Has the life quality for the Indigenous peoples in Latin America improved after three decades in which legislation has been developed to recognize them? Statistical information and the increase of social conflictivity in the indigenous territories leads to the negative answer on that question. This essay is a critical reflection on the exhaustion of the multicultural moment in Latin America, starting with the dialogue of critical thinking that has emerged from the movements themselves, especially from activists and intellectuals who denounce the relationship between policies of recognition and extractive capitalism, resisting the colonialist images that these policies reproduce in so far as they deny the historicity and political potential of their peoples.

Claudia Zapata Silva is a Doctor of History and an Academic at the Center for Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Chile. She is specialized in contemporary Latin American history, in indigenous movements and in Latin American critical thinking. In 2015 she received the Ezequiel Martínez Estrada Essay Prize from Casa de las Américas, Cuba, for her book Intelectuales indígenas en Ecuador, Bolivia y Chile. Diferencia, colonialismo y anticolonialismo.