This article departs from ethnographic engagement with a pedagogical performance piece titled 'Taxonom & iacute;a of a Spicy Esp & eacute;cimen' by the Afro Puerto Rican artist, Javier Cardona Otero. The piece is an embodied critique that 'turns the tables' of history, conjuring up colonial specters that not only haunt Anthropological discourses of racial extinction but speak directly to the current existential crisis of white futurity. I read the performance in conjunction with scenes from Raoul Peck's documentary 'Exterminate All the Brutes' and words from the Khoisan poet, Diana Ferrus, whose elegiac poetry played a decisive role in the repatriation of Sarah Baartman's remains. Through the lens of hauntology, the article critically engages with colonial specters that articulate a core contradiction between the supposedly 'inevitable' extinction of 'savage' races and today's paranoidal far-right politics of 'white extinction.'
This article examines intercultural bargaining dynamics in Chile by analyzing the strategies Indigenous representatives employ within formal state decision-making spaces. Rather than focusing on factors explaining the lack of Indigenous recognition, this study investigates how Indigenous-non-Indigenous interactions operate across different contexts. We analyze three cases: the Constitutional Convention (2021-2022), the National Council of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage, and four Communal Councils. Through interviews with 52 participants and document analysis, we identify four key dimensions shaping these interactions: power asymmetries, institutional frameworks, negotiation strategies, and epistemological disputes. Findings reveal significant variation across institutional levels. At the national level (Constitutional Convention), epistemological and symbolic debates were prominent, the National Council of Cultures showed intermediate levels of symbolic negotiation focused on discussions of interculturality, while local councils exhibited more pragmatic dynamics. Indigenous representatives employed diverse strategies including alliance-building, repetition, pedagogy, social mobilization, adapting tactics to specific institutional contexts and decision-making rules. The study demonstrates that intercultural negotiation patterns are highly sensitive to institutional settings, with national spaces emphasizing recognition debates while local contexts integrate Indigenous issues into daily governance. These findings underscore the importance of understanding how institutional frameworks and decision-making rules shape Indigenous political agency and intercultural relations in contemporary Chile.
Vector-borne diseases (VBDs) pose significant public health challenges for indigenous Amazonian communities. A limited understanding exists regarding how indigenous knowledge systems conceptualize and manage these diseases beyond Western biomedical frameworks. This study examined the Tikuna people's ethnomedicinal knowledge and healthcare practices for VBD management in Puerto Esperanza, Colombian Amazon. Using mixed methods, including questionnaires, interviews with traditional practitioners, medicinal plant mapping, and field collections, researchers analyzed data through ethnobotanical indices (TRAMIL Significant Use Level, Relative Frequency of Citation, and Use-Value of Species). Findings revealed complex social dynamics in health knowledge distribution: while 91 per cent of community members recognized VBDs, only 38 per cent could differentiate symptoms and vectors, indicating knowledge stratification. Traditional practitioners serve as crucial cultural mediators in a three-stage healthcare process, bridging self-care and biomedical treatment. Forty-five plant species across 29 families were identified, with Petiveria alliacea dominating community use (NUST 50.82) while Crescentia cujete characterized specialized practice (RFC 0.17, UVs 0.63). Spatial analysis showed sophisticated landscape categorization, with 53.3 per cent of medicinal plants concentrated in highland stubble areas. Despite extensive medicinal plant knowledge, limited disease-specific understanding highlights the need for intercultural health approaches that integrate traditional ecological knowledge with contemporary public health strategies for more effective VBD management in indigenous communities.
Between 1890 and 1900, Lima's Santa Ana Hospital produced two distinct sets of records: birth certificates and registers documenting orphaned infants placed under institutional care. Strikingly, while the orphan records consistently assign a racial category to each child, the birth records omit any explicit reference to race. This divergence reveals two key dynamics shaping race relations in Peru. First, it highlights a taxonomy not based solely on racial categorization, but on the distinction between those who are racially classified and those exempt from such classification. Second, it underscores the protective role of familial ties in circumventing overt racial labeling and enabling movement into, or fluidity within, whiteness. Orphaned children - disconnected from kinship networks, known ancestry, and cultural markers - offer a unique lens through which to examine the embodiment of race. In the absence of social networks, known lineages, and other racial/cultural signifiers, their phenotypical body became increasingly significant as evidence of racial identity. This article supports the argument that the inscription of social differences on the body solidified in Peru, not during colonial times, but with the inauguration of an independent liberal state that promised equality for all.
