The 1998 peace agreement between Ecuador and Peru prompted neoindigenist Hernán Ibarra to explore the implications of the apparent resolution of two centuries of border conflict for the Ecuadorean nation. Faced with a potentially permanent peace and globalization, Ibarra asserts that Ecuadorans must now ask “who we are.” Ibarra leaves the reader with the disturbing conclusion that the question may be even more difficult to answer now than ever.
Ibarra argues that the border conflict was dominated the definition of nationality in both countries, with largely counterproductive results. The obsession with a geographically centered concept of nationality long obscured deep ethnic and regional divisions. Even though such divisions proved less debilitating for Peru because of its earlier centralization, Peruvian military and political leaders readily seized the opportunity for victory in 1941 to overcome the image of defeat imparted by their loss in the War of the Pacific. Generations of scholars...
