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The challenge of the“indigenous movement” in LatinAmericaAníbal Quijano

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To cite this article: Aníbal Quijano (2005): The challenge of the “indigenousmovement” in Latin America, Socialism and Democracy, 19:3, 55-78

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The Challenge of the “Indigenous

Movement” in Latin America

Anıbal Quijano

There has been no shortage of writing produced within andbeyond Latin America on the so-called “indigenous movement,” par-ticularly after the January 1994 insurgency in Chiapas and, especially,after the more recent events in Bolivia and Ecuador. This probablyreflects, above all, an anxious recognition of the immediate politicalimpact of the “indigenous” people’s actions and of the conflictswhich such actions unleash – and threaten to unleash – in the rest ofthe population, putting at risk the stability of purportedly democraticregimes and the “governability” of an increasingly discontented popu-lation which is starting to organize itself in new ways and to presentdemands which its oppressors clearly do not expect. However, mostof this literature focuses on the theme of identity, albeit primarily asa demonstration of the vastness of the discourse on culture, the multi-cultural, cultural hybridity, etc. – in short, all the terminology in whichthe question of identity is shrouded in order to keep it far away fromthe question of power. By contrast, little attention is paid to the morecomplex and long-term implications of the actions of “indigenous”people, especially insofar as these might point toward new structuresof collective authority and other forms of social existence.

My main purpose here is to address two issues which have not yetbeen sufficiently discussed but which may be decisive in the immediatefuture of Latin America, namely, how the “indigenous movement”relates to the nation-state and to democracy, within the currentsystem of power.

Note on “the indigenous” and on the coloniality of power

In order to do this, it is essential to revisit the issue of what is “indi-genous” in Latin America. Here I will limit myself to setting out themost significant propositions.

Socialism and Democracy, Vol.19, No.3, November 2005, pp.55–78

ISSN 0885-4300 print/ISSN 1745-2635 online

DOI: 10.1080=08854300500258011 # 2005 The Research Group on Socialism and Democracy

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First, it is necessary to recognize that both those who identify them-selves as “indigenous” instead of “Indians,” and those others who nowaccept being identified as “indigenous,” “native,” “aboriginals” and “ori-ginarios,” are exactly the same – that is, if we are dealing with the place ofbirth and also, for the very great majority, if we are dealing with thehistory (i.e. the “aboriginal origins,” partial or total) of the family line.Seen this way, everyone who fits into any of these categories falls underexactly the same umbrella. On the other hand, they are in no way thesame in terms of their relationships with “whites” and “Europeans.”1

And this is, precisely, the question: any one of these “categories,” inAmerica and especially in Latin America, only has meaning with refer-ence to the system of power which originates in the colonial experienceand which since then has grown and developed continuously, main-taining its basic original principles and colonial character. In otherwords, this is about a system of power which will not, and cannot,shed its colonial imprint.

The coloniality of the current model of power

In relation to our present concerns, the main products of the colo-nial experience are as follows.

(1) The “racialization” of relations between colonizers and colonized. Fromthen onwards, “race” – a modern mental construct bearing norelation to previous reality, generated in order to normalize thesocial relations of domination created by the conquest – becomesthe foundation stone of the new system of domination, as previousforms of domination (e.g. between the sexes and between agegroups) are redefined around the hegemony of “race.”2 The orig-inal antagonistic poles in this new system of domination are, onthe one hand, the “Indians” – a colonial term embodying thenumerous historical identities which inhabited this continentbefore the Iberian conquest – and, on the other, the colonizers,

1. All statistics on “Indians” or the “indigenous” in Latin America are uncertain. Theyobviously depend on the criteria of identification, on who is identifying whom, andon how people define themselves. In Mexico the figures go from 25 to 50 million,and in the Andean countries from 10 to more than 20 million.

2. See Anıbal Quijano and Immanuel Wallerstein, “Americanity as a Concept. Or theAmericas in the Modern World-System,” International Journal of Social Sciences, 134(Paris: UNESCO, 1992), pp. 549–557; Anıbal Quijano, “Que Tal Raza,” Familia yCambio Social (Lima: CECOSAM, 1999), pp. 186–204, and “Raza, Etnia, Nacion enMariategui: Cuestiones Abiertas,” in Roland Forgues, ed., Jose Carlos Mariategui yEuropa (Lima: Amauta, 1993), pp. 167–188.

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who, since the 18th century, identified themselves, in relation to the“Indians,” “negros” and “mestizos,” as “whites” and “Europeans.”

(2) The formation of a new system of exploitation which connects in a singlecombined structure all the historical forms of control of work orexploitation (slavery, servitude, simple commodity production,reciprocity, capital) to produce merchandise for the capitalistworld market.

(3) Eurocentrism as the new mode of production and control of subjectivity –imagination, memory, and (above all) knowledge. It expresses the newsocial interests and the new social needs which are generated anddevelop within the experience of the coloniality of power: in par-ticular, the relations between the new system of social dominationbuilt around the idea of “race” and the new system of capitalistexploitation. It cushions the novelty of radical sociohistoricalchanges, of new relationships with time and space, the jettisoningof the past in favor of a new golden age in which the yearningsof the species would be fulfilled – in short, the novelty of aprocess that will soon be called modernity. The Europe-centeredcontrol of the new system of power meant that the framework forthe production and control of knowledge would be developed pre-cisely in Western Europe, which itself was being formed as part ofthe same historical process. And the worldwide expansion of Euro-pean colonialism leads also to the worldwide hegemony of Euro-centrism.

(4) Finally, the establishment of a new system of control of collective auth-ority centered on the hegemony of the state – after the 18th century, thenation-state and system of states – with the populations classifiedin “racial” terms as “inferior” being excluded from the formationand control of the system. This exclusion gave collective authoritya private character.3

This system of power, which began to form five centuries ago,has been globally hegemonic since the 18th century. Although anti-colonial struggles have managed to decentralize power to some

3. I started to discuss matters relating to this new system of power, its basic principlesand its implications in “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America,” inNEPANTLA, vol. 1, no. 3 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 533–581;“Colonialidad del Poder y Clasificacion Social,” in Giovanni Arrighi and WalterL. Goldfrank, eds, Festschrift for Immanuel Wallerstein, Journal of World-SystemsResearch, VI:2 (2002), pp. 342–348; and “Colonialidad, Globalizacion y Democracia,”in Tendencias Basicas de Nuestra Epoca: Globalizacion y Democracia (Caracas: Instituto DeAltos Estudios Diplomaticos “Pedro Gual,” 2001), pp. 25–61.

