Andean Logic and Andean Identity: Deathly Waters and Hungry Mountains: Agrarian Ritual and Class Formation in an Andean Town . Peter Gose. ; Cumbe Reborn: An Andean Ethnography of History . Joanne Rappaport.

Abstract

tries undermine mobilization and plurinational initiatives. Some mention should have been made of struggles and gains in North America; this is a missed opportunity considering growing political clout of Canada's First Nations and plurinational proposals found there. And by omitting any mention of nations in United States, volume gives impression that everything is all right at home. More emphasis could also have been placed on how increasingly transit regional, urban, and national boundaries, discovering new worlds, adopting new technologies, and prosperingwithout sacrificing their cultural identities. But latter, I would argue, are inextricably linked-by representations in popular media, nationalist doctrine, and scholarship alike-to images of poverty and marginality, implicit message being that to achieve social mobility, peoples must renounce their identities. The definitions and images generated by dominant society allow for little else, viewing their cultures as archaic, static, and part of nature, far removed from cultural mainstream of modernizing nation. Such stereotypes also impact international institutions such as World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, which list grievances as environmental issues. Future work must explore how native peoples are reshaping their images and resignifying constraining terms Indian and indigenous people. Such work, I believe, will show that cultural distinctiveness of peoples is entirely compatible with modernity, urban spaces, transnational migration, and social mobility. In sum, while real progress has been made, future of rights and cultural nationalism is uncertain. On one hand, as presence of senators, reformed constitutions, strategic international alliances, and ethnicity-based federations demonstrates, generally have more political clout than ever before. Even in countries such as war-torn Guatemala and Peru, where tens of thousands of peasants have been murdered in recent years, authors find hope that exclusionary creole and ladino political dominance is deteriorating and that politically effective groups and constitutional provisions are emerging. Yet legacy of 1492 remains strong, and in countries throughout Americas, languages and cultures of the hemisphere's most marginalized people (p. 30) are still treated with contempt and excluded from national mainstream, while assaults on their leaders, territories, and resources continue. Until this changes, peoples will continue to view democracy found in Americas as an institutional facade serving interests of a light-skinned, neocolonial society. I