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On the Link between Ethnic Politics and Identification: Lessons from Bolivia

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 13; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17449057.2013.825436

1744-9065

Anaïd Flesken,

Political Conflict and Governance

AbstractThis article presents an analysis of the link between ethnic politics and identification in Bolivia. It does so by, first, qualitatively examining the development of political identity discourses and, second, quantitatively examining two dimensions of indigenous identification—self-categorization and cohesion—through time-series survey data. The analyses show that ethnic identifications do indeed change with changing political discourses, that they do so more quickly than expected, and not necessarily in the manner as expected: the type of reaction in identification depends on the type of dominant discourse, demonstrating that it is necessary to distinguish different elements of ethnic identification. Notes1. TIPNIS is the Spanish acronym for Indigenous Territory and National Park Isiboro–Securé. Government plans for the construction of a road through the territory was protested in autumn 2011 with a 700-km-long march from the city of Trinidad to the seat of government in La Paz. The TIPNIS crisis was resolved in favor of the protesters but ongoing tensions gave rise to a second march to La Paz at the time of writing.2. I thank the Latin American Public Opinion Project and its major supporters (the United States Agency for International Development, the United Nations Development Programme, the Inter-American Development Bank and Vanderbilt University) for making the data available. Thanks also go to the University of Exeter, where this research was conducted, for providing access to the data.3. They do not, however, agree on the potential for change of ethnic identities once constructed (see also Hale, Citation2004).4. A small percentage also identify as Afro-Bolivian.5. The name MAS was borrowed from a defunct party in order to meet registration requirements; the original name had been Instrumento Político por la Soberania de los Pueblos (Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples). For an overview of the MAS and Morales' rise to presidency, see, e.g. van Cott (Citation2005) and Postero (Citation2010).6. Note that all elements were always present, if less salient. For further details on the indigenous discourse, see also Flesken (Citation2013).7. For the purposes of this article it is secondary whether the recourse to indigeneity was purely instrumental; what is important is that indigeneity became a salient issue in political discourse.8. It is important to note here that the indigenous discourse during the protest cycle also had exclusionary effects (see, e.g. Laurie et al., Citation2002; Albro, Citation2005a; Perreault, Citation2006).9. The wiphala is a square flag consisting of 49 squares in seven rainbow colors. It was originally Aymara but, until the beginning of the 2000s, had been adopted as a political symbol of all highland indigenous peoples in Bolivia.10. See note 1.11. The highland, traditional organization CONAMAQ is divided over the issue as to whether to support lowland indigenous organizations or the MAS government (Tilley, interview, 7 September Citation2011).12. The formulation of the question and the responses provided changed over time. For details, see Table A5 in the Appendix. Cholo refers to an 'upwardly mobile urban Indian', although often used in a pejorative manner (Albro, Citation2010b, p. 153). While the question asks about race, ethnic categories in Bolivia today are structured more according to cultural rather than biological factors. However, both question and response categories were developed in pre-tests in Bolivia (Seligson, Citation1998), and the inclusion of the term in the question does not seem to make a difference to response rates: the differences in self-categorization are indeed smallest between the survey rounds in 2006, when the term was still included, and 2008, when the term was removed.13. The results confirm the findings by Moreno Morales (Citation2008) and Seligson et al. (Citation2008). Results displayed are based on weighted samples to consider departmental stratification in the sampling design when making generalizations to the whole Bolivian population. As I have used different weightings than Moreno and Seligson and colleagues, based on updated population numbers, the exact numbers may differ slightly.14. Although we cannot be completely certain that the difference is due to a change in feeling of belonging rather than due to differences in coverage, the former is more likely given that the sample of the official census equates to the population and that the sample of the LAPOP surveys is representative of the population.