Category: Uncategorized

Indigenous Rights Organizations: CONAVIGUA

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The National Coordination of Widows of Guatemala (la Coordinadora Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala: CONAVIGUA) has a website, which you can find here: http://conavigua.tripod.com/, as well as a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Conavigua-Guatemala-457506251121355/. Both pages are in Spanish. The major participants of this group are Guatemalan women whose husbands were killed in the Guatemalan Civil War. The objectives of this group include food, peace, equal education, protection for widows and mothers, protection for indigenous women, socioeconomic equality, and equal rights for indigenous communities. The group also seeks integration to la Unidad de Accion Sindical y Popular (UASP), a major union organization in Guatemala. CONAVIGUA, as well as the community the organization represents, faces some serious threats, in addition to the factors that led to the creation of the group in the first place. According to the website, members of CONAVIGUA have been threatened with violence by government soldiers for speaking out.

Summary of Now Peru Is Mine

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In Now Peru Is Mine: The Life and Times of a Campesino Activist, Manuel Llamojha Mitma and Jaymie Patricia Heilman present a testimonio of Llamojha’s lifelong activism and struggles against socioeconomic and racial oppression in Peru—and across the globe, to some extent—throughout the 20th century. Now Peru Is Mine illustrates the idea that nonviolent resistance, especially activism involving the written word, can be far more effective than violent means with respect to achieving social progress.
The book begins by outlining the events of Llamojha’s early life that led him on his activist path. Although Llamojha was born to an indigenous peasant family in a community with a severely low literacy rate, his father taught him to read and write at a young age. Llamojha witnessed the abuses of the hacendados firsthand, and these injustices, in conjunction with his literacy, inspired in him a desire to lead and make a difference. He initially intended to become a priest, but was unjustly rejected as a result of his race and class. He then joined the military, planning to use his service as the jumping-off point for a revolution, but was dismissed for these very same revolutionary inclinations. Over time, Llamojha learned more about the systems of oppression operating in Peru, through books, word of mouth, and his personal observations. He became secretary general of a migrant club in his community, challenging the local authorities.
Next, Llamojha and Heilman focus on Llamojha’s activism with the Jhajhamarka hacienda. Llamojha would use his ever-present typewriter, as well as makeshift seals and other “official” devices, to compose complex legal documents. The authorities constantly harassed him, occasionally forging documents to brand him a communist. Llamojha observes that he was in jail so often that it became like home to him. He was even forced to fake his own death at one point in order to evade arrest. This constant turmoil was difficult for his family to handle at times. While Llamojha was in jail, he also continued his activism. Eventually, he was elected personero legal of Concepción, a position to which he continued to be reelected over the years.
