Fictive Feasting: Mixing and Parsing Bolivian

Popular Sentiment
ROBERT ALBRO
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Wheaton College
Norton, MA 02766

SUMMARY In this article I analyze the vitalizing relationships betweenfictivekinship

(compadrazgo) and Andean cultural practice. I distinguish several recognized strate-
gies offictivekinship in the region of Quillacollo, Bolivia. While provincial folk are quick
to insist that Andean culture, as such, no longer exists in this region, at the same time
ritual kinship, recognized as a remainder of Andean cultural practice, is one typical way
that "the Andean," as a cultural trope and moral discourse, continues to permeate peoples'
lives. This argument uses Fernandez's insights about "wholes" and "parts" to emphasize
the play of synecdoches, a regional preoccupation with "partness" and the right relation
among parts, expressed by the orchestration offictiveties.

Garlic he loved, and onions too, and leeks,

And drinking strong red wine till all was hazy.
Then he would shout and jabber as if crazy,
And wouldn't speak a word except in Latin.
—Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Prologue," The Canterbury Tales

Leftover goods
From former meals
Long simmering are reborn
Redeemed again as victuals—
Inspiration for the forlorn!
—James Fernandez, "Garlic Soup: A New Year's Garland"

Public Sentiments
Quillacollo's radio reporters, really just a handful of people, were to have their
annual fiesta, and the persistently apologetic fellow charged with carrying off
the event had cornered me. He was asking if I wouldn't throw something into
the pot, though in Bolivia the requisite idiom would be "to make a little cow"
(hacer una vaquita). He must have thought my sponsorship a likelihood, since I
was often lumped in with this crowd as an albeit unconventional "reporter."
"Sponsors" (padrinos, literally, "godfathers") scared up for such situations are
expected to contribute the lion's share of the fiesta staples: crates of beer, barrels
of chicha (corn beer), food, the people obliged to cook it, the music, the amplifi-
cation, and even the fiesta hall. Such sights as a teetering stack of continuously
replenished beer crates, a dance-hall floor slick with spilled drink, or heaping
plates of panpaku (a meat and potatoes dish) hurried into the hands of recent
arrivals, are the sights and smells of a sponsor's generosity. And I was used to
them, having attended many similar misachikus, as these events are generically
called, in the past.
But surprised by the unexpected request, I lamely offered to contribute a sum
of money, which I proceeded to fork over. When later relating this to some

Anthropology and Humanism 25(2): 142-157. Copyright ©2001, American Anthropological Association.
Albro Fictive Feasting 143

friends, I was roundly criticized for giving the money. "Who would know what
you contributed?" they asked. "How do you know he won't spend it himself?"
"Or drink it away?" they asked. One friend flatly informed me, "You should have
offered him something of substance [de material." For the next such event, he and
I did just that, "sponsoring" no small portion of the drink consumed at the yearly
fiesta for a union of market sellers. During the misachiku itself he unflaggingly,
and at the time I thought rather boastfully, called repeated attention to the sudsy
proof of our contribution. But such strategies of sponsorship, I was to realize, are
a particular sort of "vitalizing" cultural practice, not to be taken lightly, in an
Andean region all too susceptible to identity crises.
In the unevenly urban provincial Bolivian capital of Quillacollo, the Quechua-
speaking "Indian" is an ever more elusive (or, as I will argue, allusive) figure at
the century's turn, treated as a sociocultural category that is rapidly disappearing
from view. Some quillacollenos are already quite prepared to confirm the Indian's
permanent demise as a part of the region's own ethnoscape. And they have their
reasons. As people have said, Quillacollo's is a "ch'ajchu culture." Ch'ajchu is a
regional dish, a plato tipico, that routinely mixes strips of beef, freeze-dried
potatoes, regular potatoes, cheese, cabbage, and hardboiled egg but also admits
to regular improvisations. It has a "little of everything," and people feel that
mixtures of things lie at the heart of a region typically characterized by its steady
loss of obviously Andean traits, and assumed to have rapidly given way to the
more homogeneous, fast-paced, urbanized, and Spanish-speaking sensibilities
of the mestizo (that is, the racial or cultural hybrid). 1 But just as ch'ajchu is a
gustatory experience of what it means to live in the region, which people can still
taste if they know where to go, in the same way "humble" sensibilities—those
thought to be rooted in an erstwhile Quechua nativeness—are still indulged, if
now of necessity in particular times, places, and events.
Locally descended Indians are now more than ever social facts of allusion,
conjured as archaic characters of history, song, story, jokes, and vanishing
traditions of the so-called ancestral culture. As vital protagonists, if no longer
directly authors of local expressive culture, regionalist evocations of the Indian
continue in a contrapuntal rhetorical tension with the still emergent "post-peas-
ant" social realities. Increasingly parallel, these realities are currently lived by a
largely disconnected collection of factory workers, self-identified professionals,
campesinos (small-scale agriculturalists), piecemeal and wholesale produce buy-
ers, street merchants, denizens of the "hidden" or "informal" economy, trans-
porters, migrants, artisans, ckolos (urbanized Indians), lowland cambas, townies,
drug traffickers, small-time politicians, and people of the "middle class." It is
evident to many people across the social spectrum that turn-of-the-century
Quillacollo is in the throes of acute confrontation with what Fernandez has aptly
called the "problem of relatedness" (1986:191).
And yet folks still frequently, and sometimes passionately, refer to their own
evanescent "Indian" alter egos. Sentimental talk is perhaps the most prevalent
register of choice. Typical of such talk was my friend Nestor Pavo's explanation
for the turn to more popular Quechua song styles by folkloric bands over the last
two decades. In his words, these tunes "brought back the autochthonous music
of the Inca." As a person whose Quechua language skills were at best minimalist,
Nestor still offered up the synesthetic claim: "This is so people suffer and cry
more. It deepens sentimentality [sentimiento]. We Quechuas are very sentimental.
[This music] grabs the sentiment. Aymara is indifferent. A Quechua is more apt
to shed tears [mas llordn]." Such a sentimentalized shift to a self-identity as
"Quechua" is surprising coming from an individual who regularly inveighed
against perceived country bumpkins, and whose own self-presentation of colorful
144 Anthropology and Humanism Volume 25, Number 2