This article examines the history of plurinationality during the Chilean Constitutional Convention of 2021-2022 from an ethnographic perspective. Through the analysis of speeches, internal documents, and semi-structured interviews with Indigenous and non-Indigenous representatives, and drawing on Ernesto Laclau's theory, we examine plurinationality and its evolution as an 'empty signifier.' Initially, plurinationality was presented by Indigenous representatives as a signifier without specific content to 'fill' it, referring to the general recognition of all Indigenous peoples. However, as the constitutional debate developed, it became 'filled' with specific meanings, serving as the theoretical basis of the new state and, simultaneously, the target of conservative attacks, thus shifting from an empty to an ambiguous signifier. We argue that this stems from the difficulty of articulating plurinationality - which recognizes each nation in its difference - with interculturality - which seeks a shared space for relations between cultures - within a single concept and legal figure. This reflects the dilemma between recognizing difference and building the common, which entails both territorial socioeconomic and cultural-symbolic injustice. Nevertheless, the process enabled, for the first time in Chile, a debate on plurinationality led by Indigenous representatives in a body of popular representation, constituting an exercise of what Loughlin calls constitutional imagination.
This article examines ancestrality as an ethical and epistemological foundation for the resistance practices of Quilombola women in southern Brazil. Based on a qualitative study using focus groups and facilitated listening sessions, it analyzes narratives that weave together material precarity, structural racism, gender-based violence, and institutional erasure, counterbalanced by strategies of care, collective memory, and intergenerational bonds. The analysis engages Quarto de Despejo (Child of the Dark) by Carolina Maria de Jesus as a critical methodological device, creating a space of dialogue between marginal literature and contemporary Quilombola testimonies. Findings demonstrate that ancestrality, far from a mere symbolic evocation, operates as an active matrix of belonging, healing, as well as subjective and territorial reconstruction. By recognizing these voices as knowledge producers, the study contributes to debates on epistemic justice, reparative policies, and forms of governance grounded in the lived knowledge of racialized communities.
This article explores the intersectional experiences of Afro-Bolivian women navigating racism and anti-racism within the context of plurinational Bolivia, which has become internationally known for its decolonizing policy agendas and inclusive politics. Despite advances in constitutional recognition, anti-racism legislation, and political organizing, Afro-Bolivian women continue to face intersecting inequalities shaped by race, gender, and economic status. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews and focus group discussions, the study reveals how Afro-Bolivian women perceive recent anti-racist reforms while identifying persistent challenges in a society that often prioritizes Indigenous narratives over Afro-Bolivian experiences. The findings highlight that racism manifests uniquely for Afro-Bolivian women, who encounter discrimination in various sectors of the economy and society, including employment and education, while also facing gendered obstacles within the Afro-Bolivian movement. Consequently, we argue for a nuanced understanding of intersecting inequalities to better address the specific needs of Afro-Bolivian women, emphasizing the importance of integrating their voices into broader anti-racist discourses.
La Constituci & oacute;n chilena de 1980, impuesta por la dictadura c & iacute;vico-militar, es reconocida internacionalmente como un caso extremo de neoliberalizaci & oacute;n de la naturaleza. Este modelo, sustentado en la propiedad privada, el libre mercado y la restricci & oacute;n del rol estatal, gener & oacute; profundas asimetr & iacute;as en el acceso y control de los recursos, dando origen a m & uacute;ltiples injusticias ambientales y conflictos. Estas tensiones estuvieron en el centro del estallido social de 2019, que abri & oacute; el camino a un proceso constituyente para reemplazar la Constituci & oacute;n. Durante ese proceso, las demandas ind & iacute;genas de autodeterminaci & oacute;n y control territorial se entrelazaron con las luchas ambientales, configurando un campo de fricci & oacute;n constituyente. En este art & iacute;culo analizamos c & oacute;mo la propuesta constitucional incorpor & oacute; categor & iacute;as jur & iacute;dicas innovadoras - como los derechos de la naturaleza, los bienes comunes naturales y el buen vivir-, pero tambi & eacute;n c & oacute;mo & eacute;stas chocaron con posiciones ambientalistas y con estereotipos sobre lo ind & iacute;gena. En particular, expandimos la cr & iacute;tica al imaginario del 'nativo ecol & oacute;gico' hacia un terreno constitucional. Argumentamos que el rechazo del texto en 2022 refleja no solo la persistencia del modelo neoliberal, sino tambi & eacute;n los l & iacute;mites y posibilidades de articular agendas de justicia ambiental y autodeterminaci & oacute;n ind & iacute;gena en escenarios de cambio constitucional.
