Review. Trials of Nation Making. Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in The Andes, 1810-1910

Reseña. Trials of Nation Making. Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in The Andes, 1810-1910

Originally written for volume two of the Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, edited by Stuart Schwartz and Frank Salomon and published in 1999, this powerful writing by Brooke Larson on four case studies in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, is focuses on the dynamics of subaltern subjectivities and social contexts, emphasizing the contradictions of liberalism in the Andean region from independence to 1910. Social contexts are known as they constitute post-independence Latin American history: initially flows of liberal ideas, and after disenchantment of elites with political change, transitions to authoritarian models. This work is unique for Larson's specific view of the place of indigenous groups in the Andean countries in what she calls nation-making, their participation in nation-building.