unbuttoned fake silk polyester shirts was more reminiscent of Robert Ro-
driguez's Mexican gangster movie El Mariachi, popular in Bolivia in the early
1990s, if also aggressively delocalized and non-Indian.
But Nestor's appeal is certainly in the spirit of local politics and the often
remarked "sentiment of being a quillacolleno." This phrase is offered up, mostly
by public officials, as an expression of whatever it essentially means to be a "son
of the town," and to "know our culture." This nostalgia contrasts with the
pervasive popular suspicions of corruption, say, where political doings are
baldly "improvised" in self-serving fashion. In this expressive mode of identity
politics, improvisation goes right along with the perceived mixing up of things
which many take to be the source of temptation for political corruption to begin
with.2 This understanding is reflected in the frequency of discussions about
political corruption, which people call "creole politics" (politica criolla).
But even as the popular maxim claims that "the Indian insults his own origin,"
congeries of sentimental associations keep an Indian alter ego close at hand if just
out of view, and engaged in an ongoing shadow dialogue characterized by the
play of tropes. If kept nearby, Indianness—which Nestor metaphorically desig-
nated "the intimate fever of the race"—has for centuries been treated as a malady,
as a stigma to be sublimated if at all possible (see Mendez 1996). In Quillacollo
almost everyone has a nickname. Nicknames like Negro (Darkie), Bolauma
(Bighead), or Enano (Elf) are synecdochic reminders of apparent traits of "indige-
nous" physiognomy, or stature, in a Bolivian version of the irreverent irony
Herzfeld (1997:4) has called "rueful self-recognition." But convivially drinking
chicha with friends, one might hit a different synecdochic note, and spontane-
ously "open up his heart" (though this is not the Spanish corazon but, rather, the
Quechua sonqo). Or the iconoclast might wryly and ironically observe about a
suit-and-tie rival, "He gives his indio to his woman." Sexual passion, it is imag-
ined, is too uncontrollably popular in affect, and so comes a moment when
pretensions are likely to give way to racial essences. But in the turn-of-the-century
moment of so-called popular participation,3 as I was told with a wry wink, "it's
suddenly fashionable to be an Indian."
One recent gathering place for native sentiments has been the ritualized
activity associated with the practice of fictive kinship. It appears that the quotid-
ian politics of fictive kinship (or compadrazgo) have become a key resource in
furthering the region's shadow conversation with its rapidly disappearing, if also
in part adopted and recently reinforced, Indian ancestry.
Thinking about questions of mood, affect, and feeling tone, James Fernandez
asks whether there might not be a "structure to sentiment" (1986:8). Others—as
with Williams's (1965) "structure of feeling" or Sapir's (1949b) "form-feel-
ing"—have harbored the same suspicions. But for Quillacollo a better question
might be: Is there a sentiment to structure? By this I mean the feelings people
have about their organic placement in the world, that is, their desire for the
integration or right relation among parts. What Fernandez refers to as the
"emotional subjectivity"(1986:39) of fictive kinship is an idiom in Quillacollo that
self-consciously dwells on partness—ego's own manipulations of his or her web
of given relations—and so questions of ambivalent relatedness. My development
of these ideas is indebted to Fernandez's (1998) own recent preoccupations with
ways that fictive kinship, as a strategic essentialism, expresses "natural" or
"genealogical" identities. My present task is to trace out how different parts of
quillacolleno identity are figuratively and simultaneously mapped onto local
arguments about fictive kinship, even as they are treated as distinct cultural
strategies.
Albro Fictive Feasting 145

Moral Fictions
In Quillacollo people definitely give the impression that there is, or at least
until very recently there was, a normative ideal of the institution of com-
padrazgo. Let me quickly summarize a version of this institution that at least one
ethnographer of the region has referred to as "genuine ritual compadres" (Sim-
mons 1974:124). As people will firmly explain, this is a sacred relationship ideally
forged on the basis of "respect" for another or "mutual esteem." It is also a
conservative sort of relation, as Mintz and Wolf made clear in their benchmark
study. In their words, ritual kinship is used to counter the "weakening of certain
traditional obligations" (1977:12). Quillacollenos generally agree that fictive kin
ties take precedence over those of "friendship," "friendships of confidence," or
even "first cousins." Although there exist other opportunities, they rate the
compadre bonds of "baptism," "marriage," and quince anos (a daughter's coming
out ceremony) as the most important.
Particularly in the political theater, ritual godparenthood is understood to be
a paternalistic institution, where men take the lead in publicly formalizing a
mutual "affection" already developed through "lifelong friendships," long-term
working associations, or what F. G. Bailey (1988:84) has called the "demotic
appeal" of a familial leadership style. In ideal terms, it is a lifelong commitment,
ritually consecrated in a church, with the obligatory sanction of the priest, and
most importantly, "before God." As a religious bond, fictive kinship is often
described by people as a set of obligations and duties, but more importantly as
a "spiritual sentiment." 4 Couples ideally claim to seek padrinos (godparents) for
their children whom they should emulate in life. And with the passing years, a
strict moral calculus holds sway over peoples' spiritual commitments to fictive
kin. Prominent among those named by quillacollenos are: the provision of
material or financial support, the lending of a hand to resolve disputes, the
maintenance of relations of exchange (even if just occasional token exchanges),
the doing of small unsolicited favors, and, of course, the favorable use of
"influence" (muneca) on your fictive relative's behalf.
In fact, shared mutual affection is almost incidental to the gravity of this bond
of filiality. A case in point is the admonition never to tutear a compadre (that is,
in Spanish use the informal pronoun tu) but, rather, always to maintain the more
formal usted. Likewise, one's baptismal godfather is thought of as a "spiritual
father," with all the moral authority that implies. An indication of the padrino's
authority is that it is he who pays the fee and signs the baptismal registry kept
in the church archive. He has the right, as someone put it, to morally castigate
(chicotear, "to whip") a godchild gone astray with an absolutism even surpassing
that expected of the biological father. The "whip" concretely alludes to the harsh
categorical distinctions typical of the feudal hacienda (landed estate) universe
prior to 1952, one where owners or foreman, themselves called tatay (Quechua:
father), could lash an Indian peon with impunity.
While Quillacollo might not have a mayordomia system (or a developed civil-
religious hierarchy), strictly normative talk about fictive kinship assumes it to be
inextricably bound up with the sponsored fiestas of passage celebrating a per-
son's progress through the steps of Catholic personhood. These expectations are
encapsulated in the well-known aphorism, often applied to public civic and
private family fiestas, which says, "From mass to the table" [De la misa a la mesa].
As the saying makes plain, padrinos must meet expectations of largesse. Traditions
from the bygone economy of the landed estate once again reinforce this skein of
associations between politicians and padrinos/patrons, where Indian workers
on the estate had the right to expect generosity from the patron, the White estate
146 Anthropology and Humanism Volume 25, Number 2

