Ethnic Struggles for Autonomy in Cauca, Colombia

My project explores the ways Indigenous intellectuals in the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC) of the 1970s articulated non-Western ways of being in their mobilization of Indigenous peasantry to social action. These articulations challenged assumptions of the universality of Western understandings of being and faced off against homogenizing discourses from the leadership of the National Association of Peasant Users (ANUC). The Unidad Indígena (Indigenous Unity) periodical that began in the 1970s in collaboration with ANUC became an area for indigenous struggles for autonomy. My project will consult and attempt to digitize relevant parts of the periodical to further understand the indigenous articulations of non-Western ways of being.