ABSTRACT
In colonial times, the problem of how to deal with the indigenous population in the conquered territories was solved by the Spanish crown. The solution was the establishment of a segregated political system of two republics, one for the white conquerors and one for the conquered indigenous population. Social anthropologists, as well as indigenous leaders, criticized the politics of assimilation and traditional indigenismo at the end of the 1960s through the 1970s as ethnocide, which is best expressed in the first declaration of Barbados For the Liberation of the Indian in 1971. At the same time, indigenous peoples themselves gained voice. Since the midst of the 1990s, the debate on indigeneity has been related to the emergence of a transnational conjuncture of the indigenous question. To reach out for supranational political institutions, indigenous movements began to organize beyond the nation-states.
