Taxing the indigenous: a history of barriers to fiscal inclusion in the Bolivian highlands

ABSTRACT

Following the electoral success of left wing and pro-indigenous President Evo Morales, the indigenous poor in Bolivia find themselves at the centre of a new vision of the state, echoed by a fervent citizenship project to include them as contributing participants in this new Bolivia. The state is working to initiate these hitherto informally employed subjects into an individualized fiscal regime: to make them into “taxpayers”. While the highland indigenous population have supported Morales’ political project, they resist inclusion into the broader state-sponsored project. This is not simply about avoiding financial obligations; their resistance is instead firmly rooted in the historical experience of fiscal exploitation, general suspicion of any state-run scheme as well as a clash of exchange models. I argue that in order to overcome these barriers, the Tax Office has to succeed in separating fiscal expansion from its association with an abstract state concept, and instead link it to palpable everyday life and politics, such as the union structure and Morales’ project of indigenous inclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Taxation
• Andes
• state
• unions
• citizenship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In a TCO the community owns the land, in this case land is owned by the whole ayllu. No individual may sell any land within the TCO or speculate on it. While a majority of land in Bolívar received the TCO title from INRA, two sections (cantones), Comuna and Challoma, did not. Because these are ex-hacienda areas, their population received private land titles following agrarian reform in 1953. As they already had land deeds they decided to opt out of the TCO. Private land deeds allow people to do what they wish with their land, although subsoil resources are not protected.

2. The cacique is the top ayllu position in Kirkiyawi. Below the cacique sits two kuraj tatas, one for the Aransaya (highland) and one for the Urinsaya (lowland). There are an additional eight kuraj tatas, one per jap’i (territorial sub-division of the ayllu). Below the kuraj tatas are the jilanqus, each representing a village. At the beginning of every new year in early January, there is a rotation of roles. A new jilanqu is appointed in every village and a new kuraj tata for every jap’i.

3. TIPNIS conflict: The plan to build a road through a TCO against the wishes of the local inhabitants sparked big marches and violent crackdowns by the police in 2011. While the road building was paused following the government’s mishandling of the protests, it has in the last year been given the green light again, thus undermining the legal power of the TCO.

4. Despite the fact that it is a derogatory term that is both unspecific and homogenizing, I use the term “indian”, as it is effective in referring to a large subaltern group which can be bracketed off as a collective due to its shared marginality (cf. Canessa 2005; Harris 1995b; Weismantel 2001). Following Canessa (2005) I do not capitalize the “i” in indian as people are not nationals of India and the term is analogous to creole or mestizo, neither of which are normally capitalized.

5. The indigenous Aymara-speaking people are a highland group. They make up one of the largest indigenous groups in Bolivia and are a strong political force in the country.

6. The domestic GDP in Bolivia in 2015 was £1941. With the rural poor earning significantly less than this average the Renta Dignidad represents a considerable boost in income.

7. Made up of the departments of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija. The four departments create a crescent shape to the east of the country, hence its name media luna (half moon).

8. The centre of the Tiwanaku empire, the now archaeological site of Tiwanaku, is close to lake Titicaca and at its height the empire incorporated much of present-day Bolivia, Peru and Chile. It was at its strongest between 500 and 1000 AD.

9. In the language of the Inca, Quechua, the name of the empire is Tawantinsuyu (literally, four corners). The empire began taking shape in Cuzco, Peru, in the beginnings of the thirteenth century. In one century the empire had expanded into Ecuador, Columbia, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. Though huge, the empire was short-lived and fell with the invasion of the Spanish. In 1533 the last Sapa Inca (hereditary position of ruler, perceived as divine), Atahuallpa, was killed, and by 1572 the last strongholds of the Incas had been completely conquered.

10. Bolivian highland Indigenous Rights Organisation that ultimately want to see the re-establishment of the gran ayllus and total de-colonization.

11. According to the Atlas de los Ayllus Sura y Qurpa Kirkiyawi the petition was signed by the then cacique of Kirkiyawi Don Juan Domingo Fernández Mamani. However, Izko (1992) in his examination of the same document claims that the signatory on behalf of Kirkiyawi was a cacique by the name Juan Pedro Mamani. Whether these two people are in fact one and the same, whether there were two acting caciques, one for the aransaya and one for the urinsaya, during this time in Kirkiyawi or whether one of them was not a cacique but held another ayllu position, is unclear from the evidence.

12. According to people in Kirkiyawi now, the previous cacique, Don Marcos Mamani, can be directly traced back to the earliest rulers, including whoever signed the Third Revisita. The genealogy of the present Cacique can then be traced back to at least 1646, when colonial documents show the signature of Cacique Juan Domingo Fernández Mamani. In Kirkiyawi, some people were able to cite the names of the caciques going back three generations – Don Marcos Mamani, his father Don Nicanor Mamani Ibarra and his grandfather Don Mariano Mamani. The present cacique, Vicente Arias, is the nephew of Don Marcos Mamani. The position passed to him when Don Marcos died leaving no male heirs. Don Vicente sometimes goes by the name of Mamani in order to associate himself with the legitimate line of the caciques of Kirkiyawi.

13. Although many of the hacienda workers were yanacondas, a group that had been landless previous to the Spanish invasion and were mainly servants or slaves to Inca nobles (Klein 2003).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council grant number [PTA-030-2006-00299].