Antes de que lo enmallaran (Before they fenced it in): memories and decolonisation in Tiwanaku

(Bolivia)

Drawing on a preliminary fieldwork carried out in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Tiwanaku,
this papers aims at highlighting the governmental appropriation of indigenous claims for their
cultural heritage. Evo Morales’ government has fostered a decolonial rhetoric and the pursuit of the
self-determination for the 32 ‘indigenous nationalities’ officially recognised. However, a continuous
colonial thread is still working in order to classify various degrees of ‘indigeneity’ according to
political or economic interests. The analysis of heritage policies allows to trace such a thread across
time and through the relationships between people and things in Tiwanaku. A particular material
aspect emerged from my conversations: many of the interviewees remember the time when the site
(las ruinas) was not fenced, and the stones were able to actively participate in the life of the
communities. Even though the current management plan seeks to include the different voices that
compose Tiwanaku as a ‘live heritage’, the voices of the stones, the materiality of heritage, and its
self-determined, relational memories, are not taken into consideration. The colonial values
attributed to those stones have been transmitted by means of a disciplining heritage discourse, and
internalised by local communities, which are currently leading the administration of the site.
Nevertheless, recovering memories, oral histories, and intimate relations might enable to highlight
another way of caring about heritage, pursuing an “undisciplined” (Haber 2012, Hamilakis 2013)
archaeological knowledge in accordance with the promotion of a cosmopolitan solidarity among
peoples and a vernacular conception of human rights.