Making Ecuadorian Histories: Four Centuries of Defining Power (review)

The publication of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities (New York, 1983) inspired a generation of scholars whose explorations of the poetics and politics of "imagining" greatly enriched our understanding of that enduring historical artifact, the nation. Latin Americanists have taken up Anderson's evocative, if notoriously slippery, claims with both a critical eye and an enthusiastic embrace, as they have scrutinized and refined many of his arguments in order to analyze the discourses and practices of nationhood more effectively. It has become commonplace to describe national formations as processes; to look to museums, novels, maps, and censuses as evidence; and to disagree on the extent of inclusiveness or contradiction in nationalist discourses.

Hence, little is surprising about Benavides' attempt to use the archeological site of Cochasquí and the various narratives that explicate it to explore twentieth-century Ecuadorian nationalist discourses. He argues that the site is at the center of a number of historical narratives that inform popular understandings of Ecuadorian nationhood. Several entities, including the state and indigenous groups, offer their own renditions to legitimize their power or their authenticity (and thus their claim to power). Benavides draws principally from textbooks, tour-guide accounts, and texts used by conaie (Confederación Nacional de Indígenas del Ecuador), Ecuador's most powerful indigenous group. Written in the wake of successful large-scale indigenous mobilizations of 1997 and 2000, this book argues that much is at stake in the relationships among history, archaeology, and politics.

Unfortunately, serious drawbacks greatly limit its utility for scholars. Benavides' use of the concept of hegemony lacks dynamism. Despite his invocation of Roseberry's injunctions to understand hegemony as a contested process, the author treats hegemony as a static object, speculating at one point about "the Indian movement's encounter with hegemony" (160). ¹ With such statements as "official discourse operates as if it has a life of its own" (86), his other key concept, discourse, comes across as disembodied and free-floating rather than constituent of, and constituted by, specific actors and entities.

Most troubling is the author's failure to apply his critical insights to his own work. By omitting any discussion of his methodology or primary sources, he hides the process by which his own narrative was constructed. Given his interest in the transparency (or lack thereof) of authoritative discourses, the absence of precise references and of a list of interviews is puzzling. Moreover, his insistence on rendering Indigenous-European interaction as 500 years of oppression and discrimination greatly oversimplifies a complex history. By taking this as his point of departure, he naturalizes a narrative that has been contested by many parties, including indigenous movements themselves. In its favor, the book admirably refuses to romanticize Ecuadorian indigenous movements and contributes new information to a relatively understudied field. Yet the methodological and theoretical foundations lead to conclusions that are less than illuminating.