One State, Many Nations: Indigenous Rights Struggles in Ecuador

The Zápara are one of the smallest Indigenous nationalities in Ecuador, with roughly two hundred members, most of whom live along the Conambo and Pindoyacu rivers in Pastaza province. The Zápara language is a member of the Zaparoan language family, a small group of Amazonian languages in eastern Ecuador and northern Peru. In 1998 four communities organized as the Nacionalidad Zápara de Ecuador (Zápara Nationality of Ecuador, NAZAE) with the intent of reasserting Zápara identity and establishing a legal Zápara territory distinct from those of other Indigenous nationalities in the region. At the heart of this revitalization was an attempt to document the language of the remaining Zápara elders as "proof" of these communities' cultural uniqueness.

One State, Many Nations traces the Zápara nationality's process of self-organization and emergence within Ecuador's Indigenous movement from 1998 to 2008, to explore the complex role that multiculturalism has played in local Indigenous politics. The paradoxical treatment of Indigenous identity is the subject of this book. Its purpose is to explore the official recognition of ethnic and cultural difference in Ecuador with the following question in mind: has the official recognition of Indigenous rights provided new opportunities for Indigenous actors or further restricted their political action?

An excellent text for courses on globalization and Indigeneity, language disappearance and revitalization, or Indigenous movements in the Americas... --Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2012

In an ethnography that is both detailed and succinct, Viatori's One State, Many Nations: Indigenous rights Struggles in Ecuador presents a textbook case of contemporary indigenous activism. --Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Nov. 2012

This work makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of indigenous activism and the challenges that smaller indigenous groups face in attempting to achieve important goals....This book will be of interest not only to Ecuadorianists but also to scholars interested in indigenous activism more generally, and because it is short and readable it would be an excellent book for course adoption. Viatori has set a fine precent for further studies of this nature. --Erin E. O'Connor, The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History, 69:3, January 2013

This work makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of indigenous activism and the challenges that smaller indigenous groups face in attempting to achieve important goals....This book will be of interest not only to Ecuadorianists but also to scholars interested in indigenous activism more generally, and because it is short and readable it would be an excellent book for course adoption. Viatori has set a fine precent for further studies of this nature. --Erin E. O'Connor, The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History, 69:3, January 2013

The significant strengths of Viatori's study of indigenous activism coupled with the activism by powerful and well-educated others on behalf of this indigenous emergent ethnicity is the detailed description of microlevel interpersonal cooperation and competition, collaboration and opposition. --Norman E. Whitten, Jr. American Anthropologist, vol. 115, no. 4, Dec. 2013