Centro de Estudios Mapuche Pewma, by Pedro Cariman, Cecilio Melillan & Fresia Mellico
The Centro de Estudios Mapuche Pewma is an initiative of a Puel Mapu Mapuche group (from Argentina), most of whom live in the province of Neuquén. One of their main goals is to promote research and documentation of different aspects of the Mapuche culturea and language. These initiatives also aim to generate debate and spaces of exchange between Mapuche individuals and communities interested in analyzing the history of their people from their own perspective and with their own discourses. (Web cuaderno is in Spanish)

Fragments of Peruvian History and Society

This web cuaderno offers the visitor a brief tour through Peruvian history and society using a few of its characters, places and forms of expressive culture. However, this tour doesn’t draw a continuous route; nor does it try to connect facts in a singe narrative line. It is more precisely about the presentation of fragments that the visitor will be able to explore and eventually connect as a part of a bigger scene. The cuaderno itself is organized upon three axes: characters, places and representations. Within each axis several cases have been selected according to their relevance to illustrate and explain bigger historical processes.

Sarhua: Tierra de Montañas y Colores

This cuaderno houses the photographs and texts of the exceptional indigenous community of Sarhua in the Peruvian Andes. It is a village of painters whose art dates back centuries and is unique to that region. Their paintings play an active social role, being compulsory gifts for couples building a home—the drawings span the surface of a wooden beam that then becomes part of the couple’s roof. In the 1970s, some of these beams were exported to Lima and abroad, and they took on different forms during a short-lived commercial boom. This cuaderno is about the story of these events and the importance of this age-old artistic form in the village of Sarhua.

Native Performance in New York City at the American Indian Community House

In addition to serving the cultural, health, and social service needs of Native Americans residing in New York City, the American Indian Community House of New York City provides a much needed space for the performing arts. In existence since 1969 the AICH Performing Arts Department was developed to promote Native American performing artists and to provide them with a performance space to showcase their work. This web cuaderno project serves as an introduction to the American Indian Community House and to the diverse and important collection of performance materials amassed by its Performing Arts Department.

Indigenous Encuentros by Pilar Rau

At the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics’ fifth Encuentro, "“Performing 'Heritage': Contemporary Indigenous and Community-Based Practices,” members of two Brazilian indigenous communities, the Kaiapó and the Maxacalí, presented performances that generated fascination, confusion, and considerable dialogue. This web cuaderno presents audio-visual documentation and analysis of their participation in this event.

Tepeyac Television Service by Irene Garcia and Adriana Ayala

Vachiam Eecha: Planting the Seeds by David Delgado Shorter

This cuaderno draws from Yoeme Indian language and aesthetics in order to demonstrate how one tribe in Mexico combines religiosity, indigeneity, and ritual performance to assert sovereign control over their homeland. In collaboration with Yoeme people from several pueblos, the web designers work here to speak with both community member and non-Yoeme people about the politics of representation. In this virtual territory of the internet, come see how we have planted seeds of indigenous collective
memory and ethnographic performance.

The Death of the Inca Atahualpa by Luis Millones and Ulla Berg

In this web cuaderno, we present multiple representations - written, drawn, or enacted - by communities of the Peruvian Andes. The materials have been collected by a team of researchers directed by Luis Millones. By initiative of Diana Taylor, Luis Millones, and Ulla D. Berg these materials have found their way into the pages of this electronic archive, which we hope will be of use to future researchers and students of the foundational scene of the Andean countries: The capture and death of the Inca Atahualpa.

Performance and Censorship in Colonial Mexico by Martha Toriz (editor)

This Web Cuaderno discusses the wide variety of expressive behaviors within the colonial society, from the performing arts to civic, courtly and popular festivities. These social performances necessarily implied power and political relationships. The common denominator of these performatic expressions is their public character and their message directed to the collective masses.

Mapuche Campaign for Self-Representation by Miriam Alvarez, Lorena Cañuqueo and Laura Kropff

In 2001 the Mapuche Campaign for Self-Representation was created to redefine Mapuche identity to reflect the diversity of the community in an urban context. The campaign openly confronts the hegemonic discourse, which tries to diminish the Indian practices and cultural identity as folklore, and intends to promote self-knowledge in the Mapuche community.

This site evolved from a course examining the use of performance—by the State, by oppositional groups, and by theatre and performance practitioners—to solidify or challenge structures of power. We look at specific paradigms of power (conquest, colonionialsm, fascism, military dictatorship, globalization) of the 20th and 21st Centuries. How have public spectacles been used to support or contest state power? How do theatrical terms such as ‘catharsis,’ ‘mimesis,’ ‘identification,’ ‘spectatorship,’ and so on, serve to elucidate political strategies? And how has language changed so that words such as “freedom” could refer to invasion, “patriot” (as in “Patriot Act”) become shorthand for blind allegiance, and intelligence gathering be demoted to unintelligible “chatter?

This site is the result of the one-week conference on Intangible Heritage at CRIM (Cuernavaca, México, 2003), where a group of students and faculty worked as a team to explore the Day of the Dead tradition. By looking at the Day of the Dead celebration as a performance, the group examined the ways in which cultural memory is transmitted through social practices, customs, actions, and rituals.

Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform: by Diana Taylor and Alexei Taylor

The Holy Terrors website is designed to augment and constantly update the book, Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).  Here we provide an ever-expanding archive of visual materials (such as videos, slide shows, photos), performance texts, interviews, scholarly essays, bibliographies and related links concerning the artists in the volume, as well as others.  Feel free to suggest new artists, contribute materials, or make comments about this site.