Alonso Barros obtained his law degree from the Pontificia Universidad Católica (Santiago, Chile) and received his PhD from the University of Cambridge (Department of Social Anthropology). His work focuses on the anthropology of law and human rights in Mesoamerica and Latin America. He has carried out extended fieldwork periods amongst the Mixe of Oaxaca (Mexico) and with Atacameño, Aymara and Quechua communities and peoples across the Argentinean, Bolivian and Chilean highlands. His publications combine the ethnography of peoples and archival regimes with 'longue durée' historical and legal data that enable to assess conflicting historicities (time and memory politics). They address the cyclical (de- and re) territorialization of 'vertical' regimes of truth and domains of objects (including fetishized cultures) as enmeshed with 'horizontal' territorial repertoires in terms of supernatural warfare, property relations and commodity fetishism. Between 2006 and 2009, he was principal investigator of the FONDECYT (National Science and Technology Fund, Chile) PROJECT N°11060534 "Discrimination, identity and inequality in periods of crisis: juridical and political ethnohistory of San Pedro de Atacama and Chiu-Chiu (XIX – XXI C.)" His publications in Spanish revise nationalist accounts of 19th C. "republican" wars in South America, highlighting often unacknowledged ethnocides carried out in the High Andes during this period. His work engages current anthropological debates on indigenous peoples' human rights, geopolitics, intellectual property and traditional knowledge, land and water rights, medias and commodity fetishism, racialization, ethnobotany, archaeology, corporate social responsibility, media activism and communal ontologies.
Selected Publications:
2011 'All is not well…' in LSE Research 3: 31-32 http://www2.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/LSEResearchMagazine/RM_3.aspx|
2010 Charqui por carne: arqueología, propiedad y desigualdad en el Desierto de Atacama. In Jofré, Carina (Coord.) El regreso de los muertos y las promesas del oro: Significados y Usos del Patrimonio Arqueológico en los conflictos sociales frente al Estado y a los capitales transnacionales. Grupo Editor Doctorado en Ciencias Humanas, UNCA. Córdoba, Argentina, Editorial Brujas, pp. 83-105.
2010 Tsunami in Bolivia and Perú: The earthquake and tidal-wave of 9th May 1877|(Atacama Desert, Chile). In Revista de Ciencias Sociales 24: 73-94 (UNAP)
2009 The Practical Declaration: Ius et praxis of indigenous peoples in the North of Chile|. In Álvarez Molinero, N.; Oliva Martínez, J.D.; Zúñiga García-Falces, N. (eds.) Declaración sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas. Hacia un mundo intercultural y sostenible. Editorial Catarata - Ensayos UNESCO Etxea / Investigación y debate, Madrid, pp. 325-347
2008 Properties and identities: territorial transitions in the Atacameño's 19th C|. In Estudios Atacameños. 35: 119-139. (International Scientific Index)
2008 Of castes and indigenous poverty in Chile|, 2008. In Anales del Instituto de Chile, La pobreza en Chile II, 27: 213-262. Santiago, Instituto de Chile.
2008 Groundwater: autonomy, discrimination and environmental justice in the Atacama Desert|. In Bello, Álvaro and José Aylwin (Comp.) Globalization, Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples, Santiago, FORD Foundation, Observatorio Ciudadano and IWGIA, pp. 347-372
2007 A hundred years of Mixe wars: pre-Hispanic territorialities, bureaucratic expansion and zapotequization in the Mexican Isthmus of Tehuantepec during the 16th C.| In Historia Mexicana 226: 325-403. Colegio de México.
2004 Chronicle of an announced ethnic group: new research perspectives after ten years of the promulgation of the Indigenous Law in San Pedro de Atacama|. In Estudios Atacameños 27: 139-168. Antofagasta, U. Católica del Norte (International Scientific Index).
1998 Development and Pachamama: conflictive landscapes in the Atacama Desert, in Estudios Atacameños |13: 75-94, Antofagasta - U. Católica del Norte (reduction of M. Phil. dissertation)