Discursos y alteridades en la quebrada de Humahuaca (provincia de Jujuy, Argentina): identidad, parentesco, territorio y memoria

Abstract

Discourse and Alterity in the Quebrada de Humahuaca (Province of Jujuy, Argentina): Identity, Kinship, Territory and Memory

The last decades were witness to the awakening and flourishing of the indigenous social historiography of the "peripheral" regions of the Inca Empire. Study of the identification processes of populations who lived in these areas, who made up the organised State, allows for a more complex view of the relationship between the centre of Inca power and the colonized people. This report attempts to discuss the construction process of the "identities" of the indigenous societies that lived in the central-southern sector of the Quebrada de Humahuaca; in particular the people who in the Spanish testimonies were named in the Jujuy history as "Tilcaras and Purmamarcas". The research shows that the Incan conquest of the Quebrada de Humahuaca territory broke up and distorted not only the local power games, but also self-identification. Through examining archival documents, the descriptive mechanisms and the new territorial and political organisation imposed by the Incas became clear. The Spanish conquerors, by incorporating the Incan oral traditions and transforming them into the written word, continued the process of fragmenting and homogenising the social diversity.