Political Cultures in the Andes, 1750-1950

A major contribution to theoretical debates about Latin American state formation, Political Cultures in the Andes rethinks the construction and reconfiguration of modern Andean political cultures. It brings together comparative case 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, regional, and local political cultures depended on specific constellations of power, processes of identity formation, and socio-economic and institutional structures. The contributors foreground the struggles over democracy, authoritarianism, citizens' rights, and 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. Including a debate between the noted Mexicanist Alan Knight and the volume's editors regarding the meaning, value, and limits of the concept of political culture, Political Cultures in the Andes exemplifies the rich potential of a political culture approach to deciphering the processes involved in the formation, reconstruction, and dissolution of historical polities. Contributors Carlos Contreras Cristobal Aljovin de Losada Margarita Garrido Laura Gotkowitz Aline Helg Nils Jacobsen Alan Knight Brooke Larson Mary Roldan Sergio Serulnikov Charles F. Walker Derek Williams