Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Symbols in Motion: Katari as Traveling Image in Landless Movement Politics in Bolivia

2012; Routledge; Volume: 7; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17442222.2012.658294

1744-2230

Nicole Fabricant,

Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

Abstract This case study of the Landless Peasant Movement (MST-Bolivia) looks at the contemporary use and value of the image of Tupac Katari, an anti-colonial hero who led a regional insurgency in 1780. The symbol of Katari as resurrected spirit in political tale-telling and on flags and posters mixes with more contemporary icons of landless peasant politics to serve political and economic purposes: redistributing land and resources to displaced peoples. This essay argues that as this symbol travels through time – from a popular sign of Andean politics to a critical emblem of multiculturalism in the 1990s – it takes on new meanings as indigenous peoples make critical links between ethnic/racial identity, uneven resource distribution, and structural inequality. As people move across geographic space – from MST communities to urban centers, from Santa Cruz to La Paz – their symbols stand against new forms of violence and discrimination and infuse regional spaces with hybrid political identities. However, when an image or symbol, once tethered to concrete demands and embodied performances at a local level, moves across scales and turns into a mere symbol of the state, abstracted from material shifts, it loses its capacity to mobilize. Keywords: Indigenous politicsculture and political economy Inkarrí mythland and territory Notes 1. These questions build off of the work of more recent scholarship like that of Arturo Escobar (2010 Escobar, A. 2010. Latin America at a crossroads: alternative modernizations, post-liberalism or post-development. Cultural Studies, 24(1): 1–65. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Bret Gustafson (2009a Gustafson, B. 2009a. New Languages of the State: Indigenous Resurgence and the Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), who examine and interrogate the socioeconomic, political, and cultural/epistemological transformations that have been taking place in South America, not merely as battles over citizenship rights, but rather as complex responses to the failures of neoliberal reforms and creative efforts to constitute alternative forms of modernization. 2. The Inkarrí (or Inkari) myth is one of the most well-known Pre-Andean legends where a famous ruler, named Atahualpa, was killed by the Spaniards. They buried his body in several places around the kingdom. As legend has it, the body will grow, until one day, Atahualpa will rise out of the earth, and take back his kingdom. This reincarnation will restore harmony between mother earth and her children. 3. Ayllus were the fundamental unit of social organization of ancient Andean communities, based on kinship groups and communally-held territory. 4. See Albro (2005a Albro, R. 2005a. "The water is ours Carajo! Deep citizenship in Bolivia's water wars". In Social Movements: An Anthropological Reader, Edited by: Nash, J. 249–272. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Press. [Google Scholar], 2005b Albro, R. (2005b) 'The culture of democracy and Bolivia's indigenous movements', paper presented at the Conference of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, New York, 13–15 June [Google Scholar]) for more on coalitional politics. 5. These local structures are built into a pyramidal hierarchy of local, regional, and departmental union organizations. Many of them emerged from the land reforms after the 1952 Revolution and now make periodic demands on the state (Gustafson, 2002 Gustafson, B. 2002. "The paradoxes of liberal indigenism: indigenous movements, state processes, and intercultural reforms in Bolivia". In The Politics of Ethnicity: Indigenous Peoples in Latin America, Edited by: Maybury-Lewis, D. 267–306. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]). 6. As Nancy Postero (2007b Postero, N. 2007b. Now We are citizens: Indigenous Politics in Postmulticultural Bolivia, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar]) notes, the 1970s began a period of massive land invasions, and lands that had been too remote or too difficult to farm suddenly began to be invaded by government colonization programs. In order to defend these lands, lowland groups began organizing in the 1980s with the help of NGOs like Apoyo Para el Campesino – Indigena del Oriente Boliviano (APCOB), which was run by a German anthropologist. In 1982, these distinct groups founded the Confederacion Indigena del Oriente del Bolivia (CIDOB), which was a regional federation of Guarani, Guarayo, and Mataco Indians. The purpose was to unite distinct lowland indigenous groups in a common battle to 'defend the rights of the "pueblos indigenas" of the lowlands of Bolivia, through an organizational structure that receives public and private funds, to strengthen representative organizations and to search for effective incorporation and participation into the political, social, economic, and cultural decision-making of the country' (http://www.cidob-bo.org). 