The Thoughts of the Indian who Was Educated in the Colombian Jungles and The Ball that Rolled in the Desert

Abstract

Manuel Quintín Lame was the most important Colombian indigenous leader of the 20th century. He was born in 1883 and grew up as a serf in an hacienda located in the surroundings of Popayán, the economic and political centre in the former society of masters and landowners of the province of the same name. He led the first movement of Indians against the land relations, a form of servitude, and for the recovery of communal lands or resguardos, as they are known in Colombia. He developed a long-silenced political thought. The “Quintiada”, as the highest form of resistance to the dissolution of the cultural identity of the Indians, and their political ideals, are the precursors of the contemporary Colombian and Latin American indigenous movement.