Identity and otherness among the Ese Ejja of Northern Bolivia

Abstract

This paper explores the construction of self-identity in relation to others in a Bolivian Amazonian society, through the ambivalent attitudes the Ese Ejja people display towards mestizo and white Bolivians. I argue that the Ese Ejja's ambivalence reflects the mutable, contextualand r elationalnature ofidentity, understood as self-image. The relationship described is characterised by self-abasement on the part of the Ese Ejja. This is partly attributable to historical, economic and political factors, but is also consistent with the indigenous strategy of avoiding direct confrontation with dangerous entities. Moreover, it is suggested that this stance towards powerful foreigners can also be read in terms of indigenous socio-cosmological notions of otherness and of Other-becoming, and of the Ese Ejja's own sense of being in history.

Keywords:

• Amazonia
• Bolivia
• indigenous people
• self-image
• identity
• alterity

Acknowledgments

This paper is based on research funded by an esrc Postgraduate Scholarship (no. r00429934274). I am grateful to all those who have read, heard and commented on different versions. Special thanks go to Edward Simpson, Henrietta Moore, Peter Gow, the lse research seminar and the ciase seminar in St Andrews. I am also very grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their useful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. This paper is based on eighteen months fieldwork in the Ese Ejja village of Portachuelo, on the left bank of the Beni River in Northern Bolivia, between November 1999 and April 2001.

2. This notion is consistent with the ‘rhizomic’ model of identity, ‘nonbounded and expansive’, discussed by Dan Rosengren (2003).

3. This was the distribution at the time of my first visit. However, between 2002 and 2003, most of the residents of Alto began to migrate to a new settlement on the Madre de Dios River, called Chiquia.

4. During my stay, Portachuelo seemed to be undergoing a period of Evangelical zeal, and people refrained from drinking openly. However, I was often told of village-wide fights which had taken place the previous years, mostly fuelled by alcohol. On these occasions, women took part to defend their husbands.