An Overview of Mishqui Chullumbu’s Artistic and Literary Practice

Discover the eighth session of the 2024-2025 Americanist Anthropology Seminar: “Historia de una cultura... a la que se quiere matar. Presentation of Mishqui Chullumbu’s Graphic and Literary Work, Napo Runa Artist and Writer from the Ecuadorian Amazon."

"Mishqui Chullumbu (Carlos Pascual Alvarado Narváez) is an artist, political leader, musician, writer, and intellectual belonging to the Napo Runa Indigenous group of the Ecuadorian Amazon. He is the author of a series of illustrated ethnographic collections entitled Historia de una cultura... a la que se quiere matar. This literary and graphic work centres on the history of the Napo Runa people, narrating the colonial encounters experienced by Mishqui’s ancestors. The accompanying drawings vividly express both the violence of colonisation and the animistic worldview through which Amazonian peoples perceive and represent the world."

This presentation will explore and analyse this powerful and richly layered autoethnographic work.

• Arthur Cognet: Université Lyon 2, Laboratoire d'Anthropologie des Enjeux Contemporains