Continuidades, rupturas y discursos en la representación de los indígenas de Ecuador, Perú y Chile
Abstract
This study examines the continuities and ruptures in the representations of the indigenous peoples of the Andes depicted in the discourse of selected texts of the Conquest of America, the Colonial Era, the nation-state, and in the indigenous narratives. The first chapter explains the concept of representation and explores different approaches to the identity of the indigenous peoples from the perspective of the Other and from the indigenous voices themselves. Based on the theoretical contributions that relate history and genealogy with literature, I propose a discursive analysis that aids in articulating the genealogy of tropes, which are contained in the texts of the corpus. In the second chapter, I determine the representations of the native people of the Americas in the history of the first half of the fifteenth century, or the so-called Conquest, which starts with the relation of Christopher Columbus and culminates with the chronicles of Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. The third chapter begins with the debate between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, which dominates the colonial era at a discursive level, and it also gives an account of other representations of the indigenous peoples during the historical period of the Colony. In the fourth chapter, the Spanish-American nation-state bursts upon the scene with an exploratory study of the Chilean nation about the Mapuche people and the literary expressions of indigenism. The fifth chapter revolves around the emergence of indigenous narratives as another major moment in this study. It contains the self-representations portrayed by the indigenous narrative voices themselves, which also indicate a significant change in their representation. This thesis contributes to making visible the pockets of resistance and rupture that have risen as efforts to deconstruct and re-signify the representations of indigenous peoples, which are present in contemporary indigenous narratives that emerged as a reaction to the modes of representation from the perspective of the dominant groups, particularly in the Andes.