Motley territories in a plurinational state: forest fires in the Bolivian Chiquitanía

ABSTRACT

In August and September 2019, wildfires destroyed over 3 million hectares of forest in the Bolivian Chiquitanía. They were caused by slash-and-burn land clearance techniques used to prepare land for agriculture. In this article, we examine how the forest fires constitute a way of making territory, paying particular attention to how underlying relations of power have historically shaped territories in the region. We trace the actors and social relations of power that have historically developed in the region from the 17th century to today, putting an emphasis on the necessity to expand the temporal lens through which we analyse struggles over territory in Latin America. The Chiquitanía region is an illustrative case study, as it reflects Bolivia’s highly diverse society, revealing multiple, simultaneously existing territorialised social relations, which we conceptually grasp as motley territories. We define motley territories as diverse territorialised social relations that were established in different epochs but continue to coexist in often unarticulated ways. We argue that the state-sanctioned appropriation of slash-and-burn practices by landowners is a mechanism to integrate more land into the agricultural frontier while rendering other forms of inhabiting those motley territories more difficult.

KEYWORDS:

• Territory; plurinationality; motleyness; conflict; forest fires; Bolivia

Introduction

In August and September 2019, forest fires destroyed over 3 million hectares of dry forest in the Bolivian Chiquitanía (Gobierno del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia 2020). The fires were caused by slash-and-burn techniques widely used in the region to clear land for agriculture (McKay and Colque 2016). However, in 2019, the fires got out of control and disproportionately affected indigenous territories, state-owned fallow land and natural reserves (Vos et al. 2020). In this article, we examine how the forest fires constitute a way of making territory, paying particular attention to how underlying relations of power have historically shaped territories in the region. The Chiquitanía is an interesting case study, as it reflects Bolivia’s highly diverse society, revealing many, simultaneously existing, territorialised social relations that we conceptually grasp as motley territories. Following Zavaletas concept of motley formations (formaciones abigarradas) (Zavaleta Mercado 2009), we define motley territories as diverse territorialised social relations that were established in different epochs but continue to coexist in often unarticulated ways.

In the Bolivian Chiquitanía, forest fires are a recurring phenomenon and frequently become humanitarian and environmental disasters (Killeen et al. 2007). In the wake of the fires, new and historically developed conflicts over territory become visible. Delaney (2005, 11) points out that:

[Territory] appears to be self-evident, necessary, or unquestionable, it may obscure the play of power and politics in its formation and maintenance […] but when push comes to shove, enforced by physical violence, then the forms of power which are inherently connected to territory may become more visible, and justifications, more clearly partial or partisan.

The wildfires and ensuing conflict are the push coming to shove. Using fire to clear parcels for agriculture has been used in the region since pre-colonial times. As the wildfires show, slash-and-burn practices are not sustainable at large scales as they quickly get out of control. We argue that the state-sanctioned appropriation of slash-and-burn practices by landowners are a mechanism to integrate more land into the agricultural frontier while rendering other forms of inhabiting those territories more difficult.

Especially in the wake of Bolivia’s 2019 political crisis, the forest fires served as a means of social mobilisation against the MAS government, blaming new settlers in the region for the wildfires. The 2019 general elections were fraught with allegations of electoral manipulation and the legally questionable fourth consecutive run for office by former president Evo Morales. Following three weeks of protest, increasing tensions and violence, Morales and the MAS party were temporarily forced out of office on November 10th. The interim government under Jeanine Áñez exacerbated police and military violence against protesters (Jasser 2020). In 2020, a new MAS president, Luis Arce was elected. The initial 2019 general strike after the elections was led (among others) by the economic elite from Santa Cruz. This economic elite largely relies on agrarian extractivism (McNelly 2021), that requires ever more farmable land. While the ultimate decisive factors were a police mutiny and military intervention, the coup d’état in October 2019 was part of the continuing struggles over land, resources, and sovereignty in Bolivia. The forest fires have intensified the previously latent conflicts over the distribution and use of land between the indigenous population, new community settlements of farmers, and private landowners in Chiquitanía. The fires highlight the contentious dynamics between state actors, private landowners as well as indigenous and peasant groups, and reveal deep set social structures ingrained in – and struggles over – land (tierra) and territory (territorio) (Inturias et al. 2019).¹

Struggles over land and territory are part of larger crucial conflicts across the continent, as the access to and control of land or territory guarantees not only economic security – or even functions as an economic asset for speculation – but it can also be a living space that comprises the possibility to maintain one’s livelihood, forms of social organisation and sovereignty (Anthias and Hoffmann 2021). On a regional scale, struggles over territory have been central for nation states, elites, and social movements alike: After formal independence from Spain in the 19^th century, unequal concentration of land ownership in Latin America grew ever more extreme. The unequal and colonial land distribution was contested through attempted land reforms in the mid-20th century but remains a structuring feature up until today. During the territorial turn of the 1990s, partial and ambivalent attempts of land devolution were promoted by international organisations (Offen 2003). The World Bank and the International Labour Organisation started to increasingly focus on the legal recognition of indigenous territories as part of environmental and multicultural policies. Simultaneously, movements started to articulate their claims around further territorial control (Halvorsen 2018). In Bolivia, these claims and struggles have resulted in a new, plurinational constitution. Plurinational states offer a unique terrain for understanding decolonial struggles over territory, as they open up a playing field for renegotiation on the recognition of multiple, motley territories.

Plurinationality itself constitutes, as Gustafson (2009, 8) points out: “a historical project that seeks to rearrange relations and symbols of legitimacy, territory, and authority through the transformation of the Bolivian nation-state” The push that drove the foundation of the plurinational state was initiated in the early 2000s, when indigenous and peasant social movements led intense anti-neoliberal protest cycles over the colonial matrix of the state. They claimed not only indigenous rights, representation, and multicultural education but also the pluralisation of sovereignty arrangements according to the existing ways of living and relations to (natural) resources and territory (Radhuber 2017; Chávez and Mokrani 2007; Radhuber and Radcliffe 2022). Core demands were the redistribution of land and the decolonisation of the Bolivian state and society. This transformation aimed to re-shape the state to reflect the highly diverse societies and recognise the coexistence of the many indigenous nations and forms of living within one state.

