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Abstract
This article analyses the ‘indigenous autonomy’ being constructed in two dozen Bolivian municipalities and territories, in accordance with the 2009 Constitution. It finds that Bolivia’s 1994 decentralisation reforms, which created the country’s system of municipalities, are central to understanding the contemporary implementation of indigenous autonomy. Some indigenous people view as favourable the representative and material gains achieved by municipalisation, which helps explain why more majority-indigenous communities have not yet chosen the new option of indigenous autonomy. However, the new legal framework also limits indigenous self-governance, because territorial delimitations of the country’s municipalities are generally inconsistent with indigenous peoples’ ancestral territories. The new institutions of self-governance are legally obligated to include discrete legislative, executive and administrative functions, reflecting not indigenous norms but a municipal structure of liberal design. This study illustrates the way that indigenous self-determination may encounter obstacles where indigenous territorial jurisdictions must coincide with contemporary boundaries of colonial origins, rather than with pre-colonial territories.
Funding
Support for this research was provided by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), UBC’s Department of Political Science and Maxwell Cameron.
Notes
1. Yashar, Contesting Citizenship; and Lucero, Struggles of Voice.
2. Yashar, Contesting Citizenship.
3. Cameron and Hershberg, Latin America’s Left Turns.
4. Primary field research involved 10 field research trips to Tarabuco, Mojocoya, Jesús de Machaca, Curahuara de Carangas and Charagua. Methodologies included interviews with representatives of the government, municipalities converting to indigenous autonomy and NGOs accompanying these processes, as well as with scholars and other experts; observation of the elaboration of autonomy statutes; and analysis of primary and secondary texts.
5. This article provides a condensed argument that is part of a broader analysis elaborated in the author’s dissertation. Tockman, “Instituting Power.”
6. Dunkerley, Rebellion in the Veins; Rivera Cusicanqui, Oprimidos pero no Vencidos; and Albó Movimientos y Poder Indígena.
7. Dunkerley, Rebellion in the Veins, xii.
8. Tapia, El Estado de Derecho, 13.
9. Ibid., 15; Rivera Cusicanqui, Oprimidos pero no Vencidos; and Tapia, El Estado de Derecho.
10. Dunkerley, Rebellion in the Veins.
11. Centellas, “Bolivia’s New Multicultural Constitution.” Eisenstadt, Politics, Identity, characterises Bolivia’s decentralisation programme as one of the most comprehensive in Latin America.
12. See Medeiros, ‘Civilizing the Popular?’; Kohl and Farthing, Impasse in Bolivia; Van Cott, Radical Democracy; and Faguet, Decentralization and Popular Democracy.
13. Kohl and Farthing, Impasse in Bolivia.
14. Ibid.
15. Sucre remains the country’s judicial and constitutional capital.
16. As of March 2015 the number of municipalities has increased to 339.
17. Another component of the new political architecture are ‘regions’, intermediary political units within departments (which they cannot cross). Regions aggregate contiguous municipalities and provinces and serve as administrative and planning units. By referendum of their constituent municipalities regions may become autonomous and may convert into indigenous autonomies; however, the Constitution specifies that regions do not enjoy legislative powers.
18. Albó and Romero, Autonomías Indígenas.
19. From an interview with Diego Cuadros, a principal actor in the design of the system of autonomies, November 4, 2013.
20. Michel Foucault used the concept of ‘governmentality’ to describe techniques by which the state coordinates subjects to act in ways that fulfil state objectives; many scholars have subsequently employed the term to characterise the self-disciplining done by governed subjects. See Foucault, “Governmentality.”
21. Lâm, At the Edge, 135.
22. Under the 2009 Constitution, Tierras Comunitarias de Origen (TCOs) – the collective land ownership units created by the 1996 Law of Agrarian Reform – were renamed TIOCs. Across Bolivia there are some 200 TCOs-turned-TIOCs. ‘Consolidation’ signifies that the TCO has traversed the process of land titling.
23. Albó and Romero, Autonomías Indígenas.
24. From interviews with Ministry of Autonomies officials responsible for overseeing these processes in municipalities and TIOCs, conducted on November 4 and 7, 2013, respectively.
