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The Gran Chaco is a sparsely populated, hot and semi-aridlowland region of the Río de la Plata basin, dividedbetween eastern Bolivia, Paraguay, northern Argentina and aportion of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. This land issometimes called the Chaco Plain ... Read more

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During the Inca Empire and, indeed, in the previous centuries, the harsh climate and difficult physical environment of the Andean plateau around Lake Titicaca sustained a population many times larger than the one struggling to sustain itself in more recent times. Academics began studying this in the late 1960s and discovered that the Incas and their forefathers had used a complex system of raised fields and irrigation canals to obtain high yields from their crops. This technology seems to have been lost after the Spanish conquest. Since its academic rediscovery, there have been numerous projects set up by the Peruvian and Bolivian governments as well as international NGOs, which have set about reintroducing this system of farming, along with the traditional Andean "wonder crops" such as quinua, canilua and amaranth. This book presents a critical analysis of these raised field projects, setting them in context and taking into consideration factors such as agrarian reforms and counter-reforms, the psychology of aid dependency and the limited remit of the agencies.It shows that very few of the raised field projects have led to permanent cultivation and explains the failures in terms of a variety of standard factors. Its conclusions suggest what may be a more successful way forward, advocating a more integrated approach, which recognizes the integrated nature of society and economy in the traditional communities and the existence of a rounded Andean technology, of which the raised fields comprise only one part. ... Read more

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The people of Quirpini, a rural community in the Bolivian Andes, are in constant motion. They visit each other's houses, work in their fields, go to nearby towns for school, market, or official transactions, and travel to Buenos Aires for wage labor. In this rich ethnography, Stuart Alexander Rockefeller describes how these places become intertwined via circuits constituted by the movement of people, goods, and information. Drawing on the work of Henri LeFebvre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Nancy Munn, Rockefeller argues that by their travels, Quirpinis play a role in shaping the places they move through. This compelling study makes important contributions to contemporary debates about spatiality, temporality, power, and culture.

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The Latin American subcontinent appears to have reinvented itself in the 21^st century. Its economy has been transformed under liberalization and globalisation. Decentralization and the democratic transition have modified the political environment, while local development approaches are replacing the (grand) national-regional development schemes. The current local governance and local development debates refer to very different levels of scale: from small, rural communities to fairly extensive (even international) spaces. It is clear that the development process shows substantial differences between large and small cities, and between core regions and remote rural areas. Indeed, the heterogeneity of the process is strongly influenced by national, regional and local contexts. The empirical studies in this volume show the diversity and complexity of local governance and local development in Latin America, while avoiding stereotypes about the impact of public sector reform and administrative decentralization.

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In 1857, Captain William Lewis Herndon sacrificed his life trying to save 600 passengers and crew when his ship foundered in a hurricane off the Carolina coast. Memorialized in Gary Kinder's best-selling book Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, Herndon, with this final courageous act, epitomized a lifetime of heroism. Seven years earlier, the secretary of the Navy had appointed Herndon to lead the first American expedition into the Amazon Valley. Herndon departed Lima, Peru, on May 20, 1851, and arrived at Para, Brazil, nearly a year later, traveling 4,000 miles by foot, mule, canoe, and small boat. He cataloged the scientific and commercial observations requested by Congress, but he filed his report as a narrative, creating an intimate portrait of an exotic land before the outside world rushed in. Herndon's report so far surpassed his superiors' expectations that instead of printing the obligatory few hundred copies for Congress, the secretary of the Navy ordered 10,000 copies in the first print run; three months later, he ordered 20,000 more. Herndon described his adventures with such insight, such compassion and wit, and such literary grace that he came to symbolize the new spirit of exploration and discovery sweeping mid-nineteenth-century America. For the next hundred years, Herndon's report languished out of print before being revived briefly in 1951. Now, for the first time in nearly fifty years, Gary Kinder and Grove Press bring to readers one of the greatest chronicles of travel and exploration ever written. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Spell check city
This is a absolutely fascinating historical account marred by at least a thousand typos.It was sheer pain to get through.Buyers deserve more for their dollar.Yes, we were warned by the publisher, but the company also wrote that the robot that turned the pages and photographed each page "is 99 percent accurate."Wow.

By the way, the book reveals that the Herndon article on Wikipedia has faulty dates and does little credit to the daring exploits of a heroic naval explorer.

this is VOLUME 2 ONLY!written by another army officer NOT herndon
This is only volume 2 of the two volume report about the amazon, and vol 1 was written by Herndon, and vol 2 by another army officer on the expedition.not as promised

a bit disapointing
Book is very generalized with little detail of trials and triumphs,rather boring after a while.I was hoping for more details of the amazon valley and its people,you wont find it here.

Gift
This book was requested for Christmas by a descriminating family member so it must be good!

A Definite Adventure !!
This book was very interesting and led the reader into so many villages and introduced various cultures.It gives an inside look to the Amazon and the difficulty in this venture.If a reader does not enjoy going into a great number of different villages or prefers a book that sticks to few areas and characters, then this is not a read for them. It is mainly for those that are adventure seakers. CP ... Read more

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As indigenous peoples in Latin America have achieved greater prominence and power, international agencies have attempted to incorporate the agendas of indigenous movements into development policymaking and project implementation. Transnational networks and policies centered on ethnically-aware development paradigms have emerged with the goal of supporting indigenous cultures while enabling indigenous peoples to access the ostensible benefits of economic globalization and institutionalized participation. Focused on the Andean countries of Bolivia and Ecuador, Indigenous Development in the Andes is a nuanced examination of the complexities involved in designing and executing "culturally appropriate" development agendas. Robert Andolina, Nina Laurie, and Sarah A. Radcliffe illuminate a web of relations among indigenous villagers, social movement leaders, government officials, NGO workers, and staff of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank.

The authors argue that this reconfiguration of development policy and practice permits Ecuadorian and Bolivian indigenous groups to renegotiate their relationship to development as subjects who contribute and participate. Yet it also recasts indigenous peoples and their cultures as objects of intervention and largely fails to address fundamental concerns of indigenous movements, including racism, national inequalities, and international dependencies. Andean indigenous peoples are less marginalized, but they face ongoing dilemmas of identity and agency as their fields of action cross national boundaries and overlap with powerful institutions. Focusing on the encounters of indigenous peoples with international development as they negotiate issues related to land, water, professionalization, and gender, Indigenous Development in the Andes offers a comprehensive analysis of the diverse consequences of neoliberal development, and it underscores crucial questions about globalization, governance, cultural identities, and social movements. ... Read more