In Indigenous Settlers of the Galapagos: Conservation Law, Race, and Society, Pilar Sanchez Voelkl offers an anthropological and historical account about the early arrival and prominent presence of Andean Indigenous people in the Galapagos Islands. Her research traces the stories of the earliest colonizers, who permanently settled on the archipelago, from the 1860s onwards. Sanchez Voelkl argues that their journey illustrates the way multiple notions of nature, race, and society interact to shape a social order in Darwin's archipelago. Contrary to common portraits of the islands as an example of untouched nature, Indigenous Settlers of the Galapagos provides compelling evidence about the complexities about human and non-human relationships.
Pilar Sanchez Voelkl is a cultural anthropologist and author of Indigenous Settlers of the Galapagos and Masculinities in Corporate Elites in Colombia and Ecuador.
Chapter 1: Ecuadorian Colonization Chapter 2: Science takes on the Galapagos Chapter 3: From the Andean Highlands to the Galapagos Islands Chapter 4: Salasaca Colonos Chapter 5: The Disappearing "Colono" Chapter 6: Translating Conservation Law
In this carefully researched and highly readable ethnographic and historical account, Pilar Sanchez 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. Sanchez 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 Galapagos, but also the Indigenous struggle for dignity and respect. In doing so, Pilar Sanchez Voelkl tracks the origins of these issues in Galapagos contemporary history as well as in Salasaca parish history. -- Pablo Ospina Peralta, Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar, Quito