For understanding Bolivia’s highly diverse societies and territorialities, we build upon the work of Bolivian scholars Zavaleta² and Tapia. We expand on the concept of motley societies (sociedades abigarradas), meaning the coexistence of multiple societies with distinct economic, social, and political forms of organisation within one state territory. We situate forms of territory by drawing upon the long memory of colonisation. That is, we consider colonial, post-colonial and plurinational social formations. In this context, we examine forest fires as a specific, power-laden form of making territory in which different livelihoods and forms of social organisation are at stake. Through this analysis, we aim to render the making of territories in the Bolivian Chiquitanía visible. We find that current motley territories in Chiquitanía reflect contradicting historic, economic, and social processes and forms of integration into, as well as resistance against and practices that go beyond the plurinational state and its organisation.

The paper proceeds as follows: The next section sets out a theoretical framework on the nexus of territory and plurinationality. We therefore propose the notion of motley territories. We then briefly describe our methodological approach and data. In the empirical sections, we revise crucial moments in Bolivia and Chiquitanía’s history that set the social parameters and conditions in the medium term. We examine how those crucial moments played out specifically in Chiquitanía and analyse them in regard to making motley territories. We identify different legal forms of state-recognised territory – each understood as the outcome of struggles from both state and (local) non-state actors. We pay particular attention to the history of the indigenous territory Lomerío of the Monkoxɨ nation and of their indigenous organisation CICOL (Central Indígena de Comunidades Originarias de Lomerío). To understand the current motley configuration, we closely examine the case of the indigenous territory Lomerío³ and trace the processes of making motley territories. We close with a discussion and concluding remarks.

Motley territories in a plurinational state

In Western theories, state territory and sovereignty are inextricably linked to one another. The prevailing understanding of territory is as an “area of land claimed by a state” (Storey 2020, 1). This notion is largely based on the Westphalian concept of state from 1648 that promotes territorial exclusivity and non-interference from external influences. Considering the colonial occupation and international interventions during the following centuries, the non-interference concept was clearly limited to European states and not extended to colonised territories (Agnew 2020). Such top-down perspectives equate territory with sovereign, indivisible nation-states with clearly defined borders. They also understand territory as a neutral space, where relations of state power and other social dynamics play out (Paasi 2020). The concept of nation states that is firmly grounded in territorial control of one sovereign state representing one unified people is – considering the social and ethnic diversity of most countries – “fundamentally a myth” (Murphy 2020, 29). Specifically, the recognition of plurinational states calls these notions of territorial states into question, calling for other approaches to understanding the relations of state, territory, and territoriality.

Instead of understanding territory as a container for state power, other approaches comprehend territory as rooted in society (Storey 2020). Such approaches encompass understandings of how territories come into being when power relations play out in a space (Haesbaert 2013). Territory that is controlled by states or other actors then becomes a material spatial expression of social relations. People, groups, and collectives strive to use and/or inhabit a territory for diverse purposes – a phenomenon that authors have referred to as territoriality (Sack 1986; Delaney 2005; Dorn 2021). Territoriality describes not only the material base but also the multiple ways in which people, groups and broader collectives relate to space. That is, as “the process whereby individuals or groups lay claim to such territory” (Storey 2017, no page). As territorial projects are in constant competition with one another and only ever partially realised (Agnew 2020), territorial struggles from below became a key focus of scholarship. Especially in Latin America, a vivid and politically important debate on territory and territoriality has developed between activists, scholars, and state representatives (Fernandes 2005).

Latin American scholars and activists emphasise how peoples’ relations beneath territory-making are entangled with colonial histories (Rodríguez and Liz Inturias 2018; Anthias and Hoffmann 2021; Porto-Gonçalves 2020). They draw upon the long history of colonial occupation and enclosure in South America (Anthias 2021) as well as on indigenous notions of territorio as a living space comprising human, non-human, and more-than-human beings (de la Cadena 2010; Inturias et al. 2019). Their notions counter the colonial supposition of empty lands that are imagined to be devoid of people and an economic “function” to be appropriated, “filled” and given a new purpose (Escobar 2018; Wainwright 2020). Territory is no longer understood as a universal instrument of state domination (Haesbaert 2021) and scholars have also (re)thought sovereignty arrangements in light of internal heterogeneity (Radhuber, Chávez, and Andreucci 2021). Discussions have moved on to debate the role of co-existing multiple territorial claims that require redefinition of the relationship between peoples and the state (Halvorsen 2018). Current socio-territorial movements, whose territory means the basis of their individual and communal existence (Rincón and Fernandes 2018; Vela-Almeida et al. 2020), clearly challenge the state as the sole entity to shape spatial organisation of power (Agnew and Oslender 2010). This challenge to territorial state sovereignty became manifest with the recognition of Plurinationality as state forms in Bolivia and Ecuador.

The Plurinational State of Bolivia was founded to transform the state. Social struggles demanded a state that includes indigenous nations and their forms of living grounded in territorial organisation (Tapia 2019; Zavaleta Mercado 2009); to “organise a state that is both democratic and does not reproduce relations of colonial superiority and exclusion” (Tapia 2009, 26).⁴ Plurinationalism as a project aims to recognise its plural societies and territories by establishing greater congruence between the actual social configurations and state organisation. Grounded in Bolivian reality, it conceptualises postcolonial societies in their diversity, from their margins, and with the goal that those societies could conceptualise their social formation without relying on Eurocentric theoretical frameworks. In practice, plurinationality requires the renegotiation of multiple territorialities and territories.

The struggles against postcolonial geographies are plural and structural change is not achieved through a singular switch from one political system to another, for example, republican to plurinational (Radcliffe and Radhuber 2020). These struggles often strive for legal recognition and the consolidation of indigenous territories amidst processes of social destructuring and “political dispossession”, i.e., the expropriation of political voice and spaces for decision-making and participation (Radhuber, Chávez, and Andreucci 2021). The re-negotiation of territorial autonomy and self-determination within plurinational arrangements has thrown territorial superpositions into sharp relief (Agnew and Oslender 2010). Postero and Fabricant (2019) point to the ambiguous position of indigenous nations when they negotiate self-determination over territories, questioning a nation-state that is based on sovereignty over the entire state territory. Anthias (2021), similarly highlights contradictions between (ethnic) territory and property in plurinational states. She shows how demands to maintain or expand private property undermine indigenous claims to territory. In this context, the notion of “motleyness” takes on special significance. Referring to the coexistence of diverse societies, it has explicative value for understanding multiple and overlapping territorialities.

