Indigenous Revolution in Ecuador and Bolivia, 1990–2005

INDIGENOUS REVOLUTION IN ECUADOR AND BOLIVIA, JEFFERY M. PAIGE INDIGENOUS REVOLUTION IN ECUADOR AND BOLIVIA, e University of Arizona Press www .uapress .arizona .edu © by e Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved. Published ISBN- : - - - - (hardcover) Cover design by Leigh McDonald Cover photo: Bolivian Indians and peasants march enroute to La Paz demanding naturalisation of gas. © Reuters Photographer / Reuters Pictures Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Paige, Jeery M., author. Title: Indigenous revolution in Ecuador and Bolivia, – / Jeery M. Paige. Description: Tucson : e University of Arizona Press, . | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identiers: LCCN | ISBN (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Revolutions—Bolivia—History—th century. | Revolutions—Bolivia—His- tory—st century. | Revolutions—Ecuador—History—th century. | Revolutions—Ecua- dor—History—st century. | Indigenous peoples—Bolivia. | Indigenous peoples—Ecuador. | Peasant uprisings—Bolivia. | Peasant uprisings—Ecuador. | Bolivia—History—– | Ecuador—History— – Classication: LCC F .P | DDC ./—dc LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ Printed in the United States of America ♾ is paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z. - (Permanence of Paper). Political revolution nds itself only in the symbolic revolution that makes it exist fully. PIERRE BOURDIEU CONTENTS List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Abbreviations xvii Prologue: The World Turned Upside Down Introduction: Modernity, Indigeneity, and Revolution PART I. THE NATION, THE LIVING JUNGLE, AND THE COMMUNAL VISION IN ECUADOR . The Nation and the Living Jungle in the Amazon ¥¦§¨©ª«¨¬® ¬«§¯ °±²³± ´³©³µ©³®, ¶³·³¨¸ °¦§¹¦«, ³¦º »³©¸¼¦ ½³¦§« . ECUARUNARI: Sumak Kawsay and the Communal Vision ¥¦§¨©ª«¨¬® ¬«§¯ ¾¨¸·¿¦ À¨¦¨®³Á³, Â¹±Ã¨©§¼ Ä¯¼¸³¦Å¼, ³¦º Æ¹«® Ä¼¦§¨¦§¼ . Pachakutik: Indigenous Jeffersonians ¥¦§¨©ª«¨¬® ¬«§¯ Ç¨©È¦«±¼ É³¦§³¸¨±³, ½³¸ª³º¼© Ê¹«®¯²¨, ³¦º °¹µ« À«§¹³Ë³ VIII CONTENTS PART II. “INDIAN REVOLUTION” AND THE MOVEMENT TOWARD SOCIALISM MAS IN BOLIVIA . Katarism-Indianism in the Andes ¥¦§¨©ª«¨¬® ¬«§¯ Ì¨¸«²¨ Ê¹«®²¨, Í¹Å¨¦«¼ ¶¼Î³®, Ï³Ã¸¼ »³±³¦«, ³¦º Í¹Å¨¦«³ Ä¯¼Ð¹¨ . The Sacred Leaf ¥¦§¨©ª«¨¬® ¬«§¯ Æ¨¼¦«¸º³ Ñ¹©«§³ ³¦º Ò¹¸«¼ ½³¸³Ó³© . MAS Unionists: Che Guevara and Túpac Katari ¥¦§¨©ª«¨¬® ¬«§¯ ¥®³³Á °ª³¸¼®, Ì«º¨¸ ½¹©Á¼, ³¦º ÍºÅ³© Ï³§³¦³ . Indianism and Marxism ¥¦§¨©ª«¨¬® ¬«§¯ °¦§¼¦«¼ Ï¨©¨º¼, ÄÔ®³© Õ³ª³©©¼, ³¦º ¶Ö¹¸ Ï©³º³ Conclusion: Twenty- First- Century Revolution Epilogue Appendix Notes Index ILLUSTRATIONS MAPS . Ecuador political divisions, . Bolivia political divisions, FIGURES . Marlon Santi and Humberto Cholango, . Indigenous march in Quito, . Indigenous demonstrators break military lines, . Lucio Gutiérrez and Antonio Vargas, . Felipe Quispe, . Leonilda Zurita, . Aymara protesters descend from El Alto into La Paz, . Deputy Evo Morales leads coca producers’ protest march, TABLES . Indigenous uprisings in Ecuador, – . Indigenous-popular uprisings in Bolivia, – PREFACE HIS PROJECT had its beginnings one quiet Sunday afternoon in the summer of when I picked up the travel section of the Ann Arbor TNews (now sadly defunct) and saw a photo of a Bolivian peasant kneel- ing before an altar dedicated to none other than Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who had been betrayed by that very same peasantry and killed there forty years before. A gigantic bust of Guevara was the centerpiece of the altar and inscribed below were the words “tu ejemplo alumbra un nuevo amanecer” (your example lights a new dawn). I was stunned. e peasantry who had helped kill Guevara was now worshiping him. Something big must be happening in Bolivia. It took two years for me to nally visit Bolivia and nd that not only the peasants but the president of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, as it is now oßcially known, thought of himself as an “hijo del Che” (son of Che). But the president, Evo Morales, the rst indigenous person to rule the area that is now Bolivia since the Spanish conquest, rejected armed struggle and Marxism—what some would say were Guevara’s core principles. He also embraced Túpac Katari, the Aymara leader of the Bolivian phase of the great indigenous uprising of –. Something big was indeed going on in Bolivia—the overthrow of the political and symbolic system inherited from the Spanish conquest and the coming to power of the indigenous majority for the rst time in the history of republican Bolivia. But it was unlike the Nicaraguan or Cuban revolution and, indeed, unlike past revolutions in most respects. It was based on a mass uprising of XII PREFACE the indigenous majority that brought the aairs of a modern nation-state to a complete stop, but Evo Morales assumed power through a democratic election (and has subsequently been reelected twice) and the constitutional order was not violated. Morales was a union organizer in the coca elds of Cochabamba but is widely regarded as the rst indigenous president. What was