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Kay E Watren and Jean E.Jackson (eds.) Indigenous Movements, SeIf-Repreaentation and the State in Latin America. University of Texas Press Austin, 2002. 294 pp., maps, photos, notes, appendices and index. $22.95 cloth (ISBN: 0-292-79141-0).
Warren and Jackson's volume successfully demonstrates that contemporary indigenous movements are seeking self-representation against and with the Latin American state. The authors assert these groups do not exist "outside historical time and agency" (p. 7) and thus, they endeavor to overturn a common mistake whereby many observers believe that "indigenousness and modernity are mutually exclusive." (p. 28) By emphasizing the complexity of indigenous self-representation in light of modernization, in seven chapters the authors' use a case study format to study the micro political relationships among and between indigenous and non-indigenous actors. In each case, indigenous groups confront the problems of forging a multiplicity of identities and strategies to create coherent messages for transmittal amongst themselves and toward non-indigenous actors. What unifies the chapters is not where changing discourses are analyzed (Colombia, Guatemala, Brazil), but how they are undertaken. This volume establishes that similar to the globalization of indigenous concerns, the methods of indigenous discourse among and between actors have also become globalized.
Defining one's identity or voice given contradictory identity definitions is important, but not simple. The first essay, "The Indigenous Public Voice: The Multiple Idioms of Modernity in Native Cauca" by David Gow explores the conflicts among Caucans in defining tierro, autonomia and cultura. He writes that determining true definitions are as challenging for observers as they are for the indigenous groups. By writing, "Latin American modernity is multiple, indeed, indigenous modernity is too," (p. 72) Cow's expression of Caucan definitional conflicts begins the echo of...