Llamojha was later elected secretary general of the Confederación Campesina del Perú, and in the sixties he traveled to various socialist countries, including Cuba, the Soviet Union, and China. Llamojha criticized the brand of communism practiced by the USSR, favoring instead the peasant-oriented communism of Mao’s China. Upon his return, Llamojha was jailed for an entire year. Unfortunately, in the seventies, schisms developed within the CCP in response to the state-enforced agrarian reforms of the Velasco military government. Llamojha and others opposed the regime because they felt the reforms were insufficient, and disempowered the peasant class. During this period, various other disputes also arose within the left.
Next, Llamojha and Heilman recount likely the darkest period in Llamojha’s life: the loss of his son Herbert. Herbert was wrongfully arrested on suspicion of involvement in a terrorist attack perpetrated by the Shining Path. Disturbingly, he was turned in by Llamojha’s own brother, who was apparently sympathetic to the hacendado cause. The Shining Path later attacked the prison in which Herbert was being held, and he escaped, but he was never officially seen again. This tragedy profoundly devastated Llamojha and his family. In this regard, Llamojha and Heilman present a pointed critique of violent revolutionary tactics like those employed by the Shining Path and other militant organizations.  
Now Peru Is Mine addresses issues that are echoed within a plethora of scholarly works, including Waskar Ari-Chachaki’s essay “Between Indian Law and Qullasuyu Nationalism: Gregorio Titiriku and the Making of AMP Indigenous Activists, 1921-1964.” Both works demonstrate the power of literacy in terms of organizing movements and effecting social progress. Like Llamojha, intellectual activist Gregorio Titiriku had a father who taught him to read and write early in his life. Like Llamojha, these abilities inspired and allowed for Titiriku’s career as an activist. Finally, for both Llamojha and Titiriku, the knowledge of and familiarity with the intricacies of their respective governing institutions provided by literacy was instrumental in their success. This connection is important because it demonstrates that the effectiveness of Llamojha’s writing-oriented, nonviolent resistance is not an isolated aberration. These forms of activism work across the globe and across historical time periods, not just in Peru and not just during the period of Llamojha’s work.
Llamojha and Heilman’s message regarding the importance of this kind of resistance can be seen in one passage in the book in particular, which depicts some highly meaningful images. In Chapter Two, “‘I Made the Hacendados Tremble’: Defending Jhajhamarka Campesinos, 1948-1952,” specifically on pages 47 through 52, Llamojha and Heilman describe how Llamojha used his typewriter and makeshift stamps to draw up documents. Llamojha recounts that he used to carry his typewriter wherever he went so that he would always be prepared to draft petitions, formal requests, memos, and the like, if the situation should present itself. He goes on to explain that he would then take these documents directly to the national government himself, bypassing the local authorities. In doing so, Llamojha was time and time again able to win important rights and protections for his people, going so far as to “make the hacendados tremble.” The image of Llamojha carrying his typewriter around wherever he would go is especially striking because it contrasts so strongly with more traditional images of revolutionaries carrying guns and other weapons. Llamojha’s example affirms the adage that the pen (or typewriter, as the case may be), is truly mightier than the sword.
Works Cited
Ari-Chachaki, Waskar. “Between Indian Law and Qullasuyu Nationalism. Gregorio Titiriku and the Making of AMP Indigenous Activists, 1921-1964.” Bolivian Studies Journal/Revista De Estudios Bolivianos, vol. 15, 2011, pp. 91–113., doi:10.5195/bsj.2010.11.
Mitma, Manuel Llamojha, and Jaymie Patricia Heilman. Now Peru Is Mine: the Life and Times of a Campesino Activist. Duke University Press, 2016.

