Emergent Conversation 27

This discussion and translation are part of the series Indigenous Politics, State Relations, and Populism in the Americas
PoLAR Online Emergent Conversation 27

By Andres F. Ramirez, Maria Violet Medina Quiscue, and Francisco Pulido

This text responds to PoLAR’s call on Indigenous-state relations under populist regimes. It is a dialogue among individuals with diverse experiences and views regarding Indigenous struggles in Colombia and the country’s political context. This article reflects on the contemporary relationship between Indigenous populations and the government of Gustavo Petro, examining how Colombia’s Indigenous movement has been affected by the administration’s policies and actions. We also seek to examine the concept and implications of populism with respect to rights, visibility, and the autonomy of Indigenous communities in the country.

The text reflects our conversation about the relationships between populism and the movimiento indígena (Indigenous movement) in Colombia. The concept of “scenography of change” refers both to the current administration and to the choreographies of symbols, bodies, and emotions we observe, wherein Indigeneity occupies a visible—though not leading—role. The format draws inspiration from the Indigenous tradition of círculo de la palabra (circle of the word), an ancestral practice that constitutes a sacred space of collective dialogue. It is grounded in the principle of equality and respect, where all must be heard. We employ scenes situated in specific contexts and circumstances to illustrate the theatricality of populism. These scenes also function as devices that oscillate between recognition and co-optation. Each participant contributes a perspective rooted in distinct life experiences, revealing tensions and affinities across struggles for recognition, territory, and power.

Scene 1

For leaders and peasants
who were unjustly stripped
of their lands and, for many, of their lives,
for them we will all struggle.
Today my Colombia has awakened,
tired at last of so much deceit.
The people cry out here: Present,
Gustavo Petro for President!
Gustavo Petro, Cauca stands with the Historic Pact…

This electoral rally cry played loudly in Bogotá’s National Park in May 2022—and surely in many other corners of the country. Set to a ranchera melody, it marked the closing of a campaign that would culminate in the election of the country’s first left-wing president. Yet those playing the music in the park were not campaign staffers, but members of Indigenous communities who had been encamped there for months in a “permanent minga.”^[1]

Among many of those Indigenous participants, enthusiasm was palpable. The prospect of a “government of change” led by Gustavo Petro and his vice president Francia Márquez—the first Afro-Colombian woman to hold the vice-presidency—stirred hope, despite the profound adversity Indigenous peoples faced in the park, the city, and in many places long ignored by the state. In this context of historical invisibility, thousands of Indigenous people traveled to the Colombian capital to join the campaign’s closing rally, flooding Plaza de Bolívar with red and green flags. There, they heard Petro express his love for Indigenous peoples, recognize the legitimacy of the minga, and affirm Indigenous rights to self-government (Petro 2022).

The “Historic Pact” that carried Gustavo Petro to the presidency represents a coalition of political and social forces in which Indigenous populations held a prominent place. Its program centered on social and environmental justice, a more participatory democracy, and the promise of “total peace.” After an opening marked by hope and high expectations, polling has shown a sustained decline in presidential approval. Today, the public—including the Indigenous communities who were key to Petro’s ascent—expresses growing disillusionment with the government’s course.

The electoral rally cry that sounded in the Parque Nacional, along with other expressions of political theater, demonstrates the novel and complex intersection between Petro’s brand of populism and the Indigenous movement in Colombia. This raises critical questions about the character of this alliance, the extent to which it has benefited Indigenous populations, and the new trajectories it may open—or foreclose—for the Indigenous left.

Populism and Indigeneity in Latin America

Andrés F. Ramírez:  Populism is complex and ambiguous, and therefore difficult to define. Mazzarella (2019) approaches it in terms of symptomatic features and tendencies rather than essentialisms. He highlights, for example, alignments with “ordinary people” and conflicts between majorities and minorities, between “us” and “them,” “the people” and “the elite”—classic binaries that not only stage antagonism but also erase the center and any possibility of consensus. He also discusses the reconfiguration of authority that occurs under populism—whether justified or just is another matter—both in right and leftwing contexts. Mazzarella further underscores contradictions, such as populism’s relationship to democracy, which it sometimes promotes and sometimes obstructs, as well as tensions between representation and popular sovereignty.

