This article assesses the global implications and structural limitations inherent in the history/identity production of traditionally oppressed Indian communities in the Ecuadorian Andes. This particular engagement of history is closely linked with development, since this paradigm profoundly structures all interactions between North–South global communities and nation-states. In this regard it is impossible to research historical exigencies without understanding the limits of political power, subtle forms of domination and development constraints that are immediately invoked by and structure the historical enterprise (as well as the ethnographic one). To this effect I highlight the writing of James Baldwin, which offers an insightful means of assessing the ‘conundrums’ of native identity production in the face of history(ies)’s crushing political power.
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