Aymara-Chinese Circuits: The Global Hacktivist Architecture of Freddy Mamani

The Aymara indigenous people of Bolivia have navigated global markets since 1970, when thousands of people from rural mining communities were forced to migrate to urban centers like La Paz. Displaced, but economically resilient, they sought out informal trade opportunities. As Nico Tassi argues in his 2017 book The Native World-System: An Ethnography of Bolivian Aymara Traders in the Global Economy, the Aymara have consistently been able to act upon global capitalism; this agency, however, “runs counter to principles forecasting the dissolution of indigenous economic forms and their absorption by large and more modern conglomerates” (Tassi 8). In this paper, I argue that literature and architecture have made informal relationships between Bolivia and China visible to reinforce the agency of local indigenous groups as they adroitly navigate globalization on their own terms. As one example, in Alison Spedding’s 2004 science fiction novel Saturnina, from Time to Time, the principal protagonist is a multilingual Aymara-Spanish “hactivist” who cracks computer code to break through security walls of imperial powers like China and the U.S. in the name of liberating the socially oppressed. As a second example, Aymara architect Freddy Mamani negotiates global economies and local indigenous politics to foster innovative urban design. His over 50 buildings in El Alto, the fastest growing city in Bolivia, are partially the result of the informal trade circuits that the Aymara have cultivated with China. Mamani benefits from Chinese imports and investments in Bolivia, but his buildings ultimately support Aymara local economies. In other words, while Mamani creates buildings that have drawn global media attention due to their unique local aesthetic, this allure occurs precisely because the buildings both obscure and showcase the global economic circuits that have made them possible.