Indigeneity and Land

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One of the things that came to mind when reading the readings this week was what it means to be indigenous. The reason that this is something that I thought about frequently was because of what we read in Now Peru Is Mine by Manuel Mitma Llamojha and Jaymie Patricia Heilman. Llamojha explains on pages 11-12 about how he prefers to describe himself as a campesino versus calling himself Indian, Quechua, Aymara, or even indigenous. Although, the author does say, “His understanding of what it means to be a campesino is one that melds ethnic, class, and historical identities, and he is both passionate and explicit about his indigeneity.”1 It’s interesting that he chooses to use a social-economic label to describe himself. Although, it’s worth noting that he denounces the word “indian”, Llamojha says:
“Discrimination began when the Spanish took America. They categorized all the natives of the continent as ‘Indians,’ as people of another country, another world. I always felt proud when they called ‘Indian.’ When Christopher Columbus came to America, he thought that all the inhabitants of America from India. So I was proud when they said ‘Indian’ to me, because that meant I was from India.”2
This reminded me of conversations with my father who spoke to me of the remnants of indigenous lifestyle in his home pueblo of Pomoca, Michoacán. While he also shared the same sentiments about the use of the word “indio” or “indian” to describe himself as someone who comes from indigenous descent, he preferred to call himself a “campesino”, but used the two terms fairly interchangeably. His rationale for this was that as a Mexican with indigenous roots, he also resonated with the idea that being called “indian” further carried on a legacy of colonialism. While my father never explicitly said this, he felt it was wrong to call his fellow indigenous Mexican people with the incorrect name because they indeed weren’t from India, and therein lies a form of belittling and taking away from the strength and pride there is in indigeneity, and having colonizers rename and stick a name onto a people.
On a different note, the reason he strongly resonated with the word campesino was the fact that he felt that as a farmer, he saw the agricultural component, the physical labor that came with the lifestyle, and the spiritual connection to the land, as a means to fulfill the needs of his people were far more important than what demarcated him as indigenous, or “indio”, in geographic and racial terms. Just because he was darker skinned than other people in his pueblo and just because he didn’t live in the urbanized parts of Michoacan wasn’t what deemed him indigenous or being of indigenous descent. I think this proves to be a very valuable insight as to what it means to be indigenous. There’s merit in the work of cultivating land and creating a lifestyle and whole community based around that labor. It weaves together societies, fortifies relationships, gives these communities capital and a means of creating and contributing to national commerce. While most of the customs, language, and religions of that my dad said were forgotten and lost over the years, the land they owned and cultivated over generations were their claim to a past that is out of reach.
I think the thoughts that my dad had about indigeneity also find themselves expressed in the thoughts that Llamojha’s words and beliefs as well. As a result of his upbringing on an hacienda and being of indigenous descent, he also lived a life of extraneous labor and knew that the land was an integral part of indigenous people’s lives and identities. A lot of the denunciations he made were always tied to land. Whether it was unfair treatment and unjust labor conditions/hours for campesinos or the acquisition and claiming of lands that belonged to campesinos; all these are rooted in the lands that were owned by the people.
Hence, why the preservation of land, and moreover, the owning of these lands by the people that have been there for centuries, is arguably the most important component to indigenous rights. While my father himself didn’t unfairly lose lands at any point, he often points to the injustices American settlers imposed upon the Mexican people through the taking of lands above the current U.S border. So, he used that often times to describe a more universal struggle of the indigenous people we have been reading about that often had their lands unjustly taken, by coercion or by force. It brings us time and time again to the discourse over land and the claims that indigenous people have to them outside of the jurisdiction of the law that is often created thereafter only to tear indigenous people from the lands.
Works Cited
1. Mitma, Manuel Llamojha, and Jaymie Patricia Heilman. Now Peru Is Mine: The Life and times of a Campesino Activist. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. 11-12.
2. Mitma, Manuel Llamojha, and Jaymie Patricia Heilman. Now Peru Is Mine: The Life and times of a Campesino Activist. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. 11-12.

Gender and Sexuality

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We have noticed that the majority of the sources we have read in our exploration of indigenous rights have been authored by men. Although women played an important role in multiple aspects of various revolutions, they were often still limited by sexist structures that subordinated them to men. In more modern times, however, Latin American women have been able to be more actively involved in struggles for indigenous rights. It is important to notice their contributions to these movements and helping their messages be heard, which is often very difficult for members of minority groups in general, much less members of minority groups within a minority group.

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Jeannette Paillan, Chile:

Utilizing film media, Paillan shares the culture and traditions of the Mapuche tribe, minimizing stereotypes by allowing for self-representation.

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Tarcila Rivera Zea, Peru:

Zea is a Quechua activist who has fought for awareness of indigenous lifestyles and social injustice for over 30 years. She holds positions on a variety of committees, founded a center for indigenous cultures of Peru, and won the Visionary Award in 2011.

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Marylen Serna Salinas, Colombia:

For over 30 years, Salinas has been fighting for indigenous rights, leading several movements and participating in multiple summits. She also focuses on the importance of women’s rights, campaigning against gender-based violence. Unfortunately, on April 7th, 2017, the activist was “abducted, interrogated, beaten, tortured and sexually assaulted by three unidentified men in Popayán, Colombia” [1], which demonstrates the dangers faced by revolutionaries and women in the context of Latin America.

