Much has been written about "indianismo" and "indigenismo" and their literary and social meaning, but rarely have these two "criollo" movements been positioned face to face with actual Indigenous expression. This article attempts a preliminary pass at just such an approach by comparing four indigenous themes established by Manuel Gonzalez Prada's essay "Nuestros indios" (1904) with analogous approximations in "Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu y asi me nacio la conciencia" (1985). Notwithstanding their different national contexts, manner of composition, and periods of composition, there is a surprising conformity between both texts' respective discursive positions on four topics: 1) the problem of the "caporal", or overseer, who rises up over his own ethnic group; 2) the negative impact of alcohol among indigenous communities; 3) the conundrum of language and culture with respect to education; and 4) the turn toward violence as a response to internal colonialism. The consonance between Gonzalez Prada's Peruvian "indigenismo" and Rigoberta Menchu's Quiche perspective as dictated to anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos could be a coincidence, but it also suggests a common frame of reference for a "criollo"-indigenous dialogue in the context of persistent internal colonialism in two Latin American countries with large Amerindian populations. (Contains 28 notes.)