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extent – snatching local control of collective authority away from thecolonizers – and although in a large part of the world this has beenpublicly formalized, allowing pro-forma participation of members of“inferior races,” worldwide control has not ceased to be Eurocentered.Moreover, a process of renewed concentration of worldwide or globalcontrol is under way, to the benefit of the Europeans.4 And in a goodpart of the present-day ex-colonial world, mainly America andOceania, “whites” and the “European” have managed to maintainlocal control of power in each of its basic dimensions. For this reason,in America, the issue of the “indigenous” cannot be looked into ordebated except in relation to the coloniality of the system of power,because outside that framework such a categorization of peoplewould not even exist.

As a consequence, it is not hard to understand that in all those con-texts where the immediate control of local power is not in the hands of“whites” or “Europeans,” the term “indigenous” does not have thesame meaning or the same implications. Thus, in Southeast Asia, andin India, Indonesia and the Philippines, the “indigenous” groups orpeoples are those that inhabit the more isolated and poorer zones, gen-erally in the jungle or the tundra, and whose main (and in some casesonly) sources of livelihood are the woods, the earth, the rivers, and theanimals or vegetables they find there. These people are oppressed, dis-criminated against, and stripped of their resources, especially now inthese times of “globalization,” by other groups that are neither“white” nor “European” but who today have immediate control ofpower in these countries, although no doubt associated with the“global” bourgeoisie whose hegemony is “European” and “white.” Incountries like India, the classification of the population in terms ofcastes worsens the situation for the “adivasi” (“indigenous”), linkingthem to the “dalit” (“untouchables”) and imposing on them an institu-tionalized system of discrimination and oppression.5 Under the

4. The term “European” is used here not in its physical-geographical sense, but inrelation to the coloniality of any given system of power, i.e. in reference to “white”or “European” social groups which have control of global power, wherever theircountries might be, since that geography continues to be a product of the colonialityof power.

5. The literature on this debate is extensive. See Agapit Tirkey, Jharkhand Movement: AStudy of its dynamics (New Delhi: All India Coordinating Forum of the Adivasi/Indi-genous Peoples [AICFAIP], 2002). The caste form of power relations in India makesthe “indigenization” of part of the population even more complex. See e.g. OliverMendelsohn and Marika Vicziany, The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and theState in Modern India (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

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renewed domination of the Brahmins and their “communalist” funda-mentalism, this situation is even worse and more violent today.

The demands of the “indigenous” of Southeast Asia are, then, fun-damentally different from those of their Latin American counterparts.Their resistance movements are increasingly broader and more orga-nized, and the regional conflicts that they are producing will head inthe same direction. The current virulence of fundamentalist “commun-alism” is a clear indication of this.6

The coloniality of power and the national question in America

With the fall of first British and then Iberian colonialism, a specifichistorical paradox arises in America: independent states linked to colonialsocieties.

Certainly in the case of the United States the nationality of the newstate corresponded to that of the majority of the population of the newcountry, which, despite its “European” and “white” origins and affilia-tions, conferred on itself, with its anti-colonial victory, a new national-ity. The “black” population, initially the only one subjected to thecoloniality of the new power within the British-American colonialsocieties, and prevented from taking any part in the formation andcontrol of the new state, was in the minority, despite its economicimportance. The same would soon apply to the “Indian” population,which survived near extinction, the conquest of its lands, and sub-sequent colonizing after the formation of the new country, the newnation, and its new state.

In the case of the countries which separated from Iberian colonial-ism (whether the Spanish area or later the Portuguese), the process wasradically different. Those who managed finally to assume control of thestate process formed, on the one hand, a reduced minority of “Euro-pean” or “white” origin, in the face of the overwhelming majority of“Indians,” “negros” and their corresponding “mestizos.” On theother hand, the majority of the “Indians” were servants, and the

6. The 4th World Social Forum, held in January 2004 in Mumbai (Bombay), wascertainly broader and more popular than the first three, thanks precisely to themassive presence of the adivasi/indigenous of all Southeast Asia and, above all, ofall the regions of India, who, together with the dalit/untouchables, filled all thespaces of the Forum with their marches, their banners, their demands, and theirprotest against oppresion, discrimination, and plunder, and against the violence of“communalist” fundamentalism. The Forum was also, for all of them, the occasionfor an unprecendented gathering together. The enormous importance of these deve-lopments will soon become apparent.

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“negros” – except in Haiti as a result of the first great social and nationalAmerican revolution in the modern period – were slaves. That is, thesepopulations were blocked from participation in the state process notonly legally and socially (because of their status as servants andslaves), but also because of their condition as colonized populations(“Indians,” “negros,” “mestizos”). Society continued to be organizedfor a long time according to the system of power created during coloni-alism. It was and continued to be a colonial society even as it becameindependent and formed a new state. This new state thus remained amicrocosm of the coloniality of power in society.

What “nation” did the new states belong to? Did they belong to the“Europeans” or the “whites” who now called themselves “Mexicans,”“Peruvians” or “Brazilians,” thereby conferring on themselves a newnational identity? These groups were a small minority in all areas,although less so in Chile, where the majority of the “Indian” populationhad not been colonized and occupied the whole territory south of theBıo-Bıo and resisted for yet another century before being almost extermi-nated and colonized, just as had happened earlier in Argentina andUruguay, under other conditions and with other results. On the contrary,the nationality of these states bore no relation to the colonized popu-lations of “Indians,” “negros” and “mestizos,” even though these werethe overwhelming majority within their borders. These subject popu-lations were in fact not just excluded from the nationality of the newstates. Such a nationality was, strictly speaking, antagonistic to them.

In both fundamental dimensions the new independent state in this (Latin)America did not emerge as a modern nation-state: it was not “national” withregard to the immense majority of the population and it was not democratic –it was not founded on, nor did it represent, any kind of citizenship of the realmajority of the population. It epitomized the coloniality of power.

The question of democracy and the “indigenous problem”

This peculiar situation of the new ex-colonial society did notremain hidden for some of those newly in power. Immediately afterthe consolidation of the anti-colonial victory, around the seconddecade of the 19th century, the question of the character of the stateand problems of citizenship were already being debated in the Hispa-nic area. For the liberals in particular, the gap between the politicalmodels coming especially from the liberal revolutionary discourse ofWestern Europe, and the actual conditions of its implantation in thisnew America, were all too evident. Moreover, the “Indian” populationwould soon be perceived as a problem for the implantation of the

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modern nation-state and for the modernization of society and ofculture. Thus, what for almost two centuries would be referred to asthe “indigenous problem” took hold from the very beginning ofLatin American independence.