Motleyness refers to a social formation in which different societies defy the myth of the modern, homogeneous nation-state. Despite colonisation, societies have maintained their own forms of organisation, including not only languages, customs, productive forms, and relations to nature, but also their own forms of self-government (Radcliffe and Radhuber 2020; Zavaleta Mercado 2009). Motley societies are a direct result of colonisation; they are grounded in social relations stemming from precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods. They do not refer to hybridity of social organisation or to mestizaje, instead they allude to a “dialectic without synthesis” (Augsburger 2021) – a parallel existence. Aymara scholar Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui builds on the concept of motleyness and develops the notion of ch’ixi – the “co-existence of socio-cultural forms that run in parallel but do not extinguish one another” (Augsburger 2021, 3). In her analyses, Rivera Cusicanqui understands territory as different forms of reproducing live (across and beyond national borders), rather than thinking them within the state (Rivera Cusicanqui 2018). Anthias (2017), following Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, proposes ch’ixi landscapes to describe indigenous territories that comprise diverse territorialities and forms of living that are neither separate from nor subsumed by capitalist development. This conceptualisation allows exploring how parallel existences in ch’ixi landscapes manifest in everyday life. By drawing on Zavaleta and suggesting the notion of motley territories, we want to add to this fruitful debate. We analyse how different state-mediated territorialities co-exist in Chiquitanía and extend the historical-temporal lens of analysis by drawing attention to how these territorialities have formed over centuries.

Our understanding of motleyness is grounded in the analysis of diverse societies over time. Following Bolivian scholar René Zavaleta, the appropriations of space emerged in specific epochs. Distinct characteristics of societies, like their forms of production, organisation of authority, forms of relating to one another and to nature persist up until today:

If it is said that Bolivia is a motley formation, it is because the economic epochs (those of common taxonomic usage) have been superimposed on each other without combining too much, as if feudalism belonged to one culture and capitalism to another, and yet they occurred on the same stage; or as if there were one country in feudalism and another in capitalism, superimposed and not combined.’ (Zavaleta Mercado 2009, 214)

Drawing on Zavaleta Mercado (2009), we propose the concept of motley territories, meaning a set of socio-spatial relations in which the colonial structures are as much part of, and ingrained into the territory, as are pre- and postcolonial distinct forms of appropriation or relation to nature, language, and self-government. This allows us to understand postcolonial societies that are “not fully governed by capitalist social relations” (Thomson 2019, 86) and deeply structured by colonial relations, as well as anti-colonial struggles and resistance.

Defining constitutive moments that shape power relations for example in colonial, feudal, republican – and we add plurinational – epochs has been one of Zavaleta’s main contributions. Accordingly, contemporary power relations have emerged and been articulated in, and hence go back to, different temporalities. This shows “how longue durée conditions cut across medium-term structures” (Tapia 2019, 132). Drawing attention to the different temporalities and worldviews that operate within a geographic territory conterminously reveals the multiple capitalist/ pre-capitalist and non-capitalist modes of production that coexist within one state (Augsburger 2021). What does it mean when we apply this notion of motleyness to the making of territory? We suggest the term motley territories to describe an analytical approach of reading territory in its historicity.

While we encounter any given territory as it is today (Delaney 2005), the reading of motley territories allows us to disentangle the making of territories over time. That is how and when the use of space was established. Territories are the result of multiple historical processes that stem from the making of different dominant and subaltern territorialities. In this context, we argue that territories reflect the social motleyness of postcolonial societies. Motley territories describe how discrete relations held by a group or collective of people coexist over time, but do not necessarily mix. Our focus is set on the epochs, in which distinct forms of territory emerged, which are related to the power relations that lie beneath social appropriations of space. In other words: we disentangle the notion of space as-is from its historical origins.

In this paper, we explore the implications of motleyness for territory-making. We outline the specific dominant and subaltern societal claims (i.e., territorialities) that shape the making of territory throughout history. We consider, for example, colonial regimes, state projects and other forms of living to secure productive activities or vital spaces. To show how territories are made over time, we revise crucial historical epochs – from colonisation till today, extending the analysis to the formation of the plurinational state. In the following sections we briefly present our research design, trace the historical formation of motley territories in Chiquitanía and examine how the recurring forest fires in Santa Cruz reveal the power relations and structuring elements of motley territory-making. As we will show, the forest fires are a mechanism of making territory.

Research design and data

To trace motley territories, we contextualise the making of different territories in Chiquitanía within different state projects. Therefore, we employ an extensive literature review, as well as a document analysis of selected historic and legal documents regarding land use and land reform. We further analyse declarations from social and indigenous movement organisations, especially the CICOL, government and non-government reports.

We present a case-study on the indigenous territory Lomerío, one of the first legally recognised indigenous territories in Chiquitanía. The collective land title is held by the indigenous organisation Central Indígena de Comunidades Originarias de Lomerío, CICOL. One co-author has a long-standing relationship with the CICOL. We rely on data collected between 2018 and 2022, consisting of participant observation during multiple visits to Lomerío, as well as of public fora and meetings of social movement organisations. We draw upon two sets of interviews: One set of 13 interviews with members of the CICOL directorate in 2018 and 15 interviews with local authorities, community members, researchers, and NGO employees in 2019. All names of the interviewees are pseudonymised. All visits to the indigenous territory Lomerío were authorised and accompanied by the authorities of the CICOL. On one visit, we were able to coordinate the delivery of medical supplies and other items to relieve some of the immediate damages caused by forest fires. In the following section, we examine crucial historical moments, in which power and territorial organisation in Chiquitanía were established.

Tracing motley territory: land politics and livelihoods from colonial to postcolonial to plurinational arrangements

In this section, we trace the making of motley territories in Chiquitanía. We argue that the plurinational state is the representation of different historical moments and state projects that reflect distinct forms of territory. We tie the current motley territories to the specific historic configurations that gave rise to the territorial regimes we find today in Chiquitanía and especially in Lomerío. Therefore, we connect the multiple legal forms of territory to the corresponding social relations and lay out in which historical epochs they emerged in Chiquitanía. We find that the legal framework translates the historical moments and state projects into different forms of land use, ownership, and tenure in Chiquitanía.

