ABSTRACT
The dramatic emergence of historically marginalized Native Americans as key political actors in several countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean poses important questions about the structure of these nation-states and their future institutional viability, as well as about the health of regional democracy and respect for human rights in the twenty-first century. Part of the estimated 250 million individuals belonging to five thousand distinct indigenous communities in seventy states around the world, Indians in Central and South America share a legacy of centuries of colonization, discrimination, poverty, and loss of control over their lands, traditions, and natural resources. As some of the globe’s most marginalized peoples, their demands for greater inclusion and control of their destiny are aided by the “unprecedented recognition” (Andolina 2003, 721) of indigenous status and rights resulting from the networking possibilities opened by the internationalization of non-state forums, such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs).2 At the same time, while the “steady flow of persons, capital, arms, and ideas,” fruit of the globalization process, is bitterly opposed by many indigenous activists and their allies, the phenomenon has had the effect of shrinking the role and importance of states while increasing indigenous peoples’ demand that they receive critical services these offer to citizens (Lam 2000, 166). It remains to be seen if and how the challenges posed
by Indian mobilization can be peacefully and productively incorporated as part of a more equitable political inclusion and economic development. Nor is it certain that these can be contained within the boundaries of nation-states for the most part drawn up two centuries ago by exclusionary non-Indian elites.
