Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T10:28:09.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Neo-extractivist controversies in Bolivia: indigenous perspectives on global norms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2018

Jessika Eichler
Jessika Eichler*
Affiliation:
Research Fellow at the Law & Anthropology Department of Max Planck Institute, and FU Berlin, Latin American Institute, TrAndeS, Lateinamerika-Institut, Berlin, 10589, Germany
*
E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Ever since Evo Morales Ayma became Bolivia's first indigenous president in 2006 and the promulgation of a human-rights-enhancing Constitution (2009) thereafter, indigenous peoples’ rights were gradually recognised. Yet, with the increasing demand for natural resources, indigenous communities have been adversely affected by the state's neo-extractivist policies. While global indigenous rights norms protect their fundamental rights, legal-implementation processes in the country's lowlands reveal dilemmas in terms of the value of laws in practice as well as its reinterpretation on the ground. Namely, in the communities, different positions and camps have emerged in terms of the role and functions of participatory rights. Despite the potential of the latter in strengthening collective-rights regimes and self-determination, community leaders, advisers and other members report how such processes fracture and weaken decision-making mechanisms and human rights claims.

Keywords

human rightsindigenous perspectivesparticipatory rightsdecision-making mechanismsnatural resourcesBolivia
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 88 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achtenberg, E (2012) Bolivia: End of the Road for TIPNIS Consulta, North American Congress on Latin America, Rebel Currents, NACLA Report on the Americas.Google Scholar
Ackerman, LA and Klein, LF (2000) Women and Power in Native North America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Albró, R (2010) Confounding cultural citizenship and constitutional reform in Bolivia. Latin American Perspectives 37, 216–233.Google Scholar
Anaya, J (2009) The right of indigenous peoples to self-determination in the post declaration era. In Charters, C and Stavenhagen, R (eds), Making the Declaration Work: The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Copenhagen: Eks-Skolens Trykkeri.Google Scholar
Andreucci, D and Radhuber, IM (2015) Limits to ‘counter-neoliberal’ reform: mining expansion and the marginalisation of post-extractivist forces in Evo Morales's Bolivia. Geoforum 9, 288.Google Scholar
Baldi, CA (2012) New Latin American constitutionalism: challenging Eurocentrism and decolonizing history. Critical Legal Thinking: Law & the Political. Available at http://criticallegalthinking.com/2012/02/06/new-latin-american-constitutionalism-challenging-eurocentrism-decolonizing-history (accessed 24 May 2018).Google Scholar
Bascopé, Sanjinés I (2012) Madre Tierra y Estado Plurinacional: Análisis sobre la construcción, contenidos y viabilidad de la ley de la Madre Tierra. La Paz: El País.Google Scholar
BBC Mundo (2017) El Tribunal Constitutional de Bolivia autoriza a Evo Morales a buscar la reelección como presidente sin límites, BBC Mundo. Available at http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-42159445 (accessed 24 May 2018).Google Scholar
Behabib, S (2002) The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Böhrt, Irahola C (2010) Introducción al nuevo sistema constitucional boliviano, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Stockholm: International IDEA.Google Scholar
Bolivian Office of the Ombudsman (2011) Informe Defensorial Respecto a la Violación de los Derechos Humanos en la Marcha Indígena. La Paz: Defensoría del Pueblo de Bolivia.Google Scholar
Buttkereit, H (2014) TIPNIS-Anführerin unterstützt Evo Morales. amerika21: Nachrichten und Analysen aus Lateinamerika. Available at https://amerika21.de/2014/08/103631/morales-unterstuetzerin (accessed 24 May 2018).Google Scholar
Canessa, A (2012a) Conflict, claim and contradiction in the new indigenous state of Bolivia. Working Paper Series desiguALdades.net 22, 1–40.Google Scholar