The Chiquitanía region is located in the eastern Bolivian lowlands, bordered in the south by the Chaco region, in the north by Amazonia, in the west by Andean valleys and in the east by the Brazilian Pantanal. The topography of Chiquitanía varies, from dry flatlands to the hilly territory of Lomerío (Killeen et al. 2007). The region is mutually defined both by its vegetation – the Chiquitano dry forest – and indigenous population: the Chiquitano people (Martínez 2018). In the most recent census in 2012, Chiquitanos remain the third largest indigenous group in Bolivia (Martínez 2018). The indigenous territory of Lomerío covers an area of 256,000 hectares and is legally owned and managed by the Monkoxɨ nation of the Chiquitano people since 2006. The name Monkoxɨ derives from the Besiro language, as stated in the nations’ Autonomous Statutes (1): “Our Indigenous nation is called ‘MONKÓXƗ’ which derives from: […] NAMONKÓXƗ = from ancient existence” (upper case highlights in the original). The territory of Lomerío is characterised by its hilly terrain and dense forest. Due to these features, it was difficult to access and provided an important place of refuge from colonial rule (Peña et al. 2016). The history of Lomerío and of the Monkoxɨ people are inextricably linked to the Chiquitanía since the entire territory and its forests were considered to be the Casa Grande – the great home of the Chiquitanos.

The recognition of the indigenous territory of Lomerío is the result of a decades, or even centuries, long and continuing struggle for self-determination. A community member recounts:

We have matured a lot in our thinking. Our grandparents dreamt of being free. Our parents dreamt of having territory. And they achieved it. We are the new generation; our dream is to achieve indigenous autonomy. (Interview David, 2018)

The current project of territorial autonomy of the Monkoxɨ nation is based on the pre-colonial existence of its indigenous people and the necessity of different territories to coexist alongside each other (Rodríguez and Liz Inturias 2018). In the following sections, we trace part of these struggles through different land regimes.

Colonial land regimes

Before colonisation, the area known today as Chiquitanía was occupied by multiple indigenous peoples – many of those peoples inhabited territories beyond colonial and current national borders. The region was colonised by Spain in the 16th century. Compared to the Andean region, Chiquitanía was sparsely populated and poorly accessible. Therefore, the Spanish Crown aimed to enforce greater territorial control by implementing Jesuit missionary reductions in the region (1696–1760). The reductional system fundamentally transformed the spatial occupation of the area, the modes of living and work, as well as social relations and family ties. In the reductions, indigenous people received conditional protection from slave hunters. Faced with this threat, the indigenous peoples either retreated further into the forests, or entered the Jesuit reductions. However, to live in the reductions, they had to abandon their forms of living and embrace the Catholic faith (Skrabania 2015; Peña et al. 2016).

In the reductions, indigenous peoples in Chiquitanía lost their territory and were only granted access to work the land. While often described as a benevolent form of colonisation, the reductions were a way of producing colonial territory. The Jesuits introduced a mixed subsistence economy of two types of work regimes: First, “God’s property” i.e., land that was cultivated collectively by the indigenous people in the reductions to maintain the missionaries, artisans, widows, and orphans; those who did not work the land. Second, every head of family was given access – not ownership – over a plot of land to work on (D’Orbigny 1999 [1844]). It is important to note that Jesuit reports already mention the use of fire and slash-and-burn as traditional practices to prepare land for agriculture (Riester 1970). This practice has been applied ever since in the region (Riester 1970). Declared aims of the Jesuit reductions were evangelisation as well as the unification and cultural homogenisation of the different peoples under the same missionary system with the same general language (Skrabania 2015).

During this historic period of colonial appropriation of territory, key social relations and long durée structures regarding territory were established. First, we find the reorganisation and enclosure of indigenous peoples and their pre-colonial territories. The established missionary reductions are still important economic and cultural centres in the region. Second, processes of colonial appropriation had far-reaching consequences for the self-identification of the Chiquitano people. Today, Chiquitanos understand their identity as an amalgamation of formerly distinct nations, languages and cultures and the Jesuit colonial culture (Martínez 2018). A third important characteristic is the establishment of the hacienda system which was on the rise after the Jesuits expulsion in 1767. The expulsion led to the occupation of the most fertile of the missionary lands and gave way to new territorialities and social structures in Chiquitanía. The colonisation through hacienda systems was further promoted after formal independence from Spain, as we will outline below.

Republic of Bolivia: haciendas and unfree labour

After declaring independence in 1825, the Republic of Bolivia was established as a formally liberal state. However, power continued to be exercised along the fault lines of racialised exploitation. Postcolonial states function on top of deep-seated colonial power relations and territorial structures. This is illustrated by the preamble of the Autonomous Statutes of the Monkoxɨ Nation (1):

From the birth of the Republic, the indigenous peoples, especially those from the lowlands, were ignored in our rights, considered as “jungle tribes”, “savages” and inhumane in order to be “civilised” and, therefore, integrated by force into the national society, ignoring our identity and our rights. […] Throughout this historical process of genocidal extermination, the colonial and monocultural state stripped us of our territory and natural resources, which contributed to the weakening of our ways of life and our traditional organisation.

This forced integration into the republic is inextricably linked with the loss of territory for the Monkoxɨ nation. The process is also shaped by colonial fantasies of bringing “civilisation” and putting idle land into use.

The integration of indigenous territories into the postcolonial republican state functions through expropriation, privatisation, and servitude. In 1866, the remaining territories of indigenous peoples were introduced into a liberal state logic of private ownership. In this process, indigenous communities were forced to “legalise” their land title before the state, paying large sums of money to state authorities or otherwise face losing their land altogether. Only eight years later, the Land Divestment Act of 1874 (Ley de Exvinculación de Tierras) constituted the next push to expropriate indigenous land (Assies 2009). The law disregarded collective landholding and communitarian social organisations completely. Property titles were only granted to individuals, practically dissolving indigenous communities in the eyes of the state. Article 7 states that:

As soon as title deeds have been granted, the law shall not recognise communities. No individual or group of individuals may take the name of community […] nor appear before any authority on their behalf. (Land Divestment Act 1874, Sec.2 Art. 7).

The Land Divestment Act was a top-down strategy to break up communities into individual private landholders. The only recognised form of land holdings by the liberal state is private or state property. This prohibits communal forms of territorial organisation and disregards communal authorities as valid interlocutors with the state, individualising territorial relations. The privatisation shapes Chiquitanía until today, as private property relations still generate contradictions in indigenous land titling processes (Anthias 2021).

