Aparapitas from the future: Miguel Esquirol’s Andean science fiction

Abstract

In 2008, Bolivian writer Miguel Esquirol published the novella “El Cementerio de Elefantes,” a science fiction re-writing of the aparapita’s figure, the Aymara peasant who carries heavy loads on his shoulders in the Bolivian street markets. The aparapita, an emblematic character of La Paz, became —thanks to the literary work of Jaime Saenz— the symbol of the indigenous identity that survives in the city in spite of the modernizing dreams of the nation. Esquirol places the aparapita in a popular market where male workers seek illegal chemical injections to enhance their muscles and prosthesis that make them more competitive; the story explores the body’s connection to the economy —capitalistic but highly illegal and informal— through multiple implants, prosthesis, and chemical substances. The aparapita is both a specter haunting the country and a cornerstone of a national identity crisscrossed by technological and globalizing desires. 

In Esquirol’s Andean cyberpunk world, the indigenous body is the place where the city is articulated, where national identity is redefined and where it shows its “abigarrado” (motley) nature, one in which tradition and modernity, past and present, rural and urban life, Indigenous and western cosmovision, high and popular culture overlap in fascinating and unexpected ways.