Who is indigenous? Self-identification, indigeneity, and claims to justice in contemporary Bolivia.(Report)

Publication: Urban Anthropology & Studies of Cultural Systems & World Economic Development

Publication Date: 22-SEP-07

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2007 The Institute Inc.

Introduction

Who is indigenous? In the context of Evo Morales' election to the Bolivian presidency and the very public recognition given to his status as indigenous, I asked my friend Teodosio Condori if he was indigenous (indigena). Teodosio, an aged shaman renowned for his skills over a wide area in the northern highland of Bolivia, including La Paz, is a monolingual Aymara speaker who has spent almost his entire life in the village of Pocobaya. Teodosio is such an adept shaman that he can regularly speak to the ancestral spirits, including the Inkas. When I posed the question he chuckled at my ignorance and told me that no: the indigenous people lived down in the jungle; people in the highlands were not indigenous.

The term "indigenous" is being used increasingly widely and in recent years has occasioned some fevered debate among some anthropologists. Adam Kuper has recently sparked a controversy over the anthropological use of the term "indigenous people" (Kuper 2003a; 2003b; 2005) which has occasioned numerous responses to his original CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY article within the pages of that journal as well as some others. (1) Although much of Kuper's initial paper and a large proportion of the responses concern themselves with Central and Southern Africa the debates as to the analytical purchase and political use of the term have obvious implications for anthropologists of Latin America who frequently use the term, and who study indigenous movements or are actively engaged in them.

One of the features of the "indigenous debate" is that it focuses heavily on hunter-gatherers, in both Kuper's initial paper and the subsequent responses to him. Kuper mentions the large and successful indigenous movements of Latin America only once in his original paper (2003a: 391) and then in the most tangential way. In a recent response to some of these Kuper reiterates that what notionally unites indigenous people is that they "are all (or once were) nomads or hunter-gatherers" (2006: 148), as indeed were everyone's ancestors. One of Kuper's principal concerns is that "indigenous" stands in for the "primitive" (Kuper 2005) and that indigenous hunter-gatherers are seen as representatives of a pan-human Urkultur (see also Barnard 2006); in an historical displacement of contemporary people they are regarded as if they were somehow living ancestors of humankind. (2)

There are many peoples in Latin America who readily conform to the broad description of those described by Kenrick and Lewis (2004) in their rejoinder to Kuper in that they are small groups marginalized by the state who are not or were not historically, settled farmers; and indeed some contemporary lowland groups are sometimes described as "living in the stone age." (3) This does not, however, describe the many millions of people who are farmers and whose ancestors have a long history (at least five millennia) (4) of farming who are identified as indigenous, nor the possibly greater millions of people who are urban and also identify as indigenous. It seems at least curious that the "indigenous peoples debate" which revolves around a criticism and defense of organizing around the term "indigenous people" should so ignore the most successful examples of such organization. Furthermore, although it may appear "relatively easy" to say who is indigenous in Latin America, as is sometimes suggested (Barnard 2006: 8; Kenrick and Lewis 2004: 6), who is and who isn't indigenous and what it means to be indigenous in Latin America is highly variable, context specific and changes over time. (5) Nevertheless, whatever indigeneity is about in Bolivia, it is not about a hunter-gatherer Urkultur.

There can be little doubt that Bolivia is an exemplary example of what has been described as an "indigenous awakening" (Bengoa 2000; Brysk 2000; Stavenhagen 2003; Wearne 1996) in Latin America and that Evo Morales' winning of the 2005 presidential election is both a product of this "indigenous awakening" and a contributory factor in setting social and political conditions for an indigenous identity to be increasingly acceptable. A number of scholars have paid close attention to the institutional and constitutional changes that have affected Bolivia as its political structures becomes increasingly affected by the rising indigenous tide (van Cott 2002; Yashar 2005) . Still others have looked specifically at the role of indigeneity as a mode for expressing a desire for social change as articulated by indigenous leaders (Albro 2005; Canessa 2006).

The election of Evo Morales and his ability to command not only a national but international stage has placed the politics of indigeneity at the forefront of Bolivian political consciousness, particularly as it embarks on a process of radical constitutional change. Evo's world renown as the world's first indigenous president is considerable and he regularly receives homage from indigenous people's around the world. On the 11th of June, 2007, for example, he received representatives from the Maori nation and sixteen tribes from the Unites States (under the auspices of the Organization for Indian Opportunity) who presented him with a peace pipe which was declared to be "very similar to the coca leaf" in its symbolism; awarded him the Taos Blue Lake Spirit of Indigeneity Award; and declared him to be the president of all indigenous people. These meetings are reported in the press and visual media and are a regular reminder of the global recognition of Evo's indigenous presidency.

The Bolivian census of 2001 records 62% of the adult population as being indigenous (INE 2003: 157) or 66% of the entire population if children are included. Until the 2001 census, the principal diagnostic for indigenous identity has been language. Despite the fact that significant numbers of people in Bolivia who do not consider themselves indigenous may speak an indigenous language, (6) native language has been considered a proxy for indigeneity for the Bolivian government as well as numerous scholars.

