Simply put, The Lettered Mountain is a beautifully written book and a must read for those interested in multiple literacies, historiography, and ethnography, as well as colonial and contemporary Latin America. Rich in descriptive detail and analytically meticulous, Frank Salomon and Mercedes Niño- Murcia tell the story of one group’s orientations and practices toward writing, describing how a municipality in the Peruvian highlands has used symbolic representations for centuries to record local events and to keep records of the important events of their community’s life.
This ethnography takes place in San Andrés Tupicocha, a district in the center of the province of Huarochirí. At the beginning of the book, the authors explain that San Andrés Tupicocha is “a recognized Peasant Community . . . . [u]nder Peruvian law . . . a self- governing corporation endowed with control of ‘immemorial’ communal titles to land and water” (p. 21). Being a...