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[2]

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Additonally, gender manifests itself in interesting ways in certain indigenous communities. Specifically, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, the Istmo de Tehuantepec region is home to three genders: men, women, and muxes. This term comes from the Zapotec language, in which there are no grammatical genders. There are many definitions of muxe, including people who are assigned male at birth but do not present themselves in a traditionally masculine way. Muxes and people who have relations with them can be of any sexual orientation, because this gender mostly manifests itself in social and cultural ways.

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[3]

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Exploring the existence of gender in different cultures is important, as it requires us to examine concepts with which we are unfamiliar. In the context of muxes, gender is not as restricted to a binary as it is in the United States. However, some overlap does exist between gender in the culture of the U.S. and gender in this indigenous Latin American communities. For example, gender has a sociocultural role in that members of each gender have specific duties and responsibilities in society. Therefore, although people in the Istmo de Tehuantepec region are not limited to a certain gender, their gender limits their powers in their community.

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Further, the presence of muxes is relatively well documented, which allows their existence to be shared with others, thus increasing their visibility and the respect and understanding they received from greater society. A significant amount of this documentation is in the form of photographs, which represents the variety of ways muxe identity manifests itself. The majority of these pictures show these muxes presenting themselves in traditionally feminine ways, wearing dresses and makeup. Many of these outfits are inspired by Frida Kahlo’s traditional look, indicating the necessity of muxes to remain connected to their cultures and traditions.

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[4]

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Additionally, muxes value self-identification to label their gender identity, as opposed to being limited to outsider labels. This importance of self-identification also applies to indigenous identity as a whole [5], which connects muxes to their larger indigeneity. Further, this overarching theme indicates similarities between different aspects of identity and the necessity of self-perception. Overall, commitment to increased knowledge and subsequent understanding and is the most important in exploring any aspects of identity.

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[6]

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[1] “Take Action for Marylen Serna Salinas,” Front Line Defenders, April 13, 2017, , accessed June 9, 2019, https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/action/take-action-marylen-serna-salinas.

[2] Monica Sabella, “Meet Latin America’s Most Prominent Indigenous Female Icons,” News | TeleSUR English, March 05, 2018, , accessed June 8, 2019, https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Meet-Latin-Americas-Most-Prominent-Indigenous-Female-Icons-20180305-0027.html.

[3] Great Big Story, YouTube, June 19, 2018, accessed June 3, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEZEiiNS3Ew.

[4] Ola Synowiec, Muxes in Traditional Clothing.

[5] Andrew Canessa, “Who Is Indigenous? Self-Identification, Indigeneity, And Claims to Justice In Contemporary Bolivia,” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 36, no. 3 (Fall 2007): , accessed April 17, 2019, JSTOR.

[6] Leora Yashari, “Muxe: Meet Mexico’s Third Gender Community,” Culture Trip, January 07, 2017, , accessed June 8, 2019, https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/mexico/articles/a-brief-history-of-muxe-mexicos-third-gender/.

