Autonomías y Autogobierno en la América Diversa

The global activism of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples has brought the demand for self-determination, autonomy and self-government to the forefront of debate, achieving significant advances in international standards. However, these achievements are confronted by the policies and realities of national governments and economic interests of all kinds in their countries, which threaten them and seek to deepen their dispossession. In this book we conceive of autonomy as a variety of practices, processes and mechanisms of self-governance through which the inherent rights and sovereign aspirations of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples around the world are expressed and given meaning. The right to self-determination is a consubstantial part of contemporary socio-political life and its exercise in their territories is today probably one of the only ways for the persistence of life on the planet. The contributions that make up this volume, many of them by indigenous authorship, bring together debates that address these challenges and link ancestral voices with today's struggles and the defense of the future.