Black hole indigeneity: the explosion and implosion of radical difference as resistance and power in Andean Bolivia

ABSTRACT

With the coming to power of Evo Morales and el Movimiento al Socialismo, an indigenized language of resistance became the language of power. In this paper I explore how epistemological and ontological ‘radical difference’ was co-opted and used to legitimize Bolivian state power. I argue that when institutionalized and instrumentalized within the state apparatus, indigeneity – as an emancipatory device of radical difference – implodes on itself and its radical potential is lost in the black hole that is coloniality. This paper provides an analytical and historical horizon against which recent political events in Bolivia can be understood.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigeneity
• Evo Morales
• Bolivia
• resistance
• power
• decolonization

Acknowledgments

I thank Juan José Ayala, Oscar Ayala and Il Grosso for their kind cooperation and my maestro Carlos Yujra (QEPD) and Davíd Quispe for their unceasing teachings. Likewise, I thank the anonymous reviewers and the members of the PoReSo research group at the School of Global Studies for their constructive critique.

Disclosure statement

There is no potential conflict of interest in regard to this article.

Notes

1. Wiphala, the multicolored banner has been used since the early 1970s to symbolize Andean indigenous peoples and resistance on a pan-Andean scale, and since 2009, it is one of the official national symbols of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

2. ‘Radical difference’ is not a concept used by the principal actors in these dynamics; rather, it is an analytical concept used by Mario Blaser (2013) and others to characterize that which escapes the epistemological and ontological straightjacket of coloniality/modernity.

3. For decades, a legendary meeting place for indianista-katarista activists (see Nacionalismo Aymara 2018, p. 10).

4. Interestingly, notions such as these would be criticized in terms of pachamamismo by 21^st century indianistas such as Pedro Portugal and Carlos Macusaya (2016).

5. Carlos Macusaya (2014) makes an interesting analysis of the manifesto, the circumstances surrounding its writing and its significance as a document that concretized the differences between el indianismo and el katarismo.

6. Among his scholarly works, see for instance his 2016 book Macha: Políticas de descolonización del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia en la perspectiva de 500 años de guerra anticolonial (Aqarapi 2016).

7. In the political context of the Morales administration, where ’indigeneity’ could be a political asset, these dynamics were to a certain extent changing.

Additional information

Funding

The writing of this paper was made possible by a generous writing grant from the Ann-Ida Broström and Dan Broström Funds.

Notes on contributors

Anders Burman

Anders Burman currently serves as an associate professor in Human Ecology at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Since the early 2000s, he has conducted ethnographic research in the Bolivian Andes, focusing on social movements and activist research, ritual practice, questions of indigeneity, knowledge production and decolonization, and, more recently, environmental conflicts and climate change. Some of Burman’s papers have appeared in the Journal of Political Ecology, Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, and Journal of Latin American Studies.