25. Albó and Romero, Autonomías Indígenas; and Colque, Autonomías Indígenas, 43.
26. Albó and Romero, Autonomías Indígenas.
27. That the arrangement is deceitful was suggested by a CIDOB spokesperson on March 5, 2012. The role of the MAS in selecting those elected to indigenous circumscriptions was emphasised by the CIDOB representative, as well as a Bolivian scholar and a former Bolivian government consultant, October 23 and November 4, 2013, respectively.
28. “MAS dice No.”
29. Ministry of Autonomies, “¿Quiénes Somos?”
30. For additional demographic, socioeconomic and geographic data for each of the 11 converting municipalities (eg population, poverty rate, literacy rate, life expectancy, distance to an urban centre), see Tockman, “Instituting Power.”
31. CONAIOC, “Resolution No. 06/2012”; and CONAIOC, “Acta de la Reunión.”
32. From interviews with two leaders of CIDOB, March 5, 2012.
33. Ibid.
34. From an interview with staff member of CONAMAQ, November 6, 2013.
35. From an interview with a secretary of the CSUTCB, April 17, 2012.
36. Ibid.
37. From an interview with a Bartolinas spokeswoman, May 3, 2012.
38. From interviews with a peasant union leader of Tarabuco, April 23, 2012; and with a former government consultant, November 4, 2013.
39. The claim that maintaining the seat of government in Redención Pampa was the primary motivation for Mojocoya’s conversion was confirmed by three sitting members of Mojocoya’s Municipal Council and Mojocoya’s former Municipal Council President, April 26, 2012.
40. See Tockman, “Instituting Power,” 245–253.
41. Ibid.
42. Eisenstadt, Politics, Identity, 165.
43. See Kohl and Farthing, Impasse in Bolivia; Faguet, Decentralization and Popular Democracy.
44. See, for example, Medeiros, “Civilizing the Popular?”; Kohl and Farthing, Impasse in Bolivia; and Postero, Now we are Citizens.
45. Tockman, “Instituting Power.”
46. From an interview with a mallku of Curahuara de Carangas, February 14, 2012.
47. Centellas, “Bolivia’s New Multicultural Constitution.”
48. Ibid., 95.
49. Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories.
50. Krasner, Power, the State, and Sovereignty, 79.
51. This argument was made by a staff member of CONAMAQ, November 6, 2013.
52. Tockman, “Instituting Power.”
53. See Cameron, Struggles for Local Democracy.
54. See Tockman, “Instituting Power.”
55. See Ticona and Albó, Jesús de Machaca; and Colque and Cameron, “El Difícil Matrimonio.”
56. Tockman, “Instituting Power.”
57. Durkheim, The Division of Labor.
58. Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, 164; and Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory, 169.
59. Zibechi, Dispersing Power, 16.
60. Durkheim, The Division of Labor.
61. From an interview in La Paz, November 6, 2013.
62. See Tockman, Instituting Power. Of the cases studied, only that of Jesús de Machaca does not support this observation.
63. Garcés, “The Domestication of Indigenous Autonomies,” 57.
64. Ibid. Garcés dismissed as virtually impossible the scenario of departmental authorities ceding territory to an autonomous region.
65. Fundación Tierra, Marcha Indígena; and Centellas, “Bolivia’s New Multicultural Constitution.”
66. Tribunal Constitucional Plurinacional, “Declaración Constitucional Plurinacional,” 59.
67. Colque and Cameron, “El Difícil Matrimonio,” 174.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid., 197.
70. Albó, Tres Municipios Andinos.
71. Kingsbury, “Reconstructing Self-determination,” 28.
72. See Tockman, “Instituting Power.”
73. Lightfoot, “Emerging International Indigenous Rights.”
74. Gustafson and Fabricant, “Introduction.”
75. Centellas, “Bolivia’s New Multicultural Constitution,” 104.
76. García Linera, Las Tensiones Creativas.
77. This was articulated, for example, during a meeting in Sucre by an NGO staff member, October 25, 2013. She commented: ‘Now, indigenous first peoples’ peasant autonomy is municipal autonomy, but with a poncho’.
78. Comment by John Cameron at a presentation in Cochabamba, November 24, 2011.