owner. Part of the basis of this institutionally unequal social relationship was
that the patron should provide food, drink, cigarettes, and often music for the
Indian field hands (an institution called the saqrahora). This expectation
about any communal type of work activity continues to be assumed as a matter
of course.
As an institution, the ritual complex of fictive kinship is also enshrined in
yearly community-level religious and fiesta events, such as the Dia de Compadres
and de Comadres, just prior to the celebration of Carnival in February or March.
On these days men and women of the marketplace publicly demonstrate their
economic well-being, taking turns serving each other steaming plates piled high
with regional dishes like puchero, another plato tipico specifically associated with
the Carnival season, and prepared using seasonal foods such as lamb, cabbage,
and peaches. Each year select individuals take on roles as pasantes (sponsors),
responsible for providing the fiesta finery and dressing the patron saint of the
marketplace (called the Senor de Compadres for the occasion but normally
referred to as either the Senor de Misterio or the Senor de Buena Esperanzas, the
Lord of Good Hopes). This is also a customary burden for padrinos of baptism
and first communion, who provide the fiesta clothes for their ahijados (godchil-
dren). In addition to food and the saint's clothes, sponsored festivities include a
mass in the marketplace itself, as well as fireworks, musical bands, drink, lavish
flowers, and ceremonial arches (arcos de plata) through which the saint's image is
carried. In ideal terms, people often stress the sacred "moral debt" that exists
between ritual coparents, godparent and godchild, or in this case, sponsor and
saint. The sanctity of the sponsor-saint relation (which is at the same time one of
saint-supplicant) is rooted in one's deep "faith and devotion" toward the saint,
and of course God, as a true believer.
Local authorities also show a marked penchant to strike the pose of "sponsor"
(generically called "padrino" as well) for a wide array of public regional events,
in actuality usually funded by political parties or the municipality. But politicians
seize any opportunity to "deliver" food, household staples, or development
projects to neighborhoods or communities in the region. An equation is drawn
between political status and access to material goods. Well-connected leaders
(perhaps as clients to powerful national caudillos) are expected to make a show
of their potency by regularly provisioning their constituencies with basic goods
like cooking oil, bags of flour, or noodles, items called "articles of first necessity."
In these terms, as a padrino the effective politician is necessarily a generous
patron. Such political expectations are allegorically reiterated by the spiritual
(and often material) patronage of Quillacollo's "patron saint," the Virgin of
Urkupina. Like the Virgin, politicians are expected to follow through on "prom-
ises" made, assuming that followers remain "loyal." Such loyalty is not much
different from the "faith and devotion" expected of those who propitiate the
Virgin for her "blessing."
The centrality of the Church and expectations of hierarchy characteristic of
normative talk about the institution of compadrazgo (most obviously in the
dyadic structure of padrino-ahijado, in the expectations of a padrino as public
political sponsor, and via analogies with patron saints and feudal patr6ns)
suggest the primary pre-1952 social context for fictive kinship as a cultural
practice. It was a key idiom for dramatizing the closed corporate nature of a
dominant oligarchy of mostly White (that is, criollo) provincial elites. When
people insist, as they frequently do, that in Quillacollo politics is "all about
families," or that "the alcaldia [the mayoralty] is a compadrerio" (that is, a nepotism
of compadreties),they are evoking this oligarchic world and also instances where
these still ingrained expectations are yet thought to hold sway, perhaps actively
Albro Fictive Feasting 147

