Insurgent Veins: Indigenismo, Indigenous Literatures, and Decolonial Cracks

by José Carlos Díaz-Zanelli

Overview

Insurgent Veins examines the decolonial ideological bridge between the early twentieth-century indigenista literary tradition and its influence on the consolidation of Indigenous literature, which emerged alongside social mobilizations in Mesoamerica and the Andean corridor. Traditionally, Indigenous and indigenista studies have been treated as separate fields of inquiry; however, Insurgent Veins challenges this dichotomy by exploring the thematic and political commonalities between the two subfields. Through a contrapuntal analysis of literary texts and social movements, Díaz-Zanelli demonstrates that indigenista proposals have continued to shape the ideological formations of Indigenous literature in recent decades across Latin America. Insurgent Veins argues that Indigenous and indigenista studies are not mutually exclusive but overlap in significant ways, including their direct critique of capitalist modernity, their incorporation of race as a framework for struggle, and their engagement with decolonization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822967828
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	01/13/2026
Series:	Illuminations
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

José Carlos Díaz-Zanelli is visiting assitant professor of Hispanic Studies at Hamilton College. He is co-editor of Worlding Latin America: Corpus, Praxis, and Global Networks. His scholarship focuses on Indigenous literatures in Latin America and Environmental Humanities. His work has been published in journals such as Comparative Literature Studies, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, América Crítica, and MLN-Hispanic Issue.

Editorial Reviews

Insurgent Veins is a powerful exploration of indigenista resonances in contemporary Indigenous writing. This type of analysis, of genealogical tracing, provides a much-needed base and framework for further exploration and analysis of the many exciting Indigenous writers who have emerged over the past decades. In that sense, this book is a timely and welcome contribution to Latin American and Native American and Indigenous studies.

Anne Lambright

José Carlos Díaz-Zanelli’s Insurgent Veins is an important, much needed introduction to current Indigenous thought and literature in Latin America, as well as to the indigenista tradition that preceded it. By means of an innovative counterpoint between Meso-American and Andean authors—both criollo and Indigenous—Díaz-Zanelli explores the evolution of these imbricated traditions and their contributions to a truly global decolonial movement and thought.

Juan De Castro