“…Many investigations of retroarc deformation, crustal thickening, plateau uplift, and foreland basin generation have emphasized the importance of horizontal shortening in driving Andean orogenesis [Isacks, 1988;Roeder, 1988;Sheffels, 1990;Schmitz, 1994;Wigger et al, 1994;Beck et al, 1996;Allmendinger et al, 1997;Lamb and Hoke, 1997]. Recently, GPS studies have provided an opportunity to compare modern displacements to geologic rates of shortening [Norabuena et al, 1998;Horton, 1999;Liu et al, 2000;Lamb, 2000;Bevis et al, 2001;Hindle et al, 2002;Khazaradze and Klotz, 2003]. These comparisons, however, arrive at conflicting conclusions about whether shortening rates have increased, decreased, or remained steady during Cenozoic deformation.…”