Colonial Situations, Ethnic Pluralism and Challenges to Indigenous Autonomy in Latin America
This article aims to present anthropological and sociological concepts developed under colonial and contact situations to explain the persistence of the notion of race in the exercise of State power over indigenous peoples within the national states of Latin America. This will enable a conceptual reference and a critical reading of the constitutional multiculturalism in the region as a rhetorical attempt so far to overcome this racial pattern of domination and promote indigenous autonomies. The author presents a critical debate around the challenges of indigenous autonomy as an effective decolonization project in the post-colonial societies of Latin America.