De fantasma a vecino. El Kharisiri y la noción de humanidad en los Andes aymara peruanos

In this paper I suggest the possibility of exploring — diachronic and synchronic — the
evolution of the notion of humanity in the kharisiri’s representations. Usually, this figure
steals the fat from its victims, making them sick and leading them — in the overwhelming
majority of cases — to an almost certain death. Through an analysis of historical and contemporary
Andean ethnographies, as well as data collected in the department of Puno between
2013 and 2016, I will try to trace a history of the transformations of the notion of
humanity between the Aymaras of South Peru, using the figure of the kharisiri as an example
of these modifications. Described in the past as incorporeal and ghostly, the successive
representations show that this figure has assumed an increasingly tangible character, until
becoming so concrete that it can potentially be the neighbour himself. The article aims to
demonstrate how the notion of humanity between the Aymaras of the Andean region of
Bolivia and Peru is relational and can be better understood in its articulation with the production
of identities and alterities that, while changing, do not eliminate the boundaries
between the «we» and the «others».