual center when the state of Tiwanaku expanded from the southeast after roughly A.D. 500. Numerous Tiwanaku sites have been registered on the Island of the Sun, some of which line the pilgrimage route from the southern island tip to the north. Bauer and Stanish (2001:147–149) consider the Islands of the Sun and Moon to have been a single centralized Tiwanaku entity during the second half of the first millennium A.D. From this perspective, the cultural landscape of Copacabana for the first time was oriented to and centered in a state installation in the immediate area of the Sacred Rock during the Tiwanaku phase, c. A.D. 400–1000. Such a state-centered orientation was repeated and intensified in the Late Horizon during Inka occupation, as presented earlier. When the Inka arrived in the mid-fifteenth century, they reconstructed the cultural landscape of pan-Andean social memory and amended it with an Inka layer of the emergence of Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu and the origins of their ruling dynasty. The state, the Sun, Inka ancestors, empowered rock wak’as, and water were knotted conceptually together in a tactic I refer to as stone ideology (Christie 2016). Stone ideology was performed in state-directed pilgrimages from Cusco to the Island of the Sun, in which Copacabana

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functioned as the administrative center on the mainland and the Sacred Rock was the final destination for the pilgrims, as described. It is important to weigh the many ways in which this cultural landscape was created and structured by state interests: 1. It validated a connection between Cusco and the ancient pan-Andean sites of beginnings, suggesting that the Inka era was the current new beginning. 2. It established a father-son relationship between the Sun and Inka rulers and thus elevated the Sun to the major state god Inti. 3. Most likely, the majority of pilgrims traveling the pilgrimage routes were mitmaqkuna resettled in Copacabana. We must further reflect upon some of the impact of such state centers upon the common people who populated the cultural landscapes. Throughout pre-Inka times, most Andean peoples were farmers and herders with a regionally stratified social organization. The lives of farmers and herders were structured seasonally by a lunar agricultural calendar (astronomía popular) divided into 12 months related to activities required in the yearly cycle. Weather forecasts were derived from observations of the stars and the moon as well as from the lifecycles of certain plants and animals (Ayme Carrasco et al. 2003:224–226). The Inka overlaid a solar calendar (astronomía estatal) upon the civil society of agriculturalists and herders. This state calendar was divided into four periods between solstices and equinoxes, according to the movements of the sun. The beginning of the solar year fell on the June solstice when agricultural activities rest throughout the southern hemisphere. The Sun, as principal Inka deity, also rested at that time (Ayme Carrasco et al. 2003:223–224). According to Ayme Carrasco et al. (2003:236), the Inka constructed a sun ideology with the goal to consolidate, reaffirm, legitimize, and reproduce the entity of the Sun as the Inka State and its ruling class. State astronomy required infrastructure and astronomers to track the movements of the Sun on the horizon. The physical infrastructure consisted of an observation point in the form of a stone construction or otherwise special stone and sets of pillars along the horizon line, between which the positions of the sun were registered by state-supported specialists (Ayme Carrasco et al. 2003:245). The prototype of the set-up and performance of state astronomy was in the central plaza of Cusco, and one variant was at the Sacred Rock on the Island of the Sun, as discussed earlier. After the Spanish Invasion, the Sun of the Inka was dethroned by the

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Virgin of Copacabana and the cultural landscape was re-centered in the evolving church and convent on the mainland. The Catholic Church was an authority of a different type from that of the Inka state. It would go far beyond the scope of this chapter to mine this question in depth; what matters here are the spatial implications of these authorities. Copacabana Catholics belong to the Archdiocese of La Paz; this is one of four archdioceses in Bolivia. All Catholic organizational structures in Bolivia as elsewhere in the world are subject to the Holy See in Rome. Today centralized authorities are the Catholic Church and the government of the nation-state of Bolivia, both seated in La Paz. My ethnographic data have shown that they have limited impact on daily life in Copacabana. Aymara farmers and herders in the surrounding communities have returned to and continue practicing an agricultural and pastoral lifestyle similar to that in pre-Inka times. Their seasonal activities are guided by an agricultural calendar that is celebrated and strengthened by the New Year’s solstice festivities documented. The data outline growing bottom-up movements of local Aymara (farmers, herders, small business owners, shamans) who have returned to land-based means of existence and who learn to use innovations introduced by outside institutions and adapt these to their local needs and under their own terms. The specifics of such mechanisms are summarized in the following section under heritage making. Finding 2—The Shaping of a Popular Heritage Landscape

I reason that these processes embrace heritage construction, a cultural phenomenon that has been receiving much attention in the recent literature. The religious places discussed fall under the umbrella of heritage since they carry on inherited cultural traditions in very interesting and new ways. Heritage studies has emerged as a dynamic field offering new avenues for understanding how the past is selectively appropriated and reinvented in the present (Harrison 2013). While the concept of heritage was first cast in Europe and the United States, its colonial history and contemporary de-colonized forms in Bolivia concern us here. Harrison (2013:114–116) reconstructs that the notion of heritage crystalized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when private individuals and public institutions began to sponsor projects of philanthropy to safeguard and preserve objects from the past for the benefit of the future. In the second phase during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, heritage was drawn into the processes of nation-building and became increasingly defined and

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controlled by state ideologies. Scientific standards were applied to practices of conservation and preservation. The third phase of heritage witnessed the emergence of “world” heritage organizations, such as UNESCO, in the late twentieth century. At this point, Indigenous societies became involved, and calls for de-colonization have moved to the forefront. In the ongoing processes of negotiation, definitions of heritage and the World Heritage Convention have been broadened. Following Harrison’s (2013:4–5) new “dialogical” model, Copacabana heritage can be “seen as emerging from the relationships between people, objects, places, and practices, . . . [a form of heritage] that does not distinguish between or prioritize what is ‘natural’ and what is ‘cultural,’ but is instead concerned with the various ways in which humans and non-humans are linked by chains of connectivity and work together to keep the past alive in the present for the future.” More specifically, Copacabana heritage is intertwined with religion and spirituality. Di Giovine and Garcia-Fuentes (2016) cogently weigh how sites of pilgrimage and sites of heritage intersect. Building on the beautiful metaphors of the philosopher and historian of religion Mircea Eliade, the authors reason that pilgrimage and heritage sites evoke similar hierophanies, or manifestations of the sacred: whereas a pilgrimage site constitutes an axis mundi where the sacred irrupts into the chaos of daily secular life, at heritage sites, it is a group’s idealized time shaped by collective memories that irrupts into the contemporary world (Di Giovine and Garcia-Fuentes 2016:7). Both types of sites and their hierophanies are juxtaposed on Mount Calvario and Santa Barbara and merge at the Virgins of Lourdes and Urkupina. The merging of pilgrimage and heritage “serves to perpetuate the present community, mingling with that of the past [here pre-contact Aymara], into the future” (Di Giovine and Garcia-Fuentes 2016:7). The Basilica of the Virgin of Copacabana more directly qualifies as pilgrimage, and the Sacred Rock on the Island of the Sun as Inka pilgrimage and contemporary heritage site. My ethnographic observations dramatically illustrate that popularity and the draw for pilgrims lie in the mixed context, the in-between sites linking pilgrimage with heritage and pre-contact Aymara past with the national and international present. Another salient aspect of heritage is its historical political origin in the nineteenth century. M. Robinson and H. Silverman (2015:1–2, 4–5) clearly outline how the notion of heritage arose in the context of affirming European nation-states: heritage came into being as an interpretation of culture as state-sanctioned values and therefore associated spaces,

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including archaeological sites, museums, historical monuments, etc., had to be owned, funded, managed, and protected. In such processes, heritage has been performed “as an elite moral system geared to maintaining the power of the nation state and its interests” (Robinson and Silverman 2015:2). As an example, UNESCO continues to refer to its World Heritage sites as properties, resulting in a paternalistic model by which heritage is put in the public domain but is not administered by the individuals of that public. Critical heritage studies increasingly focus in on the power constellations directing the construction and management of heritage involving nation-states, capitalism, and the colonial world (Robinson and Silverman 2015:4–5; Di Giovine 2009). In Bolivia, power constellations are different from those in the Western world. As of 2017 the plurinational state of Bolivia has National Monuments, six cultural World Heritage sites, and one natural one. The problems lie in lack of caring and investment of funds on the part of the government to restore and safeguard these sites (Cazas and Palacios 2014). Thus heritage is used on the surface to promote tourism globally via digital media, but it is not treated domestically as a suite of state-sanctioned values that have to be owned, funded, managed, or protected. A counterview defines heritage as popular and democratic (Robinson and Silverman 2015:4–13), which is the approach better suited to the Bolivian case study. Derek Gillman (2010:1–7) raises critical questions regarding rights of ownership of cultural heritage: can groups claim cultural materials as their property, or do they belong to the nation? He advocates a community-oriented liberalism in which individuals are embedded in the social forms surrounding them and will benefit from some government protection of cultural heritage. Again, in Bolivia such government protection cannot be counted on. In Copacabana, tensions are local. The dominant institutionalized power is the Catholic Church, the reach of which has been evaded in the outlying shrines. Ownership issues could arise over land properties on which the shrines are located. The precise system of Aymara land ownership is complex. In my understanding, land tenure in and around Copacabana consists of an assortment of public and communal agreements. In 2017 one of the attendants of the Virgin of Urkupina told me that the property owner has donated the land to the community since the Virgin provides what people are asking for. This speaks for a strong communal rather than individualistic spirit. Here “new” heritage cases are produced and meaningfully practiced as popular culture by communities of individuals who share particular values.

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The devotional and pilgrimage sites described at the Calvario, Santa Barbara, the Virgin of Lourdes and the Virgin of Urkupina provide eloquent illustrations of heritage newly created—that is, awaiting and in the process of becoming time-honored—and performed as popular and democratic, responding to the needs and hopes of the local Aymara population. I can further dissect a salient difference between traditional Aymara and present Christian pilgrimage and heritage sites: Di Giovine and GarciaFuentes (2016:5–6) note that pilgrimage sites are often placed in out-of-theway locations, peripheral to the institutional power structures of quotidian life, and near unusual geographic landforms. Such locations intensified experiences of transcendence and divine intervention and thus aided Christian pilgrims in the processes of sought-for transformation. Mount Calvario, Santa Barbara, and the Virgins of Lourdes and Urkupina occupy conspicuous landscape features and are situated outside the direct spatial control of the Catholic Church. Based upon my ethnographic observations and consultations, Andean pilgrims who flock to these pilgrimage sites do not come in search for transformation. They come to petition, pray to, and converse with the saints for desired blessings, living a relational ontology with the beings of higher power, a bond that is distinctly Andean and opposed to Western Christian ontology, which clearly separates human and divine beings and associated spaces. Andean people think in terms of communicating via reciprocal relations with multiple beings, including saints, in a circular and fluidly connected world, whereas Christians have to achieve transformation in order to rise high enough above the material terrestrial plane to experience a glimpse of divine perfection. I reason that the Copacabana sites have become at once pilgrimage and heritage locations: here the sacred fuses with idealized time created through Aymara collective memories, and as described, both irrupt into present twenty-first-century reality. We can link this with Hirsch’s model of the idealized background space versus the lived daily routine and note that in Copacabana the coming together of the two is dramatic, loud, and passionate, whereas in the Canyon de Chelly and Coba case studies it is a reflexive, quiet, and more internal process. Through the lens of seductions of pilgrimage, we could go so far as to reason that these places have “seduced” so many pilgrims so strongly away from the official Catholic space of the Augustinian basilica and convent that they have become normalized and publicly accepted as locales inviting ritual performances betwixt and between Catholic and Andean practices,

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and they have been transformed into attractions that are increasingly marketed in the global tourism industry. Of course, these developments are ongoing processes, and they are influenced by local power players or “seducers” from the point of view of the padres. I have no evidence that such “seducers” could be identified as powerful manipulative individuals; rather, they are the family who created the Virgin of Urkupina site and the yatiri and their organization whose authority rests in Aymara heritage and traditions that are part of the identity of most Bolivians as well as Peruvians in rural highland regions (Di Giovine and Picard 2016: Introduction). One small but important aspect of these heritage performances deserves mention: Copacabana pilgrims demonstrate a deep emotional desire to touch the sacred statues of their Virgins. They accept standing in long lines to fulfill their needs. Again, this shows absence of state control; in contrast, most official heritage sites in other countries are marked by “Do not touch” and “Prohibido entrar” signs. Gravari-Barbas, Robinson, and Bourdeau (2017: Ch.1) weigh shifts that the growth of tourism has brought to the traditional power constellations in the management of world heritage. The adoption of “Community” in the World Heritage Convention’s Strategic Objectives has opened doors for increased bottom-up involvement. While Copacabana is not a World Heritage place, the case study at hand passionately illustrates related community initiatives, here primarily circumventing the meta-institutional policies of the Catholic Church. While the authorized religious loci (Basilica of the Virgin of Copacabana, Christian side of the Calvario) stay intact, local Aymara people have deinstitutionalized the surrounding cultural landscape, now open to newly experienced, popular traditions and places of contact between community members and Christian Virgins, endowed with values to be inherited. Very importantly, we also see the shift from heritage as an object toward heritage as the relationship between a statue, a performance place, oral traditions, and shifting, diverse social audiences (see also del Marmol, Morell, and Chalcraft 2015:2).

