Singing Inka Princesses of the 1950s

Incidentally, there appears to be a whole mysterious world out there filled with dynamic Indigenous-chic Peruvian singers from the 1950s which I did not know about.

Part of the "exotica music" scene, Yma Sumac was born in Ichocán, Cajamarca and claimed to be an Inka princess who was directly descended from Atahualpa. In 1946, the government of Perú, apparently, formally supported this claim (at least according to her New York Times obituary).

For your viewing pleasure: a ghostly Yma Sumac performing vocal feats around stills of various South and Central American archaeology things:

That, my friends, is what it is all about. Hey there Gateway of the Sun!

The Glory of Bolivian Silent Film: Time Traveling Twice Over

Today is another day for silent film lust and desperation.

Arthur Posnansky, everyone's favorite fantastic and fantastical Bolivian archaeologist, produced a silent film in 1926. Called La Gloria de la Raza, the pseudo-documentary was shot at Tiwanaku, starred Posnansky, and pushed his always-interesting views of the past. If you liked reading about how Posnansky believed the Tiwanaku the be the 12,000 year old nucleus of all American civilizations and culture, you'd LOVE to see it on the screen. Posnansky had cash and an eye for the mystical: I am sure La Gloria de la Raza was magical.

Yet, of course, it does not survive. I'm hot on the trail of either a script or a companion document to the film that Posnansky self published. It should show where he was going with the whole deal and, I hope, will note the locations of various scenes at the site. Film footage of the pre-restoration, 1920s Tiwanaku, however, would be both valuable and exciting. If only!

Existing still from La Gloria de la Raza: Pottery!

But, in the world of silent film, there are always discoveries to be made. It seems that what is lost can often magically found. I find that one of the most alluring aspects of silent film: the constant lost and found of it all. Rumors of Posnansky hauling a bag stuffed with his film reels to the US in the 1940s and returning to Bolivia without them are out there. Where did he go? A dark part of me thinks that perhaps I should take a look into it, that maybe it takes an archaeologist to find an archaeologist's film. Would he have passed it off as a teaching tool to, say, W.C. Bennett at Yale maybe? Were they still in a fight then? I'm walking a dangerous road. Better searchers than I have failed. Do I want to be sucked in?

As it turns out, and I  didn't know this until today, the only surviving Bolivian silent film has just been restored. Set my heart ablaze: it is a full costume, Conquest era romance! Ladies and gentlemen, meet Wara Wara:


Now, obviously, there is much to be excited about there. Pre-conquest utopia! Coca leaf divination! Maybe even pushing of mestizoization!

And heck upon heck, Carlos Mesa, former president of Bolivia, has come out swinging!

In an interview about the release of Wara Wara, the former president states that in the 20s racism was unilateral and now it goes both ways; that he is proud the country has an Indigenous president, but Morales is the president of the Aymara not the president of all Bolivians; that the new constitution is racist. Getting back to Wara Wara, Mesa says the film idealizes hybridity, and:

"mestizaje in Bolivia is now a banned expression, a negative element, looked at with contempt by the plurinational State. For me, however, the base of mestizaje is precisely the diversity of languages and cultures. I do not think there are 36 nations in Bolivia. It is a fiction, a conceptual error that divides us rather than unites us"

...wow. Edgy.


As you can imagine, I want to see Wara Wara so bad that it hurts. As far as I can tell, there is no way for me to buy it online and the Cinemateca Boliviana site is down (and has been down for a while).

On an almost completely different note, while searching for the film Wara Wara, I found a Peruvian singer from the 1960s who went by the name Wara Wara. I must say that I delight in this track nearly as much as I delight in the the trailer for the silent film. Enjoy:

Changes in Altitude

Lately I have been working several days a week at a small museum that was once the home of a well-known 18th century individual who need not be named. A component of this work involves interacting with the roughly quarter of a million visitors that rattle the post and beam structure every year. I'm loving it: most of my other days are spent inside alone, poring over my computer and my thoughts, spewing nonsense that I like to think is academic (read: PhD dissertation edits); at this museum I get to talk to people all day, answer their questions about the past, and see what they are interested in.

