Nancy Postero

Morales’s MAS Government Building Indigenous Popular Hegemony in Bolivia

At his 2006 inauguration, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales claimed a lineage that included Andean indigenous insurrectional struggles, Simón Bolívar’s nationalism, and Che Guevara’s socialism. He and his MAS party have been attempting to articulate three very different lines of struggle, focusing on indigenous rights, economic justice, and popular democracy. They mediate these contradictions by adopting a core agenda that might be called “indigenous nationalism.” Comparison of the strategies of Morales and Vice President García Linera illuminates the productive tensions of different approaches to dealing with the violent counterrevolution from the eastern lowlands. Despite having to confront serious obstacles and multiple critiques, this “unstable confederation” appears to be holding, allowing the government to continue on its path to long-term change refounding the nation and decolonizing society.

The Struggle to Create a Radical Democracy in Bolivia

Evo Moraless Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government is often held up as the leading edge of the so-called left turn in Latin America. Yet this article argues that there is profound tension in the MAS administration: a push for social justice to overcome both colonialism and neoliberalism, on the one hand, and the embrace of liberal political institutions (e.g., elections, constitutional conventions, direct public referenda) to do so, on the other hand. Taking a close look at some of the conflicts that the Morales administration has produced as it tries to balance these two frameworks may help us recognize some underlying tensions in both the actually existing democracy and liberalism itself. I suggest that as Morales and his government push this agenda forward, they not only are trying to move beyond neoliberalism but also may be working toward perfecting, or vernacularizing, liberalism to make it more democratic and more relevant to Bolivias indigenous populations. So, instead of post-neoliberalism, perhaps we are seeing efforts to transform liberalism through interactions with indigenous cultures and demands, with a goal to deepen democracy.

Andean Utopias in Evo Morales's Bolivia

As indigenous people have emerged as political actors in Bolivia, indigenous activists, the media, and scholars have begun to articulate a new discourse that represents Andean culture as coherent, enduring, and fundamental to the transformation of contemporary Bolivian society. This essay focuses on the ways new president Evo Morales and his government are utilizing idealist utopian visions of Andean culture, such as the notion of pachakuti, to negotiate spaces for social and political reform. Is this just strategic essentialism? Instead of assuming continuity of Andean culture, I demonstrate instead how elements of traditional narratives and myth are arranged and enacted to produce consensus about the kinds and forms of change that are appropriate and possible in given historical conjunctures. This may be effective political strategy, but it also carries dangers, including reverse racism, fanning the flames of ethnic violence, and Andino-centrism.

Introduction: Negotiating Indigeneity

This special issue of LACES considers the politics of indigeneity in Bolivia. The authors add to the scholarship assessing the complex political positions of indigenous people in Latin America by considering three interrelated ways in which ‘politics’ and ‘indigeneity’ are related. First, they consider the broad power relations in which indigenous actors are immersed, focusing on enduring structures of racism and inequality, governance and state-building, what Ranciére might call ‘policing’. Second, they examine the role of indigenous people as political actors making claims for recognition and inclusion. Such contested forms of citizenship can be thought of in Ranciérian terms as ‘politics’. Finally, they consider how the category of indigeneity is constructed and enacted, and how it produces specific forms of power and knowledge. How is indigenous identity constructed in relation to the past and what narratives of history are useful? What forms of representation are employed and who speaks for indigenous people? The articles demonstrate that at times indigeneity acts as a tool of emancipation and resistance, but at others serves as a tool of governance.

The Indigenous State

In 2005, Bolivians elected their first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Ushering in a new “democratic cultural revolution,” Morales promised to overturn neoliberalism and inaugurate a new decolonized society. In this perceptive new book, Nancy Postero examines the successes and failures that have followed in the ten years since Morales’s election. While the Morales government has made many changes that have benefited Bolivia’s majority indigenous population, it has also consolidated power and reinforced extractivist development models. In the process, indigeneity has been transformed from a site of emancipatory politics to a site of liberal nationstate building. By carefully tracing the political origins and practices of decolonization among activists, government administrators, and ordinary citizens, Postero makes an important contribution to our understanding of the meaning and impact of Bolivia’s indigenous state. “Provides multiple new insights into the Bolivian state in the time of President Evo Morales. It is a must-read for scholars and students interested in the recent political and cultural history of the country.” JOHN ANDREW MCNEISH, Professor of International Development and Environmental Studies, Norwegian University of Life Sciences NANCY POSTERO is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California,San Diego. She is the author of Now We Are Citizens: Indigenous Politics in Post-Multicultural Bolivia .

Performing the ‘wounded Indian’: a new platform of democracy and human rights in Bolivia’s autonomy movement

This article examines Right-wing political performances in the Bolivian Eastern lowlands where regional elites claim to be living under the authoritarian dictatorship of Left-leaning President Evo Morales. We analyse how regional elites advocate for political autonomy through embodied and spectacular performances linked to discourses of indigeneity, human rights and democracy. Right-wing leaders try to legitimise their claims for justice and territorial control by strategically aligning themselves with lowland ‘Indians’ – who are equally wounded by Morales’s plan to run a massive highway though their communities and territories. Through theatrical exhibits in the plaza and a spectacular assembly spotlighting an indigenous representative as an emblematic hero of TIPNIS, regional elites perform a shared history of marginalisation, while simultaneously presenting themselves as ‘saviors’. We argue, however, that there is a dark side to these performances, as they elide long histories of racialised labour and economic injustice in the region.