Aiming to integrate the department of Santa Cruz into the national state, the republican government decreed a new phase of colonisation by expanding the hacienda system (CICOL 2018). This led to forms of servitude, as many indigenous communities were forced to work as peons and indentured labourers (Assies 2009). Practices of indentured labour functioned through accumulated and intergenerational “debt” for e.g., clothes, tools, housing, or foodstuff. In the memory of the Monkoxɨ, this period is described as one of slavery. Anacleto Peña (Peña et al. 2016), leader and historian of the Monkoxɨ people describes the expansion of cattle ranches: “practically speaking, we became the property of the owners, and could be sold together with the land” (135). Indigenous people were tied directly to a territory through relations of servitude. Some families were able to retreat further away from the colonial frontier and some settled in the area of Lomerío. Indentured labour was a common practice in Chiquitanía well into the 20th century (CICOL 2018) and was only formally abolished after the national revolution in 1952. In Chiquitanía, where the state was mostly absent, unfree labour and servitude prevailed until the 1960s (Valenzuela 2008).

National revolution and the agrarian reform

In Chiquitanía, the second half of the 20th century was characterised by two important pushes to advance state integration: government colonisation projects and the national revolution in 1952. In the 1940s, the Bolivian government aimed to colonise the eastern national territory through a development plan known as the March to the East (marcha hacía el oriente). This project was supported by the US and promoted settlements in the lowlands in Santa Cruz by distributing land to small- and large-scale colonists. The land distribution was extremely unequal: Domestic farmers received 20–50 hectares, while large-scale investors from local elites received between 500 and 50,000 hectares of arable land. This unequal state-led land distribution shaped the agrarian structure in Bolivia and especially in Santa Cruz for years to come (McKay and Colque 2016). Land clearings in this period were mostly done with fire, as agriculture was not yet mechanised in the area.

The national revolution of 1953 and subsequent agrarian reform aimed to rectify this unequal distribution. The plan was to enforce the transition from feudal agrarian structures towards a double structure of coexisting agrarian enterprises and peasant as well as indigenous units (Valenzuela 2008). The land reform law prohibited large landholdings and recognised indigenous and peasant communities. Law 3464, Article 57 states: “Indigenous communities are private owners of the lands they hold. Family allotments […] constitute private family property.” This shows that the land reform was still firmly rooted in private land ownership and initiated the transfer of individual land titles to liberated peasants, centring rural identities around labour and not territory.

In Chiquitanía, the land reform did not have the intended effects to break up latifundia: The main beneficiaries were landowners who adapted to the new rules, converting their haciendas into medium or large properties (Assies 2009). In Lomerío, the national revolution led to the foundation of an agrarian syndicate (Central Intercomunal Campesina Indígena de Comunidades Originarias CICOL) in 1961, as the post-revolutionary state promoted peasant identities and peasant union organisation over communitarian land tenure and indigenous identities (Assies 2009; Gustafson 2009).

The land reform underscores the contingent character of territory and is a first legal recognition of what we term motley territories – meaning that diverse territorialised social relations rooted in different epochs and economic structures exist without being necessarily articulated with one another. This is illustrated, e.g., by the continued existence of haciendas that still operate on overtly colonial power relations: “Beyond San Julian still lie scores of old ranching settlements sprawling across the savannas around San Javier and Conception, in a world of their own and even now, virtually untouched by Bolivia’s Agrarian Reform.” (Fifer 1982, 423, highlights added). The co-existence of indigenous and peasant lands with this “world of their own” (i.e., haciendas) shows motley territories in which multiple societies and territorial power relations are rooted in specific epochs, in this case maintaining colonial relations of power. Today, the project of colonising the Bolivian east to expand the agricultural frontier remains a key aspect, as programmes of settlement continue.

Neoliberal frontier colonisation and indigenous organisation

After the 1953 reform, agrarian policies became increasingly geared towards the colonisation of the lowlands by both peasants from the highlands and large-scale agrarian industries. After the military dictatorship ended (1964–1982), the 1980s and 1990s were characterised by neoliberal government and development projects.

In Chiquitanía, development programmes played out as frontier settlement projects. The goal was to promote internal migration to the lowlands, as they were considered inaccessible and, most importantly, unproductive by the state. Families were assigned 50 hectares to work on. They made use of slash-and-burn to clean parcels for arable land (Personal communication Cirilo, 2022). The settlement projects turned from growing subsistence crops to producing soy in the 1980s, with development plans like the World Bank Eastern Lowlands Project simultaneously promoting the shift to soy production and the titling of indigenous land (World Bank Group 1998, ii). The shift from subsistence crops to soy production is directly linked to increasing deforestation through slash-and-burn land clearance methods (McKay and Colque 2016). From the 1940s onwards, deforestation was mostly driven by colonists, whereas in the 1980s medium and large-scale landholders were expanding the agricultural frontier as a part of neoliberal structural adjustment policies (Pacheco 2006).

The expanding agricultural frontier, alongside the mostly unregulated land distribution, put the lowland indigenous peoples under increasing pressure (Assies 2009). Consequently, indigenous peoples in the lowlands began to organise on a national scale. A former leader of the CICOL refers to the mid-80s, telling that “the communities felt overwhelmed by many people who were strangers to the place” (Interview Elias, 2018). With the support of international development projects and NGOs, organisation shifted from peasant syndicates to indigenous associations. In Lomerío, CICOL changed from a syndicalist structure in the 1980s and became the Central Indígena de Comunidades Originarias de Lomerío (CICOL 2018). Subsequently, the organisation became a founding member of the confederation of lowland indigenous peoples, CIDOB (CICOL 2018). The emergence of an indigenous confederation marked an important institutionalisation of the indigenous struggles for territory and self-determination in Bolivia (Assies 2009).