Surely I could write countless blog posts about this (and I will, no doubt) but today I want to linger on "people were shorter then," popular mythology and bursting bubbles.

Scenario 1:
Ponderer: Excuse me, how tall was X?
Ms Know It All: Well, based on the work of some people who seriously spent time on this, he was about 5'7" or 5'8" going by his arm to tool ratio in his youngest portrait: pretty average.
Ponderer: Oh, because I thought people were shorter then.
Ms Know It All: They weren't. Average American height has gone up, you know, because our population now includes the descendants of known towerers such as the Dutch or the Sudanese, but he and his lot are only slightly shorter than average for modern Europeans.
Ponderer:*Makes the I don't believe you because that is not what I wanted to hear face*
Ms Know It All: Umm...George Washington was our tallest president.

Scenario 2:
Observer 1: Oh wow! That bed is so SMALL!
Observer 2: People were shorter then.
Observer 1 (if American): Oh yeah! I mean look how small these doorways are.
Observer 1 (if British): Oh yeah! But look how high these doorways are.
Ms Know It All: *tongue is held*

For some reason people like to project a real and physical difference onto the past. If life was so vastly different, the people must have been different too. Often I think we archaeologists find that the past gets dehumanized: I know I have trouble thinking of individuals and interactions, emotions, sneezes, sleepless nights, itchy backs, and relief at taking your shoes off in the past. I wonder if the general public converts this dehumanization into the bolder folk idea of past (fake-feeling) people being shorter that modern (real-feeling) people. Maybe it continues the divide between then and now.

Then again, perhaps it is only a trick of observation. Low doorways (to conserve heat) and small-seeming beds (people slept propped up a bit more than they do today) are interpreted as evidence. But still, I think such things are interpreted in that way because it *feels* right somehow.

Interestingly, nearby Plimoth Plantation has a whole page on this topic, which goes into details of diet, how variable the term 'average' is and the curious problem of past people not really recording their heights. They note that people of European extraction are taller now, but not much taller, and present various possible reasons why (hybridization, antibiotics, better water at childhood). They don't actually talk much about anywhere else in the world (I am willing to bet money that the average height of people in highland Bolivia or jungle Guatemala lines up quite close to Inka or Ancient Maya height; please correct me if I am wrong). But the fact that the question is on the website means that they deal with this folk myth as well.

Now the two scenarios above. In the first I burst the bubble: if the visitor pressed the issue I would certainly yammer about such things as the 6'6" Roman skeleton I cleaned with a toothbrush, and probably freak them out, but the point is that they asked the question and thus opened themselves for something that, perhaps, they didn't want to hear. In scenario 2, however, two visitors were having a conversation, they didn't ask me, they asserted, and for me to cut in would be rude. Also, they probably don't care: to 'know' without asking just makes me feel like there is a certain lack of curiosity plus I am not getting paid to ruin peoples' vacations by being Ms Know it All.

I feel like I should start keeping a notebook for the more interesting ideas about the past that tumble from the lips of visitors. This is certainly a learning experience for me and I want to gain something from these visitors. Indeed, on my way in tomorrow I will acquire a notebook! Watch out!

Wild Wild Westism and War on Terror Rhetoric

The moment that the news broke (quietly) that Osama Bin Laden had been codenamed "Geronimo" during the operation that shuffled him off this mortal coil, I said "you've got to be kidding me". I actually said that, out loud, to my long suffering significant other who is, no doubt, tired of such things.

But seriously folks, while I don't expect someone planning such an operation to spend much time on the irony of choosing the name of a 19th century Indigenous, anti-American warrior and spiritual leader, but you would think that someone would say "maybe it isn't a hot idea to use some actual dude's name as a code name: if it has to be a 'G' lets use 'Guanaco' or 'Gerontology'.

