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INDIGENOUS DEVELOPMENT IN THE ANDES
Culture, Power, and Transnationalism
By ROBERT ANDOLINA NINA LAURIE SARAH A. RADCLIFFE DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2009 Duke University Press
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8223-4540-4
Chapter One
SARAH A. RADCLIFFE, NINA LAURIE, AND ROBERT ANDOLINA Development, Transnational Networks, and Indigenous Politics
No longer is it merely anthropologists, romantic idealists or support groups which take an interest in indigenous cultures, but also governments, UN agencies, the European Community, and the Nobel Peace Prize committee. LYDIA VAN DE FLIERT
In 1992, a group of twenty-four indigenous representatives from around the world gathered in Amsterdam to carry out a symbolic "discovery of Europe" by peoples who had been marginalized by Western conquests (van de Fliert 1994, 7). Five centuries after Columbus's arrival in the Americas, indigenous people overcame the frictions of distance and domination to proclaim their arrival on the world stage and claim a stake in emerging global politics. The articulation between indigenous politics and shifts in development thinking and networks generated a transnational social field (Vertovec 2001; Portes, Guarnizo, and Landolt 1999) in which a policy community crystallized around "ethnodevelopment" or "development-with-identity." This policy community's ideas rest on assumptions of indigenous poverty and cultural distinctiveness, and it proposes a strategy of community development that will erase this poverty while maintaining distinctiveness. Its institutional nodes comprise offices of indigenous social movements, state agencies, NGOS, multilateral organizations, and hybrid institutions that bring together members of each. The policy community's practices include project formulation, evaluation, and reporting, as well as document circulation, informal personal exchanges, conference presentations, and the allocation of funds. This chapter highlights patterns of discourse and practice concerning indigenous development and the complex relations that produce them.
International social development has been the primary arena for conceiving and debating indigenous development as a matter of policy. During the 1990s this arena was infused by notions of a neoliberal nature, joined by ideas on multiculturalism, environmentalism, and grassroots development. Contributing to this intellectual pluralism was the embedding of indigenous development in mixed-actor networks comprising a multiethnic social field in which indigenous leaders, development consultants, national NGO staff, and government officials have moved regularly across scales and borders. This transnational social field is also political, as these actors both engaged in advocacy and established policy, sometimes entangling the two. The very connectivity among ideas and organizations that inserted indigenous and cultural criteria into mainstream development also underpinned the formation of governmentalities that shaped the design and administration of specific programs.
An overview of indigenous-movement organizing and agendas in Bolivia and Ecuador provides a substantive example of what we mean by "nondiaspora transnationalism" and "reloaded boomerang." Multiscale networking takes place between actors who advocate and formulate policy for indigenous development. A genealogy of social-development thinking allows us to see the ways in which indigenous issues are incorporated into development policy. And by examining the inter-institutional administration of ostensibly pro-indigenous development policies, we can see how this administration appropriates and deploys altered notions of the relationship between development and culture. Such administration opens spaces for indigenous participation and innovative development practices but also fixes such spaces in potentially constraining ways.
Indigenous Movements in Bolivia and Ecuador
Indigenous people have long been significant in processes of nation and state building in the Andes, but only recently have they overcome the "ventriloquism" of more powerful actors to sustain their own kinds of agency. Indigenous movements in Ecuador and Bolivia have placed indigenous peoples at the political forefront through widespread organizing, ideological contest, and public protests. These actions, in turn, created new possibilities for influencing elections, policy agendas, and constitutional reform. In response, Ecuador and Bolivia have recognized collective indigenous rights, established indigenous-run education and development councils, adopted national constitutive principles based on multiethnicity and participatory democracy, and instituted accountability mechanisms such as recall referenda on elected officials (Van Cott 2000; Andolina 2003).
