Feminisms, Genders, and Indigenous Women in Latin America

Currently in Latin America there are approximately forty-five million persons who belong to 826 indigenous groups. ¹ In this context and given the cultural and historical diversity in these communities, the idea of feminisms and genders in indigenous contexts is not so common and is difficult to generalize. However, there are crosscutting debates, to which I will refer, that have emerged in my experience of over thirty years of working with indigenous peoples in Colombia. For example, in Colombia there are 1,392,623 people who self-identify as belonging to 102 different indigenous groups. ² They demand self-determination and sovereignty over their territories, and they are active participants in national electoral politics. In a similar way, in Latin America indigenous peoples are political participants in national and transnational political arenas. In both situations, gender has been a topic of discussion.