100 books like Reimagining the Gran Chaco

By Silvia Hirsch (editor), Paola Canova (editor), Mercedes Biocca (editor)

Here are 100 books that Reimagining the Gran Chaco fans have personally recommended if you like Reimagining the Gran Chaco. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Book cover of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

René Harder Horst Author Of A History of Indigenous Latin America: Aymara to Zapatistas

From my list on understand Indigenous peoples in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

Born on the Navajo reservation and then raised among the Qom, Mocoi, and Pilagá in Argentina, I have been with Native peoples throughout my life. After studying Indigenous and Native American histories at Indiana University, I taught at Kalamazoo and Bates College, where I took students to track and canoe on Penobscot reserves. I write about Guaraní histories and have enjoyed teaching Indigenous, Native, and Latin American histories at Appalachian State University; some of my graduate students are now excellent university professors here in the Southeast. It was for these Indigenous peoples and for my amazing students that I wrote and dedicated my textbook.

René's book list on understand Indigenous peoples in Latin America

René Harder Horst Why did René love this book?

This brilliant book summarizes the history of Indigenous people in this country. It was written by a person with Indigenous heritage who participated in global Indigenous movements for over four decades.

I wish I had had this book accessible when I studied Native American history long ago with Western Cherokee Professor Dr. David Edmunds. 

This award-winning book provides a new way to understand Native people and why they have struggled so tenaciously for their human rights, even in a country that promotes itself as the world’s beacon of democracy. I recommend it unequivocally to everyone.

By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

New York Times Bestseller

Now part of the HBO docuseries "Exterminate All the Brutes," written and directed by Raoul Peck

Recipient of the American Book Award

The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples
 
Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortizoffers a history…


Book cover of A Global History of Indigenous Peoples: Struggle and Survival

René Harder Horst Author Of A History of Indigenous Latin America: Aymara to Zapatistas

From my list on understand Indigenous peoples in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

Born on the Navajo reservation and then raised among the Qom, Mocoi, and Pilagá in Argentina, I have been with Native peoples throughout my life. After studying Indigenous and Native American histories at Indiana University, I taught at Kalamazoo and Bates College, where I took students to track and canoe on Penobscot reserves. I write about Guaraní histories and have enjoyed teaching Indigenous, Native, and Latin American histories at Appalachian State University; some of my graduate students are now excellent university professors here in the Southeast. It was for these Indigenous peoples and for my amazing students that I wrote and dedicated my textbook.

René's book list on understand Indigenous peoples in Latin America

René Harder Horst Why did René love this book?

I have taught with this book so effectively in my classes because it made me realize that Native people all around the world faced similar experiences of colonization, discrimination, and marginalization to those in Latin America. 

Indigenous cultures and histories have empowered these people to defend themselves, resist creatively, and shape the states that encapsulated them in important ways. 

This book helped me better understand that the Indigenous people I grew up among in Argentina and studied in Paraguay share so much in common with Indigenous peoples throughout the world. Students in my class, A World History of Indigenous Peoples, liked this book because it summarized the subject so well.

By Ken S. Coates,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Global History of Indigenous Peoples as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Global History of Indigenous Peoples examines the history of the indigenous/tribal peoples of the world. The work spans the period from the pivotal migrations which saw the peopling of the world, examines the processes by which tribal peoples established themselves as separate from surplus-based and more material societies, and considers the impact of the policies of domination and colonization which brought dramatic change to indigenous cultures. The book covers both tribal societies affected by the expansion of European empires and those indigenous cultures influenced by the economic and military expansion of non-European powers. The work concludes with a discussion…


Book cover of Disrupting the Patron: Indigenous Land Rights and the Fight for Environmental Justice in Paraguay's Chaco

René Harder Horst Author Of A History of Indigenous Latin America: Aymara to Zapatistas

From my list on understand Indigenous peoples in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

Born on the Navajo reservation and then raised among the Qom, Mocoi, and Pilagá in Argentina, I have been with Native peoples throughout my life. After studying Indigenous and Native American histories at Indiana University, I taught at Kalamazoo and Bates College, where I took students to track and canoe on Penobscot reserves. I write about Guaraní histories and have enjoyed teaching Indigenous, Native, and Latin American histories at Appalachian State University; some of my graduate students are now excellent university professors here in the Southeast. It was for these Indigenous peoples and for my amazing students that I wrote and dedicated my textbook.

René's book list on understand Indigenous peoples in Latin America

René Harder Horst Why did René love this book?

