The challenge of the “indigenous movement” in Latin America

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Notes

1. All statistics on “Indians” or the “indigenous” in Latin America are uncertain. They obviously depend on the criteria of identification, on who is identifying whom, and on how people define themselves. In Mexico the figures go from 25 to 50 million, and in the Andean countries from 10 to more than 20 million.

2. See Aníbal Quijano and Immanuel Wallerstein, “Americanity as a Concept. Or the Americas in the Modern World-System,” International Journal of Social Sciences, 134 (Paris: UNESCO, 1992), pp. 549–557; Aníbal Quijano, “Qué Tal Raza,” Familia y Cambio Social (Lima: CECOSAM, 1999), pp. 186–204, and “Raza, Etnia, Nación en Mariátegui: Cuestiones Abiertas,” in Roland Forgues, ed., José Carlos Mariátegui y Europa (Lima: Amauta, 1993), pp. 167–188.

3. I started to discuss matters relating to this new system of power, its basic principles and its implications in “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America,” in NEPANTLA, vol. 1, no. 3 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 533–581; “Colonialidad del Poder y Clasificación Social,” in Giovanni Arrighi and Walter L. Goldfrank, eds, Festschrift for Immanuel Wallerstein, Journal of World-Systems Research, VI:2 (2002), pp. 342–348; and “Colonialidad, Globalización y Democracia,” in Tendencias Basicas de Nuestra Epoca: Globalizacion y Democracia (Caracas: Instituto De Altos Estudios Diplomáticos “Pedro Gual,” 2001), pp. 25–61.

4. The term “European” is used here not in its physical-geographical sense, but in relation to the coloniality of any given system of power, i.e. in reference to “white” or “European” social groups which have control of global power, wherever their countries might be, since that geography continues to be a product of the coloniality of power.

5. The literature on this debate is extensive. See Agapit Tirkey, Jharkhand Movement: A Study of its dynamics (New Delhi: All India Coordinating Forum of the Adivasi/Indigenous Peoples [AICFAIP], 2002). The caste form of power relations in India makes the “indigenization” of part of the population even more complex. See e.g. Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany, The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and the State in Modern India (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

6. The 4th World Social Forum, held in January 2004 in Mumbai (Bombay), was certainly broader and more popular than the first three, thanks precisely to the massive presence of the adivasi/indigenous of all Southeast Asia and, above all, of all the regions of India, who, together with the dalit/untouchables, filled all the spaces of the Forum with their marches, their banners, their demands, and their protest against oppresion, discrimination, and plunder, and against the violence of “communalist” fundamentalism. The Forum was also, for all of them, the occasion for an unprecendented gathering together. The enormous importance of these developments will soon become apparent.

7. I have put forward certain issues for this debate in Modernidad, Identidad y Utopía en América Latina (Lima: Sociedad y Política Ediciones, 1988).

8. For a more extensive discussion of the implications of “race” for citizenship, representation, and participaction in the liberal state, see my “Colonialité du Pouvoir et Democratie en Amérique Latine,” in Futur Antérieur: Amérique Latine, Démocratie et Exclusion (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1994).

9. In Peru the most important debate took place between José Carlos Mariátegui and Luís Alberto Sánchez. See J.C. Mariátegui, 7 Ensayos de Interpretación de la Realidad Peruana (Lima: Empresa Editora Amauta, 1928), and L.A. Sánchez, Apuntes para una Biografía del APRA: Los Prinmeros Pasos, 1923–1931 (Lima: Mosca Azul, 1978); also José Deustua and José Luis Rénique, Intelectuales, Indigenismo y Descentralismo en el Perú, 1897/1931 (Cuzco: Centro Bartolomé de las Casas, 1984), and Hernán Ibarra, “Intelectuales Indígenas, Neoindigenismo e Indianismo en el Ecuador,” Ecuador Debate, 48 (1999), pp. 71–94.

10. See “Colonialidad del Poder, Eurocentrismo y América Latina” (n. 3).

11. This issue has a dimension which has not yet really been studied. Of course, the “Indian” population constituted the demographic majority in most of the Hispanic countries; it also predominated culturally among the colonized populations of Mexico, Central America and the Andes. The “negro” or “black” population, however, although obviously smaller, was important along the northern Pacific Coast of South America and also, above all, in the Caribbean – not to mention the Portuguese area, where it made up the overwhelming majority. Oddly, the “white” population was the least numerous in all these countries. Thus, mere size of population does not suffice to explain why the “black” population goes unmentioned in the debate on the state – except in connection with the problem of whether to preserve or abolish slavery. This may reflect a reaction on the part of the ruling classes to the Haitian revolution. In any case, in the whole debate in Hispanic America on what to do with the non-“white” and non-“European” populations, the “blacks” remain virtually invisible throughout the 19th century. This explains why the “negro problem” never received the attention accorded to the “indigenous problem.”

