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ABSTRACT
Indigenous peoples in Latin America are historically underrepresented in elected bodies. In 2009, Bolivia introduced a new mechanism for direct representation to counteract this systematic representation gap, securing 7 of 130 seats (5.4%) in the national parliament for indigenous peoples of the lowlands. The reform was part of a series of implementation conflicts related to a new vision of plurinational state-building, included in the new 2009 Constitution. Although most indigenous organizations were seeking a ‘power-sharing’ agreement with direct representation for all indigenous nations, the new government, led by President Evo Morales, successfully intervened in favor of a minority protection scheme. Furthermore, for the direct representatives, the room to maneuver left was severely limited, leaving little space to act on behalf of their minority constituencies. Curiously, this reduced version of direct representation is nonetheless the most advanced in Latin America. The Bolivian case provides important lessons on the ‘de-monopolization’ of political parties as a key factor in the effective representation of indigenous peoples in parliament, as well as on the importance of a goal-oriented design for electoral mechanisms focusing on substantive representation.
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Notes
1. In Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela, direct representation of indigenous peoples is laid down in the constitution and amounts to 5.4%, 1.1%, and 2.7% of the members of the legislature, respectively. In Mexico, since 2017, all parties must nominate indigenous candidates in 13 of 500 electoral districts for national elections; consequently 2.6% of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies are occupied by indigenous people, but with a party affiliation. In Peru there are no direct indigenous representatives in the legislature, but since 2002 there has been a quota system for political parties in regional and municipal elections (Fuentes and Encina Citation2018; Laurent Citation2012). For an overview on indigenous direct representation in Latin America see Fuentes and Encina (Citation2018, 8), Htun (Citation2004, 453, Citation2016, 16), Hoffay and Rivas (Citation2016) and Reynolds (Citation2005, 304–5). The conclusions of comparative analyses are sometimes contradictory, because the availability and quality of data on indigenous inclusions in parliaments at a global level is rather limited and because the election formula applied are highly idiosyncratic (Protsyk Citation2010, 20; Zuber Citation2015, 399).
2. ‘We have left the colonial, republican, neoliberal state in the past. We take on the historic challenge of collectively constructing a Unified Social State of Plurinational Communitarian Law’ (Preamble, all translations are by the author).
3. The founding organizations conscientiously opted for this new form of organization, to break with the logic of conventional parties: ‘MAS is a group of social movements, we don’t want it to be a party, with a leader and statutes’ (Deputy Dionisio Núñez in 2003, quoted in Stefanoni Citation2008, 350).
4. MAS was able to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the decentralization reforms such as the Law of Popular Participation (1994) to broaden its social base, acquire experience in municipal electoral processes under different acronyms, and define new leaderships. Although it did not play a leading role in the different waves of protests since 1999, its markedly anti-system character allowed it to quickly transcend its rural origins and establish new alliances with urban sectors.
5. I understand as implementation conflicts a whole series of debates and disputes between social organizations and the Government over the interpretation of the notions of plurinationality contained in the constitution and how to transform these principles into public policies (Emiliano Madrid, author interview, 2014). These include the question of the protection of the rights of Mother Earth (Law on the Rights of Mother Earth, 2010 and the subsequent Framework Law, 2012), legal pluralism (Law on Jurisdictional Boundaries, 2010), indigenous autonomies (Framework Law on Autonomies and Decentralization, 2010), and the application of prior consultation.
6. Similarly, Canessa (Citation2012, 33) observes both a mainstream discourse that proposed the (re)foundation of a strong state based on an ‘ecumenical indigeneity for a majority’ and a minority perspective seeking ‘respect for cultural difference in its multiple forms and the protection of marginal peoples.’
7. The countries with the highest percentage are Bolivia (41%), Guatemala (41%), Peru (26%), and Mexico (15%) (World Bank Citation2015, 25).
8. Chile, Uruguay, and Guatemala are among the countries with comparatively fewer indigenous representatives, while Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela have recently managed to increase the presence of indigenous peoples in their political institutions.
9. Capotorti (Citation1979, 96) combines objective and subjective aspects, referring both to ‘a group numerically inferior to the rest of the population of a state’ and to the more subjective will of a community to preserve their own characteristics in terms of tradition, religion, or language. He also suggests that only groups holding a non-dominant (economic or political) position fall under minority protection.
10. However, as in the case of ‘minorities,’ there is no broadly accepted definition of ‘indigenous peoples’ and in many countries the concept itself is party to public debate. Most legal documents are based on a definition established by the Ecuadorian Martínez Cobo (Citation1987, 50), Special Rapporteur on Discrimination against Indigenous Populations. In Latin America, the concept of indigenous peoples is often used as a ‘higher order identity category’ (Zuber Citation2015, 397), encompassing various languages, identities, cultures, and situations of subalternality. Bearing in mind the variety and multiplicity of indigenous peoples, Hall and Patrinos (Citation2014, 90) suggest a more flexible way to define indigenous peoples, based on the idea of a polythetic type, where there is a spectrum of characteristics, but each group shares only some of them.