While populism certainly challenges and unsettles the liberal settlement and its hegemonic influence, it does not always serve the unrepresented, alienated, and marginalized sectors of el pueblo (the people). Recent history has made clear how popular imaginaries can express and foment forms of racism. Latin American populism tends to be more ethnicized than elsewhere (Mudde 2011). It is therefore worth asking what utility populism holds for ethnic and Indigenous populations. Although frequently presented as more inclusive, Latin American populism has also been described as simple rhetoric that fails to effect transformative change at the grassroots level (Teichman 2022). In our case, the populism we observe presents itself as a theater of majorities with democratic potential. What remains unclear, and contested, is who writes the script of “the popular,” and whether Indigenous peoples act as subjects, or as secondary actors.

Francisco Pulido Acuña:  In Latin America, populism can be understood not as an anomaly but as a manifestation of democracy when it is stretched toward the inclusion of historically marginalized sectors. In this sense, it lies on a spectrum that ranges from a minimalist democracy, centered on elections and basic institutional arrangements, to a maximalist democracy that seeks expanded participation and the effective recognition of excluded groups. Colombia is no exception. The Petro government can be analyzed in these terms: has populism operated as a mechanism of democratic expansion, or, conversely, has it produced practices of centralization that limit pluralism and the checks and balances of a democratic regime?

I consider populism a form of intensive democratization that is not exclusive to left or right-wing governments, but a transversal modality that redefines the relationship between state and citizenry. Access to public power reveals tensions and contradictions: what begins as an inclusive process can devolve into concentration of power, institutional weakening, or inverse exclusion. This ambivalence makes populism a complex political phenomenon—capable of enlarging the democratic horizon while generating risks of institutional capture.

For these reasons, I view populism as a manifestation internal to contemporary democratic regimes, situated within the procedures that organize control over the public realm—not as a negative category, but as a constitutive expression of democracy as a regime.

Following Urbinati (2019), populism is located within representative democracies as a form of power that reconfigures the relation between the people and institutions: a mode of “direct representation of the popular” that challenges traditional mediations without escaping the regime’s democratic logic. From this perspective, populism spans a spectrum from minimalist visions of democracy—focused on institutional arrangements such as voting—to more maximalist visions that seek the inclusion of historically excluded groups in public life.

In line with Mouffe (2018) and Urbinati (2019), populism may be understood as an ambivalent form of contemporary democracy: a strategy that aims to widen participation and incorporate historically marginalized voices, while simultaneously reconfiguring institutional mediations and displacing deliberative channels toward a more direct relationship between leader and people. Thus, populism appears as both expansive and distorting—a force capable of activating new forms of political inclusion, yet not free of tensions, resistances, and risks of symbolic concentration of power.

Accordingly, populism is not confined to left or right governments; it is a transversal feature of democratic regimes that, by centering the representation of “the people” as political subject, expresses both democratizing potential and the institutional limits of its implementation.

María Violet Medina Quiscué:  From the standpoint of Indigenous peoples in Colombia, populism is experienced as a painful paradox. Leaders who come to power brandishing discourses of resistance, embracing the historic struggles and demands of Indigenous movements, often end up governing in centralized fashion, allying with transnational capital, and weakening our own forms of community organization.

In seeking to construct a unified “people” vis-à-vis an elite, populism tends to homogenize difference and subordinate diversity. This logic is incompatible with our Indigenous cosmovisions and principles, where diversity is not only recognized but valued as a fundamental principle of life. Against the model of a single people led by a charismatic figure, Indigenous peoples propose a political model based on a plurality of peoples, where power is collective and exercised through spaces such as community, council, or assembly.

From this perspective—and drawing on Mazzarella (2019), who reflects on the conditions and effects of populist discourse—Indigenous critique does not stop at questioning who speaks in the name of the people. It also asks deeper questions: from where is one speaking? With what forms of authority? And who really has the power to decide? In this sense, Indigenous perspectives destabilize the very core of populism by proposing a politics not grounded in vertical representation, but in self-determination, reciprocity, and the collective exercise of power.

Popular Mobilization

Scene 2

We Indigenous are ready to take to the streets.

—Pacha Kanchay, Yanacona Indigenous leader (Reynoso 2025)

In April 2025, Bogotá witnessed a massive Indigenous mobilization. Although initially conceived as a protest against the government’s failure to fulfill legal and territorial commitments, the Gran Minga also became a demonstration of support for the popular consultation promoted by President Gustavo Petro.