Indigenous and peasant organisations gained traction in the 1990s and achieved important milestones in the recognition of indigenous territories. A first success was the establishment of originary community lands (Tierra Comunitaria de Origen, TCO) per presidential decree in 1995 (Supreme Decree 24,124, 1995). Continuing cycles of intense peasant and indigenous mobilisations concluded with the promulgation of the INRA Law a year later, in 1996 (National Agrarian Reform Service Law 1715; Valenzuela 2008). The law “guarantees the existence of peasant plots, smallholdings, communal properties, cooperatives and other forms of private property” (Law 1715 Sec. 3 Art. 2). It further states that: “Originary Communitarian Lands (TCOs) grant indigenous and native peoples and communities” collective ownership of their lands’ (Law 1715 Sec. 3 Art. 3, highlights added). This marks an important shift in the legal recognition of territories as collectively held. A community member highlights that after centuries of encroachment: “The greatest benefit for the communities […] is to feel that we are the legitimate owners of the land.” (Interview Elias 2018). The land titling falls into a wave of territorial recognition of indigenous and afro communities across the continent. In the 1990s, after the ratification of the ILO Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (ILO 169), development projects promoted the titling in Latin American lowlands. The changes also reflect constitutional reforms across the continent that recognised their societies as multi-ethnic and pluricultural (Offen 2003).

The titling of indigenous territories shows profound changes in the legal recognition of motley territories. The introduction of communally held lands counteracts constant pushes towards privatisation since colonial times and is a result of social struggles in highly diverse societies. However, the double strategy of promoting indigenous territories in a context of empowered agrobusiness is ambivalent. In practice, indigenous peoples’ rights were often delimited in the course of recognition, leading to new and intense protest cycles in the 2000s.

Struggles for decolonisation in plurinational states

Bolivia became a plurinational state with the 2009 constitution. This was the result of continued social mobilisation led by workers, peasant, and indigenous social movement organisations demanding recognition of their rights and forms of life. We argue that plurinationality as a project elevates motleyness to its founding principle (Radcliffe and Radhuber 2020) yet the implementation of plurinational ideals has been contested since its beginning. During its thirteen-year tenure, frictions arose between different social movements, and the MAS party proved to have more proximity to peasant organisations than to indigenous struggles (McNelly 2021). For example, indigenous Communitarian Lands of Origin (TCO) now include peasants under the legal form of Indigenous Originary Peasant Territory (Territorios Indígena Originario Campesinos, TIOC) (Presidential Decree 727, 2010).

In today’s plurinational state, we find a variety of legal forms of landholding that have emerged throughout the described historical epochs. Summarising our findings in relation to the Chiquitanía, we find the following territorial forms:

• (1) Land as private property – often in forms of large landholdings – and(2) State-owned land. Both date back to colonisation but were consolidated after independence.

  (3) Family plots of farming activity were introduced after the national revolution in 1952 under the motif that land belongs to those who work it.

  (4) Communitarian land titles: formerly dispossessed territories were first re-introduced in 1994 as Communal Land of Origin and reformed in 2010 as TIOCs, corresponding to claims of indigenous ancestral land.

Bolivia’s plurinational state clearly reveals the territorial aspects of motley societies, as well as the limits of decolonisation. During its 13-year existence, the plurinational state negotiated between different ways of living by formally recognising indigenous nationalities and forms of organisation including their claims to territories. However, the reshaping of the state and territories is contradictory. Medium-term changes in legislation like the recognition of peasant and indigenous territories cut across long-term structures of colonial making of territory (e.g., encroachment of indigenous livelihoods). The promotion of indigenous territories also stands in stark contrast to the expansion of cash crop production like soy, which is also promoted by the government. This expansion is accompanied by devastating forest fires. We see that on the ground, historically accumulated relations of territorialised power often prevail. In the next section, we will identify such power-laden interactions in the indigenous territory Lomerío of the Monkoxɨ nation.

Forest fires as a means of making territory

The historical approach shows the complexity of the current motley territories in Chiquitanía. Multiple groups have settled in the region during different epochs in phases of planned and unplanned colonisation. Many of the settlements were state-backed projects to colonise the Bolivian east with small-scale settlers as well as large agro-industrial enterprises. On the other hand, the recognition of the indigenous territory of Lomerío is considered the result of decades and even centuries long struggles for a living space by the Monkoxɨ people (CICOL 2018). Today, the title to the TIOC is collectively held by the local indigenous organisation CICOL, though there are some private landholdings within the area of the territory. In the south and east, Lomerío is bordered by soy producing large scale agricultural areas and small-scale plots of peasant activity. In this section, we examine the role of forest fires in the making of territory.

Forest fires in the Bolivian lowlands are a recurring phenomenon and the use of fire to clear land for subsistence agriculture has a long-standing history in the region. Preparing plots of land (Chacos) for agriculture through slash-and-burn practices is known as chaqueo. The ways fire is used and the type of area that are burnt differentiate the multiple mottled territorialities in Chiquitanía: Areas colonised in the 1980s small-scale settlement programme as núcleos were cleared gradually both by hand and fire and are fully converted into soy fields today (Personal communication Cirilo, 2022).

In Lomerío, all communities distinguish their practice of chaqueo from the ones that cause forest fires. Here, fire is mostly used after the first heavy rainfalls of the season to clear parcels of one or two hectares, maintaining the surrounding forest. Chaqueos are coordinated within the community to prevent uncontrolled wildfires, whereas the forest fires are reported to be set during dry season (Personal communication, Enrique 2019). A community leader affirms that:

Setting fire to a maximum of one hectare of chaco is a very traditional practice and it is the only way we have to make a chaco. But it is controllable. It has always been controlled. (Interview Edward, 2019)

Since the 1980s, slash-and-burn is increasingly used to clear larger plots for cash crops or cattle breeding (McKay and Colque 2016). The community leader continues: “Nevertheless the big companies, the big agribusinesses make chacos of 500 to 1000 hectares, they set fires and that is inconceivable. They set those fires and they become uncontrollable.” (Interview Edward, 2019).

Between 2010 and 2016, fires were set mostly in already partially deforested areas and savannas that are considered as “productive” by the state (MMAyA, Ministerio de Medio Ambiente Y Agua 2020). In 2019, wildfires affected almost exclusively publicly held land, indigenous territories, or natural reserves. Of the 5 million hectares that burnt in 2019, 3.6 million hectares were located in the Department of Santa Cruz (Gobierno del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia 2020), including 1.2 million hectares of indigenous territories. The territory of Lomerío was highly affected by the forest fires. The burnt land comprises 89.676 hectares, or 38% of the territory (Vos et al. 2020).

