Genealogy of a Ghost Town: Kinship, Matrifocality and Adoption in Ayquina-Turi

PABLO F. SENDÓN Y VIVIANA MANRÍQUEZ

Kinship

University of California

Lugar: Los Angeles; Año: 2021 vol. 1 p. 37 - 65

This paper is a first approach to the kinship and social organisation of the Ayquina-Turi Atacama Indigenous Community (El Loa Province, Antofagasta II Region) from the perspective of a genealogical inquest made in situ and in the city of Calama. The discussion unfolds in four stages: first, an introduction to the setting where the ethnographic inquiry was conducted; second, the presentation of the problem which inspired the research; third, the exposition of the baseline information; and fourth, the analysis thereof. In contrast to the current situation in other peasant indigenous communities in the Central and Southern Andes, it is possible to identify a strong tendency towards the conformation of matrifocal family units related to a generalised practice of intrafamily adoption, which finds ethnographic echoes reverberating in other places of South America, namely British Guiana.