Democracy against the grain: indigenous politics in Colombia’s southwest Andes

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the southwest Colombian Andes indigenous peoples’ active participation as ‘demos’ in Colombia´s modern polity and democratic politics. Despite a long-term pattern of nonrecognition, their ‘against-the-grain democracy’ emerges from sedimented experiences of collectivism and intercultural experimentalism. The resulting indigenous politics expands the horizon of commonality and calls for new interpretations of the political. This work is based on long-term research on twentieth-century ideas and political texts by Nasa, Misak, and Pijao pueblos, on an examination of their leaders´ biographies, and on my extensive research on Manuel Quintín Lame´s twentieth-century social movement leadership. I examine the inter-dependency of popular republicanism and struggles for citizenship that began in the nineteenth century, with the dynamics of collectivism and commonality that converge in the strong grassroots, indigenous-oriented politics of the twentieth century. My analysis is enlightened by Sheldon Wolin´s interpretations of democracy, commonality, elemental politics, the liberal dilemmas of recognition, and Cristina Roja´s reflections on nonrecognition.