Indigenous Communists and Urban Intellectuals in Cayambe, Ecuador (1926-1944)

This case study provides an example of how people from two fundamentally different cultures (one rural, indigenous, Kichua-speaking and peasant, and the other urban, white, Spanish-speaking and professional) overcame their differences to struggle together to fight social injustices. Rather than relating to each other on a seemingly unequal basis, the activists recognized their common interests in fighting against the imposition of an international capitalist system on Ecuador's agrarian economy. Emerging out of that context, activists framed collective interests, identities, ideas, and demands as they worked together to realize common goals. Their actions challenge commonly held assumptions that leftist activists did not understand indigenous struggles, or that indigenous peoples remained distant from the goals of leftist political parties. Rather, it points to how the two struggles became intimately intertwined. In the process, it complicates traditional understandings of the role of "popular intellectuals", and how they interact with other activists, the dominant culture, and the state

Left-wing politics · Peasant · Politics and Society in Latin America

• Por el halago del voto popular». Participación electoral indígena en Talamanca, Costa Rica, 1919-1948

  Open Access•Alejandra Boza Villarreal•Historia y Política Ideas…•2021

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• From Indigenous Economies to Market-Based Self-Governance

  Open Access•R Kuokkanen•Canadian Journal of Political…•2011

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