UC Davis

The inadvertent insistence on variations of the ‘Indian problem’ as traditional sociological departure has oriented cultural analysis away from the centrality of Peruvian whiteness for understanding the effects of racialized and gendered representations, and how they relate to persisting inequality, discrimination, gender violence, and political instability decades after the Peruvian armed conflict. Through decolonial feminist lenses, this dissertation explores representations of Peruvian Indigenous women that emerged after the political armed conflict (1980-2000) in television, film, and digital storytelling—a collaborative project with Indigenous women from the National Organization of Indigenous Andean and Amazonian Women of Peru (ONAMIAP). I argue that, as technological and discursive maps showcasing the underpinnings, borderlines, and transfigurations of race and gender, hyperreal portrayals of Indigenous women reveal renewed racial anxieties given the exacerbated rural to urban migration during the conflict, devaluing their political efforts and social demands, while also laying bare Peruvian white fragility and the prominence of masculine coloniality of power.

By centering Indigenous women’s voices, this research concludes that despite the shifting perceptions of Indigeneity as cultural stock to a fully-fleshed political body, Indigenous women and peoples now face compounded threats, such as the environmental crisis of late capitalism. In addition to illuminating race and gender as indivisible analytical categories, this examination includes national and transnational extractive flows, alliances, and resistance to demonstrate the interconnectedness of race, capital, and environmental justice in an increasingly mediatized world.