| Sumario: | The writer discusses the cultural features of kharisiri beliefs. He explains that the kharisiri is a well-documented Andean figure who steals the fat of Indians and sells it to bishops or hospitals. He indicates that the concept of the kharisiri has been understood generally in terms of the fear that Indians have toward outsiders and their concern about modernity; but he asserts that an understanding of the role of fat in Andean culture would lead to not only a better understanding of the phenomenon of the kharisiri, but to how this figure comes so horrifyingly to represent the “racialized” outsider. He further contends that such an analysis highlights how the distinction between Indian and non-Indian is understood at an emic level and so offers a method of understanding difference that goes beyond analyses based on the categories of ethnicity, race, or class, or difference as a boundary between alterity and identity.
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