Canessa, A (2012b) Intimate Indigeneities: Race, Sex and History in the Small Spaces of Andean Life. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Canessa, A (2014) Conflict, claim and contradiction in the new ‘indigenous’ state of Bolivia. Critique of Anthropology 34, 153–173.Google Scholar
Clavero, B (2010) Bolivia entre constitucionalismo colonial y constitucionalismo emancipatorio. In Moisés Chivi Vargas, I (ed.), Bolivia, Nueva Constitución Política del Estado: Conceptos elementales para su desarrollo normativo. La Paz: Convergencia Comunicación Global.Google Scholar
Colque, G (2017) TIPNIS bajo asedio. La Paz: Fundación TIERRA.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J and Comaroff, JL (2008) Law and Disorder in the Postcolony. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J and Comaroff, JL (2009) Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Corntassel, J and Holder, C (2002) Indigenous peoples and multicultural citizenship: bridging collective and individual rights. Human Rights Quarterly 24, 126–151.Google Scholar
de Sousa Santos, B (1995) Toward a New Common Sense: Law, Science and Politics in the Paradigmatic Transition. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dresch, P and James, W (2000) Fieldwork and the passage of time. In Dresch, P, James, W and Parkin, D (eds), Anthropologists in a Wider World. Oxford/New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Eichler, J (2016) Indigenous peoples’ land rights in the Bolivian lowlands: ways to mitigate inequalities in resource-related issues. International Human Rights Law Review 5, 119–145.Google Scholar
Fabricant, N and Postero, N (2015) Sacrificing indigenous bodies and lands: the political-economic history of lowland Bolivia in light of the recent TIPNIS debate. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 20, 452–474.Google Scholar
Fabricant, N and Postero, N (2018) Performing indigeneity in Bolivia: the struggle over the TIPNIS. Anthropology Quarterly, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J (1994) The Antipolitics Machine: Development, Depolitization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Fontana, LB and Grugel, J (2016) The politics of indigenous participation through ‘free prior and informed consent’: reflections from the Bolivian case. World Development 77, 249–261.Google Scholar
Francescone, K (2015) Cooperative miners and the politics of abandonment in Bolivia. The Extractive Industries and Society 2, 746–755.Google Scholar
Freeman, M (1995) Are there collective human rights? Political Studies 43, 25–40.Google Scholar
Goodale, M (2007) The power of right(s): tracking empires of law and new modes of social resistance in Bolivia (and elsewhere). In Goodale, M and Merry, SE (eds), The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law between the Global and the Local. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Guardian, The (2016) Bolivia's president Evo Morales to run again despite referendum ruling it out, The Guardian, 18 December. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/18/bolivias-president-evo-morales-to-run-again-despite-referendum-ruling-it-out (accessed 24 May 2018).Google Scholar
Guidi, R (2015) Guaraníes de Bolivia protestan nuevas políticas que abren sus territorios a exploración de gas y de petroleo. Mongabay LATAM. Available at https://es.mongabay.com/2015/10/guaranies-de-bolivia-protestan-nuevas-politicas-que-abren-sus-territorios-a-exploracion-de-gas-y-de-petroleo/ (accessed 24 May 2018).Google Scholar
Hinojosa, L et al. (2015) Gas and development: rural territorial dynamics in Tarija, Bolivia. World Development 73, 105–117.Google Scholar
Hirsch, SM (1999) The Capitanía of the Izozo: the struggle for political autonomy among the Guaraní Indians of eastern Bolivia. In Miller, ES (ed.), Peoples of the Gran Chaco. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Kaup, BZ (2010) Powering Up: Latin America's Energy Challenges: Bolivia's Nationalised Natural Gas: Social and Economic Stability under Morales, LSE IDEAS Reports. London: London School of Economics and Political Science.Google Scholar
