Antipode Article PDF

A Radical Journal
of Geography
Geographies of Indigenous Identity:

Spatial Imaginaries and Racialised
Power Struggles in Bolivia
Tathagatan Ravindran
Departamento de Estudios Sociales, Universidad Icesi, Cali, Colombia;
travindran@icesi.edu.co
Abstract: This article examines racial power struggles in Bolivia through a spatial lens.
It analyses the process of resistance to the oligarchic elites mounted by indigenous-pop-
ular sectors in Bolivia in the first decade of the 21st century as well as the subsequent
eruption of conflicts between different indigenous sectors, and argues that political con-
flicts in Bolivia in the 21st century are, among other things, also conflicts over spatial
imaginaries and the different territorialising and (re)territorialising projects correspond-
ing to them. Social movements against racial neoliberalism challenged the colonial spa-
tial imaginary. The partial success of those struggles brought into relief two distinct
indigenous spatial imaginaries, one rooted in the defence of ancestral territory and
indigenous autonomy, and the other based on a redefinition of territoriality as centrality
within the state and society at large. The article reads contemporary inter-indigenous
conflicts as manifestations of the differences between these two spatial imaginaries.
Keywords: Indigenous geographies, spatial imaginaries, Bolivia, anti-racist geography,

Indigenous autonomy, Indigenous territory
Zona Sur of the Bolivian city of La Paz has historically remained a white-mestizo
space. The residents of that part of the city hardly go to those parts where people
of indigenous and popular descent reside. Being at the lowest altitude of the city
of La Paz, it remains sheltered from the cold winds and the low temperatures that
characterise the higher parts of the city. No wonder the wealthy and powerful
white-mestizo elites made it their home! Zona Sur is a world apart from the other
areas of La Paz and the predominantly indigenous city of El Alto. There have been
cases where people have been racially discriminated against in the Zona Sur just
for looking like Indians. In October 2012, Roberto Quispe, an indigenous profes-
sional in La Paz, was on his way to visit a friend who lived in Zona Sur. Some young
white men in the area spotted him. Immediately, they went over to him and
shouted, “Shitty Indian! What are you doing in this neighbourhood?” Roberto,
being very conscious of his indigenous background, shouted back, “Shitty Whites!”
Hearing such a phrase that is not part of the everyday vocabulary of a culture
marked by white racial dominance startled the young white men. They went over
to Roberto and gave him several punches on his Indian looking face.
This episode shows the close links between then racial and the spatial. Scholars
have pointed out that in Latin America, race is spatialised and space racialised
Antipode Vol. 0 No. 0 2019 ISSN 0066-4812, pp. 1–19 doi: 10.1111/anti.12517
ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.
2 Antipode
(Alves 2014; Radcliffe and Westwood 1996; Weismantel 2001). In the Andean
region, the relationship between space and race is so close that racial belonging
has often been seen as synonymous with spatial location. The whites were sup-
posed to be the residents of the city and the Indians were seen as belonging to
the countryside and the Amazonian forests (Radcliffe and Westwood 1996). How-
ever, in countries such as Bolivia, indigenous mobilisations have posed a challenge
to these racialised imaginative geographies.
This article reads racial power struggles in Bolivia as conflicts over space. Bolivia
has witnessed some of the most dramatic processes of collective resistance against
racial neoliberalism in the globe as well as serious efforts to dismantle racial power
structures at various levels, which convert it into a laboratory of social transforma-
tion. At the same time, policies of the government of Evo Morales have been
vehemently criticised by some social movement organisations and progressive
intellectuals. The question of the meaning of indigeneity and its political manifes-
tations has become a central point of contention in these conflicts, which has cru-
cial implications for debates in the geography of indigeneity.
Radcliffe (2017:226) calls for a critical geography of indigeneity that underlines
how “authenticity and ‘prior presence’ are less relevant than the forms of power
and economy that produce indigeneity continuously in relation to non-indigenous
subjects, sovereignty, environment, the academy, and policy”. In a similar vein,
Anthias (2018) and de la Cadena (2010) observe how indigenous people have
historically engaged with modernity, but on their own terms, questioning the
notion of pure and timeless indigenous traditions. While building on these pre-
mises, this article goes further to reveal that differential histories of engagement
with modernity has produced multiple visions of indigenous liberation and well-
being, which are laden with disagreements, tensions and even contradictions. In
this context, differential impacts of distinct forms of power and economy not only
produce indigeneity in relation to non-indigenous people and the state, but also
produce multiple indigeneities that are antagonistic to each other.1 This article
analyses the process of resistance to the traditional elites mounted by indigenous-
popular sectors in Bolivia in the first decade of the 21st century as well as the sub-
sequent eruption of conflicts between different indigenous sectors, and argues
that political conflicts in Bolivia in the 21st century are, among other things, also
conflicts over spatial imaginaries and the different territorialising and (re)territorial-
ising projects corresponding to them.
Scholars have defined “spatial imaginary” in various ways. Watkins (2015)
points out that while some geographers describe spatial imaginaries as represen-
tational discourses about spaces (Said 1978) or semiotic orders (Jessop and
Oosterlynck 2008), some others see spatial imaginaries as transcending linguistic
representation and including embodied human action (Gregory 2004; Pilkey
2013; Puar 2006). Watkins observes that in the former framework, the “real” and
the “material” are separated from the linguistic and the imagined, and it is
argued that imaginaries prefigure material action by providing conceptual justifi-
cations for the same. The latter framework, which this article follows, draws on
post-structural theory to question the distinction between discourse and material-
ity (Butler 2011; Laclau 2005) and understands spatial imaginaries as inextricably

Geographies of Indigenous Identity 3
linked combinations of linguistic representations of space and embodied material

practices. In this framework, questions of materiality and class are not external to
spatial imaginaries but an integral dimension of it.
The article begins with an analysis of the colonial spatial imaginary and its
long-lasting legacy for over five centuries. It then gives an account of the particu-
lar forms and processes that underlay the resistance to this colonial spatial imagi-
nary at the beginning of the 21st century. The transformation of the city from a
historical space of assimilation where one loses one’s indigeneity to a space where
indigeneity is revalorised and radicalised has caused a seismic shift in the racialised
meanings attached to space. The final section deals with two alternative indige-
nous spatial imaginaries that have emerged in the wake of the challenge to the
colonial race-space imaginary, which I call revivalist and expansionist. Besides
highlighting the diversity within indigenous political visions, this exercise also
enables a spatial analysis of conflicts between different indigenous sectors that
rock contemporary Bolivia.
Besides an analysis of social transformations in Bolivia since the dawn of the
21st century based on secondary sources, and primary sources such as newspa-
pers and discussions in online fora, this work also draws on intensive ethno-
graphic fieldwork in the Bolivian cities of El Alto and La Paz predominantly among
people who self-identified as belonging to the Aymara indigenous group and
some occasional visits to the Andean countryside. Between 2010 and 2014, I con-
ducted 22 months of ethnographic research that included 85 semi-structured
interviews, five focus groups, and a participant observation of the residents in
multiple neighbourhoods of El Alto. Pseudonyms are used for the interviewees
with the exception of two of them, who are public figures and well known
Aymara intellectuals who are active participants in the Bolivian public sphere.
The Colonial Legacy