I loved this book because it provided a geographic perspective that deepened my understanding of how Native people in the Lower Chaco of Paraguay are mobilizing to reclaim their land. Like Indigenous people throughout the world, the transition to ranching pushed these people off their homelands and made them dispensable peons.

Refusing to give up, the Enxet and Sanapaná employed international advocates to pressure neoliberal politicians to return their lands. I was so impressed by Correia’s years of participant observations and the insights he provides into the Native peoples’ changing world.

By Joel E. Correia,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Disrupting the Patron as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

In Paraguay's Chaco region, cattle ranching drives some of the world's fastest deforestation and most extreme inequality in land tenure, with grave impacts on Indigenous well-being. Disrupting the Patron traces Enxet and Sanapana struggles to reclaim their ancestral lands from the cattle ranches where they labored as peons-a decades-long resistance that led to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and back to the frontlines of Paraguay's ranching frontier. The Indigenous communities at the heart of this…


Book cover of Frontier Intimacies: Ayoreo Women and the Sexual Economy of the Paraguayan Chaco

René Harder Horst Author Of A History of Indigenous Latin America: Aymara to Zapatistas

From my list on understand Indigenous peoples in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

Born on the Navajo reservation and then raised among the Qom, Mocoi, and Pilagá in Argentina, I have been with Native peoples throughout my life. After studying Indigenous and Native American histories at Indiana University, I taught at Kalamazoo and Bates College, where I took students to track and canoe on Penobscot reserves. I write about Guaraní histories and have enjoyed teaching Indigenous, Native, and Latin American histories at Appalachian State University; some of my graduate students are now excellent university professors here in the Southeast. It was for these Indigenous peoples and for my amazing students that I wrote and dedicated my textbook.

René's book list on understand Indigenous peoples in Latin America

René Harder Horst Why did René love this book?

Sometimes, research turns up unexpected and inconvenient truths. When Paraguayan anthropologist Canova researched Native voting patterns in Western Paraguay during the last several decades of the nation’s democratic opening, she found that Ayoreo women, from the latest Indigenous nation to be forced off their land, commonly exchanged sex for money or material goods with the local Mennonite setters. 

Economic and mission frontiers in the Chaco have changed gender roles, sexual practices, and frontier economies. While I learned about these practices back in 2002 during a trip to the Chaco, this brave exposé of frontier exploitation and changing cultures finally documents and brings to light new understandings of Indigenous agency amidst settler colonialism on internal Latin American frontiers. 

By Paola Canova,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Frontier Intimacies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Until the 1960s, the Ayoreo people of Paraguay's Chaco region had remained uncontacted by the world. But as development encroached on their territory, the Ayoreo began to experience rapid cultural change. Paola Canova looks at one aspect of this change in Frontier Intimacies: the sexual practices of Ayoreo women, specifically the curajodie, or single women who exchange sex for money or material goods with non-Ayoreo men, often Mennonite settlers.

Weaving personal anecdotes into her extensive research, Canova shows how the advancement of economic and missionary frontiers has reconfigured gender roles, sexual ethics, and notions of desire in the region. Ayoreo…


Book cover of Intimate Indigeneities: Race, Sex, and History in the Small Spaces of Andean Life

Catherine J. Allen Author Of The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community

From my list on Andean life, landscape, and personhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

My connection with the Andean highlands of southern Peru stretches back to 1975 when I spent about a year in a small community of Quechua-speaking potato farmers and llama herders. I have returned there many times over the years, most recently in 2019. Its people, their way of life, and vision of the world are dear to my heart and are the subject of The Hold Life Has as well as a play, creative nonfiction, and, more recently, poetry. I love the way anthropology forces me to think outside the box and experience the world with different eyes, something I aim to convey in my work.

Catherine's book list on Andean life, landscape, and personhood

Catherine J. Allen Why did Catherine love this book?

What does it mean to be “indigenous”? The answer is never simple, and I particularly like the way Andrew Canessa approaches the question by drawing us into people’s lives in an Aymara-speaking community in highland Bolivia and exploring how the people themselves understand different ways of being indigenous in different contexts. In the process he shows how “indigenous” identity is complex and situationally defined.