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Settler Colonialism

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The crises of American states and indigenous struggles is that at their core they are relationships formed and reproduced by colonialism. Colonialism as a process establishes a complex hierarchical relationship and is founded and justified through a series of systems. The continuation and legacies of European colonialism beginning in the 15h century with the arrival of Columbus have profoundly transformed our world today. Settler colonialism is characterized by a logic of dispossession and elimination. The term is rooted on a problematic binary of the expropriation of land as opposed to the expropriation of labor that distinguishes it from extractive colonialism as popularized by Patrick Wolfe (Speed, 2017).
Recognizing Settler Colonial Strategies in Latin America
M. Bianet Castellanos points out the struggle of recognizing the settler colonial structures in Latin America because the term did not originally account for the Latin American case but was formulated as a way to differentiate British colonialism in North America from black slavery, and the lack of an appropriate translation of the term in Spanish (Castellanos, 2017; Speed, 2017). As a result, it can be difficult to conceptualize the term in within and about Latin America. Shannon Speed argues that in Latin America colonialism always operated with elements of both extractive and settler colonialism, and furthermore draws on studies that argue that settler colonialism emerges from the formation of the state in Latin America after independence (Speed, 2017). This argument negates the image of a general progression of liberties and rights over time, as it is with the end of traditional European colonial ties in Latin America that the new independent states began to dispossess and eliminate indigenous persons with a new fervor to create a homogenous state under certain economic systems. Juan Castro and Manuela Picq use the case study of indigenous land dispossession in Guatemala as a case study to highlight how settler colonial structures have evolved over time in the central American country. “Guatemala’s modern democratic state is anchored in the colonial state and operates under the logic of settler colonial states” (Castro, 2017: 799).
Mestisaje as a Tool of Colonialism
Castellanos argues that the myth of mestisaje as a racial ideology to consolidate national identity in Latin America functions in a settler colonial state to eliminate indigenous identities (Castellanos, 2017; Speed, 2017). The idea and language of mestisaje in the 20th century is applauded by leftists for celebrating not only the European heritage of Latin Americans but also its African and indigenous historical roots. However, in this text we see that the formation of the idea of mestisaje comes around with formations of new forms of white nationalism in the global north. As a political project, the mestisaje concept takes a totalizing agenda by erasing the loving afro-Latinos and indigenous persons.
Reversing the “Irreversible”
Pineda addresses the dilemma of perceived irreversibility of settler colonialism that in the words of Patrick Wolfe aims to destroy and replace. The article concludes by offering the reader to reflect on the impact of settler colonialism in Latin America and in indigenous struggles working within state-centered systems. Ultimately, it is important to recognize the settler colonial tools used by Latin American states to dispossess, erase, and kill indigenous persons in order to take their lands and use them for neoliberal economic strategies of extraction. In these way, extractive and settler colonialism function together in the region. These texts challenge us to see beyond the seeming irreversibility of these powerful and totalizing systems of oppression.
References
Castellanos, M. Bianet. “Introduction: settler colonialism in Latin America.” American Quarterly 69.4 (2017): 777-781.
Castro, Juan, and Manuela Lavinas Picq. “Stateness as landgrab: A political history of Maya dispossession in Guatemala.” American Quarterly 69.4 (2017): 791-799.
Pineda, Baron. “Indigenous pan-Americanism: Contesting settler colonialism and the Doctrine of Discovery at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.” American Quarterly69.4 (2017): 823-832.
Speed, Shannon. “Structures of settler capitalism in Abya Yala.” American Quarterly 69.4 (2017): 783-790.
 

Theme: "Lettered Society"

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[et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]Key Theme: “Lettered Society”

This concept is mentioned in Brooke Larson’s article “Forging the Unlettered Indian”, in Joan Rappaport’s book “Politics of Memory,” and in Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s article “The Notion of Rights and the Paradoxes of Postcolonial Modernity.” Through these texts, the written word and literacy are conveyed as powerful tools for colonization, which are used as an exclusionary tool kept away from Indigenous communities and used to control, oppress, and set them apart. Because literacy played such an important role throughout colonization and subsequent law and land reforms, it is important to understand how literacy operated in this historical context and how it was used as a tool to oppress Indigenous communities and later as a tool by Indigenous people to empower themselves and stand up against their colonization.

