This is an excellent book and a worthy addition to the series of volumes on collective violence and political movements in the Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics. Building on Deborah Yashar's earlier work with indigenous groups in Mexico and Guatemala and the strategies they have devised in “a global fight for democracy and justice” (p. xiii), the book uncovers a powerful and common theme in the indigenous voices of the region: a demand for inclusion, equality, local autonomy, and authentic citizenship. In short, it is about identity and rights and how and why indigenous movements arise, develop, and succeed in this struggle to attain them.

This study in comparative historical analysis addresses the important phenomenon of indigenous mobilization in Latin America, particularly in three critical and volatile Andean countries: Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. Employing a well-thought-out comparative research design and based on field research, Yashar's investigation serves to isolate the factors that were, and potentially are, most significant in the development of strong indigenous activism and mobilization in Latin America: motive, opportunity and capacity realized through politicized identities, political associational space, and transcommunity networks (p. 8).

Generally, ethnic movements around the world today challenge the “prevailing ideas about citizenship and the nation-state” regarding whether the state can serve effectively as “the legitimate basis for extending and defining democratic citizenship rights and responsibilities,” especially “group rights and ethnic self-determination” (p. 3). In Latin America, it was assumed that such ethnic mobilization did not entail contestation and conflict; but this may no longer be the case, if it ever held true. Yashar asserts that indigenous organization is not new, but what is new is that in the past, Indians “have not organized along ethnic lines to promote an explicitly indigenous agenda” (p. 5). Their goal no longer centers on assimilation and equal rights within a multicultural nation-state, but on “special rights as native peoples” (p. 5). The overall purpose of her book, therefore, is to explain “the uneven emergence, timing, and location of indigenous protest in contemporary Latin America: why indigenous movements have emerged now and not before; and why they have emerged in some places and not others” (p. 5). In the process, her research addresses several ongoing debates, perhaps the most important of which is the relationship among state formation, democracy, and ethnicity.

In Part I, Yashar draws out the conceptual and analytical foundations of the book and tests these against a subset of five countries. Theoretically, she emphasizes that the popular identity politics approach, which emphasizes culture, must be combined with structural and institutional analysis. Social movements develop and succeed in relationship to the structures and institutions of the state. And ethnic political identities are institutionally and historically bounded; that is, important institutional changes may serve to politicize identities, often in new and unintended ways, providing the key motive for mobilization. Specifically, she argues that “changes in citizenship regimes” served to politicize indigenous identities because they challenged centers of local autonomy that had been basically ignored by the state (p. 8).

Yashar's selection of cases for broad comparative analysis represents a clear logic: five of the most populous Indian countries in Latin America—Bolivia (60%–70%), Guatemala (45%–60%), Peru (38%–40%), Ecuador (30%–38%), and Mexico (12%–14%) (pp. 19–20). Her methodology is a mix between “most similar and most different systems” models, which allow both longitudinal comparisons and variation across the cases. On the one hand, Bolivia, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Mexico are four very different systems where indigenous movements emerged. On the other hand, in Peru, which shares certain historical and demographic similarities with Bolivia and Ecuador, and a history of civil war with Guatemala, an effective indigenous movement did not emerge. A careful comparison of these five cases, complemented by useful tables and charts, lends support to her overall thesis that the contemporary and uneven emergence of indigenous movements in the region can be explained by the variation in three key factors: “changing citizenship regimes, trans-community social networks, and political associational space” (p. 29).

Part II explores in great detail the three case studies most alike in geography, history, and demographics: Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Significant differences in the aforementioned three key factors explain why Ecuador developed a powerful, national indigenous movement—the strongest in Latin America. In turn, Bolivia developed two strong regional movements in the Andes and Oriente of the country. Peru, on the other hand, achieved only weak national movements. However, a significant subnational indigenous movement emerged in the Puno region where “political associational space and trans-community networks” remained strong, in contrast to the rest of Peru where these were destroyed by the civil war between the state and the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla insurgency (p. 267). Both the Sendero and the Tupak Amaru Revolutionary Movement in Peru, while ostensibly mobilizing indigenous communities, did so along class lines and for Marxist political ends—often at the expense of indigenous goals. Consequently, Yashar describes the Peruvian case as an anomaly; for despite two centuries of indigenous organization and activism, Peru failed to develop “widespread indigenous movement organizing in the contemporary period” (p. 224).

The concluding chapter and Part III is especially relevant to an understanding of the relationship between democracy and the challenge of postliberalism in Latin America. Here, Yashar concludes that “the politicization of ethnic identities” occurs “where state policies challenge the material and political foundations” of local community autonomy (p. 283). Changes in citizenship regimes, which include both state institutions and policies, directly affected and often instigated this politicization. Contemporary indigenous movements have had both beneficial and detrimental effects for third-wave democracies in the region. At the same time that second-generation indigenous movements have managed to redefine the terms of democratic citizenship to their benefit, the very opportunities that new democracies have provided have also challenged the unity and integrity of national indigenous movements (p. 282). In short, greater opportunities for Indian political inclusion and partisan mobilization have tended to divide and fragment indigenous movements and their agendas.

In the final analysis, however, the indigenous challenge that modern states “incorporate heterogeneous notions of who is a citizen, how citizenship is mediated, and where authority is vested,” is intended to deepen the region's democratic development (p. 285; Yashar's emphasis). To date, Indian movements have discussed and even demanded constitutional reforms and innovative democratic institutions that may better accommodate a multiethnic and plurinational view of nation and state. This indigenist agenda is also revolutionary and potentially dangerous; it may be viewed as a threat to the power and homogeneity of the traditional nation-state. In countries such as Bolivia, demands for local autonomy and institutional pluralism may further encourage secessionist tendencies. Moreover, Yashar warns that one cannot predict indigenous electoral success based on the success of indigenous movements. Whatever the future portends, she concludes that the mobilization of indigenous groups has “solidified indigenous peoples as political actors whose interests are now part of the national dialogue” (p. 307). Bolivia especially, among the three in-depth cases of indigenous movements in Contesting Citizenship in Latin America, will provide further opportunities to assess the meaning and practice of democracy.