UC Irvine

How does Indianismo – an indigenous movement from the Andean region of Latin America - construct and discuss conditions of possibility for a reflexive form of multi-relational global coexistence? Indianismo proceeded from political intellectual productions and Aymara religious notions practiced in the Andean region of Latin America, but its work has important implications at the global level. In order to analyze these discussions and implications, I study the historical process through which Indianismo developed from 1962 to 2017 by using archival research in Bolivia. The genealogical study of Indianista intellectual practices shows how the movement created a political form of decoloniality against different kinds of patriarchic, capitalist, racist, and anthropocentric colonialisms. According to Indianismo, these forms of colonialism, together with other hierarchicalizations potentially ignored, were not only imposed domestically in Bolivia, but also globally in international institutions such as the United Nations. Indianismo thus questioned these colonial legacies and it constructed a dynamic, reflexive, and multi-relational alternative of global coexistence. My dissertation thus analyzes the genealogical construction of Indianismo while also producing important questions for the United Nations and its construction of global coexistence.