In Larson’s article, she discusses how “lettered elites” were in control of the government and made Bolivian legal, political, and economic decisions. Because literacy was seen as such a powerful tool in this society, it was kept from many indigenous people. Larson describes an education reform in which a “dissident group of intellectuals hijacked the liberal idea of universal literacy and schooling to push forward a model of Indian schooling that subordinated universal literacy to specialized labor.” This supports that literacy was used as an exclusionary tool to maintain that those in power remain in power. Cusicanqui’s article discusses how it was the literate apoderados in Bolivia who were empowered to voice complaints and demands for their communities. She discusses how it was the literate who were able to contribute to political discourse and decision making and it was through this discourse that a “literate public opinion” and “literate culture” developed. Exclusion from literacy perpetuated indigenous exclusion from these spheres as well. Finally, Rappaport discusses the weight put on literacy in her book Politics of Memory. She uses the term “fetishization of the written word” to emphasize the priority and power placed within the ability to read and write. She also discusses Quintin Lame’s use of the written word to gain a voice in the society and to gain legitimacy for the history he writes down about his people. He is able to find power for himself and his community through his literacy.[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column]
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Theme: Neoliberalism

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Neoliberalism has been a central theme that we have examined throughout our course.

This term has been brought up throughout many of the readings both about Bolivia and Columbia.We have discussed how neoliberal ideologies promoted the privatization of services (water, gas, etc.) in Bolivia in the 1960’s and 70’s. The essay by McNeish, “Extraction, Protest and Indigeneity in Bolivia: The TIPNIS Effect” discusses a modern effort in Bolivia to “forge together a new socialist alternative to neoliberalism through the ALBA (McNeish, 222). The article discusses the influence of the neoliberal era in Bolivia on modern day politics and policies. In order to properly understand criticisms to this capitalist notion of progress we must understand what neoliberalism ideology promotes and how it functioned in Latin America.
Further, it is important to understand neoliberalism and its effects on land conflicts and reform in Bolivia and elsewhere in Latin America. Neoliberal ideals spurred many land reforms with the goals of pursuing a profitable extractive economy. In Yashar’s article “Contesting Citizenship,” she discusses how Latin American indigenous communities commonly voiced opposition to state reforms that had neoliberalism as the “symbolic target” (Yashar, 36). In addition, she discusses how neoliberalism “has become synonymous with the culpable state and has enabled indigenous movements to target the state for retribution, justice, and guarantees” (Yashar, 36).
In summary, we should define neoliberalism to understand its influence on the history of political and economic state goals in Latin America throughout the 1900’s. Neoliberalism could operate also as a theme and so it should be up for debate whether to define neoliberalism as a key term or key theme in our syllabus.

Theme: Identity and the intersections of women and ethnicity

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The article “‘Women Are More Indian’”: Ethnicity and Gender in a Community near Cuzco” by Marisol de la Cadena “explores the ways in which gender and ethnic relations have developed and intersected over time in Chitapampa…” [1] A key theme in both texts is that seemingly separate categories of ethnicity, class, masculine, and feminine should not be studied independently, but rather as interconnected elements of identity that are relational to each other. In this text, the author focuses on the distribution of valued labor between urban and rural settings to suggest that women are perceived as more “Indian” because of the ethnic associations with the labor their gender role restricts them to.
The article introduces the idea of valued work being divided along gender lines when discussing how work was divided in an agricultural society. Men were perceived as being more suited to harder physical labor, such as plowing, so “…for Chitapampinos, men’s capacity to work is greater than that of women…” [2] Women’s work, which involved tending to the house or selling the harvests, was seen as less physically strenuous, and therefore was valued less. Therefore, in a rural society, farming (valued more) was associated with men and the author defines this a key source of gender inequality.
However, the author recognizes that there is a historical and ethnic component to this relationship between genders. As rural indigenous workers began to move into the cities, the perception of valued labor shifted to “Urban work is valued more highly than rural work.” [3] This meant that working in the cities was considered more valuable and the author claims that this was divided along gendered lines as well. Men had more opportunity to find work and be based in the cities while women continued to be confined to the home. Therefore, men worked in urban settings and women worked in rural settings (where the home was located). Even though women began to fulfill an agricultural role that was once valued highly and restricted to men, the goal post had shifted, and urban work became what was valued. However, there is an ethnic component to this value system as well. The author writes, “…urban work serves to distinguish mestizos from Indians: ‘Indians don’t know how to work as well as mestizos do…’” [4] Urban work characterized mestizos and rural work characterized what was considered “Indian.” Since urban and rural is also divided along gender lines, the author argues that men are more associated with being mestizo and women are more associated with being Indian. Therefore, ethnicity, labor value, and gender influence each other to create identity and cultural perceptions of identity.
Footnotes
[1] De la Cadena. “Are Women More Indian?” in Larson, Brooke, Olivia Harris, and Enrique Tandeter, eds. Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration in the Andes: At the Crossroads of History and Anthropology. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995, (329).
[2] De la Cadena. “Are Women More Indian?” (333).
[3] De la Cadena. “Are Women More Indian?” (334).
[4] De la Cadena. “Are Women More Indian?” (334).
Sources Used:
De la Cadena. “Are Women More Indian?” in Larson, Brooke, Olivia Harris, and Enrique Tandeter, eds. Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration in the Andes: At the Crossroads of History and Anthropology. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.