11. Kymlicka (Citation2001, 120) prefers comparing them to other ‘stateless nations’ like the Catalans, the Scots, the Québécois, the Flemish, or Puerto Ricans, with whom they ‘typically share the tendency […] to resist state nation‐building policies, and to fight instead for some form of territorial self‐government.’
12. The independence of the legislator to act freely is often illustrated in reference to Edmund Burke (1729–1797), who argued during a public meeting in 1774: ‘You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament’ (Burke Citation[1774] 1854, 391).
13. One example of how electoral systems can hinder exact representation is the 2016 presidential election in the United States, where Hillary Clinton received 2.8 million more votes than the legally-elected President Donald Trump by dint of the rules of the Electoral College.
14. As Zhanarstanova and Nechayeva (Citation2016, 78) conclude, ‘underrepresentation of [ethnic] groups in the political life of a country can lead to tragic consequences,’ after revisiting the 2010 political crisis in Kyrgyzstan, caused by ‘weak political representation of non-titular groups.’
15. Illustrative examples of power-sharing arrangements include the Constitution of Belgium (1970–1993), the Taif Agreement in Lebanon (1989), the Dayton Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1995), and the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland (1998). More recently, the participative constituent processes in Ecuador (2007–2008) and Bolivia (2006–2007) also resemble power-sharing agreements, as major stakeholders came to the negotiation table seeking to reorganize the basic principles and structures of the state (Nolte and Schilling-Vacaflor Citation2012).
16. For some analysts, Evo Morales’s resignation was a coup d’état, since the military ‘invited’ him to leave office, while others interpret it as constitutional succession in a crisis situation (Diaz Cuellar Citation2019; El País, 12 November 2019).
17. Both leaders, Evo Morales and García Linera, also expressed their opposition to direct representation of indigenous peoples as a matter of principle, indicating the risk of promoting the division and atomization of indigenous groups. Instead, they supported party quotas, usually a measure applied for strengthening the participation of women (Cordero Carraffa Citation2005, 71; Htun Citation2004; Schavelzon Citation2012, 144).
18. The Unity Pact (Pacto de Unidad) was a national alliance of indigenous and peasant organizations that fought for a profound reform of the Bolivian State through a new constitution. It was formally founded in September 2004 in Santa Cruz with the participation of more than 300 representatives. The Unity Pact represented the culmination of several decades of coordination and articulation between different peasant and indigenous actors. Members included peasant and colonist organizations, indigenous peoples from the lowlands, indigenous peoples from the highlands, and the Landless People’s Movement (Garcés Velásquez Citation2010; Valencia García, María del Pilar, and Iván Egido Zurita Citation2010, 27–28; Zegada, Arce, and Canedo Citation2011).
19. This is an informal political denomination for an area located in the east, formed by the departments of Tarija, Santa Cruz, Beni, and Pando, which together seem to be shaped like a crescent. The opposition to the government of Evo Morales was geographically centered in this region, characterized by strong autonomist movements.
20. In the successive versions of the text – including the Constitution ‘adopted in large measure on the basis of majority reports’, ‘approved in large, detailed and revised’ and ‘text amended in Congress’ (Bonifaz et al. Citation2009, 79, art. 146, 147) the original approach was reduced.
21. As a curious detail, one of the first acts of the transitional government of Jeanine Áñez was the introduction of the direct nomination of indigenous representatives in the special districts, without the intermediation of political organizations (OEP Citation2020). This measure was possibly intended to reduce the influence of MAS.
22. This process is somehow reminiscent of the differentiation between ‘permitted Indian’ and ‘prohibited Indian,’ which applies for the neoliberal regimes of the 1990s (Hale Citation2005), and is taken up again by Postero (Citation2017) through the figure of the ‘allowed decolonized’ under the government of Evo Morales. Here I am interested in the aspect of the enforcement of a rather narrow and centralist vision of plurinationality by the State, rather than the differentiation between ‘accepted’ and ‘unacceptable’ persons.
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Cletus Gregor Barié
Cletus Gregor Barié is a researcher and practitioner in the field of indigenous rights and social dialogue with a focus on the Andean region. He lived in Bolivia working in development cooperation programs from 2000 to 2009, and completed additional field research in 2013, 2015, and 2016.This article is part of his PhD research at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA) in Amsterdam on conflicts over plurinational state building in Bolivia and Ecuador.