Itinerant Ideas

Itinerant Ideas convincingly argues that indigenistas in Chile and Peru did not reflect the stark national rivalry and official state rhetoric between their two countries in the first half of the twentieth century. In many ways, Joanna Crow's work is a great companion to Joshua Savala's Beyond Patriotic Phobias: Connections, Cooperation, and Solidarity in the Peruvian-Chilean Pacific World (2022), which also focuses on individual connections to show that political and class-based identities transcended and sometimes defied national identity in the Andes. Using extensive research, Crow provides a detailed transnational perspective to examine the porous networks of Indigenous people in the Andes.One of Crow's most valuable contributions is showing how while Indigeneity rose in prominence in both Chilean and Peruvian national identities in the twentieth century, it did so thanks to transnational connections between the two countries. Crow focuses on three broad categories of cooperation between indigenistas in Chile and Peru: labor, cultural heritage, and education. To do so, the book is organized into three parts reflecting these categories. Each part is composed of several chapters dedicated to more specific elements of each theme.The breadth and depth of this book's investigation are impressive. Crow analyzes the works and writings of over 170 distinct indigenistas as well as numerous overlooked conferences, newspapers, and exhibitions. While readers will be familiar with many of those analyzed by Crow, the book should be praised for introducing overlooked doctors, local educators, and journalists, many of them of Indigenous descent, into the narrative. Crow's research even recasts well-known figures. For example, the book shows how Gabriela Mistral (traditionally not thought of as an indigenista writer) was central in creating intellectual and political networks between indigenismo movements in both Chile and Peru. Finally, Crow includes an extensive engagement with existing scholarly literature on indigenismo that readers will find very valuable.Crow builds on a growing body of works that bring a transnational perspective to examining Latin America. The scope of her book allows the reader to appreciate the “South-South” transnational exchanges that formed the movement rather than connections to the global North.Sometimes, however, the book suggests connections between events in both countries that, in many ways, may not have been so strongly linked. For example, Crow cites the 1934 Ránquil uprising in Chile alongside campesino uprisings in Puno, Peru, between 1901 and 1946 as evidence that Indigenous communities “sometimes took up arms” when their legal petitions were not resolved, even though the time line and circumstances of these conflicts were quite distinct (pp. 89–90). In chapter 7, Crow suggests that the 1940 folkloric performances of Mapuche activist Manuel Aburto Panguilef were inspired by the Peruvian Mission of Incaic Art that took place in 1923–24 despite the fact that a generation and many other popular theater and music performances separated these two efforts. These instances distract the reader from otherwise very well-documented close interactions between indigenistas in both countries.The book also contains some minor editorial errors. For example, Leo Rowe and Albert Giesecke were connected to the University of Pennsylvania (not Pennsylvania State University, as stated on page 237), historian Jaymie Patricia Heilman's name is misspelled twice (p. 10), and the author of Making Machu Picchu: The Politics of Tourism in Twentieth-Century Peru (full disclosure—the same individual writing this review) is incorrectly cited as Tim Rice. However, I want to emphasize that none of these errors hurt the argument of the book (or as Tim Rice might say, “Hakuna matata”).Crow's analysis emphasizes the strong transnational connections inherent in indigenismo between Chile and Peru. At times, though, readers may be left wanting to know more about moments of disconnect. Crow notes that while Indigeneity became a category applied nationally to citizens of Indigenous descent in Peru, in Chile “it was common to talk specifically and only of the Mapuche” (p. 335). This affirmation may warrant a deeper analysis of the reasons and consequences of this divergence and how it affected the ways that indigenistas worked together in these two countries to devise strategies and forms of resistance in the face of state policies that certainly viewed the demographics and geography of Indigeneity in different ways.In summary, readers interested in indigenismo in Chile, Peru, and really all of Latin America will learn much from this book. Crow's thorough research and literature reviews will be used as a handy reference for scholars interested in these themes

Latin Americans · Political science · Race (biology) · Sociology · Argentine historical studies · Gender Studies · Historical Studies in Latin America · Latin American Cultural Politics · Law