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Introduction: Peru and the ethnography of writing -- An Andean community writes itself -- From khipu to narrative -- A tale of two lettered cities: schooling from ayllu to state -- "Papelito manda": the power of writing -- Power over writing: academy and ayllu -- Writing and the rehearsal of the past -- Village and diaspora as deterritorialized library

Los años noventa, época en la cual el significado transcultural de la "historicidad" llegó a ser tema candante dentro de la teoría antropológica, alternaron algunos fundamentos de la vocación etnohistórica. ¿Cuánta variación cultural existe entre los diversos conceptos del tiempo y del cambio? ¿Hasta qué punto aquellas diferencias gobiernan la actuación histórica de los pueblos? Al contemplar tales preguntas, el debate teóricodentro de la etnohistoria viró de la posición de crítica metodológica a la de liderazgo heurístico donde quiera que se pretendía investigar las historias de los "otros". Aunque Oceanía fue la zona que llevó la voz cantante durante el famoso debate entre Sahlins y Obeyesekere, los estudiosos andinos y amazónicos aportaron contribuciones no menos creativas.

The 1970s witnessed an outpouring of research on the Andean cultural tradition sufficient to place Andean studies among the well-established regional subspecialties of anthropology. Among the historic factors converging to produce this abundance was the emergence of a generation of fieldworkers trained by ethnohistorians such as John Murra, John Rowe, Herman Trimborn, and R. T. Zuidema. Their understanding of historical and intellectual activity in past Andean communities made it possible, even in the heyday of development theories, to appreciate the modern Andean tradition as an active and creative rather than merely resistant presence. At the same time, events within the Andean republics called forth new interest in the indigenous tradition. In Peru the Velasco regime (1968–75), with its far-reaching intervention into rural institutions, received both support and criticism from those whose knowledge of the Quechua countryside seemed suddenly valuable. In Ecuador the post-1974 oil boom awakened hope for a more "integrated" national state, thereby provoking debate (as yet inconclusive) between pluralist and assimilationist approaches to the problems of the multiethnic highlands. In all the Andean countries regional and national research institutions with periodicals and monographs of their own took form. Generally outside universities, and sometimes with support from sectors of the Catholic Church increasingly open to the study of local belief, they produced distinctive schools of thought fruitfully different from the academic tradition proper. Regional meetings such as the Congresos del Hombre Andino indicated the coalescence of an Andean field of study across national boundaries. In some places, self-mobilization of Andean communities and experimentation with bilingual media and institutions raised hopes for a definition of the Andean situation from the Andean side, a definition not precast in terms familiar to the Hispanic-oriented outsider.