Linking Civil Society and the State: Urban Popular Movements, the Left, and Local Government in Peru, 1980-1992 (review)
ing reading. In many ways, the heart of Pallares' book is found in chapters four and five, where she examines two different ways that Indians in specific areas began to mobilize politically. In the Cotacachi area (Imbabura province), Indians began to contest municipal elections in the 1970s. They did so through electoral alliances with existing political parties and the adoption of a peasantist rhetoric that emphasized the problems of the rural poor rather than of Indians as such. Indians themselves have been directly represented in the municipal council continuously since 1979, and it was here that Ecuador's first Indian mayor was elected. In contrast, in Cacha (Chimborazo province), a rather different political goal was pursued: full administrative autonomy from the local mestizo town. This process involved a prior struggle to free Indians from exploitation by local mestizo merchants and moneylenders, exercised through the fiesta system. Political autonomy was achieved in 1980 when Cacha was declared an independent parroquia and an indigenous teniente politico was named, who took on local policing and civil registry duties, as well as promoting community forms of justice.