January 27, 2025

Post-Colonialisms and Global Citizenship

Maria Paula Meneses

Since the 1970s, the Ecuadorian indigenous movement has built its epistemological and political proposal for a Plurinational State within a broader project of Plurinationality (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador CONAIE, 1991, 1994), through which indigenous communities, peoples, and nationalities have exercised, practiced, and developed their justice systems. One of those is the Kichwa justice or Kichwa Law practiced by eighteen Kichwa Nations. This thesis, employing an experiential and extended case method focused on a decolonizing methodology, reflects upon and accompanies two 'llakikuna': called, the 29 of Saraguro conducted by the Consejo de Ayllukuna de Saraguro and the rape administered by the Comunidad Kichwa Otavalo de Tocagón, located in the southern and northern Andean regions of Ecuador, respectively. It aims to make visible and analyze the knowledge and practices developed by these communities in the exercise of their justice, in the midst of the historical, political, social, and economic transformations that these communal societies face regarding the onslaught of the Western hegemonic project of modernity and globalization. The central argument of the thesis is supported by reflections from postcolonial theories, especially those of the Epistemologies of the South (Santos, 2009b) and the memory of living academia, upon which this research seeks to answer how the Kichwa justice of these communities contributes to the construction of the Plurinational State and Plurinationality.

Keywords: Kichwa Law, Plurinational State, Epistemologies of the South, Resistances, Kichwa Communities