Indian republicanism and critique of colonial epistemocracy

Abstract

This work focuses on analyzing some philosophical grounds of what we can call Indian republicanism. By this expression I mean the political thought that support the criticism of the conquest of America and the defense of the right of self-determination of the nations of the "New World" against the arguments that justify the war of conquest and the imperial project of Spain. Defenders of the imperial project such as Ginés de Sepúlveda argue that, because of their barbarism, the original peoples of America are incapable of governing themselves and therefore must be subjugated by rational and more prudent nations and people like the Spaniards. This thesis that I call epistemocratic will later become a hegemonic theory of the political thought of Modernity to justify authoritarian states. Critics of the conquest and the Spanish empire in America such as Bartolomé de las Casas and Alonso de la Veracruz do not accept that the republican right of peoples to self-government depends on them being fully rational, but, nevertheless, they recognize the importance of this thesis. To refute the argument they do not question the epistemcratic principle itself, but confront the view that the peoples of the “New World” are barbaric and rationally inferior to Europeans, for they have good laws and rulers who in their own way seek justice. Therefore, in their own way, the natives of the “New World” are as rational as the Spaniards and have full capacity to govern themselves. This statement shows that Indian republicanism critical of conquest and empire is distinguished by a political, social, juridical and epistemic pluralism that opposes a univocal universalism that sustains the imperial epistemocratic argument.