It is indispensable that Ecuador has peace, but to have peace you need
freedom and to have freedom you need justice. And the Indian population
needs justice.-President Gustavo Noboa, January 23, 2000 For five
centuries, the Indians had very little voice in Ecuador. Now they are
major protagonists who seek more acceptable terms in which to coexist in
a society with two vastly different world views and cultures-that of
Indians and that of the descendants of Europeans. Their recent political
uprising has become the most powerful and influential indigenous
movement in Latin America. They have inspired other Indian movements
throughout the continent. Author Allen Gerlach details the origins and
evolution of the Indian rebellion, focusing on the key period of the
last thirty years. In the process, he also presents a concise political
history of Ecuador. Gerlach infuses his text with an abundant supply of
quotations from participants in the rise in ethnic politics, bringing
Ecuador's history and the Indians' opposition to the country's
government to life. In addition, Indians, Oil, and Politics serves as a
case study on what happens to a nation when its economy is based solely
on one commodity-in this instance, oil. The discovery of oil in the
Amazon in 1967 was a major factor in Ecuador's modernization and also
sparked the Indians' fight for their rights. Oil wealth wreaked havoc on
the environment and cultures of the native people of the Amazon, and it
did not end old traditions of political fragmentation and corruption.
Gerlach explains that the Indians fought back by forming federations to
advance their interests and by joining forces with similar structures
molded in the highlands of Ecuador. Together they created the country's
first truly national indigenous organization in 1986-CONAIE (The
Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador)-and by 2000 their
movement was a major force to be reckoned with, one which increasingly
influenced state policy. This book shows how the Indians he
