Introduces the geography, history, industries, diverse culture and people of the South American republic with the widest assortment of climates and landscapes.

Hugo Blanco's vivid and direct prose takes the reader on an inspirational journey to the heart of Peru, looking for a respectful relationship with Pacamama (Mother Earth) and with its indigenous communities and their struggles for land reform and change in the 1950s and 1960s. These pages, written in bursts, disorderly, jubilant and desperate, tell of the adventures and misfortunes of the man who headed the campesino struggle in Peru, the organizer of the rural trade unions, the man who pushed for an agrarian reform born from below. The authorities accused him of being a terrorist. He slept under the stars and in cells occupied by rats. He went on 14 hunger strikes. During one of them, the Minister of the Interior made a kind gesture and sent him a coffin as a gift. More than once, the district attorney demanded the death penalty, and more than once the news was published that Hugo had died. He continues to be that smart, crazy man who decided to be an Indian, even though he was not, and turned out to be the most Indian of all.

The land occupations and uprisings by peasants in the early 1960s, recounted by a central leader of the struggle in Peru.

"The builders were not in search of fields. There is so little arable land here that every square yard of earth had to be terraced in order to provide food for the inhabitants. They were not looking for comfort or convenience. Safety was their primary consideration. They were sufficiently civilized to practice intensive agriculture, sufficiently skillful to equal the best masonry the world has ever seen, sufficiently ingenious to make delicate bronzes, and sufficiently advanced in art to realize the beauty of simplicity. What could have induced such a people to select this remote fastness of the Andes, with all its disadvantages, as the site for their capital, unless they were fleeing from powerful enemies."

This book is an attempt to reflect on the process which made the Ucayali titling project possible. Begun in 1986 and involving the AIDESEP, IWGIA and OIRA, it was an innovative and essential first step in the process towards indigenous self-management.

Mining investment in Peru has been presented as necessary for national progress; however, it also has brought socioenvironmental costs, left unfulfilled hopes for development, and has become a principal source of confrontation and conflict. Fighting for Andean Resources focuses on the competing agendas for mining benefits and the battles over their impact on proximate communities in the recent expansion of the Peruvian mining frontier. The book complements renewed scrutiny of how globalization nurtures not solely antagonism but also negotiation and participation. Having mastered an intimate knowledge of Peru, Vladimir R. Gil Ramón insightfully documents how social technologies of power are applied through social technical protocols of accountability invoked in defense of nature and vulnerable livelihoods. Although analyses point to improvements in human well-being, a political and technical debate has yet to occur in practice that would define what such improvements would be, the best way to achieve and measure them, and how to integrate dimensions such as sustainability and equity. Many confrontations stem from frustrated expectations, environmental impacts, and the virtual absence of state apparatus in the locations where new projects emerged. This book presents a multifaceted perspective on the processes of representation, the strategies in conflicts and negotiations of development and nature management, and the underlying political actions in sites affected by mining.

Documents the epic conquest of the Inca Empire as well as the decades-long insurgency waged by the Incas against the Conquistadors, in a narrative history that is partially drawn from the storytelling traditions of the Peruvian Amazon Yora people. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.