“Antes de que lo enmallaran”

(Before they fenced it in): Memories and

Decolonisation in Tiwanaku (Bolivia)

Francesco Orlandi
Department of Archaeology,
University of Exeter
frorlandi.985@gmail.com
The Autonomous Municipality of Tiahuanaco is home of the “Spiritual
and Political Centre of the Tiwanaku Culture”, Bolivia’s most important
archaeological heritage, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage
List (WHL) since 2000.
 Why Tiwanaku?
● Long term history of interactions.
● Important site for both national
imagination and indigenous
movements.
● The role of cultural heritage in
international relations, and in the
reformulation of the Bolivian state.
Evo Morales’ Presidential Ceremony in Tiwanaku, 21st January 2015. Since his first election,
in 2005, Morales has always been proclaimed president in an indigenous ceremony at the
site previous to the official nomination in the Government Palace. In such a way, Morales
performs the strong connections with Andean authorities which are the ground of his political
power.
Source: TeleSur.
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Evo-Morales-Inauguration-Ceremonies-Begin-20150121-0018.html
A new “common”?: Multicultural recognition
vs. Plurinational (self)determination

The banner reads, “The water is ours, Damn it!”. The picture was taken during the days of
the so called War of Water, in the year 2000: a massive popular protests against the
privatisation of water in Cochabamba.
Source: http://www.contramare.net/site/en/the-water-is-ours-damn-it/
 Tiwanaku’s Conundrums

Expansion of the buffer zone around the main monuments of

Tiwanaku: (left) the “multicultural” document presented in
1999; (right) the “plurinational” management plan in 2016.
Sources: UNESCO and Centre of Achaeological and Anthropological Research, and Administration of Tiwanaku (Centro
de Investigaciones Arqueológicas, Antropológicas y Administración de Tiwanaku, CIAAAT).
 The Politics of the Fence
“Before they fenced it in, tourists used to arrive at the village. I was a child,
between ten and twelve years old, but I remember people arriving by taxi, they
had a coca-cola, which was what my grandmother used to sell the most, and
thereafter they went to visit the ruins. But nobody hassled them, nor charging
them for visiting the site. […] However, I can’t remember who came up with
that, at that point they started to fence the ruins, that is: let’s protect it!”
(Interview with
doña G., 10
Sept 2016)
 Archaeological Ethnography
● A hybrid meeting ground for theoretical, methodological, and ethical
encounters aimed at “identifying competing conceptions of the common
goods, and the practices by which new and emergent realities come into
being” (Meskell 2012:140).
● Focus on relational materialities and multi-temporal assemblages of
people and things (Hamilakis 2011).
● Enabling to investigate into the “contemporary past” of specific

gravitational spaces of modernity (González Ruibal 2008; Harrison 2011)

Taipy Kala: “central stone”.
A gathering place for worlds
“I asked the natives, in presence of Juan de Vargas (who holds them
in encomienda), whether these edifices were built in the time of
the Yncas, and they laughed at the question, affirming that they
could not say who made them. They added that they had heard from
their fathers that all we saw was done in one night. From this and
from the fact that they also speak of bearded on the island of Titicaca,
and of others who built the edifices of Vinaque, it may, perhaps, be
inferred that, before the Yncas reigned, there was an intelligent
race who came from some unknown part, and who did these
things. Being few, and the natives many, they may all have been
killed in the wars.

Seeing that all these things are hidden from us, we may well say,
Blessed be the invention of letters! by virtue of which the
memory of events endures for many ages, and their fame flies
through the universe. We are not ignorant of what we desire to
know when we hold letters in our hands. But in this new world of
the Indies, as they knew nothing of letters, we are in a state of
blindness concerning many things.”
Cieza de León, P., 1874[1553]. Cronica del Peru. English translation by Sir Markham, C. R.,
The travels of Pedro de Cieza de Léon, A.D. 1532-50, contained in the first part of his
Chronicle of Peru. London: Hakluyt Society. p. 379.
 Ch’ixi : alternative temporalities and
materialities
“As a kid, I listen to very
old stories, and the
histories, barbarisms
and fables from the time
of paganism, which are
as it follows: among the
Indians, things from
times past always
speak to people”
Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui
Salcamayhua, 1879[1613], Relación
sobre las Antigüedades deste Reino del Waman Poma de Ayala 1615, Primer
Piru, p. 234. Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno, folio
261[263].
 Heritage’s Long Memory
“Then I understood why my great-great
grandfather did it, why he did the
church with the stones of Tiwanaku.
Beneath the temple there is another
temple, bigger than Kalasasaya […] He
preserved this temple because he kept
the plan of the church, which is square
with the arches representing each
elements. […] This was the reason,
and the two monoliths at the gateway
of the church are in their original
place. And this is the most important
thing I could know, to know about my
family, to know why my grandfather
was participating in that, and why he
lived in the village and all that”