The most significant dichotomy in the Spanish American empire was between the
“civilised” and “uncivilised”. The term “civilised” signified being Catholic and
urban (Osorio 2008). The association of the urban with the civilised and the rural
with the uncivilised also intersected with a racial classification system that was
based on the idea of Spanish superiority and Indian inferiority. This was accompa-
nied by the division of the city based on the racial background of its inhabitants.
In colonial La Paz, the Choqueyapu and Mejawira rivers separated the centre of
the colonial city from indigenous “parishes” (Gill 2000). The areas around the
central Plazas in most Bolivian cities were reserved for the whites and this practice
continued till the second half of the 20th century. The central plazas hold great
symbolic significance for the white elites.
Despite all the transformations in political regimes and social dynamics the
region witnessed through five centuries, the colonial spatial imaginary survived in
a durable way from the colonial era to the 20th century. Though the Spanish
colonisers and their descendants who later founded and led the independent
Republican states envisaged the city as a white space, indigenous people
migrated in large numbers to those urban centres.

4 Antipode
Migrating to the cities was essentially seen as a civilising experience that led to
upward racial mobility because geographical proximity to the “civilised” space
enables an acquiring of the traits associated with whiteness (Albo et al. 1981).
Thus, the racial order also translated into a spatial order which contained the fol-
lowing strata in this order: the central plaza of the city which was the centre of
elite white power and the parts of the city inhabited by white-mestizos, the urban
peripheries populated predominantly by people of indigenous and popular des-
cent, the small provincial towns, the rural peasant communities and the Amazo-
nian forests. Each stratum was seen as superior to the ones below them and
inferior to the ones above them.
The discourse of civilising and deindianising by moving to the city became
more influential in indigenous communities in the latter half of the 20th century
when the state adopted mestizaje and assimilationism as official ideologies. How-
ever, as Weismantel (2001) observes, the indigenous people living in the cities,
like Jews in medieval Europe, were always seen as foreign to that space. Except
for a few indigenous intellectuals and professionals, people in the city hardly self-
identified or took pride in being indigenous. Rather, they negated their indige-
nous origin and tended to self-identify as mestizo, as the city was seen as a
deindianising space (Albo et al. 1981; Canessa 2007).
Winds of Change
The 20th century marked a major transformation. The years from 1999 to 2005
were marked by a cycle of indigenous and popular mobilisations that led to the
fall of neoliberal governments and the election of the first indigenous president
Evo Morales. It began with the struggle against the privatisation of water in
Cochabamba. In October 2003, protests broke out demanding nationalisation
and domestic industrialisation of gas which would increase employment in the
country and also lead to the export of manufactured products with a higher value
added than the raw materials.
One outcome of these mobilisations was a revalorisation of indigeneity. The
protagonists in the “gas war” were the people of the city of El Alto which was
mainly populated by indigenous migrants from the countryside. However, as
moving to the city had historically been an exercise in deindianisation and assimi-
lation through mestizaje, people there hardly used to self-identify as indigenous
or take pride in that identity. As the city was seen by the white-mestizos as an
indigenous space and thereby lower on the continuum of racial power, living in
El Alto was a source of shame.
After the 2003 rebellion that catapulted the city of El Alto to international fame
and gave it titles like “the most rebellious city in Latin America”, being a resident
of El Alto became a matter of great pride, and to this day, the people of the city
claim that they are the ones who shed blood, lost lives and made all the sacrifices
to cause revolutionary transformations in the country. This shift is captured by the
chant “El Alto de pie, nunca de rodillas” (“El Alto on its feet, never on its knees”)
that is repeated in all political events and the anniversary celebrations of the city
and of each of its neighbourhoods. As racial belonging and spatial location were

nearly synonymous, a pride in being an Alten ~ o also translated into indigenous

pride. This led to a tendency of proudly affirming one’s Aymara indigenous roots,
and in some cases, a disidentification with the mestizo identity (Ravindran 2015).
Backlash and Struggles over Space

Evo Morales represented everything the white-mestizo elites despised. The election
of a president of humble indigenous origins with a low level of formal education
posed a serious challenge to the dominant racial/spatial order. When the new
indigenous president vowed to correct historical injustices to the country’s indige-
nous majority, it provoked a severe backlash from the elites. When the new Con-
stituent Assembly convened by the Morales government began functioning, the
white-mestizo elites organised against it and the government. They violently took
over all major public buildings in the city of Sucre where the Constituent Assembly
met using dynamite and Molotov cocktails. There was also an assault on the Presi-
dent of the constituent assembly, Silvia Lazarte, an indigenous woman.
These protests revealed the symbolic significance of the city, and more impor-
tantly, particular spaces within it like the central plaza wielded for the white-mes-
tizo elites. In Sucre, white elites physically attacked the indigenous members of
the Assembly who were passing through the central plaza of the city saying that
the plaza was not meant for Indians. “The Indians still have the nerve to enter the
plaza ... they should not set foot in the plaza because it is a shame”, yelled a
woman (Observatorio del Racismo 2008:89). The city of Santa Cruz inhabited by
the most conservative white elites in the country was the main centre of opposi-
tion to the Morales regime. When indigenous organisations decided to march
into the city and occupy it to counter the protests against Morales, the civic com-
mittees of the city declared that, as a last resort, they will defend the central plaza
where “an Indian will never be able to enter” (Rodriguez 2013:8).
A few years into the new regime, things have been changing. Indigenous
women in their polleras can be seen to be confidently entering spaces like the
central plazas of Santa Cruz and Sucre. Laws passed by the Morales government
also changed the dynamics of racialised space. Within the city, there used to be
privileged spaces where access was restricted to the white-mestizo elites. Restau-
rants and hotels in white-mestizo neighbourhoods used to put up signs stating
that they had the right to restrict access. This was mainly used to make those
spaces racially exclusive. The Morales administration, through a new law against
racism and discrimination, now obliges every establishment to replace the sign of
restricted access with a sign that states that everybody is equal before the law.
Now it is common to see indigenous women in their traditional attire in spaces
like star hotels and restaurants in elite white areas, something unimaginable at
least till the end of the 20th century.
A controversy that erupted over indigenous presence in a multiplex in the Zona
Sur of La Paz in 2015 is emblematic of the contemporary struggles over space.
When the government constructed a cable tramway from El Alto to La Paz, the
Zona Sur of La Paz became more accessible to the people of El Alto. The residents
of El Alto started using the tramway to visit the Megacenter, a multiplex located

