Sicuanga Runa is Whitten’s third book on native peoples of the Ecuadorian Oriente. His first was Sacha Runa: Ethnicity and Adaptation of Ecuadorian Jungle Quichua (1976). The second was Amazonía ecuatoriana: La otra cara del progreso (1982), of which Sicuanga Runa is an enlargement and update. Like its predecessors, Sicuanga Runa is based on ethnographic observation of and interaction with Canelos and other Indian groups of the upper Amazon. The primary setting is Nayapi Llacta/Nueva Esperanza, a composite of three native settlements. The theme of the book is the impact of the nation/state and national culture on Quichua- and Achuar-speaking peoples of the region and their reactions to the changes and policies imposed on them.
Sicuanga Runa is a significant work. What happens to native peoples encroached on by Western societies is well known. What is not well known is how such peoples perceive and endeavor to cope with Westernization. But the book is not easy to understand. Whitten writes in a mixture of English, Spanish, Quichua, and Achuar. Also, he seems to be addressing himself mostly to his colleagues, advocates and critics of structuralism, notwithstanding his claim that he wrote Sicuanga runa for nonspecialists. Hence such barely digestible sentences as:
As a result of the ongoing bipolar (native Runa [including Achuar in some contexts]/national [oriental/blanco]) indigenous debate, the concept of mestizaje in all of its multifaceted dimensions (ranging from processes of blanqueamiento to those of choloficación) is becoming crystallized at a very salient level of public discourse by those previously dichotomized as bianco versus indio (in Spanish), Runa versus mashca pupu, ahua llacta, or ahulta (in Quichua) or Achuar versus apachi (in Achuar or Shuar) . . . (p. 178; Whittens parentheses, italics, and brackets),
