Urban indigeneity in Latin America: towards a decolonial methodology?

This presentation will offer some preliminary, personal and tentative reflections on this question – or, at least, some thoughts on what does not constitute such an approach.

The starting point is a sense of unease about a suggestion Ann Varley made in an article published ten years ago, ‘Postcolonialising informality?’, in which she queried why postcolonial studies had displayed little interest in Latin American cities. 

"Perhaps the omission was a product of what had been described as scholars’ switching their concerns from class to ethnicity, emphasising Amerindian populations rather than urban residents. Demographically, the suggestion was not unreasonable, since indigenous groups are strikingly under-represented in the region’s cities; but ‘under-represented’ does not mean ‘absent’. Do such observations effectively render urban indigeneity invisible? And if so, what should be done about such rendering invisible?"

- Ann Varley