When thinking about how bodies are socially and individually connected, I decided to make a short description of how these relationships influence the aesthetic perceptions in indigenous beauty contests.
The aesthetics characteristics of indigenous bodies today carry all the stereotypes contextualized by the others. They symbolize that “blood did not diluted” or in actual cases diluted to the extend that the “western” stereotypes of beauty must prevail over other phenotypical characteristics. Moreno (2007) describes this in her study Misses and Indigenous Pageants in the Ecuadorian Nation Building that “(…) indigenous bodies seem to be socially constructed as non desirable or unattractive. Beauty is not natural, but ideological; it has a certain type of face, certain features, hair texture, eye color, mouth and lips shape”(Moreno 2007).
The aesthetic stereotypes influence the concept of the self, and of Western notions of cultural identity: “privilege exotic body images as an index of authenticity. (…) Western images of Indians are the product of Western discourses. These images often say more about Westerners than about Indians and tend toward simplistic notions that do not encompass the complex realities of most native peoples' lives.” (Conklin 1997).
But these characteristics of the body as authentic of a certain "race" can also be transformed in powerful political discourses for defending identity and fighting typologies of discrimination, or at least producing new spaces that shape the tensions of categories of race. Recently, these indigenous beauty contests in Latin America have reestablished the idea of authenticity. The ultimate standard of evaluation consists of the level of authenticity they have. For instance, an indigenous national beauty contest in Guatemala, the Rabín Ahau, calls contestants from all parts of the country to compete based on the authenticity of their race, the authenticity of their typical clothing, their ability to express themselves in their own language and in Spanish and their authenticity in dancing (Moreno 2007).
This idealization of authenticity and its ultimate achievment of proving identity and ethnicity can also be observed in the recent scandal of Bolivia’s beauty contest Cholita Paceña in 2007. The aim of this contest is to elect the most beautiful, authentic and representative young Aymará woman in Bolivia. Last year, the winner of this pageant was disqualified because the braids that she wore were false, since part of the requirement is to wear “traditional” and “authentic” body accessories and styles. Again, it is possible to observe how this aesthetics of the body within race produces new arenas for constructing identity an idealization of otherness and the self.
I will end these reflections with a personal anecdote. I was chatting three months ago with two Colombian friends who are both grad students at UBC, and they told me that there are no indios in the region I am studying for my MA research. I asked them why they thought that, and they responded that the people who live there don’t dress like indios, don’t speak like indios and don’t live like indios, but most important, they don’t look or seem like indios, I tried to explain them in all ways possible how these stereotypes were produced, how these are relational categories, and I even tried to make a brief explanation about ethnicity and race, mentioning that indio is not an acceptable term, and taht they rather use indigena, but it is impossible to explain in 10 minutes to an already convinced audience the 500 or so years of historical processes of power and domination that created such perceptions, and that ultimately they are not representing themselves in terms that conform to outsiders' stereotypes of Indianness. I hope that they understand a little bit, just a tiny bit more about these complex processes after they read this.
References:
-Conklin, B. A. (1997). "Body Paint, Feathers, and VCRs: Aesthetics and Authenticity in Amazonian Activism." American Ethnologist 24(4): 711-737.
-Moreno, M. (2007). "Misses y concursos de belleza indígena en la construcción de la nación ecuatoriana." Iconos. Revista de Ciencias Sociales. 28.
-Elegirán a belleza indígena en Bolivia (June 16 2007)
http://www.cnnexpansion.com/lifestyle/2007/7/16/elegiran-a-belleza-indigena-en-bolivia
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Friday, March 7, 2008
reflections
Saturday March 1 2008: Raul Reyes, a senior FARC (guerrilla) member was killed during a military operation in a camp in the Colombian frontier with Ecuador. The newsflash spread everywhere online and international media were shyly displaying news fragments about the event. Few hours later it escalated in a bigger uncontrollable event: Venezuelan president Chavez announced his disgust and condemned, he actively made public appearances and cut diplomatic ties with Colombia, and subsequently moved some of his troops on the border. This same sort of action followed Correa’s reaction: showing his dissatisfaction with Colombia’s actions. Later on this situation got ventilated in an OAS urgent reunion. Nicaragua decided to join and cut diplomatic ties, showing solidarity with Ecuador. Everything was well ventilated in international media, TV. News and in all languages was possible to find news about this situation, or at least a portion of it. It all then became a sort of fragments. And such, what it truly happened is still unknown beyond the facts that Raul Reyes was killed along with other 25 people, troops were mobilized, ambassadors removed, and diplomatic ties were cut. The resolution until now was that during a conference in Rio, everyone seemed to resolve their differences and hands were shaken and no more politicized statements were done – so far- (March 7 2008).
So, what does this tells us of the reactions of the small amount of people that I am fortunate to know? Are their opinions reflections of what Colombia lived?
I’m absolutely aware that my perceptions are totally fragmented and partial and that they can´t represent the opinions of a majority of Colombians, or can they?
From my position as an international student in a Canadian university that is teaching me to question what I have for granted, to try to find answers of phenomenon, of change, of life, of academia and that is making me write and express many things that were impossible for me to transform in words, here is what I saw:
From my standpoint, I began to feel anxious, not understanding what was going on and even scared to check the news about Colombia thinking about what was I going to find next. How can a virtual space such as Facebook (an online community) serve as an arena to show political opinions and contested rationales on events such as the crisis between Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Colombia? Another layer of speech was perceived when opinions and ideas were ventilated in virtual spaces: and it was quite possible to infer political positions form Facebook “status”. Some even answering each other and some even using very strong and explicit language.