The paradigmatic impunity surrounding the 1997 Acteal Massacre in Chiapas, Mexico, has radically reshaped survivors' diverse senses of justice. Following the controversial 2009 Supreme Court rulings that invalidated survivor testimonies from the legal record and ordered the release of those convicted in the case, the Maya organization Las Abejas developed an alternative form of justice they call 'Otra Justicia.' More than a response to impunity, this decolonizing approach transcends retribution by centering relationality and healing to strengthen survivors' political autonomy. Through it, Las Abejas have reimagined justice by creating social spaces to collectively articulate, disseminate, and transmute the traumatic memories that the state has attempted to silence. Drawing on collaborative ethnographic research with Las Abejas, I argue that Otra Justicia challenges Western legal frameworks by mobilizing survivors' bodies and emotions as both the medium of its practice and the measure of its realization. Through an exploration of Otra Justicia's emergence and praxes, the product of a 'dissident legal pluralism,' I illustrate how Maya survivors challenge the racism and epistemic violence of the Mexican judiciary by relying on embodied forms of justice aimed at reaffirming the truthfulness of their testimonies and healing the harmful effects of impunity in their bodies and communities.
From enslavement in the 1500s to an apartheid system in the 1900s, Afro-Panamanians have endured structural and institutional discrimination for centuries. The twenty-first century, however, presented new political opportunities for this historically marginalized group with the creation of the National Secretary for the Development of Afro-Panamanians (SENADAP) in 2016. Emerging from the advocacy of the Black social movement, SENADAP aimed to address institutional gaps in policy development for Afro-Panamanians. This analysis identifies the strategies the Black movement employed to establish SENADAP. Drawing on social movement theory and institutional change literature, we argue that the Black movement utilized the interaction of mechanisms such as public preference, political access, and international politics, and additionally promoted the strategy of displacement to achieve institutional change from the more politically embedded National Council of the Black Ethnicity (CONEN) to the more autonomous SENADAP. These findings are corroborated through process-tracing, drawing on interviews and archival documents.
Buen vivir (good living) represents a holistic conception of well-being that transcends conventional Western metrics, which often rely on monetized poverty measurements. However, there is no structured model for assessing quality of life and livelihood satisfaction. This study employed a sequential mixed-methods design, beginning with the development of constructs through a qualitative literature review, followed by systematic data collection from 287 participants in the Alto and Medio Atrato communities of Choc & oacute;, Colombia. Data were analyzed using Exploratory Factor Analysis within the SmartPLS software framework. The resulting model integrates latent and observable variables, underscoring the critical role of governance in the well-being of Afrodescendant communities. Furthermore, the study highlights the limited relevance of social justice due to inadequate access to essential services, such as healthcare, education, and housing. It also emphasizes the significance of individual fulfillment, as measured by indicators such as self-perceived happiness, beauty, and autonomy. While this research focuses on a single department in Colombia, its methodology is notable for integrating the lived experiences of Afrodescendant communities with theoretical frameworks of human well-being. Although few scholars have explored the relationship between governance and buen vivir, this study brings this connection to the forefront.
This article explores how a group of urban Shipibo-Konibo men and women in Peru make sense of nonnormative sexualities through the notion of subjective theories: culturally situated explanations people develop about themselves and others. Drawing on twenty-four in-depth interviews with heterosexual and gay Shipibos in Pucallpa and Ica, we identify two dominant themes. First, collaborators explained the current heightened visibility of sexual diversity in Amazonia through temporal idioms of 'before' and 'nowadays.' While they described rural communities of the past as places where queerness was largely hidden or invisible - shaped by secrecy, Christian influence, and gender-stratified arrangements - urban life was seen as enabling greater visibility, albeit alongside rejection and stigma. Second, collaborators explained queer subjectivities through the notion of becoming: a cumulative, embodied, and relational process shaped by childhood gender transgressions, intimate encounters, and urban migration. These accounts rearticulate Amazonian logics of incorporation - where subjectivities are formed through exchanges of affects, substances, and practices - while intersecting with global queer discourses. Together, Shipibo theories of sexual becoming provincialize Western assumptions of fixed identities, offering alternative ways of imagining queer subjectivities in indigenous urban worlds. The article contributes to rethinking sexual modernity in Amazonia beyond liberal frameworks of recognition.
