Abstract We present the life dynamics of an indigenous woman. Those dynamics, which took place mainly in the post-revolutionary era, have been taken from life stories. They have been built among fragments of memories and empty documentaries. The analysis approaches the sociocultural conditions of a region where ancestral knowledge was vital for family subsistence. This approach allows us to consider the actors, Ángela Tolentino and other Otomí-Tepehua [geographic and cultural region from Hidalgo State, Mexico] women natives of the state of Hidalgo, as products of history. We highlight decisive actions to make her life a unique story as an actor in her own social space. Those actions are the formation of a family without the guardianship and protection of a father, a brother, or a husband; becoming the sole economic provider of her children; migrating to experience the gradual abandonment of previous knowledge (including her mother tongue, which gradually became extinct among her descendants); and to live in a political context that fought for the assimilation of indigenous culture because it was considered as a restraint for the development of the country. We recover memories of her life from her descendants, such as experiences and discussions made while walking and traveling from one ranchería [small rural settlement] to another, far from rural and urban centers. In this sense, we consider her as the producer of her own story. This is how to interweave the image of an Otomí-speaking indigenous woman at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.
Abstract The aim of the text is to analyse contemporary Bolivian decolonial feminism using Cusicanquiʼs model of cultural hybridity. Cusicanqui formulated the concept of chʼixi as an analytical tool for theorizing about the mixing of cultures that maintain distinct aspects but enter a mutual creative dialogue and create new qualities through it. In my analysis, I focus on two streams of Bolivian decolonial feminism, represented by Mujeres Creando and Mujeres Creando Comunidad movements. First, I describe historical roots of Bolivian decolonial feminism with an emphasis on the influence of anarchist ideas both on the formation of the Bolivian workersʼ movement and on strategies and practices of social and indigenous movements at the turn of the millennium. In the following discussion I analyse the ideologies and strategies of Mujeres Creando and Mujeres Creando Comunidad movements using Cusicanquiʼs model of hybridity. I conclude that both movements construct a subversive network of alternative knowledge and practices, within which seemingly contradictory experiences can coexist harmoniously and create a new, non-dichotomous qualities. According to Cusicanqui, these chʼixi spaces are the source of a new, emerging epistemology based on which a radical vision of decolonised modernity can be formulated.
Abstract The article deals with the issue of representation and the practice of othering of the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas – the so-called Indians – in selected Czech written sources from the 16th century. Using the concept this/that/the other by literary historian John Barrell, it examines how the practices of othering, i.e., the production of signs of difference, are produced in analysed sources and identifies key discourses for their formation. Applying the concept to concrete textual passages, the article explores its benefits as a tool in textual analysis. It enables to categorise different types of otherness, among which it identifies the interrelationships, and the way power is distributed. Othering is produced through discourses of civilization and barbarism, religious discourse, and the discourse of power. Textual discourses are based on existing European literary production, strongly dominated by Christian discourse and the resulting Eurocentric interpretation of the world. European ideas about society and its organization are also transmitted to the New World.
