Michael Taussig teaches anthropology and has written about peasant economy, shamanism, and fear in Colombia, a country he first visited in 1969. His books include The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1990), Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man (1987), The Nervous System (1992), Mimesis and Alterity (1993), The Magic of the State (1997), and Defacement (1999).  

The following article is is published in:  "Comparative Studies in Society and History," Vol. 26, No. 3 (Jul., 1984), pp. 467-497 Published by: Cambridge University Press. 

I chose to reproduce it here because it is haunting: An anthropologist's penetrating examination of colonialism, torture, and the culture of death.