History of Assimilation in Bolvia and Columbia

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Key Term: Assimilation
Definition: The absorption of the culture and practices of one group of people into the culture and practices of a dominant group with the aim of marginalizing the first group.
Significance: The term assimilation is key to the topic of indigenous rights because of the way in which is has underlined state-community relations for the past few centuries. Hybrids of colonial and pre-colonial power structures were still in place but the new liberal governments in Columbia and Bolivia wanted to get rid of these colonial practices post-independence. One of the manifestations of this change in ideology was several neo-liberal reforms in both countries which targeted at creating a nation and assimilating the indigenous population into the dominant culture. Understanding the history and consequences of these assimilationist policies enacted by the Bolivian and Columbian governments towards the indigenous people informs as to why assimilation is not the answer to current indigenous demands and how the indigenous identity is under threat. The books Revolutionary Horizons and Politics of Memory demonstrate the ways in which on political and economic levels, the indigenous population shifted to being termed as “peasants” and the government attempted to assimilate them into the dominant culture. In Revolutionary Horizons, Hylton and Thomson write, “Bolivian liberalism in the nineteenth century has been described as ethnocidal since it aimed to turn ‘Indians’ into ‘Bolivians,’ without granting them the rights and status of ‘citizens.’” [1] Political movements to incorporate indigenous communities into the nation were seen as progressive in contrast to the colonial system of two separate republics. However, Hylton and Thomson note how for the indigenous people, equality and citizenship were still out of reach. They write, “The document noted the gains of the national revolution as well as its limits – among other points, Aymara-Quechua peasants were ‘foreigners’ in their own country due to the culturally homogenizing policies of the MNR and the military.” [2] By terming the policies of the government at this time as “culturally homogenizing,” Hylton and Thomson convey the extent to which political movements at the time aimed to take the cultural diversity in Bolivia and weld the people into one people who followed one Bolivian culture. The consequences of this were that indigenous people continued to feel excluded from the nation because they didn’t want to sacrifice their indigenous identity. Hylton and Thomson describe this as the concept of mestizaje which, “implied a distillation of Bolivia’s distinct Spanish and Indian racial and civilizational essences into a blended national unity.” [3] While the term national unity and everyone being made citizen seemed progressive and beneficial to everyone, the failure to recognize the separate indigenous identity and history meant that many of the policies in actuality were assimilationist and contributed to the erasure of the indigenous identity. I think that the term assimilation and its history is very important to include in our syllabus so that anyone reading can have a good understanding of how governments have treated indigenous communities in the past and how the consequences of those actions are shaping present day indigenous movements.
[1] Hylton, Forrest, and Sinclair Thomson. Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics (London: Verso, 2007), 47.
[2] Hylton, Forrest, and Sinclair Thomson. Revolutionary Horizons, 87.
[3] Hylton, Forrest, and Sinclair Thomson. Revolutionary Horizons, 80.
Sources Used:
Hylton, Forrest, and Sinclair Thomson. Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics. London: Verso, 2007.
Rappaport, Joanne. The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian Andes. Duke University Press, 1998.

