Insurgent Poetics: Literature and Alternative Textualities in Contemporary Abya Yala

The last two decades of the 20th and the first decade of the 21st centuries have been marked by a notable increase in indigenous political action as well as an outpouring of texts produced by native authors and poets. Amerindians from Alaska to Chile are increasingly raising their voices and reclaiming the right to represent themselves, in both a political and a discursive sense. This boom in indigenous literature and social movements is arguably one of the most significant occurrences at the turn of the twenty-first century, yet it remains largely understudied on a comparative level. This dissertation seeks to address that gap by expanding the possibilities for North-South dialogue and exploring the commonalities and particularities of different movements across both continents. By critically adopting native activists’ use of the term Abya Yala—meaning “Continent of Plenitude and Maturity” in the Kuna language of Panama—I explore alternative conceptions of space and place that impart a powerful starting point for rethinking comparative, inter-American work through the lens of indigenous studies.\ud \ud Central to this inquiry is the concept of insurgent poetics, which I introduce to convey a mode of writing that narrates and/or performs acts of resistance and partakes in the struggle for political and intellectual sovereignty. Through an analysis of several novels, essays, and poetry collections from Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia/Venezuela, the Southwestern United States, and Bolivia, I demonstrate that literature constitutes a key weapon in indigenous social movements, as it provides a means of rendering subjugated knowledges visible (visibilizar) and of envisioning alternatives to modernity/coloniality (visualizar). Given that this process of revitalization represents a struggle for autonomy in what is ultimately a poetic (re)creation of the self, I contend that insurgency represents not only the negation of oppression, coloniality, neoliberalism, or the dominant classes (as the case may be), but also the affirmation of possible alternatives to the dominant power structures and systems of knowledge. Contemporary indigenous insurgency thus represents a form cultural resurgence, an emergence into the scene of global politics, and an in-surgence into the sphere of lettered culture and State power