7. There have been a series of these marches since the first march of 1990. The second march of 1996 was the 'March for Territory, Development, and Political Participation of the Pueblos Indigenas.' This march included the participation of all the pueblos that are members of CIDOB. It was initiated in Samaipata and had two overarching goals: the passing of the Ley INRA and the recognition of 33 TCOs (Tierras Comunitarias de Origen) [Communal Lands of Origin]. The third march occurred in 2000, and was called the 'March for Land, Territory, and Natural Resources'; it was protagonized by CPESC and the pueblos Mojenos of Beni and other pueblos of the Amazon. This march called for the Modification for the Ley INRA and a decree that would officially recognize the indigenous languages of the tierras bajas. The fourth march occurred in 2002, the 'March for Popular Sovereignty, Territory and Natural Resources,' which included both campesino movements and indigenous peoples of the lowland regions, numbering more than 50 social organizations present in the march from Santa Cruz to La Paz. This march called for the Constituent Assembly and a new constitution. 8. Like other indigenous organizations, MST is supported by a broad network of NGOs, both national and international, which provide financial assistance, talleres [workshops], and legal advice. El Centro de Estudios Jurídicos e Investigación Social (CEJIS), or the Center for Legal Studies and Research, provides financial support and legal advice to the movement. CEJIS is a national-level non-governmental organization with local offices in Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, and La Paz, and was founded in 1978, when Bolivia suffered under a repressive military dictatorship. Funded by the European Union, CEJIS works in the field of human rights, which centers on 'the individual and collective human rights of women and men, in a democratic Bolivian state, with a focus on social justice and respect for diversity.' MST-Bolivia is also part of the transnational peasant coalition called the Via Campesina, which promotes social justice in fair economic relations and the preservation of land, water, seeds, and other natural resources. 9. The Ley INRA was intended to protect campesino and indigenous landholdings while promoting the redistribution of agricultural land through the creation of 'efficient land markets' (Kohl, 2003 Kohl, B. 2003. Restructuring citizenship in Bolivia: El Plan de Todos. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27(2): 337–351. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 10. Quechua remains a vital language. Nevertheless, it has been an oppressed language throughout the five centuries since the Spanish arrived in the New World. Assimilation has been the dominant political ideology in the Andes and patterns of language use have reflected that ideology; census records and sociolinguistic studies document that high rates of Quechua–Spanish bilingualism only mask a continuous cross-generational shift from Quechua to Spanish monolingualism (see Garcia, 2005 Garcia, ME. 2005. Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Education and Multicultural Development in Peru, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 11. Tupac Amaru led an indigenous uprising in 1780 against the Spanish in Peru; Tupac Katari laid siege to the city of La Paz in 1781 and set up a court in El Alto. He maintained the siege for 184 days until he was killed and quartered by Spanish forces. 12. Popular theater is a particular genre of performance, written by community residents and performed for large concentrations of workers in union meetings and in the streets and squares. 13. Scholars have noted that there is a clear influence from Christian theology and its emphasis on the corporeal resurrection of Jesus. This resulted in a synchretism between local beliefs about recuperation and about the subterranean as a space of the ancestors (see Flores Galindo, 1987 Flores Galindo, A. 1987. 'Buscando un Inca' in Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, ed. S. J. Stern, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, pp. 193–210 [Google Scholar]; Postero, 2007b Postero, N. 2007b. Now We are citizens: Indigenous Politics in Postmulticultural Bolivia, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar]). 14. The Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Katari shared with other groups the idea that the conventional political parties did not have a program that really responded to the needs of the peasantry, and that it was therefore necessary to form a party that would do this. It has emphasized more the sociopolitical problems, reflected by its 'R' for 'revolution' instead of an 'I' for 'Indian.' It does not exclude, but rather gives a certain priority to class analysis. 15. Perhaps some part of the culture discourses emerged out of these critical NGO networks, whereby NGOs institutionalized ethno-development and the creation of indigenous experts through social movements engaged in political training, with an emphasis on indigenous knowledge. However, in the tradition of Gustafson (2009a Gustafson, B. 2009a. New Languages of the State: Indigenous Resurgence and the Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), I view these interactions not solely as top-down knowledge inculcation or a form of 'neoliberal governmentality,' which can be highly deterministic and lead to a 'pessimistic view of all knowledge politics' (Gustafson, 2009a Gustafson, B. 2009a. New Languages of the State: Indigenous Resurgence and the Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), but rather as part of the new circuits of power dynamics and global/local interconnections. 16. Augusto Boal (1979 Boal, A. 1979. Theater of the Oppressed, New York: Urzien Books. [Google Scholar]) took Paulo Freire's (1993 Freire, P. 1993. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum Press, New York: trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. (Orig. pub. 1968.) [Google Scholar]) ideas regarding transformative educational philosophy and applied them to the realm of popular theater in Brazil. His theatrical vocabulary of the use and manipulation of the human body very much resembles Freire's ideas about recalling the past in order to free oneself from the oppression of poverty and inequality. Boal argues that once the actor takes control of his body, knows his body, and makes it more expressive, then he will be transformed into a free actor. 17. Much work in anthropology, particularly feminist anthropological work, has turned toward how broad-based political economic shifts mark geographic space and indigenous bodies through new regimes of labor control and violence (see Wright, 1999 Wright, M. 1999. Dialectics of a still life: murder, women and maquiladoras. Public Culture, 11(3): 453–473. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Salzinger, 1997 Salzinger, L. 1997. From high heels to swathed bodies: gendered meanings under production in Mexico's export processing industry. Feminist Studies, 23(3): 549–574. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2000 Salzinger, L. 2000. Manufacturing sexual subjects: "harassment," desire and discipline on a Maquiladora shopfloor. Ethnography, 1(1): 67–92. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Wilson, 2004 Wilson, A. 2004. The Intimate Economies of Bangkok: Tomboys, Tycoons, and Avon Ladies in the Global City, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Gender studies scholars like Ara Wilson (2004 Wilson, A. 2004. The Intimate Economies of Bangkok: Tomboys, Tycoons, and Avon Ladies in the Global City, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) coined the term 'intimate economies' in order to trace the impact of the global economy on Thai sex/gender systems. I query whether the embodied effects of expansive agro-industrial capital and ever-greater and harsher methods of work have influenced a new kind of resource politics, which uses the indigenous body as part of symbolic performances. 18. Mary Weismantel (2001 Weismantel, M. 2001. Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]) wrote about the strong smells of Cholas as 'matter out of place' and argues that such disruptive smells are part of a much broader capitalist structure of estrangement in which bodies and odor become the primary symbols of white discomfort. Sex and race, she argues, exceed and exacerbate alienation produced by class (Weismantel, 2001 Weismantel, M. 2001. Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar], p. 263). 19. Daniel Goldstein (2004 Goldstein, D. 2004. Spectacular City: Violence and Performance in Urban Bolivia, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) argues that 'spectacular lynchings' of suspected criminals in a peripheral area of Cochabamba are attempts of marginalized residents to make demands upon the state. Lynchings are intended to call attention to the predicament of insecurity and the lack of police presence in their neighborhoods. Chris Krupa (2009 Krupa, C. 2009. Histories in red: ways of seeing lynching in Ecuador. American Ethnologist, 36(1): 20–39. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) follows up on Goldstein's work by refocusing attention on the indigenous body in Ecuadorian lynchings and the significance attached to it. He suggests that this 'lynched body' comes to symbolize public opposition to the country's indigenous movement and the potential transformations it proposes. 20. This illustrates the fluidity of racial identity in Santa Cruz (see Cannessa, 2005 Canessa, A. 2005. Natives Making Nation: Gender, Indigeneity, and the State in the Andes, Tucson: University of Arizona Press. [Google Scholar]). Many second-generation and third-generation Andeans speak like 'Cambas,' act and dress like them, and have become some of the Civic Committee's strongest allies in this regional campaign for autonomy. 21. More spectacular forms of violence followed these incidents. On 11 September 2008, right-wing groups opened fire on indigenous farmers in the northern Amazonian Pando. Wounded peasants who were being transported to the local hospital for treatment were dragged from ambulances and publicly beaten in the main plaza of Cobija, tortured with whips, and lashed with barbed wire (see Gustafson, 2009b Gustafson, B. (2009b) 'Bolivia 9/11: bodies and power on a feudal frontier', Caterwaul Quarterly, [Online] Available at: http://www.caterwaulquarterly.com/node/85 [Google Scholar]). 22. These kinds of embodied performances of politics have been common in Bolivia: from hunger strikes, which sacrificed bodies publicly and put them on display in order to stand against during the brutal military dictatorships in the 1970s, to more recent and creative use of women's bodies in the resource wars, where protestors used their stout bodies to form human chains as the military opened fire on road blocks during the Gas Wars. 23. In October 2006, the draft of the bill was still sitting on the floor of the Senate, but the right-wing members of the political party Podemos had refused to pass the new law. The MST and other campesino organizations decided to take matters into their own hands in order to defend the position that land should belong to those who work it and pressure the government to pass the Modification to the Ley INRA, which included four critical pillars: land redistribution, mechanization, credit to small-scale farmers, and development of eco-markets.