Indigenous organizations: Rising actors in Latin America

This article analyses the recent increase in the importance of indigenous peoples as political and social actors in the region, reviewing the changes that have taken place in the situation of the indigenous peoples, the relationship between the State and such peoples, the forging of new identities, and cultural changes: questions that are all being reappraised in the light of what has become known as “the ethnic question". The author highlights the existence of a number of leading threads which appear and reappear in the various types of indigenous movements.