In contrast to previous years, the forest fires in 2019 have mainly affected intact forests in state or collectively owned land that have not burnt down before. In these areas, the loss of biodiversity and old tree stock are severe (Vos et al. 2020, 35–36). The fires are also a direct threat to the livelihood of the people of Lomerío. In some cases, they came within only a few metres of indigenous communities, destroying crops and forcing people to abandon their houses (Interview Rocío 2019). A community leader recounts:

With the frost and the fires, the produce in the chacos has burnt. The community, the chaquitos, everything that the community survives on. In the forest it’s the same. We are very small producers; we produce to survive. (Interview Pablo, 2019)

Subsistence agriculture and forestry activities have been particularly affected, both during and after the fires. As another community member points out: “This whole place never dries out, it is full of water, grass, medicinal plants. This whole place, as you can see … there is nothing. It is all ashes.” (Interview Pedro, 2019). The destruction of homes and crops, as well as the depletion of water reservoirs severely impact the basis of life and community in the territory.

In public discourse, chaqueo as part of subsistence agriculture has been devalued and “indigenous people have been demonised, it is said that they are the ones who set fires.” (Interview Edward, 2019). Our research showed that it is difficult to obtain information on who initially set the fires, and how many ultimately turned into wildfires. This was the case especially during and after the political crisis in 2019, in which the forest fires were instrumentalised in protests against the MAS government in the department of Santa Cruz.

During the 2019 political crisis, the government declared an ecological break (according to Law 3425 Art. 4, 2006) briefly prohibiting all land-clearing fires. This seemingly logical step, however, illustrates the entangled practises within diverse territories and the state:

They make this law, and it is clear … that it comes from a different society. For us indigenous peoples, the law is fine, but it should have been passed earlier to prohibit fires. (Personal communication, Enrique 2019, highlights added)

Enrique notes that the declaration of an ecological break comes from another society, highlighting the concept of multiple, motley societies co-existing in one state. A community leader elaborates:

They are now proposing a law that prohibits burning and logging, when this is precisely the time to prepare the soil, the chacos. So, imagine what the indigenous people are going to live from? If we can’t prepare a chaco to sustain the family for the year. If we don’t sow today, next year it will be difficult; there won’t be corn, there won’t be tamales, there won’t be chicha, there won’t be patasca and there won’t be chicha fuerte to celebrate. (Personal communication Ignacio, 2019)

Thus, the forest fires and related laws impact the Monkoxɨ’s forms of production and organisation.

While acknowledging indigenous territorial rights, it is important to emphasise that the state also facilitates and promotes deforestation in Chiquitanía. The Bolivian government legalises and even actively promotes the amplification of the agricultural frontier (Vos et al. 2020). The government decriminalises the use of slash-and-burn practises at a larger scale, e.g., through the pardoning of illegal deforestation (Law 337) in 2013 or through the expansion of legal deforestation from 5 to 20 hectares per year and land holder in 2015 (Law 741). In 2019, the Supreme Decree 3973 drastically simplified the process of authorising the clearing and burning in forest areas and explicitly mentions the expansion of the agricultural frontier as its goal.

The consequence, intended or not, is the encroachment on indigenous territory. It also highlights the motleyness of the territories, and the fragile state of co-existing ways of life and of production under the dominant agrarian extractivist model. The effects of the fires and the destruction of existing subsistence agriculture cause further precarity. As a result, people resort to unauthorised logging, migrate temporarily to seek wage labour outside the territory, or leave the territory altogether (Interview Rocío 2019; Interview Pedro 2019). Therefore, forest fires are a form of appropriating space, through which territory is being changed. Driving people from the territories because they are uninhabitable, or subsistence is no longer possible, is a form of dispossession (Rincón and Fernandes 2018).

Discussion and concluding remarks

Territories are a material base of society. They are, calling back to Delaney (2005), where “push comes to shove” (11) and where power becomes clearly manifested. In this article, we render the power-mediated relations between territorialities visible. We lay out how applying a historic and locally grounded framework changes our understanding of territory-making in Latin America’s highly diverse societies. The focus on motleyness enriches debates on plurinationality, post- and decoloniality as it explores how territorialities are articulated in states, paying particular attention to indigenous territories and autonomies.

Bolivia’s plurinational state offers an interesting case, as it envisions a spatially organised co-existence of multiple societies, formally promoting indigenous and other forms of making territory. The plurinational state form opens up a playing field to transform the social relations of territory in Bolivia, reflecting motley societies and economic systems. Indigenous territories and collective self-determination force the state to share its territorial sovereignty. This constitutes an important political horizon aiming to go beyond capitalist-colonial homogenisation by valorising the multiple societies that co-exist within the state territory. In practice, however, conflicts arise over the use of resources and the appropriation of space and territories considered as “non-productive” are still under threat.

In this context, we reflect on the processes that lead to the making of motley territories, revealing antagonist territorialised social relations that correspond to often contradictory political projects. These projects often connect to and are based on historical and long durée structures from colonial and postcolonial times. This links to Zavaletas notion of motleyness as social relations that are layered upon or alongside one another throughout time. The framework of motley social formations can provide insights for scholars studying plurinational states and other postcolonial socio-territorial formations by drawing upon the long memory of colonisation and decolonial struggles. We expand on Zavaletas notion of motley societies and open up the question of constitutive moments, – i.e., when specific power relations, forms of organising societies, and territorialities were established.

Motley territories are a direct result of colonisation. Developing the concept of “motley territories”, we tie the emergence of multiple (dominant) forms of territory-making to specific epochs and trace their existence throughout time. Motleyness – as opposed to most Eurocentric frameworks – is not based on the assumption of homogeneity and one universalised society. This approach allows us to take characteristics of formerly colonised societies as an analytical starting point. They are grounded in social relations stemming from precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods and simultaneously rooted in both colonial occupation and decolonial struggles for self-determination. Against this background, we demonstrate the motley and entangled making of territory in Bolivia.

Examining land use and tenure today, we encounter private landholdings and especially agrarian enterprises co-existing with indigenous and peasant territories. Throughout history, we find top-down forms of enforcing territory by means of colonial exploitation of indigenous peoples and territory; and later through displacement, expropriation and forced labour. Indigenous forms of making territory range from the retreat into inaccessible areas to political mobilisation, resistance, and negotiations within the state for sovereignty. The legal mix of private, state-owned and collective forms of land use mark how the grassroot appropriation of space has fundamentally changed the state. The different territories not only represent the struggles, but also show multiple territorialities- i.e., as a business and form of investment, as tierra or land one works on, or as a living space.