Conclusions

The three case studies in this book have analyzed cultural landscapes from their temporal beginnings to the present as complex interactions between the natural settings and human interventions. Cultural landscapes are physical as well as intangible in the memories of the people who have shaped and populated them. Memory acts as the essential link between the present, in which it is created, and the past, which it recalls. If cultural landscapes coalesce the past and present in case-specific ways, the question that remains open is: how do they prepare for the future? Can they provide insights and messages in the twenty-first century, the age of the Anthropocene and climate crisis? And to what extent, if any, can culture stay spatialized? In the following discussion I sketch out a number of applied strategies derived from the scientific data-driven stage set of archaeological landscapes presented in the three parts of this book. These strategies were identified with ethnography and specifically through participant observation and interviews with my consultants in the towns next to the archaeological zones. I focus on two principal perspectives of this book, derived from the findings at the end of each case study: Power Constellations in the Geopolitical Networks in Which the Subject Communities Are Involved

As cultural landscapes expand, local communities and ethnic groups participate in increasingly complex economic, political, and cultural relations with outside entities and individuals. Such relations are inevitably characterized by dynamic, colonially sanctioned imbalances of power grounded in wealth, military force, and knowledge. Since about 1800 this imbalance

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has been dramatically tilted to the side of capitalism and its driving technologies, which have been consuming and in many ways linking nations and the world. The questions for analysis then become how do cultural landscapes and intangible heritage fare when confronting power systems in the past and capitalism in the present? And as anthropologists, scholars, or tourists, what roles can and should we play, morally and professionally, to help empower Indigenous peoples and contribute to sustainability defined broadly? Impact of the Christian Religion on Indigenous Lifeways and on the Path to the Future

Christian religion arrived in the Americas as the Catholic Church, allied with the Spanish Crown and acting as its spiritual validation. Native peoples were often resettled, pressed into colonial political and administrative systems, and assigned to religious orders and low social ranks. Throughout their histories, they have learned either to evade or to adapt selectively to higher power structures. Since the 1990s Protestant groups, referred to as evangélicos, have been spreading rapidly in Indigenous communities of the Americas. They pose new challenges since they more specifically target the individual, as opposed to the community. Their diverse denominations offer many choices to the individual to join, and many practice a more personalized counseling against alcoholism, wearing of traditional dress, native language, and intangible heritage. This approach of targeting the value of the individual as an alternative to the individual finding purpose as part of the community stands in stark contrast to Indigenous community-based worldviews and can threaten Native identities and heritage. Lessons from Perspective 1: Confronting Colonial Power Structures

Cultural landscapes and intangible heritage are resilient (Canyon de Chelly), actively redefine (Coba), and refuse to be assimilated (Copacabana) by Indigenous groups, who do not view themselves as passive colonial victims but engage as local agents in the realities of the twenty-first century.

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Cultural Landscapes and Intangible Heritage Are Resilient (Canyon de Chelly) Canyon de Chelly has remained relatively distant from overarching power structures throughout its occupation phases. From the extended family groups of the Basketmakers to the larger kin- and clan-based village-size social units of the Ancestral Pueblos and the Navajo clan system, Canyon de Chelly, the Southwest, and Native North America in general have not known the dominant, top-down, and centralized state institutions as they have existed in Mesoamerica, for example. In the 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo, a small reservation was established through negotiations between Navajo leaders and the U.S. federal government. In the succeeding decades the reservation land base was enlarged through various executive orders. Navajo government was established in 1923, and Window Rock was chosen as the centralized capital in the early 1930s. In 1989 a three-branch system of government was formed, comparable to major democracies of the Western world, in which the executive branch is headed by the president and vice-president, who are elected by popular vote; the judicial branch is led by the chief justice; the Navajo Nation Council constitutes the legislative branch. This council has 24 members called council delegates, who represent the 110 chapters, which are the smallest administrative units in the Navajo Nation. The Navajo government considers itself an independent nation within the United States. My ethnographic consultations have shown that canyon residents of the Chinle Chapter feel a deep disconnect from the Navajo Nation as well as the U.S. government (see Chapter 3). Larry Emerson, who lives in Tsedaak’aan Diné Nation east of Shiprock, goes so far as to call for a complete rejection of the present form of Diné self-governance and for it to be “replaced by a decolonized, Diné culturally and linguistically relevant self-governance model” grounded in Diné peacemaking methodology (Emerson 2017:161). In their lived experiences, governments drown in rules and senseless bureaucracies, which hurt rather than facilitate local interests. Volunteerism and commitment to organizing are low, and many families retreat to their own family businesses, as for example Lupita McClanahan has resigned herself to doing. The great complexities of Lupita’s experiences as a guide and owner of the business Footpath Journeys of Canyon de Chelly are succinctly discussed by Simonelli and McClanahan (2015). Three salient issues with wider application arise from this case study.

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1. At times cultural heritage in its physical and intangible form becomes disembodied from the very people associated with it. In Canyon de Chelly the canyon landscape and the values it holds have become contested objects of protection between the National Park Service (NPS) and the Historic Preservation Department and Parks and Recreation Departments of the Navajo Nation. The processes of management and protection involve federal and tribal funds as well as generation of new revenue from fees and tourism. As a result, the tangible and intangible heritage of Canyon de Chelly have become commodified; canyon residents who have owned the lands since time immemorial and who carry the oral narratives received from generations of ancestors have largely been left voiceless. 2. Common law principles of Anglo American property law often have little relation to indigenous peoples’ values (Tsosie 1997, in Simonelli and McClanahan 2015:214–215). Anglo American property laws were written in the interests of individuals, whereas tribal property systems tend to revolve around principles of collective or communal ownership. With regard to protecting knowledge, federal laws, such as the “misappropriation doctrine,” are structured to protect knowledge for mostly economic reasons; see copyright and patents. For Native peoples, on the other hand, their knowledge of cultural places is of communal value and should be managed and shared under their terms. Thus federal laws are tilted toward economic and tribal laws toward social goals; what complicates matters further is that the Navajo Nation has adopted and is operating under Western business models. We have observed similar shifts toward an increasingly profitdriven structure in the Coba ejido. The binaries economic versus social, individual versus community, lead on to the ultimate confrontation between Native groups and global capitalism. 3. Appeals to international law of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. To circumvent this confrontation, Simonelli and McClanahan (2015:217–220) discuss the tactic of appealing to the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), which guarantees the right of Indigenous peoples to all human rights, including that of their intellectual and cultural property, both tangible and intangible (see also Gorman 2017:143; Johnston 2006). In theory the tactic sounds worthwhile, but when applied to specific cases, it often stalls in a morass of legal interpretations and involves extensive legal expenses. In 2013 the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission (NNHRC) appealed to the United Nations through the U.N. Working Group on Business and Human Rights to prevent a ski

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resort on the sacred San Francisco Peaks from making artificial snow using treated wastewater. The NNHRC noted that “the Navajo people have lived in the southwest region of the United States within six sacred mountains since time immemorial, [and] the Navajos have a responsibility to remain on and care for the land where the Holy People placed the Navajo people” (Simonelli and McClanahan 2015:218). Another relevant international law is Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization, which provides that Indigenous and tribal peoples have the right to “exercise control over their [lands’] economic, social, and cultural development.” Neither the United States nor Canada has ratified this convention (Simonelli and McClanahan 2015:218–219). Another forum to confront power structures has been chosen by growing numbers of Navajo intellectuals who write books, create art and new prayers, and advocate for Navajo land, values, and how to move Navajo way of life forward (see Lee 2017). It is vital to realize that Navajo activists are deeply split among themselves: let us consider that in the same volume edited by Lee (2017), Colleen Gorman (2017:142) advocates for “individual, sovereign, independent Diné” and a “collective, sovereign, dependent [within the U.S.] Nation,” whereas Emerson (2017:163–165) radically rejects the term sovereignty as a colonial construct. One powerful example of such efforts is a large-scale full-dome animation for the New Mexico Museum of Natural History’s Lodestar Planetarium created by Colleen Gorman (Navajo) in collaboration with Roger Cultee of the Quinault Nation. The work is entitled Celestial Beings in Indigenous Skies and is permanently accessible as the YouTube video animation Indigenous Skies and Celestial Beings (https://youtu.be/zUQQl7dCwvE). It visualizes the vital message that “to see the universe in balance is Diné” (Gorman 2017:151). This message is illustrated through the design principles of sacred geometry, which can be found in many Indigenous and ancient art styles. The work speaks against linear research in the Western sense, which can only see accumulating more knowledge, and advocates instead for Indigenous research, which looks at the world from new angles and asks innovative questions of how to apply knowledge to life. This book is meant to combine linear and Indigenous research and raise innovative questions about how research can shape sustainability.

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Cultural Landscapes and Intangible Heritage Are Actively Redefined (Coba) Coba experienced the power structure of Classic Maya kingship, which was mediated by multiple elite positions, such as the batabob, ah cuch cabob, ah hol pop, and the priest levels ahau can mai and ah kin mai (as discussed). When we accept the projection of colonial period secular as well as religious positions back to the Late and Terminal Classic, we can reconstruct a dynamic flux of power constellations from the top down but also from the bottom up, depending upon specific situations. During the colonial (c. 1520s–1820s A.D.) and republic (c. 1820s–present) periods, cultural landscapes and intangible heritage were redefined (as discussed). In the Coba case, the key to unpacking their meanings is the ethnic signifier Maya, which is a contested term linking heritage and identity. It was used to refer to the native Yucatec language, to sacred material objects, and to small specific groups of people and places, like Mayapan, while the local population self-identified through their cah and chibal (community and extended family). Over time, Spanish colonial and Mexican colonial authorities assigned the name Maya to the Indigenous population of the Yucatan peninsula as an administrative and documentary tool in the colonial endeavor to subjugate, integrate, and investigate native peoples. The Indigenous inhabitants of the peninsula had always used the term to designate their language; but sometime around the 1960s, when interest in ethnicities and multi-culturalism revitalized throughout the Americas, they began to adopt the term Maya—which historically is a colonial classifier—as their own identity. What this means in terms of the Coba people confronting power constellations is debatable: most consultants do not question their Maya identity because it is based upon the Yucatec language and their birth and land ownership on the peninsula; others argue that Maya people at large keenly understand contemporary politics and know that by presenting themselves as “Maya,” they can best engage in tourism and politics and participate in the economy of the twenty-first century to their advantage (for example, Quetzil Castaneda, pers. comm., 2014). A nuanced approach to contemporary Yucatec Maya identity construction has been formulated by Cocom Maya Juan Castillo Cocom, Timoteo Rodriguez, and McCale Ashenbrener (2017): they explore the issue through the Yucatec Maya word iknal, which implies understanding one’s bodily space in relation to one’s perception, opinion, and attitude; thus iknal is at

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the core of Maya thinking about who they are. Iknal implies social agency, perspective, presence, and action, for which they use the term ethnoexodus in the context of identity formation, critiquing Restall’s static ethnogenesis (2004). Both ethnoexodus and iknal are related to Bourdieu’s (1990) concept of “habitus” commonly referenced in the social sciences. All three concepts agree on a generative, habituated presence of human beings, a disposition of where you can be both physically and habitually. The significant difference is that iknal or ethnoexodus frames identity construction by escaping from status, from how one fits into social structures, but never from presence. This includes mobility between numerous imagined identities. Habitus, on the other hand, is more static, always embedded in social power relations in which status depends upon the accumulation of social capital, from which one can never escape (Castillo Cocom et al. 2017:49–50). This lens helps us explore the less direct links between Cobaneros today and their cultural landscape through mobile identities. I have discussed the Coba ejido as an existing structure in which key ingredients of the Maya cah and chibal have been translated into twentyfirst-century reality: as a land management organization, it shapes the Coba cultural landscape (aspects of cah); the community-based management and administration of the ejido aims to obtain social and economic benefits for all ejidatarios (aspects of chibal). This has been very successful, as reflected by the profit- and jobs-generating ejido business enterprises discussed. Whereas the ejido is a colonial construct devised by the federal government, the Coba ejidatarios have made it local to manage and sustain their cultural landscape under their terms. Nevertheless, we have seen that these terms do not go uncontested. Individual ejidatarios have been making decisions to increase their own profit in line with capitalist business models, which could be framed as a form of ethnoexodus. As in Canyon de Chelly, another way of confronting political and cultural colonial power constellations is through works of art and theatrical performances. My discussion has focused upon the work of Luis May Ku and his multiple roles as artist, cultural broker, and public school teacher. His knowledge about what is Maya is learned from elders, books, Mayas for Ancient Mayan (MAM), and from his friendships with outside academics, merging colonial and Indigenous sources of knowledge production. In his curriculum and extra-curricular activities he teaches this learned understanding of Maya heritage. In his artistic work he creates a new vision of his own of what it means to be Maya in the Coba region in the

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twenty-first century: the contemporary stela makes a direct reference to the archaeological site, Lake Coba with its crocodiles, and May Ku’s school; his works in clay, for example, a new series of portrait busts of traditional Maya from the area, use clays and firing techniques in collaboration with pottery workshops in Ticul, Yucatan, a Maya community situated a three-and-ahalf-hour drive from Coba. May Ku and the Ticul potters believe that their clays and working techniques continue ancient Maya traditions and that they build new heritage for the art and economic market of the twenty-first century. In this sense, they shape a place in the middle, a “third space” that aims to accommodate both the Maya past and present-day global realities (see also Simonelli and McClanahan 2015:222). The concept of third space was rigorously theorized by Homi Bhabha as “borderline work of culture . . . that is not part of the continuum of past and present . . . such art does not merely recall the past . . . ; it renews the past, refiguring it as a contingent ‘in-between’ space, that innovates and interrupts the performance of the present. The ‘past-present’ becomes part of the necessity, not the nostalgia, of living” (Bhabha 2012:10). It is apparent that in the interstices of the third space, “meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity” (Bhabha 2012:55). This third space is not static but moves Maya heritage forward. One related issue raised by Simonelli and McClanahan (2015) is whether cultural heritage in Coba in its physical and intangible forms has become disembodied from the very people associated with it. Clearly, the cultural landscape regarding the ruins, Lake Coba, and the cenotes has been heavily commodified as result of the ejido’s active engagement with tourism. As we saw in Chapter 5, consultant Amairani summed it up dramatically: “Sin turistas, no hay Coba” (there is no Coba without tourists; translation mine). I reason that physical and intangible cultural heritage in Coba are more succinctly evaluated through the lens of iknal or ethnoexodus. The perspective of Castillo Cocom and colleagues (2017) allows for more fluid identities, as well as for more than one, but always emphasizes a permanent Maya presence. As anthropologists we can engage with Cobaneros as tourism entrepreneurs and as artists and widen their presence through publications and virtual dissemination as a way to empowerment.