6 Antipode
in the Zona Sur. Though indigenous people work in the Zona Sur as domestic
maids, security guards and janitors, or sell on the footpaths, spaces like the multi-
plex were out of their reach.
When the residents of El Alto started going to the Megacenter, the residents of
the whitest neighbourhoods reacted as if there had been an invasion of their terri-
tory. Through their social networking pages on the internet, they expressed their
shared sense of horror at the sight of indigenous women in their polleras in abun-
dant numbers in what was once their exclusive space. They posted photos of
women in polleras with their families sitting on the floor and street vendors
around the multiplex on their Facebook group pages. Comments on the photos
accused the people of El Alto of showing their unmannerliness by sitting and eat-
ing on the floor and dirtying the multiplex. The cable car was held responsible for
the influx of the people of El Alto (read Indians) into the centre. Some of the
comments posted on Facebook included: “the only way to stop this is to stop the
cable car that comes from El Alto and that would kill the dog and also the fleas”;
“really it is so sad, now I don’t feel like going there to watch a movie or to eat”;
“I don’t want to imagine how the whole of Zona Sur will turn out to be with
more car cables that are going to come. We need to do something, but now!!!”
(La Razon 2015).
When the circulation of these comments became news, the vice-minister of
decolonisation in Morales’s cabinet intervened, criticising the comments as racist
and pointed out that it is very common in indigenous culture to sit on the floor.
The ministry directed the owners of the multiplex to put up signs on the premises
of the centre against racism and discrimination. The owners agreed but also
decided to start a “citizen education initiative” and put signs requesting visitors
to keep the area clean and use the trash bins properly.
The following week an apthapi was organised by some residents of the cities of
La Paz and El Alto to protest against these expressions of racism. The apthapi is a
traditional indigenous practice of sharing food spread on pieces of clothing. The
food people brought was diverse, ranging from snacks to juices, cookies and meat.
They were spread on pieces of clothing that were up to five metres long. Around
600 people attended the event from El Alto and La Paz. I went to the Megacenter
a week later. I found many women in indigenous pollera skirts moving around the
food courts and the ticket counters. On the walls, there were television screens that
repeatedly ran a video clip from the Ministry of Communication. The clip showed
men and women of various ages and racial groups, with each one of them saying a
particular word like equality, dignity and respect after which the message “No to
discrimination” was displayed. Outside the Megacenter, there was graffiti on the
walls that was similar to the familiar slogan: “El Alto de pie, nunca de rodillas”. It was
“El Alto de pie, el mega de rodillas” (“El Alto on its feet, the mega on its knees”) in
reference to the multiplex Megacenter.
Alternative Spatial Ontologies

Militant mobilisations against the neoliberal system with indigenous protagonism
and the power struggles after the election of Evo Morales have challenged the

centuries-old racial hegemony that has perpetuated itself in various forms since
the colonial era. They also destabilised the historical relationship between race
and space. These processes have also brought into relief two distinct kinds of
indigenous politics and two new spatial imaginaries corresponding to them. I call
them revivalist and expansionist respectively. Though frictions have been existing
for a long time, rivalry between different indigenous sectors has also intensified
since the second term of President Morales. I argue that the roots of these con-
flicts lie in the differences between these indigenous visions and the spatial imagi-
naries they produce.
The revivalist spatial imaginary valorises the indigenous and the rural pole of the
racial/spatial order. In spatial terms, it is a revalorisation of rural indigenous spaces,
and the epistemologies and relational ontologies they hold. Indigenous cultures
are celebrated as carrying the potential to address the “civilisational crisis” of west-
ern modernity and a major focus of this current of indigenous politics is to revive
traditions that are in the process of being lost. Central to their spatial imaginary is
indigenous territorial autonomy and self-government, which is assumed to be cen-
tral to the preservation of cultural identity and civilisational alterity manifested in
terms of a distinct cosmovision. Organisations such as La Confederacio n de Pue-
blos Indıgenas de Bolivia (CIDOB) and the Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del
Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ) belong to this category. The CIDOB represents indigenous
people in the lowlands and the CONAMAQ in some highland communities.2 These
organisations lay emphasis on the concept of ancestral indigenous territory as
opposed to land as a factor of production. Like many other indigenous and Afro-
descendant groups in Latin America, they feel that the term “land” signifies a com-
modification of life support while “territory” is seen as an ancestral space. The
“sense of historically belonging within a landscape” is very important in their dis-
course (Escobar 2008; Sawyer 1997). In that spirit, the CONAMAQ calls for a revi-
val of 16 Andean “nations” that pre-existed Spanish colonial rule and advocates
the replacement of frontiers between departments, provinces and municipalities
established by the Republican state with precolonial boundaries based on suyus,
markas and ayllus (Perreault and Green 2013).
These organisations have also been mobilising strongly for the defence of their
ancestral territories from gas and petroleum extraction, and mining. They accuse
the latter of causing environmental problems such as pollution and drought.
Asserting ownership over their territories, some indigenous organisations such as
the CONAMAQ demand a consultation process with a right to veto projects in
their territories (Fontana and Grugel 2016). While Guarani and Weenhayek groups
opposed gas extraction in the Gran Chaco region (Bebbington 2013; Postero
2017), some indigenous communities in the TIPNIS national park in the Amazo-
nian part of the country have been resisting the construction of a highway
through their territory, which they feel, among other things, is also designed to
facilitate hydrocarbon exploration in the park (Laing 2012, 2015). In the high-
lands, the CONAMAQ organises resistance to mining projects. The resistance to
extractivism draws on the relational ontologies of indigenous communities that
presuppose a filial bond between humans, non-humans, land, rivers and moun-
tains (de la Cadena 2015).

