Indigenous people, socio-environmental conflict and post-development in latin America

Abstract

The aims of this article is to reflect on the contradictions between a conception of development that is anchored in the idea of progress, industrialization and economic growth and worldviews of indigenous peoples, for whom the existing symbiotic bond between man and nature necessarily involves intangibility and irreducibility of natural resources as a source of economic and social development. For this reason, it is argued that a proper view of development must include an epistemic shift in which the ideas and knowledge of indigenous communities are built to radically alter society/nature and highly predatory logic environment relationship and life human that comes currently prevail. This new perspective implies a change in the discourse and everyday practices of "knowing" and "doing" in what some authors have referred to as post-development.