Intangible heritage and the indigenization of politics in the Peruvian Andes: the dispute over the political party appropriation of the pablito/ukuku dancer

This article analyses the opposition of the Council of Pilgrim Nations of Lord Quyllurit’i to the appropriation of the pablito/ukuku dancer by the Kausachun Cusco Political Movement during the 2014 Cusco municipal elections as part of a process of indigenization of politics in the Peruvian Andes. Quyllurit’i is the largest pilgrimage in the Peruvian Andes, recently included in the List of Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The pablito/ukuku dancers are crucial mediators between Lord Quyllurit’i–a Christ painted over a rock–and Apu Qulqipunku, a glacier closely related to the shrine. The opposition of the Council of Nations to Kausachun appropriation of the pablito/ukuku as well as the increasing electoral appeal of indigenous symbols are shaped by the confluence of two concurring processes: first, the democratization of the regional society partly due to the rural-urban migration and the 1979 instauration of universal suffrage; second, the global emergence of indigeneity and its instruments and the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. While intangible heritage is closely related to neoliberal forms of governmentality, it has strengthened the Council of Nations in its organic and implicit indigeneity, and has even pushed it to an instance of explicit indigenous identification.