Author Description

This book is an analysis of the constitutive power of law and its role in the subalternization of subjects in Colombia. It analyzes the way law became central in the process of occidentalization of indigenous peoples and in the constitution of the Colombian nation as an inclusive/exclusive imagined community. It is based on a multilayered historical, textual analyses of archival documentation and interviews to indigenous rights activists, former guerrilla members, and members of the Colombian elites. This work begins with an analysis of the way law was used during the colony to constitute an occidental identity and goes on to analyze some 19th century Colombia legal artifacts in order to show the logic of incorporation into modernity that repeats itself in different waves of globalization. It analyzes the incorporation of indigenous rights in the 1991 Constitution, its implementation by the Colombian Constitutional Court and its role in constituting a liberal identity as part of neoliberal governmentality. It also analyzes the processes of resistance of indigenous peoples and the way their claims are framed in legal terms in order to be heard by the national state.