As the government’s consultation faltered, Kanchay reaffirmed his willingness—and, it seemed, that of all Indigenous peoples in the country—to use their bodies to make themselves heard. While one cannot treat the Indigenous subject as a monolithic bloc, the intention behind Kanchay’s words appears to have had an effect: a few days later, on May 5, a decree was signed to enable the operation of Indigenous Territorial Entities (ETI)—a promise left unfulfilled since the 1991 constitutional reform.

Andrés F. Ramírez:  Populism cannot be understood solely as an ideology or a mere political structure; its force reveals itself in moments of effervescence, when what Mazzarella calls the “collective flesh” emerges: the body of the people in its affective, visceral, vulnerable, and exposed dimensions (2019). In this sense, the Gran Minga constituted a populist inflection point that mobilized around twenty thousand Indigenous Colombians in Bogotá. Yet, as Kanchay suggests, the very possibility that this collective flesh be activated highlights the rhetorical dimension of populism as a resource for convening and legitimating.

We must also recognize that minga is not synonymous with popular mobilization and we must likewise attend to its reach as an ancestral practice. In Colombia, the minga is often interpreted as a form of political mobilization and protest against the state, a product of a historical context of confrontation between Indigenous communities and government (Ulloa 2012; Murillo 2009). This reading, however, reduces its complexity. The term, which is of Quechua origin, refers to an Andean ancestral practice linked to collective, reciprocal, and solidaristic labor—one that exceeds the logic of protest (Jaramillo 2011; Poole 2009). The fact that the minga is recognized primarily as political action says more about Colombia’s conditions of conflict than about its deeper meaning, rooted in community organization and the defense of collective life (Escobar 2008).

Although the Gran Minga and other mingas in Colombia may resemble large populist mobilizations, their character must be clarified. The “collective flesh” is the people’s body that expresses populism, which is made visible, vulnerable, and affective in the public square (Mazzarella 2019). Yet the minga neither originates in nor is exhausted by populist performativity. It is worth recalling that the minga is not specified or regulated by any particular statute; its definition cannot be limited to a single register—whether community labor or political mobilization (Orcasita & Sarmiento 2005; Testori & d’Auria 2018). While both the minga and the activation of collective flesh generate outcomes by mobilizing numerous bodies, the minga transcends the populist script, anchored in practices of deeper cultural provenance and longer historical trajectory (Van Cott 2005).

Francisco Pulido Acuña:  Understood from a juridico-political perspective, populism can be characterized as a form of democratic expansion that seeks to move beyond the limits of formal liberal democracy by integrating historically marginalized actors into public decision-making. Political practice thus unfolds both through traditional institutional arrangements—appointments, legal reforms, regulated channels of access to power—and through direct social mobilization, which operates as a parallel source of legitimacy to the institutional track.

In Colombia, the Petro government has deployed this twofold strategy. On the one hand, it uses state institutions to advance its reform agenda; on the other, it appeals to popular mobilization—particularly the support of Indigenous communities and excluded sectors—as a resource to press for and accelerate changes that would otherwise be more complex and protracted.

This dual approach is a local and typical expression of Latin American populist regimes, insofar as it claims the people’s voice as a foundation of legitimacy in the face of institutional rigidity. While oriented toward inclusion and democratization, it raises a legal question: to what extent can popular mobilization substitute for regulated procedures of deliberation and decision in a state governed by law? In this sense, populism presents a tension between the need for openness and social inclusion and the risk of eroding institutional checks and balances by privileging the mobilizational “shortcut” over the normative channels provided by the Constitution and the laws.

María Violet Medina Quiscué:  Social mobilization has been a key tool for Indigenous communities to articulate demands and exert political pressure in Colombia. In this context, concepts like “popular mobilization” and “Indigenous minga” have often been used interchangeably by non-Indigenous sectors, overlooking their profound differences. The former obeys a contingent political logic; the latter has historical, cultural, and spiritual roots that exceed conjunctural politics. Our national imaginary has frequently reduced the Indigenous minga to a form of protest, when in fact it is an integral expression of community organization, reciprocity, and collective thought, as the peoples of Cauca have taught through the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC).

