The politicisation of indigenous identities in Bolivia and their challenges in the Plurinational State

• In Event: Political Identities and Cultural Practices

Abstract

In the social convulsion that paved the way to Evo Morales’s rise to power and, later on, to the establishment of a plurinational state in Bolivia, indigenous social movements and peoples had a prominent role. Their long-lasting struggle against the persistent coloniality of power, as well as more recent demands for legal and territorial recognition, became strongly politicised since the 1990s. This led to a robust criticism of the homogeneity of the mestizo national identity, the permeability of liberal-representative citizenship criteria and the prevailing economic status quo. After years of neoliberal-multiculturalist hegemony, the new government and constitution pushed forward the process of plurinationalisation, communitarian democracy, and the recognition of the indigenous originary peasant nations and peoples as constitutive subjects of the Bolivian people. However, the current scenario points to numerous setbacks, as the so-called ‘indianisation’ of the nation-state promoted by Morales and the notion of suma qamaña (live well) contrast sharply with the government’s developmentalist policies and grassroots indigenous identities and demands. This article analyses the development and politicisation of indigenous identities in the past decades, followed by a discussion of how these struggles were (partially) incorporated in this new state model. Finally, the analysis turns to present contradictions, in which the empowerment of indigenous subjects clashes with the prioritisation of representative democracy and the growing nationalist appeal of the state, as a rift develops between the indigenous identities claimed by peoples and movements and that imposed through state forces and institutions.

Author

• Aiko Ikemura Amaral, University of Essex