MANUEL QUINTÍN LAME EN LA CONFLUENCIA DEL MITO Y DE LA HISTORIA

Abstract

This essay deals with the increasing importance that the life and work of the Indigenous leader from the early twentieth century, Manuel Quintin Lame, has obtained through time in Colombian society. Accordingly, different aspects of his work like textual and discursive heterogeneity and a plurality of discourses regarding pedagogy, history, jurisprudence and autobiography are examined. It is shown how this Indigenous leader with his struggle, doctrine and example has helped to the transformation of the social, political and ideological structure of the country. His thinking is mirrored in the principles that guided the structuring of indigenous organizations in Colombia at regional and national levels. It also helped to define the country as a divers and plural one in terms of ethnicity, language and culture. Through the information revealed by Quintín Lame himself in his book Los pensamientos del indio que se educó dentro de las selvas colombianas, it is shown how his mystical and rebellious spirit, which is not foreign to Indigenous thinking, helped and comforted him constantly through his struggle, allowing us to understand him as a man located in the confluence of myth and history.