Cultivando Conociemiento: un Autoetnografía de un Reconectando Quechua warmi Investigando Soberanía Alimentaria en Bolivia’s Altiplano y Chiquitanía / Cultivating Connection: An Autoethnography of a Reconnecting Quechua Woman Researching Indigenous Food Sovereignty in Bolivia’s Highlands and Chiquitanía
By Karen Crespo Triveño, Ph.D. Student in the Environmental Studies Department at UC-Santa Cruz
I regard myself as a reconnecting Quechua warmi (woman) with ancestral lineages from Bolivia. I am part of the Andean diaspora, meaning I identify as a first-generation Bolivian-American of Quechua heritage. My mother was born in the pueblo of Llallagua, Northern Potosí, a predominantly Quechua-speaking peri-urban town in Northern Potosí. These lands were scarred by natural resource extraction and colonial violence. Historically, Indigenous highland populations were forced to extract resources such as tin, zinc, lead, and silver for Spanish accumulation. My maternal grandparents experienced this forced labor system first-hand, working as mineros (miners) and supplementing their income by selling crops, meat, or clothes to campesinos around the Potosí Department of Bolivia until they migrated to Cochabamba. This nearby city offered more socioeconomic opportunities to sustain their livelihoods. Similarly, my father was born in Huanuni, Oruro, located in Bolivia’s altiplano (highlands). Like my mother, his immediate family also migrated to Cochabamba for better socioeconomic conditions. Despite migrating to Cochabamba, my parents and their families remained impoverished. However, my father found a passion for Andean folklore music by playing instruments like charango, zampoña, tarkas, and composing songs in our native language, Quechua. By the 1980s, my father immigrated to the US with his band to seek socioeconomic opportunities and send resources back home to his family, with my mother immigrating shortly afterward.
My familial lineage holds histories of migration, displacements, and encuentros (encounters) of cultural perseverance through reconnection, a lifelong process of remembering and returning to ancestral ways of knowing and being.
These ongoing experiences led me to my interest in the perseverance of Quechua (Northern Potosí) and Chiquitano (Santa Rita) food sovereignty, and how dynamic forms of Indigenous and campesino migration(s) relate to farmers’ ability to maintain sovereignty over their land, agroecological knowledge, and foodways. This inquiry of migration(s) is framed through re-peasantization, a process in which former campesinos return to the countryside to defend their autonomy and reconnect to their agroecological farming practices to support knowledge transmission. Within agroecological farming, I inquire about agricultural biodiversity or agrobiodiversity–the variety and variability of life contributing to food and agriculture. These diverse varieties of seeds and crops are associated with Indigenous and campesino farmer’s knowledge, who steward, care for, and preserve genetic material for future generations.
I draw on feminist research methodologies like autoethnography by centering relationality (minka) and reciprocity (ayni) with Indigenous agroecological farmers in Bolivia. I learned the practice of autoethnography through a graduate seminar taught by Dra. Naya Armendarez Jones in UCSC’s Sociology department. Autoethnography has interpretive meanings and practices (Denzin, 2014). It is a feminist methodology that centers on one’s consciousness of a specific phenomenon through documenting observations and experiences, coupled with analytical reflexivity (McIvor, 2010). Reflexivity can allow a researcher to reflect on how their identities and lived experiences shapes the research process, to support the interpretation of a phenomenon through reflecting (Bukamal, 2022). A few phenomena (s) can include connections to history, place, memories, sensories, and encounters with others. The practice can involve independent and collective writing, documenting streams of consciousness, and narrative writing, such as testimonios (testimonies). Testimonio is a form of narrative writing told in the first person– which can be a liberating process of truth-telling through oral and written documentation (Reyes & Curry Rodriguez, 2012).
In pursuit of repairing ruptures that have fragmented ways of knowing, my research experiences include ongoing documentation of autoethnographic reflections, captured through written and audio-based journal entries. In the summer of 2023, I conducted semi-structured interviews with Quechua and Chiquitano farmers, focusing on their lived experiences of, and awareness about, rural-urban migration, agroecological farming practices, and market contexts of their food production. The following vignettes are autoethnographic accounts from field experiences in Northern Potosí and the Chiquitano community of Santa Rita. These narratives intend to illuminate how I reflect on my embodied identities and experiences, an introspective approach I hope other emerging researchers can consider integrating into their methodology.