Why were the “Indians” a problem in the debate over the implan-tation of the modern nation-state in these new republics? Outside theframework of the coloniality of power, such a problem would notmake sense. On the other hand, within this framework, the “Indians”were not only servants, as the “blacks” had been slaves; they werefirst and foremost “inferior races.” And the idea of “race” had beenimposed not only as an aspect of social relations – as in the case ofslavery or servitude (in which case it could be changed) – but ratheras an aspect of the people themselves, as was precisely the case with“Indians,” “negros” and “whites.” At that level, therefore, there wasno possibility of change. This, then, was the essence of the “indigenousproblem”: freeing the “Indians” from the weight of serfdom did not byitself give them the kind of social equality that had been possible inEurope as a result of the liberal revolutions. Nor did it remove themarks of traditional colonialism such as the “tributo indıgena,” as hadhappened when previous colonialisms had been defeated or brokenup. In fact, the hegemonic sectors opposed the elimination of thetribute – and especially the elimination of servitude – with all theirmight. Whom would that leave to work for the powerholders? The“racial” argument, whether explicit or implicit, was the touchstonefor the defense of their social interests.

The “indigenous problem” thus became an authentic political andtheoretical irritant in Latin America. In order to resolve it, simultaneouschanges would be required in three interdependent dimensions: (1) thedecolonizing of political relations within the state; (2) the radical under-mining of conditions of exploitation and the end of servitude; and (3),as precondition and point of departure, the decolonization of relationsof social domination, i.e. the purging of “race” as the universal andbasic category of social classification.

In other words, the effective solution of the “indigenous problem”necessarily involved the subversion and disintegration of the entiresystem of power. And given the relations of social and politicalforces at the time, a real and definitive solution was not feasible, noteven partially. For this reason, the “indigenous problem” became the knot,not yet untied, that has bound and restrained the historical development ofLatin America: the non-convergence of nation, identity, and democracy.

Political independence from Spain and Portugal, under the leader-ship of “whites” or “Europeans,” did not mean the independence of

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these societies from the hegemony of Eurocentrism. In many ways, onthe contrary, it led to the deepening of that hegemony, preciselybecause the Eurocenteredness of the system of power meant thatwhile in Western Europe modernity permeated not only thought butalso social practice, in (Latin) America modernity (especially thenotion of “progress”) was confined to the ideological sphere, essen-tially among small groups within the dominant sectors and amongthe limited early groups of middle-class intellectuals.7

Democracy and modernity without revolution?

This is the context which allows us to explain and give meaning toa political phenomenon, peculiar perhaps to Latin America: the ideathat it is possible to reach or establish modernity and democracy inthese countries without having to go through any kind of radical revo-lution. Modernity and democracy were and still are in Latin America akind of political mirage. Since they exist in other spaces, they allow theliberal eye to copy its images onto the ideological horizon of a LatinAmerican blank slate. This process continues to fascinate a leadingsector of the Latin American political world, including those whoimagine the Latin American revolution as a reproduction of the Euro-centric experience. Eurocentrism thus extends into every political andideological sphere.

In Latin American political discourse since the defeat of Spanishcolonialism, this ideology has meant the adoption of the liberal-democratic paradigm of the state and of the relations between stateand society. This paradigm of liberal democracy is not only separatefrom but actually opposed to the paradigm of bourgeois society. Inbourgeois society (which produced liberal democracy), power relationsin society have been built up not only as an expression of capital and ofthe centrality of Europe, but also – and, for liberal-democratic pur-poses, above all – as the expression of a relatively broad, if notexactly democratic, distribution of economic and social goods. In the“central” countries governed by liberal democracy, this is the resultof a century of liberal-bourgeois revolutions, or equivalent processes.But such processes did not and could not take place in LatinAmerica. This is above all because liberal citizenship was, and hasremained, an impossible aspiration for the immense majority of thepopulation, made up as it is of “inferior races.”

7. I have put forward certain issues for this debate in Modernidad, Identidad y Utopıa enAmerica Latina (Lima: Sociedad y Polıtica Ediciones, 1988).

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In this sense, liberalism in Latin American has always put forwardthe image of a “rule of law” based on institutions designed with exqui-site devotion to liberal aspirations, but sustained almost exclusively byconstitutionalist discourse, which, not by chance, has remained entirelydivorced from changes in social power relations. In practice, this hasalmost always meant “rule of law [derecho]” linked to a “society ofthe Right [derecha].” For this reason when it works it cannot last, andhas never been able to last; or it simply has not worked.8

Regarding the place of the “Indian” population in a possible demo-cratic future, the only important change which could be accepted,already late in the 19th century, and which with some difficulty hasbeen put into practice in the 20th century, is the “Europeanization”of the subjectivity of the “Indians,” as a means of “modernizing”them. The so-called “indigenista” movement, with ramifications inthe visual arts and in literature, was doubtless the most completeembodiment of this project.9 The coloniality of such an idea is,however, quite clear, for it is based on the impossibility of admitting,or even imagining, a decolonizing of relations between the “Indian”and the “European,” since by very definition the “Indian” is not onlyinferior but also “primitive” (or “archaic”), that is, doubly inferiorbecause “anterior” to the “European” in a supposed line of historicalevolution of the species. Since it was not possible to “whiten” themall in “racial” terms, despite the intensive practice of “mestizaje”which pervades the history of Latin America, it was decided that itmade sense at least to “Europeanize” them subjectively or culturally.10

There is no point in dwelling on what is well known. The dominantgroups had mainly two policies to deal with this problem, althoughthere were many variants from country to country and over time. Onthe one hand we had the virtual extermination of the “Indians” andthe conquest of their lands in all those countries in which the dominant

8. For a more extensive discussion of the implications of “race” for citizenship, rep-resentation, and participaction in the liberal state, see my “Colonialite du Pouvoiret Democratie en Amerique Latine,” in Futur Anterieur: Amerique Latine, Democratieet Exclusion (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994).

9. In Peru the most important debate took place between Jose Carlos Mariategui andLuıs Alberto Sanchez. See J.C. Mariategui, 7 Ensayos de Interpretacion de la RealidadPeruana (Lima: Empresa Editora Amauta, 1928), and L.A. Sanchez, Apuntes parauna Biografıa del APRA: Los Prinmeros Pasos, 1923–1931 (Lima: Mosca Azul, 1978);also Jose Deustua and Jose Luis Renique, Intelectuales, Indigenismo y Descentralismoen el Peru, 1897/1931 (Cuzco: Centro Bartolome de las Casas, 1984), and HernanIbarra, “Intelectuales Indıgenas, Neoindigenismo e Indianismo en el Ecuador,”Ecuador Debate, 48 (1999), pp. 71–94.

