Enactive Narrativities: Rubber-Times Historicity and Indigenous Media in Peruvian Amazonia

This article analyzes the intersection between historicity and politics expressed in Kukama media-making practices. It examines the political and enactive dimensions involved in the Indigenous mediatization of rubber-era narratives in Peruvian Amazonia. I focus on the case of Radio Ucamara, a Kukama radio station from the Peruvian town of Nauta, and the ways in which they confront private and state powers through the production of digital and non-digital media. I specifically analyze Indigenous media-makers’ instrumentalizations of rubber-times narrativity by virtue of aesthetic mastery. Radio Ucamara media relies on a polyphonic strategy that encapsulates both narrative and meta-narrative discourses aimed to reveal mytho-histories’ political messages to defy hegemonic modes of historical imagination in Peru. By engaging in the literature on Amerindian myth and history, I argue that when turned into media (e.g., audiovisual creations and mural art), Indigenous narrativity becomes amplified and deemed as a transformative force capable of intervening in contemporary political realities. Drawing on the concepts of “embedded aesthetics” by Faye Ginsburg (1994) and “enactive aesthetics” by Patience Epps and Danilo Paiva Ramos (2020), I make the case for a notion of “enactive narrativity” operating in Radio Ucamara media practices whereby power is fueled by expressive means. Kukama mediatizations not only represent a tool for empowerment but also illustrate the new forms of aesthetic agency taking place in contemporary Amazonia.