thwarting their own ambitions. Quillacollenos who style themselves "profes-

sionals" (agronomists, doctors, lawyers, etc.), and who are, in fact, in many
instances scions of this now largely disenfranchised former oligarchy, still speak
in the present tense about the once prevalent social expectations of provincial
seignorial privilege.
This arena (as an oligarchy, as a set of oligarchic cultural institutions, and as
still recent regional history) is a vital context for locating markedly normative
features of Quillacollo's extant moral imagination. The arena was largely defined
by the "closed triangle" of the alcaldia, the Catholic Church, and the town's social
club, called the Comite Pro-Quillacollo. As the three institutional legs of elite
control, these relations cohered around "profound ties of friendship and family,"
as with the sanctity of fictive kin bonds. By and large the actors of these three
institutions overlapped. The priest and municipal authorities, of course, were
also club members in good standing. And the club routinely "suggested" appro-
priate candidates for the office of mayor. This provincial oligarchy saw itself as
an island of civility set within a far-reaching and "barbarous" rural hinterland.
Its basic purpose was to insure the local presence of "national symbols" (which
included the ancient Inca but not living, breathing Indians). Its cultural point of
reference was not the region itself but, rather, the patria chica, that is, the nation
writ small. Explicitly normative talk about compadrazgo ties (their sanctity, clear
moral obligations, and sentimentality), then, has this oligarchic vision of the
patria chica as its most recent inspiration.
By way of contrast, in a more freewheeling 1990s political climate no longer
dictated by the closed ranks of these "little sons of their fathers" (hijitos de papa),
the sanctity hedging in compadre bonds limits their effectiveness in political
intrigue. As one veteran of the political wars volunteered, "friendship" is pref-
erable when swift action is called for, since "if it's your compadre, you can't
openly battle [hacer la pelea]\" People often contrast friendship with fictive kinship
as completely informal, tending to wax and wane as fortune permits, and for these
reasons, more politically useful at the proverbial "moment of truth." The moral
and spiritual imperatives accompanying fictive kin ties stand in stark contrast to
the off-color informalities shared with "drinking buddies" (amigos de chupa).
As a cultural space, the chicheria (local watering hole) is legendary as the
Machiavellian ambience of choice, where "cocks at midnight," as they say,
undertake political subterfuge. As two regional historians have it, "What politics
could not accomplish, the fraternity of the chicheria did" (Rodriguez and Solares
1990:142). In distinct contrast to the etiquette of hierarchy publicly structuring
the social interaction of Catholic fiestas of passage, in chicherias people can
bluntly speak their minds, or utter the "naked truth" (a calzon quitado, literally,
"with dropped pants"). Like Bakhtin's Carnival, these are potential spaces of
"simultaneous praise and abuse" (1984:165). For the sake of contrast, my veteran
friend noted with the exasperation of one belaboring the obvious, "You have to
shut up in front of a compadre. There's more cooperation with a friend."
As a "genuine" ritualized practice for extending filial ties, fictive kinship has
been an effective (and affective) means to evoke and give interpersonal substance
to the existence of that "complex whole," to use Fernandez's (1986:207-208)
phrase of choice, appealed to by the "sentiment of being a quillacolleno/' As a
traditional institution, it is talked about in the language of clear-cut moral rules
of conduct, obligations, and prohibitions, a harmonic order often aligned with
the feudal and oligarchic provincial landscape prior to the Revolution of 1952.
Systematic intimations of order are manifest in the familial, political, or spiritual
attention paid to hierarchy (epitomized by baptismal padrinos and political
padrinos, as well as patron saints), in the dramatization of the stages of Catholic
148 Anthropology and Humanism Volume 25, Number 2

personhood, and also the very "sacredness" of genuine fictive ties as the prover-
bial social glue of a one-time oligarchic "closed triangle."
In their explanations about "genuine ritual compadres/' peoples' relations to
each other are presented as well defined and as hedged in by widely practiced
religious and spiritual sanctions. I have suggested this to be one vital register of
quillacolleno sentiment. One purpose accomplished by such categorical talk
about ritual godparenthood is that it nicely epitomizes the "spiritual essence"
(Sapir 1949a:316) of Quillacollo before 1952 or thereabouts, in much the same
way as Sapir discussed his famous "genuine culture." This seignorial consensus,
however, is what has rapidly unraveled in the last forty years. A sign of this for
many folks has been the ubiquity of a newer, debased, form of ritual kinship,
now depicted as a purely strategic act.

Strategic Fictions
In the aftermath of the structural adjustment of the 1980s, people are quick to
point out that the reemergence of party politics has decisively lessened the role
of fictive kinship. In an era where local elections are held every two years, current
wisdom has it that the moral sanctity of ritual kinship might complicate things
in an unforeseeable way. A more important category has become that of party
militante (the loyal party worker). Rather than the hope of strategic influence via
compadres, as with the past, it is more urgent to run a successful campaign,
staffed by the front-line militants who do all of all the "ant's work" of getting the
word out and popularizing their candidate. After all, as was noted, "Compadres
aren't going to make your campaign." The newly transitory character of political
allegiances make such enduring ritual bonds less desirable, as reliable tools of
network consolidation or expansion. They can in fact backfire, or produce
awkward entanglements with "godparents" or "godchildren" turned sudden
rivals. People also insist that the morally suspect compadrazgo of recent vintage
was born out of the recent increase of political transitoriness as well. Present
circumstances, it is implied, mock the virtues of ritual kinship bonds.
The kinds of practices and attitudes thought to epitomize today's more unscru-
pulous politicos are in distinct tension with "genuine ritual compadres." This new
breed consists of folks of "popular" or "humble" descent rather than oligarchic
pretension. At one level, this tension expresses little more than the differences
between talking about the cultural institution in the abstract (the "ideal") and as
a strategy put into action. But, I argue, such a critical register further indicates
how sentimental attachments have shifted their location, to where ritual bonds
are talked of as having lost the cultural vitality of moral debt or spiritual depth
that typified them in the oligarchic context. Instead, they are spoken of as
debased, as just one among a variety of strategic options, which after 1952 have
been put to use in the context of a rapidly transforming regional market (both
political and agricultural). Instead of viewing compadre ties as a way to close
oligarchic ranks, people now consider them as just a help in closing business deals.
Folks describe the features of this morally suspect, and more obviously strate-
gic, fictive kinship as if this were the all-too-apparent "reality/' in sharp contrast
to the still remembered and more genuine fading "ideal." As opposed to the
unquestioned sincerity of "respect," "esteem," and "moral debt," people stress
the collusive and manipulative character of compadre alliances. As one recent
ethnographer has put it in the case of provincial Bolivian markets, people
self-servingly appeal to "culture and customs to consolidate their hold over
production and exchange" (Lagos 1994:160-161).
Albro Fictive Feasting 149

