Political Cultures in the Andes, 1750-1950

Description

A major contribution to debates about Latin American state formation, Political Cultures in the Andes brings together comparative historical studies focused on Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth. While highlighting patterns of political discourse and practice common to the entire region, these state-of-the-art histories show how national and local political cultures depended on specific constellations of power, gender and racial orders, processes of identity formation, and socioeconomic and institutional structures. The contributors foreground the struggles over democracy and citizens’ rights as well as notions of race, ethnicity, gender, and class that have been at the forefront of political debates and social movements in the Andes since the waning days of the colonial regime some two hundred years ago. Among the many topics they consider are the significance of the Bourbon reform era to subsequent state-formation projects, the role of race and nation in the work of early-twentieth-century Bolivian intellectuals, the fiscal decentralization campaign in Peru following the devastating War of the Pacific in the late nineteenth century, and the negotiation of the rights of “free men of all colors” in Colombia’s Atlantic coast region during the late colonial period. Political Cultures in the Andes includes an essay by the noted Mexicanist Alan Knight in which he considers the value and limits of the concept of political culture and a response to Knight’s essay by the volume’s editors, Nils Jacobsen and Cristóbal Aljovín de Losada. This important collection exemplifies the rich potential of a pragmatic political culture approach to deciphering the processes involved in the formation of historical polities. Contributors. Cristóbal Aljovín de Losada, Carlos Contreras, Margarita Garrido, Laura Gotkowitz, Aline Helg, Nils Jacobsen, Alan Knight, Brooke Larson, Mary Roldan, Sergio Serulnikov, Charles F. Walker, Derek Williams Contents About the Series Acknowledgments The Long and the Short of It: A Pragmatic Perspective on Political Cultures, Especially forthe Modern History of the Andes Is Political Culture Good to Think? How Interests and Values Seldom Come Alone, or: The Utility of a Pragmatic Perspective on Political Culture Part One State- and Nation-Building Projects and Their Limitations Civilize or Control? The Lingering Impact of the Bourbon Urban Reforms A Break with the Past? Santa Cruz and the Constitution The Tax Man Cometh: Local Authorities and the Battle Over Taxes in Peru, 1885-1906 ‘‘Under the dominion of the indian’’: Rural Mobilization, the Law, and Revolutionary Nationalism in Bolivia in the 1940s Part Two Ethnicity, Gender, and the Construction of Power: Exclusionary Strategies and the Struggle for Citizenship ‘‘Free Men of All Colors’’ in New Granada: Identity and Obedience before Independence Silencing African Descent: Caribbean Colombia and Early Nation Building, 1810-1828 The Making of Ecuador’s Pueblo Católico, 1861-1875 Redeemed Indians, Barbarized Cholos: Crafting Neocolonial Modernity in Liberal Bolivia, 1900-1910 Part Three The Local, the Peripheral, and the Network: Redefining the Boundaries of Popular Representation in the Public Arena Andean Political Imagination in the Late Eighteenth Century Public Opinions and Public Spheres in Late-Nineteenth-Century Peru: A Multicolored Web in a Tattered Cloth The Local Limitations to a National Political Movement: Gaitán and Gaitanismo in Antioquia Concluding Remarks: Andean Inflections of Latin American Political Cultures Bibliography Contributors Index