Indigenous Languages and Populations in "Latin" America: Aymara/Aimara

"El alma de una cultura andina" -- cover.
Poems translated by Vitaliano Huanca Tórrez from Aymara to Spanish; text presented in Spanish and Aymara.

Sound recording including vocal and instrumental music from the Andes. Program notes by Xavier Bellenger.
Booklet in Aymara and Spanish.

Recorded in Bolivia by Bernard Keiler.
Performer: Played by the native musicians with various instruments.
Primarily instrumental music.
Program notes by Bernard Keiler (3 p. : ill.) inserted in container.

Since the days of the Spanish Conquest, the indigenous populations of Andean Bolivia have struggled to preserve their textile-based writings. This struggle continues today, both in schools and within the larger culture. "The Metamorphosis of Heads" explores the history and cultural significance of Andean textile writings--weavings and kipus (knotted cords), and their extreme contrasts in form and production from European alphabet-based texts. Denise Arnold examines the subjugation of native texts in favor of European ones through the imposition of homogenized curricula by the Educational Reform Law. As Arnold reveals, this struggle over language and education directly correlates to long-standing conflicts for land ownership and power in the region, since the majority of the more affluent urban population is Spanish speaking, while indigenous languages are spoken primarily among the rural poor. "The Metamorphosis of Heads" acknowledges the vital importance of contemporary efforts to maintain Andean history and cultural heritage in schools, and shows how indigenous Andean populations have incorporated elements of Western textual practices into their own textual activities. Based on extensive fieldwork over two decades, and historical, anthropological, and ethnographic research, Denise Arnold assembles an original and richly diverse interdisciplinary study. The textual theory she proposes has wider ramifications for studies of Latin America in general, while recognizing the specifically regional practices of indigenous struggles in the face of nation building and economic globalization.

This book compiles texts by U.S. and Bolivian scholars in anthropology and linguistics, as well as educators and Bolivian professionals who work in teaching Aymara populations, producing materials in Aymara, and in promoting this language. Texts included address anthropological dimensions of linguistics in Aymara-speaking communities, mutual influences between Aymara and Spanish in the region, and the connection with other Andean languages, among other topics. The book also includes a phonetic alphabet of Aymara.

This book provides an insight to resistance of Aymara indegenous communities, and Quechua-speaking communities, against an historical tradition of oppression and colonization

This book presents analysis of interviews with Aymara men and women. Questions cover topics as daily life experiences, the principles through which they organize their life, the organization of gender relations, conceptions about feminine identity and management of powers relations.

This book presents testimonies of the participation of Aymara-speaking women and Quechua-speaking women, in resistance and uprising of indigenous communities. This publication communicates these women's thought and experiences.

This book provides a reading of the social history of Andean women, from the perspective of the author as an Aymara women and activist herself, and including other testimonies through the "Taller de Historia Oral Andina".
Includes texts in Aymara and Spanish

This book presents conflicts that arise in the practice of forms of western and Aymara medicine. The author emphasizes the value of Aymara medicine practiced by Yaritis in rural Andean Bolivia, and suggests policy orientations to close the bridge between western and traditional medicinal practices.