Representing "Real Indians": The Challenges of Indigenous Authenticity and

Asking who "really" speaks & acts for indigenous people is an increasingly important political question in Latin America. This article explores how an "unlikely" Evangelical Protestant Indian organization (FEINE, the Ecuadorian Evangelical Indigenous Federation) & a seemingly more "authentic" Bolivian indigenous federation of communities claiming pre-Columbian authority structures (CONAMAQ, the National Council of Markas & Ayllus of Qollasuyo) have grown in representational strength, or the ability to convince others that they speak for specific constituencies. Through this historically & ethnographically based comparative political study, I argue that indigenous representation is produced across scales, both from "below" (as communities & leaders organize & mobilize) as well as from "above" (as elites & opportunity structures favor some groups over others). FEINE & CONAMAQ present mirror images of the ways in which indigenous people negotiate local-global networks & discourses: FEINE Indianized Protestant Evangelicalism while CONAMAQ transnationalized local ayllu authority structures. This multi-scale analysis suggests that how Indians are spoken about transnationally shapes who gets to speak for Indians locally. References. Adapted from the source document.