Indigenous Settlers of the Galpagos: Conservation Law, Race, and Society

(Hardback)

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In Indigenous Settlers of the Galpagos: Conservation Law, Race, and Society, Pilar Snchez Voelkl offers an anthropological and historical account about the early arrival and prominent presence of Andean Indigenous people in the Galpagos Islands. Her research traces the stories of the earliest colonizers, who permanently settled on the archipelago, from the 1860s onwards. Snchez Voelkl argues that their journey illustrates the way multiple notions of nature, race, and society interact to shape a social order in Darwins archipelago. Contrary to common portraits of the islands as an example of untouched nature, Indigenous Settlers of the Galpagos provides compelling evidence about the complexities about human and non-human relationships.

Reviews

In this carefully researched and highly readable ethnographic and historical account, Pilar Snchez Voelkl provides a new understanding of an Indigenous Ecuadorean population, the Salasacas, marginalized not only in their own homeland but also within scientific, naturalist discourses of the Galapagos. Snchez Voelkl reveals the ways in which racial ideology, the politics of the Ecuadorean state, international tourism, and the transnational conservationist impulse intersect to shape the contemporary reality of native peoples of the islands, as well as their efforts to push back against these forces of displacement and discrimination. The result is a fascinating work of critical anthropology that will interest students and professionals of Latin America and Indigenous social life at all levels.

-- Daniel M. Goldstein, professor emeritus, Rutgers University

This book provides a fine analysis that unpacks not only the structural and everyday racism in Galpagos, but also the Indigenous struggle for dignity and respect. In doing so, Pilar Snchez Voelkl tracks the origins of these issues in Galpagos contemporary history as well as in Salasaca parish history.

-- Pablo Ospina Peralta, Universidad Andina Simn Bolvar, Quito

Author Bio

Pilar Snchez Voelkl is a cultural anthropologist and author of Indigenous Settlers of the Galpagos and Masculinities in Corporate Elites in Colombia and Ecuador.