Latin American Cultural Objects and Episodes. William H. Beezley
and Foreword by John Stephens, Variations of the Story as a Socio‐Ethical Text (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2019). This investigation came as a wonderful suggestion from one of the reviewers.
6 6 Matías Dewey, Making it at Any Cost: Aspirations and Politics in a Counterfeit Clothing Marketplace (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020).
7 7 Peter Steiner, “A Suit Fit for A King: Narratives from a Cultural Empire” (Seminar paper, University of Wyoming, 2014); https://vimeo.com/channels/596143/103385088.
Acknowledgments
This book has taken a long time but has been a pleasure to complete. It owes its existence, in the first instance, to several persons who have given assistance or made suggestions at critical times. Series editor Jürgen Buchenau patiently allowed me to tinker with the project until it reached this form. Editor Peter Coveney suggested ways to make a half‐baked idea a full‐blown proposal and then insisted on a narrative that matched the subject; he did, surprisingly, have an absolute aversion to titles using Latin phrases. Since Peter’s retirement, Jennifer Manias has continued his careful and professional guidance to authors. Carmen Nava, the unofficial cronista of Mexico, the city she loves, answered obscure questions, made smart suggestions, and laughed at foolish mistakes. William E. French, a fellow traveler throughout Mexico to puppet museums, impromptu accordion concerts, and regular mezcal tastings, converses with the past and always reconceptualizes the context of individuals and events. Our discussions always prompt me to rethink the narrative. There are no better friends.
Two other people serve as accessories to this project as they have for others. David Yetman and Dan Duncan make Emmy‐winning programs for television, especially PBS’s “The Desert Speaks,” and now “In the Americas with David Yetman.” The opportunity to travel with them as a guest for some episodes resulted in the discovery of some of the objects included in this book. Dave and Dan always provided challenging and amusing conversations over dinner and drinks, wherever we were in a half dozen Latin American locations.
Finally, this book is dedicated to Nic Beezley and his brother Matt and cousins Virginia and William, to Rosy, with whom I walk each morning around 4 a.m. While she sniffs the trails of rabbits or squirrels, I ponder the morning’s writing project. Of course, it is also dedicated to Blue.
1 Bowler Hats
Hugh Threlfall/Alamy Stock Photo.
Bowlers, often called derbies, for the women of La Paz, Bolivia have become the expression of their identity, community, and locality. Not surprisingly, a recent television program of professional wrestling featured La Paz women, reputedly housewives, wearing their iconic derby. The origin of these hats has been tangled up in a thicket of Aymara romance, town memory, and urban folklore. Largely ignored has been the essential role of merchants from the Italian Piedmont.
Other hats beside bowlers top off the typical clothing of indigenous women in the Andes. Hats appear in Peru, Ecuador, northwestern Argentina, northeastern Chile, and, especially, Bolivia, where they make a statement as an emblem of identity. Especially for women from La Paz, consumption of derbies also allows urban Aymara ladies the conspicuous display of their social status. In one of South America’s poorest nations, the derby predominates in some communities but there exists a wealth of more than 100 hat styles for both women and men in a population of 6.4 million. Some women, preferring another style, have adopted a Stetson known locally as a “J. R. Dallas,” because it resembles what J. R. Ewing wore on the once popular television series (1978–1991). Gunnar Mendoza, director of Bolivia’s National Archives in Sucre, once declared, “I don’t know of another region in the world that has such a variety of hats.” Nevertheless, the derby, called in Spanish a bombín or sombrero hongo (a mushroom hat), predominates as the stereotypical female headgear especially in La Paz. Aymara women, who have dominated market trade, wear black, brown or gray bombines while selling fruits, vegetables, and today, home computers and compact discs. With their hats, they have become a picturesque part of the Bolivian city best known to visitors. Other women wear them throughout the Andes. As a result, hat‐making thrives as a business, from home shops and, until recently, the industry‐leading but now closed Charcas Glorieta factory in Sucre. Although typical today, the bowlers and similar hats preserve neither preconquest vestige headgear nor uniquely Aymara objects.
Shortly after arriving in the Andes, the Spanish brought guild workers who produced felt to make hats.1 The fabrication involved the use of arsenic, and ingesting the chemical resulted in madness among the workers. In a strange episode, an entire guild of hat makers went crazy at the same time in Potosí, Bolivia – the richest and largest city in the Americas at the time – and they rioted through the streets. Despite the spectacle of mad hatters, production continued for Spaniards; for the indigenous new felt hat styles came only later.
Indigenous peoples did not immediately adopt Spanish hats because they had long used traditional head coverings, as demonstrated today by archaeological evidence. The monoliths and ceramics of the ancient Tiahuanaco culture centered near Lake Titicaca feature headgear of a flat, rectangular style. Later the ancient Aymara, confirmed in burial remains, adopted a conical hat without a brim. The Inca ruler did not use a hat at all, rather a head band that signaled his authority, although the men and women of this empire wore various caps.
The derbies, now traditional women’s wear especially in La Paz, had been typical for barely a century and a half when their adoption completed the evolving women’s clothing adaptations in the Andes. Following the Túpac Amaru Rebellion that racked the region from 1780 to 1782, the Spanish crown sent a Royal Inspector with extraordinary authority to evaluate its causes and make proscriptive changes. Inspector José Arreche concluded the rebellion, as a kind of cargo cult, had resulted from identification with traditional Inca society, so in order to destroy the collective memory of the indigenous greatness of the pre‐Spanish empire, he ordered prohibitions against speaking Quechua, celebrating Inca holidays, practicing cultural mores, and wearing of ethnic clothing.2 One royal decree directed Spanish colonial landowners to require that indigenous peoples on their properties adopt the clothing typical of the Spanish provinces of the owner.3 Villagers were forced to wear Spanish garments that already had become the clothing of Andean mestizos especially in Peru in an adaptation of the clothing worn by Spanish commoners (in Madrid called the Maja). For women it included a skirt with several petticoats, embroidered wrap,4 a jacket‐like blouse, and often a large hat. Andean peoples resented being forced to wear Spanish clothes, and they tended to make changes, creating community distinctions in color, embroidery, and hat styles.
Villagers covered their heads with hats made of feathers, alpaca, tin, plaster, felt, straw, and tortora reeds, a type of bulrush that grows from Lake Titicaca, across Peru, to Easter Island. Perhaps the typical lluchu, a woven cap with ear flaps, comes from this era and was modeled loosely on the Catalan beret with flaps from Madrid. An alternative explanation posits that the cap, also called the Ch’ullus in much of highland Peru, dates about 600 CE from the pre‐Inca Mocha culture. Female residents of Tarija, near the Argentine border, adopted hats patterned after eighteenth‐century women from Andalusia.5 Men and women from Jatamayu, in the highlands near Sucre,