Aimaraism: The Aimara in southern Peru under the lens of empirical historical evidence and linguistics. A nation that never existed.

27 February 2023, Version 1
This content is an early or alternative research output and has not been peer-reviewed by Cambridge University Press at the time of posting.

Abstract

Currently, Peruvian society is experiencing a phenomenon of revalorization of the identity of the pre-viceroyalty, that is, the pre-Inca cultures; Aymarism is also part of this process of “re-elaboration”. Nevertheless, there are historical and archaeological elements that can reformulate the identity created by these Andean settlers of South America, especially those of southern Peru. In the territory of the southern Andes of Peru and the current republics of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, both historical and archaeological evidence and linguistic archaeology contradict this narrative of “the Aymara”. This evidence transgresses the Aymara dialectic, breaking the narrative basis of a sociocultural origin in the extreme south of the western Andes of South America. In this sense, this research aims to answer the following questions ¿What is Aymara, What is Aymaraism, and where did it originate?, demonstrating through research the inconsistency between the Aymara dialectic and the empirical historical data.

Keywords

aymarism
History of south Andean Region from Perú
The Ethnoarchaeology and Linguistics of the Indigenous Peoples of Southern Peru
Politics
dialectics and historical narration of the Aymara versus empirical historical data

Supplementary materials

Title
Description
Actions
Title
fig. 1: : Early Intermediate Period. Initial sites of the major languages of ancient Peru (drawing: Nicanor Domínguez Faura, October 2011). Source: Cerrón Palomino R. Contacts and linguistic displacements in the Central-Southern Andes: Puquina, Aimara and Quechua, 2010, p. 259.
Description
Desplazamiento lingüístico del Jaqu Aru
Actions
Title
Fig. 02: Map of Wari and Tiawanaku territorial influence during the Middle Horizon in the Pre-Inca period with border articulation zones Source: Own elaboration.
Description
Límites territoriales entre Wari y Tiahuanaku.
Actions

Comments

Comments are not moderated before they are posted, but they can be removed by the site moderators if they are found to be in contravention of our Commenting and Discussion Policy [opens in a new tab] - please read this policy before you post. Comments should be used for scholarly discussion of the content in question. You can find more information about how to use the commenting feature here [opens in a new tab] .
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy [opens in a new tab] and Terms of Service [opens in a new tab] apply.