Slavery and Utopia

Fernando Santos-Granero is a senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and a specialist on the Yanesha of Peruvian Amazonia. His books include Vital Enemies: Slavery, Predation, and the Amerindian Political Economy of Life.

The book’s protagonist, also known as Chief Tasorentsi ('all-power blower world transformer'), his aspirations and indigenous worldviews, the bloody revolt and reaction, a changing export economy, and networks of foreign and Native Adventist preachers come into fascinating focus over eight chapters. (Choice) [Slavery and Utopia] brings to light one...long and intriciate process of indigenous resistance to territorial loss in the Peruvian Amazon...While taking on a refuge history approach to privilege narrative over structure and agency over determinism, Santos-Granero, perhaps unintentionally, has also contributed to a much larger historical chapter of indigenous peoples' resistance to feudal and capitalist encroachment—a struggle that endures today. (American Ethnologist) No one knows more about the Peruvian rubber boom than Fernando Santos-Granero. (Ethnohistory) Equal parts history and anthropology, Slavery and Utopia provides a close reading of the dynamic networks of indigenous resistance in Peru's central Amazon during the early twentieth century…Santos-Granero's collaborative triangulation of the scant evidence resuscitates stories that were silenced and co-opted by colonisers and their allies even as they occurred...the book's greatest contribution is perhaps its most subtle one: the centering of the stories of indigenous actors in their struggles against colonisation within a historiographical tradition that was built to forget them. (Journal of Latin American Studies) [A] fascinating biography of a man about whom very little is known....[Slavery and Utopia] is a deeply original work...Tasorentsi's remarkable life and the rebellions he led, the cultural principles and political agency of Amazonian peoples like the Ashaninka, and the persistence of indigenous slavery must become integrated to national and regional histories. This important book provides an ideal opportunity to do so. (Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies) This is a superbly researched book. Santos-Granero uses techniques borrowed from all corners of the disciplines of history and anthropology, from careful historical research to ethnomusicology. (The Americas) Slavery and Utopia is a fascinating reconstruction of the personal and political trajectory of JosÉ Carlos Amaringo Chico, an Ashaninka leader also known as Chief Tasorentsi…[a] compelling and erudite book...In detailing a distinctly indigenous response to the collapse of the rubber boom in Peru, Santos-Granero shows that indigenous peoples were agents of social transformation and authors of a moral discourse that denounced injustice in the Amazon. (Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology)

• IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsPrologueChapter 1. An Indian Uprising Thirteen Years Later, 1928Chapter 2. Chronicle of a Revolt Foretold, 1915–1916Chapter 3. First Signs of Indigenous Discontent, 1910–1914Chapter 4. Early Years of an Indian Slaver, 1875–1897Chapter 5. A Struggle for Vitality, 1912–1914Chapter 6. After the Waters of Youth, 1915–1916Chapter 7. From War Chief to People-Gatherer, 1921–1929Chapter 8. Twilight Years of an Old World Transformer, 1930–1958EpilogueNotesGlossaryReferencesArchives ConsultedInterviewsIndex