Remaking Indigeneity in the Amazon

Esteban Rozo is a Professor of Anthropology at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. His research focuses on how conversion to Christianity in the Colombian Amazon relates to processes of colonization, state-formation and the emergence of new forms of indigeneity.

"Valuable corrective to contemporary political discourse about settler colonialism, which is usually framed in binary terms. In contrast, Esteban Rozo shows how indigeneity in the Colombian Amazon emerged in relation to state formation, evangelization, and economic interests, as well as choices made by indigenous peoples themselves."Stuart Kirsch, University of Michigan, USA"Esteban Rozo offers a powerful intervention in the ways that states, Christian missionaries, and industries of capitalist extraction impinge on indigenous life in the Colombian Amazon. Pushing against the figuration of indigenous groups as passive victims of outside encroachments, Rozo shows how indígenas selectively appropriated Catholic and then evangelical Christianities to define their own identities and advance their own interests."Paul Christopher Johnson, University of Michigan, USA"This outstanding historical ethnography analyzes the relational construction of indigeneity in the Colombian Amazon frontier. With interpretative fluidity, the study looks at the social and cultural processes that linked indigenous peoples to Christianity, the nation-state, narratives of modernity, and development politics."César Ceriani Cernadas, CONICET- UBA, Argentina

• Introduction 1. The Making of an Amazonian Frontier 2. Conversion Under Dispute: Evangelical Christianity and the State 3. Between Rupture and Continuity: The Politics of Conversion 4. Christianity, Materiality, and the Critique of Modernity 5. Indigeneity, Development and Extractivism. Conclusions