Before I dive in further, I want to say that ultimately I am upset with the use of that code name, not because the person whose name was appropriated was a Native American, but because the person whose name was appropriated was a person at all. Using "Judy Garland" or "Tito Puente" would be just as questionable.

Anyhow, sure enough it was only a matter of time for others to notice (and get offended by) the inherent irony in codename 'Geronimo'. As of yesterday, staffers of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee have given the name choice a thumbs down. Loretta Tuell says that this issue will be discussed in a previously scheduled committee meeting that will take place tomorrow. Others have gone so far as to say that this is an attempt to link Native Americans with terrorists, but I think that is about twenty-eight steps too far. Besides, we have all seen the t-shirts like the one pictured above: everyone on all sides has linked Geronimo to 'war on terror' terminology for a variety of purposes. Turning the tables is still playing along.

I think the powers that be probably imagined that they were using 'Geronimo' in the slangy, surprise attack sense: what we all probably yelled while jumping out of a tree onto an unsuspecting sibling. Sure the linking of Geronimo's name to surprise attacks (always from above?) can/should be examined; the persistence of the name as "war cry" is interesting in its own right. Yet, to say that the use of this code name was an overt (or even subconscious) linking of Native Americans with terrorists is shaky: the name was an attempt to link the swift surprise attack on Bin Laden with an American folk term that means 'surprise attack', however questionable that term might be.

 

What IS interesting is that Geronimo's descendants, as I have pointed out previously in this blog, can be quite litigious. Are they up for a defamation of character suit? Maybe! Yet, because of the folk definition of Geronimo, I'm thinking that such a case might not go very far.

It is worth noting that the BBC has a piece out about the code name. It talks about wild west imagery in the Bush administration etc. Frankly, I think it is a bit of a crap article. The quotes they use are either not attributed to anyone, especially the one that links Bin Laden to Geronimo (no date, no source?!), or they come from some random retired colonel or other who don't seem to be speaking for anyone. The one thing that the article DOES clear up is why I had this impression of 'Geronimo' being what is shouted when attacking from above:

The night before the jump, a small group of soldiers left the base to watch film at the local cinema - a western featuring the fearless Geronimo. As the men later revealed their apprehension about the next day's jump, Pt Aubrey Eberhardt announced that he was going to shout "Geronimo" as he leapt from the plane to demonstrate his courage...The motivational yell was adopted other servicemen and quickly became standard practice for US army paratroopers - and the favoured cry for little boys performing a daring leap. 

Nice gendering, BBC. We little girls who grew up in the shadow of the US Military yelled it too. I can promise you that it was not linked in my mind to Geronimo the man at the time.

Yet, however much I feel like the slight was entirely unintentional, I honestly thought that by now the pentagon would have a binder filled with words that they were just not allowed to use for coded operations and some basic guidelines that can never be crossed. Having worked a little bit in NAGPRA compliance for the Army, you'd think that several decades of mandated attention to some level of Native American concern would have trickled down to culturally sensitive operations naming...that someone, anyone, in that room would say "this is a bad idea guys"...that as a last stop the president, who we like to think is race savvy, would say "NO, NEW CODE NAME".

One could argue that they had other things on their mind, but there was a clear concern from the top about how this operation would look to the public. There was so much media flack over the codename of Libya operations that you would think that at least one Pentagon person would be watching out for codename blunders.

UPDATE:
The chairman of the Fort Sill Apache tribe, Jeff Houser, has released this letter to President Obama. At least these are words from the current leader of Geronimo's tribe and not some randoms, thus they are worth mention:

We are grateful that the United States was successful in its mission against Bin Laden, but associating Geronimo's name with an international terrorist only perpetuates old stereotypes about Apaches.

In the 1800's Geronimo and the Chiricahua Apache people were portrayed as savages. This portrayal was used as justification for the forced removal from their homelands and their subsequent imprisonment. Linking Geronimo's name to an infamous terrorist only reinforces this false and defamatory stereotype.