Trials of Nation Making

Brooke Larson's interpretive analysis of the history of Andean peasants reveals the challenges of nation making in the republics of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia during the volatile nineteenth century. Nowhere in Latin America were postcolonial transitions more turbulent than in the Andes, where communal indigenous roots grew deep and where the "Indian problem" seemed so discouraging to liberalizing states. The analysis raises broader issues about the interplay of liberalism, racism, and ethnicity in the formation of exclusionary "republics without citizens" over the nineteenth century.

Introduction; 1. Andean landscapes, real and imagined; 2. Colombia: assimilation or marginalization of the Indians?; 3. Ecuador: modernizing Indian servitude as the road to progress; 4. Peru: war, national sovereignty and the 'Indian problem'; 5. Bolivia: dangerous pacts, insurgent Indians; Conclusion. Postcolonial nation building and the burden of 'race'; Bibliographic essay.