Koskenniemi, M (2001) The Gentle Civiliser of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kuokkanen, R (2012) Self-determination and indigenous women's rights at the intersection of international human rights. Human Rights Quarterly 34, 225–250.Google Scholar
Kuper, A (2003) The return of the native. Current Anthropology 44, 389–402.Google Scholar
Laing, A (2015) Resource sovereignties in Bolivia: re-conceptualising the relationship between indigenous identities and the environment during the TIPNIS conflict. Bulletin of Latin American Research 34, 149–166.Google Scholar
Lalander, R (2017) Ethnic rights and the dilemma of extractive development in plurinational Bolivia. International Journal of Human Rights 21, 464–481.Google Scholar
Layme, B (2015) Normas limitan el trabajo de las ONG en Bolivia, Página Siete. Available at http://www.paginasiete.bo/gente/2015/8/17/normas-limitan-trabajo-bolivia-66803.html (accessed 24 May 2018).Google Scholar
Lenzerini, F (2014) The Culturalization of Human Rights Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
López Camacho, E (2015) Frontera petrolera crece y afecta a 37 áreas indígenas, Los Tiempos. Available at http://www.cedib.org/post_type_titulares/frontera-petrolera-crece-y-afecta-a-37-areas-indigenas-los-tiempos-28-7-15/ (accessed 24 May 2018).Google Scholar
Lucero, JA (2006) Representing ‘real Indians’: the challenges of indigenous authenticity and strategic constructivism in Ecuador and Bolivia. Latin American Research Review 42, 31–56.Google Scholar
Luhmann, N (1984) Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Masaki, K (2010) Rectifying the anti-politics of citizen participation: insights from the internal politics of a subaltern community in Nepal. Journal of Development Studies 46, 1196–1215.Google Scholar
McCormick, M (2017) ‘They lied’: Bolivia's untouchable Amazon lands at risk once more, The Guardian, 11 September. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/11/they-lied-bolivia-untouchable-amazon-lands-tipnis-at-risk-once-more (accessed 24 May 2018).Google Scholar
McKay, MC and Benjamin, C (2010) A vision for fulfilling the indivisible rights of indivisible rights of indigenous women. In Hartley, J, Joffe, P and Preston, J (eds), Realizing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Triumph, Hope, and Action. Vancouver: Purich Publishing Ltd.Google Scholar
McNeish, J-A (2013) Extraction, protest and indigeneity in Bolivia: the TIPNIS effect. Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 8, 221–242.Google Scholar
Merry, SE (2006a) Anthropology and international law. Annual Review of Anthropology 35, 99–116.Google Scholar
Merry, SE (2006b) Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Merry, SE (2006c) Transnational human rights and local activism: mapping the middle. American Anthropologist 108, 38–51.Google Scholar
Muguerza, L (2011) El Proceso de Construcción de una Práctica Tuitiva de Derechos y su Afectación por una Coyuntura Adversa: el Caso Boliviano. In Martínez, FR (ed.), Los derechos en Latinoamérica: tendencias judiciales recientes. Madrid: Editorial Complutense.Google Scholar
Paz, S (2012) La marche indígena del TIPNIS en Bolivia y su relación con los modelos extractivos de América del Sur. Niteroi: Departamento de Geografia, Universidade Federal Fluminense.Google Scholar
Periódico Digital ERBOL (2017) No somos animales para vivir solamente de la naturaleza, ERBOL COMUNICACIONES. Available at http://www.erbol.com.bo/noticia/social/23082017/no_somos_animales_para_vivir_solamente_de_la_naturaleza (accessed 24 May 2018).Google Scholar
Perreault, T (2008) Natural gas, indigenous mobilisation and the Bolivian state. In UNRISD (ed.), Identity, Power and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.Google Scholar
Perreault, T (2015) Performing participation: mining, power, and the limits of public consultation in Bolivia. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 20, 433–451.Google Scholar
Pirie, F (2013) The Anthropology of Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Postero, N (2007) Now We Are Citizens: Indigenous Politics in Postmulticultural Bolivia. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Postero, N (2013) Protecting Mother Earth in Bolivia: discourse and deeds in the Morales administration. In Cooper, JM, Hunefeldt, C and Acosta, Y (eds), Amazonia: Environment and the Law in Amazonia. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press.Google Scholar
