In his highly acclaimed 1491 book, American journalist specialized in scientific topics Charles Mann provided a poignant account of new revelations affecting pre-Columbine America. Mann echoed new research directions –divergent ones–, born at the confluence of fields like archeology and anthropology, to argue three things: (a) that the continent was vastly more populated than previously assumed –on Indian demography–; (b) that fifteenth century native Americans enjoyed a longstanding heritage far exceeding what had traditionally been portrayed in history books –on Indian origins–; and, (c) that those tribes and peoples had created some of the largest, richest and most sophisticated artificial environments on the planet –on Indian ecology–.
Among its many merits, 1491 also explained clearly what Mann framed as Holmberg’s Mistake. He alluded to Allan Holmberg, the young American anthropologist who studied South American indigenous peoples in the 1940’s. In Nomads of the Long Bow: The Siriono of Eastern Bolivia –published in 1950–, Holmberg, who had been plagued by serious illness during most of his travels, and would later pass away before turning fifty-six, wrote scathing observations about this indigenous tribe. His bottom-line? That the Siriono were among the most culturally backward peoples of the world.
Mann’s criticism was that Holmberg had ignored the extraordinary circumstances shaping the lives of the Siriono in the run-up to his visit. Using a simile, it was as if an anthropologist had extracted conclusions about certain peoples and their degree of development just from studying the individuals found in Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II. But the damage to our collective understanding of what civilizations looked like before the European colonization had already been done. From his highly prestigious professorship at Cornell University, Holmberg would go on to stand at the pinnacle of his profession. In fact, his fellow anthropologists elected Holmberg president of the American Ethnological Society in 1958.
The lesson when we think about the long-term propagation of knowledge? That mistakes like the one described by Mann have far-reaching consequences, with their effects spanning decades. When the fundamental understanding of something is compromised, new risks arise to threaten both present and future.
When I turn my mind to Spanish politics, sometimes I think that we have made some serious collective ‘Holmberg Mistakes’. With our two-party system now staging a solid recovery, in the hope –no doubt– of claiming its historical strength back in full soon, its critics –and I among them–must ask ourselves the following questions: What pillars of our understanding were fundamentally wrong? How did those errors affect observed outcomes? Which building blocks, if thought through differently, more accurately, would provide a more solid foundation to future attempts at building alternative political spaces in the country?
Rather than follow certain intuitions already bustling in my brain, and rush into answers, I want to chew more on this before posting a more elaborate response.
