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One of the richest and most complex civilizations in ancient America evolved around Lake Titicaca in southern Peru and northern Bolivia. This book is a comprehensive synthesis of four thousand years of prehistory for the entire Titicaca region. It is a story of the transition from hunting and gathering to early agriculture, to the formation of the Tiwanaku and Pucara civilizations, and to the double conquest of the region, first by the powerful neighboring Inca in the fifteenth century and a century later by the Spanish Crown. Based on more than fifteen years of field research in Peru and Bolivia, the book brings together a wide range of ethnographic, historical, and archaeological data, including material not previously published. It brings together intimate knowledge of the ethnography and archaeology in this region to bear on major theoretical concerns in evolutionary anthropology. The book provides a broad comparative framework for evaluating how these complex societies developed. After giving an overview of the region's archaeology and cultural history, it discusses the history of archaeological research in the Titicaca Basin, as well as its geography, ecology, and ethnography. The book then synthesizes the data from six archaeological periods in the Titicaca Basin within an evolutionary anthropological framework. Titicaca Basin prehistory has long been viewed through the lens of Inca intellectuals and the Spanish state. This book demonstrates that the ancestors of the Aymara people of the Titicaca Basin rivaled the Incas in wealth, sophistication, and cultural genius.

Two of the world's most pressing needs—biodiversity conservation and agricultural development in the Third World—are addressed in this multidisciplinary investigation in geography. The book challenges current opinion by showing that the world-renowned diversity of crops grown in the Andes may not be as hopelessly endangered as is widely believed. It uses the lengthy history of small-scale farming by Indians in Peru, including contemporary practices and attitudes, to shed light on prospects for the future. During prolonged fieldwork among Peru's Quechua peasants and villagers in the mountains near Cuzco, evidence that much of the region's biodiversity is being skillfully conserved on a de facto basis was found to be convincing, as has been true during centuries of tumultuous agrarian transitions. Diversity occurs unevenly, however, because of the inability of poorer Quechua farmers to plant the same variety as their well-off neighbors and because land use pressures differ in different locations. Social, political, and economic upheavals have accentuated the unevenness, and this book's geographical findings are all the more important as a result. Diversity is indeed at serious risk, but not necessarily for the same reasons that have been cited by others. The originality of this study is in its correlation of ecological conservation, ethnic expression, and economic development.

This synthesis of history, anthropology, and linguistics gives a view of the first two hundred years of the Spanish colonization of the Yucatec Maya. Drawing on a range of sources, it documents the crucial role played by language in cultural conquest: how colonial Mayan emerged in the age of the cross, how it was taken up by native writers to become the language of indigenous literature, and how it ultimately became the language of rebellion against the system that produced it. The book includes analyses of the linguistic practices of both missionaries and Mayas—as found in bilingual dictionaries, grammars, catechisms, land documents, native chronicles, petitions, and the forbidden Maya Books of Chilam Balam. It presents an approach to the study of religious and cultural conversion that aims to illuminate the history of Latin America and beyond.

This ethnography set in contemporary Peru provides an analysis of the making and unmaking of class consciousness among the urban poor. The author's research strategy is multifaceted; through interviews, participant observation, and survey research she digs deeply into the popular culture of the social activists and shantytown residents she studies. The result is a penetrating look at how social movements evolve, how poor people construct independent political cultures, and how the ideological domination of oppressed classes can shatter. This work is a new chapter in the growing literature on the formation of social movements, chronicling the transformation of Peru's poor from a culture of deference and clientelism in the late 1960s to a population mobilized for radical political action today.

This book tells the stories of tequila and mezcal, two of Mexico’s most iconic products, to investigate the politics of protecting local products in a global market. As people have yearned to connect with the people and places that produce their food, the concept of terroir—the taste of place—has become increasingly salient. Tequila and mezcal are both protected by denominations of origin (DOs), legal designations based on the notion of terroir. The DOs link production to particular regions, while quality standards guarantee each product’s safety and authenticity. Advocates argue that the DOs and the standards ensure the reputation of Mexico’s national spirits, expand market opportunities, and protect Mexico’s cultural heritage. But the institutions that regulate tequila and mezcal ultimately protect the interests of a small group of powerful global elites more than anyone else. The growing global demand for tequila and mezcal has led to fame and fortune for a handful of people, while excluding and marginalizing many others. The cases analyzed in this book illustrate the limitations of relying on alternative markets to protect food cultures and rural livelihoods. Because arguments about how to define and regulate tequila and mezcal have been conducted within the parameters of the global marketplace, they have privileged consumers while largely ignoring the perspectives of producers, farmers, workers, and communities. There is a need to move beyond market-based models to create more democratic, participatory, and inclusive ways of protecting and valuing local foods and drinks, as well as the people who make them.