From a political science perspective, popular mobilization can be understood as a collective expression of social action under democratic conditions or institutional crisis. As Andrés notes in analyzing the April 2025 mobilization, such mobilizations coalesce around moments of political effervescence in which the people—or the “collective flesh,” in Mazzarella’s terms—erupt into the public square with affective and visceral demands. Often associated with populism, these phenomena constitute “the people” as a political subject through mass visibility and presence.

Indigenous support for President Petro’s popular consultation was read in this light: seen as a strategic political move in which mobilization became a resource of legitimation. As Francisco argues, this form of action reflects a model of direct democracy that seeks to include the historically excluded by rallying popular backing for structural reforms, often skirting traditional institutional channels.

Unlike popular mobilization, the Indigenous minga does not arise solely in response to political conjuncture, nor is it limited to the public performativity of protest. According to Indigenous traditions—and in particular the pedagogical legacy of the CRIC—the minga is an act of collective life that entails joint labor, community thought, and the exercise of autonomy. Murra (2002) emphasizes that the minga articulates values of shared work, territorial defense, transmission of knowledge, and collective healing. It is not a reactive manifestation but a long-term organized process that transcends the politico-institutional and is rooted in the cultural fabric of the pueblos. Reducing it to a form of urban protest distorts its essence and perpetuates marginalizing views that criminalize Indigenous organization, as this occurs in Colombia when indiamenta[2] is derided for minguear (whining).

Positions without Power

Scene 3

“If I must leave, I will do so with dignity, with the agenda of caring for Mother Earth, and with the pride of having fulfilled my duties, even under difficult conditions.”

A leader from the south replied bluntly:

“If the minister goes, the Indigenous movement of this government goes too.”

It was a Saturday, August 2025, at around 7:00 p.m. at the Hotel Inter. The Indigenous movement had convened a meeting with Minister of Environment Lena Estrada and her team. The aim: to reflect collectively on the present moment, amid tensions and rumors of her departure. The room was filled with respect, pride, and emotion. Though her exit was discussed, those present recognized the commitments to the movement she fulfilled, especially during the minga, where she played a key role in the approval of reforms and decrees in health and education. The interventions were thoughtful and moving and made one thing clear: the Indigenous movement is united and organized, firmly supporting the first Indigenous woman to lead the Ministry.

María Violet Medina Quiscué:  This is not merely a political crisis; it reveals a structural tension. That an Indigenous woman reaches a ministerial post is a milestone, but also a test. During her tenure, Lena was denied autonomy: she could neither appoint her own team nor manage resources nor represent the country with an Indigenous environmental vision. Her approach was delegitimized from within the government itself, showing that not even a progressive state is ready to truly integrate Indigenous proposals.

Her replacement by a figure aligned with extractivist industries made clear that the priority remains the traditional economic model, not territorial protection. Thus, the state instrumentalizes Indigenous identity for symbolic ends without guaranteeing real participation or spaces of power.

Even so, Lena’s tenure was an act of resistance: under adverse conditions, she pushed concrete transformations grounded in a community vision. The lesson is clear: being in the state is not enough; one must wield real power to transform its colonial structures.

Today the challenge for Colombia’s Indigenous movement is greater: safeguard autonomy, avoid co-optation, and continue building a plurinational democracy from the grassroots level. We do not want to be part of someone else’s official narrative. We demand power to defend life and territories and to transform the country from the Earth, from community, from below.

Andrés F. Ramírez:  Petro’s unprecedented inclusion of Afro-descendant and Indigenous leaders in high government posts has been both celebrated and questioned. Beyond Vice President Márquez and Lena Estrada, Leonor Zalabata (Arhuaco) was appointed ambassador to the UN, Patricia Tobón (Emberá) was appointed to the Victims’ Unit, and Giovanni Yule (Nasa) was appointed to the Land Restitution Unit—appointments that opened spaces previously denied to leaders in roles crucial to the Indigenous movement (Lewin & Torrado 2025; Rejón & Ewig 2025; Delcas 2022). These designations were seen as steps toward rewriting national identity and broadening political inclusion for communities historically excluded from power. Yet their significance is contested. Symbolic representation does not automatically translate into political influence, especially when leaders are placed in institutions with limited resources or mandates that are more rhetorical than executive. Like Petro’s decision to reinstall the portraits of José María Melo and Juan José Nieto—two Indigenous and Afro-Colombian presidents long erased from official history—these gestures resonate symbolically but risk functioning as populist spectacle (Freixes 2025). Their transformative potential depends on whether these leaders are granted real room to effectuate structural change rather than being treated as mere symbols of diversity (Torino 2021; Velasco & Kline 2025).