10. See “Colonialidad del Poder, Eurocentrismo y America Latina” (n. 3).

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forces, whether liberal or conservative, quickly concluded that no“de-Indianization” was viable. This is what happened in the UnitedStates, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. On the other hand, we havethe process of cultural and political assimilation in Mexico/CentralAmerica and in the Andes.11

Why this difference? Mainly, no doubt, because in the lattercountries the “Indian” population not only was (and is) in the majority,but above all was already socially disciplined within a system of dom-ination and exploitation. These countries, like Mexico and Peru, wereprecisely the centers of the Spanish colonial empire, whereas Argen-tina, Chile and Uruguay were marginal before the mid-18th century.Given these conditions, the policy of the “whites” with regard to the“Indians” prolonged, with certain changes and adaptations, the colo-nial policy of simultaneous discrimination and cultural assimilation.With the formation of the republic, “assimilationism” became –especially from the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20thcentury – the preferred approach.

Cultural assimilationism is the policy which the state has sought topromote through the system of public education. The strategy consistsof an “assimilation” of the “Indians” into the culture of the dominantgroup – which tends to be referred to as “national culture” – aboveall through the schools, but also through the work of religious and mili-tary institutions. For this reason, in all these countries, the educationalsystem came to play a central role in the relations between the “Indian”and the non-“Indian” – a role described in mythical proportions toboth constituencies. There is no doubt that in countries such asMexico and Peru (especially in Mexico after the 1910 “revolution”)the schools produced a significant measure of subjective or cultural

11. This issue has a dimension which has not yet really been studied. Of course, the“Indian” population constituted the demographic majority in most of the Hispaniccountries; it also predominated culturally among the colonized populations ofMexico, Central America and the Andes. The “negro” or “black” population,however, although obviously smaller, was important along the northern PacificCoast of South America and also, above all, in the Caribbean – not to mention the Por-tuguese area, where it made up the overwhelming majority. Oddly, the “white” popu-lation was the least numerous in all these countries. Thus, mere size of populationdoes not suffice to explain why the “black” population goes unmentioned in thedebate on the state – except in connection with the problem of whether to preserveor abolish slavery. This may reflect a reaction on the part of the ruling classes to theHaitian revolution. In any case, in the whole debate in Hispanic America on whatto do with the non-“white” and non-“European” populations, the “blacks” remain vir-tually invisible throughout the 19th century. This explains why the “negro problem”never received the attention accorded to the “indigenous problem.”

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“de-Indianization.” An important element of this strategy has also beenthe appropriation of the cultural heritage of the societies that weredefeated, destroyed, and had their populations colonized: it is trans-mitted as pride in the “Inca,” the “Aztec,” “Mayan,” etc: in a word,the “Indian” before colonization.

However, this strategy has never ceased to alternate and combinewith a policy of discrimination toward and alienation of the “Indian.”For this reason, “de-Indianization” was not able to encompass themajority of the “Indian” population, which therefore could not fit orbe incorporated – except partially, hesitantly and in a purely formalsense – into the process of nationalization of society, of culture and ofthe state. The coloniality of power continues to imply that the “non-white” populations cannot be consolidated into the citizenry (even inpart) without giving rise to profound and serious social conflicts. Incertain countries such as Brazil, Ecuador or Guatemala, or in certainzones of Bolivia, Mexico or Peru, this lies at the heart of what the domi-nant culture is just starting to see as a new “indigenous problem,” butwhich in truth has opened a new historical period, above all for thesystem of power that created that “problem” in the first place.

Trajectory of the current “indigenous movement”

From the outset it is pertinent to note that the current “indigenousmovement” is the clearest sign that the coloniality of power is in themost serious of its crises since its establishment 500 years ago.12

Of course the populations which survived the destruction of pre-vious societies and historical identities did not initially accept theappellation “Indians.” Some of them (e.g. some of the Incas of Cuzco)refused to accept that defeat for a full half-century. Today, manygroups demand back the names of their ancient historical identities(now condescendingly accepted as “ethnicities”). And it is probablethat various other names will be restored to these populations, andeven, given the widespread appeal of such rediscoveries (tentacion iden-titaria), that certain identities will be reinvented to go with them.

12. Its first two great moments of crisis were (1) the revolution of Tupac Amaru in theViceroyalty of Peru (1780), which was defeated but had a profound impact, and (2)the Haitian revolution of 1804, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture – clearly the first greatmodern revolution, which in a single movement brought a victory of social subver-sion (slaves over masters), an anti-colonial victory (the defeat of French colonialismand formation of the Haitian nationality), and, on a global level, the first step in thedisintegration of the coloniality of power (“blacks” against “whites”). Haiti’s all toofamiliar later misfortunes in no way diminish the historic significance of that excep-tional achievement.

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However, the consolidation, development and worldwide expan-sion of the coloniality of power proved to be processes of exceptionalhistorical vitality. Although some of the names and fragments oftheir historical memory were preserved, all those societies and identi-ties or peoplehoods were ultimately dispersed,13 and the survivingpopulations and descendants ended up accepting defeat and, with it,the new common colonial identity, which obviously did not involveany peoplehood. Three hundred years after the Conquest, at the begin-ning of the republican period, they were all “Indians.” During thecenturies to follow, that colonial identity was maintained. It might besaid, without risking much, that for a greater part of these populations,that identity had ended up being accepted as “natural.”

Why then have the rejection of the designation “Indian” and theaffirmation of the name “indigenous” spread among these populationsin virtually all of Latin America, within the relatively short space of twoto three decades? And furthermore, why have the non-Indians – “mes-tizos” mainly, but also “whites” and “Europeans” – ended upacknowledging that claim?

Between two crises

I suggest in the first place that the current “indigenous movement”had been germinating in the course of what Latin American socialresearch has called the “crisis of the oligarchic state,” and that itshaped itself and emerged within the very process of neoliberaliza-tion–globalization of Latin American society.14

13. Peoplehood [in English in the original – Ed.] is a neologism coined in English byProfessor Gonzalo Santos to refer to a people’s distinctive power systems, historyand cultural conquests, its imagination, consciousness, language and memory,and its place in the world.

