Gonzalo Álvarez, Carlos Piñones-Rivera and Sofia Larrazabal

This article discusses how Aymara conceptions of territory and associated practices developed in the cross-border area between Bolivia and Chile, transcend the state boundaries imposed by the international order. Drawing on ethnographic observations of cross-border processes, individual interviews, and a review of sources, Aymara conceptions of territory are analyzed, focusing broadly on their expression through sociopolitical practices and, more specifically, on the popular economy of Andean medical wisdom. From this, it is argued that Aymara ways of understanding space – as an ecology produced by relational practices between a large number of beings, including human, non-human and more than human – and the practices developed there promote a reappropriation and resignification of the territory that transcends state constraints and the narrow margins that have historically defined relations between both countries.

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Natalia Castelnuovo Biraben y Anabella Verónica Denuncio

Between the 1970s and 1980s, “human promotion” emerged as the guiding concept framing a set of ideas, actions, and values that mobilized actors from religious backgrounds and Christian development organizations. This article traces the origins of this concept back to the paradigm of the new evangelization articulated in Medellín, and analyzes its consolidation as an alternative to ideas of ‘assistance’ and ‘charity’. Based on ethnographic interviews and archival materials, the text examines human promotion initiatives directed toward indigenous and criollo groups in Argentina’s Gran Chaco, carried out by these development actors and
organizations. The analysis reveals that the concept of “human promotion” involves three key dimensions vital to understanding the presence and actions of development and religious agents in the region: local knowledge, self-awareness, and forms of organization and mobilization. This concept has become the driving force and guiding framework for the territorial work carried out by various Christian development agents and institutions.

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This article examines the interaction and production of knowledge among Jesuits, travelers (naturalists, scientific explorers), and local peoples in the missions of Maynas and Orinoco, and, the Jesuit expulsion in 1767, from the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. The analysis is based on the interpretation of two concepts: baptism and poison. The historical account develops through the asymmetrical interactions of these three historical agents, interpreting and interweaving Jesuits’ and travelers’ accounts from chronicles and travel diaries regarding local practices and their own experimentation with baptism and poison. Through the lens of these concepts, the article highlights not only the key role that local peoples played in the production of religious and scientific knowledge in the missions, but also the intermediary capacity of Jesuit missionaries to record and produce this complex and controversial knowledge.

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Cristóbal Palma Rojas

Drawing on an ethnographic experience in Villa Francia, a popular and politically organized neighborhood in Santiago de Chile, I address the relationship between young residents killed during the military dictatorship and the current inhabitants of the sector. I argue that the bond between the living and the dead is a forged by walkers and through walks. This connection has taken shape not only through commemorative walks, but also through what I refer to as caminares (the walks): the biographical, necrographical, and historical lines and routes traced by both the living and the dead. The aim is to construct a conceptualization of death and life after death that moves beyond a purely symbolic and/or representational point of view.

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