This is a gripping book on how and why all the people of the city of Cuzco practice a cruel and elaborate game of discrimination against each other. Everyone in Cuzco feels herself or himself the victim of cultural/racial discrimination, while at the same time, that same person feels an equally justified right to practice the very same against others. In an admirable and very readable book, de la Cadena forcefully presents the complex and intricate rules used to disparage others by associating them with indigenous cultural or racial traits and to elevate oneself through the adoption of mestizo categories. At the other end of the continuum, the mestizo categories are used to ascribe to oneself or to superiors. Marisol de la Cadena does a superb job in showing how Andean distinctions do not conform to dual and closed compartments of either-or choices, but are a matter of an excruciatingly...

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