Recent biodiversity research in the Western Amazon has emphasized the linkages among road construction, deforestation and loss of indigenous lands. Many observers have concluded that hydrocarbon production inevitably means destruction of forests and expropriation of native territory. Yet evidence from the eastern lowlands of Ecuador (known as the Oriente) shows that oil can be developed without roads or harmful impacts. The Oriente also provides another contrasting case: in areas where no oil was discovered, the government often built roads to support its agricultural colonization efforts. In these areas, a great deal of deforestation and indigenous displacement occurred. Such evidence suggests that a different set of agrarian and environmental policies might permit oil activity without loss of rain forest or indigenous territory.

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In the 1960s and 1970s, anthropologists began modern ethnographic research in lowland Ecuador and Colombia. At the time, Cofán and Siona people there lived in apparently remote forests with a diverse subsistence economy based on hunting, fishing, and gardening. It was difficult to imagine that traditional indigenous territories often coincided with old rubber outposts, derelict haciendas, missionary stations, and abandoned oil camps. Nor did researchers envision the maelstrom that had taken place fifty years earlier, when native families were forced to collect rubber throughout the western Amazon. It seemed more reasonable to think that they had somehow avoided the cataclysmic impacts of rubber extraction that led to enslavement and ethnocide along the lower Putumayo River. But the story turns out to be much more complicated, as new historical research shows. Since 1930, the resurgence of Cofán and Siona communities presents a compelling story of survival and reconstruction, not isolation. It bears directly on current discussions of ethnicity, citizenship, and indigenous rights in contemporary Amazonian society.

Civil‐religious hierarchies (cargo systems) have often formed the subject of anthropological research in Mesoamerica; indeed, it has been said that they play an essential role in structuring and organizing native communities. Using ethnohistorical evidence from highland Chiapas, however, we argue that such hierarchies emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in response to changes in the regional economy that placed new demands upon Indian laborers. [civil‐religious hierarchies, cargo systems, Mesoamerica, economic development]

R e s u m e n Este trabajo se enfoca en el boom cauchero y su impacto entre los grupos Waorani ubicados en la violenta frontera ecuatoriana. Antes de 1910, los Waorani a veces recolectaban caucho para intercambiar con los comerciantes en la cuenca baja del río Curaray. Pero el comercio pacífico terminó abruptamente. Después de 1930, con el colapso del boom, la mayor parte de los Waorani no optó por el aislamiento voluntario, sino que siguieron a los runa quienes se retiraron a los márgenes occidentales de la selva. Desde allí, los Waorani atacaron a los asentamientos kichwas para robar herramientas de acero y, en ocasiones, a los cautivos. Simultáneamente, incrementó la violencia entre las familias Waorani. Ya para 1958, cuando llegaron los misioneros norteamericanos, muchos Waorani estaban dispuestos a buscar otra salida. Tales acontecimientos sugieren que nuestra visión de la sociedad Waorani y su relación con el mundo exterior necesita una revisión fundamental. A b s t r a c tAnthropologists have often described the Waorani people in eastern Ecuador as fearsome warriors who violently reject contact with outsiders and even with other Waorani. Yet archival and documentary sources paint a very different picture. Even before American missionaries arrived in 1958, Waorani did not generally opt for voluntary isolation. This article highlights the key roles played by external actors-mainly rubber collectors and other commodity extractors, missionaries, and government agents-in altering Waorani responses to the outside world. It describes how changing relations between Waorani groups and outsiders have reshaped patterns of conflict and power in Waorani