Encounters with Guna Celebrations
In 1681, an injured pirate named Lionel Wafer spent several months in the Darién region of eastern Panamá recuperating with the local Indians, who, he noted…
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Theme: Indigenous Issues
A Mayan Financial Crash
Next to an ancestor cross, where Ixil priests make regular offerings, lives one of Nebaj’s better-known financial speculators. Doña Alfonsa (not her real name) has eight children and sells food in the market. She doesn’t own a motor vehicle but she does have a cell phone. Her story is well-known because she has repeatedly apologized for it. In 2005, Alfonsa and her husband began asking their neighbors for huge loans. …
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Llamas, Weavings, and Organic Chocolate
first met Kevin “Benito” Healy a little over four years ago at an information session he gave to a group of State Department Foreign Service officers on their way to assignments in the Andes. After the session, I asked Healy…
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Indigenous Rights
In recent human rights practice, Latin America’s indigenous peoples have fared better than its Army officers. While government efforts to apply the rule of law to military officers have been…
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Community Ecotourism in the Global Economy
(Napo Province, Ecuador) The RICANCIE community eco-tourism project in the lowland Quichua Indian community at Runa Huasi embraces two rivers. Winding northward through Amazonian indigenous lands …
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