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Cultural Landscapes and Intangible Heritage Refuse to Be Assimilated (Copacabana) Copacabana has confronted two colonial power structures: the Inka empire and then the Spanish Invasion bringing the Catholic Church and the Bolivian nation-state. Before European contact. In the literature colonialism is commonly treated as a European phenomenon, but the Inka state pursued solid colonial power politics. Indeed, the idealized goal was to conquer and unite the world in the “Land of the Four Quarters” (Tawantinsuyu) under a specifically Inka order. To accomplish this, the Inka used a variety of strategies, the most brutal of which was the resettlement or mitmaq policy, as discussed. The profound social implications of this drastic policy have been undertheorized in the literature and not sufficiently examined from the bottom-up perspective of the mitmaqkuna. We have seen that Copacabana was particularly harshly affected: 42 nations were relocated here, from the far north, the central highlands, and the southeast of the Andean region. The relocated families were allowed to travel back and forth at least initially (Ramos Gavilán 1988 [1621]:85) and were most likely the “pilgrims” misinterpreted by the Spanish. From this perspective, Inka rulers would have sponsored and endowed such pilgrimages as a social performance of the legitimacy of the state. Indeed, the Inka even attempted to colonize the natural landscape by planting exotics, such as coca, on the Island of the Sun among maize, molle, and aliso trees (Chapter 7). Ramos Gavilán admitted that the coca would not grow (in McCormack 2010:59). Few material data or written accounts survive to document the reverse, the bottom-up perspective of the mitmaqkuna. European invasion and later. The Spanish arrived in the region in the 1530s and put an end to the formal cult of the Sun. In 1548 the licenciado Pedro de la Gasca granted to the licenciado García de León Copacabana and its dependent villages in encomienda, which includes all the tributary Indians residing there. These Indians are described in the document as mitmaqkuna brought to the area for the service of the temple of the Sun, and were ruled by Conde Mayta, an Inka, and four other principales. Ramos Gavilán lists six nations resident in Copacabana in about 1621 (McCormack 1984:46–47). This documents a significant drop from the 42 nations of mitmaqkuna resettled by Topa Inka Yupanqui roughly 140 years earlier. These numbers are vital for understanding the fundamental effects that

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Inka colonization and then their collapse had in uprooting the social landscape of Copacabana: the rural pre-Inka way of life, which was subsistence based and coordinated by ayllus, was rapidly transformed into a cosmopolitan, multi-national territory with different languages and in which the ayllu-land connection was suppressed; it was not lost, but it had to be hidden and copied when the ayllu paqarina (origin place) was re-created somewhere else in the wake of the resettlement policy. After the arrival of the Spanish, the foreign population soon dissipated. This underscores the bottom-up perspective and the deeply rooted ayllu-land connection by which rural Andean people define their identity: most mitmaqkuna wanted to go back home and attend to their own lands as part of their original ayllus. The remaining local population was predominantly Aymara. MacCormack (1984, 2010) cogently reconstructs the surprisingly subtle transition from Inka to Spanish rule, which the Copacabana Aymara experienced most directly through the intervention of the Catholic Church. The first missionaries to arrive in the Copacabana region in the 1540s were Dominicans. In the 1580s the patroness Santa Ana was changed to the Virgin Mary and the Augustinian order assumed management of her shrine by virtue of a royal decree (MacCormack 2010:62). In 1582 the farmers and herders in the region were hit by a severe drought. The upper moiety of Copacabana, Anansaya, which included the Inka who had aligned themselves with the Spanish, wanted to found a new confraternity to serve the Virgin Mary, considered more powerful than her mother Ana to assist against the drought. The lower moiety, Urinsaya, to which most Indigenous Aymara people belonged, requested that this new confraternity would honor Saint Sebastian. On the surface this seemed to be a local religious debate, but in essence it veiled the ideological takeover of the cultural landscape of Copacabana: in Andean tradition, the upper moiety is formed by the original, first and native peoples, and those who join the community later are grouped in the lower moiety. When Pachakuti Inka Yupanqui redesigned Cusco as the Inka capital, he altered–that is, colonized—this hierarchy by appropriating the upper moiety for his panaqa (royal corporate lineage) and for those of his successors, whereas the panaqas of earlier rulers held the lower moiety. Similarly, in Copacabana, the Inka lineages of the first invaders who had partnered with the Spanish new invaders dominated the upper moiety, Anansaya (in Aymara), and the original Aymara population was demoted to the lower moiety, Urinsaya. On the religious level it was said that the

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Virgin Mary appeared and interceded for the victory of Spanish forces when they were fighting Manqo Inka to keep him from taking back Cusco. The resulting victory brought on by Mary strongly aligned the Virgin with the Spanish and with conquerors in a more general sense in the colonial mindset of Cusco and Copacabana in the late sixteenth century. And the Virgin it was who became the new patroness of Copacabana, to be housed in a monumental church and convent to be built a century later. This is the more subtle powerplay that replaced the pilgrimages to the Sun on the Island of the Sun with those to the Virgin of Copacabana on the mainland (MacCormack 1984, 2010). Local Aymara people do not perceive themselves as defeated. As laid out in my ethnographic fieldwork during the August pilgrimages to the Virgin in Copacabana in 2015 and 2017, most local people are Catholic and wait in long lines to touch the Virgin, leave petitions with her, or be wetted by the holy water the padres dispense. But they also contract a shaman or yatiri for issues of family well-being. Indeed, the growth and spread of new Virgin shrines or wak’as at liminal features in the surrounding landscape, such as caves and rock outcrops, is living proof for such spiritual needs. It is not that the colonial power of the Catholic Church would have replaced Indigenous ritual, but the two coexist with fluid overlaps. A distinct spatiality of power structures must be noted here in contrast to the other two case studies: the control of the Augustinian padres is limited to the church and convent and physically marked by the perimeter wall. In the outside space, power structures crumble in multi-relational interactions among shamans, pilgrims, tourists, local vendors, Peruvians, and visitors from La Paz. Certain initiatives are taken by the Copacabana shaman association or local families to safeguard specific places for spiritual intercessions; I view this as active re-making and creating of new wak’as or strong bottom-up social efforts to build new popular heritage in challenge to the top-down religious structure of the Catholic Church. On the secular level, the Bolivian highlands were known as Upper Peru (Alto Peru) and remained under the authority of the Viceroyalty of Peru during most of the Spanish colonial period. Local government was implemented by the Real Audiencia of Charcas, situated in Chuquisaca or La Plata (now the city of Sucre). During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, conflicts of authority and numerous independence initiatives unfolded; Spanish royal authority was severely undermined by the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century, when Joseph Bonaparte took the Spanish throne.

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Bolivians proclaimed independence in 1809 but it was not until August 6, 1825, that a constitutional congress declared Bolivia an independent republic. It was named after Simon Bolivar, a freedom fighter and highly successful political leader from Venezuela, who was instrumental in the formation of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama as sovereign states, independent of Spanish rule. The second half of the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth were marred by economic crises and political turmoil involving military leaders, traditional ruling classes of Spanish descent, conflicts over nationalizing or privatizing major economic resources, and emerging Indigenous rights movements. In 1952 the Bolivian National Revolution introduced universal adult suffrage, carried out sweeping land reform, and promoted rural education. For the first time in Republican history, the Indigenous Aymara and Quechua who constituted about 63–65 percent of the total population were included in the reforms. However, this kind of inclusion came as part of national politics which aimed at de-Indianization through integration, essentially defined as the complete elimination of Indian culture (Ari 2014:148– 153). More tumultuous years followed under several military regimes until democratic government was reestablished. During the past decades the most serious challenges for the Bolivian government have been economic debates over nationalization versus privatization of state infrastructure and resources, dovetailing conflicts between socialist and liberal forces, rampant rural poverty, and Indigenous rights and independence movements. After 2000 the Indigenous leader Evo Morales entered the political scene and was elected in 2005. He assumed office on January 22, 2006, as the first Indigenous Bolivian president in history. He remained in power until November 2019. Morales’s drastic political reforms have implemented the spirit of Earth Politics, the discourse that encompasses an ideology of land, territory, nation, faith, religion, rights, and Indianness. Waskar Ari (2014) used the term Earth Politics to designate the ideology and activism of the Indigenous activist network Alcaldes Mayores Particulares (AMP), which he followed from the 1920s to the early 1970s and whose essential ideas resonate today. Melitón Gallardo, an early leader, summarized the AMP platform as: “Nuestra política es la tierra, nuestra política es la Pachamama” (Our politics is the earth, our politics is the Mother Earth; Ari 2014:4). In this revitalized spirit, Bolivia under Evo Morales has written a new constitution that empowers Indigenous heritage and Mother Earth. In

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more specific terms, in December 2010 Bolivia’s Plurinational Legislative Assembly passed the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, known as Law 071, which makes nature agentive with the same rights as humans and defines Earth as a collective subject of public interest. Two years later, the government added the Mother Earth and Holistic Development for Living Well Framework Law, also known as Law 300, which contains bylaws with more specific content for implementation. Another new piece of legislation called the Autonomy and Decentralization Framework Law gives Indigenous communities the opportunity to declare autonomy and develop their own norms, procedures, and institutions (Ari 2014:179–180, Appendix 2). In the Copacabana case study the analysis of the contemporary pilgrimage to the Virgin of Copacabana should be understood under the umbrella of this national Earth Politics. More directly, early AMP leaders envisioned instituting an independent Kollasuyu republic among the Indigenous Aymara-speaking highland peoples. I give the term Earth Politics broader application in the remaining conclusions. So far I have tried to sum up major commentary regarding cultural landscape and intangible heritage confronting power structures, as was analyzed in the three case studies, in political, economic, and social sciences terms. These parameters are limiting because they leave out the overarching social problem of poverty, notwithstanding how the three communities under discussion have been resilient, have redefined themselves, or have refused to be assimilated. All three continue to exist in poverty far below average middle-class economic standards in Euroamerican societies. In 2020 Covid-19 has been exacerbating the interwoven economic, social, and healthcare inequalities. These facts are connected with the colonial structure of the global economy, which is clearly an issue and problem far too complex to be mined here. For some Indigenous groups, part of being resilient, redefining, and refusing to be assimilated is not wanting to participate in the capitalist system. They raise the questions of whether we can alleviate poverty, level wealth, and survive the pandemic with traditional medicines by not living the capitalist model. Such questions address the core lessons of this book: the chronological reconstructions of the three cultural landscapes through archaeology have laid open their colonial context. The Indigenous descendants have been born into this colonial structure, as have we, the anthropologists and visitors. Can we do more than uncover it through scholarly discourse? The ethnography sections of this book have shown how Indigenous

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residents have redefined cultural landscapes through intangible heritage, which is fluid and escapes the normative categories and grip of colonial power structures. This is what José Martínez-Reyes (2016:21) frames as “moral ecology”; it comprises not only the profound, historical, humannature exchanges and spiritual dimensions but extends to include the ontological principle of life with the land: a life in which people, the land, and universe come together in relations of mutuality and interdependence with the species of the plant and animal world—relations that provide moral imperatives with regard to the inside versus outside. As anthropologists, we are uniquely positioned to learn case-specific moral ecologies with our consultants and, upon their consent, present them to the outside world via publications, public lectures, and university courses as well as presentations before government agencies. I have outlined some approaches in the data sections of the three case studies. Lessons from Perspective 2: Impact of the Christian Religion

Cultural landscapes and intangible heritage occupy space that is separate from Christian Space (Canyon de Chelly), have ceded center space of the town to Christian churches (Coba), and revitalize and build in discourse with the Catholic Church (Copacabana). Cultural Landscapes and Intangible Heritage Occupy Space That Is Separate from Christian Space (Canyon de Chelly) To begin with, Christianity arrived in the Americas as part of the Spanish Invasion and the ensuing colonial project. Thus secular, economic, and religious power structures have always been cross-linked, and I do not wish to create an impression of disconnecting them. Rather, the focus here is on the local impacts of the Christian religion and how they are spatialized and interwoven with the living spaces of a majority of the people. At Canyon de Chelly a number of Christian church buildings have sprung up in the town of Chinle, while many families of the Chinle chapter continue to live along the canyon rims or in homesteads on their land. I argue that this continuing spatial separation should be viewed as parallel to a continuing fundamental distinction between Christian and traditional Navajo worldviews. As I have demonstrated, traditional Navajo philosophy and views of the world carry elements of what Viveiros de Castro (1998) has defined as

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perspectivism among Amazonian societies. The salient points of perspectivism are that the world began in an original state in which living beings combined human and animal attributes and interacted with one another to serve essential needs, such as food, shelter, and clothing (which could be fur or feathers), and social organization. What united them was a basic culture or spiritual essence grounded in survival needs, a culture that was expressed and accepted. What differentiated them were diverse physical bodies, which could morph and transform but always remained bound by the same cultural needs. In Western evolutionary thought that has been Christianized, humans transcend their original human condition shared with apes (and other animals), “develop” intellectual capacities, and rise to become superior living beings in the Darwinist hierarchy, fit to dominate all “weaker or less developed” species. Western science classifies living beings as biological species (humans, dogs, horses, etc.); beings within each species share unity of body form. Cultural diversity is created in interactions between species members and among species. It is clear that the Christian doctrine in which God shaped man in the image of himself and gave him a stewardship position over the rest of creation reinforces the evolutionary ideology. In Amerindian thought, the original state of undifferentiation is better conceptualized as the cultural condition of humanity. Humans, as one group of beings, continued living the original condition of humanity. Animals, on the other hand, separated and lost some of their human-like qualities, took on different bodies, chose distinct clothing but still remained united by the essential cultural survival needs of a shared humanity. We can now see that the human being takes on fundamentally different roles depending upon whether it is viewed and constructed according to the Western scientific scheme, as occupying the top of the evolutionary ladder, or from the roles in the Amerindian scheme, sharing the condition of humanity with all living beings. Specific interviews with Navajo consultants who described experiences of Skinwalkers, the moving presence of other beings in healing sessions with a medicine man, or more common accounts of Navajo people sensing the presence of Holy People in certain places in Canyon de Chelly suggest that perspectivism was integral to Navajo heritage and demonstrate that aspects of it continue to be experienced. It is clear that the more widely Christian religions are practiced, the more this part of Navajo heritage will move into background memory experiences, since the two views of the human being are contradictory and incompatible.

