Amarres and the magic of cultural heritage in Lima, Peru

• In Event: Heritage discourses: from nation-building to nation-branding?

Abstract

This paper explores the archaeological afterlife of amarres—or ritual bundles used by urban sorcerers to enchant or curse a victim—as a means of examining the shifting boundary between individual and collective essence in contemporary Lima. These bundles are frequently uncovered by archaeologists during excavations in pre-Columbian monuments or shrines, which have been incorporated into the built space of popular districts during the late 20th century urbanization of Peru’s capital. Often containing detachable fragments of a targeted person, these bundles quite literally incarnate the interpersonal tensions of emergent neighborhoods. Until recently, archaeologists have discarded these objects along with other urban detritus in their search for, and purification of, national heritage. However, a new generation of heritage administrators increasingly view amarres as material evidence of popular religiosity and, therefore, have begun to preserve these objects as part of a monument’s cultural milieu. If cultural heritage is a legal technology which forges a link between a collective person—in this case, the Peruvian nation-state—and a set of goods which belong to and define it, amarres—and the vernacular religious practices that produce them—confound this subject-object property assemblage by positing a divisible human substance as the basis for Limeños’ embodied connection to pre-Columbian ruins. In discussing the ways amarres mediate state archaeologists’ interaction with the inhabitants of two sites on the outskirts of Central Lima, this paper examines how novel cultural heritage management techniques reconfigure notions of legal personhood and national resources in early 21st century Lima.

Author

• Christopher J Parisano, The Graduate Center - City University of New York