14. I do not mean to suggest here that the “Indians” only began to mobilize themselvesin the last 30 years. The list of their rebellions and organizational efforts in theAndean countries is long and well documented. My purpose here is not to retellthat story but rather to examine the specificities and the direction of the current“indigenous movement.” On earlier movements, see Guillermo Bonfil Batalla,Utopıa y Revolucion: El Pensamiento Polıtico Contemporaneo de los indios en AmericaLatina (Mexico: Nueva Imagen, 1981); and the anthologies Democracia, Etnicidad yViolencia Polıtica en los Paıses Andinos (Lima: IEP/IFEA, 1998), and Sismo Etnico enel Ecuador (Quito: Abya Yala/Cedime, 1993). Also: Rodrigo Montoya, Al Borde delNaufragio: Democracia, Violencia y Problema Etnico en el Peru (Madrid: Talasa Edi-ciones, 1992). It should be noted that between 1930 and 1980 most of the indigenousstruggles were charaterized as peasant struggles. See Anıbal Quijano, “Contempor-ary Peasant Movements in Latin America,” in S.M Lipset and A.E. Solari, eds, Elitesand Development in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).

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One should bear in mind, in this respect, that under the oligarchicstate the overwhelming majority of the population called “Indian” wasrural, although in the city as in the countryside the regime of domi-nation of which they were victims was seigneurial. That is, the socialcondition of the majority of the “Indians” was servitude: domestic inthe cities and agro-domestic in the countryside.

The near-universal servitude of the “Indians” was a consequenceof continued dispossession of their lands in favor of the non-Indiansfrom the very beginning of the republican era. During the colonialperiod, together with the formal elimination of the encomiendasystem, and as a means of control of the “Indian” populations, theCrown decreed that they would be given lands to sow and to live on,as zones of exclusive “Indian” property and residence. The extent ofthese lands varied according to the zones, but it was no smallamount in any case. In Peru the lands were very extensive and inBolivia even more. After the defeat of the Spanish, Bolıvar decreedthat for all of the ex-Viceroyalty of Peru, the lands of the indigenouscommunities would be privatized and put on the market. However,for most of the 19th century, the indigenous communities of theAndean republics maintained control of most of the lands that hadbeen adjudicated to them during the Viceroyalty. The dispossessionbegan again at the end of that century as one of the consequences ofthe appropriation of the mines, plantations and estates by North Amer-ican capital. This was accentuated and expanded in the first threedecades of the 20th century, as the repression and bloody defeat ofthe indigenous peasant resistance forced most of the “Indian” popu-lations to submit to servitude. What has been called the oligarchicstate based on relations of domination inherent to the coloniality ofpower grew stronger during these processes. In Mexico, resistance bythe indigenous peasantry converged with the dispute for powerwithin the bourgeoisie itself and the middle classes, giving rise to theso-called “Mexican revolution.”

In this context, we can understand why the crisis and decline theoligarchic state in the countries with an “Indian” majority had decisiveimplications for the social and political situation of those peoples, andwas a key factor in the crisis and change of their identity.

In effect, the crisis of the oligarchic state ended together with theend of the predominance of servile and semi-servile relations and thedisintegration of the structures of local and state authority linked tothe power of the seigneurial bourgeoisie and the seigneurial land-owners. This occurred in a variety of ways: (a) through social revolu-tions such as those of Mexico (1910–1917) and Bolivia (1952), in

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which the organized participation of the mainly “Indian” peasantrywas decisive; (b) through a process such as that of Peru (1957–1969),where massive pressure exerted by the “Indian” peasants led to agrar-ian reform; or (c) because the seigneurial landowners themselves wereforced, as in Ecuador (1969–1970), to change the regime of servile laborto one of wage-labor. The result everywhere was the expansion ofwage-labor and of commercial activities.

Such processes were associated, as is known, with the abrupt urban-ization of Latin American society as a whole, the relative expansion ofindustrial production and of the internal market, and the change of struc-ture of urban society with the formation of new groups of the industrial-urban bourgeoisie, new professional and intellectual middle classes, anda new wage-earning population. And of course part of these changes wasthe massive migration from the countryside to the city.

All this was soon reflected in the relative modernization of thestate, which saw its social bases not only expanded but above all pro-foundly changed with the partial and precarious incorporation ofnew contingents of peasant and “Indian” origin into citizenship –although still entangled in the mesh of cronyism and forms of politicalmediation, rather than direct representation.

These processes were broader and more global in some countriesthan in others. For those with majority indigenous population, thesedifferences have proved to be decisive. It was in Peru that theprocess was earliest, fastest, and most thorough. It involved thede-Indianization of the identity (and self-identification) of a great partof the “Indian” population and their shift to the cities, to salaried andmarket-related activities. Even those who remained in the countrysidewere affected. This specific process of de-Indianization was termed“cholificacion” (becoming “cholos”).15

The new “cholo” population was, without doubt, the main prota-gonist and agent of change in Peru after World War II. It was they, inthe first place, who formed what was, until the end of the 1960s, themost broadly based and powerful peasant movement in LatinAmerica.16 It was they who brought about the disintegration of

15. A number of Peruvian and foreign social scientists took part in discussion of thisissue in the 1950s and 1960s. See esp. Francois Bourricaud, “Algunas CaracterısticasOriginales de la Cultura Mestiza del Peru Contemporaneo,” Revista del Museo Nacio-nal, XXIII (1954), pp. 37–59; Jose Marıa Arguedas, “Evolucion de las ComunidadesIndıgenas del Valle del Mataro y de la Ciudad de Huancayo,” Revista del MuseoNacional, XXVI (1957), pp. 78–151; and Anıbal Quijano, “El Cholo y el ConflictoCultural en el Peru” (orig. 1964), in idem., Dominacion y Cultura (Lima: MoscaAzul, 1980), pp. 47–117.

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seigneurial power in the countryside, culminating in the agrarianreform of the military dictatorship of Velasco Alvarado in 1969 –carried out strictly speaking to block the development of the“cholos’” peasant movement, with all the negative consequences forrural society and for agricultural production which this entailed. Itwas the cholos who formed the new contingent of urban wage-workers, created a new trade union movement (whose role in nationalpolitical life was very important up to the crisis of the mid-1970s), andwon legislative decisions which allowed them certain advantages inwage negotiations. It was they who filled the state education apparatusat all levels, obliging the state to expand it rapidly. They filled the stateuniversities, forming a new and broader movement of university stu-dents with profound consequences for the country, beginning withthe abrupt broadening of the new middle classes, recruited preciselyfrom that population. They more than anyone filled the Peruvian“barriadas” which ended up housing more than 70% of the urbanpopulation and embodying Peru’s central social, cultural and symbolicexperience of the second half of the 20th century.

