“Courage Tastes of Blood explores how ordinary, marginalized indigenous peoples in Chile construct historical memory in small, discontinuous steps, a process which enables them to sustain a ‘politics of difference’ in a world where globalization threatens to further homogenize diversity in the name of economic progress and stability. Following this logic in her own practice, Florencia E. Mallon highlights the importance of everyday practices in understanding oral sources, and, in so doing, she challenges readers to reconsider the preconceptions of history as a field of knowledge that reproduces the rationality of power. This is a bold, fascinating, and highly original contribution to our understanding of indigenous lives, repression in Chile, and racism, and it provides a methodological lesson in rethinking fields of inquiry from the perspective of alternative knowledge producers.”—Arturo Arias, past president of the Latin American Studies Association
“Florencia E. Mallon combines a historian’s sensitivity to context and an ethnographer’s attention to cultural description, capturing the everydayness of life in the midst of rapid social transformation. While focusing on one Mapuche community, she provides insights into larger histories of social mobilization, state formation, political violence, and community identity.”—Greg Grandin, author of The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War
“Florencia E. Mallon gives history a human face. Her description of a Mapuche community’s struggle to recover land rights previously lost in extremely adverse conditions underscores the promise of historical work to go way beyond the cold, distanced analysis of things past. The Mapuche navigate the pages of Courage Tastes of Blood with the sturdy competence of devoted craftsmen carving their own destiny.”—Alcida Rita Ramos, author of Indigenism: Ethnic Politics in Brazil
“[A] unique history of modern Chile from the point of view of a Mapuche community. . . Mallon offers an original contribution to the understanding of indigenous politics and memory, negotiations between indigenous people and the state, and the production of history from the margins.”
“Much more than a community study, [Mallon’s] book sheds new light on modern Chilean history by approaching it from the perspective of the often neglected southern frontier. It constitutes the first major work in English on the history of the Mapuche and offers a sweeping revision of the history of modern state formation in Chile.”
~Thomas Miller Klubock, American Historical Review
"Courage Tastes of Blood is a thoroughly researched, detailed, and at times incredibly moving account of the struggles faced by a Mapuche community in the face of the Chilean state. This book will be of great value not only to those interested in the recent history of indigenous peoples in Latin American, but also to anyone concerned with the inevitable contradictions, challenges, and paradoxes involved in transforming individual memories into a collective history."
~Magnus Course, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
