Reframing Autonomy: Decolonizing Practice in Indigenous and Afrodescendant Communities

Session Submission Type: LASA Section Panel

Abstract

Diverse expressions of autonomy have been part of decolonizing struggles in Latin America for more than 500 years, challenging the external imposition of authority and identity. Still much of the scholarship on autonomy focuses on the political evolution and institutional design of ethnic autonomy regimes that decentralize state power and accord special political and cultural rights to indigenous and Afrodescendant people. Many of these perspectives emphasize the limits of formal recognition, whether it be the compromised conditions of autonomous politics, the failure to effect structural change, or the ongoing struggle to stem land dispossession and state violence. This panel moves beyond these debates to examine expressions of autonomy that may reject the politics of multicultural recognition or eschew engagement with the state. We focus on alternative sovereignties, strategies, values, practices, solidarities, and modes of self-organization, identification, and valorization that are not always visible in formal multicultural politics. We contend that these expressions of autonomy form the bedrock of decolonizing struggles today, shaping resistance to dispossession, predatory capitalism, and the false promise of liberal democracy. Papers will examine the Zapatista reframing of power and pedagogy, autonomy as a social practice in an Afro-Nicaraguan community, the decolonizing imaginaries of Mexico’s Indigenous Governing Council (CIG), and Afro-Colombian visions of autonomy in the emerging peace process.

Sub Track

• Section Sessions

Session Organizers

• Jennifer Goett, Michigan State University

• Richard Stahler-Sholk, Eastern Michigan University

Chair

• Jennifer Goett, Michigan State University

Individual Presentations

• Demandas indígenas y estrategias autónomas de educación en México - Bruno J Baronnet, Universidad Veracruzana

• Afro-Colombian Autonomous Visions of Peace - Roosbelinda Cárdenas González, Hampshire College

• Afro-Nicaraguan Autonomy as a Social Practice: Post-Recognition Politics and the Repressive State - Jennifer Goett, Michigan State University

• The Political Imaginary of Zapatista Autonomy as Part of the National Indigenous Governing Council in Mexico - Mariana Mora Bayo, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS)/ Ciudad de México

• Zapatista Ways of Doing Politics in the Neoliberal Era - Richard Stahler-Sholk, Eastern Michigan University