8 Antipode
The struggle for rights over ancestral territories is not only a form of defence
against the forces of predatory capitalism that prey on the resources contained in
these territories but also a form of resisting processes of deracination suffered by
black and indigenous communities in the continent ever since the conquest of
the Americas and the beginning of slave trade. In her analysis of the Colombian
Pacific region, Vergara-Figueroa (2018) argues that deracination is an integral part
of the historical, racial and spatial formations of the nation-state.
However, during my ethnographic fieldwork in El Alto, I discovered that the
majority of people who proudly self-identify as belonging to the Aymara and Que-
chua indigenous groups did not consider indigenous autonomy or defence of
ancestral territory as a major priority. Their narratives on indigenous empower-
ment revolved around the struggles over urban space elaborated above, indige-
nous presence in institutions of power and the rural development initiatives of the
Morales government that they wholeheartedly support. While those who hold on
to the revivalist current of indigenous politics mobilise against the extractivist poli-
cies of the government, the majority of urban indigenous people I interacted with
in El Alto support the same policies, as the revenue from them finances social wel-
fare schemes, cash transfers and rural development projects. This reveals the exis-
tence of another indigenous vision with different emphases, priorities and
assumptions. I call it the expansionist indigenous vision.
One major emphasis of the expansionist current is on expanding the presence
of indigenous people to spaces that have been historically inaccessible. This can
include anything ranging from entering a cafeteria facing the central plaza of big
cities to occupying positions of power like being ministers and ambassadors and
directors of institutions. They hail the efforts of the government to appoint indige-
nous people, especially women wearing the pollera, to positions of power.
While the revivalist spatial imaginary emphasises rootedness in ancestral terri-
tory, the expansionist spatial imaginary, among other dimensions, also finds
expression in spatial mobility and spatial expansion. A large proportion of urban
indigenous people in the Andes engage in commercial activity due to which they
support the government for its proactive role in constructing roads and highways
that connect different parts of the country, and the rural provinces with the urban
centres. A new class of rich traders from the indigenous popular sectors has
emerged that has been replacing the traditional bourgeoisie from various spheres
of the economy, especially external commerce. In La Paz, they control 90% of
the commerce (Tassi 2017). The major reason for the success of the popular sec-
tor traders is the creation of their own parallel institutional structures which also
enable the control of various commercial routes and the penetration of spaces tra-
ditionally controlled by transnational capital or the domestic oligarchic elites (Tassi
2017). Wide informal networks connect the traders in El Alto to those who are
based in the Chilean port city of Iquique and family enterprises in China. Rather
than focus on one territory, they simultaneously operate in multiple commercial
spaces in the region. Some Aymaras have also established their businesses in
Shangai and Guangzhou (Tassi 2017). The dramatic increase in their economic
fortunes has also enabled some of them to buy property in spaces like the Zona
Sur of La Paz that was exclusive to the elites (MacLean 2018).

Though many of them live in cities, ancestral territory in the countryside

becomes the referent of indigenous identity for the revivalists. For instance, one
of my interlocutors Raul Quispe, a young Aymara man in his early thirties, lives in
El Alto where he coordinates a cultural centre for the youth. Whenever he trav-
elled to his ancestral rural community, he told me proudly that he was going
there to cultivate potatoes, just like his ancestors used to do. For him, it is an
essential way of strengthening his indigenous identity by maintaining connections
with the rural community where his roots lie and with the cosmovisions held by
his ancestors. As Perreault and Green (2013) argue, in reference to the CONA-
MAQ, revivalist identities are not incarcerated within ancestral territories and they
do not cede urban spaces to the non-indigenous elite. However, their identities
remain anchored to ancestral territories in the sense that it becomes the reference
point for the construction of indigenous identity. On the contrary, expansionist
indigenous identity is not spatially anchored to any specific ancestral territory as
they lay emphasis on expanding their access and control over spaces that have
been historically closed to them. Nevertheless, though the struggles over urban
spaces elaborated in the earlier part of the article have been a major manifestation
of expansionist spatial praxis, expansionism is not entirely an urban phenomenon.
In my visits to the Andean countryside, indigenous peasant organisations like

the Confederacion Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB),
Confederacion Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas Indıgenas Originarias de Bolivia “Bar-
tolina Sisa” (FNMCIOB “BS”), generally referred to as Bartolina Sisas, Confed-
eracion Sindical de Comunidades Interculturales de Bolivia (CSCIB), generally referred
to as interculturales, hold on to the expansionist current of indigenous politics
and also form the major support base of Morales in the countryside. They are
highly supportive of the government’s rural development initiatives. In contrast to
the revivalist vision based on protecting ancestral territories, these organisations
prefer to expand the agricultural frontier and explore new territories. They lay
more emphasis on land reforms entailing a redistribution of land that would facili-
tate a migration of highland indigenous peasants from their “ancestral territories”
to the lowlands. It is the fragmentation of landholdings with each generation and
the greater productivity of land in the lowlands that foster such migration.
Due to the fact that these organisations have the structure of a union rather
than traditional indigenous organisational forms, they are not recognised by
many scholars as indigenous. However, an exploration of the history of organisa-
tions such as the CSUTCB reveals that an affirmation of indigenous identity has
been central to their politics. However, in contrast to organisations like the CON-
AMAQ that rejects the class identity of peasant, the CSUTCB believes in the “the-
ory of two eyes” that combines indigenous with peasant identity (Sanjines 2004).
Though migration of highland indigenous Aymara and Quechuas to the low-
lands in search of agricultural land had been igniting tensions between the low-
land indigenous groups and the former for decades, the differences were set
aside to form a Unity Pact in 2004 between various social movement organisa-
tions representing different indigenous sectors and political visions. However, ide-
ological conflicts between them resurfaced during discussions in the constituent
assembly convened by the Morales administration in 2006.

10 Antipode
A major point of contention was the ownership of natural resources in indige-

nous territories. The organisations that held on to the expansionist paradigm sup-
ported the proposal of the ruling MAS party to declare non-renewable natural
resources as the property of all the Bolivian people to be administered by the
state, leaving only the renewable resources under the control of the particular
indigenous groups who inhabited the territory. Those who hold on to the revival-
ist paradigm demanded that the non-renewable resources be declared the prop-
erty of the indigenous people who have historically belonged to the particular
territory (Schavelzon 2012).
When they realised that it will not be acceded to, they demanded the right to
exclusive use of those resources, but in vain. The proposal of the MAS supported
by the expansionists was approved by the Constituent Assembly. The conflict over
the construction of the highway across the TIPNIS national park and the various
struggles by indigenous groups against the extractivist policies of the government
have been a continuation of this clash between the two distinct indigenous
visions and the spatial imaginaries they contain. In this context, it is necessary to
dwell on the differences in notions of territoriality held by the expansionists and
the revivalists.
Territoriality, Centrality, and Autonomy

Studies on indigenous politics have generally focused on movements for the
defence of ancestral territories and autonomy. Other studies deal with the ques-
tion of indigenous marginality in the cities in terms of the precarity of indigenous
lives in urban spaces (Radcliffe 2017). However, struggles over urban spaces
among indigenous people like the ones elaborated in this article have not been
well documented. One exception is Collaredo Mansfeld’s (2011) work on the
small Ecuadorian town of Otavalo where indigenous people successfully resisted
the plan of the Mayor of the city to replace the statue of “Indian general”
Rumin ~ ahui from the central plaza of the city with that of Simon Bolivar, and move
the Rumin ~ ahui statue to a new park named after him on the outskirts of the city.
The indigenous residents who protested this plan asserted that the statue con-
nected them to the city and that the presence of Rumin ~ ahui in the central plaza
made them proud. For Collaredo Mansfeld (2011), this is illustrative of how cen-
trality rather than territoriality defines the politics of place in this context.
Nevertheless, the dichotomy between territoriality and centrality is misplaced.
The fact that the politics of urban indigenous people in Otavalo did not manifest
itself in terms of rural and bounded ancestral territory does not imply that these
struggles do not have a territorial aspect. In Bolivia, while those who adhere to
the revivalist spatial imaginary focus on autonomy within their respective ancestral
territories that are geographically located far away from the cities where state
power resides, the expansionist imaginary emphasises centrality in a sense very
similar to the indigenous people in Otavalo. However, in Bolivia, rather than
being opposed to territoriality, centrality also has a crucial territorial dimension.
For those who hold on to an expansionist indigenous vision, the entire space
corresponding to the Bolivian state is conceived as indigenous territory. This

