Testimonio de la migración Esther Sandoval "siempre he llevado presente la tierra de una".

Resumen

The topic of this study, a life history, has been conducted in collaboration with Esther Sandoval (coauthor), and it collects her oral life history, presenting and analyzing it according to the central theme of a rural migrant’s resistance to disappearing completely in the city. The research is also developed as an ethnography of Andean cultural themes, interpreted within a contemporary context and enriched by a new perspective, that of the interviewee. These themes include: identity, gender, and politics and culture, all of which are linked to ever-changing structures of power in a globalized world. In sum, throughout the work I aim to account for the dynamics of the persistence of memory and the cultural landscape as sources for the construction of personal identity and subjectivity. The cultural adaptation of Esther Sandoval, born in an Andean community and migrant to the city is therefore analyzed as a confrontation, adoption and resistance to new forms of identity through a lifetime of struggle. This adaptation cannot be analyzed through its literal construction as hybridization, a fundamental term in anthropology used most notably by Garcia Canclini (2000); citing this author of the book “Culturas Hibridas,¨ se encontraran ocasionales menciones de los terminos sincretismos, mestizaje y otros empleados para designar procesos de hibridacion. Prefiero este ultimo porque abarca diversas mezclas interculturales – no solo las raciales a las que suele limitarse ¨mestizaje¨- y porque permite incluir las formas modernas de hibridacion mejor que ¨sincretismo¨, formula referida casi siempre a fusiones religiosas …¨ (14-15). Rather, I prefer to focus on Ester Sandoval’s story itself as an organic testimony that at the same time brings to light sociocultural processes and realities relative to her experiences, her constant returns to her place of origin and the living memory of the details of her childhood and adolescence as a way of conserving her original identity. The methodology utilized, which included recorded interviews that were transcripted in their entirety, aims to demonstrate the intrinsic value of life history as a means to interpret cultural reality as dynamic and in process; thus, it is concerned with realities in permanent change and mutation due to the effects of cultural contact. Finally, we should not forget that it is Esther who tells her story within our dialogue.