The militarization of the state after the guerrilla experience of1965–1967 and its clash with the younger generation of this new“cholo” population, especially in the universities and among youngintellectuals, blocked and distorted the social, cultural and politicaldevelopment of these sectors, especially in the “Second Phase” of the1968–1980 Military Dictatorship. It also exacerbated the grave distor-tions which the Stalinist and Maoist versions of an already Eurocentri-fied “historical materialism” introduced into the universities andamong the young “cholo” intelligentsia, in the debate about theinterpretation of Peruvian history (according to them Peru was afeudal or semi-feudal society like China at the beginning of the1930s, hence revolutionary war would proceed from the countrysideto the city, etc.). An unfortunate result was the turbulent and bloodyterrorist exchange between the state and the Maoist group SenderoLuminoso (Shining Path) between 1980 and 2000, whose mainvictims were the very “indigenous” peasant populations (60,000according to the official report) – and not at all the urbanized“cholos.”

For a half-century, the population which de-Indianized itself – andwhich adopted and made positive the derogatory self-identification as“cholo” and/or “mestizo” – has grown proportionally and in terms of

16. For a systematic study of these social movements, see Quijano, “ContemporaryPeasant Movements in Latin America” (n. 14).

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presence and influence in all areas of Peruvian society, including cer-tainly the rural world in which a minority of them still live, identifiedas “Indians” (although it is not certain that they accept that identifi-cation). It is unlikely that the “cholo” population would go back tobeing identified as “Indian.”

This is certainly the response to the question that now weighsheavily in the debate in Peru and Latin America over the current “indi-genous movement”: why is it that in Peru, where the “Indian” popu-lation was greater than in the other Andean countries, there is nowno “indigenous movement” of importance, while there is one – anda manifest and influential one at that – in Ecuador most especiallyand in Bolivia?

Neoliberalization–globalization and its implications in the“indigenous movement”

For convenience but not arbitrarily, I link “neoliberalization” and“globalization” to refer to the process undergone by Latin America,as by the rest of the world, between the crisis of the mid-1970s andnow. There is relative consensus in the current debate, notwithstandinga sea of literature on the subject, as to the weakening and denationali-zation of the state, as to growing social polarization, and as to thede-democratization of society. There is no need to belabor thesepoints.17 However, what such processes mean or have meant for thequestion of the “indigenous movement” has barely started to enterthe Latin American debate. It is therefore quite pertinent to raise themost significant issues.

I suggest in the first place that the rapid, rather brusque disinte-gration of the structure of production which was occurring in thosecountries, produced not only unemployment, increase in under-employment, and rapid social polarization, but also a process whichmight be recognized as one of social reclassification affecting allsocial sectors, and, obviously, especially the workers. This process isassociated with a crisis of social identity in all sectors, but above allin those whose identity was still (or already) ambiguous and vacillat-ing, pushing them to an urgent search for new and different identities.This explains, in my opinion, why, for example, the social identities

17. See “Colonialidad del Poder, Globalizacion y Democracia” (n. 3). On the conse-quences of neoliberalization–globalization for Latin American society, see my argu-ments in “The Latin American Labyrinth: Are There Other Ways Out?” Journal ofLatin American Studies (Melbourne), forthcoming.

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expressed in terms of “social classes” have given way, in all thesecountries, to identities classified as “ethnic,” regional, or residential,or by terms such as “informal” and “poor.”

This crisis and change in identities took place explicitly among“Indian” rural workers of the less urbanized Andean and Mezoameri-can countries, who had been given (and had accepted) being identifiedby class as “peasants” and who now have ended up re-identifyingthemselves as “indigenous.” In Peru, on the other hand, this changeis not at issue, or is occurring indecisively and slowly. Even today,the most important communal organization confronting the miningcompanies is called Coordinadora Nacional de Comunidades Afecta-das por la Minerıa (CONACAMI), and makes no appeal to the ideaof “indigenous community” in its very place of origin.

Secondly, together with these problems, so-called globalization hasalso brought a new network of communication, with a growing spec-trum of technological resources, from the classic transistor radio(which was the first element to break the isolation of “peasants” and“Indians”) to e-mail and the cell-phone, which have reached into theleast expected locations. In this sense, the rural or rural/urban popu-lations undergoing a crisis of social identity and ethnic re-identificationhave found in the Internet a means of learning about and identifyingthemselves with all those who share a common “racial” identity, justas in the immediately preceding period it was pertinent to identifythemselves with all those affected by the same structure of exploitation,that of capital.

However, the idea of seeing the virtual realities produced by thesenew communication networks as “deterritorialization” or “delocaliza-tion” must in the specific case of the “indigenous” be treated with greatcaution, because geography – the local and the communal, the neigh-borhood, the home – clearly has an importance that it would nothave for the dispersed, sometimes itinerant or migrating urban popu-lations of industrial societies.

Thirdly, the weakening of the state, its visible denationalizationand even its reprivatization in many countries, has left broad sectorsof the exploited classes without recourse for their needs anddemands (e.g. in matters of health, education, urban services, andworkers’ rights), which are now more extensive than ever. Beyondthis, especially in the 1990s, the state in several countries beganacting against the majority of the population, much in the way that itdid immediately after the fall of the Iberian colonial empires. Aftermore than three decades of these processes, growing sectorsof the popular classes of Latin America, including the “Indians,”

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have learned or are quickly learning that they have to find waysnot only to not live from the state but to live without or against thestate.

It is in this sphere that we probably find the basis for the currentprocess of re-identification: from “campesinos” and “Indians” to “indi-genous.” I refer above all to the ways in which issues of public auth-ority have been approached, since the beginning of the 1980s, by the“Indian” populations which have organized and mobilized in theAndean/Amazon region, and which have gained worldwide recog-nition since Chiapas.

The formation in 1984 of the Federation of Indigenous Organiz-ations of the Amazon Basin (Coordinadora de Organizaciones Indı-genas de la Cuenca Amazonica, COICA, representing populations ofPeru, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela), and, shortlyafterwards, the organization the Union Nacional de ComunidadesAymaras (UNCA) in Puno (in the Peruvian altiplano bordering onLake Titicaca), signified major steps in the reorganization and revitali-zation of the community as the specific structure of collective andpublic authority of these populations. In the founding congresses ofCOICA and UNCA, the problem of the absence and hostility of thestate was explicitly debated, prompting recognition of the urgentneed for a communal authority.18 The question of territorial and politi-cal autonomy, which had been the empty slogan of followers of theStalinist International in the late 1920s and early 1930s, reappearednow, autonomously placed on the agenda of the “indigenous commu-nities.”

There then began the period of tension and pressures betweenthese populations and the state, which has only broadened and inten-sified up to today. This is probably also the moment when the shift ofidentity from “Indian” to “indigenous” took place. It is doubtful thatany collective and systematic debate took place among the “Indians”as to the coloniality of the terms “Indian,” “negro,” “white,”“mestizo” (although some social scientists in Mexico and Peru werealready discussing these questions19). What is most likely is that theshift occurred in connection with decisions to reorganize and revitalizethe “indigenous community” in opposition to the state.