conception is also linked to a demographic imaginary of the indigenous people

being the majority in the country. Considering themselves as the majority, Bolivia
is seen predominantly as an indigenous country, and in that spirit, they claim
their right to spaces that have been historically inaccessible to them and to hold
positions of power in the state apparatus. One of my interlocutors Wilmer Con-
dori, a 75-year-old Aymara resident of El Alto, expressed his unwavering support
for Evo Morales, saying that he is the first President who is “authentically Boli-
vian”. Here, it is the whole state of Bolivia that is reimagined as an indigenous
space. I also came across multiple instances of the more radical among the expan-
sionists identifying themselves as the true owners of the territory corresponding
to the Bolivian state and sometimes referring to the non-indigenous as tenants.
“Inquilinos no mas son” (“they are just tenants”) is a frequently heard expression
in Indianista political circles in reference to the non-indigenous elites.
The less radical among the expansionists do not go to the extent of considering
whites as tenants, but demand equal rights over the natural resources in the
country and access to all public spaces. That claim is also based on the assertion
that their ancestors had sacrificed their life in the Guerra del Chaco in 1935, a
battle the country waged with Paraguay over natural resources. About 50,000
mostly highland indigenous soldiers lost their lives in this war (Kohl and Farthing
2012). Though the historical validity of the claim has been contested, a widely
believed narrative considers indigenous people as the ones who stood up in the
line of fire, suffering most of the consequences (Romero 2011). The memory of
this sacrifice also inspired the mobilisations in 2003. For instance, to my question
on what motivated her to risk her life blocking roads and taking on army tanks
with stones and sticks during the “gas war” in 2003, Magdalena Condori, a 70-
year-old Aymara woman, told me:
Our grandfathers had suffered another gas war and they had won. They used to say
that they did not have water, they even used to drink their own urine. They had suf-
fered for us, no? And they [the government of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada] wanted
to sell the gas elsewhere. So we went to march.
In 2003 too, it was the indigenous residents of El Alto who lost their lives
demanding the nationalisation of gas. The lowland indigenous territories where
the gas reserves are located were silent during the protests. This inspires a narra-
tive of (highland) indigenous people being the historical defenders of the coun-
try’s natural resources and this becomes the basis on which they claim rights over
the same. As Bebbington and Bebbington (2010b) note, it is no coincidence that
the decree to nationalise gas issued by Morales was titled “Heroes del Chaco”. It
was a reminder that those who died in the defence of gas were the highland
indigenous people and not their lowland counterparts on whose territories the
gas reserves are located. Here, indigenous rights are not conceptualised in terms
of a specific local indigenous community having control over the use of natural
resources found in their particular ancestral territory. Rather, they are seen in
terms of the rights over natural resources held by the indigenous people in the
entire territory corresponding to the state of Bolivia, which in turn is seen as a
predominantly indigenous territory.

12 Antipode
Perreault (2006) argues that the “gas war” was a struggle not just over natural
resources, but also national resources and that the widespread sense of structural
inequalities being reproduced by neoliberal policies was a major catalyst for the
mobilisations. However, according to Carlos Macusaya, an Indianist intellectual,
such traditional national popular concerns came to be seen through the lens of
racial exploitation during those years. Macusaya, during those years, used to sell
books on Indianist politics in the Plaza de los heroes in La Paz. The plaza was a
space where people got together to have long and heated political discussions. In
an interview, Macusaya spoke to me on the discussions he had with Aymara uni-
versity students, carpenters, construction workers, cobblers and school teachers.
He observed that 500 years of colonialism became a major framework to make
sense of social reality during those years of militant indigenous mobilisations
throughout the country. For instance, Aymaras saw themselves as poor and the
q’aras (the Andean name for white elites) as rich because the latter have been
dominating them for 500 years and they felt the need to regain control of the
natural resources because the q’aras took exclusive benefits away from them for
500 years.
Geographers have explained how the subsoil became a terrain for struggles
over citizenship (Perreault and Valdivia 2010) in Bolivia and have mapped out the
conflicts between multiple place-based identities and territorialising projects that
have erupted in this context (Bebbington and Bebbington 2010b). However,
apart from passing references to disputes between lowland and highland indige-
nous groups (Bebbington 2013) and the policies of the Morales government
favouring the Aymaras and Quechuas (Perreault 2010), the territorialising projects
of those who adhere to what I call the expansionist indigenous vision have not
been adequately analysed in discussions of the geographic dimensions of resource
struggles. As elaborated above, the territorialising project of the expansionists
emerged from below as a product of multiple struggles, especially those over
urban spaces, and everyday economic strategies that helped them expand their
control over commercial routes and markets.
It is this territorial discourse held by the expansionists that explain their position
on autonomy. While revivalist indigenous organisations such as the CIDOB and
the CONAMAQ find fault with the government for not implementing indigenous
autonomy as it had promised, indigenous peasant organisations adhering to the
expansionist vision such as the CSUTCB and the Bartolina Sisas do not feel that
indigenous people need more autonomy (Tockman 2016). During the course of
my fieldwork, I once accompanied staff of an NGO that works on agrarian issues
to a rural community in the department of La Paz. The Aymara peasants in the
community told me that “their organisation is the CSUTCB and not the CONA-
MAQ”. They were not only unaware of the possibilities offered by the new law of
autonomies to convert their municipalities into those with indigenous autono-
mies, but displayed lack of interest when the NGO staff explained to them the
advantages of indigenous autonomy. In my conversations with them, they spoke
at great length on how the Morales government has made significant transforma-
tions in the countryside with investments in agriculture and the construction of
roads. Connectivity between the countryside and the city facilitated by the

