Archaeological Survey in Northern Highland Ecuador: Inca Imperialism and the País Caranqui: Bray

Bray, Tamara L. “Archaeological Survey in Northern Highland Ecuador: Inca Imperialism and the País Caranqui.” World Archaeology 24, no. 2 (October 1992): 218–33. Tamara Bray’s “Archaeological Survey in Northern Highland Ecuador: Inca Imperialism and the País Caranqui” documents the presence of local and Incan influences in the Guayllabamba basin, an area that represented the Incas’… Read More Archaeological Survey in Northern Highland Ecuador: Inca Imperialism and the País Caranqui: Bray

Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America: Asunción Lavrin

Asunción Lavrin’s edited volume, Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, presents a series of perspectives on what Lavrin calls the “conquest of the mind,” the means through which the Spanish state and Catholic Church sought to maintain control over colonial society. The authors challenge received understandings of the region’s early history by showing the… Read More Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America: Asunción Lavrin

Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador: Suzanne Alchon

Suzanne Alchon: Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador (1991) explores the relationship between epidemic diseases and indigenous populations in the north-central highlands of Ecuador in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Alchon argues that appreciating the role of epidemics in everything from food security to politics is critical to understanding changes in regional history in… Read More Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador: Suzanne Alchon

Oppressed But Not Defeated: Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s Oppressed but Not Defeated, on the struggles of Aymara and Quechua peasants in the highlands and western valleys of the Bolivian Andes, focuses on the creation of peasant unions after the 1952 revolution by the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario. Her book is a concise collection of essays written in collaboration with Bolivian peasant… Read More Oppressed But Not Defeated: Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui

The Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Colombia: Léon Zamosc

Sociologist Léon Zamosc’s The Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Colombia, looks at the development of agrarian capitalism and peasant land struggles in Colombia between 1967 and 1981. In ten concise chapters, Zamosc analyzes differences in agrarian strategies, changes in peasant-state relations, and what he calls the politics and ideology of the “peasant challenge,”… Read More The Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Colombia: Léon Zamosc

Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas: Frank Salomon

Frank Salomon’s Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas (1985) is still the most complete ethnohistory of the Ecuadorian Andes in English. Making extensive use of indigenous legal documents from the early colonial period, Salomon focuses on what is today the city of Quito and the Los Chillos valley, as well as… Read More Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas: Frank Salomon

The Andean Past: Magnus Mörner

Magnus Mörner’s The Andean Past: Land, Societies, and Conflicts (1985) is a wide-ranging survey of Andean history since conquest, focusing on classic political, social, and economic themes. In his discussion of Andean rural history, Mörner says historians should view the development of haciendas in terms of their wider commercial networks and argues that international export… Read More The Andean Past: Magnus Mörner

Huarochirí: Karen Spalding

Karen Spalding’s history of colonial Peru, Huarochirí, begins with the origins of Andean society, following social changes from pre-Inca days until the height of colonial rule. Written in the mid-1980s amidst a brutal economic crisis that inordinately impacted indigenous communities in areas like Huarochirí, this monograph seems an attempt to revalorize Andean society at a… Read More Huarochirí: Karen Spalding