The End of the Future broadens the theoretical framework for understanding memories' role in reconciliation following a violent conflict. This book explores the complicated and confusing linkages between memory and trauma for individuals caught up in civil war and post-conflict reconciliation in the Peruvian Amazon's Huallaga Valley—an epicenter for leftist rebels and a booming shadow economy based on the extraction and circulation of cocaine. The End of the Future tells the story of the TÚpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement's (Movimiento Revolucionario TÚpac Amaru, MRTA) violent attempts to overthrow the state in the late 1980s and early 1990s from the perspective of the poorest residents of the lower Huallaga's Caynarachi Basin. To give context to the causes and consequences of the MRTA's presence in the lower and central Huallaga, a poorly documented part of the Peruvian Amazon, the book relies on the written works and testimony of SÍstero GarcÍa Torres, an MRTA rebel commander, the government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, MRTA propaganda, media accounts, and critical historical texts. Besides exposing Huallaga Valley human rights abuses, the book's contribution to political anthropology is consequential for its insistence that reconciliation is by no means equivalent to local, indigenous notions of "justice" or customary forms of dispute resolution. Without deliberately addressing the diverse socio-cultural contours defining overlapping epistemologies of justice, freedom, and communal wellbeing, enduring reconciliation will likely remain elusive.

The State and the Awajun: Frontier Expansion in the Upper Amazon, 1541-1990 demonstrates how the indigenous people of Amazonia have been subjected to a series of regional, national, and international socioeconomic and political processes that have shaped their lives. The text explores how extractive economies in Amazonia have provided fleeting periods of elite prosperity, but ultimately at the expense of the regions biocultural diversity. Beginning in 1541 and progressing chronologically, the text details significant instances of conquest, resistance, development, and policy. Students learn about the Awajun people and the indigenous policies that have impacted their lives and land since early encounters with explorers and missionaries. The text addresses colonial social control, Juan de Salinas Loyola and the conquest of the upper Amazon, the emergence of the Peruvian nation-state, and the geo-politics of Amazonian frontier expansion. The effect of populism on indigenous policy, military colonization, and the dynamics of contemporary Awajun society are also addressed, among other critical topics. The State and the Awajun is an ideal text for courses in anthropology and South American history, especially those with focus on the social and political effects of frontier expansion.

The End of the Future broadens the theoretical framework for understanding memories' role in reconciliation following a violent conflict. This book explores the complicated and confusing linkages between memory and trauma for individuals caught up in civil war and post-conflict reconciliation in the Peruvian Amazon's Huallaga Valley—an epicenter for leftist rebels and a booming shadow economy based on the extraction and circulation of cocaine. The End of the Future tells the story of the TÚpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement's (Movimiento Revolucionario TÚpac Amaru, MRTA) violent attempts to overthrow the state in the late 1980s and early 1990s from the perspective of the poorest residents of the lower Huallaga's Caynarachi Basin. To give context to the causes and consequences of the MRTA's presence in the lower and central Huallaga, a poorly documented part of the Peruvian Amazon, the book relies on the written works and testimony of SÍstero GarcÍa Torres, an MRTA rebel commander, the government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, MRTA propaganda, media accounts, and critical historical texts. Besides exposing Huallaga Valley human rights abuses, the book's contribution to political anthropology is consequential for its insistence that reconciliation is by no means equivalent to local, indigenous notions of "justice" or customary forms of dispute resolution. Without deliberately addressing the diverse socio-cultural contours defining overlapping epistemologies of justice, freedom, and communal wellbeing, enduring reconciliation will likely remain elusive.

The indigenous people of the hemisphere have resisted a five-hundred-year assault, fighting to maintain their cultural identities. During this time, authorities in the Americas have insisted that the toleration of indigenous societies and cultures would undermine their respective states. In recent years, however, the nations of the Americas have started to reverse themselves. They are altering their constitutions and proclaiming themselves multiethnic. Why is this happening now? "The Politics of Ethnicity: Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States," edited by David Maybury-Lewis, helps us understand the reasons and history behind these times of transition.

The book provides a valuable overview of current problems facing indigenous peoples in their relation with national states in Latin America, from the highlands of Mexico to the jungles of Brazil. The traditional, sometimes centuries old, relations between states and indigenous peoples are now changing and being rediscussed. The collection, authored by U.S. and Latin American anthropologists using interdisciplinary approaches, enables the reader to understand these recent developments in a comparative framework. An ambitious and quite thorough collection, it is brought together skillfully by one of the discipline's maitre penseurs.

"This work transcends the two-dimensional studies of conventional ethnography. Dean provides a comprehensive vision of the Urarina, making and remaking themselves in the complex history and multiethnic society of lowland Peru."--Richard K. Reed, Trinity University The Urarina are an indigenous group found in the Peruvian lowlands. Seemingly isolated, they actually have a long history of engaging in networks of trade with outside groups, argues Bartholomew Dean in this first ever ethnography of the group. Dean describes the surroundings and circumstances under which the Urarina live, focusing on such hot-button issues as globalization, inequality, and debt. He challenges the view of "pristine" Amazonian society by revealing the region's long history with agents of international capital. By showing how the Urarina are engaged with global, national, and regional economies, he reveals the ways those interactions shape their day-to-day life. Based on more than a decade of field research in Peru, Dean's analysis touches on kinship and power, the exchange of goods such as cloth and forest game, land use, and the importance of narcotic trance, myths, and shamanic wizardry. Grounded in observation rather than theory, the book offers a new and more complex form of the traditional anthropological ethnography. Bartholomew Dean is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas.