UCC Library and UCC researchers have made this item openly available. Please let us know how this has helped you. Thanks! Title Comparative indigeneities in contemporary Latin America: an analysis of ethnopolitics in Mexico and Bolivia Author(s) Warfield, Cian Publication date 2020 Original citation Warfield, C. 2020. Comparative indigeneities in contemporary Latin America: an analysis of ethnopolitics in Mexico and Bolivia. PhD Thesis, University College Cork. Type of publication Doctoral thesis Rights © 2020, Cian Warfield. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Item downloaded http://hdl.handle.net/10468/10551 from Downloaded on 2021-10-09T12:31:58Z Ollscoil na hÉireann, Corcaigh National University of Ireland, Cork Comparative Indigeneities in Contemporary Latin America: Analysis of Ethnopolitics in Mexico and Bolivia Thesis presented by Cian Warfield, BA, M.Res for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University College Cork Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies Head of Department: Professor Nuala Finnegan Supervisor: Professor Nuala Finnegan 2020 Contents Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………………………………03 Abstract………………………….……………………………………………….………………………………………….06 Introduction…………………………..……………………………………………………………..…………………..08 Chapter One Tierra y Libertad: The Zapatista Movement and the Struggle for Ethnoterritoriality in Mexico ……………………………………………………………….………………………………..……………………..54 Chapter Two The Struggle for Rural and Urban Ethnoterritoriality in Evo Morales’s Bolivia: The 2011 TIPNIS Controversy and Neo-Andean Architecture……………………..……………………………118 Chapter Three The Politics of Space in Chiapas: An Analysis of the Declaraciones de la Selva Lacandona…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………192 Chapter Four (De)Constructing Andean Utopia in Evo Morales’s Bolivia: Analysis of Presidential Discourse and the 2011 TIPNIS Controversy………………………..………………...………..………..263 Conclusion ………………………………………………………..…………………………………….………...…...332 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………………...……..………...340 2 Acknowledgements There are many individuals and groups who deserve my acknowledgment for the immeasurable support that they have shown me over the five years it took me to complete this project. First, I must thank my research supervisor Professor Nuala Finnegan who is most deserving of my gratitude for, without whom, this thesis would not have been possible. I thank Professor Finnegan for her ideas, her time, and her endless patience, all of which made this a better thesis. Professor Finnegan encouraged me at each and every stage of this long and, sometimes, difficult process and her belief in my capabilities was unwavering, even during some of the most testing times. She is a wonderful mentor who has taught me so much and, for that, I am grateful to have been her student. I profoundly thank my wonderful parents Kathleen and Vincent for their sacrifice and encouragement which has endured throughout every minute of my time in education. Their constant support has allowed me to achieve these great heights in education and, for that, I am deeply grateful. I would also like to extend this gratitude to my wide circle of family and friends for their curiosity and support in my education. I reserve the greatest appreciation for my brother and best friend Niall. I thank him for his humour, his strength and his curiosity at each and every stage of the doctoral process. I must, of course, thank the staff of the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies (UCC) who helped me in myriad ways during my time at university. In particular, I would especially like to acknowledge the support of Dr 3 Helena Buffery, who was head of department during much of my time as a PhD researcher and who guaranteed me a measure of financial support during these past few years with the award of the PhD scholarship; I am grateful for the burden which it diminished and the belief in me which it symbolised. I also wish to acknowledge my PhD colleagues: Eva Cabrejas and Rhys Davies for their friendship; Dr Nadia Abaladejo Garcia whose friendship, curiosity and conversations provided me with a well of constant support during some of the most challenging stages of my research; Dr Donna Alexander whose advice and constant encouragement provided me with reassurance when I needed it most. During 2017, I undertook fieldwork in Bolivia as part of my doctoral research and there are many people and organisations to acknowledge and thank as a result. I would like to thank the Universidad Técnica de Oruro (UTO) which hosted me, in particular Professor Oscar Vargas, Dr Milton Salas and their respective families who all warmly welcomed me to Oruro and their homes and who went above and beyond to help support my fieldtrip