Aspects of Latin American Integration and Non-Integration: Introduction

Author(s): Judith-Maria Buechler

Source: Ethnohistory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Spring, 1983), pp. 47-48
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/481240
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 Ethnohistory 30(2) 47-48 (1983) Buechler

ASPECTS OF LATIN AMERICAN INTEGRATION

AND NON-INTEGRATION

A Special Issue
Judith-Maria Buechler
Special Issue Editor

INTRODUCTION

by
JUDITH-MARIA BUECHLER
Hobart and William Smith Colleges

The search for dynamic models of social organization in Latin America has led
sophisticated attempts to understand the past in terms of itself and with respect to
sent. The authors in this issue share a regional focus, the concern for the "native"
history and an appreciation for cultural survival. They differ considerably in
theoretical orientations or approaches.
Behavior and relationships found in local communities are placed in a regional con
For example, Tom Zuidema's structural cognitive analysis of mummy cults, Inca
and the principles of ranking and class oppositions, "Hierarchy and Space in Incai
Organization," lead him away from a description ranking Cuzco to a complicated
of bureaucracy which may have integrated the entire Inca empire. In "Native Enc
the Upper Amazon: A Case of Regional Non-Integration," Anthony Stock is conc
with the political economy of the Cocomilla, a native enclave of 2,000 persons in six
munities in lowland northeastern Peru, who have maintained a niche in the regional
in the city and in rural areas during a succession of foreign intrusions: Spanish raid
sions, direct military rule, White Mestizo haciendas, rubber roundups and barbasc
tations. The interactional analysis of two rites, described in "Lore and Life: Cuna
Pageants, Exorcism and Diplomacy in the 20th Century," provides Alexander Moo
the opportunity to understand how San Blas Cuna Indians from fifty communities
coast of Panama, have maintained a social system by major alterations in thei
organization including the slow establishment of a regional tribal confederation. And
ly, for the author, "Trade and Market in Bolivia Before 1953" can only be unde
with regard to complex social networks linking three ecological zones and the count
with the capital city.
All four authors try to present the indigenous insider perspective on change.
Zuidema contrasts the Spanish chroniclers view of mummy cults as examples of d
history with one that considers Inca history as mostly political myth, treatises on pr
and functions of bureaucratic integration. He maintains that the hierarchical organ
of ancestral mummies does not refer to actual historical or genealogical links

47

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 48 JUDITH-MARIA BUECHLER

Spaniards thought but to politic

ferent rank, class, and geograp
the changes in political econom
those of an ethnic group in a pa
the "intervention" of Spanish, Colombians, Panamanians and North Americans in Cuna
life is reinterpreted, or interpreted by the Cuna in a dynamic world view and ritual ap-
paratus. Lastly, the author views the complex system of market exchange in La Paz not as
a Spanish imposition but as a resilient institution in articulation with state and local means
of exchange and distribution. Change then in all four articles is not seen as a simple con-
tinuity but as a complex transformation of principles of alliance, ecological adaptation,
ritual incorporation and economic integration which native actors have employed for their
own purposes: to justify conquest, rebellion, or livelihood.
This issue of Ethnohistory deals with both integration and non-integration. As noted, all
four authors describe extracommunity networks: political alliances, bureaucracies, ex-
change and ecological linkages, cult and ritual ties, which integrate diverse communities at
the same time they discuss non-integration, i.e., in the manner in which the cultures have
survived repeated attempts to destroy or incorporate them. Zuidema stresses the special
nature of Incaic cognition. Stocks points to the resilience of Cocomilla ecological adapta-
tion. According to Moore, a rich ritual apparatus allows the Cuna to become "civilized"
and yet remain Cuna; and this author stresses the none too peaceful but continued coex-
istence of indigenous marketing exchange with other forms of distribution and trade.

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