Indigeneity at the 1948 Bogotá Conference

Abstract

The article examines the history and legacy of the Bogotá diplomatic conference of 1948 in relation to Indigenous peoples. Indigenous voices were entirely absent from the Bogotá conference itself, and delegates relied instead on certain assumptions and narratives largely drawn from the Indigenismo movement in the Americas at the time. In considering Indigenous peoples as part of a broader social agenda, delegates confronted the legacies of colonialism and the ongoing exploitation and resistance of Indigenous peoples, invoking threads that we today might label a racial capitalism critique of international law. Their efforts, however salutary, culminated in an instrument, the Inter-American Charter of Social Guarantees, that was never ultimately adopted. Nevertheless, the debates at Bogotá are illuminating of the subsequent trajectory of Indigenous peoples’ rights in international law, and the alternative possibilities that can still be recovered to live up to the Bogotá conference delegates’ aspirations of Indigenous emancipation.