Movilizaciones étnicas y crítica civilizatoria. Un cuestionamiento a los proyectos estatales en América Latina

Abstract

There have been many very different approaches to the writing of the history of western colonial expansion and to the setting forth of its motivations, and the same is true when dealing with the political logics of the mono-national states that continued their dominion over the native peoples. The article suggests, however, that insufficient attention has been paid to the transformations suffered by the human societies that have born the brunt of the process. It is necessary to take into account not only the traditional register of political, economic and social changes, but also the new contexts of discourse, ideology and culture which are evolving at present. It is not, however, the author’s intention to examine the internal logic of the various discourses, so much as to understand them as expressions of concrete social subjects, who exercise a leading role in various contextual situations. In this sense an approach is offered to the dynamics of identity in Latin America, such as they are manifested in presentday
ethnopolitical movements; these are viewed as processes of confrontation between civilizations, and thus differentiated from the so-called “new social movements”.