The State and the Awajn: Frontier Expansion in the Upper Amazon, 1541-1990 demonstrates how the indigenous people of Amazonia have been subjected to a series of regional, national, and international socioeconomic and political processes that have shaped their lives. The text explores how extractive economies in Amazonia have provided fleeting periods of elite prosperity, but ultimately at the expense of the regions biocultural diversity. Beginning in 1541 an.