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Documentation around a museum exhibition
This book is a collection of photographs and some background text of an exhibition of the same title.The photographs are good.The information behind them is academic and dry.So beyond getting the book for some interesting photographs you would not need to including this book in things related to either Tiwanaku or the Inca.In fact the book makes a tepid case of this link between Tiwanaku and the Inca.The Inca themselves identified with this area and claimed (as the current conquerors) the divine descendency from the Tiwanaku.But the Inca also strongly inherited their culture from the Wari, Moche, Chavin, and others.

If you are interested in Tiwanaku then 'the' prime resource is Ancient Tiwanaku (Case Studies in Early Societies).

One of the few books you'll find on the Tiwanaku - scholarly exhibition catalogue
This is one of the few books to be found on the Tiwanaku people of Lake Titicaca.These are a people who pre-dated the Inca and for close to 800 years dominated the highlands in what is now Peru and Bolivia.

Today their most visible remains is the gate of the sun and semi sunken temple on the shore of Lake Titicaca. They left no written records and in the immediate area of Tiwanaku city itself their remains have been poorly excavated over the years.Aside from their ruins perhaps their most stunning legacy has been their textiles.

This book displays a number of gorgeous textiles that were produced by the Tiwanaku and Wari peoples - these textiles, most of them today in private collections, on display here for the first time in one place, are one of the main reasons to get this book.

The text surrounding the textiles, snuff trays and sculptures produced in Tiwanaku and Wari illustrated in this book is scholarly.It draws on what little we have been able to find out about these people to show us a culture that was both savage, tightly integrated with nature and a people with high artistic sensibilities.If you want to know more about pre-Columbian cultures that extend beyond the Inca this book is one you should get for your collection about a little discussed people.If you enjoy pre-Columbian textiles this book should not be missed, if only for its colour illustrations.
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This beautifully written book weaves reflections on anthropological fieldwork together with evocative meditations on a spectacular landscape as it takes us to the remote indigenous villages on the shore of Lake Titicaca, high in the Peruvian Andes. Ben Orlove brings alive the fishermen, reed cutters, boat builders, and families of this isolated region, and describes the role that Lake Titicaca has played in their culture. He describes the landscapes and rhythms of life in the Andean highlands as he considers the intrusions of modern technology and economic demands in the region. Lines in the Water tells a local version of events that are taking place around the world, but with an unusual outcome: people here have found ways to maintain their cultural autonomy and to protect their fragile mountain environment.
The Peruvian highlanders have confronted the pressures of modern culture with remarkable vitality. They use improved boats and gear and sell fish to new markets but have fiercely opposed efforts to strip them of their indigenous traditions. They have retained their customary practice of limiting the amount of fishing and have continued to pass cultural knowledge from one generation to the next--practices that have prevented the ecological crises that have followed commercialization of small-scale fisheries around the world. This book--at once a memoir and an ethnography--is a personal and compelling account of a research experience as well as an elegantly written treatise on themes of global importance. Above all, Orlove reminds us that human relations with the environment, though constantly changing, can be sustainable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Feel-Good Ethnography
This ethnography is quite literary with lots of anecdotes and popular song narratives.However, it also deals quite seriously with contemporary environmental issues like invasive species, biological diversity and the rights of subsistence communities.I recommend taking it to the beach or assigning it in an undergraduate seminar.

Excellent
(Planeta.com Journal) -- Lines in the Water (University of California Press, 2002), a beautifully written ethnography of rural fishermen and their families. The book's subtitle "Nature and Culture at Lake Titicaca" specifies the center of action, but the scope is much broader and deeper. It's actually hard to find the words to say how delightful this book is. Author Ben Orlove is an environmental science professor at the University of California, Davis, and his book is based on three decades of trips to Peru and Bolivia. The book is a showcase of fresh writing and a major contribution to the literature about South America. Orlove provides a frank account of the role academics themselves play. He includes himself in this story and shares candid observations -- from his reactions to office politics to daydreaming about museums. This book is highly recommended. Eco travelers visiting Lake Titicaca would do well to read this book in advance.

