Indigenous populations in urban contexts, identity and political power

Abstract

Indigenous populations in urban contexts constitute an increasingly present actor in the social, political, and cultural reality of cities in Paraguay. The present text is the advance of a more extensive investigation that delves into the identity determinants of the same, settled in the capital Asunción and its Metropolitan Area, through the theoretical approach and the empirical anchors of the elements of the observed reality. Categories such as identity, ethnic identity, ethnic borders, collective identity, land and territory, allow us to understand and configure the edges of a social phenomenon that has been strongly projected since the 1990s and is positioned towards the first quarter of the 21st century, as an issue that if it is not addressed seriously and rigorously with respect for consecrated and customary rights, it can become a tinderbox at the gates of central political power. It exposes the statistical circumstances of the communities, settlements and clans; outlines the visible characteristics of the progressive constitution of a collective identity that starts from feeling indigenous as a determining and cohesive imperative; explores the intricacies of the tensions with the political power that initially displays an action and management of denial towards the recognition of the existence of indigenous people living in cities; and anchors the reflection on the problem of land and territory in general and in the urban sphere, its possession and intrinsic link with the constitution of indigenous societies as part of an ancestral totalizing and totalized culture: its cosmogonic configuration and its dynamic identities.