ABSTRACT
The term Indigenous in the sense that it is presently used has its origin in colonialism. As colonialism has had different histories in different areas of the colonized world, the categories that designate the colonial identities are also diverse. This does not mean that colonialism is a fragmented and unrelated phenomenon, but that colonialism, as capitalism, is a worldwide process that has local conditions of production and reproduction (Thomas 1994). The poetics and politics of colonial discourses and categories can be read from a global perspective, but the reading has to retain a local scope if it is to disentangle the mechanisms of production and reproduction of present day colonial relations. That an understanding of colonial categories is local is evident in the fact that an academic book published in the city of Catamarca can be read with unanticipated connotations, just on the other side of the Ambato mountains, a couple of hours away. Local resistances always inform the diversity of colonialism and colonialist categories.
