“¡Su pasaporte, Señor!” It was 1965 and I had just landed in Lima, the capital of Peru, the ?rst stop on my way to the Andes, where I was to live for two years among Quechua-speaking peasants to gather data for my doctorate in anthropology. Since then ?erce economic and demographic forces have undermined the lives of the people I met and those of other peasants, transforming Peru from a rural to an urban country. Peruvian peasants have long been tied to the global system, forced to mine the gold and silver sent to Spain in the colonial period, then labouring in wool, cotton, and guano production, their sweat generating more recent exports. Since the mid-twentieth century, however, economic decisions made in international capitals, compounded by a rapid increase in population, have impoverished them further, fomenting profound social disruption and stark inequalities that have underlain other changes, including the brutal Shining Path war of the 1980s. (Extracto introducción).