Paper short abstract:

The pastoral landscape of Sikkim Himalaya evolved as one of the most remarkable landscapes sculpted by semi-nomadic Dokpas and their Yaks. The uncertain climates along with geopolitical interventions, have left them with multiple challenges thus leaving a profound impact upon their way of life.

Paper long abstract:

Dokpas are the semi-nomadic community living in the highlands of Sikkim Himalaya associated with subsistence practices of rearing Yaks and sheep. The Dokpas are mostly known to be associated with the traditional Yak herding practices based on seasonal movements from high altitude to low altitude and vice versa. Yaks are the sole provider of Dokpas livelihood and a flagship species of the highland ecosystem. The history of Yak pastoralism in Sikkim is structured in a unique bond and the relationships shared by the people of Tibet as well as Sikkim along with the movement carried through traditional paths that connected these two landscapes. However, the Dokpas way of living introduced in the highlands for more than a century is thriving in the landscapes that are now being gradually eroded through geopolitical as well as socio-economic interventions. Their traditional way of living is being distorted with the passing time and are now being left to adjust with many challenges day by day.

Paper short abstract:

The new Cuzco airport in Chinchero (Peru) is bringing fragmentation to familiar and dynamic geographies now reified and commoditized by privatization processes. This paper explores the potential of local cultural categories and practices to fix spatial ruptures and to rethink notions of territory.

Paper long abstract:

In the Peruvian Andes indigenous peoples have historically related to the land through well-rooted categories and institutions such as the ayllu (kin group in re-productive and affective relationships with a given territory). Historical events and social change brought about by the various "modernities" have transformed the ayllus into peasant communities in a different relationship with the State. These communities partake of a wider national legal framework that dissolves cultural difference into homogenising notions of citizenship.

Nowadays, the (tourism-driven) construction of the new Cuzco airport in Chinchero is encouraging a process of de-territorialization, of shattering of old patterns of spatial organization, movement across the space, and social relationships. It is replacing them with private ownership of the land, spatial disjunction, political fragmentation, and geographic reorganization. And this is all happening in a new space arising from the logics of economic production, technical efficiency, and rational compartmentalization.

This context forces us how to rethink notions of "territory" in Chinchero, when the airport and other developments like land privatization, or the heritagization of cultural landscapes and archaeological sites are shattering well established bonds between the villagers and the land eroding a sense of place. This paper asks: how is the airport transforming customary territorial patterns and movement practices among Andeans? How does it force us to rethink the new territoriality arising from the airport and that challenges pre-established concepts of indigenous peoples? What Andean categories and place-making practices could be helpful to fix the spatial ruptures and the fractured geographies of Chinchero?

Paper short abstract:

I deal with cases of ritual practices and celebrations carried out by Purépechas emigrated to the United States in contexts of spatial and territorial displacements, which involve cultural change and identity mobility. Such examples are analyzed both in the communities of origin and in "the north".

Paper long abstract:

The space and territory and the relationship established with them and around them are two of the key elements that define the membership of a group and the identification of people with a specific culture, as Castilleja, Liffman, Zárate, and others have shown. These concepts are far from being simple and immutable, on the contrary, they are dynamic, complex, and are constantly re-elaborated according to the social and historical conditions of the group in question. In the case of the Purépecha people of Mexico (settled in the state of Michoacán in the central-western part of the country, with a population close to 180,000 inhabitants), it is possible to find a shift or an extension in the conception of their ancient territoriality and space towards new places where they emigrate, mainly to the United States of America.

In this paper, I will present some examples of ritual practices that support the identity of the people and that incorporate external elements and practices (including "contradictory" ones) that people have endorsed through the mechanism of cultural change and control, proposed by Guillermo Bonfil Batalla. I will also present some practices that are carried out in the United States by displaced Purépecha communities (many of whose members are illegal immigrants), in order to keep their identity and sense of belonging alive, mainly through large fiestas of the patron saints, as well as the celebration of the rites of passage, such as weddings, baptisms and Quince años (Fifteen-year celebrations).

Paper short abstract:

Migrations are phenomena that encompass the economic, social and cultural spheres, but they also involve the transfer of elements from the imaginary that are fundamental aspects of a culture, and that when a social group moves from one place to another, they find different ways of representing it

Paper long abstract:

From an ethnographic approach, this study intends an analysis between indigenous women, who at different times migrated from their places of origin to San Luis Potosí. During the interviews and the dialogue they maintained between them, compare what they left in their villages and how they've adapted to a foreign place. Despite relocation they maintain their (cultural) imaginaries and representations as shown in mechanisms to preserve the use of their traditional clothing, speak the native language and make the crafts they learned in their place of origin.

In sharing their dialogue, this paper intends to explain the main elements of each woman's culture that prevail in the imaginary and how they are reconfigured and represented. It is also analyzes how they elaborate their present in everyday life from a past protected within the collective memory of the native people. They talk about how they have managed to adapt to the new territory by forming new intercultural identities, based on the interaction with indigenous peoples of other origins as well as with non-indigenous peoples. In the interaction between these women, the important tensions that push them to strengthen their own traditions as a form of resistance also become evident.

This new approach to human geographies allows us to analyze the concept of territory in the migrant's imagination differently, which according to García (2003, 101): "Clarify certain aspects of identity permanence and collective memory that transcend the time they originated through cultural recreations, giving it a cumulative continuum…"