12. Its first two great moments of crisis were (1) the revolution of Tupac Amaru in the Viceroyalty of Peru (1780), which was defeated but had a profound impact, and (2) the Haitian revolution of 1804, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture – clearly the first great modern revolution, which in a single movement brought a victory of social subversion (slaves over masters), an anti-colonial victory (the defeat of French colonialism and formation of the Haitian nationality), and, on a global level, the first step in the disintegration of the coloniality of power (“blacks” against “whites”). Haiti's all too familiar later misfortunes in no way diminish the historic significance of that exceptional achievement.

13. Peoplehood [in English in the original – Ed.] is a neologism coined in English by Professor Gonzalo Santos to refer to a people's distinctive power systems, history and cultural conquests, its imagination, consciousness, language and memory, and its place in the world.

14. I do not mean to suggest here that the “Indians” only began to mobilize themselves in the last 30 years. The list of their rebellions and organizational efforts in the Andean countries is long and well documented. My purpose here is not to retell that story but rather to examine the specificities and the direction of the current “indigenous movement.” On earlier movements, see Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, Utopía y Revolución: El Pensamiento Político Contemporáneo de los indios en América Latina (México: Nueva Imagen, 1981); and the anthologies Democracia, Etnicidad y Violencia Política en los Países Andinos (Lima: IEP/IFEA, 1998), and Sismo Etnico en el Ecuador (Quito: Abya Yala/Cedime, 1993). Also: Rodrigo Montoya, Al Borde del Naufragio: Democracia, Violencia y Problema Etnico en el Perú (Madrid: Talasa Ediciones, 1992). It should be noted that between 1930 and 1980 most of the indigenous struggles were charaterized as peasant struggles. See Aníbal Quijano, “Contemporary Peasant Movements in Latin America,” in S.M Lipset and A.E. Solari, eds, Elites and Development in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).

15. A number of Peruvian and foreign social scientists took part in discussion of this issue in the 1950s and 1960s. See esp. François Bourricaud, “Algunas Características Originales de la Cultura Mestiza del Perú Contemporáneo,” Revista del Museo Nacional, XXIII (1954), pp. 37–59; José María Arguedas, “Evolución de las Comunidades Indígenas del Valle del Mataro y de la Ciudad de Huancayo,” Revista del Museo Nacional, XXVI (1957), pp. 78–151; and Aníbal Quijano, “El Cholo y el Conflicto Cultural en el Perú” (orig. 1964), in idem., Dominación y Cultura (Lima: Mosca Azul, 1980), pp. 47–117.

16. For a systematic study of these social movements, see Quijano, “Contemporary Peasant Movements in Latin America” (n. 14).

17. See “Colonialidad del Poder, Globalización y Democracia” (n. 3). On the consequences of neoliberalization–globalization for Latin American society, see my arguments in “The Latin American Labyrinth: Are There Other Ways Out?” Journal of Latin American Studies (Melbourne), forthcoming.

18. As an invited guest at UNCA's founding congress, I was able to attend these debates.

19. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo (México: ERA, 1988); Quijano, “Raza, Etnia y Nación en J.C. Mariátegui” (n. 2).

20. See Felipe Burbano de Lara, “Ecuador, cuando los Equilibrios Crujen,” Anuario Social y Politico de America Latina (Caracas: FLACSO/Nueva Sociedad), 3 (2000), pp. 65–79; Fernando Bustamante, “Y después de la insurrección qué …,” Ecuador Debate (Quito), 49 (2000), pp. 43–56.

21. See references in my “Contemporary Peasant Movements” (n. 14).

22. See e.g. George A. Collier with Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello, Land and the Zapatistas: Rebellion in Chiapas (Oakland: Food First Books, 1994), and the anthology Auroras of the Zapatistas: Local and Global Struggles of the Fourth World War (Jamaica Plain, MA: Midnight Notes, 2001). On Guatemala, Kay Warren, “Indigenous Movements as a Challenge to the Unified Social Movements Paradigm for Guatemala,” in Sonia E. Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino and Arturo Escobar, eds, Cultures of Politics, Politics of Culture (Boulder: Westview, 1998), pp. 165–196.

23. Not long ago in Peru, an Aymara leader harshly challenged a journalist who insisted on calling him indigenous: “Señorita, I am neither Indian nor indigenous; I am Aymara.”

24. On Ecuador, see esp. CONAIE, Proyecto Politico, Document No. 4 (Quito, 2002); on Chiapas, Auroras of the Zapatistas (n. 22). On Peru, a number of documents are available; see esp. Propuesta Concertada para Incorporar los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas y Comunidades en la Constitución Política del Perú, presented by Miguel Palacin (CONACAMI), Antonio Iviche Quisque (AIDESEP), Hildebrando Ruffner Sebastian (CCOICAP), and César Sarasara (CONAP), April 14, 2003, following the Gran Consulta Indígena sobre Reforma Constitucional of April 12–14.

25. On the concept of Global Imperial Bloc, see “Colonialidad del Poder, Globalización y Democracia” (n. 3).