Contextualizing the Progress of Indigenous’ Struggles in the 21st century

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In the course that set the foundation for this collective project to be made, we critically analyzed contemporary issues unfolding today with real consequences on the lives of many peoples. As a class, we aimed to engage with the literature in a critical way while being conscious of our subjectivity and positionality to these issues. We apply this understanding of our own work to our critical analysis of the literature we have engaged with in this course as their personal temporality and own biases influenced the works they created and the conclusions they reached. In the first week of our course, we explored three texts that contextualize the hopes, successes, and failures of indigenous struggles in Latin America. In 1998, Deborah J. Yashar was hopeful about the radical changes that could be achieved through the new indigenous mobilizations in the last two decades of the twentieth century. She understood these new waves of increasing political organization by indigenous communities as the radical continuation of previous mobilizations to achieve material survival. In her narrative, these new indigenous mobilizations would fulfill the incomplete political liberalization and state reforms that previous mobilizations began but were unable to complete. Specifically, Yashar understood these mobilizations as new phenomena of contestation for the practice and terms of citizenship in Latin American democracies. Yashar is representative of an optimistic group of scholars in the late 20th century encouraged by the emerging democracies throughout Latin America, and the radical social organization that sought to define these different democracies. However, this optimism would be stifled by the rise of neoliberalism in the region.
In the 21st century, the consequences of the indigenous movements of the late 20th century were beginning to unfold and their successes as well as failures had lessons for new radical groups continuing the struggle against systems of oppression for marginalized groups in Latin America. To clarify the struggle these groups were engaged in, Nancy Grey Postero and Leon Zamosc’s essay label what Yashar understood as an indigenous contestation over citizenship as the Indian question. Postero and Zamoc ask through the Indian question “what kinds of rights indigenous people should be granted as citizens of democratic nation-states” (Postero, 2006: 5). While Yashar was mostly hopeful about the change that indigenous organization could achieve, the authors of this paper hold the opinion that the effect of these movements is dependent on the context of the state in which they form and they highlight the importance of plurality, history, and state relations in the claims and goals of indigenous movements. The diversity of conditions across Latin America makes it impossible to draw universal conclusions on the success and failures of the wave of indigenous social movements in the late twentieth century throughout the region.
Charles R. Hale’s article offers a more a critical assessment of the impact of the indigenous mobilizations of the late 20th century. In his article, he reassesses the effect of these mobilizations nine years later as incomplete. He argues that the new indigenous mobilizations at the end of the 20th century did not create a new citizenship, as Yashar predicted, but rather ended up opening spaces for some forms of indigeneity but continuing to exclude the majority. He critiques Yashar’s work for not accounting for neoliberalism’s cultural project and its violent relations with indigenous culture. While Portero and Zamosc’s article recognizes neoliberalism as a factor to take into account in the Indian question, they concentrate more on the political and economic dimensions of neoliberalism and similarly fail to fully recognize the importance of the cultural dimension of the neoliberal project. Hale uses the term “Indio permitido” to describe the way indigenous movements are being domesticated and divided by the granting of cultural rights by state’s with neoliberal projects. These articles summarize how the recent organization of indigenous groups around their indigeneity has opened promising conversations and some amount of progress in the granting of rights, but there are still questions about the progress that can be achieved when working through the colonizing states whose neoliberal projects demand the cultural erasure of indigenous culture and peoples or assimilated versions of who they are.
References
Hale, Charles. “Rethinking indigenous politics in the era of the “indio permitido”.” NACLA Report on the Americas 38.2 (2004): 16-21.
Postero, Nancy Grey, and Leon Zamosc. “The struggle for indigenous rights in Latin America.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 11.1 (2006): 208-210.
Yashar, Deborah J. “Contesting citizenship: Indigenous movements and democracy in Latin America.” Comparative politics (1998): 23-42.