INTL 410/510

Summer 2006

Professor Carlos Aguirre

e-mail: caguirre@uoregon.edu

Office: 369 McKenzie Hall, Phone 346-5905

Office Hours: Monday and Thursday, 10-11 a.m.

Instructor's Web Page: http://uoregon.edu/~caguirre/home.html

Latin American Indigenous Peoples and Social Movements

Course description

This course traces the history of Indigenous peoples of Latin America since pre-Hispanic times. It surveys the conditions of marginalization and oppression that Indigenous peoples have usually endured, their multifaceted strategies of resistance and survival, their participation in political and social movements aimed at effecting social change, and the challenges they confront today in an increasingly globalized world.

Course policies

1. Students are expected to attend lectures consistently. A passing grade will be difficult to achieve without regular attendance. Students must also consistently read the assigned materials.
2. The course instructor will hold regular office hours every week. Students are encouraged to visit him to discuss pertinent issues or get additional information about the course's themes, policies, and grades.
3. A common form of academic dishonesty, plagiarism, will not be tolerated. Students must become familiar with the University of Oregon rules about this issue.
4. An atmosphere of mutual respect, tolerance, and fairness will be enforced by the instructor. Students must behave in ways proper to an academic environment--i.e. no talking, eating, or newspaper reading during class time.
5. An "incomplete" grade will be granted only in cases of extreme need and only to those students that have an acceptable record of class attendance and get at least a C in all evaluations prior to the final exam. Students that need an "incomplete" grade must make arrangements with the instructor on or before the last week of classes.
6. This summer class will maintain the same standards of rigor and the same expectations about students' performance than similar courses taught during the regular academic year. Students must participate in class, read the required materials, and have a consistent attendance record.

Evaluations

-Attendance, participation, and written exercises: 20%

-Take-home midterm exam: 30% (DUE: Monday, August 7^th).

-Final exam: 50%

Required readings

The following book is available for purchase at the UO bookstore and on reserve at Knight Library:

I, Rigoberta Menchú. An Indian Woman in Guatemala (Verso Books, 1983).

In addition, a number of articles will be available on electronic reserve.

Schedule of Lectures and Readings

Week 1

7/24 Introduction to the course. Who is “Indigenous”? Pre-Conquest Indigenous Peoples.

7/25 1492: The challenge of European conquest

7/26 The colonial period: exploitation, resistance, and survival

7/27 Indigenous peoples and the nation state in post-Independence Mexico and the Andes

Readings:

Steve J. Stern, “Paradigms of Conquest: History, Historiography, and Politics,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 24, 1992,

Matthew Restall, “Maya Ethnogenesis,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology, 9, 1, 2004, pp. 64-89

David Garrett, “’His Majesty’s Most Loyal Vassals’: The Indian Nobility and Tupac Amaru,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 84, 4, 2004, pp. 575-617

Wolfgang Gabbert, “Of Friends and Foes: The Caste War and Ethnicity in Yucatán,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology, 9, 1, 2004, pp. 90-118.

Week 2

7/31 Indigenous peoples and the remaking of race: scientific racism, Indigenismo, and mestizaje, 1870-1930

8/1 Indigenous peoples and revolutions, I: El Salvador (1932) and Bolivia (1952)

8/2 Indigenous peoples and revolutions, II: Peru (1968) and Nicaragua (1979)

8/3 Indigenous peoples and counter-insurgency, I: Guatemala

Readings:

Florencia Mallon, “Indian Communities, Political Cultures and the State in Latin America, 1780-1990,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 24, 1992, pp. 35-53.

Rick A. López, “The India Bonita Contest of 1921 and the Ethnicization of Mexican National Culture,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 82, 2, 2002, pp. 291-328..

Jeffrey Gould and Aldo Lauria-Santiago, “’They Call us Thieves and Steal Our Wage’: Toward a Reinterpretation of the Salvadoran Rural Mobilization, 1929-1931,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 84, 2, 2004, pp. 191-237.

Anika Oettler, “Guatemala in the 1980s. A Genocide Turned into Ethnocide?” German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Working Paper, 2006.

Week 3

8/7 Indigenous peoples and counter-insurgency, II: Peru’s Dirty War in the 1980s

8/8 Indigenous women, subalternity, and agency / Rigoberta Menchú: Truth and Representation

8/9 500 years of struggle: the 1992 conjuncture and the emergence of new Indigenous movements

8/10 Indigenous worldviews: religion, culture, and identity

Readings:

I, Rigoberta Menchú. An Indian Woman in Guatemala (Verso, 1984).

Dorothy Smith, “Rigoberta Menchú and David Stoll: contending stories,” Qualitative Studies in Education, 16, 3, 2003, pp. 287-305.

Jean E. Jackson and Kay B. Warren, “Indigenous Movements in Latin America, 1992-2004: Controversies, Ironies, New Directions,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 34, 2005, 549-573.

Week 4

8/14 Indígenas and Zapatistas in Chiapas

8/15 Pachakuti in Bolivia? Assessing the election of Evo Morales [suggested reading: Alma Guillermoprieto, “A New Bolivia?”, New York Review of Books, August 10, 2006]

8/16 Latin American Indigenous peoples and the challenges of (neo-liberal) globalization

8/17 Final exam

Readings:

Nancy Postero, “Indigenous responses to Neoliberalism: A Look at the Bolivian Uprising of 2003,” Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 28, 1, 2005, pp. 73-92.

Niels Barmeyer, “The Guerrilla Movement as a Project: An Assessment of Community Involvement in the EZLN,” Latin American Perspectives, 30, 1, 2003, pp. 122-138.

Michelle Wibbelsman, “Otavaleños at the Crossroads: Physical and Metaphysical Coordinates of an Indigenous World,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology, 10, 1, 2005, pp. 151-185.

“United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” (June 2006).