TRIBUTE TO MANUEL QUINTÍN LAME

Photo credits: Cortesía Casas Riegner y Sucesión Antonio Caro
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Antonio Caro

1992
ink on paper
70 x 50 cm

This is the signature of Quintín Lame—a Nasa indigenous leader, writer, conservative during the Thousand Days' War, and founder of Latin America's first indigenous guerrilla movement. His signature resembles a pictograph that symbolises the struggle for the recovery of his community’s land. Antonio Caro appropriates Quintín’s signature, thereby reclaiming his thought and advocacy for the protection of indigenous peoples—an effort echoed by Constitutional Court rulings T-795 of 2013 and T-475 of 2014, which recognise indigenous peoples and their education as entitled to special protection. "