The 11 substantive essays in this volume address the general theme of indigenous participation in the market economy from initial contact with Spaniards in the 1530s to the twentieth century. Its geographical focus is decidedly on the southern Andes (from Cuzco to southern Bolivia), although Susan E. Ramírez contributes a chapter on exchange and markets in northern Peru and Ecuador. Chronologically, it clearly concentrates on the colonial period—particularly on the sixteenth century (with chapters by John V. Murra, Steve J. Stern, Ramírez, and Carlos Sempat Assadourian) and the eighteenth century (Enrique Tandeter et al., Brooke Larson, and Rosario León).
The late Thierry Saignes provides the only piece on the seventeenth century, in the form of a broad discussion of indigenous migration in the kingdom of Charcas. Tristan Platt analyzes the determinants of economic decisionmaking in the western Bolivian province of Lipes in the nineteenth century. Olivia Harris contributes a discussion of the symbolic importance of money in northern Potosí in the twentieth century, and Marisol de la Cadena continues the anthropological focus with a detailed study of the impact of male migration on gender relations in a rural community (Chitapampa) in the Cuzco region.
The concluding chapter, by Olivia Harris, provides wide-ranging coverage of ethnic identity in the Andes, tracing the imposition of European ethnic categories — “Indian,” “mestizo” —on rural communities as part of a wider process of attempted cultural domination. Her essay is the only one that overtly addresses, albeit briefly, the crucial period from 1880 to 1930, when, as economic historians generally agree, modernizing nation-states and market forces made a concerted assault on the surviving cultural and economic autonomy of indigenous communities throughout the Andes.
As Brooke Larson’s lengthy introductory chapter explains with admirable clarity, this volume has had a long gestation period. The concept, if not the conception, dates back nearly two decades, when the editors began to plan a symposium for the 1981 International Congress of Americanists. The papers were presented instead at a 1983 conference held in Sucre, giving rise to the publication in 1987 of the original Spanish version of the compilation, La participación indígena en los mercados surandinos: estrategias y reproducción social, siglos XVI a XX. This work was well received by reviewers (see, for example, Ramirez’s review in HAHR 69:3, August 1989), although several, including Ramírez, commented on the lack of a definitive concluding chapter and the absence of contributions about Ecuador and central-northern Peru.
The latter problem has been alleviated by the inclusion of a chapter by Ramirez on “Exchange and Markets in the Sixteenth Century: A View from the North,” which demonstrates that in the early postcontact period, at least, the entry of caciques into the market economy as entrepreneurs did not reflect wholesale economic assimilation of indigenous communities. This process, however, had progressed rapidly in Ecuador by the mid-seventeenth century, and was largely complete in much of northern and central Peru by the end of the colonial period.
Brooke Larson’s introductory essay, “Andean Communities, Political Cultures, and Markets: The Changing Contours of a Field,” although occasionally self-indulgent in praising the work of the contributors, makes a good attempt to relate the volume to the recent work of other scholars working at the interface between history and anthropology. It does not explain, however, why several papers from the earlier volume have been dropped. The volume as a whole leaves unresolved the basic question of why historians tend to stress the loss of indigenous cultural and economic autonomy, whereas anthropologists stress continuity. It is, however, a major contribution to the ongoing debate about the relationship between tradition and change over a long period of time.
