Kategoria BISAC: History >> Latin America - South America

This book reexamines the structure of Inca society on the eve of the Spanish conquest. The author argues that native Andean cosmology, which centered on the idea of divine rulership, principally organized the indigenous political economy as well as spatial and socio-kinship systems.

Ramirez begins by establishing that the phrase "el Cuzco," picked up from the native peoples by the Spanish invaders, referred not only to a place but also to the Inca leader. This leader acted as the center of the Inca universe, connecting the people to their ancestors, nature, and each other....

It is unlikely that any single book or document will ever earn a more firmly-fixed position of respect and authority than this distinguished volume by Grant Foreman. Originally published in 1932, on the date of the hundredth anniversary of the arrival in Oklahoma of the first Indians as a result of the United States government's relocation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Indian Removal remains today the definitive book in its field.

The forcible uprooting and expulsion of the 60,000 Indians comprising the Five Civilized Tribes, including the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee, and...

A narrative history of exploration from Christopher Columbus to the 19th century, with journal excerpts, diaries and other writings of the explorers themselves. Goodman has marshaled his wide-ranging research and lifelong interest in exploration into a comprehensive, scholarly history. A reprint of the original 1972 edition, the tales have lost none of their luster.

In Francisco Pizarro and His Brothers, Rafael Varon Gabai breaks fresh ground in his reconstruction of the Pizarros' conquest as a new form of business enterprise, built up by Francisco Pizarro both to conduct government and to manage his family's exploitation of Peru.

The private nature of the Pizarro enterprise, together with the public political support it received at first from the Spanish Crown, allowed Pizarro to build an organization of several hundred people.

Drawing on extensive research in her native Ecuador, Amalia Pallares examines the South American Indian movement in the Ecuadorian Andes and explains its shift from class politics to racial politics in the late twentieth century. Pallares uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore the reasons why indigenous Ecuadorians have bypassed their shared class status with other peasant groups and movements in favor of a political identity based on their unique ethnicity as Indians.

In the 1960s and 1970s, land reform and the modernization of economic and political structures in Ecuador led to...

For four centuries, the indigenous Campa Ashaninkas of the Peruvian Amazon have fought for their identity and independence in the face of Spanish colonialism and Peruvian national expansionism. Stefano Varese originally wrote about the Campa Ashaninkas in the mid-1960s after three seasons of field research among them and three years of archival research, titling his book "La Sal de Los Cerros" after the conquered Mountain of Salt that had been the center of Camp Ashaninka trade and power for millennia. Updated with a new preface and introduction by the author, "Salt of the Mountain" makes...

Renato Beluche played many roles in the turbulent world of the nineteenth-century Caribbean. He was a merchant sea captain as well as a successful Privateer. He was Simon Bolivar's favorite admiral as well as an active partner in the affairs of the Laffite brothers. He fought both as a revolutionary and as a defender against revolt. He was a patriot in the eyes of eight American nations and a brigand in the eyes of England and France.

In tracing the course of Beluche's chameleonlike career, this biography by Jane Lucas De Grummond gives us a panoramic view of the complex affairs of the...