These appointments have produced uneven but tangible results. For example, the Petro government has formalized the legalization of more than a million hectares of land, promoted renewable-energy transitions with Indigenous participation, and created new institutions focused on equality (Bocanegra 2023). Still, outcomes are mixed, delayed, and frequently contested (Díaz Pabón 2025). Symbolic gestures generate high expectations. However, when promises outpace capacity, disillusionment sometimes follows. The inclusion championed by Petro thus poses a critical question: does it mark the onset of durable structural change, or will it be remembered as a powerful yet ultimately limited populist gesture?

New Instruments

Scene 4

In October 2024, the president signed Decree 1275 in La Guajira, recognizing Indigenous communities as environmental authorities with powers equivalent to those of Regional Autonomous Corporations (CARs).

The scene was staged as a solemn ceremony: television cameras, Wayuu leaders in the front row, and ceremonial staffs bestowed as symbols of authority. Petro proclaimed, “You are the guardians of nature,” inscribing the decision within a symbolic register of historical restitution (Presidency of the Republic 2024). This gesture condensed a theatrical populism in which the symbolic transfer of power sought to institutionalize Indigenous peoples within the machinery of the state. Yet the announcement was quickly tempered by budgetary weakness and the absence of interinstitutional coordination, which hindered its material viability (El País 2024).

A second register concerns the politics of immediacy, expressed in improvisation in the street, where stage and crowd become a momentary legislator. In 2025, during a Minga in Cauca, Petro responded to leaders who questioned the efficacy of prior consultation with a phrase that became historic: “If consultation is not enough, we will recognize cultural objection as a political right of the peoples.” The communeros’ ovation greeted the declaration, which soon materialized in Decree 488 of 2025 (Mongabay 2025). As in La Guajira, however, the promise confronted legal uncertainty and tensions with the juridical safeguards afforded to extractive and investment projects.

Francisco Pulido Acuña:  These scenes characterize the populist manifestation of the Petro government, oscillating between two registers that paradoxically both become sources of law under the so-called Gobierno del Cambio (government of change). The first corresponds to ceremonial populism, inscribed in the ritual of the state; the second to presidential words that become norm in a mass act, giving form to a performative populism that translates immediate demands into decrees. In both settings, populism functioned as a device of direct legitimation, transforming promises into norms. Yet both the ceremonial decree (1275) and the performative decree (488) expose the same paradox: the distance between the populist gesture and the complexity of normative development and implementation.

There is, however, a third manifestation of this juridical populism, located in an intermediate plane where symbolic gesture and institutional incorporation converge. The Petro government did not only resort to ceremonial theatricality or improvised decrees; it also strategically appointed Indigenous leaders to decision-making posts—such as Leonor Zalabata in diplomatic representation and Patricia Tobón in the the Victims’ Unit, and included an ethnic chapter in the 2022–2026 National Development Plan.

These measures constitute formal recognition of ethnic and cultural plurality that, in a populist key, is projected as historical restitution of citizenship and participation within the state apparatus. Their reach, however, is strained by the gap between ambitious norms and capacity for implementation, converting the promise of inclusion into a contested horizon rather than a consolidated outcome.

This contrast between norm and reality again reflects the paradox that traverses ethnic inclusion policies in regimes with populist traits. Designations and statutory chapters are indisputable advances in symbolic and legal terms, but their efficacy depends on structural factors such as institutional capacity, budget availability, and intersectoral coordination. In this sense, the populism of the Gobierno del Cambio has inscribed historical demands into normative texts, yet their translation into effective policy stumbles against state bureaucracy and the tension between immediate expectations and regulated procedures. Populism thus operates as a device of legitimation and acceleration; its true measure lies in the gap between the foundational gesture and the material realization of recognized rights.

María Violet Medina Quiscué:  The relationship between the Indigenous movement and the current government has been marked by significant advances in the materialization of our own instruments in health, education, justice, and in the development of the Competencies Law, among others. Unlike in earlier periods, we have achieved recognition and the beginnings of implementation of rights historically denied to us. This has not been a gift or concession; it is the result of decades of struggle, organization, and collective mobilization.

