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The efforts of Indians in Latin America have gained momentum and
garnered increasing attention in the last decade as they claim
rights to their land and demand full participation in the political
process. This issue is of rising importance as ecological concerns
and autochtonous movements gain a foothold in Latin America,
transforming the political landscape into one in which multiethnic
democracies hold sway. In some cases, these movements have led to
violent outbursts that severely affected some nations, such as the
1992 and 1994 Indian uprisings in Ecuador. In most cases, however,
grassroots efforts have realized success without bloodshed. An
Aymara Indian, head of an indigenous-rights political party, became
Vice President of Bolivia. Brazilian lands are being set aside for
indigenous groups not as traditional reservations where the
government attempts to "civilize" the hunters and gatherers, but
where the government serves only to keep loggers, gold miners, and
other interlopers out of tribal lands. Contemporary Indigenous
Movements in Latin America is a collection of essays compiled by
Professor Erick D. Langer that brings together-for the first
time-contributions on indigenous movements throughout Latin America
from all regions. Focusing on the 1990s, Professor Langer
illustrates the range and increasing significance of the Indian
movements in Latin America. The volume addresses the ways in which
Indians have confronted the political, social, and economic
problems they face today, and shows the diversity of the movements,
both in lowlands and in highlands, tribal peoples, and peasants.
The book presents an analytical overview of these movements, as
well as a vision of how and why they have become so important in
the late twentieth century. Contemporary Indigenous Movements in
Latin America is important for those interested in Latin American
studies, including Latin American civilization, Latin American
anthropology, contemporary issues in Latin America, and ethnic
studies.
Hemispheric Indigeneities is a critical anthology that brings
together indigenous and nonindigenous scholars specializing in the
Andes, Mesoamerica, and Canada. The overarching theme is the
changing understanding of indigeneity from first contact to the
contemporary period in three of the world's major regions of
indigenous peoples. Although the terms indio, indigene, and indian
only exist (in Spanish, French, and English, respectively) because
of European conquest and colonization, indigenous peoples have
appropriated or changed this terminology in ways that reflect their
shifting self-identifications and aspirations. As the essays in
this volume demonstrate, this process constantly transformed the
relation of Native peoples in the Americas to other peoples and the
state. This volume's presentation of various factors-geographical,
temporal, and cross-cultural-provide illuminating contributions to
the burgeoning field of hemispheric indigenous studies. Hemispheric
Indigeneities explores indigenous agency and shows that what it
means to be indigenous was and is mutable. It also demonstrates
that self-identification evolves in response to the relationship
between indigenous peoples and the state. The contributors analyze
the conceptions of what indigeneity meant, means today, or could
come to mean tomorrow.
The subject of missions-formal efforts at religious conversion of
native peoples of the Americas by colonizing powers-is one that
renders the modern student a bit uncomfortable. Where the mission
enterprise was actuated by true belief it strikes the modern
sensibility as fanaticism; where it sprang from territorial or
economic motives it seems the rankest sort of hypocrisy. That both
elements-greed and real faith-were usually present at the same time
is bewildering.In this book seven scholars attempt to create a
"new" mission history that deals honestly with the actions and
philosophic motivations of the missionaries, both as individuals
and organizations and as agents of secular powers, and with the
experiences and reactions of the indigenous peoples, including
their strategies of accommodation, co-optation, and resistance.The
new mission historians examine cases from throughout the
hemisphere-from the Andes to northern Mexico to California-in an
effort to find patterns in the contact between the European
missionaries and the various societies they encountered.Erick
Langer is associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon
University. He is the author of Economic Change and Rural
Resistance in Southern Bolivia, 1880-1930 and editor, with Zulema
Bass Werner de Ruiz, of Historia de Tarija: Corpus
Documental.Robert H. Jackson is the author of Indian Population
Decline: The Missions of Northwestern New Spain, 1687-1840 and
Regional Markets and the Agrarian Transformation in Bolivia
Cochabamba, 1539-1960. He is an assistant professor in the
Department of History and Geography at Texas Southern University.
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