construction of roads is a major priority for Andean indigenous communities as

many urban residents also maintain double residency in urban and rural spaces,
and sell their products in weekly fairs in multiple towns. Again, spatial mobility is
the overriding concern.
Indigenous intellectuals leaning towards the expansionist current see the cre-
ation of rural indigenous autonomies as a measure that is out of touch with the
aspirations and demands of the indigenous people. For instance, Pedro Portugal,
the editor of a prominent Indianista periodical Pukara, argues that the only route
to indigenous liberation is the capture of state power. Focusing on decentralised
autonomies, for him, is a form of self-apartheid similar to the South African model
of “separate development” characterised by structural racial inequalities. He
affirms that it is not only small rural communities with indigenous autonomy that
should be considered “ethnic spaces”. Rather, the whole national territory should
be seen as an “ethnic space” (Portugal 2016).
While the revivalist project stands for cultivating particularised indigenous iden-
tities rooted in specific (rural) ancestral territories, the expansionists uphold gener-
alised indigenous identities based on the redefinition of the Bolivian state and the
whole territory corresponding to it as indigenous. It is precisely the generalised
character of indigenous identity that makes demands such as decentralised auton-
omy redundant from the perspective of the expansionists. For instance, a spokes-
woman of the Bartolina Sisas interviewed by Tockman (2016:159) said that rather
than divide themselves into autonomous entities, indigenous people have to
recognise that they are all the same as they are all indigenous.
The difference between these two indigenous visions and the spatial imaginar-
ies corresponding to them caused tensions between different indigenous sectors.
While the revivalists oppose the extractivist development model adopted by the
government, the expansionists support it as it facilitates the government’s pro-
gressive redistributive agenda. Indigenous sectors are also at loggerheads over
some of the infrastructure development projects of the government. The most
well known case is that of the highway cutting across the TIPNIS, where the
revivalist and expansionist indigenous organisations not only held contrasting
positions but also entered into direct conflict. The tensions ignited by the migra-
tion of highland indigenous peasants to the lowlands in search of agricultural land
have also intensified. For instance, a major reason for some communities in the
TIPNIS opposing the construction of the highway was to prevent the colonisation
of their lands by highland indigenous peasants, especially the coca cultivators.
Identity, Interests, and Materiality in the Formation of

Spatial Imaginaries
The Bolivian experience yields significant insights into the ontology of spatial
imaginaries. Watkins (2015) observes that even analyses of spatial imaginaries that
question the distinction between representation and embodied action have gen-
erally followed the representation-then-action causal structure. He points out that
a consideration of how embodied material action can transform spatial imaginar-
ies seems a fruitful research direction. Heeding that call, the analysis of indigenous

14 Antipode
spatial imaginaries undertaken here reveals that the causal link between represen-
tation and material action is not unidirectional. Raul Quispe going to the coun-
tryside to cultivate potatoes can be considered a case of representation (the idea
of the rural community as the ancestral territory and agricultural practice as a revi-
val of cosmovision) leading to embodied material action (the act of going to culti-
vate potatoes). On the other hand, Aymara traders developing business networks
and establishing control over multiple trade routes and commercial spaces
through embodied actions such as local, regional and international business trips,
highland indigenous peasants going to the lowlands in search of new agricultural
lands and Aymara women of El Alto wearing polleras entering spaces that were
historically inaccessible to them exemplify how material practices can also give
rise to new spatial imaginaries. In other words, as Aymara traders gradually devel-
oped their subsistence strategies, these experiences eventually gave rise to a speci-
fic pattern of establishing control over commercial spaces and routes, from the
local to the international. The expansionist spatial imaginary they hold also con-
solidated through these embodied material practices, which challenges the idea
of a unidirectional causal link between representation and action.
The Bolivian experiences also highlight the impact of identities and interests as
two mutually constituting factors in the dynamics of spatial imaginaries. The anal-
ysis of Griggs and Howarth on the role played by these two factors in social
movement organising illuminates our understanding of spatial imaginaries. For
them, identities are “contingent constructs, the products of social and political
identification with the roles and subject positions made available by historically
produced discourses” (2002:46). They also add that identities are constructions
that are more or less sedimented in any particular conjuncture. Interests are also
discursive constructs that are “relative to historically positioned agents with sedi-
mented forms of identity” (2002:47). Interests display the same contingency and
historicity of identities.
The positions of different indigenous sectors analysed here are a product of the
dialectic interplay between identities and interests. Although people mobilise
around their immediate material interests, the latter are grounded on a sedi-
mented social identity. Revivalist and expansionist currents construct specific
indigenous identities marked by differences in the meanings attached to indigene-
ity, which in turn influence indigenous political aspirations and notions of well-
being. Those who adhere to an expansionist spatial imaginary that sees
indigenous liberation in terms of spatial mobility and spatial expansion struggle
for their material interest in expanding their access and control over routes and
spaces of commercial activity and agricultural lands in the Amazonian parts of the
country. As Webber (2014) observes, their spatial practices are based on their
class interest in converting themselves from poor to middle and then to rich peas-
ants, not only by expanding their land holdings but also by hiring lowland indige-
nous people as labourers and appropriating surplus from them. Those who
adhere to the revivalist spatial imaginary that sees indigenous liberation in terms
of autonomy in ancestral territories where indigenous cosmovisions and relative
ontologies thrive struggle for their material interest in defending those territories
and their livelihood strategies in those spaces. The change in the discursive

construction of material interests between these two indigenous sectors can be

traced to the historical differences in their encounter with colonialism and their
engagement with modernity, which lead to the formation of two distinct sedi-
mented forms of identity.
The contrasting response of different communities to extractivist projects in
their territories can be explained by the differences in their sedimented identities
that influence their material interests. Though both highland and lowland regions
have witnessed resistance to such projects, as Schilling-Vacaflor (2013) observes,
resistances to extractivist projects are relatively more pronounced in the lowlands
than in the highlands, as the latter tend to see such projects in their habitat as
more beneficial to their interests than the former.
Nevertheless, there are some instances of indigenous spatial praxis that com-
bine elements of both spatial imaginaries. The Guarani community in Eastern Boli-
via studied by Anthias (2018) is a case in point. While elderly community
members adhered to a revivalist spatial imaginary based on the protection of
ancestral territory where their ancestors hunted, gathered and collected honey,
the younger leaders negotiated with Repsol, the Spanish multinational corpora-
tion, to capture gas rents and finance development projects through them. They
understood territorial autonomy as the ability to make their own development
plans funded by Repsol. Their focus on autonomy is inspired by revivalism, but
the choice of taking advantage of gas rents to finance development projects
rather than opposing gas extraction is similar to the expansionist notion of “de-
veloping” indigenous communities through redistributive extractivism. Another
indigenous group, the Weenhayeks, also had negotiations with companies
involved in gas extraction to capture rents (Bebbington and Bebbington 2010a).
In a similar vein, as McNeish (2013) observes, there was no consensus in the
communities that were opposing the TIPNIS highway project on many issues,
which led to conflicts between and within communities as well as families. Laing
(2015) points out that during the march, there were debates on whether hydro-
carbons should be exploited or not and whether indigenous people should be
allowed to get a share of the gas rents. Disagreements on the meaning of indige-
nous empowerment within these communities and the combination of elements
of both revivalist and the expansionist spatial imaginaries by some of them reveal
the contingent nature of both identities and interests.
Conclusion
This article traces the roots of inter-indigenous conflicts in Bolivia to the divergent
conceptions of indigenous liberation and wellbeing held by different indigenous
sectors. Most studies on indigenous politics in Bolivia and elsewhere take the
revivalist vision and its focus on ancestral territories and the resistance to extrac-
tivism as the prototype. The expansionist current of indigenous politics which
goes beyond the prototype has not been adequately analysed and theorised.
Generally, it is not even recognised as a variant of indigenous political discourse.
However, paying attention to the geographic dimensions of expansionist indige-
nous discourse through an analysis of the spatial imaginaries they contain reveals

