Convergencias y bifurcaciones en las biografías y autobiografías de intelectuales indígenas de México y Brasil

Abstract

In this article we present an exercise of reflection on the challenges involved in writing and studying the biographies and autobiographies of indigenous intellectuals in different geographical, historical and political scenarios: Mexico and Brazil, the colonial era and post-colonial modernity. Our comparative analysis will focus on the figures of the indigenous historian Domingo Chimalpáin and the Brazilian activist Alvaro Tukano. It is about rehearsing a critical and imaginative experiment that reveals the difficulties and limitations of our production of academic texts on the lives of indigenous intellectuals, whose autobiographical writing does not obey necessarily the literary criteria, the borders, and the objectives imposed by the Western genres.