Llallagua, Northern Potosí:
Before arriving in Northern Potosí, I established a research protocol with El Programa de Desarrollo Integral Interdisciplinario (PRODII), a local NGO in Llallagua, Northern Potosí that works with migratory rural families to re-learn their farming practices, restoring campesino family farming (la agricultura familiar). In collaboration with PRODII’s director, we co-developed research questions, methodologies, and an outreach protocol to ensure the research was relevant to their work, which led us to interview Quechua rural highland farmers about their agroecological farming practices. Upon arriving, I took a 6-hour flota (bus) ride to the main terminal in Llallagua. I was wrapped in a blanket my tía lent me for my travels from Cochabamba to Llallagua, I nervously opened my eyes at 4 in the morning. A cholita (a woman of Quechua/Aymara descent) noticed me shivering in my seat as we arrived at the terminal and remarked, “Mamita, si quieres, puedes quedar en la flota hasta que hay luz para salir afuera con mas confianza. ¿Tu casa esta lejos de aqui?” / “Mamita, if you want, you can stay on the bus until it’s bright so you can go outside more confidently. Is your house far from here?”
Her words affirmed me, as she wished me safety on my arrival to my home, when in reality, I was staying at a local hotel. I thought about how my positionality led me to have specific encuentros in Bolivia. For me, positionality refers to how my identities and lived experiences position me within my work as an emergent scholar-activist reconnecting to her homelands. The following day, I walked around the local markets to search for some ingredients for breakfast. Market vendors greeted me in Quechuañol– a blend of Spanish and Quechua that locals use to communicate. As I searched for food, I thought about how the plaza principal (main plaza) and mercados locales (local markets) of Llallagua remind me of what I recall Cochabamba to look like when I visited with my family as a child in the early 2000s. Upon returning to my hotel room, I pulled out my autoethnographic journal to jot down observations about my first experiences arriving and walking around in Lllallagua. Shortly after, I began documenting my thoughts onto a voice recorder to archive my immediate reflections.
Santa Rita, la Chiquitanía
While situated in a different geographic location from Bolivia’s altiplano, Indigenous farmers in Bolivia’s Chiquitanía also practice agroecological farming to preserve culturally relevant seeds and crops for future generations. Since 2018, I’ve been in relations with the community of Santa Rita–a cultural and biodiversity hotspot located in the rural outskirts of the municipality of Concepción in Bolivia’s Chiquitania. In Santa Rita, female community leaders and elders practice subsistence farming, ancestral weaving, sharing of seeds and crops, and local marketing. During my time in Santa Rita, I witnessed the leadership of Chiquitano women elders, who primarily support their livelihoods by practicing traditional weaving techniques and producing hilos (threads) made from cotton, which are then woven into women’s clothing for sale. Alongside weaving, women farm in tropical dry-leaf forests. Although the women of Santa Rita resist agro-industry through subsistence agroecological farming, migration is common among community members, which can imperil knowledge transmission and socioeconomic vitality. Before returning, I shared my research approaches with women elders and leaders and sought their feedback, many of whom were eager to support with interview participant outreach and made me feel like I had a home with their community.
Along with interviewing Chiquitano farmers about their farming practices and awareness of migration(s), I participated in community food production, helping plant and harvest local culturally relevant crops, such as yuca, banana, papaya, beans, sweet potato, and maize for Chiquitano subsistence, sharing, barter, and local marketing. On many afternoons after participating in morning food production, I returned to my homestay, met with the curious smiles of local youth who wanted to play games, and accompanied me to my evening interviews with Chiquitano farmers, often expressing interest in the research process and higher education. After long days of fieldwork, I was met with thoughts about my responsibility in carrying out a project that allows me to support Chiquitano food sovereignty and the type of role model and mentor I want to be for younger generations, such as the youth from Santa Rita.
Moving forward, a few commitments feel apparent. Research holds immense responsibility, as one’s pursuit of knowledge void of connection to ancestors will fail to serve the communities that a reconnecting Indigenous researcher aims to represent (McIvor, 2010). The pursuit of ancestral reconnection continues to guide me through my everyday encuentros with my relatives, community partners, and the more-than-human world, like Indigenous and local crops and seeds. An autoethnographic methodology supports commitments toward reflexivity, built on humility and communal care, to uplift epistemologically diverse expertise that centers community agency. An ongoing autoethnographic practice can support remembrance and uplift the diversity of stories embedded in the places we call home and the communities we are rooted from.
