Histories of the Present

An engaging study of the shifting power relations in Ecuador since the indigenous-led uprising in 1990, Histories of the Present: People and Power in Ecuador interweaves intimate ethnographic detail with international perspectives on political and economic relations. In critically examining transformative cultural dynamics in Latin America, Norman E. Whitten Jr. and Dorothea Scott Whitten find that marginalized groups in Ecuador are instrumental to events that have changed the very structure of the region since the uprising. Central to this timely anthropological study is a detailed examination of long-term processes of identity construction and change among indigenous Afro-Latin American peoples, including a look at primary language use and the words describing race and ethnicity employed by different groups. In exploring the signification of ethnic and racial identities in Ecuador, Histories of the Present demonstrates how an enduring commitment to ethnography contributes to theoretical understandings of how people transform their worlds.