The Laboratory of Indianista-Katarista Thought

By Abraham Delgado Mancilla

Translated by Angus McNelly

Origins

The Laboratory of Indianista-Katarista Thought is a collective from the city of El Alto, Bolivia.[1] It is the result of a long initiative beginning in the year 2006/2007, when a roundtable event celebrating the Mara T’aqa (Andean-Amazonian New Year) hosted by the Autonomous Public University of El Alto (UPEA) first voiced the fundamental need to create an Indian laboratory,[2] a space to analyse, reflect and reconstruct the knowledge and thought of the Aymara and Quechua. This event was organised by the Council of Originary Ayllus of El Alto, Katari Returns.[3] The Council was founded to help coordinate other organizations and urban groups in El Alto, and its main leaders were the future Laboratory of Indianista-Katarista were its main leaders. However, the structures forced upon the collective in order to gain institutional recognition prevented its consolidation and it lay forgotten, disbanded, for a number of years. Nevertheless, a handful of members from the Council continued to hold onto the idea of consolidating the laboratory. After so many attempts, on 12 December 2015 in the Hotel Torino, situated in the city of La Paz, they finally managed to found the laboratory. It was then that the project began in earnest.

Central Actors

At the start, the Laboratory of Indianista-Katarista Thought was conformed of six members: Marcos Cuti, Claudia Condori Laura, Clemente Mamani Colque, Abraham Delgado Mancilla, María Eugenia Apaza and Hilarión Mollo. As of the beginning of 2021, only Abraham Delgado Mancilla and Marcos Cuti of the founders remain, with the others all going their separate ways for various reasons. Currently, the four active members are Abraham Delgado Mancilla, Marcos Cuti, Rubén Conde Limache and Marco Antonio Barrero.

For Whom

In the first instance, the collective works to find the political and ideological self-determination of the indigenous peoples and nations, not only in Bolivia, but of the continent of the Americas. Through the publication of texts, themselves the product of collective work and reflection, it is possible to travel to different spaces. In the second place, it is important to draw attention to the plight of the indigenous nations, found not necessarily in rural areas usually associated with indigenous peoples, but immersed in the urban expanses in cities across the country and beyond, with the Aymara nation building its own city, that of El Alto.

The Laboratory of Indianista-Katarista Thought “Ch’ikhi Ajayu”[4]

The Laboratory of Indianista-Katarista Thought “Ch’ikhi Ajayu” is one of the intellectual spaces of indianista-katarista activists in Bolivia. It is based in the combative, potent and Aymara city of El Alto. From this space it attempts to rethink and reconstruct the history, knowledge and political and philosophical thought of the Aymara in order to gain the self-determination of the ancestral nations.

The axes of investigation are open, but anticolonial thought runs through its work on politics, indigenous justice and western rights, history, sociology, philosophy and cosmovions.

The collective, through its named institution The Laboratory of Indianista-Katarista Thought, after the principal activities of reading and internal gatherings, focuses on academic scholarship and publication for the Aymara and indigenous peoples more generally, so that they may have a library based in their own ways of thinking and knowing, so that they may continue the anticolonial struggle.

[1] Indianista-Katarista refers to the Katarismo, an attempt to recuperate Aymara culture and knowledge and use it to build a political movement that began amongst Aymara university students in the 1960s. [2] It is difficult to translate the original indio from Spanish, a word that holds so much historical weight. Indio was a derogatory term, a racist slur that subjugated the indigenous peoples of South America. Aymara activists, however, have worked hard to reclaim the term indio or indian [non-capitalised] over the past two decades, and subvert it intentionally, harnessing its power for their own ends. However, it is not a term to be used lightly, and must always be contextualised in this manner. [3] Ayllus are the socio-territorial units of the Aymara situated in the highland plateau to the north and south of Lake Titicaca. Katari refers to the leader Tupaj Katari who led an uprising of the indigenous peoples around Lake Titicaca in 1781, laying siege to the city of La Paz. When he died, he reportedly stated “I will return and I will be millions”. [4] Aymara words that roughly translate as intelligent energy.