A partir de una serie de palabras guía, entre las cuales destaca el concepto de ch’ulel (aquello que es “lo otro del cuerpo”, lo anímico o sagrado, para los pueblos tzotziles y tzeltales), el antropólogo español Pedro Pitarch y el artista tzotzil Abraham Gómez reflexionarán sobre las estrategias creativas de resistencia y adaptación al mundo occidental que han surgido en las últimas décadas en los territorios del sur del país. Las distintas visiones disciplinares de los participantes servirán como puntos de tensión para repensar las relaciones entre las prácticas antropológicas y los movimientos políticos, sociales y artísticos de los pueblos indígenas en México. ¿Es posible a estas alturas reconfigurar la antropología como disciplina?, ¿cómo puede a su vez el arte nutrirse de las prácticas antropológicas?
Pedro Pitarch is an anthropology professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and director of the American Anthropology Research Group. He has a doctorate from the State University of New York at Albany and has been a guest professor at New York University, UC Berkeley and the UNAM. He studies the Maya cultures of Chiapas, in southeastern Mexico, especially the Tzeltal language. He has worked there without interruption since 1988. His research centers on questions of cosmology, person and corporeality in Mesoamerican cultures. He has also addressed themes such as Indigenous languages, discourses and ritual texts (especially shamanic healing songs), among others. His books include Ch'ulel: An Ethnography of Tzeltal Souls (1996), The Jaguar and the Priest (2010) and The Fragrant Word: Tzeltal Shamanic Songs (2013). His most recent research project is on the topological concepts of Indigenous textiles.
Experiments with tradition and the tradition of experimentation in Indigenous art
“Unlearning the modern,” in connection to Indigenous art and aesthetics, means conceiving of them in a way that is not only oriented toward the past, but also the present and especially the future. Here we emphasize two possible aspects of this change in perspective. First, there is the recognition that the continent’s Indigenous cultures are characterized by a drive toward innovation and experimentation. This is not new, but something that has been intrinsic to Indigenous culture for millennia, contradicting the “modern” stereotype of the Indigenous as being conservative by nature. Second, we are currently witnessing a convergence between “traditional” Indigenous culture and new ways of thinking and global dilemmas. Indigenous cosmology and aesthetics spark interest because they illuminate and coincide with many of the emergent concerns of contemporary society (climate, relationships between species, the use of new technologies, sexuality…). These arguments are illustrated through brief examples of contemporary Indigenous artworks and literature.
Soy tzotzil de Chamula, fotógrafo y asesor de ventas en la agencia Nissan en San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. Desde la narrativa visual, exploro las interacciones entre el mundo tzotzil y el mundo global. Mis proyectos fotográficos emergen de la necesidad de indagar la tradición cultural, el valor de los conocimientos ancestrales y la aculturación hacia el mundo occidental a través del mercado de consumo, destacando la creciente interacción entre el mundo indígena contemporáneo del cual mis clientes y yo somos parte, y el mercado globalizado en el que estamos inmersos. Mi quehacer fotográfico transita entre dos mundos: el tzotzil, que me ha dado mi origen (ch’ulel, “espiritualidad”), y el occidental, que me hace cuestionar mis creencias y prácticas culturales. Aquí se visualiza una grieta interna generada por el deseo de permanencia dentro de la tradición cultural tzotzil y el de aceptación para formar parte de la globalización.
Lik xchuvajil
Madness Entered Him
I am a Tzotzil from Chamula who walks between two worlds. One has given me an origin and a spirituality and the other has made me question the beliefs of my grandfathers, to the point of attempting to prove whether or not they are true. Before these ethnotheories, I expose my body.Bless My Path is a series of photographs based on my double practice as a photographer/artist and a sales consultant at a Nissan dealership in San Cristóbal, Chiapas, revealing one aspect of the growing interaction between the contemporary Maya world, which includes both me and my clients, and the globalized market in which we are likewise immersed. This series explores the growing contact between Maya culture and the global market. Bless My Path emphasizes the power of cultural appropriation, acculturation and syncretism between languages and systems of values, in which ancestral knowledge, from the meaning of the position of ch’ul me’tik (the moon) when closing a deal to community-based behavior (including practices for avoiding envy), interweaves with universalized capitalism, which reaches into the most isolated parts of Los Altos in Chiapas.