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Cultural Landscapes and Intangible Heritage Have Ceded Center Space of the Town to Christian Churches (Coba) In Coba numerous houses marked as Christian churches by signs and columns line the principal road, and more are found in the town section south of the lake. Most of these are Protestant (evangélicos) churches. Most of my consultants are practicing Christians. At night, broadcast evangelical services often dominate by sound volume the otherwise quiet town. Does this mean that the Christian God and the accompanying colonial enterprise have conquered the souls of the Coba Maya? I would deny this question and refer back to Hervik’s (1999:82–89) emphasis on personal choice. Fluid and interconnected global cultural landscapes offer local people more individual choices, including a variety of Christian Protestant denominations. Cobaneros have joined where they choose and continue to self-identify proudly as Maya. Does Coba demonstrate distinct Maya and Christian spatialities? Nobody I consulted with knew of Maya oral narratives or rituals tied to specific places, except for general remembrances of strange beings rising from the ruins and lakes at night or the night vision of Lake Coba turned upside down with an emerging beautiful market (see Chapter 6). I have argued that the Maya cultural landscape lives primarily in the community values of the ejido system. I reason that the best approach to understanding the impact of the Christian religion and colonialism on Coba and Yucatec Maya culture in general is to use the concept of wutz or Jaloj-K’exoj given by the Maya, as discussed. The concept itself is rooted in traditional Maya cyclical notions of time. The wutz is a turning and beginning of a new era, which Maya elders in the Tulum area described in details strikingly similar to life in the early twenty-first century. This new era will be a time when the Maya regain control of their lands and lives. While they critique some contemporary changes, they understand the impacts of the global era with tourism in the context of their prophetic tradition (Juarez 2002:119). In the Tz’utujil Maya way of conceptualizing Jaloj-K’exoj, jal and k’ex both denote change. Jal is change on the outside, as things or persons pass through their individual life cycles; ke’x occurs at the seed and refers to generational transfer. Together jal and k’ex form a concentric system of transformation and renewal (Carlsen 1997:50–51). In this sense the past traditional Maya cultural landscapes and intangible heritage are never lost. Essential elements of Maya heritage are selected

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by active Maya agents and carried forward in the cycle of the present, and those to come in the future, by their own choice and under terms they struggle to set. I posit that the Maya have subordinated Christian religions, colonialism, and capitalism to wutz or Jaloj-K’exoj, but their principle of renewal cannot reach the fundamental colonial structure of economic inequalities nor the unprecedented health crisis brought on by Covid-19. Here then, more specifically, lies the interstitial space in which anthropologists should practice Earth Politics by linking their research about Indigenous moral ecologies with social and political activism. Cultural Landscapes and Intangible Heritage Revitalize and Build in Discourse with the Catholic Church (Copacabana) In Copacabana, spatial control by the Augustinian padres is demarcated by the perimeter wall of the Basilica and Convent of the Virgin of Copacabana. Outside we have observed a colorful and passionate mixture of traditional Aymara ritual and Christian practices at the Calvario and Santa Barbara peaks, the Boca del Zapo site, and at the Virgins of Lourdes and Urkupina. In all these places, yatiri or Aymara shamans evoke higher powers at liminal (meaning transitional and borderline) landscape features, such as mountain peaks, caves, and special rock formations. It was documented that the Catholic padres have begun to venture into some of these spaces at certain times to compete with the shamans in serving the public demand for blessing ceremonies. I argue that the Aymara in Copacabana actively build popular heritage from the bottom up to meet their spiritual as well as economic needs, which are linked. As was documented in the discussion of the pilgrimages, people approach the sacred sites not for spiritual transformation but to receive help in economic and medical requests. Since 2005 this fervor of heritage building in which the past and present coexist has been fueled by the policies of Evo Morales, who has also passed certain reforms in which government profits from nationalizing major industries are being channeled back to rural Indigenous people. During my participant observations, it was apparent that Aymara people do not make distant intellectual choices of founding new shrines. Rather, these are more desperate choices to solicit more supernatural help to alleviate poverty by going back to their ancestral landscapes. One friend once commented: “It is safer to have one foot in traditional religion and the other foot in Catholicism” (anon., pers. comm., 2005). Evo Morales stands out

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as the president who has adopted Earth Politics and taken radical steps to break down colonial imbalances on a national level. His presidency sets a historical model, but implementation is slow and often lacking. I argue further that through deep time of the historical occupation phases, Aymara people have been remarkably resilient in their lifeways based upon the community structure of the ayllu and a subsistence-based economy of cultivating high altitude crops and herding. These lifeways were interrupted by the penetration of Inka colonial power, during which Aymara sacred places were personified by Inka ancestors. When the Inka lost power, the Aymara of Copacabana continued to live from their land and in their ayllu social structure held together by an ideology of reciprocity. Their lives were overseen by and have been entrusted to the mallkus (ancestors), Pachamama (the Earth), and the Achachillas (Mountains). The Spanish Invasion caused a new disruption accompanied by a new religion. The Aymara were capable of integrating Catholic teachings so that Christian and Aymara practices coexist. The most complete integration of past and present can be experienced at the Boca del Zapo site, with Aymara ritual offerings, a shrine to the Virgin, and Inka memories in the rock painting of Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu. During Morales’s presidency it would appear that competition and capitalism have made little headway in the Aymara world. Local people surely adopt amenities, such as electricity, watches, television, and cell phones; yet it is the moral ecology, the value system that links people and their land, to which they return and which stands as an enduring alternative to colonialism or capitalism. Earth Politics in Action

I have presented three case studies as de-colonization projects of Earth Politics, a term I have borrowed from Waskar Ari (2014) but that was first developed by John Dryzek (2013 [1997]) in his earlier and deeply succinct unraveling of environmental discourses. Dryzek lays open the conflicting interests and interpretations of general constructs such as people, environment, nature, wilderness, and climate and the fact that they are all interconnected within the finite planet Earth. Realization of such complex connectivities has given rise to a politics of the Earth beginning in the 1960s (Dryzek 2013 [1997}:6).

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In this book, archaeology had laid out the physical stage set through the chronological reconstructions of cultural landscapes in the three parts investigating three case studies. Archaeology focuses upon the physical data of how people have interacted with their lands, albeit interpreted through researchers. The ethnography sections have added mental dimensions of how people have experienced, perceived, and imagined their environments. The conclusions reflect on the connectivities of Earth Politics and place Indigenous people at center stage. They survive despite of colonialism, and they enrich Earth Politics with alternative land-based knowledge systems. Conclusions are that: ** Cultural landscapes and Indigenous peoples will not be erased. This notion was part of an outdated colonial system that essentialized and froze cultures in prescribed places and subscribed to Darwinist models of social evolution. We have learned that the West and Indigenous peoples are connected in complex geo-political networks. This book contributes to illuminating and untangling these networks. ** Indigenous concepts of cyclical time will assure cultural survival and continuities. In all three case studies, traditional native people view time as progressing in “worlds” (Navajo), eras (Maya), or yearly agricultural cycles (Aymara). Each cycle moves forward into the future and carries with it elements from the past. This means cultures are not static: they absorb technological innovations and adjust to new religions, and traditional and modern features may be used side by side. ** Cultural landscapes and intangible heritage will not fade away. In the lived daily routines, they are inscribed in the memories of idealized background social spaces. And they do not exist only in memories. In all three case studies, popular heritage is newly created in initiatives of Earth Politics from the bottom up in contemporary art, new prayers, and teachings (Navajo), artistic representations of Maya culture (Coba), and the new Virgins and pilgrimage sites (Copacabana). ** In all three case studies, people choose as primary identity markers family relations and family lands: clans among the Navajo, cah and chibal among the Yucatec Maya, and the ayllu for the Aymara.

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These are community-based social structures and land management systems alien to the individualistic and competitive spirit of capitalism in the Western world. Community-based systems move traditions forward; I posit that their strength or weakness will largely determine the depth of cultural landscapes and intangible heritage in the future. The new decade is bringing new challenges to community-based systems with Covid-19 and social distancing requirements. Ways to Plot “Third Spaces”

In this book I have discussed many aspects of colonialism and its accompanying division of the world into binaries, such as the West versus Indigenous ways, with the underlying premise that cultures occupy designated spaces, science versus Indigenous knowledge, and so on. Binaries are cultural productions that we, as Westerners, create and perpetuate in the ways we have been raised and educated and in how we travel, interact with native peoples, teach, or do research. Whenever we separate people from our own society, we mark them as “the other” and subtly nativize them, most of all by assigning them to specific spaces proper to an “other” culture (Gupta and Ferguson 1997:42–43). Earth Politics teaches that such separations are no longer a working premise and that instead, people, cultures, spaces, land, religions, traditions, and the present must be interconnected on a finite planet Earth. This translates into a call for Indigenous or communitybased anthropology. Therefore the task for applied scientists is to find middle ground and plot third spaces to bridge the binaries of the past in order to move into the future. Homi Bhabha’s (2012:3) complex third space is—among other aspects—the realm of “borderline engagements of cultural difference . . . which may confound our definitions of tradition and modernity; realign the customary boundaries between the private and the public, high and low.” How could this be done based upon the data presented in the case studies at hand? The first basic call is to take time and listen, be open, learn, and dig deeper than the few points presented in disconnected websites, when we have opportunities to interact with Indigenous people. Time itself has become a de-colonized asset in the sense that the gift of human time—away from academic schedules or rigid travel arrangements—is our first contribution

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to native peoples; that implies time on their terms when they feel inclined to return it to us. What we can receive are insights into traditional philosophies of balance between all living and spiritual beings in the world of the Earth; versions of worldviews in balance have been documented in all three case studies. We can open ourselves and integrate wisdoms of balance into our daily routines, teachings, and political activism. This is a grassroots potential that, when multiplied, will contribute to regenerating our planet with all its living beings. On the other hand, the case studies have clearly demonstrated that such balanced worlds may be part of idealized background memories, whereas lived daily routines are often ruptured by profit-driven capitalist economic interests, for example, the Navajo Nation or individual ejidatarios. As a practical alternative, Simonelli and McClanahan (2015:221–225) offer the model of cooperative entrepreneurship. These initiatives are fueled not solely by the passion of individuals but also by the combined energies of groups of people with a vested interest in their collective future. In contrast to a model based upon competition, collaborative models can create greater social value. A merged goal of income and social value drives the overall initiative (Simonelli and McClanahan 2015:222). However, this model of cooperation that collectivizes risk and profit has not worked well for the Canyon de Chelly guide association. Stepping back to a more general level, the cooperative business model is just one of the many possibilities to seek and help prepare middle ground or “third spaces” between the binaries, the most fundamental of which is economic, the West with wealth versus Indigenous peoples in poverty. Where it works, cooperative entrepreneurship can actively balance the binaries. More far-reaching strategies of Earth Politics with wider impact are new political platforms leading to governance systems that integrate Earth Politics. Evo Morales’s government in Bolivia was discussed as the primary example. The Navajo Nation Council recently translated and codified Diné Fundamental Law (Sa’ ah Naaghai Bik’eh Hozhoon or SBNH) as the official ethics to be applied in policy decisions, bolstering the legal power of customary teachings centered in the core principle of k’e (relations) and hozho (harmony, balance, peace; Powell 2018:13). Thus two case studies have demonstrated that Earth Politics can enter twenty-first-century government systems. Globally, all Indigenous groups can appeal to the international law of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (as mentioned earlier).

