Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology最新文献

This article explores the relationship between territorial claims and long-term indigenous memories, analyzing their articulation in processes of victimhood and political subject formation. Drawing on the case of a death during a land conflict in the Andean town of Humahuaca, Jujuy, Argentina, it shows how collective memories of dispossession and struggle were reactivated, producing a figure of sacrifice that condensed historical grievances and contemporary tensions. The case demonstrates that the victim is not merely a passive condition but a generative political force, one that reconfigures territorial demands beyond judicial arenas and reframes conflict through symbolic and affective registers. The sacrificial figure of the Humahuaca-born “Pato Condorí” thus emerged as both a landmark in long-term land struggles and a site where more recent dynamics—such as the patrimonialization of the region and the consolidation of politically salient indigenous identities—became entangled.

The Darién Province separating Panama and Colombia has experienced unprecedented movement of people across its border since the easing of COVID-19 border restrictions in 2021. Panama established the “controlled flow” migration strategy in 2016 to manage “irregular” migration within its national borders as this flow rapidly increased in Darién Province. This policy provided basic services while containing people in reception centers after their journey across the Darién Forest. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Darién Province, we elucidate how the Panama-Colombia border transcends its geopolitical boundaries and shapes embodied borders based on the experiences of people excluded from legal migration pathways to North America. We examine how the “controlled flow” infrastructure in Panama constructs new systems of control and surveillance, embodied health impacts, and regimes of agency and migrant refusal after crossing one of the most treacherous borders in the world.

The literature on the relationship between religion and migration has focused on how religion plays a key role in migrant adaptation processes. In this article, I focus on the importance of religious and spiritual practices for Latin American migrants seeking asylum in the United States before and during their journeys, as well as in the context of their entrapment in the city of Tijuana. To do so, and to show the complexity with which religiosity is expressed, I analyze cases in which people engage in practices that violate the boundaries between religious confessions and spiritualities. Given the difficult circumstances that push them to leave their homes and the adversities they encounter on their journeys, migrants frequently engage in practices to experience and produce well-being. On the other hand, religiosity in the migratory context intensifies, transforms, and becomes porous.

This special issue explores the encounter between cultural memory, media, and autonomy in collaborative printing and editorial projects. In recent years, there has been a rise in Indigenous publishing involving collaboration with anthropologists and/or anthropological knowledge. Indigenous collectives often invite anthropologists to support their autonomous publishing projects centered around history and cultural revitalization, due to their presumed interest in recording everyday performances and mobilizing diverse publics. In contemporary Latin America, cultural revitalization is often linked to Indigenous autonomy, interrogating and rekindling memory when salvage anthropology is considered unfashionable and impractical. Yet the reappropriation and repurposing of ethnographic knowledge may offer the possibility to retrace what no longer is, remember and retransmit in various ways, make present anew, or even create alternative forms of (re)presentation. The articles in this special issue explore the dynamics of collaboration in the context of decolonial initiatives and the persistence and transformation of mediatic forms.

In 2016, a group of Wayana intellectuals from French Guiana approached academics and museum curators to assist them in recovering texts, images, sound recordings, and ancient artefacts collected over the years by several generations of travelers and researchers. This led to the creation of a bilingual Wayana-French portal designed to facilitate virtual access to these formerly scattered collections. Although the main objective was to create a digital database developed according to Wayana-defined criteria, the initiators soon felt the need to produce a parallel printed work to relate their experience. Written exclusively in their language, the book, titled Itëneimëk Kunolo, was published in 2019. This paper recounts its making and its social significance, with emphasis on the challenges of achieving authorial autonomy in the context of a collaborative digital repatriation project.

Artisanal fishing is essential for the food sovereignty and cultural identity of the Raizal people of Old Providence and Santa Catalina islands, Colombia. However, Colombian state intervention in the 20th century brought significant local transformations that negatively affected this activity and the associated knowledge. To address this problem, a group of researchers, fishermen, community leaders, anthropologists, and biologists proposed designing a sustainable artisanal fishing school, a pedagogical initiative that seeks to recover and strengthen traditional fishing knowledge and support a model of indigenous development. Against this backdrop, the article analyzes the historical and political context that supports the initiative, with particular emphasis on how internal colonialism and neoliberal multiculturalism have impacted island society and artisanal fishing. It also highlights the importance of local knowledge in an environment threatened by overexploitation and the loss of cultural identity. Finally, it addresses the school as a tool for the dialogue of knowledge and for fostering the autonomy of the Raizal people in their maritorium.