‘Now we are Indígenas’: Hegemony and Indigeneity in the Bolivian Andes

Abstract

This article explores the ever-shifting semantics and semiotics of the concept ‘indígena’ in the Bolivian Andes and argues that ‘indigeneity’ is charged with different meanings by different actors in changing contexts of territorial and social struggles and state governance. The article focuses on the discourse and politics of the indigenous Andean organization ‘Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu’ and its response to changing pressures on indigenous territories and resources caused by the nation-building process started in 2006 by the Evo Morales administration. The article identifies a recent conflict in the Bolivian lowlands between indigenous organizations and the Bolivian State as one decisive moment in a broader historical and political process, a moment when two divergent projects of ‘lo indígena’ emerged in the Bolivian Andes: one hegemonic state project of indigeneity and one counter-hegemonic project of indigeneity. The article shows that this was not the first time in Bolivian history that a hegemonic project from above was responded to from below with a counter-hegemonic project. Moreover, the article argues that hegemonic projects actually tend to create the spaces that are necessary for counter-hegemonic projects to emerge and for new political visions and subjectivities to take form.

Keywords:

• Indigeneity
• hegemony
• counter-hegemony
• CONAMAQ
• Aymara
• Bolivia

Acknowledgments

I thank mallkus and mama t’allas of CONAMAQ and my friends and former colleagues in CADA for letting me take part, in different ways, in their respective organizations over the years. Other people who have given me important input for this article and to whom I am grateful are Susan Paulson, Nancy Postero, Anna Kaijser, and Freddy Acarapi. I also thank the three anonymous reviewers whose comments improved earlier versions of this piece.

Notes

[1] Covering the Andean parts of Bolivia, the southern parts of Peru, northern Chile, and northern Argentina, Qullasuyu was one of the four suyus of Tawantinsuyu, the Inca territory.

[2] Q’ara is the Aymara term for Bolivians of European descent. It literally means ‘peeled’ and its usage is often explained by Aymara people with an anecdote about how the Spaniards came to what is now Bolivia ‘without anything, no women, no belongings, no land,’ that is, peeled. The dominant are socially and culturally ‘peeled.’

[3] Due to the political sensitiveness of the issue, the identities of informants referring to the TIPNIS conflict are not revealed.

[4] Evo Morales’ assertion would be backed up by a controversial and contested consultation carried out by the government among the indigenous communities of TIPNIS in 2012, in which an overwhelming majority approved of the projected highway (see McNeish 2013, 231).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anders Burman

Anders Burman is at the Human Ecology Division, Lund University, Sölvegatan 10, S-223 62 Lund, Sweden (Email: [email protected]).