OSHER 461 - Modern Indigenous Peoples of Highland Peru and Bolivia

A different award-winning film of the modern highland peoples of Peru and Bolivia (mostly Quechua and Aymara) will be screened at each class session, accompanied by class discussion and student questions. Films are chosen to highlight important aspects of Andean cultures.Topics to be included are: traditional customs, celebrations, clothing, crafts, and community organization; the blending of native Andean religions with Catholicism introduced by the Spanish; health and economic challenges within modern nation-states; effects of modernization, globalization, and tourism; social disruption as the young are lured to cities for wage labor; and threats to identity and existence such as native language suppression, malnutrition, forced sterilization programs in Bolivia and Peru, new diseases (including AIDS), drug cartels, and climate change (threatening the viability of traditional staple crops, for example), and "development" programs imposed from the outside.