in any way they possibly could. Further to this, I wish to acknowledge and thank the following for their support while abroad: Orlando Nicolás Arce Cabrera, the staff at the Dirección de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, Fundación Tierra, Centro de Documentación e Información Bolivia (CEDIB), the staff at the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, Freddy Villagomez (CIPCA), Julio Cuervo, Daniel Manzanedo, Alex Villea Limaco, Rodrigo Mariace, Helga Caithin Ayala, Cecilia Matinzo Iriarte, Maclovio Macroni Humerez, Limber Sanchez (CEPA), Valentina Sanchez, Ann Chaplin. I also wish to thank fellow Bolivianist Dr Britta Katharina Matthes for her encouragement during my PhD and for her willingness to openly share with me her extensive knowledge on the subject of Bolivian politics. 4 Finally, I would like to acknowledge and thank my doctoral examiners Professor Thea Pitman (University of Leeds) and Dr Carlos Garrido Castellano (University College Cork) as well as the chair Dr James Kapalo (University College Cork) for ensuring a wonderful viva experience during the unusual and challenging circumstances of the 2020 global pandemic. 5 Abstract This thesis engages in a comparative analysis of two key ethnopolitical case studies drawn from Bolivia and Mexico. The intention is to critically evaluate the politically diverse ways in which Indigenous groups respond to the challenge of coloniality as they seek to restore their ethnic rights. The 2011 TIPNIS conflict between President Evo Morales (2006-2019) and lowland Indigenous communities reveals the difficulties faced by Bolivia’s former Indigenous president who struggled to find equilibrium between ethnic rights and national economic development. While Morales himself claimed to represent the interests of all Bolivian ethnic groups, the TIPNIS conflict showed that a policy of neoextractivism in combination with territorial development intersected with the struggle for ethnoterritoriality to reproduce scenes of chaos, conflict and socio-territorial change which sometimes distorted, at other times, enhanced his image as an Andean-decoloniser. Comparatively, in 2003, the Zapatista social justice movement bypassed Mexican state relations in order to satisfy their search for ethnoterritoriality. While the Zapatistas struggled in the midst of this pursuit against a global capitalist framework, which they claim, masquerades as international free-trade alliances and foreign corporatism, the rebels have become an important ethnopolitical model of resistance in the context of a neoliberal Mexico. Conceptually framed around notions of place and space, this interdisciplinary study uses a broad range of theoretical approaches (decolonial theory, discourse theory, utopia studies) which facilitates an innovative reading of key speeches, declarations, government policy documents, communiqués and locally-sourced journalistic material and relies on a range of scholarship drawn from cultural studies, political science, 6 anthropology and philosophy. Through its comparative design, this thesis not only generates fresh and original perspectives on contemporary ethnopolitical activity between Mexico and Bolivia but also reveals the challenges, opportunities, similarities and differences which shape diverse forms of ethnopolitcal resistance across the region today. 7 Introduction Introduction In Latin American Studies, ethnopolitics, or the study of Indigenous political activism, has evolved across a range of scholarship, enhanced by an understanding of how Indigenous social movements resist the politics of the international neoliberal order from their specific places and spaces of ethnopolitical thought and action. From the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (hereafter EZLN) in Mexico, which advances a model of ethnopolitical autonomy outside the legal and conceptual limits of the neoliberal state, to the politics of Evo Morales (2006-2019) and the Movimiento Al Socialismo – Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos (hereafter MAS- IPSP), which formally shaped and reworked the foundations of Bolivian state matter in a more ethnically inclusive way, it is clear that ethnopolitics is practiced in diverse ways, across multiple geographies, producing a host of often opposing outcomes. While scholarship tends to endorse alterity in the analysis of ethnopolitical social movements in Latin America (López Caballero and Acevedo-Rodrigo 2018), frequently 8 locating the study of Indigenous political activism within specific local and national contexts, this thesis offers the reader an alternative view whereby I explore the implications of ethnopolitical research from a "hemispheric frame of reference" (Castellanos et al. 2012: 1). What happens to our understanding of ethnopolitics