Postero, N (2017) The Indigenous State: Race, Politics, and Performance in Plurinational Bolivia. Oakland: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pred, A and Watts, M (1992) Reworking Modernity: Capitalisms and Symbolic Discontent. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Regino Montes, A and Torres Cisneros, G (2009) The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: the foundation of a new relationship between indigenous peoples, states and societies. In Charters, C and Stavenhagen, R (eds), Making the Declaration Work: The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Copenhagen: Eks-Skolens Trykkeri.Google Scholar
Robb, K et al. (2015) Indigenous Governance and Mining in Bolivia, Report for International Mining for Development Centre (IM4DC). Queensland: Institute for Social Science Research, The University of Queensland.Google Scholar
Robyn, E, McNeish, J-A and Cimadamore, AD (2005) Indigenous Peoples and Poverty: An International Perspective. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Garavito, C (2011) Ethnicity.gov global governance, indigenous peoples, and the right to prior consultation in social minefields. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 18, 263–305.Google Scholar
Saavedra, JL (2017) Territorios indígenas: agresión petrolera e impunidad oficial. Pukara: cultura, sociedad y política de los pueblos originarios 11, 2–15.Google Scholar
Schilling-Vacaflor, A (2014) Contestations Over Indigenous Participation in Bolivia's Extractive Industry: Ideology, Practices, and Legal Norms, GIGA Working Papers 254. Hamburg: GIGA.Google Scholar
Shah, A (2007) The dark side of indigeneity? Indigenous people, rights and development in India. History Compass 5, 1806–1832.Google Scholar
Sieder, R and Sierra, MT (2010) Indigenous Women's Access to Justice in Latin America, Chr. Michelsen Institute Working Paper 2. Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute.Google Scholar
Sneider, L (2015) Complementary relationships: a review of indigenous gender studies. In Innes, RA and Anderson, K (eds), Indigenous Men and Masculinities: Legacies, Identities, Regeneration. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.Google Scholar
Souza, LM (1997) Women and crime in colonial Oaxaca: evidence of complementary gender roles in Mixtec and Zapotec societies. In Schroeder, S, Wood, S and Haskett, R (eds), Indian Women in Early Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Thede, N (2011) Democratic agency in the local political sphere: reflection on inclusion in Bolivia. Democratization 18, 211–235.Google Scholar
Toranzo, Roca C (2008) Let the mestizos stand up and be counted. In Crabtree, J and Whitehead, L (eds), Unresolved Tensions: Bolivia Past and Present. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 35–50.Google Scholar
von Benda-Beckmann, F, von Benda-Beckmann, K and Griffiths, A (2012) The Power of Law in a Transnational World: Anthropological Enquiries. Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Wiessner, S (2011) The cultural rights of indigenous peoples: achievements and continuing challenges. European Journal of International Law 22, 121–140.Google Scholar
Willemsen, Diaz A (2009) How indigenous peoples’ rights reached the UN. In Charters, C and Stavenhagen, R (eds), Making the Declaration Work: The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Copenhagen: Eks-Skolens Trykkeri.Google Scholar
Wolkmer, AC and Wolkmer, M de FS (2015) Pluralismo Jurídico y Constitucionalismo Emancipador desde el Sur. In de Sousa Santos, B and Cunha, T (eds), International Colloquium Epistemologies of the South: South-South, South-North and North-South Global Learnings. Coimbra: Centro de Estudos Sociais.Google Scholar
Yrigoyen, Fajardo R (2011) Derecho y Jurisdicción Indígena en la Historia Constitucional: De la Sujeción a la Descolonización. In Garavito, CR (ed.), El Derecho en América Latina: Los Retos del Siglo XXI. Buenos Aires: Siglo XX.Google Scholar