It is true that we have occupied spaces in the state, including Indigenous persons in ministerial offices, as in the case of a minister who, from day one, faced structural racism and systematic efforts to delegitimize and remove her from office. We do not deny this, but we must not confuse representation with real power. Presence in government does not guarantee effective participation in the country’s structural decisions.

Many Indigenous people are no longer dazzled by pleasant speeches or symbolic decrees. We know that the creation of legal instruments is not a favor. These are rights that have been won and are now backed by the Constitution. From the days when we were deemed “soulless” to our recognition as citizens and subjects of rights, we have advanced, but the struggle continues.

We do not forget our dead, under this government or previous ones. The numbers of murdered leaders in Cauca and other regions among our peoples mark the state’s ongoing debt to our communities. Rhetoric is not enough.

The Appropriation of Symbols

Scene 5

In August 2022, standing before hundreds of representatives of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, as well as campesinos—including mamos, jaibanás, and Indigenous guards—Gustavo Petro participated in a spiritual ceremony parallel to his official inauguration. On the brick ground of Parque Tercer Milenio lay a large mandala made of flowers, fruits, seeds, and candles forming concentric circles. The air was heavy with incense and the fermented aroma of chicha, traditionally used as a medicine to cleanse the spirit. Ceremonial staffs rested beside multicolored flags waving in the wind. Women and men in traditional attire encircled the scene. Amid this choreography, the presidential figure seemed to absorb the collective energy, while the peoples, through their presence and gestures, inscribed a powerful act of shared spirituality in the urban heart of Bogotá (Semana 2022).

Many analysts interpreted the spiritual act accompanying Petro’s inauguration as a legitimate expression of Andean Indigenous cosmovisions: offerings to nature, floral and seed mandalas, and rituals to balance the four elements—earth, water, air, and fire—opening pathways toward a different leadership: the Historic Pact and the government of change. Yet the event also unleashed intense public controversy. Conservative and religious sectors labeled it “witchcraft” and claimed the president sought to “hand the country over to demons.” Beyond the media scandal, the debate revealed deep tensions regarding the presence of Indigeneity in the state sphere.

It is important to note that the act was not organized directly by the Presidency but by social, Indigenous, and Afro-descendant organizations close to the Historic Pact—among them the CRIC, AISO, and the Black Communities Process (PCN)—with logistical support from the transition team and grassroots collectives in Bogotá. Although neither financed nor directed by the Presidency, its placement within the symbolic calendar of the presidential inauguration transformed a community ritual into a state act, loading it with new political meanings. Organizers presented it as a “people’s inauguration,” not a personal ceremony for Petro, but its media visibility linked the spiritual gesture to the official narrative of change.

María Violet Medina Quiscué:  I remember that day clearly: Parque Tercer Milenio. I was there, a few meters from the Casa de Nariño, near National Park, where we have resisted so many times. That moment was not merely a ceremony; it was a scene charged with history, symbolism, and hope. The flags of Colombia’s Indigenous movement waved where they always should have been: at the country’s heart, before the state, before Gustavo Petro, the man who in that instant became head of state. Far from an act of witchcraft, as some religious sectors and media pundits cast it, it was a ritual of harmonization and opening pathways. Our medicine does not bind or manipulate; it heals, cares, reveals. Those who look only with prejudice see spells where there is spirituality, and condemn what they cannot understand.

In that moment, we believed our voice was finally being heard, that our demands would not only be named in speeches but included in action. Petro, no longer a candidate but the president, spoke gently, recognizing the importance of the Indigenous movement. The speech fostered hope. It made us feel that, perhaps for the first time, we would be more than a backdrop.

Over time, however, the harmony invoked that day has been ignored. Although we acknowledge some improvements, they have not translated into a true materialization of our vision. We continue to be guardians of life, water, and territory, even as we witness the deepening mistreatment of the Indigenous collective being. The medicine offered at the inauguration ritual was not to bind, but to heal. But the government has chosen other paths.

That day, both Indigenous peoples who live in their homelands and those of us resisting in urban contexts expected not only a symbolic act but a foundational one: to deliver a mandate to the new president and for him to receive it with open ears. He came, gave his speech, and the act was brief. The brevity of this speech contrasts with a prolonged disenchantment we felt.

Today we can say clearly that this ritual was not a scene of darkness but of light. What has been truly dark is the ongoing disregard for our struggles, the silence in the face of our proposals, and the denial of who we are: caretakers of life, of the planet, of humanity.