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Other options and strategies lie in the fields of visual culture. We have seen how Luis May Ku acts as a cultural broker between notions of the ancient Maya past and present Maya identities. Navajo artists also aim to apply tradition to the present in techniques and messages. Rodney Harrison (2013:4–5; see Introduction to the present volume) has outlined a new critical framework for heritage studies that he names a “‘dialogical’ model in which heritage is seen as emerging from the relationship between people, objects, places, and practices, and that does not distinguish between or prioritize what is ‘natural’ or what is ‘cultural,’ but is instead concerned with the various ways in which humans and nonhumans are linked by chains of connectivity and work together to keep the past alive in the present for the future.” Harrison emphasizes that this dialogical model has radical implications for breaking down the bureaucratic divide between laypersons and experts and offers many new possibilities of engagement. We have followed this kind of popular heritage building from the bottom up at the Virgin and ritual sites at Copacabana. When we begin to understand heritage as practice of Earth Politics and relationships, when we accept heritage as a form of ongoing social production (Robinson and Silverman 2015:19–20), we can find many open doors to engagement and participation in the social process toward a regenerative planet as foundation of life for all living beings. Postscript

I am completing the editing process of this book manuscript in the summer of 2020, at a time when the world has been changed by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this brief postscript, I first address how the theoretical model of Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage offers a compass for parallel future research directives, the results of which could become the supporting evidence for new regulations strengthening sustainability at various governmental levels; and second, I ask in what ways Covid-19 will impact the findings of this study. Research data regarding the physical and social effects of the virus are minimal at the moment but will be growing for years to come. First and foremost, Earth Politics in its widest sense as defined by Dryzek (2013 [1997]) involves the discourses of relations between people and land, animals, plants, water, and air. In the Western world these relations have historically been weighted by access to power on the side of humans. In Earth Politics, such power strategies commonly fall under the umbrella

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of “colonization projects.” On a very broad level, humans “colonized the earth” when we started cultivating land. In the narrower modern sense, “colonialism” refers to the military, economic, and cultural takeover of lands in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania by economically strong European countries, most notably Spain, Portugal, France, and the United Kingdom since roughly 1500 A.D. and by the United States beginning in the eighteenth century. Thus colonialism since 1500 A.D. is about power relations between Euroamericans and Indigenous peoples, and Earth Politics links them to land. As my book covers only three case scenarios in the Americas, future research directions will accumulate more case studies for comparison. I am currently working on a parallel analysis of cultural sites on the islands of O‘ahu and Hawai‘i. Each new study requires immersion into local communities, ethnography, oral histories, and linguistics as well as archaeological and historical data. Native Hawai‘ians use the word “‘aina” to designate earth and land, which condenses the English terms place and space in the daily practice of living through land. New case scenarios uncover different systems of knowledge that do not fit into Western scientific categories. In the Southwest, Earth Politics are fought on multiple fronts between Native American tribes, archaeologists, and federal agencies; for example Bears Ears National Monument in southeast Utah (Lipe et al. 2017–2018). Earth Politics between a conqueror and local populations were also performed before the European invasions in what we choose to call the Third World. For example, ancient Greek polis established colonies along the Mediterranean, and the Roman Empire colonized large swaths of central and western Europe. Archaeologists could benefit from the Earth Politics framework and focus research questions on local resistance and bottom-up movements, as opposed to limiting inquiries to mechanisms of rulership and control. Scholars focusing on Russia, Africa, and Asia could contribute rich historically and regionally specific insights. I envision conference panels and edited volumes with titles related to Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage. They would call on scholars as well as Indigenous activists to present scenarios from different parts of the globe. Discussants would analyze different ways of knowing and search for patterns in wisdoms applicable today that could help redirect twenty-firstcentury societies on a more regenerative path. Such results can be shared in public lectures, meetings, and with administrators and legislators. Data from multiple knowledge systems could become the backbone of new

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legislation to shape environmental as well as social sustainability on local and regional levels, and—ideally—nationally and worldwide. The second question is whether Covid-19 has been and is changing my findings and projections. An obvious impact already clear from the pandemic statistics is that Indigenous communities have been hit especially hard on the Navajo Reservation, in Mexico, and in the Andes, particularly in Peru. I asked one of my consultants why she thinks so many Navajo people have contracted the virus even though a majority of families live in isolated homesteads and not in big cities? She replied: “The household sizes are a major factor. Even in my home I live with six grandsons, three adult daughters, a son-in-law and myself. Four adults work, and if one of us gets exposed I am sure it would not be good” (anon., pers. comm., June 2020). Families nurture, support, and transmit community values. My findings clearly show that traditional knowledge systems and identities are supported by community structure. The new virus rules teach social distancing, that community is dangerous, that each person can bring the virus and quite literally be a carrier of death. In what ways the 2020 virus rules will undermine Indigenous community organization (or not) will be a research topic in the social sciences for years to come. Related questions are: can cultural heritage be treasured, transmitted, and managed digitally, or does it truly require personal contacts, shared experiences, and community interactions? The virus may open one promising door to Indigenous communities and their cultural landscapes: a rise in traditional medicines. I was on the Navajo Reservation in March 2020 when the lockdown began. I asked one of my consultants what he would do if he contracted the virus. His answer was: I call the medicine man and schedule a sweatlodge session. He will prepare the hot stones and medicinal herbs. He will chant the required songs inside or outside. This is not just normal sweating. It is strong and hard; nasty things come out of your nose and mouth, you vomit. This will cure you! . . . We Navajo people will survive this; we have survived worse things in the past, such as the Long Walk. We will change, adapt, survive. We will also survive the climate crisis as a community. We have each other as community support! (Anon., pers. comm., March 2020) At the time of this writing, scientific data about Covid-19 are limited, and its long-term social damage can only be imagined. The powers of medicinal

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herbs are the private knowledge of Navajo medicine men. I end with these final Diné reflections of how traditional knowledge systems may provide alternative cures and the strong reinforcement that community values are the foundation for a regenerative planet.

Notes

Introduction 1. It is of interest that this shift in archaeology was cross-pollinated by and ran parallel to the publications of influential social theorists, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and Anthony Giddens, who built indisputable arguments that human society is the direct product of the members who create it through the web of their interpersonal relationships. Giddens’s work in the 1970s pioneered new comprehension of human construction of space in the sense that a cultural landscape is not simply the outcome of human practices but becomes an agent in itself, by channeling human actions and reproducing as well as slowly altering them and their supporting social structure (Smith 2003:71–72). His theory of structuration introduced an action theory and human agency into the social sciences and aimed to anchor action in the time-space relations of social interactions (Giddens 1979:1–8). Chapter 1. Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time: The Archaeological Past 1. Southwest scholars have employed a variation of cultural chronologies. The first and still standard chronology was the Pecos classification, agreed upon at the first conference held at the Pecos ruins in New Mexico in 1927. In 1935 Frank Roberts revised and simplified the Pecos classification of 1927, which Grant has adopted (1978:24–25). The dates remained the same but Roberts condensed Pecos Basketmaker I, II, and III to two phases (Basketmaker and Modified Basketmaker) and condensed Pueblo I, II, and III in the Pecos system to Developmental Pueblo and Great Pueblo. I follow the original standard Pecos system; however, for rock art occasional references to the Roberts-Grant system are necessary. 2. Moiety organization is well documented for Eastern Pueblos near the Rio Grande. Several contemporary Pueblos are still divided into two kiva societies, for example, atno at Zia and Taos. The theme of dual social organization can be traced back in the archaeological and ethnographic records. For example, excavations by A. Rohn (1971) in Mug House, Mesa Verde, provided evidence for dual social groupings among Ancestral Pueblo peoples. Don Morris’s (1986) extensive archaeological work reconstructed a social system of contrasting dualities at Antelope House and other settlements in Canyon del Muerto.

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3. Oral narratives of origin and migrations characterize the entire Southwest. As discussed, geopolitical networks throughout the region can be archaeologically identified for Ancestral Pueblo (Pueblo I–III) occupations. Canyon de Chelly constituted one link in this system. Such oral narratives continue to be discussed and debated privately by contemporary Pueblo groups (personal communications in Santa Ana and Zia, 2000– 2014) as well as by the Navajo (Diné). Some have been published in the ethnographic literature (Duwe and Preucel 2019). These narratives are dynamic and fluid and shift, as does lived and experienced human reality. We return to Navajo ethnography in Canyon de Chelly later in the chapter. 4. For ye’i or Yeh, also see Klah 1942:17, 103–104, 107, 123. 5. In general, women are considered the weavers and textile experts throughout the Southwest in the public eye. However, we must remember that men were documented as textile weavers in Great Pueblo kivas in Antelope House. Numbers of male weavers in the twentieth century, like Hosteen Klah, and in the twenty-first century, such as Ephraim Zefren Anderson, have also been increasing, so that Navajo textile production should not be seen as a specifically gendered activity. 6. A very similar version of the creation stories was given to Kelley and Francis (1994:23–24) by their consultants on the Navajo Reservation. 7. For a Navajo example, note a detail in Female Mountain-Top-Way by Yucca Patch Man: “We sat in the rear room, when suddenly the door was heard outside and two entered. They carried their clothes [on their arms] and I saw that their faces were white, their arms and legs black. . . . They hung up their clothes, bear garments they were, very pretty garments” (Wyman 1975:201). What seems implied here is that their bodies were bare and the bear garments were their body form. Chapter 2. Cultural Landscapes of Canyon de Chelly through Time: Heritage in the Present 1. In June 2017 I hiked with 15-year-old Tanner to Tear Drop Arch and Hidden Ruin in Monument Valley. Tanner has lived in Colorado and speaks broken Navajo, but he feels strongly about the ruins: “Stay away. . . . Stay outside . . . if part of your body leans inside the walls, you may get cursed and experience nightmares” (Tanner, pers. comm., June 2017). 2. I have documented similar ongoing traditions among contemporary Pueblo groups. Peter Pino, an elder from Zia Pueblo, created a petroglyph panel in 2009 commemorating a work project on a small local dam that year. He also engraves portable panels on commission. 3. De Harport (1959: vol. I, chap. IV) differentiates two groups of Lino Black-on-gray dating to about A.D. 500–700 or Basketmaker III. Of the 45 decorated Basketmaker III sherds from Canyon de Chelly that De Harport analyzed, 20 or 44% are likely Lino Black-on-gray. Steen (1966:83–86) found 3,977 sherds of Lino Gray and 11 of Lino Blackon-gray in Tse-ta’a. Gray vessels with bands around the neck are classified as Kana’a Gray and assigned to Pueblo I, implying fluid transitions between Basketmaker III and Pueblo I. The pottery classification is based upon Colton’s (1955) typology for the Southwest. 4. In 2017 15-year-old Tanner was our guide in Monument Valley. When I asked him

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about Skinwalkers, he gave a similar answer: “They are bad medicine men who practice witchcraft. There are not many left today” (Tanner, pers. comm., 2017). I wonder, though, whether young men who know about Skinwalkers might connect social memories of Navajo witchcraft with their passion for video games. 5. However, in lived daily practices, confrontations do arise: for example, guides show great respect for landowners and are hesitant to take visitors to specific sites if they have to access land without having received prior permission from the owner. When NPS discovers burials or other cultural objects at archaeological sites, political conflicts arise over whose heritage portable material culture from Canyon de Chelly is. 6. I photographed the sherd and we left it in place. My guide was uneasy. The interface between heritage material and modern activity can be disquieting. Chapter 4. The Cultural and Political Landscape of Pre-Contact Coba: The Late and Terminal Classic Maya City of Coba (c. 600–800/900 A.D.) 1. The geology of large sections of the Yucatan peninsula is characterized by limestone karst topography and an absence of rivers. Lakes are few, and where they form, they are possibly the result of the collapse of several sinkholes or faulting (see Folan et al. 1983:21–34). 2. In 1981 Benavides (1981a:22) counted 34 stelae. Archaeologists assume that more stelae will come to light; thus the history of Coba is in the process of being put together. The tradition of placing carved stelae with ruler portraits and their written biographies in public space is rooted in the Southern Lowlands of the Peten as far north as Calakmul, in the Southern Highlands, as well as in Chiapas, and is rare in the northern Yucatan peninsula (for stela presence see Grube 2003). The fact that Coba adopts the stela practice as an isolated city sets up geographical relations with Late Classic Maya cities in the south. In addition, Pollock and Thompson list certain architectural similarities between features in Coba and cities such as Uaxactun, Tikal, Nakum, and Palenque to the south (Thompson et al. 1932:80, 194–195). Folan (Folan et al. 1983:58–59) observes that there are additional sites on the Yucatan peninsula with Peten-like architecture, for example, Acanceh, Ake, Dzibilchaltun, Izamal, and Oxkintok. 3. “ [Katun] 13 Ahau was the thirteenth in the Itza katun cycle. The seat was in Coba. It was usurped at the outset and there were rebellions throughout, amid war and pillage and suffering of all, living and dead, who rise to the bright heavens or descend to the evil center of the earth.” (Edmonson tr. 1982:30) Chapter 5. The Cultural and Political Landscape of Coba from c. 1950 A.D. to the Present 1. In March 2017 the secretary in the Ejido Office stated that their ejido began with about 60 ejidatarios. My current understanding is that their number has increased to about 133, due to recent land divisions. Most consultants give a number of about 130. 2. A contested scenario has arisen in the community of Yaxuna(h), situated west of Piste, where residents feel very concerned that INAH will come in, declare their ruins an official archaeological site, and reduce ejido land rights. Archaeological investigations in Yaxuna(h) have been ongoing for decades, for the most part directed by U.S. archaeolo-