18. As an invited guest at UNCA’s founding congress, I was able to attend thesedebates.

19. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, Mexico Profundo (Mexico: ERA, 1988); Quijano, “Raza, Etniay Nacion en J.C. Mariategui” (n. 2).

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The “indigenous community” was a creation of the colonial auth-orities in the 16th century. During the colonial period it was thecenter and refuge of the “Indian” populations which had not beenimmediately placed in servitude. For this reason, when the “Indians”were despoiled of their land and subjected to servitude in the repub-lican period, the “indigenous community” was reclaimed andproclaimed as the emblematic institution in the fight against servitudeand abuse by the estates, the mines and the state. Moreover, for manyyears, for the “Indian” peasant population, it became the virtuallyexclusive center of political democracy under the oligarchic state,because all the adult members of an “indigenous community,” menand women, from the age of 14, had the right to participate in collectivedebates and decisions that affected its members. For this reason,despite its colonial origins the “indigenous community” now providesthe “Indian” populations – peasants, unemployed, and informales, andlater also professionals and intellectuals – with anti-colonial ideologi-cal flags vis-a-vis both the national problem and democracy.

There is now a visible, recongized and active stratum of “indigen-ous” intellectuals in Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico, and Guatemala; also inPeru, but those that identify with them are above all the Aymarasand the people of the Andean-Amazonian basin. In the recent debateon all these questions, they certainly played an active and decisiverole. The creation of the Universidad Indıgena Intercultural and theInstituto de Investigaciones Indıgenas in Quito, under the leadershipof Luıs Macas – one of the founders of CONAIE (Confederacion deNacionalidades Indıgenas del Ecuador) and recently Minister of Indi-genous Affairs in the government of Lucio Gutierrez, from whom hefinally split – is one of the clearest expressions of this phenomenon.

The current “indigenous movement” developed initially amongthe main groups of the Amazonian basin, whose most important mani-festation before the COICA was ECUARUNARI (Pueblos del Ecuador)in 1972. Although in Ecuador there were active organizations of“Indians” which, with the influence and support of the EcuadoranCommunist Party, sought political autonomy from the State ofEcuador, it is not likely that these antecedents had any role in the for-mation of the current indigenous movement in that country. On theother hand, some religious orders – Silesian and Jesuit – appear tohave had an important influence. In 1980 CONFENAIE (Confederacionde Nacionalidades Indias Ecuatorianas) was formed and finallyCONAIE (Confederacion Nacional de Indıgenas Ecuatorianos) in1989, as formations central to all the organized groups of Ecuadoranindigenous peoples. Their political legitimacy was won with the

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famous March on Quito in 1992. They gained international stature withtheir participation in the fall of the Abdala Bucaram government (1997)and their leadership in the fall of the government of Miguel Mahuad(January 2000), on which occasion the main leader of CONAIE,Antonio Vargas, briefly occupied the presidential seat, with thesupport of then-Colonel Lucio Gutierrez (later elected President ofEcuador), thanks mainly to the support of the indigenous movement.20

The case of Bolivia is much more complex. The Bolivian peasantsorganized themselves along trade union lines from the 1940s, side byside with the miners’ movement. Together they participated in the Boli-vian revolution of April 1952 and while the miners took over andexpropriated the mines, the peasants took the lands and expelled thebig landowners.21 Together they formed the famous worker–peasantmilitias which consolidated the revolution and, allied with theConfederacion Obrera Boliviana (COB), forced the government ofPaz Estenssoro to legalize the redistribution of lands and to extend it.The peasants were involved in all the ups and downs of Bolivian poli-tics from that time onwards, although not always following the sameline. They were even used by General Barrientos, who with the MilitaryCoup of 1964 blocked the revolutionary process and carried out theferocious massacre of mineworkers in June of that same year.

When tin mining collapsed and the state mines were closed down,many of the mineworkers, including some of their most respectedleaders, decided to go and work with the coca producers in Chapare.But they also helped them to organize themselves on the model ofthe miners’ unions. This saved those “Indian” peasants from becomingeither victims or instruments of the mafioso networks of coca andcocaine trafficking. It also allowed them to resist the Bolivian stateand the United States, who were engaged in simply eradicating cocacultivation without offering useful alternatives for the peasants. Inthis struggle they became stronger as a movement of workers and pea-sants, gained the support of other social forces whose struggles theysupported, and emerged as a political movement with a socialist affilia-tion, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), producing political leadersof such national stature as Evo Morales, who, to the surprise of the

20. See Felipe Burbano de Lara, “Ecuador, cuando los Equilibrios Crujen,” Anuario Socialy Politico de America Latina (Caracas: FLACSO/Nueva Sociedad), 3 (2000), pp. 65–79;Fernando Bustamante, “Y despues de la insurreccion que . . . ,” Ecuador Debate(Quito), 49 (2000), pp. 43–56.

21. See references in my “Contemporary Peasant Movements” (n. 14).

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urban press, received the second-highest vote total in the presidentialelections.

On the other hand, without losing continuity with the experience ofthe katarista movement (named in honor of Tupac Katari, Aymara cau-dillo in the revolution of Tupac Amaru in l780), active in the peasantand guerrilla struggles in the 1970s, other movements have arisenand developed among the Aymara who populate the altiplano sur-rounding Lake Titicaca. The most important currently is the Confedera-cion Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB),whose leader is Felipe Quispe, called El Mallku, who has gainednotable authority over the peasantry and a notable national presence.

The MAS and the CSUTCB have participated not only in the elec-tions, but above all in broad social and political movements in defenseof national control of the country’s resources, as in the March for Landand Dignity (Marcha por el Territorio y la Dignidad) of 1991, andrecently in the well-known events which led to the resignation ofGonzalo Sanchez de Losada from the presidency of Bolivia, afterbloody conflicts with the people’s movement.

