Constructions of Tacana indigeneity: regionalism, race and indigenous politics in Amazonian Bolivia (2025)

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‘‘We don’t lie and cheat like the Collas do.’’ Highland–lowland regionalist tensions and indigenous identity politics in Amazonian Bolivia

Esther Lopez

This paper adds to the growing discussion on Bolivia’s conflictive highland–lowland regionalism, going beyond it as predominantly a tension between a mestizo elite and the indigenous poor. Indigenous lowland groups’ as Tacana people in the Amazon utilize their new ‘indigenous identity’ to effectively challenge highland indigenous migrants (colonos) claiming land in their region. For this they link ‘being Tacana’ to the lowland identity of ‘Camba’. Tacana people align with lowland mestizo people participating in Camba spectacles as Beauty Contests to annunciate a common heritage. They situate themselves against highland indigenous migrants (colonos), an arrangement which surprises in light of the ‘indigenous solidarity’ propagated by the indigenous movement and indigenous President Evo Morales.

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Reseña de libro. Gary Van Valen, Indigenous Agency in the Amazon. The Mojos in Liberal and Rubber-Boom Bolivia, 1842–1932. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 249.

Beatriz Vitar

2014

The experiences of American indigenous peoples during the Republican period are of great interest to those who study the socioeconomic conditions imposed by the liberal states. Economic development under the dictates of liberalism and modernization had a profound impact on the Indians, especially those considered bárbaros, living on the frontiers of civilization. This work by Gary Van Valen, dealing with the Mojos people of the Bolivian Amazon between 1842 and 1932, reveals the permanence of indigenous agency under the liberal state and the contemporary rubber boom. Interestingly, the legacy of the missionary system introduced in colonial times played a crucial role in the history of the native peoples inhabiting the Llanos de Mojos. The author defines this system as a " viable mission culture, based on agriculture, artisan industry, and cattle raising " (27): a participatory tradition of mission government organized through the cabildos, an institution created by the Jesuits for the administration of temporalidades (material production of the mission). This indigenous agency, which survived the expulsion of the missionaries and the creation of the Bolivian republic, had an early manifestation in the decision to accept missions as a way of avoiding enslavement by the settlers of Santa Cruz. The liberal states born in the nineteenth century in the former Spanish colonies regarded autonomous indigenous territotories as a barrier to their understandings of progress and civilization. The implementation of liberal reforms in the first half of the nineteenth century, such as the urban transformation of missions, educational change, and the opening of trade and communication routes, did not have the anticipated effect. Despite the reforms, in the mid-nineteenth century the Indians of the former missions of Beni retained the missionary culture. An example is the permanence of the cabildo and its indigenous officials, even though we can observe the rivalry between leaders, the weakening of parcialidades (ethnic division), subordination to the municipal authority, and the phenomenon of mixed unions between members of cabildo elites and whites (carayanas), which introduced new ethnic loyalties. However, Van Valen concludes that the loss of certain elements of the missionary legacy was itself an expression of Indian agency: for instance choosing activities through which they could earn a salary. The invention of the vulcanization process by Goodyear in 1839 produced a strong global demand for rubber in various industries. In the case of Bolivia, it became " a country vulcanized " (58). The rubber industry was promoted by president José Ballivián and the local elites of Santa Cruz. With respect to the peoples who inhabited the Amazon, this became a decisive factor in the process that gradually led to the disappearance of the former missions. The author highlights the flexibility and adaptability of the Mojos peoples who faced the circumstances created by the rubber boom: for instance, the migration from Llanos habitats to the rainforests of the north and also to Brazil. The abandonment of villages to rubber work was considered by Indians as an opportunity to avoid the tax, tribute, and unpaid labor of the former missions. It is clear that the exploitation of rubber produced significant changes in the indigenous communities of Mojos but, as Van Valen emphasizes, " it is equally true that the Indians were not helpless victims " (103–4), because under the control of the Indian elite, the cabildo continued to operate as a guardian of cultural continuity. However, it should be noted that these elites consolidated their power by marriage alliances with whit white authorities and neighbors in Santa Cruz, while worsening the situation of the mass of indigenous people. After 1880, rubber exploitation showed its more negative effects: the pressure from the carayanas to recruit labor for rubber extraction (enganches) and the open breach between commoners and the cabildo elites, who had moved closer to the interests of the white population. These circumstances caused the emigration of the Mojos of the village of Trinidad to San Lorenzo, where they reconstituted the cabildo and organized a resistance movement (1886–87), in which indigenous traditions mixed with elements of colonial Catholic culture. This movement, which was harshly repressed by the white authorities, is analyzed through valuable sources, including the writings of carayanas authorities and the travel stories of three Jesuit missionaries. The author covers in depth the millenarian movement and the emergence of the ventriloquist messiah Andrés Guayocho. This phenomenon deepens our understanding of indigenous responses to colonial rule and later national states: a phenomenon also observed in the twentieth century, in other spaces and with other actors, as part of the native reaction against capitalist exploitation. The Mojos millenarian movement has remarkable similarities with the cult of the " talking cross " (Cruz Parlante) in the so-called " caste war " in Yucatán (Mexico), where Mayan communities were affected by the expansion of sugar plantations into the eastern zone of that peninsula. Moreover, in Bolivia there were other important millenarian movements, including the one that arose among the chiriguanos of the Andean foothills in 1890, a case studied by Thièrry Saignes. Van Valen's book also includes an analysis of another Mojo leader, Santos Noco, who led the return to San Lorenzo, which had been abandoned after the 1887 repression. This cacique enjoyed community consensus because, through their actions, they managed to respect the indigenous land, which allowed for the continuation of traditional cultural practices. At the same time, Noco used " weapons " provided by the liberal discourse of citizenship for the benefit of community interests. After the experience of Guayochería and Noco's leadership in San Lorenzo, in the 1888–1930 period the Mojos experienced great changes. Through the study of two villages, San Ignacio and Trinidad, Van Valen exposes the causes that hindered the deployment of indigenous agency: the consolidation of large estates and the loss of land to the advance of haciendas and sugar planting, along with the growth o f the white population. In this context, the Mojos tried to keep alive practices inherited from the missionary era, such as the cabildo, religious beliefs, and ceremonies. The ability to adapt their cultural habits to new circumstances is reflected perfectly in the machetero dancing that occurs on Bolivian Independence Day. Finally, I would emphasize the words with which the author concludes his acknowledgments (xi-xii), which include thanks " to the Mojos themselves. " I fully agree with the author and his reflections on the meaning of the work of ethno-historians, who spend much time in archives far distant from the subject of their research. Such scholars can at least help reconstruct part of the past for the descendants of those men and women who fought to preserve their culture and identity against external threats. In short, this is a valuable tool that can be used today, in the context of neo-liberal policies and economic globalization. The book contains plans, maps, tables, and photographs and illustrations of different aspects of Mojos life, especially during the rubber boom. There is also a glossary of local variants, Spanish terms, and toponymic-geographic names, which is a very useful aid when reading this excellent book.

