Power, Culture, and Violence in the Andes

Book excerpt: In this book, scholars - in anthropology, history, literary and cultural studies - present their current research on culture and violence in the Andean region. Within an interdisciplinary approach, the contributors explore the complex and mutually constitutive relationship of culture and violence in Peru and Bolivia. These countries contain large indigenous populations who have largely preserved their culture and way of life in spite of centuries of colonial domination and the encroachment of capitalist modernization, including the latest free-market variant. The intertwined histories of culture and violence in the Andes are examined through: analyses of the indigenous and popular mobilization that brought Evo Morales to power as Bolivia's first indigenous president . conservative Latin American intellectuals' response to this popular rejection of neoliberal economic and social policies . the work of Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the legacy of the Shining Path war . 19th-century intellectual and political discourses on race, gender, and the incorporation of indigenous peoples into the nation-state.