The 2001 census recorded for the first time that a majority (50.6%) of Bolivians had Spanish as their mother tongue (INE 2003: 143) but in this census people were given the opportunity to self-identify as belonging to an indigenous ethnic group and this element of self-identification is now a major component in calculating the numbers of Bolivians who are indigenous. The President himself is apparently such an example since, even though he was born into a small Aymara community, there is considerable doubt whether he can actually speak Aymara (his native tongue) or Quechua, the language of the region where he has spent much of his life. It is rumoured (Rob Albro pers comm.) that he is actively attempting to (re) learn Aymara (and possibly Quechua as well) but his personal sense of indigeneity is clearly not one profoundly rooted in language. Perhaps because he moved from one indigenous region to another and became involved in a coca-growers' movement his indigeneity is much less rooted in place and language than it is in a particular political perspective.

The surprising element of the 2001 census is that it runs counter to what has been a long trend in the 20th century and before of indigenous migrants to urban centers becoming increasingly absorbed into the mestizo (7) urban culture. Daily racism and weakening community ties (Harris 1995) have been seen as important factors in impelling people to de-emphasize their Indian roots and become mestizos. One feature is the phenomenon of Aymara-speaking parents who only speak Spanish to their children (Albo and Anaya 2004). All the more noteworthy is the fact that most indigenous people registered in the census are urban dwellers and a considerable majority of the Aymara population, the second largest indigenous group in the country, live in towns and cities. (8) Significantly, and somewhat controversiall, "mestizo" was not a category available in the 2001 census. There have been a number of recent articles in the press arguing for the inclusion of the "mestizo" category and suggesting that the "true" number of indigenous people would need to exclude all urban residents, e.g. the lead article in La Paz's LA RAZON July 1, 2007.

Being Indigenous or Indian in the Late 20th Century

Who is and is not considered indigenous is, however, by no means straightforward. For much of the Colonial period and until the 1900 census, the state recorded as Indians those who paid tribute to the state and were subject to the mita, the labor draft to the mines. The 1952 Revolution abolished the category "indio" ("Indian") as it attempted to do away with the hacienda-owning class and abolished the many semi-feudal practices which sustained them.

The term "Indian" was replaced with "campesino," peasant as the new ruling elite attempted to convert a notionally retrograde and anachronistic Indian majority into a class of yeoman farmers. Indian culture became, at best, national folklore and the principal nation-building project was to assimilate Indians into a national mestizo Spanish-speaking culture. As a number of scholars have commented, the rapidly expanding educational system was particularly directed to this end (Canessa 2004; Choque 1992).

In many contexts campesino became a euphemism for "Indian" (Canessa 2006; Lagos 1994) and was much more than simply an identifier of a particular class position; but the political language that went with it was very much that of class over culture, especially at the national and regional level.

For much of the latter half of the 20th century indigenous movements in Bolivia were weak and muted. In the highlands Fausto Reinaga's Partido Indio Boliviano served as the inspiration for some, but most Bolivians it seems acquiesced to the universalizing rhetoric of the revolution and identified as campesinos (peasants) rather than indios. Protest was based on class rather than ethnicity and it appears there was very little conceptual space for an ethnic-based movement in the highlands. The 1952 Revolution successfully co-opted indigenous people into a syndicalist structure as rural workers: Indians were to be transformed into unionized peasants. Indigenous cooptation was even more profound under the military-peasant pact which did not reach its demise until the 1970s. At the same time, labor organizations did not develop an indigenous critique or agenda because their class analysis left no room for it; indeed they were often wary of peasants because of their status as petit bourgeois small landowners. Although the 1952 Revolution afforded major improvements to the lives of many people, not least through the dismantling of the feudal hacienda system, over time Bolivian politics became increasingly autocratic and militarized; and by the 1970s all dissent was heavily repressed. The sustained repression of class-based political movements, and the latter's blindness to issues of race and ethnicity, led to the ethnicization of political protest particularly arising out of the CSUTCB (the peasants' union). The Tiwanaku Declaration of 1973 and the establishment of katarista (inspired by the 18th century insurgent, Tupak Katari) Aymara nationalism in the highlands lead to two decades of factional katarista politics. Despite having potentially large numbers to draw into their new ethnic politics, katarista parties and groups failed to reach out beyond their altiplano Aymara base and had virtually no success in electoral politics (Albo 2002). (9) By the 1980s it seemed clear that the indigenous population in Bolivia was in steady decline as the rural population became increasingly exposed to Spanish language schooling and hundreds of thousands of peasants moved to the cities.

The failure of class-based politics to continue to secure and consolidate advances for working people was, of course, not confined to Bolivia, although the racial dimension is perhaps important to mention: one of the problems of seeing peasants, miners, and urban migrants as simply occupying a class position is that there is no vantage point for tackling the profound and pervasive racism that many indigenous people endured and continue to endure. As indigenous politics was gaining voices in Bolivia there were a number of significant international trends which contributed to a growing awareness of indigenous issues as the anniversary of the landing of Columbus in America approached. In combination these turned being indigenous from something that appeared hopelessly anachronistic and backward to an identity that was vigorous and progressive.

In advance of announcing a Decade for Indigenous People (1995-2004) the UN appointed Martinez Cobo to report to the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination of Minorities (1986) in which he defined indigenous people...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.