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Recognition Politics: Indigenous Rights and Ethnic Conflict in the Andes, Lorenza B. Fontana

Reviewed by Roberta Rice
 

Without a doubt, one of the most promising developments in Latin America over the past thirty years has been the rise of Indigenous movements and the expansion of democracy to include Indigenous actors and issues. Fontana's book is about what happens next now that Indigenous groups are relatively entrenched as social and political actors, or what the author terms the “post-recognition phase” (14). The book tells the story of the non-Indigenous, rural, poor communities who have been left behind by international recognition politics. Without recourse to Indigenous identity and living in an environment of resource scarcity, building resentment by peasant groups has translated into intercommunal conflicts with Indigenous peoples in the featured cases of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. In an era of growing strife and instability in the Andes, this book will make Indigenous politics scholars stop and think about the potential ramifications of our work.

The central thesis of the book is that recognition reforms that advance Indigenous peoples’ rights to the exclusion of other rural folk can produce “recognition conflicts” in the form of violent disputes between peasant groups and Indigenous peoples (4). This is a controversial argument, one that runs counter to the literature on multiculturalism and Indigenous rights. Based on extensive

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