ANATA AMAYA: The pdroductión of people and economies during the Aymara festivities of Todos los Santso and ñatitas in Achacachi and La Paz, Bolivia

• Grant number: 24/10516-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: July 01, 2025
• End date: June 30, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Salvador Schavelzon
• Grantee: Chryslen Mayra Barbosa Gonçalves
• Host Institution: Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Osasco. Osasco , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Anata Amaya (translated as festival of the dead) is a festive circuit of death that takes place in November in the Bolivian Andes, especially in the department of La Paz, that represents two Aymara festivities related to the dead: Todos los Santos and Día de ñatitas. This post-doctoral work aims to understand ethnographically how the festive circuit of the dead articulates and moves an economy of death in which the encounter (taypi) between the dead and the living creates forms of "more existence" (Despret, 2023) for both subjects of the relationship. This work proposal interrelates theories about rituals and mortuary festivities in the Andes with theories of popular and feminist economies, in addition to intending to understand the protagonism of indigenousAymara women as determinant for these encounter relationships. The field locations will be the Aymara community of Achacachi, during the Todos los Santos festivities (November 1 to 3), andthe ñatitas festival in the city of La Paz (November 8). Bolivia is a Plurinational State which, in its main text, the Political Constitution of the State of 2009 (Schavelzon, 2012), discursivelyhighlights a pluralism based on the 36 nations existing in its territory and an economic pluralism, set out in Article 1 and Chapter Fifth. For this reason, the development of this work will contribute to the internal and external debate on plural expressions and other-than-human (De la Cadena, 2015) subjects involved in these practices, placing emphasis on expanding knowledge about Andean indigenous peoples, a basis of the political project that gives space to other possible ontologies against the modernizing political project.