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This article explores the multiple ways in which the 1934 massacre of peasants in Ránquil in the Chilean Andean region of Lonquimay has been remembered and explained in Chile across the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries. With the rise of the left and internal Communist Party debates in the 1930s, Ránquil first became an emblem of popular resistance and the unity between Mapuche and non-Mapuche peasants who were willing to sacrifice all in the name of revolution. During the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, Ránquil was one of several massacres transformed into narratives of popular heroism that were used as emblems to support the construction of a new and more inclusive national community. Yet because of Ránquil's unique location along the southern frontier where Chilean expansion into Mapuche territory created a rupture in the national imaginary that has yet to be closed, the presence of Mapuche peasants in the massacre continues to be debated until the present day. Ránquil is therefore an especially meaningful example of how debates over memory can serve as windows into the deeper conflicts and anxieties present in any society.

Decolonizing Native Histories is an interdisciplinary collection that grapples with the racial and ethnic politics of knowledge production and indigenous activism in the Americas. It analyzes the relationship of language to power and empowerment, and advocates for collaborations between community members, scholars, and activists that prioritize the rights of Native peoples to decide how their knowledge is used. The contributors—academics and activists, indigenous and nonindigenous, from disciplines including history, anthropology, linguistics, and political science—explore the challenges of decolonization. These wide-ranging case studies consider how language, the law, and the archive have historically served as instruments of colonialism and how they can be creatively transformed in constructing autonomy. The collection highlights points of commonality and solidarity across geographical, cultural, and linguistic boundaries and also reflects deep distinctions between North and South. Decolonizing Native Histories looks at Native histories and narratives in an internationally comparative context, with the hope that international collaboration and understanding of local histories will foster new possibilities for indigenous mobilization and an increasingly decolonized future.

This ambitious book began at a seminar in Mexico City in 1999 and culminated at a public conference in Washington, D.C., in 2000. Its eleven essays address the following question: if both the 1810 Independence wars and the 1910 Revolution had been preceded by periods of state-led reform, economic growth, and increasing disparities between rich and poor, could the strange parallelism that has marked modern Mexican history be repeated yet again in 2010?

In Tlatelolco, in the symbolically laden Plaza of the Three Cultures, there is a famous plaque commemorating the fall of Tenochtitlán, after a heroic defence organised by Cuauhtemoc. According to the official words there inscribed, that fall 'was neither a victory nor a defeat', but the 'painful birth' of present-day Mexico, the mestizo Mexico glorified and institutionalised by the Revolution of 1910. Starting with the experiences of 1968 – which added yet another layer to the archaeological sedimentation already present in Tlatelolco – and continuing with greater force in the face of the current wave of indigenous movements throughout Latin America, as well as the crisis ofindigenismoand of the postrevolutionary development model, many have begun to doubt the version of Mexican history represented therein.1Yet it is important to emphasise that the Tlatelolco plaque, fogged and tarnished as it may be today, would never have been an option in the plazas of Lima or La Paz. The purpose of this essay is to define and explain this difference by reference to the modern histories of Peru, Bolivia and Mexico. In so doing, I hope to elucidate some of the past and potential future contributions of indigenous political cultures to the ongoing formation of nation-states in Latin America.As suggested by the plaque in Tlatelolco, the process and symbolism ofmestizajehas been central to the Mexican state's project of political and territorial reorganisation. By 1970, only 7.8 % of Mexico's population was defined as Indian, and divided into 59 different linguistic groups.

THE AUTHOR STUDIES THE MODERN HISTORIES OF PERU, BOLIVIA, AND MEXICO, FOCUSING ON SOME OF THE PAST AND POTENTIAL FUTURE CONTRIBUTIONS OF INDIGENOUS POLITICAL CULTURES TO THE ONGOING FORMATION OF NATION-STATES IN LATIN AMERICA.