On Frankfurt’s Latam Stage, Daniela Catrileo and Carola Saavedra explored literary traditions in Chile and Brazil, the politics of naming, and barriers to recognition.

By Talita Facchini, Contributor

Indigenous literature, its significance, and its history took center stage at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2026’s Latam Stage, sponsored by Skeelo and created to mark the 50th anniversary of Latin America’s selection as the fair’s first thematic focus in 1976.

A session titled “Literature Between Indigenous Roots and Colonialism” brought together Chilean author Daniela Catrileo and Chilean-born Brazilian author Carola Saavedra for a discussion with literary scholar Karen Genschow moderating. Their perspectives revealed different paths to visibility in Chile and Brazil, alongside a shared concern about how literary institutions categorize and recognize Indigenous writing.

The term itself became the starting point—for Catrileo, “Indigenous” has political value, connecting peoples who have experienced racialization and colonial violence, and who share struggles over territory. But using the term broadly can also obscure distinct languages, philosophies, and ways of understanding the world. “The Maya people are not the same as the Mapuche people; the Aymara people are not the same as the Quechua people,” she said. “Each has its own particularities, its philosophy, its ways of knowing.”

That distinction extends to how literature is presented. Catrileo questioned the practice of placing writers on an “Indigenous panel,” asking what such labels make visible, and what they separate from the wider literary conversation.

For Saavedra, the political importance of visibility is especially pronounced in Brazil, where Indigenous identity can go unrecognized. She recalled an account by one of Brazil’s leading Indigenous writers and thinkers, Ailton Krenak, of being mistaken for a foreigner in his own country, illustrating how difficult it could be for others to recognize him as Indigenous.

Saavedra grew tearful as she discussed Brazil’s political uncertainty ahead of its October 25 presidential runoff between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro. Her fears for Indigenous peoples echoed Catrileo’s warning about far-right movements that challenge their existence and rights, even as interest in their cultures grows.

“We are living through a very difficult moment, politically,” Saavedra said. “We don’t know what will happen.” For communities still fighting to be seen and heard, she emphasized the political strength of collective identification, despite their differences.

The contrast between Brazil and Chile became clearer in their accounts of writing and education. Catrileo described a sustained Mapuche literary tradition, including participation in newspapers and higher education from the early twentieth century. Education intended to assimilate Mapuche people into Chilean society also provided tools they appropriated for their own purposes. “Mapuche literature has a fundamental place in Chile today,” she said.

In Chile, traditional oral forms and contemporary writing coexist within that literature, influencing one another. Recalling a remark by poet Leonel Lienlaf, Catrileo explained that Mapuche writers would continue making Mapuche literature even if they wrote in French—the connection is to a people, rather than a prescribed language, subject, or aesthetic.

In Brazil, Saavedra emphasized the strength of oral traditions and the barriers that still prevent many works from reaching publishers.

“There are other people, for example, writing in Guarani, but it does not reach publishers. It is not published,” she said. Children’s publishing provides an opening but can also reinforce a hierarchy, she observed: Indigenous works are received as “very beautiful stories, very interesting for children,” yet are not recognized as “high literature.”

Access to universities has helped challenge those hierarchies, Saavedra said, linking affirmative action admissions policies to greater opportunities for Black and Indigenous Brazilians to write, publish, and bring their thinking to wider audiences. Brazil’s federal Quota Law, signed by President Dilma Rousseff in 2012, reserved at least half of undergraduate places at federal higher-education institutions for public school graduates, with allocations within those places for Black, mixed-race, and Indigenous students based on state demographics.

For Saavedra, the resulting changes helped deepen a question already emerging in Brazilian literature: why had the stories treated as representative been so predominantly those of white men from major urban centers? Greater access, it seems, had not resolved the question of literary legitimacy.

“What is literature? What is high literature? Who, ultimately, can produce high literature?” she questioned “What other literatures are we treating as ‘this is not literature’?”

Meanwhile, growing international interest presents its own contradictions. Catrileo connected the reception of Indigenous authors to political, ecological, and spiritual crises in the West, which have encouraged readers to seek other ways of understanding the world. But expecting Indigenous peoples to rescue Western society risks reproducing the “noble savage” stereotype, even as far-right movements challenge their existence and rights.

Saavedra connected that distinction to filmmaking in Brazil, recalling outsiders who took material from communities and gained recognition without returning the benefits. Indigenous peoples making their own films offered a different relationship between cultural expression and those whose lives it represents—a question that runs through publishing as well.

In closing, the discussion returned to who has the authority to describe a work as Indigenous. For Catrileo, Indigenous subject matter alone does not make an Indigenous author. “You can address Indigenous themes, work with these issues, adopt aesthetics,” she said. “But that does not make you an Indigenous author.”