ABSTRACT

Regional autonomy is being discussed in Latin America as one of several proposals for resolving the indigenous issue. As a political collectivity, an autonomous community or region is established as a component of the corresponding nation-state. Autonomy seeks not only to satisfy the interests and aspirations of partial communities but to ensure a more adequate integration of the national society. The regime of regional autonomy is a response to the need to ensure democratic representation of the country's sociocultural regions within the state's political and administrative organization in a way compatible with the plural ethnic-national makeup of the society. In these terms, regional autonomy implies a certain political and administrative decentralization of the state. The decentralization brought about by autonomy is juridical-political rather than simply administrative. It depends on the law rather than on the assignment or transfer of functions by a higher administrative organ that can also revoke them.