While becoming less relevant in the United States, shopping malls are booming throughout urban Latin America. But what does this mean on the ground? Are shopping malls a sign of the region's “coming of age”? This is the first book to answer these questions and explore how malls and consumption are shaping the conversation about class and social inequality in Latin America. Through original and insightful ethnography, the author shows that class in the neoliberal city is increasingly defined by the shopping habits of ordinary people. Moving from the global operations of the shopping mall industry to the experience of shopping in places like Bogotá, Colombia, the book is an indispensable book for scholars and students interested in consumerism and neoliberal politics in Latin America and the world.

Can we address the issue of nationalism without polemics and restore it to the domain of social science? This book takes a major step in that direction by applying anthropological tools to the study of national culture. The book's sweeping interpretation of Mexican national ideology constructs an entirely new theoretical framework for the study of national and regional cultures everywhere. With an analysis of culture and ideology in internally differentiated regional spaces—in this case Morelos and the Huasteca in Mexico—the book links ethnographic and historical research to two specific aspects of Mexican national ideology and culture: the history of legitimacy and charisma in Mexican politics, and the relationship between the national community and racial ideology.

The idea of a family level society, discussed and disputed by anthropologists for nearly half a century, assumes moving, breathing form in this book. According to this ethnography, the Matsigenka people of southeastern Peru cannot be understood or appreciated except as a family level society; the family level of sociocultural integration is for them a lived reality. Under ordinary circumstances, the largest social units are individual households or small extended-family hamlets. In the absence of such “tribal” features as villages, territorial defense and warfare, local or regional leaders, and public ceremonials, these people put a premium on economic self-reliance, control of aggression within intimate family settings, and freedom to believe and act in their own perceived self-interest. The book shows how the Matsigenka, whose home is the Amazon rainforest, are able to meet virtually all their material needs with the skills and labor available to the individual household. They try to raise their children to be independent and self-reliant, yet in control of their emotional, impulsive natures, so that they can get along in intimate, cooperative living groups. Their belief that self-centered impulsiveness is dangerous and self-control is fulfilling anchors their moral framework, which is expressed in abundant stories and myths. Although, as the book points out, such people are often described in negative terms as lacking in features of social and cultural complexity, it finds their small-community lifestyle efficient, rewarding, and very well adapted to their environment.

The acclaimed book Soldiers in a Narrow Land went inside the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Carrying Chile's story up to the present, this book now offers this account of how Chile rebuilt its democracy after 17 years of military rule—with the former dictator watching, and waiting, from the sidelines. The book discusses the major players, events, and institutions in Chile's recent political history, delving into such topics as the environmental situation, the economy, and the election of Michelle Bachelet. Throughout, it examines Pinochet's continuing influence on public life as it tells how he grudgingly ceded power; successfully fought investigations into his human rights record and finances; kept command of the army for eight years after leaving the presidency; was detained on human rights charges; and died without being convicted of any of the many serious crimes of which he was accused. Chile has now become one of South America's greatest economic and political successes, but as we find in this book, it remains a country burdened with a painful past.

This book provides the first in-depth exploration of how Latin American feminist and queer activists have interpreted the internet, from its inception in the region through the explosion of social media. They have done so to support their counterpublics: the diverse and dynamic arenas in which they develop their identities, build their communities, and hone their strategies for social change. This region boasts a long history of gender- and sexuality-based counterpublic construction, supported by a range of alternative media. Since the 1990s, aided by a global network of women and men dedicated to establishing an accessible internet, activists have translated the internet into their own vernacular. Through an analysis of original research based on over 125 interviews and online evidence spanning fifteen years, this book advances three interrelated arguments. First, it supports the sociomaterial thesis that, as with all technologies, the internet is influenced by the social contexts in which it is embedded. But this influence changes over time and place. Second, the internet in itself offers no guarantee of social or political transformation. Instead, this book’s third argument is that the internet’s potential depends on the consciousness and creativity with which activists translate it into their own contexts, through adopting, sharing, and wielding it. In Latin America, feminist and queer counterpublic organizations have taken advantage of all three layers of the internet – physical, logical, and content – to extend and enrich their communities. And, led by their “keystone species” of early adopting, technologically savvy members, they have transformed applications from distribution lists to blogs in order to reflect their values.