Twelve essays pose a challenge to classical anthropological theory and methodology in which Indian cultures have been analyzed in isolation, without regard for nation-state context. Empirically focused, they deal with such issues as how the Guatemalan tourist industry appropriates indigenous clothing to create a national image and how highland Indian music has adapted to Peruvian state interventions since the colonial period. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Initially decimated by disease and later faced with the loss of their lands and their political autonomy, Latin American Indians have displayed remarkable resilience. They have resisted cultural hegemony with rebellions and have initiated petitions to demand remedies to injustices, while consciously selecting certain aspects of the West to incorporate into their cultures. Leading historians, anthropologists and sociologists examine Indian-Western relationships from the Spaniards' initial contact with the Incas to the cultural interplay of today's Latin America. This revised edition contains four brand new chapters and a revised introduction. The list of suggested readings and films has also been updated.
Far from being a footnote in Latin American history, Indians form the structure upon which Latin American history is based. More than ten million Indians were organized into many complex cultures and societies thousands of years before Europeans reached their hemisphere. In The Indian in Latin American History, Professor John E. Kicza compiles articles by leading historians and anthropologists to examine the complex interplay of Indian and Western cultures. The ten articles in this work explore Indian-Western relations from initial contact to contemporary struggles for cultural identity.
This book deals with the perennial tensions between ethnic groups and the modern nation-state and does so from the perspective of a leading Mexican anthropologist with deep and long experience in these matters. As such, it is both a superb introduction to the basic issues and a presentation of the author's own original contributions. The appearance of this book in English gives North American readers access to these important and political currents in Latin American anthropology and political economy. It is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the current recrudescence of indigenous peoples at this moment in history?when conventional wisdom had predicted its demise.
This book examines the rise of human rights movements in five Latin American countries—Ecuador, Mexico, Brazil, Nicaragua, and Bolivia—among the hemisphere's most isolated and powerless people, Latin American Indians. It describes the impact of the Indian rights movement on world politics, from reforming the United Nations to evicting foreign oil companies, and analyzes the impact of these human rights experiences for all of Latin America's indigenous citizens and native people throughout the world.
First Published in 1994. In nearly all racially and ethnically heterogeneous societies, there is overt national conflict among parties and social movements organized on the basis of race and ethnicity. Such conflict has been much less evident in Latin America. Scholars have pondered the nature of race and ethnicity with regard to both Afro- American and Indo-American societies, though research on Brazil has been particularly prominent. Special attention has been given to the relationship between social class and race and ethnicity.
In Indian Given María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo addresses current racialized violence and resistance in Mexico and the United States with a genealogy that reaches back to the sixteenth century. Saldaña-Portillo formulates the central place of indigenous peoples in the construction of national spaces and racialized notions of citizenship, showing, for instance, how Chicanos/as in the U.S./Mexico borderlands might affirm or reject their indigenous background based on their location. In this and other ways, she demonstrates how the legacies of colonial Spain's and Britain's differing approaches to encountering indigenous peoples continue to shape perceptions of the natural, racial, and cultural landscapes of the United States and Mexico. Drawing on a mix of archival, historical, literary, and legal texts, Saldaña-Portillo shows how los indios/Indians provided the condition of possibility for the emergence of Mexico and the United States.
At a juncture in history when much interest and attention is focused on Central and South American political, ecological, social, and environmental concerns, this dictionary fills a major gap in reference materials relating to Amerindian tribes. This one-volume reference collects important information about the current status of the indigenous peoples of Central and South America and offers a chronology of the conquest of the Amerindian tribes; a list of tribes by country; and an extensive bibliography of surviving American Indian groups. Historical as well as contemporary descriptions of approximately 500 existing tribes or groups of people are provided along with several bibliographic citations at the conclusion of each entry. The focus of the volume is on those Indian groups that still maintain a sense of tribal identity. For the vast majority of his entries, James S. Olson draws material from the Smithsonian Institution's seven-volume Handbook of South American Indians as well as other classic resources of a broad, general nature. Much attention is also focused on the complicated question of South American languages and on the definition of what constitutes an Indian. Olson's introduction cites dozens of valuable reference works relating to these topics. Following the introduction, this survey of surviving Amerindians is divided into sections that contain entries for each existing tribe or group; an appendix listing tribes by country; the Amerindian conquest chronology; and a bibliographical essay. This unique reference work should be an important item for most public, college, and university libraries. It will be welcomed by reference librarians, historians, anthropologists, and their students.
This groundbreaking multidisciplinary book presents significant essays on historical indigenous violence in Latin America from Tierra del Fuego to central Mexico. The collection explores those uniquely human motivations and environmental variables that have led to the native peoples of Latin America engaging in warfare and ritual violence since antiquity. Based on an American Anthropological Association symposium, this book collects twelve contributions from sixteen authors, all of whom are scholars at the forefront of their fields of study. All of the chapters advance our knowledge of the causes, extent, and consequences of indigenous violence—including ritualized violence—in Latin America. Each major historical/cultural group in Latin America is addressed by at least one contributor. Incorporating the results of dozens of years of research, this volume documents evidence of warfare, violent conflict, and human sacrifice from the fifteenth century to the twentieth, including incidents that occurred before European contact. Together the chapters present a convincing argument that warfare and ritual violence have been woven into the fabric of life in Latin America since remote antiquity. For the first time, expert subject-area work on indigenous violence—archaeological, osteological, ethnographic, historical, and forensic—has been assembled in one volume. Much of this work has heretofore been dispersed across various countries and languages. With its collection into one English-language volume, all future writers—regardless of their discipline or point of view—will have a source to consult for further research. CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction Richard J. Chacon and Rubén G. Mendoza 1. Status Rivalry and Warfare in the Development and Collapse of Classic Maya Civilization Matt O’Mansky and Arthur A. Demarest 2. Aztec Militarism and Blood Sacrifice: The Archaeology and Ideology of Ritual Violence Rubén G. Mendoza 3. Territorial Expansion and Primary State Formation in Oaxaca, Mexico Charles S. Spencer 4. Images of Violence in Mesoamerican Mural Art Donald McVicker 5. Circum-Caribbean Chiefly Warfare Elsa M. Redmond 6. Conflict and Conquest in Pre-Hispanic Andean South America: Archaeological Evidence from Northern Coastal Peru John W. Verano 7. The Inti Raymi Festival among the Cotacachi and Otavalo of Highland Ecuador: Blood for the Earth Richard J. Chacon, Yamilette Chacon, and Angel Guandinango 8. Upper Amazonian Warfare Stephen Beckerman and James Yost 9. Complexity and Causality in Tupinambá Warfare William Balée 10. Hunter-Gatherers’ Aboriginal Warfare in Western Chaco Marcela Mendoza 11. The Struggle for Social Life in Fuego-Patagonia Alfredo Prieto and Rodrigo Cárdenas 12. Ethical Considerations and Conclusions Regarding Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence in Latin America Richard J. Chacon and Rubén G. Mendoza References About the Contributors Index
