Indigenous people in Latin America have mobilized in unprecedented ways - demanding recognition, equal protection, and subnational autonomy. These are remarkable developments in a region where ethnic ...cleavages were once universally described as weak. Recently, however, indigenous activists and elected officials have increasingly shaped national political deliberations. Deborah Yashar explains the contemporary and uneven emergence of Latin American indigenous movements - addressing both why indigenous identities have become politically salient in the contemporary period and why they have translated into significant political organizations in some places and not others. She argues that ethnic politics can best be explained through a comparative historical approach that analyzes three factors: changing citizenship regimes, social networks, and political associational space. Her argument provides insight into the fragility and unevenness of Latin America's third wave democracies and has broader implications for the ways in which we theorize the relationship between citizenship, states, identity, and social action.
During the age of dictatorships, Latin American prisons became a symbol for the vanquishing of political opponents, many of whom were never seen again. In the postdictatorship era of the 1990s, a ...number of these prisons were repurposed into shopping malls, museums, and memorials. Susana Draper uses the phenomenon of the "opening" of prisons and detention centers to begin a dialog on conceptualizations of democracy and freedom in post-dictatorship Latin America. Focusing on the Southern Cone nations of Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina, Draper examines key works in architecture, film, and literature to peel away the veiled continuity of dictatorial power structures in ensuing consumer cultures.The afterlife of prisons became an important tool in the "forgetting" of past politics, while also serving as a reminder to citizens of the liberties they now enjoyed. In Draper's analysis, these symbols led the populace to believe they had attained freedom, although they had only witnessed the veneer of democracy-in the ability to vote and consume.In selected literary works by Roberto Bolaño, Eleuterio Fernández Huidoboro, and Diamela Eltit and films by Alejandro Agresti and Marco Bechis, Draper finds further evidence of the emptiness and melancholy of underachieved goals in the afterlife of dictatorships. The social changes that did not occur, the inability to effectively mourn the losses of a now-hidden past, the homogenizing effects of market economies, and a yearning for the promises of true freedom are thematic currents underlying much of these texts.Draper's study of the manipulation of culture and consumerism under the guise of democracy will have powerful implications not only for Latin Americanists but also for those studying neoliberal transformations globally.
Voices from the Global Margin looks behind the generalities of debates about globalization to explore the personal impact of global forces on the Peruvian poor. In this highly readable ethnography, ...William Mitchell draws on the narratives of people he has known for forty years, offering deep insight into how they have coped with extreme poverty and rapid population growth—and their creation of new lives and customs in the process. In their own passionate words they describe their struggles to make ends meet, many abandoning rural homes for marginal wages in Lima and the United States. They chronicle their terror during the Shining Path guerrilla war and the government's violent military response. Mitchell's long experience as an anthropologist living with the people he writes about allows him to put the stories in context, helping readers understand the impact of the larger world on individuals and their communities. His book reckons up the human costs of the global economy, urging us to work toward a more just world.
The 1998 arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in London and subsequent extradition proceedings sent an electrifying wave through the international community. This legal precedent for bringing a former ...head of state to trial outside his home country signaled that neither the immunity of a former head of state nor legal amnesties at home could shield participants in the crimes of military governments. It also allowed victims of torture and crimes against humanity to hope that their tormentors might be brought to justice. In this meticulously researched volume, Naomi Roht-Arriaza examines the implications of the litigation against members of the Chilean and Argentine military governments and traces their effects through similar cases in Latin American and Europe. Roht-Arriaza discusses the difficulties in bringing violators of human rights to justice at home, and considers the role of transitional justice in transnational prosecutions and investigations in the national courts of countries other than those where the crimes took place. She traces the roots of the landmark Pinochet case and follows its development and those of related cases, through Spain, the United Kingdom, elsewhere in Europe, and then through Chile, Argentina, Mexico, and the United States. She situates these transnational cases within the context of an emergent International Criminal Court, as well as the effectiveness of international law and of the lawyers, judges, and activists working together across continents to make a new legal paradigm a reality. Interviews and observations help to contextualize and dramatize these compelling cases. These cases have tremendous ramifications for the prospect of universal jurisdiction and will continue to resonate for years to come. Roht-Arriaza's deft navigation of these complicated legal proceedings elucidates the paradigm shift underlying this prosecution as well as the traction gained by advocacy networks promoting universal jurisdiction in recent decades.
