Editor’s Letter

From the Maya in Guatemala to the Mapuche in Chile, Latin America’s Indigenous peoples are on the forefront of fighting for rights, whether against mining and deforestation or for land rights or the right to express themselves as a culture.

We divided the issue—somewhat arbitrarily—into heritage, rights and challenges. However, in the process of editing and working with authors, we learned just how arbitrary these divisions are. Take, for example, Elisa Loncón’s eloquent article on the Mapuche struggle for the recognition of its nation from a feminist and decolonizing point of view. It’s about the rights of a nation, the challenges of achieving it and the heritage of the Mapuche philosophy of the “good life.” We ended up putting it in the rights section. 

“[I] focus from an intercultural perspective on defending the rights of Indigenous peoples, mainly the right to language and intercultural education because I believe that Indigenous peoples can continue to be Indigenous peoples with our languages, philosophy, exercising our rights and being part of a plural society, exercising autonomy, living in our territories,” she writes.

Her words sum up what this issue is about, although you will find many different perspectives here in this issue, whose authors range from weavers to poets to anti-extraction activists. It’s the beginning of a conversation. Read on….