With compadre ties, the promise of market advantage now beckons. The
following lengthy explanation by a provincial townsperson relates the ways that
these ties have shifted to the market context after 1952, and shifted from an
emphasis upon horizontal in-group ties between oligarchs, or between campes-
ino ex-peons, to an emphasis upon more vertical and intergroup alliances, forged
with "middlemen" market traders:
The peasants who before looked for a compadre among the rural folk, be they mid-level
proprietors or vendors, now look for compadres in the people who live in the city of
Cochabamba: owners of shops and houses in the city. This, toward the end that these
people give them guarantees when they want to buy a house, a truck, or conduct some
business. Then, they make these same people bless whatever they acquire. In turn,
people of the sierra or hamlets come to the provincial population looking for compa-
dres, and always choose those who have a truck, or a shop, with the hope of collabo-
rating with them or because they believe that with these fictive kin requests, [his
compadre] will ask for less in the transport of his products or the sale of his merchan-
dise. As well, the majority of the people who have transport sell chicha in their house,
where their compadres lodge. And also, they buy from [their compadres] their entire
harvest or whatever they carried from their hamlet. Many people of the sierra, when
they come to sell their products, arrive at Cliza or Punata nights before and, so as not
to sleep in the street, go to the house of their compadre to lodge, carrying the product
that they brought. Then, in the house of their comadre, they suss things out: to his
comadre he gives chuno, quinua, and other products that he carries to sell in the market,
and in retribution, she invites him to chicha and food. Then, little by little, the comadre
becomes the person who buys all the produce that the campesino brings to sell in the
market. [Barnes de Marschall and Torrico 1971:156, my translation]

In this account the market middleman and campesino agriculturalist are

brought together by the smell of profits. To top off a transaction with her caserito
(a market relation routinized by ritual kinship), a seller might throw in a little
something more, a yapa of potatoes, a few pieces of fruit, or an egg or two. The
moral guidance of the padrino gives way here to the interests of compadres as
co-conspirators. Fictive kinship is viewed as a collusive frame within which
people might get a leg up on the market's unpredictabilities.
This collusive interpretation is offered with particular conviction for the mu-
nicipal political arena. In the interest of "job security," or in the hope of "greasing
the wheels" with the powerful, myrmidons typically ask their bosses to be
padrinos of their children. For most people, even those actively seeking such
relationships, these are rather obvious cases of "self-interest" (de interes), and so
virtually devoid of any "spiritual sentiment." The Quechua term most often used
to describe these folks is llunk'u (flatterer). Not surprisingly, the associated sense
of moral responsibility is decisively absent, since such self-interested compadres
are likely to "screw you" (joderte) the instant they feel the political winds shift.
A case in point was my friend Pancho Sanchez, known as something of a
scoundrel, who asked a local party leader to be the padrino de anillo (godfather of
the ring) for his daughter's graduation from beauty school in 1991. This leader
had the direct ear of the national party head, so much so that he was often called
the "button on his fly," and Pancho had hopes of getting in with the party via
this door. Describing how he became "compadres" with the local head man,
Pancho emphasized to me that the two had never shared a friendship and had
never been drinking together. He even admitted that at the time he had doubts
about whether his compadre-to-be would follow through, even despite the
"moral pressure" Pancho had applied, since it was "forced." So as not to be
publicly "embarrassed," Pancho hurriedly lined up a back-up. Nevertheless, at
the eleventh hour the leader did show up, unexpectedly, to present the ring at
150 Anthropology and Humanism Volume 25, Number 2

her fiesta, and then quickly left. Yet, as Pancho has it, even as this took place, his
new compadre was actively trying to "play me dirty" (jugarme sucio) by removing
Pancho's name from the list of possible candidates for office. This small political
drama, played out in the theater of ritual kinship, was one way Pancho thought
to "obligate" a higher-up not to oust him. But there was never an expectation of
enduring responsibility on anyone's part, either to Pancho or to his daughter, the
new ajihada. After the public show of "respect" at the fiesta itself, the deed was
done. I recall an accidental meeting between the two "compadres" some years
later, where the still influential party leader barely registered Pancho's presence.
In his turn, Pancho seemed not even to expect that much.
People generally agree that the bond of fictive kinship now does not carry the
force of influence it once had, and amounts to a one-time-only sort of responsi-
bility during the fiesta event itself, rather than any kind of long-term or sacred
commitment. Other ethnographers of Bolivia have similarly noted a new expec-
tation for fictive kin ties as "specifically for the fiesta," and as explicitly a
"profit-making venture" (Crandon-Malamud 1993:584).5 Likewise, people feel
antics like Pancho's are blatant "mercantilism." They conclude, shrugging their
shoulders, "There is inflation." Fictive kinship, they argue, has "become com-
mercialized." Such language suggests that people view changes in local institu-
tional relations as directly reflective of the recent national shift to a neoliberal
economic model (for similar examples see Albro 1998b).
There is even a name coined for this disingenuous incarnation of the institu-
tion, which people call "ritual coparents of advancement" (compadres de promo-
don). Such a tie of "advancement" is strategically expedient, for "it is a catch-all
where circumstances can be fabricated," beyond the traditional cases of baptism
or marriage that are much harder to jury-rig. Typical examples would be a fiesta
for the purchase of a new taxi, or a party to bless a new TV (events entirely outside
the scope of the Church). In the spirit of Pancho's gambit, typical as well are the
reports of enterprising opportunists who ask several people to serve unknow-
ingly as the same padrino for their child, finding pretexts to fill a child's life with
"improvised" fiestas of advancement, or the naming of new categories for
potential sponsors, as in one notorious fiesta that boasted of both padrinos de
video and de polaroid.6
Part of the "catch-all" quality of current fictive kin bonds these days is that,
like "political friendship" (ideally at odds with compadre ties), they are "conven-
iently" and "self-interestedly" improvised to serve the needs of the moment.
Popular sayings about fickle politics like, "You're a better friend when under the
tree," now might as well apply to compadres too. Not surprisingly, Quillacollo's
mayor lumped them together while touting his commitment to clean up corrup-
tion, barking, "I won't go along with drinking bouts, playing favorites, or
compadres!"
Even as a critical register of compadrazgo has taken "neoliberal" form as a
basely self-interested, mercantilist, inflated, and commercialized activity, people
also treat fictive ties "de promotion" as a clear case of the notorious "creole
politics," or as simply expressing "the Creole characteristic." This more or less
"corrupt" political sensibility (viewed as a generic lack of morals) is particularly
associated with unscrupulous market middlemen or local political authorities. It
is interpreted as a sign of the unfortunate outcome of "miscegenation" (and lack
of a clear moral compass) that is the colonial legacy, and which explains the
ubiquity of the "mestizo." Such rueful self-derision marks the relish with which
townspeople insisted to me, "Quillacollo is screwed!"
Albro Fictive Feasting 151

