Disability and Latin American indigenous peoples

Abstract

Disability among Latin American indigenous peoples is frequent and has particular characteristics. On the one hand, people understand and experience disability from their own worldview and cultural practices, but on the other hand, these cultural characteristics coexist with the reality of a disability produced by colonialism, colonization and forced assimilation into the states. Additionally, the socioeconomic conditions in which indigenous peoples live, as well as the political violence to which they are subjected, create a complex panorama that challenges disability studies to dialogue with other philosophies. Decoloniality, interculturality, epistemologies of the South, and indigenous thought can be approaches that discuss and problematize the study of disability in indigenous cultures from a more just and situated perspective.