In Bolivia and Ecuador, nationwide indigenous organizing began in the 1970s, conditioned by corporatist political regimes and a statist development model. In each country, government policy toward indigenous groups was ambivalent. On the one hand, agrarian reform and the registration of indigenous communities provided legal support for their claims to land and communal forms of governance (Ibarra 1992; Wray 1989; Albó 1987) and in some cases led to the redistribution of landholdings to indigenous peasants. On the other hand, government policy was underpinned by racist assumptions about the inferior contributions of indigenous people to national development and the need for indigenous people to adopt national mestizo culture. This tension was replicated by the traditional Left, which sought to bring Indians into their unions and political parties. The Left advocated for Indian land and labor rights but often resisted efforts at cultural revival, as it envisioned indigenous people largely as the rural sector of a modernizing working class. Such racism and ethnocentrism was also widespread in society at large, as indigenous people faced quotidian discrimination in schools, markets, and workplaces even as they gained individual citizen rights and recognition (Andolina 1999; Pallares 2002; S. Rivera 1987; Patzi 1998).
In the wake of the Bolivian Revolution in 1952, the government forged a national confederation that incorporated indigenous people into the regime and bequeathed a template for future organizing. The National Federation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia (CNTCB) recognized indigenous people officially as "peasants" or "rural farmers" who would form a smallholding class to bolster national agricultural development. The CNTCB was also a mechanism of state control over Indians, especially under the "military-peasant pact" established at the outset of military rule in 1964. The current indigenous movement in Bolivia began when dissident activists appropriated these unions in the 1970s and created the Sole Union Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers (CSUTCB) in 1979, rupturing state control over peasant organizations. The Kataristas and the CSUTCB forged an anticolonial ideology that tied indigenous ethnicity-defined at the time by the Aymara and Quechua languages and generic cultural tradition-to a class-based peasant identity around the symbol of the colonial-era indigenous rebel Tupaj Katari (Hurtado 1986; Hahn 1996). Since then, the CSUTCB has gained affiliates in all departments of Bolivia, but it mainly represents indigenous people in the highland region. However, many highland indigenous people are now organized into federations and councils affiliated with CONAMAQ, the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qollasuyu (Bolivia), created in 1997. This council rivals CSUTCB for indigenous representation (see chapter 3).
Lowland Indians in Bolivia organized separately from those in the highlands. Activists from the Guaraní and Ayoreo indigenous groups founded the Indigenous Center of the Bolivian Lowlands (CIDOB) in 1982. Its principal adversaries were white ranchers, logging and mining companies, and the Santa Cruz departmental development agency. Its main allies were local and international NGOS working in the areas of cultural advocacy, environmental protection, and grassroots development (Brysk 2000). As CIDOB moved from being a "center" to a representative "confederation" in 1988, it identified and represented over thirty groups in lowland Bolivia according to language use, local territories, and traditional authority systems of capitanías. Its platform and agenda downplayed class discourse, which is one reason why the lowland CIDOB has never united with the highland CSUTCB to form a single national organization. However, they have joined forces at certain moments, and their representations of indigenous groups-taken together-informed commonsense cultural geographies in Bolivia (see map 3).
Map 3 is a representation of such cultural geographies. Produced in 1991 by the Center for Campesino Research and Promotion (CIPCA)-a grassroots development NGO in Bolivia that has long been an ally of indigenous and campesino organizations-this map adopted precolonial language as the constitutive marker of indigenous identity in Bolivia. As a result, it located numerous indigenous groups in the lowland areas of Bolivia (to the north, west, and southwest) but identified only two indigenous groups in the highland areas of the country: speakers of Aymara and Quechua. Accepted features of highland indigenous identities grew more diverse by the late 1990s, however, leading to a proliferation of named highland indigenous groups, even though their members all spoke Aymara or Quechua.
In Ecuador, indigenous peoples did unite across the lowland-highland divide in 1986. The establishment of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) in that year cemented a unification process underway since 1980 through a highland-lowland indigenous coordinator. During the 1960s and 1970s, however, indigenous activists in each region organized separately, although budding organizations in both regions received support from the same international NGOS, such as Oxfam America and the Inter-American Foundation. With additional local help from the Catholic Church and some government funds, indigenous activists in the highland created Awakening of Ecuadorian Indigenous People (ECUARUNARI) in 1972 to fight racial discrimination and recuperate or fortify indigenous cultures. As it grew in strength, ECUARUNARI organized and incorporated federations in all provinces of the highland region of Ecuador, which were composed of second-tier, local federations. These, in turn, were made up of first-tier, village-level organizations.