Native Sentiments
In his story "El Padrino," the regional journalist Ramon Rocha Monroy pro-
vides us a contemporary updating of the familiar Andean genre of indigenismo.7
We are given a biographical anecdote of the accumulated prosperity of a provin-
cial merchant, Don Vito. He is a citified, jaded, and upwardly mobile figure, the
notorious market trader here as ironic archetype of Bolivia's new "variegated
identity" (Toranzo Roca 1991). The story's narrator begins:

I would say that, starting with the Agrarian Reform, the vehicle of social mobility par
excellence is the truck. The campesinos who brewed this chichita—still with fat, mind
you, and from pure muco [the tradition of women chewing ground corn to start chicha's
fermentation], with the sweetness and scent of maize, without sugar—build up in their
chests, cent by cent, a desire: to come to the city and buy for themselves a truck.... You
might not believe me, but Don Vito was the same. This was owing to having been born
with ojotas [footwear worn by Indians] on his feet: Don't forget that his mother wore
the pollera [gathered skirt worn by women of popular descent]. But it would be false to
say he was a campesino. [Rocha Monroy 1979:15, my translation]

The story is framed as a conversation between two people, friends perhaps,

drinking together in a chicheria. The tale's protagonist, Don Vito, is neither
"Indian" nor "criollo." And it is the anecdote's purpose to fix his identity. The
narrator tells of Don Vito's gradual rise from years of working "like a slave" in
the market, and at the expense of his "godchildren," whom he in turn mercilessly
exploited for his own ends. The narrator concludes his tale with a judgment on
Don Vito:

He's no indio, I've come to believe, to the point of having the soul of a patr6n, or at least
of a capatdz [estate foreman], you know. Taking a close look at him, what he has is the
soul and the smell of a merchant: better put, the wreak. If I were to peg him... he lives
in the countryside, but this doesn't stop him from insulting the campesinos. How? Indio
bruto [Dumb Indian]? No, the epoch of "indio bruto" is past. Permit me a phrase:
huayrapamushcas, which today would mean that which is carried away by the wind. But
the contempt has been perpetuated, the hidden violent hunger, the paternalism. Be-
cause Don Vito is padrino to his compadres, a spiritual father for generations. [Rocha
Monroy 1979:19]

Partially intended as an indictment of the mendacity of this all-too-common

provincial figure, the story ends with a rueful punch line of the Garcia Marquez
pueblo chico variety. The critical narrator, it turns out, is Don Vito's son-in-law.
Subject and critic are intimates, parts of the same family. This is thus also a story
of family relations, and, perhaps, resemblances.
Such intimacy puts cynical talk of ritual kin bonds in an entirely different, and
more ironic, light. Although stigmatized, these are also instances of rueful
self-recognition focused on the "tweener" category of the "popular." From the
critical vantage point that condemns an unholy union of sacred filial bonds and
personal expedience, and which treats the moral ideal as a memory quickly
receding before present and unsentimental neoliberal realities, fictive kinship
sentimentally fastens on the cultural institutions of the patron. Verbalized as a
discourse of corruption, it is nursed along by the amalgamated ills of mixture
percolating in the hearts and minds of Quillacollo's thoroughly hybrid populace.
But all the while, derogatorily and wistfully, the very corruption directs attention
to "popular" sensibilities. This includes the "violent hunger" of the Quechua
turns of phrase not yet totally "carried away by the wind." Sorted out of the mix,
there is a popular remainder.
152 Anthropology and Humanism Volume 25, Number 2

Ritual kinship is not just a social strategy, but, in a provincial Bolivian arena
sharply characterized by the many hybridities of postcolonial experience, it is
also a vital juncture where Andean sensibilities are found. Compadrazgo, in
short, is part of what survives of the "ancestral Andean culture," as quillacollenos
put it. People make their case by discriminating another strategic dimension
within ritual kinship, not in itself debased. Fiesta compadres are often viewed as
engaging in the originally campesino reciprocal strategy of resource sharing
called ayni (often defined as an exchange of equivalents). People feel that fictive
kin practices have not precisely supplanted ayni. Nor has the latter exactly given
way to less obviously "Indian" practices. Rather, as a friend sought to express it
while equating the role of padrino with ayni, such a practice "has carried on in
this part of Cochabamba's valleys." But he hurried to clarify, "It no longer exists!
But this is what has remained of all that." A nice way of having your cake and
eating it too.
A wider areal literature treats ayni as one generic expression of mostly agri-
cultural work exchange practiced in "peasant" households (Painter 1991; Skar
1995).8 Some of its key features include the expectation of "strict reciprocity" in
kind, where the reciprocal gesture must not be in cash but instead "in exactly the
same type of work or goods received" (Albo 1985:31). It is a basic type of the
collaborative pattern of popular work. Ayni is typically set off from other closely
related variants of reciprocity, such as yanapa (Quechua, help or aid), less struc-
tured, practiced among relatives, and not requiring a direct return; t'inka, a little
gift for a favor, often treated like a bribe; mink'a, where payment need not be in
kind and might include cash; and also faenas, which are obligatory communal
work parties.
In Quillacollo, even as people stress the disappearance of ayni, they affix
ayni-like interests to fiesta compadres. Ritual coparental bonds are usually
established "in return for some favor." The most typical ayni-like favors are those
called in to help orchestrate family-level fiestas, where ritual kin are recruited to
supplement the fare, set it up, cook, and serve. The orchestration of such fiestas
now follows the same "logic" as that of the defunct ayni, a point often made to
me. Ayni was "from person to person," where those exchanging ayni remem-
bered exactly the balance of exchange. Hence, ayni-like expectations would
"definitely be repaid." If "ayni no longer exists in Quillacollo," people point out
that at misachikus it is still avidly noted who contributes, and whether what goes
around comes around again. And so, when a fiesta padrino receives deferential
treatment from his host, he still might retort, "But it's just ayni!" [Ayni no mas
es!]. Families often kept written lists, so that when fictive kinship is sought,
someone wearily responds, "Okay, okay. Just sign me up. Sign me up . . . ! " [Ya,
ya. Anotame. Anotame...!]. And this is analogous to the padrino's signing of
his ahijado's "baptismal certificate." In the case of political rallies, as padrino a
politician might make a "promise" of some community work. After years of
broken political promises, people often ask authorities to sign the "minutes"
(libro de actas) of the local union. In this way, people feel that the politicians are
"obligated" to carry through on the promised "favor." Ayni is in part an idiom
of keeping records of who owes what to whom and when.
The identification of ritual coparenthood as ayni-like is framed entirely by the
food-related reciprocities specific to fiestas. Both reciprocal institutions share
organic traits. Interpersonal expectations are decidedly in kind and not in cash;
fiesta sponsorships and ayni reciprocate the same sorts of things: food, drink, and
labor; an important motivation is personal interest (de interes); the distribution
of a financial burden; accounts are kept; both are conceived as a game of strategy,
where one tries to get the better of the exchange; the exchanges are dyadic and
Albro Fictive Feasting 153

