Indigenous Intellectuals in Contemporary Ecuador: Encounters with "Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America"

The indigenous intellectuals who were part of the foundation of the Ecuadorean indigenous movement of the 1980s contributed to the theoretical and political grounding of the concept of the plurinational state that is now recognized in the country's new constitution. This concept constitutes a critique of the idea of nationhood that developed in Latin America throughout the twentieth century. A comparative reading of these intellectuals' work on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Rodolfo Stavenhagen's Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America reveals two themes: colonial continuity and historical continuity. Both can be seen as a settling of scores with colonialism understood both as a historical period and as an analytical term for understanding the social reality of Latin America.