16 Antipode
that, far from being a non-indigenous or anti-indigenous discourse, it is one of

the forms in which indigenous radicalism finds expression. A critical geography of
indigeneity that goes beyond the concern about authenticity, therefore, needs to
theorise the distinct and often mutually contradictory forms through which indi-
geneity gets politicised and examine their implications of spatial praxis.
Though the right to rural ancestral territory is an important objective for many
indigenous sectors, laying predominant emphasis on this dimension of indigenous
politics excludes the specific demands of urban indigenous people and those rural
indigenous sectors that have different visions of wellbeing. Due to increasing pov-
erty in the countryside caused by neoliberal economic policies and factors such as
the armed conflict (in countries such as Colombia), the proportion of indigenous
people living outside their ancestral territories and suffering the impacts of struc-
tural racism, poverty and economic inequality is increasing. Indigenous spatial
politics, in this context, cannot restrict itself to decentralised autonomy in rural
ancestral territories, as such an approach has the unintended consequence of con-
sidering the rest of the country, especially urban areas, as non-ethnic spaces,
which in turn weakens the ability of indigenous politics to challenge the structural
reproduction of racial privileges in the country as a whole. By reclaiming those
spaces that have historically been the sites of the reproduction of economic, polit-
ical and social power as indigenous spaces, the expansionist current of indigenous
politics reorients the way the indigenous question has been approached in the
region.
The Bolivian experiences of struggle and its achievements, as well as shortcom-
ings, could offer crucial lessons. First, though the expansionists have challenged
the dominant racial/spatial order, their embrace of capitalist logics of accumula-
tion have widened economic differences within indigenous groups. Though there
is a lack of research on economic inequality within the popular economy, it is evi-
dent that while some indigenous traders have attained extraordinary success in
domestic and international commerce, others continue to be steeped in poverty.
This resonates with experiences from other parts of the world where the strength-
ening of capitalist relations and logics have increased inequality and exploitation
within indigenous communities. For instance, Li (2014), in her study of indige-
nous people in Indonesia, points out that the individualisation of land rights and
the formation of capitalist relations governed by rules of competition and profit
led to the prosperity of some farmers who could accumulate land and capital and
the squeezing out of others who could not compete.
Second, the broadening of the scope of indigenous politics has also been coun-
terbalanced by the eruption of tensions between different indigenous sectors. The
divisions between various indigenous sectors could be a stumbling block to new
collective mobilisations. The fact that the Morales government has been respond-
ing favourably to many of the demands of the expansionists and rejecting some
revivalist demands such as exploring the possibilities of a non-extractivist econ-
omy has only deepened the divisions. One form of creating new alliances and
political synergies between distinct indigenous sectors that are currently in conflict
is to refocus on opposition to the big landowners. Despite significant advances in
land titling processes and redistribution of land to indigenous peasants, the

landed oligarchy continues to retain the best quality land in the country (Braba-
zon and Webber 2014). This is due to the compromise the government struck
with the opposition parties in altering the more radical provisions on land reform
in the draft constitution approved by the Constituent Assembly. As Andreucci
(2018) observes, if the government had not done so, it would have had more
land to redistribute and could have reduced the tensions between these two sec-
tors. The end result of this decision taken by the government was that the high-
land indigenous peasants began to see the big land owners as an enemy too
powerful to confront and decided to seek agricultural land in the lowland indige-
nous ancestral territories, sparking off tensions between these two sectors.
In this context, a struggle against the landed oligarchy in the lowlands can
unite highland and lowland indigenous sectors that are now scrambling for land.
This joint struggle could also set a better basis for dialogue between different
indigenous sectors, which in turn could contribute to the process of mutual
understanding and acceptance of mutual differences. In such a scenario, there is
a greater possibility of indigenous-popular unity on the basis of common
demands, despite the existence of differences in worldviews between different
indigenous sectors.
The creation of such synergies based on the identification of common interests,
which in this case could be a reinitiation of the struggle against the rural oli-
garchy, would not only reduce frictions between different indigenous groups but
also rejuvenate revolutionary politics in the country. In a political moment charac-
terised by a crisis in the Latin American left and the resurgence of right-wing con-
servative politics, it is the need of the hour.
Endnotes
1
I initially made the argument on multiple indigenous visions in Ravindran (2015). Here, I
expand on that argument by identifying the two distinct currents of indigenous politics
and analysing them from a spatial perspective.
2
The CIDOB and the CONAMAQ split in 2012 and 2014 respectively, with one sector
allying with the government and the other continuing to oppose it. In this article, by
CIDOB and CONAMAQ, I refer to the wing opposing the government to show the contrast
between them and the organisations supporting the government.
References
Albo X, Greaves T and Sandoval G (1981) Chukiyawu: la cara Aymara de La Paz. La Paz:
CIPCA
Alves J A (2014) From necropolis to blackpolis: Necropolitical governance and black spatial
praxis in S~ao Paulo, Brazil. Antipode 46(2):323–339
Andreucci D (2018) Populism, hegemony, and the politics of natural resource extraction in
Evo Morales’s Bolivia. Antipode 50(4):825–845
Anthias P (2017) Ch’ixi landscapes: Indigeneity and capitalism in the Bolivian Chaco. Geofo-
rum 82:268–275
Anthias P (2018) Indigenous peoples and the new extraction: From territorial rights to
hydrocarbon citizenship in the Bolivian Chaco. Latin American Perspectives 45(5):136–153
Bebbington D H (2013) Extraction, inequality, and indigenous peoples: Insights from Boli-
via. Environmental Science and Policy 33:438–446