this peculiar combination of indigeneity, massive resistance, and liberal democracy? Was it a revolution in the twentieth-century sense of the word? Was it a combination of mass protest and electoral democracy or, perhaps, something entirely new, an emerging form of twenty-rst-century revolution? I went to Bolivia to nd out by asking the leaders of the great upheaval themselves what they thought it was, how it came about, and what they wanted for the future. eir answers and my reäections on them make up the second half of this volume. I was fortunate to be accompanied on my rst trip to Bolivia in by my friend and colleague Muge Gocek, who is always ready for a new foreign adventure. At her suggestion we paid a courtesy call on the chair of the sociol- ogy department at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA, Higher University of San Andrés), Eduardo Paz Rada. Before I knew it, Eduardo had kindly put me in touch with several of his colleagues and friends who were close to the revolutionary process and my eld research interviews were underway. I also met Pablo Stefanoni, bureau chief of Le Monde Diplomatique in La Paz, and his colleague Hervé do Alto, who were also helpful in providing intro- ductions. I returned the following summer () and completed my Bolivian interviews with the aid of a talented Bolivian research assistant, Rodrigo Elio. e details appear in the appendix but I found particularly helpful an article in the La Paz daily La Razón that nominated the “six people closest to Evo.” I interviewed them all as well as leaders of Morales’s party, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS, Movement Toward Socialism), and delegations in the Senate and the National Assembly. I also interviewed the leaders of the constituent peasant unions that had come together to form MAS in . e goal of the interviews was to talk to top members of the MAS party just below Morales. But I soon found that an important current, Katarism-Indianism, was not well represented among them so extended the interviews to include leaders in this group as well. I found pictures of Che Guevara in some of the MAS oßces and often the indigenous äag, the wiphala (the rainbow banner of indigeneity), or even pictures of Túpac Katari hanging on their walls. At the same time as I was completing my eldwork in Bolivia, I was super- vising an extraordinary dissertation by Mandi Bane, who had spent more than a PREFACE XIII year living in a Kichwa village in the Andes of Ecuador. In the indigenous people of Ecuador had risen up in an enormous protest that shut down the country for a week. Indeed, Ecuador was where this new form of indigenous revolution began. It subsequently spread to most of the indigenous populations of South America, but Ecuador and Bolivia were the places where it had had the greatest success. In the s it was commonplace to hear the Ecuadorian indigenous movement referred to as the strongest in Latin America. Evo Morales even traveled to Ecuador to nd out why Bolivia, with an indigenous majority, had had so little success in contrast to Ecuador, where the indigenous popula- tion was a minority. In the end Morales, riding the back of a huge indigenous uprising, took national power while the Ecuadorian movement was sidelined after it formed a successful electoral coalition to do the same. e two most powerful indigenous movements in the history of Latin America occurred a decade apart, one in power and the other not. e comparison was irresistible. So in I traveled to Ecuador to replicate the research I had by then completed in Bolivia. Once again I had the enormous good fortune of having the assistance of distinguished local social scientists—especially Carlos de la Torre and his spouse, Carmen Martínez. Carlos assigned a graduate student, Lucía Yamá, to me as a research assistant. is duty also fullled a degree require- ment in her program. She had completed her own eld research interviewing indigenous social movement leaders in Colombia and was well connected in the indigenous movement in Ecuador through an anonymous third party who was himself a leader of the movement. e general political framework was similar to Bolivia. A powerful indigenous organization had created an initially successful political party and with Lucía’s help I interviewed many of the leaders of both. Before Mandi Bane left Michigan for a career in public service, I asked her to prepare a list of nationally prominent indigenous leaders. I later shared this list with distinguished Ecuadorianist Marc Becker, who added one name but in general found Mandi’s list to be satisfactory. As in Bolivia, I found that the leaders were expansive in their views and happy to talk with me (see the appendix for details). I asked the same questions, mutatis mutandis, in both countries. eir answers and my commentary make up the rst half of this volume. e names of all those interviewed in both countries may be found in the interviews section at the end of the appendix. ey will be familiar to most specialists.

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