What undecidability does: enduring racism in the context of indigenous resurgence in Bolivia

ABSTRACT

This article deals with the continuities and changes in the racial dynamics of Andean Bolivia in the context of dramatic transformations the country has witnessed since the beginning of this century. It departs from the idea that Andean racial formations are characterized by a constant alternation between multiple classificatory logics, which introduces ambiguity and undecidability in racial discourses. It argues that it is this undecidability of the racial that maintains racial hegemony. The article then goes on to analyze the implications of the process of indigenous resurgence Andean Bolivia witnessed in the twenty first century for durable structures of racial privilege and racialized everyday social relations. It reveals that though this process posed a frontal challenge to white-mestizo racial hegemony, the undecidable character of the racial contributes to a perpetuation of subtle forms of internalized racism and enduring structural racism.

KEYWORDS:

• Structural racism
• pigmentocracy
• racial hegemony
• internalized racism
• mestizaje
• Bolivia

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, Charles Hale, Jaime Alves and Circe Sturm for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Pseudonyms have been used to protect the identity of all the interlocutors in the study.

2 Fausto Reinaga was the most important Indianista intellectual and political activist in Bolivia. Most contemporary Indianistas claim to have been inspired by him.

3 News report in eju.tv available in http://eju.tv/2013/07/viceministro-del-gobierno-de-evo-renuncia-por-racismo-cruel-refinado-y-oculto/ Accessed 16/10/2018.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation [grant number 1259599] and the Wenner Gren Foundation [grant number 8671].