Examining the case of Chiquitanía, we see how colonial, republican and plurinational projects have shaped the social relations in diverse territories up to today. During the missionary occupation, colonial-religious forms of appropriating land intently changed the social relations of the multiple peoples living in the area by declaring them “one people”. Parallel to these religious forms of colonial occupation, secular feudal strategies of colonisation in forms of haciendas were established. After formal independence, the Republic of Bolivia continued to build and promote hacienda settlements, extensively drawing upon indentured and slave labour of indigenous peoples. Subsequently, the national revolution played a crucial role in breaking up feudal structures of territorialised power and granting land to those who work it. The following land reform formally prohibited the feudal power relations in favour of the capitalist-modern logic of work and private property. However, even after the national revolution, indentured labour (well-integrated into the capitalist system) continued to exist in Chiquitanía.

The state project of colonisation of Chiquitanía has been upheld under all state forms until today: under colonial rule, during the republican state maintaining haciendas, and in the 20th century through planned settler frontier-colonisation. During the 1980s, those settlements increasingly used fire to clear more land, leading to the encroachment of unindustrialised and forest areas, including indigenous territories. Today, with the territory of Lomerío legally recognised within the framework of the plurinational state, forms of encroachment still happen, especially connected to the push for soy production in the area. The industrialisation of agriculture is another fundamental change in the power structures in the region, defining the dominant territorial structure of this epoch.

Chiquitanía remains a frontier of capitalist inclusion through large-scale agriculture. We read the recent forest fires and the extension of the agricultural frontier in Chiquitanía through the framework of motley territories. Agricultural frontiers in extractivist states are insufficiently researched. However, the role of the government in Bolivia mirrors its approach in conflicts around mining or gas extraction, as it legislates against forest fires as land clearance in the short-term and under considerable social pressure – including indigenous practices of chaqueo – but at the same time enables mass-scale fires by promoting large-scale activity. The colonisation of the region is still upheld in the plurinational state, despite the legal recognition of indigenous territories. This reflects the contradictions within the plurinational state of promoting indigenous, peasant and agro-industrial rural territorialities in Chiquitanía.

Increasingly devastating wildfires across all continents call for more empirical research on their causes and their effects on societies, people’s forms of living and production, and the environment. We have shown that the growing use of slash-and-burn practices for large-scale deforestation is driven by the idea of incorporating ever greater areas of “idle land” into production, reflecting colonial imagery. The incorporation of land also serves to integrate the region into the nation state. Our historically informed framework of motley territories allows us to situate the uncontrolled wildfires as a way of making territory and as a colonial continuity. Wildfires increase the tensions in motley territories that are already conflict-prone due to the dynamic power relations. The tense and contradictory nature of motley territories becomes clear as, on one hand, the state sanctioned the appropriation of indigenous practices of chaqueo for deforestation; on the other hand, persisting power relations in the motley territories of Chiquitania made it possible to wrongly lay the blame for the wildfires exclusively on indigenous and small-scale farmers.

The forest fires are an iteration of encroachment within the persistent motleyness, as the uncontrolled wildfires impose one mode of production and social organisation over the others. Forest fires are one way of materially depriving the Monkoxɨ and other indigenous peoples of their livelihoods by using the slash-and-burn practice common to the region against them. The forest fires in Chiquitanía show how the conversion to industrially used agricultural land threatens the remaining forest areas and enclosed indigenous territories.

While this paper focuses on the relationship of motley territories within the state, broadening the scope beyond nation states could yield important new insights for critical scholarship. Since motleyness is a concept that was developed specifically to understand Bolivia from within, we believe that working with the framework of motley territories is fruitful for post-colonial societies. We think that it could also be a promising perspective to analyse European or US societies, taking their historical and intrinsic diversity of societies and forms of production over time into account. Extending the notion of motley territories beyond the nation state could constitute a new research horizon to explore.

Acknowledgements

We want to thank the CICOL and the Monkoxɨ Nation of Lomerío. We are grateful for your time, analyses, knowledge, and history you have shared with us and hope this research benefits the Monkoxɨ people.

We also want to thank the anonymous reviewers who have provided valuable feedback that has significantly improved the quality of earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Austrian Academy of Science and by the Indigenous International Interactions for Sustainable Development Project (INDIS);Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Notes on contributors

Marie Theresa Jasser

Marie Theresa Jasser is a DOC-team fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria, and an associate researcher at the Universidad Nur in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. She is researching the role of social movements in land conflicts in the Plurinational State of Bolivia and coordinates the research group SolPan+ Bolivia.

Isabella M. Radhuber

Isabella M. Radhuber is a research associate (post-doc) at the Research Network Latin America at the University of Vienna, Austria, and leads the research project “Solidarity in Times of Pandemic” SolPan+ Latin America. Her research focuses on environmental and health politics in the global South and North. She explores conceptual issues related to postcolonial pluralism, decoloniality, human-nature relations, human and ecological health, political power relations, and crisis preparedness.

Mirna Inturias

Mirna Inturias is a Bolivian sociologist with an interest in Sustainable Development. She is a social researcher, specialising in indigenous issues, identity and interculturality, indigenous education and transformation of environmental conflicts. Inturias has carried out research on environmental conflicts in protected areas and indigenous territories in the East, Chaco, and Bolivian Amazon. Inturias is a founding member of Grupo Confluencias and part of different Latin American networks of reflection and research. She is a lecturer at Nur University, Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Notes

1. While tierra is used to describe the mainly agrarian resource character of an area, territorio refers to a living space that goes beyond resources (Altmann 2018).

2. René Zavaleta Mercado (1935–1984) was one of the most under-recognised social scientists outside Bolivia. Two important examples for Zavaletian influence within Bolivia are the Grupo Comuna and aymara scholar Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Outside Bolivia, two notable exceptions are the René Zavaleta Symposium (Webber 2019) and the reception by Augsburger (2021) and McNelly (2022).

3. Legally, Lomerío is a TIOC (Territorio Indígena Originario Campesino) but is usually referred to as a TCO (Tierra Comunitaria de Origen) by the people of Lomerío.

4. All translations from Spanish are our own.