On Trial in the Promised Land

Refugees seeking asylum in the United States face a legal system insensitive to the emotional problems refugees commonly suffer. Refugees who have escaped persecution in their homelands may be unprepared for the stress of the political asylum process. They are often treated more like criminals than victims of political violence. Many experience renewed terror as they are arrested by armed officers, jailed, and put on trial. Lawyers and judges with little psychological training may further aggravate the stress by their inquisitory or adversarial behavior, or misinterpret the symptoms of trauma-induced emotional disorders and conclude that refugees are dissembling and untrustworthy. Under such threatening circumstances, refugees may be unable to reveal the facts necessary to gain asylum. Mental health practitioners can help by explaining the psychological symptoms of trauma to lawyers and judges. Psychological evaluations of refugees have been successfully submitted in asylum cases to explain the refugees ...

Introduction: the politics of identity in neoliberal Chile

In July 2007, an indigenous Aymara herder, Gabriela Blas, and her 3-year-old son, Domingo Eloy, were taking care of their llamas and alpacas in the Chilean highlands. When she lost two of her animals, she left her son to look for them. When she returned, the boy was missing. When Domingo’s body was finally found in December 2008, Gabriela was charged with the negligent murder of her son. She spent 3 years in preventive detention, and then was sentenced to 10 years in prison. After an appeal, she was retried and sentenced to even an longer sentence of 12 years. Finally, Gabriela denounced the Chilean state before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, arguing the prosecution and harsh sentence were the result of racism and discrimination. She showed that the court had not taken into consideration her economic conditions or the traditional indigenous practices she had been following when her son disappeared (Galaz 2012). As a result of this pressure, the state settled the case. Yet, although she was eventually released, Gabriela spent years in prison, far from her family and community, and suffered repeated police violence. If Gabriela’s case attracted international criticism of Chile’s treatment of indigenous people, the treatment of Chile’s largest indigenous group, the Mapuches, has been even morewidely critiqued. The Mapuches, whose traditional lands are in the Auracanía region in the south, resisted domination for hundreds of years. Once conquered, the Mapuches lost the majority of their lands to hacendados (large landholders), forest plantations, and natural resource exploitation. As Mapuche historian Fernando Pairicán describes in this issue, the Mapuche people have organized over the last several decades in both the rural and urban areas. In the rural South, Mapuche activists have made claims to their traditional territories (which they call Wallmapu), in some cases through direct actions like land takeovers. In the cities, where the large urban Mapuche population (called the Mapurbe) live, activists struggle for dignity and equality. The Chilean state has met what it calls ‘the Mapuche conflict’ in two ways. On the one hand, it has sanctioned ‘illegality’ with harsh measures, militarizing ‘rebellious’ communities, trying indigenous activists under anti-terrorism laws, and sentencing those convicted for long periods. In 2014 the Inter-American Commission onHuman Rights held that the conviction of a group ofMapuche lonkos (leaders) sentenced to 20 years imprisonment violated human rights (FIDH 2014). On the other hand, as Kelly Bauer describes in her article in this issue, the state has offered to purchase limited areas of ancestral lands from private owners to return to certain qualifying indigenous communities. This developmentalist approach is also accompanied by social service benefits through the

Fernando Pairicán on the Mapuche: indigenous organizing in the long shadow of neoliberal dictatorship

Fernando Pairicán is an indigenous Mapuche intellectual and historian, who lives and works in Chile. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Chile and is a PhD candidate in American History at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile. He has been an assistant researcher with CIIR, the Center for Indigenous and Intercultural Studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and is a member of the Historical Research Team of Londres 38, Espacio de Memorias, and the Comunidad de Historia Mapuche. Pairicán is the author of Malón, La Rebelión del Pueblo Mapuche 1990–2013 (Pehuén, 2016), which traces the history of the conflict between the Mapuche nation and the Chilean state. The book focuses on the last 20 years of the history of the Mapuche movement, giving a detailed account of the emergence of the different organizations, landmark events, and confrontations with the state, including the ways in which the events are documented by the press (the book is among those examined by Gabriela Piña in her review essay for this Special Issue). Pairicán’s newest book, La biografía de Matías Catrileo (Pehuén, 2018) describes the coming of age of a young Mapuche activist assassinated 10 years ago by the Chilean state police, the carabineros. In this interview with anthropologist Helene Risør, Pairicán discusses his role as a Mapuche historian studying the Mapuche movement. The Mapuche (also known as Auracanos, for the Auracanía region in Southern Chile where they live) resisted the Spanish conquest for hundreds of years and were only ‘Chileanized’ in the last century, when the state claimed and redistributed much of their traditional territory to mestizo Chileans. Pairicán describes how the Mapuche’s resistance has become embodied in Chilean national identity through literature and mythology, and how discourses of colonization and indigenismo continue to be used today. In the last 20 years, the Mapuche movement has mounted renewed resistance to the dispossession they suffered. Yet, compared to indigenous movements in other Latin American countries, the Mapuche movement is particularly heterogeneous, without a unified leadership or agenda. Pairicán describes two very different aspects of this movement. First, in the rural south, Mapuches have organized around the notion of nation, territory, and tradition, claiming rights to their nation/territory, which they call Wallmapu. In the south, some activists have engaged in direct action against the forest