Andrés F. Ramírez:  Before his formal inauguration in August 2022, Petro participated in several symbolic inaugurations organized by Indigenous communities (Orozco 2022). In each inauguration, Indigenous spiritual knowledge was explicitly invoked. These symbolic appropriations have powerful political and cultural effects: they legitimate Indigenous presence in the state, reclaim historical visibility, and create a narrative that challenges the notion of the monocultural state.

Beyond legitimating his political project as amenable to ancestral cosmovisions and Indigenous spirituality, these acts mark a rupture with the political tradition that either marginalized or “folklorized” Indigenous practices. Yet while they generate unprecedented visibility and cultural legitimacy, they are symbolic appropriations that may remain performative if state power structures still preclude genuine Indigenous self-determination.

From a critical perspective, this crossing can be read as symbolic appropriation: the state legitimates itself through signs of Indigenous spirituality without ceding real power or altering colonial governmental structures. Ritual, once a relational practice of healing and territorial balance, becomes political scenography at the national center of power. The “mandate of Mother Earth” invoked in Petro’s inauguration translates into a discourse of sustainability and buen vivir, but without the institutional mechanisms to sustain it. In Glen Coulthard’s (2014) terms, this is “colonial recognition”: a form of visibility that reaffirms state authority.

María Violet Medina Quiscué:  As Zibechi (2015) warns, when the state appropriates community practices without returning control or autonomy to Indigenous peoples, it limits Indigenous peoples’ capacity for self-government. Such appropriation risks homogenizing and folklorizing cultural diversity without modifying historical structures of exclusion.

In short, appropriation without full recognition of Indigenous autonomy and without real redistribution of power continues to reproduce contemporary forms of dispossession. Symbolic inclusion is insufficient if it is not accompanied by respect for ancestral knowledge, territorial sovereignty, and effective political participation.

From an Indigenous perspective, appropriation cannot be separated from historical processes of colonization, dispossession, and cultural subordination. In contemporary Colombia, the government has incorporated Indigenous symbols and discourses, such as the minga, ancestral spirituality, or the concept of territory, into its populist narrative without translating them into structural transformations or effective guarantees of self-determination. While such actions may raise our visibility, they are often symbolic and performative appropriations that instrumentalize our practices to legitimate state power. The minga, for example, ceases to be an ancestral form of collective organization and becomes a governmental discursive resource, emptied of its political and spiritual dimensions.

Anthropologists such as Marisol de la Cadena (2015) and Catherine Walsh (2018) note that plurinational ceremonies like those in Ecuador or Bolivia can represent an “aesthetic indigenization of the state,” where diversity is celebrated without altering its structure. The issue is not state participation in Indigenous rituals per se, but the hegemonic translation that converts them into gestures of universal harmony, erasing concrete differences among peoples and cosmovisions. This homogenization of “the Indigenous” as peaceful spirituality constitutes a subtle form of epistemic appropriation, neutralizing its political force of autonomy, territory, and resistance.

Andrés F. Ramírez:  Indeed. For a long time, the Indigenous minga has been resignified in Colombia as a form of political mobilization and protest, and the Petro government has deployed it both discursively and performatively. Petro has invoked the minga in speeches as an Indigenous cultural expression to legitimate his narrative of participatory democracy and popular power. In this sense, the minga becomes a metaphor of national unity beyond Indigeneity. His administration has celebrated and even incorporated forms of the minga in what can be seen as populist theater. In these scenarios, the minga is no longer solely an Indigenous practice. It becomes a national political ritual appropriated by the presidential figure to reinforce his bond with “the people.” Tensions follow. Some read this as recognition, while others see in it a form of symbolic co-optation, where the minga becomes a state resource rather than a tool of Indigenous autonomy.

It is important to return to the essence of the minga and its relation to autonomy. In Ecuador, “mega-mingas” bring together the state and communities (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) to carry out large-scale public works or community activities. These mass workdays can yield extraordinary results, yet they are also criticized for losing autonomous meaning and becoming political theater, effectively co-opted practices (Testori & d’Auria 2018).

Zibechi (2015) reminds us that collective work is the engine of autonomy because it signifies dignity and self-esteem. His argument is radical and relevant here because it suggests that any form of state appropriation is oppressive, depriving communities of the capacity to organize, self-regulate, and reproduce themselves. This may be the cost of institutionalizing the minga: it risks losing its meaning and essence and undermining the struggle for political autonomy.

