Colombian Indigenist Institute

This organization was established in 1942 to promote the founding of indigenist groups to advise governments on official Indian policy. Formed in response to the call of the First Inter-American Indigenist Congress (at Pátzcuaro, Mexico), the institute was a private entity founded by leading Colombian intellectuals, including Gregorio Hernández de Alba, Antonio García, Juan Friede, Gerardo Reichel Dolmatoff, and Alfredo Vásquez Carrizosa. Its objectives included the publication of cultural, historical, and socioeconomic studies of Colombian Indians as well as the promotion of applied anthropology projects aimed at the rational integration of Indians into the national life of Colombia. The Colombian Indigenist Institute was active in confronting official policies, and it was critical of the liquidation of indigenous communities and government support of Catholic missions among indigenous people. The institute was incorporated into the National University of Colombia in 1947, but was dissolved during the Violencia of the following decade.

See alsoLabor Movements .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Roberto Pineda Camacho, "La reivindicación del indio en el pensamiento social colombiano (1850–1950)," in Un siglo de investigación social: Antropología en Colombia, edited by Jaime Arocha and Nina S. de Friedemann (1984).

Additional Bibliography

Gros, Christian. Políticas de la etnicidad: Identidad, estado y modernidad. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antro-pología e Historia, 2000.

Postero, Nancy Grey, and León Zamosc, eds. The Struggle for Indigenous Rights in Latin America. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2004.

Rappaport, Joanne. Intercultural Utopias: Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Pluralism in Colombia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.

                                            Joanne Rappaport