A gem of a cross-disciplinary book
This is a gem, written with great respect for the indigenous people who live aound Lake Titicaca, well-annotated and with wonderful photographs by the author. Orlove has broad interests - anthropology, economics, natural history, environmental issues, to name a few, and a talent for accessing interesting memories. He conveys his astute observations in clear and vivid prose.The book is organized nicely - I especially liked the material in the final chapter, entitled "Paths", which offers an antidote to the sad fact that roads and highways are so often destructive to local people and to biodiversity. Paths, literal or metaphorical, also provide valuable linkages and essential connections among the various components of this remote but very interesting and community with ancient roots. Orlove provides the reader with a sense of having traveled those paths for a short while with him. ... Read more

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In December 2005, following a series of convulsive upheavals that saw the overthrow of two presidents in three years, Bolivian peasant leader Evo Morales became the first Indian president in South American history. Consequently, according to S. Sándor John, Bolivia symbolizes new shifts in Latin America, pushed by radical social movements of the poor, the dispossessed, and indigenous people once crossed off the maps of "official" history. But, as John explains, Bolivian radicalism has a distinctive genealogy that does not fit into ready-made patterns of the Latin American left.

According to its author, this book grew out of a desire to answer nagging questions about this unusual place. Why was Bolivia home to the most persistent and heroically combative labor movement in the Western Hemisphere? Why did this movement take root so deeply and so stubbornly? What does the distinctive radical tradition of Trotskyism in Bolivia tell us about the past fifty years there, and what about the explosive developments of more recent years? To answer these questions, John clearly and carefully pieces together a fragmented past to show a part of Latin American radical history that has been overlooked for far too long. Based on years of research in archives and extensive interviews with labor, peasant, and student activists--as well as Chaco War veterans and prominent political figures--the book brings together political, social, and cultural history, linking the origins of Bolivian radicalism to events unfolding today in the country that calls itself "the heart of South America." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An essential resource for Bolivia
This book, by one of the most important scholars of Latin America working in North America, has radicals abuzz on three continents.Professor John's history of Bolivia is the first of its kind, telling the full story of Bolivia's Indian working class in the 19th and 20th centuries, right up to the time of Evo Morales. Making great use of unique source material and his own interviews with participants, Johns explores the struggles of the miners in depth--their fights against the mining companies and a series of repressive regimes, their encounter with communism, including their special relationship with Trotsky. The revolution of 1952, in which the Indian miners took the central role, is a focal point of John's study. And as he traces the extent to which their revolution did and did not erase the old repressive order, the author also demonstrates a moving sensitivity to and appreciation of Indian culture. For even as the miners embrace such a modern "European" philosophy as Leon Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, they draw strength from their own culture--their Indian languages, music and folk ways.

If North Americans think of Bolivian radicalism at all, they tend to think of Che Guevara's failed guerrilla war of 1967. John notes that a young Che Guevara was a witness to miner militancy at the time of the 1952 revolution. But John explains (and this is also shown in the recent movie "Che" by Steven Soderbergh) that when the revolutionary guerrilla leader went to Bolivia in 1967, he did not understand its radical traditions. He placed himself in the Southern mountains, far from the revolutionary miners and the peasants who follow them. What few peasants he encountered in the desolate area in which he chose to operate were easily intimidated by the government's U.S.-back counterinsurgency efforts. The miners were sympathetic, and even went on strike in support of Che.They saluted his courage and spilled their blood in solidarity, but they understood that then as now, the struggle would be won not in the wilderness but in La Paz, Cochabamba, Potosi, and the other heavily Indian cities and towns of the Altiplano.

For those who want to understand Bolivia and the radical ways of its extraordinary, combative working class, this book is a must. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Miss Bolivia is a Bolivian beauty contest responsible for selecting women to represent Bolivia in the Miss Universe, Miss World, Miss International, and Miss Earth international pageants. It was founded in 1959 and Gloria Suárez de Limpias has been the event's director since 1979. As of 2009, Bolivia has not won a Miss Universe or Miss World title. A three-hour parade is held annually on August 5. Bolivian TV channel Unitel broadcasts it to the rest of Latin America, and cable broadcasts are available in the United States. For approximately one month, there are several preliminary events and presentations regarding the main parade. ... Read more

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This is the first in a series of edited volumes that reports on recent research in the south central Andes. Volume I contains 18 chapters that cover the entire range of human settlement in the region, from the Early Archaic to the early Colonial Period. The book contains both short research reports as well as longer synthetic essays on work conducted over the last decade. It will be a critical resource for scholars working in the central Andes and adjacent areas. ... Read more

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The book presents, for the first time, a rich body of empirical data on the chronology of the Tiwanaku state; the nature of the social and political relationships between the city and its hinterland; the form and meaning of its monumental and elite architecture; and the texture of everyday life in its residential quarters. Kolata concludes this monumental study with a chapter that places the organization and historical dynamics of Tiwanaku society into a broader theoretical framework that has great salience for archaeological interpretation throughout the Americas. ... Read more

