YURTA Association: a passion at the service of the nomadic-tradition indigenous communities
YURTA Association is basically a legal non-profit association created to give a formal status to the initiatives developed by Santiago J. Carralero in the field of the nomadic-traditions people. Without registred members, YURTA usually works in collaboration with other organizations and indigenous associations, but also as a specialized indepedent researching institution.
Academic formation
Santiago Carralero is twice graduate (Geography and History and Social and Cultural Anthropology, UNED-Madrid), Expert in Indigenous Peoples, Human Rights and International Cooperation (UC3M) and Master in Anthropological Research and its Applications (UNED).
Expert consultancy
Any kind of issues related to nomadic-tradition communities: history, traditions, culture, environment, anthropology, politics, organization, indigenous associations, international network, art and crafts, tribal-state conciliation, biocultural diversity, transboundary issues, human and indigenous rights, animal fibre, etc.
Last consultancy work
Report "Following the thread of Yak" (commissioned by IFAD, 2019-2020) |
Santiago J. Carralero Benítez, applied anthropologist specialized in nomadic-tradition peoples and their ecosystems "I was born in the southern Spanish city of Málaga in 1962, and since a very early age I began to dream with nomads, East Asia and grasslands. Later, I moved to Canary islands and then to Valencia to study Fine Arts, following my passion for oil painting and the classical masters such as Velazquez and Rembrandt. After some years I become a government official to get a financial stability. Then I started to travel abroad as a tourist and mountaineer too, and these first trips were key to feed my interest for biocultural diversity.
Besides living in Malaga, Tenerife, Valencia, Madrid, Zaragoza, Granada and Plasencia in Spain, I have also lived in Edinburgh (Scotland) and Chengdu (China). During this period of time and thanks to serveral unpaid leaves I could visit more than 30 countries in search of the nomadic heritage, highlighting Chile, Bolivia, Argentine and Peru in America; Namibia, Botswana, Kenya, Uganda and Morocco in Africa; and Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, China, Nepal, India, Thailand and Vietnam in Asia. As a visual artist, I have participated in some exhibitions (Salamanca, Plasencia, Amsterdam) and sold a limited stock of artworks. As a social researcher I has carried out some fieldwork campaigns in South America and Asia. My major anthropological works include a book published in 2007 resuming 3 years of research among the itinerant groups of North-Western India with the leit-motiv of the origin of gypsies (published in Spanish), a research on the present-day situation of the Yaghan people in Navarino Island (Chile), displayed in form of a visual exhibition in the 2009 IUAES Congress (Kunming, China), and some years later (2008-2014), a long campaign carried out in East Tibet (Kham and Amdo), which provided the data to write my master thesis, serving at the same time to gain a specialization in the High Asia environment and culture. More recently, I implemented the two-years porject "Community Dialogues in High Asia" among yak-herding communities of High Asia (2016-17), with FAO funding, and in 2019 elaborated the report "Following the thread of Yak" for IFAD". Experience on the field
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