(Interview with Doña G., 10 Sep 2016)

 Nation and Disciplination

D‘Orbigny 1836, Voyage pittoresque dans les deux Amériques, p.370

Stübel and Uhle 1892, Die Ruinstaette von Tiwanaku, C3
Arturo Posnaski with Wendell Bennett, 1933.
Great Project of Bolivian Archaeology.
Wikimedia Commons.

Bennett 1934, Excavations at Tiwanaku, p. 371

Authorised Heritage and Violence
“I used to work in the ruins. Here in
Kalasasaya, we excavated the Ponce
Monolith. We pulled it out. It is staying up
there now. […] Before we used to work by
hands, by pickaxe. The masters forced you
to work in that time. They make you work by
sticking. That is how it used to be. He was
so bad that master. I myself have seen a
soldier coming here forcing us to go to
work. He was so bad that soldier. Now is
different, young people are working little
slower, for the tourists. They like that. We
had to pulled this stone up by hands… very
big stones! Someone dies… dies! The stone
falls and squashes them! It was so hard...”

(Interview with Don S., 12 Sep 2016)

 Shadows of Community
Participation
“Here in our community we have suka kollos [raised fields], which is
what I hope they might improve for us. Archaeologists used to arrive,
and we got paid for what we had sowed there. They no longer used
the fields. We do it for our family but… money rules, can you see? If
there’s no money, there’s nothing.”
(Interview with doña I., 16 Sep 2016)
“The mallkus [community authority] decide who can work. Each mallkus
in their communities place some peons… that is, peons. This is the only
job one can find here. The mallkus recruit, and basically save us.”
(Interview with don J. A., 16 Sep 2016)
Other ways of caring: heritage/rights
cosmopolitics
“I will now tell you, listen: these stones speak, they walk
when their time comes. Because you don’t have to walk
at that time, you might get lost, you might fall. These
stones speak, walk, cry… That’s why we always do a
waj’ta, so that nothing bad will happen. That’s why it is
also worthy for those who come from abroad to visit all
of this, they might fall, got scared and sick, people can
die for travelling. There are lots of things that might
happen, but when we give the offering, nothing happens.
[…] It is also worthy for tourists to take a remembrance
away with them: We prepare the table, one has to know
what the ingredients mean, what is needed, what is
deemed to be used [...] We serve it like a dish, we do the
same as we do for a chicken, with its dressings, its
potatoes, everything. The same we have to do, filled with
all the ingredients, it must be nothing missing”

(Interview with doña C., 11 Sep 2016)

 Conclusions
● “Heritage” as material-discursive practice is a meaningful topic
for exploring the persistence of colonial relations in, and with,
the territory and the people who inhabit it (i.e. the “Coloniality of
Heritage”).

These colonial relations operating in the definition and

●

administration of heritage as an “indigenous common” are

reflected in the contradictions between the decolonial rhetoric of
the plurinational juncture and the lived experience of people.

● An archaeological ethnography approach to heritage-making

processes allows to identify these contradictions in the
imposition, disciplination, and readjustment of an “authorised”
assemblage of people and things.
 Thank you!

Acknowledgements:
Centro Investigaciones Arqueológicas, Antropológicas y Administración de
Tiwanaku (CIAAAT).
Dra. Patrizia Di Cosimo.
Scuola di Scienze Politiche Università di Bologna.
To all the people of Tiwanaku who gave me their worlds.