Histories of the Present

The wellspring of critical analysis in this book emerges from the major Indigenous Uprising of 1990 and its ongoing aftermath in which indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian action transformed the nation-state and established new dimensions of human relationships. The authors weave anthropological theory with longitudinal Ecuadorian ethnography to produce a unique contribution to Latin American Studies.

Norman E. Whitten Jr., a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is the editor of the University of Illinois Press's series Interpretations of Culture in the New Millennium. Dorothea Scott Whitten is a research associate at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and a Curator of the Spurlock Museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They have collaborated on many projects, including Puyo Runa: Imagery and Power in Modern Amazonia.