The politics of memory : native historical interpretation in the Colombian Andes

Summary: How does a culture in which writing is not a prominent feature create historical tradition? In The Politics of Memory, Joanne Rappaport answers this question by tracing the past three centuries of the intellectual history of the Nasa—a community in the Colombian Andes. Focusing on the Nasa historians of the eighteenth through twentieth centuries, Rappaport highlights the differences between "native" history and Eurocentric history and demonstrates how these histories must be examined in relation to the particular circumstances in which they were produced.

Record details

ISBN: 052137345X
ISBN: 9780521373456
Physical Description: print
xiv, 226 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.
Publisher: Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-213) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

1. Introduction: interpreting the past -- Part 1 The creation of a chiefly ideology: Paez historical thought under Spanish rule -- 2. The rise of the colonial Cacique -- 3. The birth of the myth: Don Juan Tama y Calambás -- Part 2 From colony to republic: Cacique and Caudillo -- 4. The chiefdom transformed: The Nineteenth-century Paez -- From sharecropper to Caudillo: Manuel Quintín Lame -- Part 3 Contemporary historical voices -- 6. The Cacique reborn: The Twentieth-century Paez -- Julio Ninquinás, a contemporary Paez historian -- Conclusion: Narrative and image in a textual community.