Sacrificing Indigenous Bodies and Lands: The Political–Economic History of Lowland Bolivia in Light of the Recent TIPNIS Debate

Abstract

Resumen El plan de Evo Morales de construir una autopista masiva a través de tierras y territorios indígenas ha creado una tormenta política que ha hecho temblar a Bolivia. Nosotros argumentamos que este conflicto no puede ser comprendido fuera de la historia de las industrias extractivas y producción agrícola en las tierras bajas bolivianas porque ambas han creado patrones racializados de opresión y explotación laboral que han estructurado a las tierras bajas desde la época colonial. Al trazar la historia económica de las tierras bajas, mostramos cómo las demandas globales por comodidades han contrapuesto a los pueblos de las tierras bajas unos contra otros, creando tensiones en torno a tierras, recursos y diferencias culturales que continúan en el presente. Segundo, mostramos que tanto el gobierno de Morales como las élites de las tierras bajas han defendido sus posiciones en el debate sobre la autopista al oscurecer esta historia política y económica y declarar la protección de los pueblos indígenas de la región; sin embargo, tales proyectos de desarrollo una vez más trastornarán la organización social y modos de producción.

The Indigenous State: Race, Politics, and Performance in Plurinational Bolivia

“…As Morales's power increased, the lowland civic committees, unelected associations of powerful political actors, began to organize a regional autonomy movement, shaped around historical discourses of being an "oppressed" or "victimized" region (Pruden 2012). During the Constituent Assembly, the right-wing opposition did everything possible to oppose the MAS process of change, and especially the agrarian reform, from boycotts of the process to a massive campaign of hunger strikes across the lowlands (Fabricant and Postero 2013). This political movement was also characterized as a cultural struggle, as cambas opposed their customs, values, and histories to those of highland indigenous peoples, often expressing these differences through violent acts of racism.…”

“…Fabricant and I examined how camba activists framed their cause in human rights terms, arguing that their political leaders were persecuted and exiled. They emphasized their victimhood by using social protests of the kind most often used by those with few political options, like hunger strikes and posters of "disappeared" leaders (Fabricant and Postero 2013). While these acts garnered them little sympathy from the highlands or at the national level, they acted, as such forms of political protest often do, to foment solidarity among their followers.…”

“…Expansive capitalism has defined the lowlands in terms of globalized commodities such as rubber, sugar, and soy, creating a class of large landholders whose original holdings in rubber and sugar plantations were later transferred to agro-industrial capital. The same class continues to hold economic power, now holding huge swathes of the lowlands in soy and other agribusiness commodity production (Fabricant and Postero 2013). This long history of resource-based extraction and large-scale agricultural production in the lowlands came under threat in the 1990s when indigenous people began to organize and mobilize for territory.…”

“…Opposition groups held massive marches, boycotted the assembly, and in December of 2006 organized a series of hunger strikes across the country (see Fabricant and Postero 2013). At one point, newspapers estimated up to 1,200 people were on hunger strikes (La Razón 2006b).…”

“…Using symbols evoking indigeneity and democracy, the civic leaders created a "representational field" where two bodies-the indigenous (symbolically wounded by the highway crossing their community and physically wounded in the Chaparina attack), and the mestizo cambas (symbolically wounded by being marginalized and persecuted by the nation-state)-are linked and condensed into one single struggle against a state that violates human rights. By doing so, this alliance legitimates the struggles of the camba elites because it associates them with the sacrifice and wounded bodies of the indigenous marchers (Fabricant and Postero 2014;Jones 2009). …”