Mapping Colonial Resistance: Colonialism, Anti-“Indianism,” and Contested Nationalisms in the Americas

Abstract

In his study of the key periods, logics, and legacies of colonialism in Latin America, Nelson Maldonado-Torres presents an examination of the political climates that shaped personal identity and inspired multiple parties to vie for political signification and power, both hegemonic and decolonial. The scholar urges that such analytical engagements offer opportunities to reflect more critically on metaphysical and literal aspects of “not only freedom or independence, but also the expansion and contestation of Western modernity.” Maldonado-Torres invites speculation about the undertheorization of politically powerful formations such as La Raza and reconceptualizes the meaning of geopolitical borders to reveal a complex nexus of imperial expansion, variant nationalisms, and nation-formations. In this chapter, I seek to engage in conversation with Maldonado-Torres’s hemispheric analysis, tracing the role of “the Indian” in the logic of colonial expansion, subaltern formations, and anticolonial resistance in Spain’s “New World.”