On the Edge of the Wild: Representations of Peru’s Montaña Region and its Indigenous Peoples, an Enduring Borderland between the Andean and Amazonian Worlds (1543-1880)

Ximena Sevilla, Multicultural Postdoctoral Faculty Fellow, History

Dr. Sevilla’s project focuses on the environmental and ethnohistory of the montaña region—densely forested eastern slopes of the Andean highlands in northern Peru. “On the Edge of the Wild: Representations of Peru’s Montaña Region and its Indigenous Peoples, an Enduring Borderland between the Andean and Amazonian Worlds” demonstrates how Indigenous peoples, Spanish conquistadors, missionaries, scientific explorers, and early national elites have formulated conceptions of this montaña and how these ideas have changed or adapted over time. This is a regional history of the montaña that traces back past ecological, cultural, and geopolitical considerations that have positioned the montaña region as a central place within the territorial imagination of Peru, and more generally of the Andean World. From the last days of the Inca Empire until the nineteenth century before the rubber boom, the environmental attributes of the montaña region have allowed its diverse residents to see the value in maintaining a physical and cultural barrier with colonial powers and urban early national elites. The overarching argument centers on the montaña region’s portrayal as an obstacle for outsiders’ imperial agendas across four centuries of history. As much as these outsiders had envisioned themselves as gaining or maintaining control over this tropical environment and its Natives, the unsustainable nature of their relationships with this place and its peoples continually derailed their expectations—forcing them to adapt, regroup, and develop different plans to execute. On the other hand, from the perspective of its Natives, the montaña was far from being an obstacle. Indeed, its supposed wildness and inaccessibility often facilitated their possibilities to stay alive, to have some autonomy while resisting the colonial church and state’s impositions.