Anthropological Quarterly

From the mid-1980s, indigenous groups in Latin America gradually began using the expression "our culture" in general reference to the practices, skills, or artefacts particular to them. In so doing, they were mirroring the parallel expression "your culture" that served to designate them from an outside perspective. These possessive expressions, in the first or second person—initially used in the national languages (Spanish or Portuguese)—emerged from a closely interconnected institutional, national, and international context. They passed thus into mainstream discourse, and even, in some cases, into indigenous languages themselves, with the help of two successive "boosts." The first of these came in the 1980s, in the political and legal domains: driven by indigenous political activism, the emergence of these expressions benefitted from the normative impact resulting from the work of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in regard to "indigenous and tribal" peoples, particularly through the enactment of Convention 169 (1989).¹ Whether in Mexico, Brazil, or Bolivia [End Page 513] (where the case studies in this special collection are taken from), this first phase also coincided with constitutional recognition by these States of their pluricultural makeup.² This shift was further encouraged, in the background, by the not too insignificant support of the Catholic Church (historically a major player in relations with indigenous groups in Latin America) following the "culturalist turn" advanced by the missionary commitments of the Second Vatican Council.³

The propagation of the "our/your culture" dialogical regime entered a second, more recent phase in the 21st century, correlating with the developing notion of culture as heritage and the adoption of the highly influential 2003 UNESCO convention on "Intangible Cultural Heritage" (ICH).⁴ UNESCO has been largely responsible for spreading the idea of culture as a "good" to be viewed within a framework of transmissible property; but also as "wealth," an aspect that is consubstantial with that of heritage, but accentuated by the label of "heritage of humanity" ascribed to cultural products based on their unique and original character.⁵ The national impact of these programs is clear, with every Latin American country having supported heritage initiatives that require the necessary participation of communities, as well as political institutions.

Thus, within the last half-century, a growing number of promotional initiatives as well as the mobilization of local populations and their leaders, together with NGOs and State agencies, have significantly heightened the profile of indigenous culture. This programmatic [notion of] culture, publicly exhibited and "practiced," has given rise—predominantly through areas of bilingual intercultural education and heritage protection, funded through international development aid—to processes of commodification (ethnic tourism, artisanry, performances), becoming a key component in demands and justifications for certain differential rights, particularly in matters of access to land, development projects, or justice. By becoming aligned with the recognition demands of Amerindian ethno-political movements, the explicit mobilization of culture has become a vehicle for civil rights, while continuing to fuel political struggles, especially in conflicts surrounding megaprojects that impact indigenous lands (exploitation of natural resources, hydroelectric dams, etc.), in a battle between the right to difference, framed in terms of culture, and the "general interest" advanced by the State (see Nahum-Claudel 2018, Ødegaard and Rivera Andía 2019). [End Page 514]

The proliferation of the term "culture" or the "our/your culture" dialogical regime included in a possessive framework among indigenous populations in Latin America provides an outline for the historical context that serves as a necessary backdrop to the articles of this special collection. If the hyper-visibility of the "culture" label is now a well-known phenomenon that can be analyzed as the result from a globalized process of identity essentialization and commodification of difference, does this line of analysis exhaust the phenomenon? Without contesting the pervasiveness of a globalized cultural idiom, bound to a transnational technocracy, State agencies and NGOs, political and heritage concerns, the articles presented here show that not all indigenous groups speak this idiom in the same way and are not committed monolithically to the dialogical regime of "our/your culture." To put it in...