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gists. People in Yaxuna(h) are trying to preserve Maya cultural heritage through their Cultural Center and to attract tourists. 3. The risers of the stairway are in various states of preservation. A rope anchored in iron or steel hooks has been installed in the center to provide climbers with secure handholds. 4. Some artists now think in global terms. Take Roberto, an artist who works in Piste, Yucatan, but comes from central Mexico. He carves obsidian. We talked about his small head sculptures. Roberto explained that small fragmented figure heads are found at archaeological sites all over Mexico. He copies them and gives them exotic features; he wants to send the message that “people from all over the world were here [in the past, before the advent of tourism]: Egyptians, Japanese . . .” (Roberto, pers. comm., 2014). Thus Roberto globalizes Mexico; comparing the archaeological original with Roberto’s copy, we see Mexican cultural patrimony gone global. He considers himself both artesano and artista and uses the terms interchangeably. 5. As an example of transcendence, Michelangelo, the embodiment of Western notions of fine art and privileged media, believed that genius (ultimate talent) was the ability to find and release the perfect image prefigured for him in the finest marble. 6. See http://discovermam.org/2013/11/6-ajaw-18-kej-november-26-2013-two-stelaetwo-maya-languages/. In Mani the director of the agricultural school U Yits’Ca’an, “the dew of heaven,” dedicated to organic food production, commissioned a stela. The text is written in Maya hieroglyphs, in Yucatec Maya, and in Spanish: “On the day 1 Muluk, the 16th day of the month K’ank’in, the house where agriculture in a natural and true sense is taught was founded; its name is Dew of Heaven; here in the great town of Mani since its third heap of stones [year] in the K’atun 4 Ahaw passed its 10th year, was planted this great stone [the stela] for the anniversary day of this house. This is the way it is” (translation mine). The second stela was erected at the entrance to the archaeological site of Iximche. This stela project was organized by the Kaqchikel organization Kaqchikel Winaq. It is an all glyphic monument recording the history of Iximche in the Kaqchikel Maya language, using Classic Maya glyphs from the creation at 4 Ajpu 8 Kumk’u 13.0.0.0.0. to the arrival of the Spanish, and colonial history up to 2012 with the completion of 13 Bak’tuns. Chapter 6. Discussion 1. For example, Freidel and colleagues (1993:128) present examples visualizing that the Classic Maya believed in an umbilical cord, represented by intertwined serpents, that connected the sky, earth, and underworld. The umbilical cord or kuxan sum transmitted the blood and energy of life to the world. Shamans and kings communicated with ancestors through this umbilical cord, which was also the vision serpent. 2. As a comparison, a religious assessment in Yaxuna(h), a small Yucatec Maya community next to an archaeological site near Chichen Itza, is quite similar: 75% of the people are protestant (anon., pers. comm., 2016). Catholic services are held in the unrestored Colonial church ruin. The original stone vault has collapsed; therefore the congregation has to protect their small altar and few pews with make-shift roofs.

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Part III. Copacabana 1. It must be stated clearly that the chronology of the Titicaca Basin is still being debated among scholars. In the recent literature at the time of this writing, Charles Stanish (2003:89–90) proposes a general chronology divided into eight periods: Late Archaic (circa 5000–2000 B.C.), Early Formative (circa 2000–1300 B.C.), Middle Formative (1300–500 B.C.), Upper Formative (500 B.C.–A.D. 400), Expansive Tiwanaku (A.D. 400–1100), Altiplano (A.D. 1100–1450), Expansive Inca (A.D. 1450–1532), and Early Spanish Colonial (A.D. 1532–1700). Alongside this general chronology he places local historical ones, providing a dual system for each area of the Titicaca Basin. Stanish (2003:139–140) dates the full cultural development of Pucara between approximately 200 B.C. and A.D. 200 and understands it as a historical period in the northern part of the basin (2003:90). Chapter 7. The Cultural Landscapes of Pre-Inka and Inka Copacabana: An Archaeological and Ethnohistoric Reconstruction 1. Similar social developments took place on the Island of the Moon. Excavations carried out by Bauer and Stanish (2001:271, note 15) at the Inka temple of Inak Uyu recorded a large Upper Formative occupation, including numerous high-status and ceremonial objects. 2. So it is reported by Ramos Gavilán and Cobo. We should regard their accounts as suspect, though, from the beginning: their statements very clearly reflect knowledge of and experiences with the Spanish Inquisition, established in 1478 with the intent of maintaining Catholic orthodoxy in Spain and in all Spanish colonies and territories. So far, pilgrimage literature has not interrogated sufficiently the Inka dimension of this pilgrimage (see later discussion for a new perspective). 3. Ramos Gavilán notes that Copacabana had a governor and that this governor “was of royal blood, second only to the person of the Inca. . . . This governor dressed like the Inca with the only difference that he wore the tassel on one side while the Inca wore it in front” (1887:27, translation mine). Martín de Murúa adds: “It was known that the Inga Wayna Kapaj had his people and captains called and then he left for Quito, leaving one of his brothers who had previously been captain and governor to act in his name and on his behalf; after a certain time, this brother settled down in the village of Copacabana and married and had children, whose descendants continue to live in said village of Copacabana” (de Murúa, in Rivera Sundt 1978:73, translation mine). Citing passages from Ramos Gavilán and Cristobal Vaca de Castro, Roberto Santos Escobar (1981) suggests that a daughter of Wayna Qhapaq who directed the aqllahuaci (an institutional house where selected elite women were kept for state service) on the Island of the Moon married her brother Paullu Tupaj Inca in Copacabana, a union that established an important royal descent line. 4. In June 2012 a concert was staged at the archaeological site as part of the winter solstice celebrations. 5. The grid-like structure of the Intinkala main boulder (see Figure 7.2) links it to stone yupana, which could be used as counting devices, and total counts could be re-

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corded on khipus, as documented in a well-known drawing by Guaman Poma de Ayala. The main boulder displays three rows of sunken rectangular surfaces. Each row could have counted a different category of objects; for example, row 1 might have totaled potatoes. Up to 9 potatoes were placed in the lowest rectangle 1; at count 10, 1 potato was deposited in rectangle 2 and the 9 in rectangle 1 were cleared; rectangles 1 and 2 recorded up to 99 potatoes, with singles in rectangle 1 and tens in rectangle 2; when the count reached 100, 1 potato was placed in rectangle 3. Each row could have counted 999 items, registering singles in rectangle 1, tens in rectangle 2, and hundreds in rectangle 3. 6. The following is the description of another event held at Llallagua. The fact that Gavilán places it close to the lake reinforces the identification with the Calvario hill: “In the seat of Copacabana, at the hill called Llallagua, where one sees today the house of the hermit Santa Barbara, at the foot of which we descend to the lake in front of Pomata, there was an enclosure, which they called Taguakouyo. There they collected the chosen Virgins destined to be sacrificed and for the time being, they put them in beautifully adorned boats. They took them where one had to do the blood sacrifice for the Sun or Moon” (Gavilán 1988:125–126 [1621: Bk.1, Ch.19], translation mine). 7. “At certain festivities, each ayllu or lineage gathered their thirteen- to fourteenyear-old boys in a public place and in full public view whipped their legs, arms, and hands with leather slings until blood appeared. After that the chief reprimanded them about their pranks and advised them that they were no longer boys but young men who now had to occupy themselves with community affairs and service to the Inca. Then they cut the boys’ hair and placed them in groups of two or three in a flat area near the lake. At a certain signal, they had to race up the road to the top of the hill, which has the name LLALLINACO because of this game (the present Calvario hill), where the judges were waiting to reward or punish. The prize for the first one to arrive at the goal was a canipo (a type of silver patenita or talisman), which they put on their llautos (the tassels that hung from the headdresses of Inka royalty and highest nobility); or a chuspa made of Cumbi cloth, interesting bags in which they carry coca leaves. These bags are so valuable that only the upper elite can use them. And the participants in these state-sponsored games had to be of the noble class; because later the Inca gave them high government positions, making them captains and governors, and their ears were pierced as a sign of nobility. But the ones who wore themselves out in the race were scolded by their parents and neighbors. They were shamed with hurtful words and with more whipping; they were given low service jobs benefiting those who had punished them” (Ramos Gavilán 1887:33–34, translation and italics mine, spelling of Inca his). 8. The only Inka pictograph I know of is situated on a high rock wall near the entrance to Ollantaytambo, in the Urubamba Valley, near Cusco. It represents a figure and overlooks the main road from Cusco. 9. Sergio Chavez has Copacati excavation data (pers. comm., 2003) that should eventually yield a more detailed plan than mine (in Christie 2016), and hence our understanding of Copacati may continue to change. 10. Lopez Bejarano (2009) has identified two roads leading from Yunguyu to Copacabana: one was the ritual pilgrimage road, whereas the other served administrative purposes.

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11. “Besides the idol Copacabana, the Yunguyos had another one that they called Copacati, its name reflecting the hill on which it stood, and one can still see remains of steps in this place. The idol was also of stone and had a most evil appearance, all wrapped in snakes like the statue of Laokoon [excavated in Rome]. They prayed to it for rain in periods of drought. Father Almeida had this idol hauled into the village, and as he had it in the plaza in front of many people, one saw a snake come out of it. This event served Father Cura to shame them that they would have worshipped such a vile creature. In addition to these idols which functioned like communal gods, there were innumerable others . . . Somewhat similar to the one at Copacati was another idol which Father Diego Garcia Cuadrado found in 1619 between Juli and Llave. It was of stone, three and a half varas tall, it had two faces like a Janus (Jano), but one face was male and the other female, with two snakes which climbed its legs, and on the head was a very large frog which formed the headdress. The idol was situated on a hill called Tucumu facing the lake. They worshipped it on a large stone block like the god of food” (Ramos Gavilán 1887:45–46, translation mine). 12. As for the cultural affiliation of the Copacabana and Copacati idols, their description does not fit the style of Inka sculpture. Portugal Zamora (1977:301) and Arkush (2005:222) suggest that the description rather corresponds to Formative or Tiwanaku period stone monoliths. Karen Mohr Chavez (2001) and Sergio Chavez (2002) have defined a religious tradition they call Yaya-Mama, which began to unify the populations on the shores of Lake Titicaca roughly between 600 and 100 B.C., as described earlier in this chapter. One identifier of Yaya-Mama is a particular iconography, which is manifested on stelae found at Taraco and Chiripa. These sculpted stone slabs exhibit low-relief images of abstracted anthropomorphs surrounded by snakes and single heads with ray-like appendages. One of the Yaya-Mama sites, Ch’isi, is located on the Copacabana peninsula (see Mohr Chavez 2001). Thus Yaya-Mama iconography fits in general with Gavilán’s description of the idols, and Yaya-Mama examples existed in the vicinity of Copacabana. 13. Bauer and Stanish remapped Pilco Kayma in 1996 and provide a detailed description accompanied by illustrations (2001:163 –173). The function of this impressive structure remains obscure. It is of architectural interest because its rooms exhibit Inka stone vaulting. 14. “One enters all this through the aforementioned door Kentipuncu, which is located two hundred paces before the Sacred Rock, where the Inca removed his shoes for the first time so that he placed his bare feet there; . . . to the right of Kentipuncu, one can see houses, which at that time were the residences of the ministers of the sanctuary and of the virgins dedicated to the Sun. A little farther (past the door), there is natural bedrock, over which the trail to the false sanctuary leads. On this bedrock are the human footprints we discussed before. Before reaching this shrine, one had to pass through three doors situated little more than twenty paces apart from each other. The first door was called Pumapuncu, which means Door of the Lion, because there was a stone lion which they said guarded the entrance. Before passing through this door, pilgrims had to confess their sins to the priest who resided there.

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The second door was called Kentipuncu because it was completely covered with feathers of hummingbirds, which they call Kenti. Here they had to confess again to another priest who guarded this door. He advised the pilgrims to worship with devotion if they wanted to be favored by the Sun. The third door was called Pillco-puncu, which means Door of Hope. It was adorned with green feathers of a highly valued and shining bird which is called Pillco and brought from the Chunchos. At this last door, the custodian priest effectively persuaded the pilgrim to examine his conscience rigorously because he could not pass with a burdened one and in this case had to reconcile himself with the priest who was experienced in these matters” (Ramos Gavilán 1988:94 [1621: Bk.1, Ch.15], translation mine). We should note how strongly this account is colored by Catholic sentiments of the Spanish Inquisition. Since Gavilán was a priest, he had to interpret the descriptions shared by local consultants through his Catholic perspective. As discussed later, his account is probably a rich source for the description of the pilgrimage route but not for the performance of pilgrimage. 15. “In the Island Titicaca, where, as the Indians assured, lived the Sun because some sorcerers saw it rise from this rock. It was the one to which they offered gold, silver, shells, feathers, and cumbi cloth that was the finest that was woven in the whole world. And so state these Indians that the Inca had the rock of the Sanctuary covered with a curtain of cumbi cloth, the thinnest and finest that was ever seen among the Indians. The whole concave area of the rock was covered with sheets of gold and silver and in a number of holes which one can still see, they placed the appropriate offerings. Depending on the ceremonies, some of which were more solemn than others, they decorated the Sanctuary with curtains of cumbi cloth in different colors. This matches with the account of Brother Prudencio de Sandoval, in Book 13 of the History of the Emperor, where he writes that there were great riches when the Spaniards entered Cusco and that the temples of the idols were covered with sheets of gold and silver. Further, one can see today in front of the rock a cross which was erected there and a round stone in the form of a bowl in which they poured the chicha they gave the Sun to drink. I don’t know with what kind of instrument they carved it with because the circular bowl is extremely well finished. They also say that the Inca kept a large golden incense burner there, which had as pedestals four lions made of gold or as some say of silver. It was a very valuable piece but we cannot be certain whether it ever existed. Some elders have told that when the islanders learned that the Spanish were looking for silver and gold so eagerly, they hid most of the treasures they had by throwing it in the lake” (Ramos Gavilán 1988:116 [1621: Bk.1, Ch.17]). “In this month, the Indians gathered in Copacabana, near the lake, in a large plaza, all the sheep and lambs from their hamlets which they could spare to sacrifice on the island. And to the sounds of flutes and music, they decorated the animals with colorful bands and ribbons and with much joy and happiness, they took them to the island where very rich and beautiful pieces of cumbi cloth covered the rock in the Sanctuary of the Sun. In the first night, they lit a great bonfire which was repeated later on the other islands because when their inhabitants saw the smoke and fire, they followed the example of the

