01491nas a2200205 4500000000100000000000100001008004100002653001200043653001100055653002400066653001600090653001200106100001500118245004400133856015700177300001200334490000700346520091200353022002001265 d10aEcuador10aElites10aEndangered cultures10aNationalism10aZápara1 aM. Viatori00aLoss and Amazonian Otherness in Ecuador uhttps://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84868581298&doi=10.1111%2fj.1935-4940.2012.01253.x&partnerID=40&md5=460154bc412cf27fef4732ecf1fa1fd0 a435-4500 v173 aIn May 2001, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Zápara language part of the world s "intangible cultural heritage." This article examines Ecuadorian government celebrations and press coverage of the UNESCO award. It demonstrates how both employed discourses of loss and preservation that included the Zápara within the Ecuadorian nation, while simultaneously marginalizing them as cultural and political others. This case study suggests that discourses of loss have as much potential to reinforce existing hegemonies and power relations as they do to undermine them. As such, it indicates the need for anthropologists and activists to more closely scrutinize widely circulating discourses of loss and revitalization to understand how such discourses can be enabled by, work through, and reinforce colonialist narratives as much as they contest them. a19354932 (ISSN)