"This book is an important source for all anthropologists who seek to understand cultural variability from both an ethnographic and archaeological perspective.The author's attention to detail and ...in-depth coverage of many groups from South America's rich ethnographic record is rare in a book with such an extensive geographical scope.This book is certain to be widely used for many years by professional ethnographers and anthropologists, but it also has much to offer all readers who have an interest in small-scale societies."
—Lewis Binford
Southern Methodist University
"Wilson does not hesitate to critique the views of other scholars, but he always does so in a constructive fashion that informs the reader about the state of numerous important controversies.The work is a compelling blend of the theory and substance of South American ethnology and archaeology. I consider it to be the single most comprehensive general work on the anthropology of native South Americans to appear in forty years."
—Jeffrey R. Parsons
University of Michigan
"This book shows brilliance and contains a systematic explanation of archaeological, ethnological, ethnohistorical, and environmental information of indigenous groups in South America. It is an all-inclusive masterpiece."
—Joe Bastien
University of Texas at Arlington
This book offers a novel political-institutional explanation for variation in political polarization, outsider populism, and the fate of democratic regimes across twenty-first-century South America. ...Drawing upon a wealth of primary evidence and employing process tracing tests to evaluate key causal claims, the book examines how the occurrence - or not - of state crises and the inherited strength of left wing political actors combined to push countries onto distinct party system trajectories characterized by different kinds of left parties and movements, highly variant levels of polarization, and ultimately divergent political regime dynamics. The book challenges extant interpretations of political variation during Latin America's turn to the left, which have centered on economic explanations. It also develops new theoretical propositions for understanding polarization, populism, and democratic erosion in young democracies across the world.
Despite the effects of epidemics of highly contagious old world crowd diseases, the native populations living on the Paraguay and Chiquitos missions survived and retained a unique ethnic identity. A ...comparative approach shows how demographic patterns on the Paraguay and Chiquitos missions differed from other Spanish frontier missions.
A Prehistory of South Americais an overview of the ancient and historic native cultures of the entire continent of South America based on the most recent archaeological investigations. This ...accessible, clearly written text is designed to engage undergraduate and beginning graduate students in anthropology.For more than 12,000 years, South American cultures ranged from mobile hunters and gatherers to rulers and residents of colossal cities. In the process, native South American societies made advancements in agriculture and economic systems and created great works of art-in pottery, textiles, precious metals, and stone-that still awe the modern eye. Organized in broad chronological periods,A Prehistory of South Americaexplores these diverse human achievements, emphasizing the many adaptations of peoples from a continent-wide perspective. Moore examines the archaeologies of societies across South America, from the arid deserts of the Pacific coast and the frigid Andean highlands to the humid lowlands of the Amazon Basin and the fjords of Patagonia and beyond.Illustrated in full color and suitable for an educated general reader interested in the Precolumbian peoples of South America,A Prehistory of South Americais a long overdue addition to the literature on South American archaeology.
This book traces the history of Argentine and Chilean pan-Americanism and asks why pan-Americanism came to define inter-American relations in the twentieth century.The Southern Cone and the Origins ...of Pan America, 1888-1933 offers new perspectives on the origins of the inter-American system and the history of international cooperation in the Americas. Mark J. Petersen chronicles the story of pan-Americanism, a form of regionalism launched by the United States in the 1880s and long associated with U.S. imperial pretensions in the Western hemisphere. The story begins and ends in the Rio de la Plata, with Southern Cone actors and Southern Cone agendas at the fore. Incorporating multiple strands of pan-American history, Petersen draws inspiration from interdisciplinary analysis of recent regionalisms and weaves together research from archives in Argentina, Chile, the United States, and Uruguay. The result is a nuanced and comprehensive account of how Southern Cone policy makers used pan-American cooperation as a vehicle for various agendas-personal, national, regional, hemispheric, and global-transforming pan-Americanism from a tool of U.S. interests to a framework for multilateral cooperation that persists to this day. Petersen decenters the story of pan-Americanism and orients the conversation on pan-Americanism toward a more complete understanding of hemispheric cooperation. The book will appeal to students and scholars of inter-American relations, Latin American (especially Chile and Argentina) and U.S. history, Latin American studies, and international relations.