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main island. On the next day, the sacrifices of the sheep and lambs were performed; they also sacrificed many innocent children and sprinkled the rock of the Sanctuary with their blood. This rock was covered with plates of gold and silver and because the rock glittered so much in the sunlight, the Indians said that no bird would dare to land; only by means of the cunning and order of the devil would birds come to this place” (Ramos Gavilán 1988:149–150 [1621: Bk.1, ch.24]). 16. Visitors in the late nineteenth century observed a large irregular depression near the center of the plaza, which was probably a looters’ pit. Bandelier mentions Inka objects that came from the immediate surroundings of the Sacred Rock (see Bauer and Stanish 2001:197–202). 17. “Farther ahead of them [the Temples of the Sun, Thunder, and Lightning], in the ravine that drops in front of the road (between Juli and Pomata), there is the storehouse of the Sun which had a visually appealing layout and buildings before time destroyed it. Its innumerable rooms formed something like a labyrinth, which the Indians call Chingana, meaning a place where one gets lost. In the center of the rooms, there was a garden with a grove of alders; its continuous freshness was sustained by a spring of sweet water that emerges there. In the shade of these trees, the Inca had strange baths of stone carved for the Sun and its cult” (Ramos Gavilán 1988:93 [1621: Bk.1, Ch.13], translation mine). 18. “When the Indians celebrated the solemn festivals of the Sun, particularly the Capacrayme [at the December solstice] and the Intip rayme [at the June solstice], the individuals of the lineage of the Incas placed all the idols on their portable platforms (which they call ramp or litter) and decorated these platforms with many flowers, sheets of gold and silver, and many feathers. They performed their dances and festivals, and all came to the island, and they deposited the decorated platforms at a location called Aucaypata which had a great plaza, and there they held the festivals. There was a large temple with five doors. No Colla Indian was allowed to participate or be at these celebrations nor approach the area until the festivities were over” (Ramos Gavilán 1988:176 [1621: Bk.1, ch.29], translation mine). Chapter 8. The Cultural Landscapes of Colonial and Present-Day Copacabana 1. Ramos Gavilán (1887) vividly describes Urinsaya opposition in capitulo V, pp. 65–68. 2. Of course the Gregorian is the civil calendar in Bolivia. 3. In 2012 I revisited Copacabana and again attended the solstice sunrise ceremony at the Horca del Inka. The events had stayed very much the same, and one of the yatiris from 2005 continues to perform. However, more solstice ceremonies are being advertised; color posters invited visitors to come to one held at the rock Sanctuary on the Island of the Sun. Furthermore, the observation of the June solstice and the New Year have been embedded in three-day-long festivities that attract many visitors to Copacabana. The city organizes stage performances by bands, people build fires in the streets and shoot fireworks, and the market and restaurants stay busy until late at night. 4. The Aymara are highland people in Bolivia and have created local shamanistic traditions that are distinctly different from those of Central Asian shamans. In the eth-

232 · Notes to Pages 175–177

nographic literature, individuals with abilities to intervene with the supernatural are described by a bewildering variety of names implying the sources of their knowledge and whether they work toward beneficial or destructive outcomes (Huanca L. 1989:27–36). The most widely used group names are yatiri, meaning “someone who knows” (Huanca L. 1989:39), and qulliri, used for any traditional healer practicing herbal medicine in Aymara society (Huanca L. 1989:42–45, 48–49). To become a qulliri, no special initiation is required. A yatiri, however, has to receive a special calling by being struck by lightning. Such a yatiri-to-be later seeks training from an elder yatiri. In their healing ceremonies, they interact with a variety of ancestral beings. Unlike Central Asian shamans, who typically live and practice in isolation, yatiri are full members of Aymara communities and share daily social and economic routines (Huanca L. 1989). During the processes of colonization, the Christian Church has often denounced yatiri as being superfluous and for inciting paganism. Since the election of Evo Morales as president of Bolivia in 2005, Aymara traditions have been encouraged and supported and yatiri have been invited to government events, often assuming roles Catholic officials held before. Nevertheless, in lived daily reality, most Aymara connect yatiri and Catholic traditions as will become evident during the Copacabana pilgrimages. 5. The Urinsaya designation of the hill of Santa Barbara where Andean religion is practiced should be seen as parallel to the social Urinsaya affiliation of the indigenous residents of Copacabana after the takeover by the Inka, who appropriated Anansaya status for themselves (see MacCormack 1984). 6. One boulder is split on the back and forms a prominent cave in the front, in which offerings can be noted. One shaman told me during a prior visit that this block was split by lightning, and that is why it has become a place for black magic and evil powers. That year the cave contained a black doll. In 2017 it held a Virgen statue to whom people offered candles. 7. A meaningful comparison can be drawn with the offering made by officials from the community of Kohoni to Illimani mountain in the 1980s (Huidobro 1989). Unlike the commercial, globally oriented town of Copacabana, Kohoni is an isolated community situated 3,520m above sea level. Here a Yatiri Mayor (approximately 80–90 years old) and a Yatiri Ayudante (in his 40s) prepare an offering to the snow mountain Illimani, which precedes the communal cleaning of irrigation canals as part of the Larka Pichsuna fiesta held in early September. Two aspects are of interest here: first, the items composing the offerings are similar to those used in Copacabana today (balls of white alpaca wool with coca leaves and llama fat, alcohol and local wine, candy in different forms and shapes, salted crackers, alpaca wool strands in different colors). What differs are the principal objects: the Kohoni yatiris offer male and female llama fetus’ to petition water from snow melts filling their irrigation canals as well as rain. The Copacabana shamans use micromodels of the objects the client desires, such as toy cars, house models, fake money, etc. Second, in both scenarios the ritual of the offering engages local landscapes. The Kohoni yatiris have established as offering site a level area surrounded by snow-covered mountain sides at an altitude of 4300m. The altar, a manmade platform on which the offering is burnt, sits near two spectacular waterfalls where water drops about 100m from higher ranges. It is a place where Illimani performs his powers to send water from his

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summit to the realm of man in perpetuity. Likewise, the Copacabana shamans invoke the mountains, Pachamama, and Lake Titicaca. This comparison highlights that the structure of Aymara ritual offerings including cultural landscapes are consistent and shared as intangible heritage. What changes and adjusts to outside influences and different local circumstances are the types of wishes or objects people ask for. 8. Only after I learned of the Zapo site could I make sense of the colorful frog sculptures, with fake money bills in their open mouths, offered by vendors on the ascent to Mount Calvario. 9. Note that this is an active Aymara reinterpretation of archaeologically documented Inka ceremonies at the Sanctuary of the Sun. The Inka elite watched sunset on June 21 between two masonry pillars constructed on the Tikani ridge to the west (Bauer and Stanish 2001:208–212). 10. Huanca L. (1989:36) notes that amawta is a very popular term among the Aymara and refers to a local political authority. According to Paredes (Paredes 1963, in Huanca L. 1989:36), amawta is the highest category of spiritualists, above the yatiri.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Agricultural calendar, 190–191 Alcaldes Mayores Particulares (AMP), 208–209 Altiplano, 3, 140, 227n1 Amauta, 185 Anansaya, 164, 179, 206, 232n5 Anasazi, 20, 34, 37, 55–56, 64–65, 76–77 Ancestral Pueblo, 23, 24, 26, 36, 37, 38, 43, 45, 49, 52, 55, 58, 65, 70, 72, 223n2, 224n3; Developmental Pueblo, 23, 38, 223n1; Great Pueblo, 24, 37, 45, 223n1, 224n5; Pueblo I, 22, 23, 24, 25, 38, 223n1, 224n3; Pueblo II, 24–25; Pueblo III, 24, 24, 25, 26, 61 Artesania, 107, 113–115 Artesano, 113–115, 226n4 Artist, 37, 67, 71, 76, 78, 107, 113–115, 117, 203–204, 218, 226n4 Arts and crafts, 67, 71, 113–115 Athapaskan, 27–28 Autonomy and Decentralization Framework Law, 209 Ayllu, 141–143, 162, 206, 214–215, 228n7 Aymara, 2–3, 11, 135, 140, 142, 144–145, 147, 150, 162, 164–175, 178–179, 184, 187, 191–195, 206–209, 213–215, 231n4, 232n4, 233nn7–10 Basketmaker, 19–20, 21, 22, 22–23, 25, 28, 37, 38, 43, 52, 65, 223n1, 224n3; Basketmaker I, 223n1; Basketmaker II, 19, 22, 22–23; Basketmaker III, 22, 23, 38, 224n3; Modified Basketmaker, 38, 52, 223n1

Boarding school, 73, 73, 74 Bolivar, Simon, 208 Bosque Redondo, 30, 69, 199 Cah, 125, 202, 203, 215 Callisaya Mamani, Dionisio, 145, 150, 164–165, 187–188 Calvario, 150, 151, 152, 165, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 186, 192, 194, 195, 213, 228nn6–7, 233n8; Llallagua/Llallinaco, 150, 151, 228nn6–7; Santa Barbara, 150, 151, 152, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 192, 194, 213, 228n6, 232n5 Canyon de Chelly, 1–2, 8–9, 11–12, 15–78, 18, 21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 47, 51, 57, 59, 62, 63, 194, 198–200, 203, 210, 211, 217, 223n1, 224n3, 225n5; Adultery Dune, 64; Ear Cave, 21, 21; Face Rock, 49–50, 53–55, 59; Flat Rock, 48, 50, 52, 53; Flute Player Cave, 61, 62, 64; Kokopelli Rock, 61, 62, 63, 64; Kokopelli Trail, 61, 63, 64; Spider Rock, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49–56; Things Flow around the Stone, 53, 54, 56–59, 57; Tse-Ta’a, 23, 38, 43, 224n3; White House, 32, 34, 46, 49, 53, 54, 55, 57, 59, 61, 66, 67, 78; Wide Rock, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53–55, 58, 59, 61; Zig Zag Cave, 58, 59 Canyon del Muerto, 17, 19–21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 48, 53, 56, 223n2; Antelope House, 19, 23, 24, 26, 37, 39, 64, 65, 223n2, 224n5; Bat Cave, 23; Blue Bull Cave, 21–22, 22, 37–39, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 55; Mummy Cave, 19–20, 23, 25 Capitalist, 6, 67–68, 74, 109, 113, 120, 124, 128, 130, 203, 209, 217

252 · Index

Caste War, 79, 80, 81, 95, 96, 100, 111, 112; Chan Santa Cruz, 96; Talking Cross, 96 Catholic, 3, 68, 76, 94–95, 112, 129–130, 163, 165, 171–173, 178, 184, 191, 193–195, 198, 205–207, 210, 213–214, 226n2, 227n2, 230n14, 232n4 Catrin, 111, 125 Cenote, 107, 109, 121, 127, 204 Central Mexico, 113, 115, 127, 226n4 Ch’a’ah Chaak rain ceremony, 128 Chaco Canyon, 23, 25 Chibal, 125, 202, 203, 215 Chichen Itza, 113, 123, 127, 226n2 Chiclero, 97, 101, 123, 128 Chimal, Vincente, 114 Chinle: chapter, 1, 9, 12, 17, 20, 30–31, 36, 38, 45–46, 52, 54–57, 59, 62–64, 66, 68, 76, 199, 210 Christianity, 68, 75, 76, 210 Chucaripupata, 137–140, 138, 157, 162, 189 Chuska Mountains, 25, 52 Cibola, 23 Cieza de León, Pedro de, 151 Classic Maya ballgame, 106, 120 Classic Maya calendar, 77, 119 Coba, 2, 11, 12, 79–131, 80, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 106, 117, 194, 198, 200, 202, 203, 204, 210, 212, 215, 225nn1–3, 225nn1–2, 226nn1–6; Casa de Cultura, 116; La Iglesia, 80, 81, 84, 86, 128; Las Pinturas, 92, 93; Macanxoc, 84, 87, 99, 127; Nohoch Mul, 80, 81, 84, 87, 92, 94, 105; sacbe/pl. sacbeob, 81, 82, 87, 90, 92, 105, 123, 127 Cobo, Bernabé, 136, 142, 143, 144, 150, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 163, 227n2 Codex Style, 118 Colla, 140, 231n18 Colonialism, 100, 130, 205, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 219 Contemporary Pueblos, 24, 223n2 Cooperativa Maya, 113 Copacati, 151, 153–154, 154, 169, 170, 228n9, 229nn11–12; Banderani, 153 Copacati idol, 153, 154, 169, 229n12 Coqui-Coqui (boutique and spa resort), 107 Covid-19, 209, 213, 216, 218, 220