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“'The colonos come in like termites to take our land': A study of indigenous leadership, women representatives, and conflict in the bolivian amazon".In Creating Dialogues - TOC and Intro.

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Corrientes River: a landmark case in the development of the Amazonian indigenous movement

Martin Scurrah

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The emergence of the indigenous movement in Andean countries of late has mobilised great numbers of people and has challenged modern society with its recommendations for profound change (see, for example, Van Cott 2005, Yashar 2005, Pajuelo Teves 2007, and Lucero 2008). It has, moreover, forced administrations to change and new Constitutions to be ratified in Bolivia and Ecuador, situations that promise to redefine social and power relations in both countries in the course of the coming decades. However, these winds of change seem to have been shunted away from Peru for three reasons: 1) subtler yet more effective exclusionary mechanisms, 2) Andean communities that used call themselves “agricultural” rather than “indigenous communities”, and 3) a politically and geographically isolated Amazonian indigenous movement, that is, until the expansion of extractive industries into rural areas at the end of the 20 and beginning of the 21 centuries increased its visibility throughout the Ama...

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The Politics of Ese Eja Indigenous Urbanite Images in Distinct Nation States: The Bolivian and Peruvian Amazon

Daniela Peluso

Urban Indigeneities: Being Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century, 2023

Recent focus on Indigenous urbanization in Lowland South America has rightfully drawn attention to the dangers of strictly rural images for Amazonians (Alexiades and Peluso 2015, 2016; Peluso and Alexiades 2005a, 2005b). This chapter is premised on the importance of understanding Indigenous peoples as diversely participating in rural-urban flows, yet it also pays close attention to the particular complications that urban images pose as many conscientiously uphold them. Such an examination does not question the significance of stressing urbanization in the way that Indigenous peoples are represented, yet it aims to be cognizant that such images are often manipulated by agents with vested interests in divesting rural areas of its inhabitance. Indigenous people "living at the borders" in Amazonia actually, apart from the symbolic underpinnings of the phrase as intended in this volume, do often tend to live on physical borders and have a long history of rural-urban flows that might not immediately seem apparent. Indeed, archeologists have now verified that pre-Columbian Amazonian settlements were large-scale and urban, centralized, densely populated, and stratified (Denevan 1992; Erickson 2006; Heckenberger et al. 2008) and were thus metropolises in their own right. Such findings expose large and expansive trade networks and challenge deeply rooted misconceptions of Amazonia as an area of pristine wilderness with minimal human impact on the environment and settlements (Fausto and Heckenberger 2007; Alexiades 2009).

