20th century peruvian history
A01=Eduardo Fernandez
A01=Michael F Brown
amazon
anthropology
archival sources
armed struggle
ashaninka indians
Author_Eduardo Fernandez
Author_Michael F Brown
Category=JBSL11
Category=JHM
Category=JPWL
colonization
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eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
failed uprising
freedom
guerrilla warfare
hope
jungle rebellions
latin american history
marx
marxist revolutionaries
militants
military
mir
movement of the revolutionary left
native peoples
native tribes
oral history
peru
peru history
peruvian amazon
peruvian government
poverty
press reports
rainforest
religion
religious movements
renegade
revolution
tragedy
us embassy
utopia
Product details
- ISBN 9780520074484
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 30 Dec 1993
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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"War of Shadows" is the haunting story of a failed uprising in the Peruvian Amazon - told largely by people who were there. Late in 1965, Ashaninka Indians, members of one of the Amazon's largest native tribes, joined forces with Marxist revolutionaries who had opened a guerrilla front in Ashaninka territory. They fought, and were crushed by, the overwhelming military force of the Peruvian government. Why did the Indians believe this alliance would deliver them from poverty and the depredations of colonization on their rainforest home? With rare insight and eloquence, anthropologists Brown and Fernandez write about an Amazonian people whose contacts with outsiders have repeatedly begun in hope and ended in tragedy. The players in this dramatic confrontation included militants of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), the U. S. Embassy, the Peruvian military, a 'renegade' American settler, and the Ashaninka Indians themselves. Using press reports and archival sources as well as oral histories, the authors weave a vivid tapestry of narratives and counter-narratives that challenges the official history of the guerrilla struggle.
Central to the story is the Ashaninkas' persistent hope that a messiah would lead them to freedom, a belief with roots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century jungle rebellions and religious movements.
Michael F. Brown is Professor of Anthropology at Williams College. He is the author of Tsewa's Gift: Magic and Meaning in an Amazonian Society (1986). Eduardo Fernandez is a development anthropologist and the author of Para que nuestra historia no se pierda (So That Our History is Not Lost).
