Resumen

SAENZ, Virginia. VISIONS ABOUT URU PEOPLE IN BOLIVIA. Textos Antropológicos [online]. 2003, vol.14, n.1, pp. 55-76. ISSN 1025-3181.

Several researchers have tried to establish the origins, history and ethnography ofthe "people ofthe water", better known locally as the Uru. In order to develop my argument, Iwillgo on to contrast mainly two authors to show, mostly, the perspective ofan oíd tradition of Anthropology and that ofa more recent one. The idea is to illustrate on what grounds the Uru, both as a concept andas a livingrelationship between human beings, has evolved to our days. Other authors will be parí ofthis description at a later stage, andwillform parí ofthe critique and discussion to be includedin the resulting investigation. It should be remembered that on theoretical as well as methodological grounds, it is well known that the methodology chosenfor carrying out an investigation is inherent to the results derived. One of our sources, Arthur Posnansky, hadan explicit evolutionist and racist stance, andhis results picture the Uru as an evolving human group, with particular physical traits. Nathan Wachtel, on the other hand, is more concerned with the social attributes ofethnic groups, involving a functionality that is reflected in stratification and homogenization. This leads him to present the Uru as aproblem, owing to the fací that his categories would notfit within any ofthe host of descriptions ofthe Uru.