Conflicts over rights and speech were set in motion and it was possible to read for instance the political propaganda of Uribe’s campain: “Adelante Presidente” (Go ahead president) in many of my friend’s virtual profiles, and other criticizing Chavez and telling him to mind his own business. I have always been public about my political opinions and –yes, my Uribists friends won’t like this- but I don’t agree with Alvaro Uribe’s ideas and actions.
Another thing that I must point out that has been currently happening with this virtual community is that on February 4 and March 6 helped launch out two important rallies. The first one against the FARC and the other one to create awareness and support the victims of all forms of violence, particularly paramilitary victims. All this almost fashioned from this virtually.
I must stress that I’m practically aware of using Internet as a tool for study and all that encompasses it: it sells itself as a free to all technology to access, but only the ones who can access to a computer and pay can do so. And obviously since is all visual, only the ones that can read, and understand what is written (try to access pages in foreign language). One of my teachers said on Wednesday something really interesting about this: yes, you can travel and is simultaneous, but computers are placed somewhere and the big ones that store and manage all the information transmitted are also par of a place, for example the Silicon Valley (USA).
So, besides that, a thing that I didn’t thought about and a friend from here made me reflect, forced me to put this words now: the thing that you should ask is not that all of this political opinions are contested and are rude or makes you feel stressed, what you should realize is that there is such a freedom of speech in your country that they don’t feel persecuted in any way to say whatever they think on a space such as Facebook that has been widely criticized for having a double public/private information recollection mechanism. That as David Harvey (on his text about spaces of utopia) states: rights have to be exercised somewhere.
I know that what I’ve written is just a flow of fragments and ideas that were on my head right now, but perhaps I’ll come back to them, eventually.
So this is me trying to figure all of this events and how they have affected me: their causes and consequences, and the way I have seen it on my nice sofa at the Department of Anthropology.
So, what does this tells us of the reactions of the small amount of people that I am fortunate to know? Are their opinions reflections of what Colombia lived?
I’m absolutely aware that my perceptions are totally fragmented and partial and that they can´t represent the opinions of a majority of Colombians, or can they?
From my position as an international student in a Canadian university that is teaching me to question what I have for granted, to try to find answers of phenomenon, of change, of life, of academia and that is making me write and express many things that were impossible for me to transform in words, here is what I saw:
From my standpoint, I began to feel anxious, not understanding what was going on and even scared to check the news about Colombia thinking about what was I going to find next. How can a virtual space such as Facebook (an online community) serve as an arena to show political opinions and contested rationales on events such as the crisis between Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Colombia? Another layer of speech was perceived when opinions and ideas were ventilated in virtual spaces: and it was quite possible to infer political positions form Facebook “status”. Some even answering each other and some even using very strong and explicit language.
Conflicts over rights and speech were set in motion and it was possible to read for instance the political propaganda of Uribe’s campain: “Adelante Presidente” (Go ahead president) in many of my friend’s virtual profiles, and other criticizing Chavez and telling him to mind his own business. I have always been public about my political opinions and –yes, my Uribists friends won’t like this- but I don’t agree with Alvaro Uribe’s ideas and actions.
Another thing that I must point out that has been currently happening with this virtual community is that on February 4 and March 6 helped launch out two important rallies. The first one against the FARC and the other one to create awareness and support the victims of all forms of violence, particularly paramilitary victims. All this almost fashioned from this virtually.
I must stress that I’m practically aware of using Internet as a tool for study and all that encompasses it: it sells itself as a free to all technology to access, but only the ones who can access to a computer and pay can do so. And obviously since is all visual, only the ones that can read, and understand what is written (try to access pages in foreign language). One of my teachers said on Wednesday something really interesting about this: yes, you can travel and is simultaneous, but computers are placed somewhere and the big ones that store and manage all the information transmitted are also par of a place, for example the Silicon Valley (USA).
So, besides that, a thing that I didn’t thought about and a friend from here made me reflect, forced me to put this words now: the thing that you should ask is not that all of this political opinions are contested and are rude or makes you feel stressed, what you should realize is that there is such a freedom of speech in your country that they don’t feel persecuted in any way to say whatever they think on a space such as Facebook that has been widely criticized for having a double public/private information recollection mechanism. That as David Harvey (on his text about spaces of utopia) states: rights have to be exercised somewhere.
I know that what I’ve written is just a flow of fragments and ideas that were on my head right now, but perhaps I’ll come back to them, eventually.
So this is me trying to figure all of this events and how they have affected me: their causes and consequences, and the way I have seen it on my nice sofa at the Department of Anthropology.
Monday, March 3, 2008
window
Remember: this is our window to/of the world. So, maybe, just maybe we should try to shut it up from time to time, to think about our own reality beyond this one and beyond this virtually. Good night my love.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Pieces
Simple enough: this is me beginning another virtual blog-diary. On May 2005 I begun my first journey in spaces: Experimento, my little experiment. The biggest picture archive of my eating-culinary habits, life and thoughts... I eventually let it go. Didn't erased anything... just didn't felt into it anymore.But here I am, lately I have been feeling a "calling" yes too theatrical, but this is it. This is quite simply and explanation for myself. To find an answer for this place. Another journal full of pieces of me.
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