NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Decolonizing Nation-States in Latin/X America: Twenty First Century Postcolonial Constitutionalism and T
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Decolonizing Nation-States in Latin/x America: Twenty First Century Postcolonial Constitutionalism and the Paradoxes of (Trans)nationalism, 1989-2014 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of Sociology By Ricardo Sánchez Cárdenas EVANSTON, ILLINOIS June 2017 2 © Copyright Ricardo Sánchez Cárdenas 2017 All Rights Reserved 3 ABSTRACT Decolonizing Nation-States in Latin/x America: Twenty First Century Postcolonial Constitutionalism and the Paradoxes of (Trans)nationalism, 1989-2014 Ricardo Sánchez Cárdenas This dissertation explores the renewed historical significance of the (geo)political1 demand to redraft national constitutions in the Americas. Building on previous2 work, my dissertation constructs a transnational lens to underline the intersectionality of the social struggles that catalyzed the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly process begun in 1999 and the Ecuadorian experience during 2007-2008: the first and the last processes behind what has been studied under the rubric of Latin American “neoconstitutionalism,” which I argue must be analyzed in relation to a broader postcolonial genealogy of constitution-making and grassroots organization. My historical-comparative approach points to the dual objective of documenting the contentious (geo)politics surrounding the last Venezuelan and Ecuadorian constituent assembly experiences (their origins and aftermath) while deconstructing (mis)representations of contemporary Latin/x American politics. By dismissing these experiences as simple power grab mechanisms of charismatic or populist caudillos, some accounts of contemporary (geo)politics in 1 I often use prefixes in parenthesis before a word to suggest a conceptual ambivalence that ought to be further investigated and theorized. In this case, (geo)politics intends to underline the challenge to take a transnational perspective in political analysis, not merely in the militaristic fashion that we traditionally understand geopolitics but rather underlining the need to understand simultaneously a series of social struggles and power structures. 2 Previously I have compared the Brazilian experience in 1989 during the democratic transition from military rule to the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly of 1998 which denounced neoliberalism as an obstacle to endogenous development and participatory democratization (B.A. thesis, Vassar College, 2008), and historicized the last two constituent assembly processes in the Americas, Bolivia (2006-2009) and Ecuador (2008-2009), focusing on the transformative concept of plurinationality –a long-standing guiding principle of the praxis of Andean indigenous peoples’ social movements (M.A. thesis, Northwestern University, 2010). 4 the region end up portraying Latin/x Americans as passive masses unfit for democratic and/or revolutionary institutional innovation. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on different forms of (counter)cultural production related to grassroots organization and mobilization that resulted in, and were further catalyzed by, the ongoing demand to redraft national constitutions across Latin America. My research design, focusing on the praxis of organized subaltern subjects that have played a key role in articulating the demand to convene participatory constituent assemblies and invoke the resulting constitutions in their cultural production, seeks to theorize the subaltern subjectivities at play on the redefinition of modern Latin American nations and states in the 21st century. This objective led me to identify crucial conflicts that emerged during the last Venezuelan and Ecuadorian Constituent Assemblies and informed my initial coding of primary documents such as transcripts of constituent assemblies’ debates as well as the sampling for interviews with elected representatives and other key (geo)political actors, particularly Afro- Amerindian and migrant women. In the aftermath of these processes, I have been able to develop a series of ethnographic engagements in social spaces that highlight the importance of considering the role that expressive cultures continue to play in these constituent processes. I show how the importance of expressive (counter)cultures is particularly salient in the Venezuelan case. The historical scope delineated by these national cases contributes to the analysis and theorization of power relations that characterize neoliberal (geo)politics across the Americas. In this vein, the in-depth accounts of the Venezuelan and Ecuadorian constituent assemblies are contextualized by referencing two “negative” cases where the demands to redraft national 5 constitutions have been blocked by political elites (Chile and Honduras) as well as the experience of Bolivia where the redrafting of the national Constitution (2006-2009) was met with violent opposition. Relying on secondary sources to reference these complementary cases, this dissertation contrasts the Venezuelan and Ecuadorian constituent processes on three different levels ripe for comparative analysis: 1) between nationalities and nation-states, 2) between postcolonial/modern nation-state actors and transnational subaltern subjects, and 3) between the embodied experiences of citizens and non-citizens. More than assessing the institutional capacity or the extent of revolutionary transformation of the Venezuelan and Ecuadorian states as a result of these constitution-making processes, this dissertation explores the effects these processes have had in the revolutionary imagination forged by transnational organizations and mobilization of Afro-Amerindian social movements and human rights activists focused on queer and feminist struggles. Ultimately this dissertation maps the transnational circulation of (geo)political projects calling for the refounding of the nation and the reinstitutionalization of the state as mechanisms to address postcolonial inequalities. In other words, it constitutes a (geo)political (auto)ethnography (Pratt, 1991, 1992) of the challenge to reimagine the modern nation-state in 21st century Latin America by focusing on the performative gesture of convening participatory constituent assemblies in Venezuela (1999) and Ecuador (2008-2009) so as to explore the renewed historical significance of the right to “freedom of assembly” (Butler, 2013, 2015; Osterweil, 2015) and contemporary enactments of renewed forms of postcolonial (trans)nationalism.3 3 Here I seek to contribute to a line of research and reflection opened by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth (1963), particularly in the chapter “On National Culture” where he analyzes (trans)nationalism as “the fundamental issue of the legitimate claim to a nation” which has mobilized social struggles in postcolonial contexts. The 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Knowledge production is always a collective pursuit as it requires collective efforts and generates epistemic communities. This is perhaps the single most important lesson that emerges from sociology as research practice and scientific theorizing. The sociological imagination developed in order to carry out this work of research and analysis is the result of both the many people I met during the process and influenced me one way or another during my lifetime more generally. All of those generous enough to share their views and experiences, in informal exchanges and more structured interviews and those who keep various sorts of archives I encountered during the last decade deserve much of the credit to whatever proves useful in this dissertation. Research funding for this project was provided by Vassar College, Northwestern University, including from the Buffet Center for Global Studies and the Latin American Studies cluster, and Universidad Central del Ecuador (UCE). The capacity to carry out sociological research particularly requires institutional support, which I have been lucky to find in various entities and organizations I have been a part of during the last decade. For this and other reasons not only individuals nor institutions should be acknowledged but also the often convoluted, interlocking collective memories and histories that we collapse under any given conception of society or people. Needless to say, the bibliography at the end of this document is another place to find more of those whom deserve credit for providing me with building blocks to construct my ambivalence of “(trans)national” evokes the need to explore how “[n]ational culture is the collective thought process of a people to describe, justify, and extoll the actions whereby they have joined forces and remained strong. National culture in the underdeveloped countries, therefore, must be at the very heart of the liberation struggle these countries are waging. […] The problem is knowing what role these [wo]men have in store for their people, the type of social relations they will establish and their idea of the future of humanity” (Fanon [1963] 2004, pp. 168-169). 7 thinking. I owe inspiration to the generosity of the Venezuelans I had the privilege to meet during the course of my research in Caracas and Chicago, the daily struggles of my compatriots both in Ecuador and Chicago, and those fought historically by Latin/x communities both north and south of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. The motivation behind this work comes from the critical decolonizing potential of taking seriously the challenges posited by the praxis of the Afro- Amerindian Diaspora(s) in the project of remaking modernity. I also want