require swift reciprocation; both almost always occur within the domestic sphere
of misachikus; and finally, the exchanges are short term (something that particu-
larly marks supposed "de promocion" from more "genuine" ties). For quilla-
collenos less moved to condemn, strategic compadre ties, insofar as they are like
ayni, are dismissed with a shrug as simply "the idiosyncrasy of the pueblo" or as
"traditions of the past." In short, this homology is part of an expressly Andean
"local color."
Bakhtin viewed the table talk of feasting as a moment of "carnival familiarity"
(1984:16), and as a way for "the folk" to unofficially experience themselves as
part of an organic whole, what Fernandez calls a "return to the whole" (1986:200).
But, in a cultural climate of mixture, I've dwelled instead on a penchant for
parsing, for discriminating among sentimental registers (of the patron and the
popular), types of compadre ties (the categorical and strategic), and types of
strategies (the self-interested and ayni-like). If quillacollenos strive for the
"whole," it is at best a "complex whole," often ambivalently or ruefully criticized
and joked about. Along with a "sentiment of being a quillacolleno" comes a sense
that "Quillacollo is screwed," as well as constant reiterations of a popular
sensibility, the pueblo's particular "idiosyncrasy."
A prevailing mood in the region is one of "partness," or as the idiom of fictive
kinship suggests, of the potential relations between parts, whether clear-cut,
corrupted, or reciprocal. But, as different and synecdochic registers of sentiment,
these are "partial truths" (Clifford 1986:7) of self-identity in Quillacollo, sorted
out from the mixture of mestizaje. Clientelistic ties of compadrazgo are what
William James called "conjunctive relations" (1976:21-27), with the potential to
bridge distinct worlds. Fictive kinship is a cultural institution that has patrolled
the borders of colonial Andean society as an important relation of "intimacy"
among categorically different identities of patron, peon, padrino, and ahijado or
between oligarch and Indian. These borders are still patrolled in Quillacollo in
the discrimination between the "spiritual sentiment" of genuine ritual godpar-
enthood and the debased strategic ties de promocion. But as intimate and conjunc-
tive strategies, they are also partial accounts of popular identity.
Misachikus, where fiesta reciprocities are orchestrated among parents, chil-
dren, padrinos, and compadres, are one such synecdochic context for "popular"
selves as "Indian." The ayni-like details of accounting (and the particular organi-
zation of social life implied therein) are expressed and witnessed through the
etiquette of drinking and feasting: where people sit, with whom they sit, when
and how much they are served, and by whom. They are also reiterated by the
fiesta fare: the purplish chicha khulli made specifically for fiestas with a special
maize called wilkaparu, the burnt smelling charki (cooked beef), regional platos
tipicos such as ch'ajchu or puchero, or the waxy taste of the f reeze-dried potatoes
called chuno, which invariably accompany any dish. 9 These palates and habits
have been carried over from the "humbleness" of provincial life ways. The
assignment of places at the table, as in ayni, is one way that people continue a
shadow dialogue with their Indian selves within the fiesta frame.10 A field note
about the drinking order at a fiesta I attended in 1994 illustrates what I mean:

Arriving, I was served a glass of chicha, and right on its heels, a glass of beer. Both had
to be drained in long droughts (called drinking seco, or "dry"). A compadre of the couple
quickly came up with a trenzito, sweet spirits served in a shot glass. This, too, had to be
tossed back. I was then directed to a table, along with other padrinos, and quickly served
a plate of picante de polio. Barrels of chicha were lined up against the wall. And soon I
was sitting along the wall of the patio, periodically "invited" to gourd-fulls of chicha
by compadres going down the line of sitting people with a ladle and a bucket, handing
over the gourd and saying simply, "Tomayku!" [Drink!]. These were getting tipsy pretty
154 Anthropology and Humanism Volume 25, Number 2

fast since those inviting were also invitees. The child's parents appeared and disap-
peared, serving people kokteles, another sweet liquor. The padrino de bautizo made a
formal toast, after which folks danced the cueca [a flirtatious and traditional Creole
dance]. At the requisite point in the dance, the music was stopped and people hustled
aros [usually glasses of beer] to each couple, which had to be downed before the dance
could continue. And so it went on for hours.

