Towards Another Cosmopolitanism: Transnational Activism of Indigenous Women in Latin America

Abstract

Throughout the 2000s, Indigenous women became leaders in the struggle of their peoples for their lands and rights. They began by occupying positions of power in local organizations and, more recently, gained prominence on the national, regional, and global levels. Brazilian Indigenous female leaders have followed the path established by other movements of the Indigenous women in Latin America and also have framed their human rights claims. Their proficiency in the language of human rights has allowed them to speak and to be heard in different arenas, such as in the rights of women and Indigenous peoples and also in the environmental aspect. This article is based on Seyla Benhabib’s cosmopolitanism approach, particularly on her conception of democratic iteractions with the aim to argue that, by using the human rights language in order to translate global norms into local contexts, Indigenous women have become mediators between the local, national and global levels. In addition, their cosmopolitanism lights up and pressures the traditional liberal cosmopolitanism at the same time. We propose a theoretical article with an empirical support which is resulted from a qualitative field research developed within the years of 2014-2018.