BETWEEN CHANGE AND CONTINUITY. INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF OUR TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY LATIN AMERICA.
For the fifth time (54th Edition, Vienna, Austria (2012); 55th Edition, San Salvador, Republic of El Salvador (2015); 56th Edition, Salamanca, Spain (2018); and 58th Edition, Serbia (2025)), and with two books arising from the same Symposium, we again propose its continuity. It has been based on generating a process of reflection and analysis through a historical and ethnohistorical journey that seeks to interweave the understanding and/or comprehension of the customs and traditions of the so-called indigenous populations with the legal and anthropological sciences, drawing on multidisciplinary tools that will broaden the cultural horizon of everyday practices and knowledge ranging from the medical, educational, moral and religious to indigenous law as a subject appreciated from different approaches. In the 55th Edition we introduced debates on indigenous revitalization, autonomy and ethnicities; in Salamanca 2018, we further proposed the need to ask about indigenous peoples as active subjects of democracy, with ways of life, visions, philosophies and proposals for participation and development that contribute novel and alternative forms of organization and social change both within their communities and in the wider society. Ultimately, beyond assessing losses of identity based on essentialist models, our idea is to approach the study of such communities as transitional subjects that update their politics of identity and memory within the framework of contemporary political, social and economic processes. And today we renew our proposal, updated through the continuity of debates and reflections on the new challenges that violence, forced displacement, drug trafficking and migration—arising from different circumstances—impose on considerations of decoloniality, other economies and depatriarchalization in discussions about current Latin American realities.