This article explores the articulation of a specific construction of whiteness in Chile by members of German-Chilean student fraternities or Burschenschaften, at the time of their creation and consolidation, from 1896 to 1940. Following the model of German Burschenschaften, these fraternities brought together male university students of German descent in Chilean cities - descendants of German immigrants who were welcomed through the state-led whitening initiatives of the mid-19th century onward. First, the article situates its approach within scholarship of whiteness and white masculinity in Latin America. Second, it examines the racial, class, and national discourses articulated by a founder and distinguished member of the first Chilean Burschenschaft. Third, it analyzes how these discourses relate to practices such as fencing, beer consumption, and the delivery of speeches - activities aimed at educating fraternity members and fostering conviviality. The article argues that such practices contributed to the construction, embodiment and sustaining of a specific form of white masculinity in Chile. The conclusion hints at the possible significance of this work for developing a more comprehensive analysis of whiteness - and particularly of 'extraordinary whiteness' - in Chile.
Marisol Ceh Moo's bilingual novel 'Chen tumeen chu'& uacute;pen & mldr; /S & oacute;lo por ser mujer' tells the harrowing story of Honorina Cadena Garc & iacute;a, a Maya Tzotzil woman who, in self-defense, killed her husband and was subsequently incarcerated. With a cultural studies lens, I carefully study the ways Honorina navigates and combats ongoing gender violence inside and outside her community. Although these conditions are denounced through the figure of Honorina, Ceh Moo does not leave us with a storyline of passive victimhood. In this article, I move this discussion forward by drawing on the concept of 'unexpectedness,' coined by Dakota scholar Phillip Deloria Honorina challenges societal norms in Mexican society by employing multiple creative strategies, including relationships with other women, 'talking back,' and re-signifying stereotypes. These tactics secure her ultimate freedom from prison and from an ongoing colonial structure that is set up for multiple forms of violence.
The enforced disappearance of forty-three normalistas on September 26-27, 2014, is still an unresolved open wound. While media coverage has been instrumental in raising awareness and demanding justice, a comprehensive understanding of the events at Ayotzinapa is essential to counter reductive narratives that portray normalista students as mere instigators of social unrest. This paper contributes to this objective by examining the broader context of Indigenous Normal schools in Mexico, which reveals a dynamic process of ethnic visibility while simultaneously challenging monolithic representations of Indigenous communities, showing that a non-essentialist perspective can foster a more nuanced appreciation of normalistas. The author argues that the Ayotzinapa tragedy represents a symptom of deeper societal issues rather than being an isolated incident. It highlights the ongoing struggles of Indigenous Normal Schools to envision and construct a decolonial alternative Mexico.
The relationship between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (DR) has been fraught with tensions over issues of migration, citizenship, and national identity. In the DR, racializing discourses have produced migrant imaginaries that socially mark Haitians as inherently 'Other', or more specifically, as the 'Haitian Other.' In this study, interdiscursive webs of anti-Haitian discourse are presented to contextualize the study's aim: the analysis of the emergence of narratives about the 'Haitian Other' in online discourse. As part of a two-step framework, (1) I carry out a thematic analysis of 633 Facebook comments to two posts by two major Dominican newspapers about Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic. Then, (2) I apply the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to explore the discursive strategies employed in the construction of the 'Haitian Other.' The findings contribute novel variations to the immigrant invasion metaphor, which are that Haitians are presented as carrying out peaceful and womb invasions through constant migration and high birth rates. The Haitian woman emerges as the most racialized figure in this context, as women are depicted as having uncontrollable fertility and depleting the Dominican healthcare budget.
The 2022 presidential election in Colombia marked a significant political milestone, as a left-wing candidate was elected President for the first time in the country's history. One of the principal objectives of Gustavo Petro's new administration is an innovative initiative dubbed 'total peace,' a holistic and multifaceted government policy working towards a lasting and sustainable solution to Colombia's decades-old internal conflict. While this is an objective at the national scale, in this article, we specifically analyze the implications of the total peace agenda for the Afro-Colombian population, which has historically been regarded as disproportionately affected by political violence and forced displacement. We examine several elements in which the total peace agenda opens possibilities for Afro-Colombian ethnic, political, and economic demands. More specifically, we suggest that the total peace agenda provides a new political opportunity structure for the mobilization of the Afro-Colombian population, which parts of the social movement among black communities have already embraced. Drawing on social movement theories of framing processes, we propose to examine current Afro-Colombian political mobilization through the notion of a 'peace frame,' suggesting a new, potentially galvanizing political development in the country.