By Andrew Canessa,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Intimate Indigeneities as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Drawing on extended ethnographic research conducted over the course of more than two decades, Andrew Canessa explores the multiple identities of a community of people in the Bolivian highlands through their own lived experiences and voices. He examines how gender, race, and ethnic identities manifest themselves in everyday interactions in the Aymara village. Canessa shows that indigeneity is highly contingent; thoroughly imbricated with gendered, racial, and linguistic identities; and informed by a historical consciousness. Addressing how whiteness and indianness are reproduced as hegemonic structures in the village, how masculinities develop as men go to the mines and army, and how…


Book cover of Tristes Tropiques

Howard Gardner Author Of The Essential Howard Gardner on Mind

From my list on offer new ways of thinking.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve had the fortunate opportunity to write over 30 books and over 1000 articles. Not even my late beloved mother would have wanted to slog through all of them! Now, thanks to Teachers College Press, I have published my overview book. In addition to collecting the “essays” on Mind that I consider most important, I have also added autobiographical material and “legends,” which provide context for the wide spectrum of themes and pieces. The chance to reflect on a life of research has stimulated me to identify the works that had the greatest influence on my thinking and writing about the range and depth of human cognition.

Howard's book list on offer new ways of thinking

Howard Gardner Why did Howard love this book?

This remarkable book, by one of the major anthropologists of the 20th century, intertwines two enterprises; it is both a fascinating account of his ethnographic work in Brazil in the 1930s and a penetrating reflection on what it’s like for a Parisian educated scholar to understand and convey what he later termed “the Savage Mind.”

Artfully written, this book exemplifies the best of social science and literary artistry—and serves as a model for all who want to write evocatively about their calling.

By Claude Levi-Strauss, Doreen Weightman (translator), John Weightman (translator)

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Tristes Tropiques as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A milestone in the study of culture from the father of structural anthropology

This watershed work records Claude Lévi-Strauss's search for "a human society reduced to its most basic expression." From the Amazon basin through the dense upland jungles of Brazil, Lévi-Strauss found the societies he was seeking among the Caduveo, Bororo, Nambikwara, and Tupi-Kawahib. More than merely recounting his time in their midst, Tristes Tropiques places the cultural practices of these peoples in a global context and extrapolates a fascinating theory of culture that has given the book an importance far beyond the fields of anthropology and continental philosophy.…


Book cover of Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru

Susan Kellogg Author Of Weaving the Past: A History of Latin America's Indigenous Women from the Prehispanic Period to the Present

From my list on the history of Native women in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in a sheltered environment on Long Island, NY, I had little sense of a larger world, except for seeing images of the Vietnam War. Going to college in the early 70s and becoming an anthropology major, the world began to open up, yet I hadn't experienced life outside the U.S. until my mid-20s as a graduate student living in Mexico to do dissertation research. That experience and travels to Guatemala, Peru, Cuba, and Costa Rica helped me to see how diverse Latin America is, and how real poverty and suffering are as well. Coming into my own as a historian, teacher, and writer, my fascination with women’s voices, experiences, and activism only grew.

Susan's book list on the history of Native women in Latin America

Susan Kellogg Why did Susan love this book?

This book is a classic of Latin American women’s history, telling the story of how Andean women’s relative gender equity (what the author calls “gender parallelism,” a concept that applies to gender structures in many Latin American societies, especially the Aztecs—known as Nahuas—about whom I’ve also written) became transformed first by the Inca, then by the Spanish.

Written with feeling about forms of both complementarity and exploitation, Silverblatt shows women of the past, non-elite and noble, to have been productive, creative, and responsive to the social and economic conditions around them.

By Irene Marsha Silverblatt,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Moon, Sun, and Witches as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When the Spanish arrived in Peru in 1532, men of the Inca Umpire worshipped the Sun as Father and their dead kings as ancestor heroes, while women venerated the Moon and her daughters, the Inca queens, as founders of female dynasties. In the pre-Inca period such notions of parallel descent were expressions of complementarity between men and women. Examining the interplay between gender ideologies and political hierarchy. Irene Silverblatt shows how Inca rulers used their Sun and Moon traditions as methods of controlling women and the Andean peoples the Incas conquered. She then explores the process by which the Spaniards…


Book cover of At the Mountains' Altar: Anthropology of Religion in an Andean Community

Catherine J. Allen Author Of The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community

From my list on Andean life, landscape, and personhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

My connection with the Andean highlands of southern Peru stretches back to 1975 when I spent about a year in a small community of Quechua-speaking potato farmers and llama herders. I have returned there many times over the years, most recently in 2019. Its people, their way of life, and vision of the world are dear to my heart and are the subject of The Hold Life Has as well as a play, creative nonfiction, and, more recently, poetry. I love the way anthropology forces me to think outside the box and experience the world with different eyes, something I aim to convey in my work.

Catherine's book list on Andean life, landscape, and personhood

Catherine J. Allen Why did Catherine love this book?