The Bolivian case, then, is not one of strictly “indigenous move-ments” of the kind that have arisen in Ecuador, in the AmazonianCOICA, or in Chiapas, Guatemala, and, more recently, among the“mapuches” of Chile and other smaller groups in Argentina. In con-trast to its coverage of Bolivian movements, the international presshas conferred worldwide renown on the movement of the “indigen-ous” people in Chiapas and their spokesperson SubcomandanteMarcos. The same happened in Guatamala, as a result of the prolongedand bloody civil war and the presence of Nobel Prize winner RigobertaMenchu.22

Direction and prospects of the current “indigenous movement”

In reality an “indigenous movement” does not exist except in anominal, abstract sense. It would be misleading to think that the term“indigenous” refers to something homogenous, continuous and con-sistent. Just as the word “Indian” served in the colonial period as a

22. See e.g. George A. Collier with Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello, Land and the Zapatistas:Rebellion in Chiapas (Oakland: Food First Books, 1994), and the anthology Auroras ofthe Zapatistas: Local and Global Struggles of the Fourth World War (Jamaica Plain, MA:Midnight Notes, 2001). On Guatemala, Kay Warren, “Indigenous Movements as aChallenge to the Unified Social Movements Paradigm for Guatemala,” in SoniaE. Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino and Arturo Escobar, eds, Cultures of Politics, Politics ofCulture (Boulder: Westview, 1998), pp. 165–196.

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common identifier of many diverse and heterogeneous historical iden-tities (in order to impose the idea of “race” and as a mechanism ofcontrol and domination which would facilitate the division of exploi-tative work), so the word “indigenous,” although it embodies the rejec-tion of colonial categories and a reassertion of autonomous identity, notonly is not a liberation from coloniality, but does not even indicate anykind of process of homogenization, despite the undoubted fact thatwith the dissolution of the old identities homogeneity is greater thanbefore. There is no doubt that the term covers a heterogeneous anddiverse reality, nor should it be doubted that various specific identitieswill reappear – and are already reappearing – besides the fact thatseveral never did disappear, as in the case of the Aymaras andamong the Amazonians, or among various groups in Chiapas or theGuatemalan Altiplano.23 Consequently there is no assurance that allthe current groups of “indigenous” people, or those that emergelater, will have the same perspectives or the same goals.

Nonetheless, the current presence of the “indigenous” in LatinAmerica has certain common implications. First of all, there is admit-tedly a common claim to identity, but above all as a response to the dis-crimination which prevents full assimilation into the national identityor dominant culture. But this is an almost traditional demand, inwhich the “Indios” and indigenistas have been joined by the anthro-pologists, who would like what they call “cultures” to be preservedin a kind of museum, regardless of whether the people like it orwhether it would benefit them.

The most organized, however, first in Ecuador and then in Chiapas,have progressed to the point of presenting the need for a pluri-nationalstate. And this is not just a question of accepting the ritual phrases thatare already common in constitutional texts, such as pluri-ethnicity,pluri-culturality, pluri-etc., etc. It is a question of changing the stateinstitutional structure at its base, so that it can effectively representmore than one nation. That is to say, it is about multiple citizenship,in contrast to the present form which does not (and cannot) give the“indigenous” full status.24 To be sure, this is not yet contemplated by

23. Not long ago in Peru, an Aymara leader harshly challenged a journalist who insistedon calling him indigenous: “Senorita, I am neither Indian nor indigenous; I amAymara.”

24. On Ecuador, see esp. CONAIE, Proyecto Politico, Document No. 4 (Quito, 2002); onChiapas, Auroras of the Zapatistas (n. 22). On Peru, a number of documents are avail-able; see esp. Propuesta Concertada para Incorporar los Derechos de los Pueblos Indıgenas yComunidades en la Constitucion Polıtica del Peru, presented by Miguel Palacin(CONACAMI), Antonio Iviche Quisque (AIDESEP), Hildebrando Ruffner Sebastian

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most of the populations that re-identify themselves as “indigenous.”However, it implies the end of political and cultural assimilationismin America, since, after all, it never was fully and consistently practicedby the dominant non-Indians or “whites.” And if this really doesmanage to clear the way – if it is not simply repressed anddefeated – it means also the end of the Eurocentric model of anation-state where some nationalities have always dominated andcolonized others who, moreover, constitute the majority.

A variant of this demand is the demand for territorial and politicalautonomy. In some cases (e.g. Venezuela and Canada), the dominantgroups have preferred not to risk their nation-states and to cede rela-tively extensive politically autonomous territories to particular indi-genous groups. But in those countries – as in Argentina, Chile andUruguay, or in Brasil – the “indigenous” populations are in the min-ority and might well at some point acquire such spaces. Quite differentis the case of countries with large “indigenous” populations: Mexico,Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia, and even Peru if its identity politicswere to move in other directions. The Aymaras have already explicitlyimagined the possibility of autonomous territory. However, they live infive countries and their situation could well become like that of theKurds in the Middle East. In these countries the conflict betweennation-state and pluri-national state is a serious prospect.

However, in this era of globalization, with its processes of weaken-ing and denationalization of states, the demand for pluri-national statesand citizenship appears much more confused and complicated. For thispresents a serious problem of democratic control of collective or publicauthority, particularly for those populations subject to states createdwithin the coloniality of power, but also for other populations, includ-ing those that identify with their own nation-state. Here again thestronger and more organized Latin American indigenous movementshave already raised the demand for communal authority, or better,for a community structure suited to radical democratic control, in theface of foreign states or, worse, a global authority that is distant, imper-ial, repressive, bureaucratic, corporate and vertical, as seems to beemerging with the Global Imperial Bloc, under the hegemony of theUnited States.25

(CCOICAP), and Cesar Sarasara (CONAP), April 14, 2003, following the GranConsulta Indıgena sobre Reforma Constitucional of April 12–14.

25. On the concept of Global Imperial Bloc, see “Colonialidad del Poder, Globalizacion yDemocracia” (n. 3).

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At this level, the Union Nacional de Comunidades Aymaras(UNCA), on the Peruvian side, initiated a significant project. The com-munities of each local district joined together to form a “MulticomunalDistrital,” several of which would combine to form a “MulticomunalProvincial,” several of which in turn constitute the UNCA. Each direc-tor at whatever level is elected by the base community and can berecalled to it. The design is very similar to the well-known idea ofthe state which is no longer a state because its bases are different,and its origins and control structure even more so. It is a form ofdirect self-government of people associated in a network of commu-nities, but with the force and authority of a whole state.

These latest demands and actions did not emerge from thin air, norare they up in the air. They are the result of the development and rede-finition of an age-old experience of local democracy of the indigenouscommunities. If the majority indigenous populations in certaincountries decide to implement these forms of political authority, theycould join together with more recent and also more incipient tendenciesin other social sectors, such as those that emerged in the recent socialoutbreak in Argentina. In a certain sense, all these movements sharea common vision of social and political change: the democratic productionof a democratic society.

In any case, the redefinition of the national question and of politicaldemocracy are the deepest and most explosive issues, with the greatestpotential for conflict in this part of Latin America. In this sense, we aredealing with the most important challenge that has arisen to the systemof power defined by the attribute of coloniality. This originated here inAmerica, and here too it is entering its most dangerous crisis.

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