Indigenous activists in Ecuador's Amazon basin created the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE) in 1980. Unlike ECUARUNARI, whose members are almost all Quichua speaking, CONFENIAE'S membership was multilingual: Shuar, Achuar, Quichua, Huaorani, Cofán, Siona, and Secoya. CONFENIAE is made up of provincial organizations established in the 1970s, such as the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza (OPIP) and the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Napo (FOIN). It is also composed of ethnic-specific associations such as the Shuar Federation and the Secoya Indigenous Organization of Ecuador. The Amazonian Quichua and Shuar are the two largest linguistic groups in the region, and most CONFENIAE leadership comes from these two groups. CONFENIAE'S formation was motivated in part by the intrusion of "outside" forces that intensified during the 1960s and 1970s.
The National Coordinating Council of the Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador-CONACNIE-was created in 1980 to mitigate differences between highland and lowland indigenous activists in Ecuador. In doing so, it abated ethnic and class tensions, staged campaigns against religious control of bilingual education, and acquired new allies in the form of human rights groups, environmental activists, and academics. In light of these activities and growing indigenous consciousness, CONACNIE was replaced by a full-fledged indigenous confederation, CONAIE in 1986 (CONAIE 1989). In 1988, the Ecuadorian government recognized CONAIE as representing approximately 70 percent of Ecuador's indigenous people (Selverston-Scher 2001). Protests, lobbying, and electoral participation throughout the 1990s made indigenous organizations and agendas politically central in both countries. Lowland indigenous marches to La Paz, Bolivia, and Quito, Ecuador, sparked profound national discussions concerning nationalism, territory, and indigenous rights (Van Cott 1994; Sawyer 1997). These were reinforced by a nationwide indigenous uprising in Ecuador (1990) and by the Bolivian anti-quincentenary campaign in 1992, both spearheaded by highland-lowland indigenous coalitions. In the wake of this mobilization, press statements and public opinion increasingly acknowledged indigenous proposals for pluricultural and multiethnic societies, and in some cases showed support for them (CIPCA 1991; López 1993; Nieto 1993).
Indigenous movements further raised the profile of their issues by gaining elected seats and appointed posts in government. In Bolivia, indigenous leader Víctor Hugo Cárdenas was vice president from 1993 to 1997, while indigenous leader Evo Morales was runner-up in the 2002 presidential elections and won the Bolivian presidency in 2005. In Ecuador, the social movement's political wing (which includes indigenous and nonindigenous members), Pachakutik, has held an average of 10 percent of the seats in the national congress since 1996. The controversial appointment of indigenous advisors and ministers by the governments of Sixto Durán Ballén (1992-1996) and Abdalá Bucaram (1996-1997) did not prevent the more consensual choice of Nina Pacari as vice president of congress in 1998. Indigenous leaders in Ecuador have also held prominent cabinet positions in agriculture, foreign relations, and social welfare, while in Bolivia they have comprised over half of Evo Morales's cabinet. In addition, Ecuadorian and Bolivian indigenous leaders have occupied hundreds of local government positions since they began running candidates en masse in 1995 and 1996. In some cases, they have been able to restructure local governmental institutions and practices to ensure more grassroots control over elected officials and augment their influence in local policymaking.
Participation in elections has complicated, but not terminated, indigenous protest politics. The Ecuadorian indigenous movement peacefully took governmental power in January 2000 through a "popular coup," in alliance with a large faction of the military and other social-movement organizations. While their stay in power lasted only a few hours, it was a watershed in Ecuadorian politics and led to their co-governance of Ecuador with President Lucio Gutiérrez's political party in 2002 (see Lucero 2001; Whitten 2003). After a period of decline for CONAIE, due in part to its association with an unpopular Gutiérrez government, it led a successful national campaign in 2006 to reject a U.S.-Ecuador free trade agreement. In Bolivia, highland and lowland indigenous activists in Bolivia led a broad popular front that forced the resignation of then-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in 2003. This also compelled incoming president Carlos Mesa to authorize the convocation of a constitutional assembly, which was ultimately realized in 2007 after the election of Evo Morales as president.
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Excerpted from INDIGENOUS DEVELOPMENT IN THE ANDES by ROBERT ANDOLINA NINA LAURIE SARAH A. RADCLIFFE Copyright © 2009 by Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission.
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