18 Antipode
Bebbington D H and Bebbington A (2010a) Extraction, territory, and inequalities: Gas in

the Bolivian Chaco. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d’etudes
du developpement 30(1/2):259–280
Bebbington D H and Bebbington A (2010b) Anatomy of a regional conflict: Tarija and
resource grievances in Morales’s Bolivia. Latin American Perspectives 37(4):140–160
Brabazon H and Webber J R (2014) Evo Morales and the MST in Bolivia: Continuities and
discontinuities in agrarian reform. Journal of Agrarian Change 14(3):435–465
Butler J (2011) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Rout-
ledge
Canessa A (2007) Who is Indigenous? Self-identification, indigeneity, and claims to justice
in contemporary Bolivia. Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World
Economic Development 36(3):195–237
Collaredo Mansfeld R (2008) Politics of place and urban indigenas in Ecuador’s Indigenous
movement. In L Gotkowitz (ed) Histories of Race and Racism: The Andes and Mesoamerica
from the Colonial Times to the Present (pp 221–239). Durham: Duke University Press
De la Cadena M (2015) Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds. Durham:
Duke University Press
Escobar A (2008) Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Durham: Duke
University Press
Fontana L B and Grugel J (2016) The politics of indigenous participation through “free
prior informed consent”: Reflections from the Bolivian case. World Development 77:249–
261
Gill L (2000) Teetering on the Rim: Global Restructuring, Daily Life, and the Armed Retreat of
the Bolivian State. New York: Columbia University Press
Gregory D (2004) The Colonial Present. Oxford: Blackwell
Griggs S and Howarth D (2002) An alliance of interest and identity? Explaining the cam-
paign against Manchester Airport’s second runway. Mobilization 7(1):43–58
Jessop B and Oosterlynck S (2008) Cultural political economy: On making the cultural turn
without falling into soft economic sociology. Geoforum 39(3):1155–1169
Kohl B and Farthing L (2012) Material constraints to popular imaginaries: The extractive
economy and resource nationalism in Bolivia. Political Geography 31(4):225–235
Laclau E (2005) On Populist Reason. New York: Verso
Laing A F (2012) Beyond the zeitgeist of “post-neoliberal” theory in Latin America: The pol-
itics of anti-colonial struggles in Bolivia. Antipode 44(4):1051–1054
Laing A F (2015) Resource sovereignties in Bolivia: Re-conceptualising the relationship
between Indigenous identities and the environment during the TIPNIS conflict. Bulletin
of Latin American Research 34(2):149–166
La Razon (2015) Descolonizacio n critica rechazo a alten~ os en cines de Irpavi. 7 January.
http://www.la-razon.com/sociedad/Denuncia-descolonizacion-critica-rechazo-altenos-Irpa
vi_0_2194580560.html (last accessed 29 December 2017)
Li T M (2014) Land’s end: Capitalist relations on an indigenous frontier. Durham NC: Duke
Maclean K (2018) Ninguna ciudad comu n: Lo que la teorıa urbana crıtica puede aprender
de La Paz (Bolivia). Journal de Comunicacion Social 5(5):15–48
McNeish J A (2013) Extraction, protest and indigeneity in Bolivia: The TIPNIS effect. Latin
American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 8(2):221–242
Observatorio del Racismo (2008) Racismo y regionalismo en el proceso autonomico. La Paz:
Defensor del Pueblo and the Universidad de la Cordillera
Osorio A (2008) Inventing Lima: Baroque Modernity in Peru’s South Sea Metropolis. Amster-
dam: Springer
Perreault T (2006) From the Guerra Del Agua to the Guerra Del Gas: Resource governance,
neoliberalism, and popular protest in Bolivia. Antipode 38(1):150–172
Perreault T (2010) Conflictos del gas y su gobernanza: el caso de los guaranıes de Tarija,
Bolivia. Anthropologica del Departamento de Ciencias Sociales 28(28):139–162
Perreault T and Green B (2013) Reworking the spaces of indigeneity: The Bolivian ayllu and
lowland autonomy movements compared. Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space 31(1):43–60

Perreault T and Valdivia G (2010) Hydrocarbons, popular protest, and national imaginaries:
Ecuador and Bolivia in comparative context. Geoforum 41(5):689–699
Pilkey B (2013) LGBT homemaking in London, UK: The embodiment of mobile homemak-
ing imaginaries. Geographical Research 51(2):159–165
Portugal P (2016) Deficiencias y posibilidades del modelo plurinacional boliviano. Pukara
113:8–11. http://www.periodicopukara.com/archivos/pukara-113.pdf (last accessed 29
December 2017)
Postero N (2017) The Indigenous State: Race, Politics, and Performance in Plurinational Bolivia.
Berkeley: University of California Press
Puar J K (2006) Mapping US homonormativities. Gender, Place, and Culture 13(1):67–88
Radcliffe S A (2017) Geography and indigeneity I: Indigeneity, coloniality, and knowledge.
Progress in Human Geography 41(2):220–229
Radcliffe S A and Westwood S (1996) Remaking the Nation: Place, Identity, and Politics in
Latin America. New York: Routledge
Ravindran T (2015) Beyond the pure and the authentic: Indigenous modernity in Andean
Bolivia. AlterNative 11(4):321–333
Rodriguez M (2013) Resignificando la ciudad colonial y extractivista. In Red de la Diversi-
dad (eds) Vivir Bien Desde Contextos Urbanos. El Alto: Red de la Diversidad
Romero P (2011) La Guerra del Chaco: Reflexiones de un investigador del siglo XXI.
https://www.boliviaentusmanos.com/historia/guerradelchaco1.php (last accessed 29
December 2017)
Said E (1978) Orientalism. New York: Vintage
Sanjines J (2004) Mestizaje Upside-Down: Aesthetic Politics in Modern Bolivia. Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press
Sawyer S (1997) The 1992 Indian mobilization in lowland Ecuador. Latin American Perspec-
tives 24(3):65–82
Schavelzon S (2012) El nacimiento del Estado plurinacional de Bolivia: Etnografıa de una Asam-
blea Constituyente. La Paz: CEJIS/Plural Editores
Schilling-Vacaflor A (2013) Rethinking the Consultation-Conflict Link: Lessons from Bolivia’s
Gas Sector. Hamburg: GIGA
Tassi N (2017) The Native World-System: An Ethnography of Bolivian Aymara Traders in the
Global Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Tockman J (2016) Decentralisation, socio-territoriality and the exercise of indigenous self-
governance in Bolivia. Third World Quarterly 37(1):153–171
Vergara-Figueroa A (2018) Afrodescendant Resistance to Deracination in Colombia. Cham:
Springer
Watkins J (2015) Spatial imaginaries research in geography: Synergies, tensions, and new
directions. Geography Compass 9(9):508–522
Webber J R (2014) Revolution against “progress”: Neo-extractivism, the compensatory
state, and the TIPNIS conflict in Bolivia. In S Spronk and J R Webber (eds) Crisis and Con-
tradiction: Marxist Perspectives on Latin America in the Global Political Economy (pp 302–
333). Leiden: Brill
Weismantel M (2001) Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press

Antipode Article PDF

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Оригинальное название

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Antipode Article PDF

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

A Radical Journal

Geographies of Indigenous Identity:

Keywords: Indigenous geographies, spatial imaginaries, Bolivia, anti-racist geography,

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

linked combinations of linguistic representations of space and embodied material

The Colonial Legacy

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

nearly synonymous, a pride in being an Alten ~ o also translated into indigenous

Backlash and Struggles over Space

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

Alternative Spatial Ontologies

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

Though many of them live in cities, ancestral territory in the countryside

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

A major point of contention was the ownership of natural resources in indige-

Territoriality, Centrality, and Autonomy

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

conception is also linked to a demographic imaginary of the indigenous people

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

construction of roads is a major priority for Andean indigenous communities as

Identity, Interests, and Materiality in the Formation of

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

construction of material interests between these two indigenous sectors can be

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

that, far from being a non-indigenous or anti-indigenous discourse, it is one of

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

Bebbington D H and Bebbington A (2010a) Extraction, territory, and inequalities: Gas in

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

ª 2019 The Author. Antipode ª 2019 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

Вам также может понравиться