Popular and Decolonial Veganism: Animal Rights, Racialized and Indigenous Subjectivities in Latin America

The white-elitist veganism of the Global North does not adequately respond to the territorial, cultural, and economic particularities of the Latin American region. This article discusses the approaches of animal rights activists from the South and their critical handling of the animal question, which challenges the neocolonial and universalising logics characteristic of hegemonic animal advocacy. It seeks to explain empirically the composition of popular and decolonial styles of veganism in Latin America, using a qualitative methodology to analyse the life stories of Luis, Luz and Puka, indigenous animal rights activists from Ecuador and Peru. Thus, it describes the subjectivities of popular veganism which, sharing the wound of colonialism, develop critical decolonial discourses and practices that affirm the principles of the Andean cosmovision of Buen Vivir - Good Living, the return to the “chakra”, respect for the living, the recovery of ancestral memory, and the defence of territorial food sovereignty.