Francisco Pulido Acuña:  Populism under the Petro government has been expressed through three interrelated registers that illuminate its democratic grammar. First, institutional representation, materialized in the inclusion of an ethnic chapter in the 2022–2026 National Development Plan, followed by the appointment of Indigenous leaders to high-level decision-making posts. These are normative and symbolic advances toward recognizing diversity.

Second, social mobilization that moves beyond the earlier scenes, and which highlight the incorporation of “cultural objection” as a political-legal instrument vis-à-vis extractive projects. This reflects the immediate translation of collective demands into norms, reinforcing the performative character of presidential leadership.

Finally, symbolic appropriation, visible in the creation of the Indigenous Environmental Authority via Decree 1275 of 2024, which inscribes within the state apparatus an imaginary of historical restitution that strengthens the bond between state and communities long excluded.

These three manifestations share the structural paradox already discussed: even as they condense historical demands into normative texts or institutional gestures, their practical effectiveness is constrained by budgetary insufficiency, administrative complexity, and lack of interinstitutional coordination.

In this context, populism operates as a device for legitimating and accelerating democratic promises, yet its translation into effective policies confronts dilemmas typical of Latin American states: the gap between normative production and real implementation. The “government of change,” then, embodies both the democratizing potential of inclusive populism and the risk that the symbolic expansion of rights remains trapped in rhetoric, without achieving the material consolidation of the social justice it proclaims.

Conclusions

In Colombia, “Indigenous populism”—if it can be called that—is something of a miracle and something of a trap. Perhaps Petro, with his loud rhetoric and a taste for symbols, succeeded in making “the Indigenous” resonate more frequently in the presidential palace than at any time in our history. He called mobilizations and celebrated the minga, appointed Indigenous leaders, and signed decrees that promised autonomy. Yet, as in Latin American politics more broadly, ceremony and reality do not coincide.

Reflecting on what has undoubtedly been a historic government—with mandalas, ceremonial staffs, and chicha—we do not know whether to narrate it with pride or suspicion. We cannot tell whether, when the government invokes ancestral spiritualities, it does so as a reparative gesture or as a staged act for taking a photograph and the next campaign. In any case, Petro has positioned himself among the protagonists of Latin America’s populist theater, from which he preaches a government of change that fails to materialize.

What is most concerning in his engagement with the Indigenous movement is that his discourse appears to embrace the ancestral to reinforce the state’s repertoire of power rather than to benefit Indigenous communities and their political project. Thus, we see the minga become a useful and powerful symbol, one that has been domesticated.

It is also important to recognize that Colombia’s Indigenous movement is not monolithic. Multiple currents flow within it. Some Indigenous leaders have seized the moment to advance agendas that, while representing Indigenous interests and communities, are not necessarily equivalent to those of the Colombian Indigenous people as a whole. Other leaders remind us that holding a high post is not enough. One must also have power.

In the end, Latin American strains of Indigenous populism have a double face: they promise to decolonize politics but end up folklorizing it; they give voice to the Indigenous but do not allow Indigenous peoples to decide. We must acknowledge that, alongside Petro, some Indigenous leaders have taken the stage with flags and staffs of office. But the discourse of change and the power that enunciates it still, as always, dresses in a suit and tie.

Andrés F. Ramírez is a doctoral candidate in Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), whose research examines Indigenous struggles in urban contexts; he is the moderator of this dialogue.

María Violet Medina Quiscué is an Indigenous leader of the Nasa people and a defender of human and environmental rights with training in psychology. She has been a candidate for the Bogotá City Council and is known for her work in contexts of displacement and urban political participation. She represents Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform before international bodies, promoting the defense of ancestral territories and human rights with global climate agendas.

Francisco Pulido Acuña is a lawyer and researcher on citizen participation, democratization, and territorial decentralization, with emphasis on autonomy and governance processes in territorial entities.

Notes

[1] The word minga comes from the Indigenous Quechua language, from the Andes region. Traditionally, this term refers to a community labor between neighbors with the purpose of building physical or cultural infrastructure (Klingman, 2012). In recent decades, the minga has also served as a form of mobilization and protest, including blocking roads against the government (Poole, 2009).

[2] In Colombian Spanish, indiamenta is a derogatory, racist, classist term for Indigenous and poor people.

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