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Roads Less Traveled is based upon forty-five years of travel by American architect James Warfield. It is a visual and verbal memoir. Its text is culled from Warfield's travel journals, spontaneous accounts written on site as he experienced the places and people of cultures around the world. Each chapter is anchored by provocative photos of places, often gritty and textured, which find their focus in the vernacular living environments of uniquely different peoples. Portrait galleries grace each chapter with the faces of man, celebrating the dignity of the individual, the distinctiveness of cultures, and the commonality of mankind. The book is a gift from a lifetime of exploration of the color, texture and richness of our shared world patrimony. ... Read more

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In Bolivia, politics have always shaped art, particularly when it comes to film. This book presents Bolivia's most significant filmmakers largely in their own words. Since 1981, JosŽ Sánchez-H. has personally interviewed most of the filmmakers featured and has consistently maintained a commitment to rigorous scholarship and attention to new developments. One of the first studies in English on Bolivian cinema, this work provides the non-Bolivian with important information about Bolivian cinema and its cultural and political context. The chapters flow from a broad profile of the country and its history through a chronological presentation of the history of Bolivian cinema to careful treatments of important films, filmmakers, and periods in Bolivian film history. Filmmakers treated include Antonio Eguino, Jorge Sanjines, Jorge Ruiz, Marcos Loayza, Paolo Agazzi, and Oscar Soria. Sanchez-H. includes information about every aspect of the cinema including the music. Appendixes include a chronology of the films and political events, a list of awards won by Bolivian films, and useful addresses. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A must read for movie buffs and historians!
Dr Sanchez-H does a splendid job of documenting the influences inside and outside of Bolivia that shaped Bolivian film and culture. His work not only uses an analytical process but is highly creative as well. A "must read" for anyone interested in Latin American history, film, and politics. Two thumbs up!

pleasure
Wonderfull book. Both Jorge Ruiz, 'the Bolivian Bob Flaherty' and Jorge Sanjines, 'the Pearl of the Andes', have produced works that stand the test of time. They are real filmmakers, in heart and soul. And trough their works speaks deep passion for the lives lived in this remote area of the world. Did you know that documentarist Jorge Ruiz was the first one to come up with the idea for the story that eventually resulted in 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'?
And that the Jorge Sanjines picture that stars GERALDINE CHAPLIN, 'PARA RECIBIR EL CANTO DE LOS PÁJAROS' was photographed by the great Bolivian cinematographer Guillermo Ruiz? The son of Jorge!

Variety International Film Guide 2001
Three unusual areas of film history at last receive their due.The Art and Politics of Bolivian Cinema, by Jose Sanchez-H. (Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland) places this Latin American nation's films in a historical and sociological context, and features interviews with some of the leading directors, above all Sanjines.

The Art and Politics of Bolivian Cinema
"...a valuable contribution to the still slim bibliography on Bolivian Cinema...a vivid and total mosaic of the history of Bolivian Cinema."-From the introduction by Jorge Ruiz, Bolivian Filmmaker

Other Reviews:

"Detailed information, not available elsewhere in English, fills the book, making it a major resource..."-FILM QUARTELY

"...a very comprehensive history based not only on sound research, but also on interviews with Bolivia's most significant filmmakers..a very valuable tool for students and scholars of filmand Latin American culture."-BRITISH BULLETIN OF PUBLICATIONS ON LATIN AMERICA

Greatly enlightening book on Bolivian Films
A book descrbing in depth the present and past reality ofbolivina filmmakers, actors an d the strong political backgorundbehind it, showing the harsh reality of this 3rd world drug republic. a must for dope users and film freaks as well ... Read more

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Chapter I: The United Nations-New Hope for Latin America - Chapter II: Technical Assistance - Chapter III: The Specialized Agencies - Chapter IV: The Economic Commission for Latin America - Chapter V: The Special Fund - Chapter VI: The Future Lies with the Children ... Read more

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Enjoy the tales of Latin America--in Spanish and in English!

In Stories from Latin America/Historias de Latinoamerica, we've placed the Spanish and English stories side by side--lado a lado--so you can practice and improve your reading skills in your new language while enjoying the support of your native tongue. This way, you'll avoid the inconvenience of constantly having to look up unfamiliar words and expressions in a dictionary. Read as much as you can understand, and then look to the facing page for help if necessary. As you read, you can check your comprehension by comparing the two versions of the story. You'll also find a bilingual vocabulary list at the end of the book, so you'll have a handy reference for new words.

Stories from Latin America/Historias de Latinoamerica gives you the chance to

• Enjoy 16 fascinating short stories from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, and more
• Fine-tune your language skills while gaining insight into the rich cultural heritage of the people of Latin America
• Improve your reading and listening skills with free audio downloads of four chapters from the book at mhprofessional.com

Genevieve Barlow is an experienced Spanish educator and author. ... Read more