The Challenge of Diversity in Rural Latin America: A Rejoinder to Jean-Pierre Reed (and Others)

Abstract

A review in the Journal of Peasant Studies by Reed [2003] of our book on indigenous movements and the state in Latin America provides a suitable opportunity to discuss several comments on questions raised in that text. In this rejoinder I argue that we do not judge neoliberalism a positive factor that provides indigenous peoples with a democratic space to press their demands. I show that our discussion of the neoliberal ‘cultural project’ provides the ground precisely for questioning the neoliberal brand of multiculturalism. Although the latter entails some degree of cultural affirmation, it simultaneously involves economic marginalization and disempowerment. This leads in turn to a further discussion of the relationship between indigenous movements and citizenship, and the strategy choices indigenous movements face in their pursuit of multicultural citizenship.

Notes

Willem Assies, Van Vollenhoven Instituut, Steenschuur 25, Postbus 9520, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]. This rejoinder was written in the context of the project ‘Indigenous Peoples and Reform of the State in Latin America,’ sponsored by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACYT, Project No. 45173), Mexico.

The comments by the three authors basically concern the first chapter of the volume, which I wrote as a ‘position paper’ for the conference of which the book is an outcome, and the last chapter which was written together with Gemma van der Haar and André Hoekema and seeks to recap some of the main points developed in the book and during the conference.

It might be useful to remember that it was the Pinochet regime that liberalized the Chilean economy and I would be more than reluctant to claim that Pinochet was the progenitor of present-day Chilean democracy, which actually is extremely repressive, invoking ‘anti-terrorist’ legislation, as a way of dealing with Mapuche protests against rampant neoliberalism.

The Law of Popular Participation is discussed in the chapters by Ricardo Calla and René Orellana in our book.

As well as a reform of the electoral system.

For a discussion of ‘minority rights’ and the rights of indigenous ‘peoples’, see Assies [1994].

For an extensive discussion of the jurisprudence of the Colombian Constitutional Court and the way it deals with the issue of collective and individual rights and the existence of non-liberal indigenous societies within a liberal multicultural state, see Assies [2003] and Sánchez’ contribution to The Challenge of Diversity.

This is not the place to discuss things like ‘peripheral Fordism’ and its political implications.

Oil exploration and mining, and the ways they oppose indigenous peoples and globalized capital, are cases in point. I therefore do not think that indigenous demands can simply be met affecting ‘the material interests of some fractions of the dominant classes…., which could be done through an economic compensation’ [ Otero, 2004: 243]. That may well be an important step, but the viability of indigenous material and cultural reproduction will not only depend on regaining lands and territories, but also on the economic environment. Lands and even territories may now have been granted and one might expect indigenous peoples to go and ‘live quietly’ on these lands and territories. That is not the case; they are under tremendous pressure to present development and management plans and to become ‘integrated into the market economy’. If neoliberal ‘national development’ is a national problem that affects indigenous peoples as well as other sections of the population, then indigenous proposals to redefine ‘development’ should be welcomed.

As Nancy Fraser [2003] has argued, class and status differences are often intertwined and therefore redistribution and recognition should not be construed as mutually exclusive alternatives in the search for social justice. Thus we can see that ‘struggles for recognition’ often involve distributive issues. This, I think, is a helpful perspective in deconstructing false antitheses between citizenship and multiculturalism, and for constructing a progressive politics of citizenship in multicultural societies. It provides a sounder starting point for thinking about multicultural citizenship than the assumption that there is no friction between liberal citizenship and indigenous societies on the basis of Kymlicka's normative statement.

Hernández [2002] shows how Mexican legislators invoked the issue of women's rights to water down a constitutional reform to strengthen indigenous autonomy rights; a variant of the colonial ‘white man saving the brown woman from the brown man’ line of reasoning. And she stresses that Zapatista and other indigenous women do not need this paternalism and struggle both for autonomy and their rights.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Willem Assies

Willem Assies, Van Vollenhoven Instituut, Steenschuur 25, Postbus 9520, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]. This rejoinder was written in the context of the project ‘Indigenous Peoples and Reform of the State in Latin America,’ sponsored by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACYT, Project No. 45173), Mexico.