Revisiter les frontières et réparer l’histoire
Abstract
Crossing boundaries is a well-known practice for Aymara people living in northern Chile, Peru and Bolivia. This population lives in a set of different ecological environments, blended together by means of what has been called vertical complementarity (Murra 1972). Throughout their history they have been able to develop a system of circulation of symbolic and material goods, allowing them to guarantee the regional redistribution of resources and to go beyond their displacement in different national states and dissimilar ecological environments. As part of this flow of goods, Aymaras also circulate medical knowledge and practices. Current therapeutic pathways represent an opportunity to revisit boundaries, but also to give new meaning to their double condition as national citizens and indigenous transnational villagers. Andean practices and knowledge have been culturally constructed drawing from symbolic resources belonging to different historical times and places and they have recently become part of a process of cultural recognition fostered by multicultural states. This paper is based on ethnographic research among Aymara healers and patients whose experiences of sickness and cure have frequently pushed to cross the border between Chile and Bolivia. It seeks to reflect upon the adequacy of the processes of cultural recognition of “traditional” medical practices and to show how the reinvention and circulation of these practices are modern strategies to use the territory in order to give continuity to a shared Andean history.
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