Crocodile, 106, 116, 118, 119, 127, 204 Cumbi, 158, 228n7, 230n15 Cusco, 134, 140–142, 144, 151, 153, 161–164, 168, 186–187, 189–190, 206–207, 228n8, 230n15 De-colonization, 8, 15, 56, 191, 192, 214, 216 Diné, 27–29 Dinétah, 29 Diving God, 92 Dzul Ek, Carlos Armando, 116; Sac Nicte, 116 Earth Politics: definition, 1–2, 8, 11, 28, 35, 56, 66, 72, 74, 79, 88, 91, 103, 108, 110, 122, 135, 137, 142, 208–209, 213–219 East Coast, 92, 104, 123 Ejido, 101, 102–105, 107–109, 110, 113, 120, 124–126, 130, 200, 203, 204, 212, 225nn1–2; ejidatario, 101–104, 107, 108, 109, 110, 113, 120, 123, 124, 203, 217, 225n1; comisario ejidal, 103; delegado (municipal), 98, 102–103; businesses, 66–67, 103–104, 108, 109, 113, 128, 199; tricycle operation, 104, 106; bicycle rental, 104–105; Ki-Hanal restaurant, 105–106, 109, 120; zip line, 2, 106–107, 109 Ek Balam, 105 Ethnoexodus, 203, 204 Ethnogenesis, 111, 124, 126, 203 Ethnopolitics, 111, 126, 128 FONART (Fondo Nacional para el Fomento de las Artesanias), 114–115 Gorman, Colleen, 67, 76, 201 Halach uinic, 90, 91, 95, 123 Hawai‘i, 219 H-menob, 128 Hogan, 28–29, 31, 33, 43, 46, 47, 50, 68, 70, 72–73 Hopi, 25, 26, 27, 52, 57, 59, 61, 72 Horca del Inka, 147–148, 148, 165–168, 167, 186, 231n3 Hosteen Klah, 34–35, 224n5 Hozho, 217 Huanca Sanchez, Porfirio, 153, 154, 169, 170 Huipil, 112, 130; terno, 112

Index · 253

Idol of Copacabana, 147 Indio, 125 Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia (INAH), 81, 103–105, 225n2 Inti, 156, 168, 190 Intinkala, 144–147, 145, 146, 153, 187, 227n5 Island of the Moon, 133, 136, 139, 161, 227n1, 227n3 Island of the Sun, 9, 133, 136–137, 138, 139–140, 142–144, 148, 150, 155–156, 156, 159, 161, 163, 165, 169, 178–179, 186–190, 192, 205, 207, 231n3; Chincana, 158–160; Kasapata, 160–161; Sacred Rock, 3, 133, 137–141, 144, 148, 156–159, 159, 169, 178–179, 188–190, 192, 229n14, 231n16; Tikani, 159, 233n9 Itzamna, 127 Jaloj-K’exoj, 129, 131, 212–213, 21; jal, 129, 212; k’ex, 129, 212 Jarana, 111 Kallanka, 160 Katun/K’atun, 94, 225n3, 226n6 Kayenta, 23, 25, 68, 73 Khipu, 146, 228n5 Kokopelli, 61–64, 62, 63 Kolla, 3, 187 Kollasuyu, 134, 141–142, 153, 187, 209 Kusijata, 148–150, 149, 186–188; Baño del Inka, 148, 149, 186 Lake Titicaca, 3, 9, 133, 136, 139, 141, 147, 153, 163, 168, 174, 177, 189, 229n12, 233n7 Late Horizon, 189 Law of the Rights of Mother Earth/Law 071, 209 Lupaqa, 140 Luum, 121 Mamani Almonte, Vicente, 182, 185 Mama Oqllu, 141–143, 158, 161, 178, 188–189, 214 Manqo Qhapaq, 141–143, 150, 158, 161, 178, 187–189, 214 Mayapan, 95, 125, 202 May Ku, Luis, 13, 107, 114–120, 117, 128, 203, 218

McClanahan, Lupita, 48, 66, 67, 199, 200, 201, 204, 217 Mesa Verde, 23, 25, 223n2 Mestizo, 111, 112, 125 Mexican Revolution, 95–96 Migration, 25, 27–28, 34–35, 65, 72, 78, 105, 224n3 Milpa, 82, 89, 98–99, 102–103, 107–108, 110, 122–124, 128, 130 Mitmaq/mitmaqkuna, 142–143, 186, 190, 205–206 Moieties, 21, 25, 65 Monument Canyon, 49–50 Monument Valley, 68–72, 70, 74, 78, 224n1; Goulding’s Trading Post, 68–69; Gray Whiskers mesa, 70; Sentinel mesa, 70; The View, 69, 71, 147; Tribal Park, 68–69, 71 Morales, Evo, 208, 213, 214, 217, 232n4 Mother Earth and Holistic Development for Living Well Framework Law/Law 300, 209 Muzen Cab, 92. See also Diving God Narbona, Antonio, 29 National Park Service, 1–2, 8, 12, 17, 19, 38, 43–44, 66–67, 69, 72, 78, 200 Navajo, 17, 19–21, 26, 26–50, 40, 41, 42, 52–58, 61, 63–78, 73, 74, 199–201, 210–211, 215, 217–218, 220–221, 224n1, 224nn3–7, 225n4; Beautyway, 52–53, 55; Blessingway, 54–55; Changing Woman, 35, 45–46, 52, 54, 55, 57–58, 67–68, 76; Coyoteway, 57–58, 72; Dibe Yazhi, 37; Excessway, 57– 61, 64; F(f)irst World, 31, 32; four sacred mountains (Sierra Blanca Peak, Mount Taylor, San Francisco Peaks, Mount Hesperus), 32–33; F(f)ourth World, 31–32; Holy People, 29, 34, 37, 39, 46–50, 54–56, 58, 60, 70, 77–78, 201, 211; Mothway, 55, 59–61; Mountaintopway, 52; Nightway (Yeibichai), 52–53, 55, 57–58, 61; oral narrative, 8, 10, 26, 33, 36, 45, 54–55, 60, 72, 75, 78, 95, 97, 99–100, 127, 133, 138, 188, 200, 212, 224n3; S(s)econd World, 31, 32; Spider Woman, 49–52, 54; T(t)hird World, 31, 32, 219; Talking God, 48, 50, 54–55, 59, 75–76; ye’i, 29, 39–40, 41, 53, 224n4 Navajo Mountain, 33, 54, 68, 71–73, 73, 74; Navajo Mountain chapter, 72

254 · Index

Navajo Nation, 9, 10, 12, 20, 42, 44, 55, 67, 69, 72, 76, 199, 200, 217 Navajo National Monument, 72; Betatakin, 72; Inscription House, 72; Keet Steel, 72; Tsegi Canyon, 72 Orcohawira, 145 Oxkutzcab, 111, 116, 125, 129 Pacariqtambo, 141, 161, 188 Pachakuti Inka Yupanki, 206 Pachatata, 180 Paqarina, 138, 141, 206 Pilco Kayma, 155, 187, 229n13 Pilgrimage, 13, 133, 135, 142, 143, 144, 150, 154, 155, 157, 158, 160, 162, 163, 164, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 179, 180, 189, 190, 192, 194, 205, 207, 209, 213, 215, 227n2, 228n10, 230n14, 232n4 Piste, 12, 113, 119, 225n2, 226n4 Processual archaeology, 4–5, 10 Protestant, 129, 130, 198, 212, 226n2 Punc[k]u, 139, 155, 157, 158, 229n14, 230n14 Rainforest, 82, 122 Ramos Gavilán, Alonso, 136, 142, 143, 144, 147, 150, 151, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 168, 205, 227nn2–3, 228n7, 229n11, 230nn14–15, 231n15, 231nn17–18, 231n1 Riviera Maya, 2, 104, 107, 113, 118 Rock art, 19–20, 22–23, 25, 29, 34, 37–39, 41, 45–46, 55, 57–58, 65, 72, 78, 144, 146, 153, 223n1; petroglyphs, 37; pictographs, 37–39, 43, 45, 49, 55, 72; star panel/ceiling, 39, 41–42, 42, 45, 55 Sac-Be Hotel, 107–108 Señorio, 140 Serrano, Wilberth Abelain, 115 Singer sewing machine, 112 Sipapu, 34 Skinwalker, 40, 75, 211, 225n4 Slim Canyon, 26, 27 Solar, 73, 108, 122, 146, 147, 170, 190 Solar calendar, 170, 190 Spanish Invasion, 92, 95, 96, 112, 123, 163, 190, 205, 210, 214

Stone ideology, 13, 133, 135, 141–142, 144, 161–162, 189 Tawantinsuyu, 140, 156, 161, 205 The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, 94. See also Katun/K’atun The Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin, 94. See also Katun/K’atun Thompson, Mae, 20, 55, 56, 76–77 Ticul, 114, 116, 118, 204; Yo’Sah Kab, 118 Titinhuayani, 137, 138, 189 Tiwanaku, 9, 137–142, 157, 162, 189, 227n1, 229n12 Topa Inka Yupanki, 205 Tourism, 12, 30, 31, 45, 67, 69, 71, 74, 79, 104–105, 107–110, 112, 126, 128, 168, 193, 195, 200, 202, 204, 212, 226n4 Tribal Council, 17, 69, 76 Tulum, 100, 103–106, 212 Tun, 128 UNESCO, 5–6, 192–193; Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 77, 200, 217; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), 8; World Heritage Convention, 5, 192, 195; World Heritage List, 5 Urinsaya, 164, 175, 179, 206, 231n1, 232n5 Valladolid, 98, 107 Villa Arqueologica Hotel, 104, 109 Virgin of Copacabana, 13, 133, 135, 163–164, 164, 171, 179, 191–192, 195, 207, 209, 213 Virgin of Lourdes, 179, 180, 181, 182, 186, 187, 194 Virgin of Urkupina, 181, 183, 184, 185, 185–186, 193–195 Viveiros de Castro, E., 33, 75; perspectivism, 33–34, 41, 43, 46, 75–76, 211 Wak’a, 135, 141–142, 152, 162, 184–187, 189, 207 Window Rock, 10, 12, 17, 20, 30, 34, 38, 42, 66, 76, 199; Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department, 42 Wiraqocha, 9, 133, 141, 162 Wutz (turn-around point to the beginning of a new era), 108, 129, 131, 212–213

Index · 255

Yampupata, 150, 155, 179 Yaxuna, 81, 92, 225n2, 226n2 Yucatec Maya, 2, 11, 28, 79, 90, 92, 94, 97–100, 110–112, 124, 125, 126, 128, 202, 212, 215, 226n6, 226n2 Yumani, 155, 156, 188 Yunguyu, 133, 143, 144, 153, 155, 228n10

Zapo, 168, 177–178, 178, 182, 184, 188, 213, 214, 233n8; Boca del Zapo, 168, 177, 178, 188, 213–214; macho and hembra, 182, 184 Zeq’e, 142, 162 Zuni, 23, 34, 52, 72

Jessica Christie is professor at East Carolina University and has published about Maya palaces and elite residences. Since 2009, she has turned toward landscape studies in the Americas (Landscapes of Origin) as well as with a worldwide focus in the coedited volume Political Landscapes of Capital Cities. Her book Memory Landscapes of the Inka Sculpted Outcrops brought Inka carved rock complexes to life from before the Spanish Invasion to the present.

Cultural Heritage Studies Edited by Paul A. Shackel, University of Maryland Heritage of Value, Archaeology of Renown: Reshaping Archaeological Assessment and Significance, edited by Clay Mathers, Timothy Darvill, and Barbara J. Little (2005) Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and the Antiquities Trade, edited by Neil Brodie, Morag M. Kersel, Christina Luke, and Kathryn Walker Tubb (2006) Archaeological Site Museums in Latin America, edited by Helaine Silverman (2006) Crossroads and Cosmologies: Diasporas and Ethnogenesis in the New World, by Christopher C. Fennell (2007) Ethnographies and Archaeologies: Iterations of the Past, edited by Lena Mortensen and Julie Hollowell (2009) Cultural Heritage Management: A Global Perspective, edited by Phyllis Mauch Messenger and George S. Smith (2010; first paperback edition, 2014) God’s Fields: Landscape, Religion, and Race in Moravian Wachovia, by Leland Ferguson (2011; first paperback edition, 2013) Ancestors of Worthy Life: Plantation Slavery and Black Heritage at Mount Clare, by Teresa S. Moyer (2015) Slavery behind the Wall: An Archaeology of a Cuban Coffee Plantation, by Theresa A. Singleton (2015; first paperback edition, 2016) Excavating Memory: Sites of Remembering and Forgetting, edited by Maria Theresia Starzmann and John R. Roby (2016) Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting, and Profiting with Cultural Heritage Tourism, by Daniel R. Maher (2016; first paperback edition, 2019) Critical Theory and the Anthropology of Heritage Landscapes, by Melissa F. Baird (2017) Heritage at the Interface: Interpretation and Identity, edited by Glenn Hooper (2018) Cuban Cultural Heritage: A Rebel Past for a Revolutionary Nation, by Pablo Alonso González (2018) The Rosewood Massacre: An Archaeology and History of Intersectional Violence, by Edward González-Tennant (2018; first paperback edition, 2019) Race, Place, and Memory: Deep Currents in Wilmington, North Carolina, by Margaret M. Mulrooney (2018) An Archaeology of Structural Violence: Life in a Twentieth-Century Coal Town, by Michael P. Roller (2018) Colonialism, Community, and Heritage in Native New England, by Siobhan M. Hart (2019) Pedagogy and Practice in Heritage Studies, edited by Susan J. Bender and Phyllis Mauch Messenger (2019) History and Approaches to Heritage Studies, edited by Phyllis Mauch Messenger and Susan J. Bender (2019) A Struggle for Heritage: Archaeology and Civil Rights in a Long Island Community, by Christopher N. Matthews (2020) Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage: Three Case Studies in the Americas, by Jessica Joyce Christie (2021)