ABSTRACT
In the peasant communities of the Huari province, Ancash, Peru, the food dishes, the main ingredients, and the way of cooking and preparing them, shape a semiotic system that enunciates a social hierarchy based on ethnic categories. What the persons eat and where the food comes from, as well what they offer in collective banquets, convey their ethnic-social identity. Likewise, the ethnic categories are inscribed in the regional space, the place of origin tracks ethnic identity, according to dynamics that also unfold at a national level and that are rooted on historical processes. However, these dynamics can be fluid and mobile, producing spaces for negotiations of new ethno-social positions.
KEYWORDS
Andes; food; relationships; ethnicity; person