Mixed People

The native people of the Bajo Urubamba frequently assert that they are ‘mixed people’ (gente mezclada) or ‘of mixed blood’ (de sangre mezclada). The idiom of ‘mixing’ refers to the collapse of pure ‘kinds of people’ existing at the beginning of history through intermarriage, and that of ‘mixed people’ asserts that kinship is a historical product. This intermarriage is productive of new settlements and hence of new generations, which differ categorically from those of previous generations. The personal identities of contemporary people on the Bajo Urubamba are ‘mixed’ in the sense that each person is of several ‘kinds of people’ simultaneously. This opposes them to prior ‘pure’ generations, and thus marks kinship as a historical process.

Ethnology · Genealogy · Kinship · Product (mathematics) · Sociology · Anthropology · History · Indigenous Cultures and History · Indigenous Health and Education · Indigenous Studies in Latin America · Mathematics