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“Somos Amazonía,” a New Inter-indigenous Identity in the Ecuadorian Amazonia: Beyond a Tacit jus aplidia of Ecological Origin?

Nicolas Maestripieri

Perspectiva Geográfica

The double colonization of the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon, coming from the Southern Amazon but mainly from the Coast and Sierra, has multiplied perceptions, rights, and management methods in this territory. This article explores these differences and reconstructs the history of this colonization and the rights of access to land, which are private for the colonos (settlers) and mostly communal for the indígenas (indigenous people). These legally differentiated groups are similar in their perception of the territory and their socioeconomic and environmental limitations: most agricultural products are not profitable. Between thegrowing metropolises and the remaining forest, the countryside is slowly shrinking. Communities are appearing that combine indigenous people and settlers and that copy the indigenous communities’ rights and practices. However, this communal right is acquired for the Amazonian groups but not for others, indígenas or colonos, defining de facto a jus aplidia, along...

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The Social Category Caboclo - History, Social Organization, Identity and outsider's Social Classification of the rural population of an Amazonian Region (Middle Solimões)

Deborah Magalhães Lima

The term caboclo is widely used in the Brazilian Amazon as a category of social classification. Caboclo is also used in the academic literature to refer to Amazonian peasants. This dissertation discusses the complexity of each use of the term. In colloquial speech, the definition of the social category caboclo is complex, ambiguous, and is associated with a negative stereotype. In anthropology, the definition of caboclos as "Amazonian peasants" is objective, and distinguishes traditional Amazonian inhabitants from recent migrants. Both the colloquial and the academic conceptions of the caboclo consist of outsiders' constructions of categories of social classification. While this work argues in favour of maintaining the academic use because it provides a reference term for a distinctive Amazonian population, it suggests that the conceptual nature of the term, as well as the difference between the colloquial and the academic uses should be acknowledged. This way, the ambiguity of the colloquial use would be avoided and the colloquial concept itself could be regarded as an important theme of analysis. The complexity of meanings and the negative stereotype of the colloquial use are associated with the history of Portuguese colonization of Amazonia. This work discusses the history of Portuguese occupation and ethnic domination of native Amerindians which led to the constitution of Amazonia's low class rural population. The definition of caboclos as "Amazonian peasants" is discussed, based on field work carried out in the middle Solimões region. Caboclos are described as a peasant sector of the economy of this region, and their economy is characterized by two productive spheres, distinguished by different relations of production: production for direct use and commodity production. An economic ethnography of rural communities in the two main regional habitats, várzea and terra-firme, shows the diversity of social and economic conditions in these rural communities. An analysis of the kinship basis of the social organization of rural communities demonstrates the role of kinship in the economic, political and religious organization of rural settlements. While religion constitutes a basis for the construction of community identity, religious practice does not constitute a basis for the formation of a symbolic identity at the level of the caboclo social category at large. Religion both creates links between caboclos and other social categories which follow the same religion and differentiates between caboclos with different religious identities. This work argues for the lack of involvement in a political movement as the reason for the absence of a collective identity among caboclos. Contemporary concern for the conservation of Amazonia may provide a basis for the constitution of a political consciousness among caboclos. The rural people's recognition of the role they might play in this new phase of Amazonian politics might lead to the creation of a collective identity and motivate the people to adopt their own term of self-ascription.

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Weber, K. 2013. "Chiquitano and the Multiple Meanings of Being Indigenous in Bolivia." Bulletin of Latin American Research 32(2): 194–209.

Katinka Weber

To be 'indigenous' in Bolivia is not only a rights-and resource-bearing identity, but the national MAS party has recently actively promoted the 'indigenous' as an inclusive national political project. This article seeks to shed further light on the different meanings Bolivians attach to 'indigeneity' by focusing on the Chiquitano people of the Bolivian lowlands. This reveals that while Chiquitano employ the term to advance their political project, some nevertheless simultaneously reject its power to categorise and subordinate Chiquitano. This highlights some of the paradoxes faced by those employing an indigenous political strategy, be it at the local or 'more inclusive' national level.

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Constructions of Tacana indigeneity: regionalism, race and indigenous politics in Amazonian Bolivia (2025)

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