Boundaries are Made to be Crossed: The Magic and Politics of the Long-lasting Amazon/Andes Divide

The construction of Amazonia as a distinct entity, opposed to the Andes, results from processes associated with the expansion of Andean-centered state formations. Analysis of five short texts on the Amazon region, written in colonial and postcolonial Peru by a diversity of social actors, reveals a pervasive rhetoric of alterity whose content varies according to the particular objectives the authors had in mind. In all cases, however, the aim is the same, namely the imposition of boundaries of differentiation as justification for state integration, expressed in the commodification and symbolic consumption of the Amazonian Other. If the politics of boundary making consist in "peripheralizing" and "othering" the Amazon and its people, the magic of boundary making resides in the discursive sleight of hand through which contemporary agents conceal the fact that the Amazon has long ago been incorporated into the nation-state.