As quillacollenos understand things, on the one hand is the "complex whole"

of the closed oligarchic triangle. On the other is the "complex whole" of the
ayni-like protocols of fiesta reciprocities, expressed in the etiquette of drinking
and eating. Framing a regional past and present, misachikus conjoin these partial
selves, even as they are kept rhetorically apart. Rather than restless predications
upon "the dark at the bottom of the stairs" (Fernandez 1986:215), this play among
shifting parts is expressed in the structured orchestration of the sights, smells,
and tastes of fiestas. It is a vitalizing reminder, and is "what remains of all that."
Synecdochies of this sort dwell on the continuities of regional experience. If they
don't necessarily dwell on Emerson's "depth of sentiment," an expression con-
genial to Fernandez's "anxiety of inchoateness" (1986:36), instead they parse it,
discriminating the genuine from the corrupt, from the popular or the Inca, from
the peon, from the humble. In a cultural world complicated by intense mixtures
and categorical intimacies, people struggle to imagine a right relation among parts.

Notes

1. As historians of the region have carefully documented, the valley's Aymara settlers
were pushed out by Quechua-speaking Inca colonialists, who were in turn quickly
divested of power by the Spanish invaders. Founded in the late 16th century, Quillacollo
was not even an Indian settlement but, rather, a Spanish parish. The region's Indian
population shrunk throughout the colonial and republican periods as a result of myriad
factors, among them the gradual elimination of large landed estates and associated Indian
labor force, the increase in land parcelization, sleights of hand with official counts like the
census, the proletarianization of the province's rural population, steady upward mobility,
and the 1952 Revolution, which greatly accelerated the market participation of Indians
(or campesinos, as they were henceforth called). Recent neoliberal convulsions have
triggered a further wave of migrants into the region, many of who speak Aymara, rather
than the more "traditional" Quechua. Given requirements of brevity, I cannot but tab
some of the most pervasive dimensions of change affecting regional Indian identity, a
rapid distillation of regional history derived mostly, but not exclusively, from the follow-
ing key sources: Alb6 1983,1987; Barnes de Marschall and Torrico 1971; Dandier 1983,
1987; Lagos 1994; Larson 1998; Lasema 1984; Peredo Antezana 1963; Salamanca 1931;
Wachtel 1982.
2. As I have discussed in more detail elsewhere (Albro 1998a), colonial-era discourse
about the mestizo emphasized what people understood to be the outcome of miscegena-
tion, the early mix of Spanish-descended and Andean peoples. Mestizos were thought to
lack a reliable moral compass, and so were taken to be "illegitimate," "untrustworthy,"
or "traitorous." This familiar prohibition against racial (and later, cultural) mixture is
similar to the widespread prohibition against "mixed metaphors" (see Pesmen 1991).
3. As part of its ongoing structural adjustment program, Bolivia put a much publicized
"popular participation law" on the books in 1995. This law has reorganized state bureauc-
racy, ideally giving local constituencies greater direct access to financial resources (see
Healy and Paulson 2000 for a recent summary). But the phrase is also a frequent synonym
of "democracy," as well as an explicit reference to the expanding, urbanizing, "popular
masses" who are potentially classifiable as one or another sort of "mestizo."
4. Quillacollenos' emphasis on the strong "spiritual sentiment" imbued in com-
padrazgo ties is comparatively quite typical. Romanucci-Ross, in her analysis of the
character of social bonds in post-Revolutionary Mexico, notes the "heightened sentimen-
tal tone" (1986:76) of fictive kin ties. Similarly, Friedrich, in his study of a Mexican strong
Albro Fictive Feasting 155

man complex, emphasized the "emotional and to some extent sacred" (1986:108) nature
of fictive kinship.
5. Comparative literature in the Andes suggests a correlation between new access to
the resources associated with the participation in "development" projects or "capitalist
enterprises" and an increase in fiesta-related activities. Page-Reeves (1999:182-185) has
noted the tendency for young women in knitters' cooperatives in nearby Arani, Bolivia,
to invest their independent earnings in fiesta sponsorship. Colloredo-Mansfeld
(1999:145-159) has detailed the greater frequency of "compadrefiestas"in Otavalo, Ecuador,
as globetrotting artisanal vendors rely more onfictivekin ties in business, while funneling
more cash into fiesta-type displays of wealth, as well as traditional Otavaleno identity.
6. For each fictive kinship event, and depending upon the relative opulence of the
accompanying fiesta, there can be as many as a dozen pairs of padrinos. A typical baptism,
for example, might boast padrinos: de bautizo (of baptism); de aro (of fiesta drinking); de
torta (of the cake); de chicha, de koktel (of sweet liqueur); de comida (of food); de amplification
(of the sound system); defotos (of photos); de colitas, de cotillones, de recuerdo (different sorts
of party favors); and de sorpresa (of the surprise). This translates into 24 potentially new
compadres. The increasing number of compadrazgo "opportunities" (such as the break-
ing down of "de foto" into "de video" and "de polaroid") is a prime example of the inflation
so many people hurry to point out.
7. When referring to indigenismo, I mean the nostalgic, largely pastoral tradition of
fiction writing about Andean culture associated with such figures in Peru as Mariategui,
Valcarcel, and Arguedas; and in Bolivia, writers such as Jesus Lara.
8. There is a rich literature in Andean studies, and I will simply provide an incomplete
list of some of the most useful discussions for "ayni" in rural Bolivia and Peru: Alberti
and Mayer 1974, Alb6 1985, Izko 1986, Lagos 1994, Lehman 1982, Sallnow 1989.
9. In her vivid case study of Zumbagua, Ecuador, Mary Weismantel (1988) conveys
many of the rules and meanings associated with food preparation and consumption, as
a central cultural practice in the definition of Andean identities.
10. Jose" Limon (1994:123-140) offers a similar case for South Texas. He interprets carne
asada, the ritualistic consumption of barbecued meat, as a carnivalesque event where
coparticipants convivially, if occasionally, reassert their Mexican American popular
maleness.

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