Kategoria BISAC: History >> Latin America - South America

"An irreplaceable testimony of the struggle for democracy and tolerance in Latin America." --El Pais

Hector Abad's Oblivion is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written memorial to the author's father, Hector Abad Gomez, whose criticism of the Colombian regime led to his murder by paramilitaries in 1987. Twenty years in the writing, it paints an unforgettable picture of a man who followed his conscience and paid for it with his life during one of the darkest periods in Latin America's recent history.

As the study of world history evolves from a Eurocentric perspective to a more global viewpoint, formerly marginalized groups are now the focus of discussion, revealing a background rich with important military, political, social, and economic achievements. This book examines the once prosperous and powerful native civilizations in Central and South America, discussing the key individuals, strategies, and politics that made these countries strong and indomitable. In spite of this, the author shows how, in only a few generations, Spain defeated these mini-empires, eventually dominating much...

In this book Rachel Corr provides a knowledgeable account of the Salasacan religion and rituals and their respective histories. Based on...

This book is a study of the ways places are created and how they attain meaning. Smith presents archaeological data from Khonkho Wankane in the southern Lake Titicaca basin of Bolivia to explore how landscapes were imagined and constructed during processes of political centralization in this region. In particular he examines landscapes of movement and the development of powerful political and religious centers during the Late Formative period (200 BC AD 500), just before the emergence of the urban state centered at Tiwanaku (AD 500 1100).

Late Formative politico-religious centers,...

Mysteries of the Jaguar Shamans of the Northwest Amazon tells the life story of Mandu da Silva, the last living jaguar shaman among the Baniwa people in the Northwest Amazon. In this original and engaging work, Robin M. Wright, who has known and worked with Silva for more than thirty years, weaves the story of Silva's life together with the Baniwas' broader society, history, mythology, cosmology, and jaguar shaman traditions. The jaguar shamans are key players in what Wright calls "a nexus of religious power and knowledge" in which healers, sorcerers, priestly chanters,...

In January 1995, fighting broke out between Ecuadorian and Peruvian military forces in a remote section of the Amazon. It took more than three years and the interplay of multiple actors and factors to achieve a definitive peace agreement, thus ending what had been the region's oldest unresolved border dispute. This conflict and its resolution provide insights about other unresolved and/or disputed land and sea boundaries which involve almost every country in the Western Hemisphere.

Drawing on extensive field research at the time of the dispute and during its aftermath, including...

Bolivia decentralized in an effort to deepen democracy, improve public services, and make government more accountable. Unlike many countries, Bolivia succeeded. Over the past generation, public investment shifted dramatically toward primary services and resource distribution became far more equitable, partly due to the creation of new local governments. Many municipalities responded to decentralization with transparent, accountable government, yet others suffered ineptitude, corruption, or both. Why? Jean-Paul Faguet combines broad econometric data with deep qualitative evidence to...