This is a wonderful, sophisticated yet accessible book that provides readers with a vivid community study that is also a wide-ranging introduction to the anthropology of religion. The title refers to a small adobe house in the community of Rapaz that serves as a temple for religious practices directed to sacred mountains. Each chapter explores aspects of the temple and related ritual practices from a different theoretical vantage point, in order to “put before students’ eyes one case, an Andean temple, and treat it as an example for pondering the possibly pan-human matter of sacred ritual” (p.9). It’s beautifully written, personal and thought-provoking.

By Frank Salomon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked At the Mountains' Altar as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In high-Andean Peru, Rapaz village maintains a temple to mountain beings who command water and weather. By examining the ritual practices and belief systems of an Andean community, this book provides students with rich understandings of unfamiliar religious experiences and delivers theories of religion from the realm of abstraction. From core field encounters, each chapter guides readers outward in a different theoretical direction, successively exploring the main paths in the anthropology of religion.

As well as addressing classical approaches in the anthropology of religion to rural modernity, Salomon engages with newer currents such as cognitive-evolution models, power-oriented critiques, the ontological…


Book cover of Antisuyo: The Search for the Lost Cities of the Amazon

Vincent R. Lee Author Of Forgotten Vilcabamba: Final Stronghold of the Incas

From my list on discovery of the true Lost City of the Incas.

Why am I passionate about this?

Vincent Lee is a professional architect and former Alpine climbing guide and instructor, US Marine Corps officer, Andean explorer, and author. Searching in the high Andes of Peru and the rain forests of the Upper Amazon for the remains of the long-lost final redoubt of the once-powerful Inca Empire not only appealed to his life-long interest in all of these disparate fields, but it called upon his many years of experience in each: wilderness trekking, mountain warfare, mapping and drawing the remains of the more than 500 ancient structures discovered.

Vincent's book list on discovery of the true Lost City of the Incas

Vincent R. Lee Why did Vincent love this book?

Following up on Hiram Bingham's 1911 visit to an overgrown ruin in the forest at a place called Espíritu Pampa (The Plain of Ghosts) and dismissed by Bingham as unimportant, Savoy set out in 1964-5 to prove him wrong. Bingham had identified Machu Picchu as the lost Inca capital, Vilcabamba, but Savoy was sure there was more to be found at the Plain of Ghosts than Bingham knew. He was right, and in several adventurous expeditions found a large Inca city there that he thought better met the Spanish accounts of Vilcabamba.

By Gene Savoy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Antisuyo as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This inspiring and historic book: Antisuyo by Gene Savoy, is about the search for the lost cities of the Amazon. Antisuyo is the full account of the authors' daring expedition beyond one of the few remaining uncharted frontiers, and of his glorious discovery of the fabled cities of Viacabamba and Muyok Viejo--two of the most important archaeololgical sites found in recent years. He takes the reader through the forbidding mysteries of the wild territory in search for of clues to puzzles that have remained unsolved since the days of Pizarro: Aztahualpa: the legendary Manco Capac; the famed El Dorado, City…


Book cover of Oil Sparks in the Amazon: Local Conflicts, Indigenous Populations, and Natural Resources

Bruce E. Johansen Author Of Resource Devastation on Native American Lands: Toxic Earth, Poisoned People

From my list on Native Americans and lethal uranium mining.

Why am I passionate about this?

I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.

Bruce's book list on Native Americans and lethal uranium mining

Bruce E. Johansen Why did Bruce love this book?

This book has worthwhile attributes, such as clear writing on the nature of uranium poisoning and its history, personal interviews, and vital coverage of local peoples’ reactions to damage done to their lands and their families, as well as their homelands by profit-mined mining companies.

Vasquez’s coverage centers on the Amazon with a focus on several extractive industries. This book stands alone in its coverage of resource extraction issues in the Amazon Valley because this area has so many other important issues to cover.

By Patricia I. Vasquez,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Oil Sparks in the Amazon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For decades, studies of oil-related conflicts have focused on the effects of natural resource mismanagement, resulting in great economic booms and busts or violence as rebels fight ruling governments over their regions' hydrocarbon resources. In Oil Sparks in the Amazon, Patricia I. Vasquez writes that while oil busts and civil wars are common, the tension over oil in the Amazon has played out differently, in a way inextricable from the region itself.

Oil disputes in the Amazon primarily involve local indigenous populations. These groups' social and cultural identities differ from the rest of the population and the diverse disputes over…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in environmental issues, ethnicity, and politics?

Ethnicity 26 books
Politics 763 books