This article explores oral histories about the foundation of the Mosetén Indigenous People's Organization (OPIM) in Bolivia. In so doing it aims to add nuance to scholarship on Bolivian social movements from 1990 to 2010 by focusing on connections and continuities between indigenous organizations and the systems of political association that predate them. Efforts to organize Mosetén communities were spurred at least in part by indigenous desire to establish order within their communities and to resolve local problems. They adopted strategies associated with models of social organization that were already familiar to them, particularly the Franciscan missions and agrarian unions, and adapted them to meet their needs. This process involved ongoing interactions between Mosetén yearnings, a particular political and historical context, and the creative capacities of Mosetén leaders. Este artículo explora historias orales sobre la fundación de la Organización del Pueblo Indígena Mosetén (OPIM), en Bolivia. Así pretende enriquecer la comprensión existente en la academia con nuevos matices sobre los movimientos sociales en Bolivia entre 1990 y 2010 centrándose en las conexiones y continuidades entre las organizaciones indígenas y los sistemas de organización política que las precedían. Los esfuerzos para organizarse por las comunidades Mosetén fueron motivados, al menos en parte, por el deseo indígena de organizar sus comunidades internamente y resolver problemas locales. Se adoptaron estrategias asociadas con modelos de organización social que ya les eran familiares-en particular las misiones franciscanas y los sindicatos agrariosy las adaptaron para satisfacer sus necesidades. Este proceso implicó interacciones continuas entre los anhelos de la comunidad Mosetén, un contexto político e histórico particular, y las capacidades creativas de los líderes Mosetén.
This article discusses the terms in which ethnoracial difference is understood in a context where migrants from the highlands of Bolivia have come into contact with an indigenous group in the lowlands. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2007 and 2010 found that these differences were not normally discussed in terms of inherent and unchangeable characteristics, but rather in terms of a fluid position in a hierarchy of human development. This hierarchical scale is described and enacted locally in terms of practices and social relationships. Commerce, social organization, and cultural production are indicators of a group's social progress. As groups change their practices, they change their position in the hierarchy. Further, changes in the local context are expected to encourage groups to change their practices. This contrasts with national discourses that generally focus on the opposition of white and Indian and see change in terms of race mixture -mestizaje -between these opposing designations. In these national discourses, the attributes of whiteness or indigeneity are seen to be fixed and essential characteristics, and difference is achieved through degree of biological and cultural mixture. I conclude by suggesting that each of these conceptions of social difference have historical antecedents that date back to the colonial encounter and may contribute to our understanding of present-day national politics.
Recent literature on citizenship practices and discourses highlights processes of ‘subjectification’ or ‘self-making’ in relation to a local community rather than the rights and responsibilities associated with the legal status bestowed on full members of a national community. In this paper, set in the town of Chicaloma in the Yungas region of Bolivia, I argue that this self-making is not simply a response to hegemonic national norms, nor to a communally defined image of its ideal member, but rather is bound up in simultaneous processes of ‘community-making’. Further, I argue that community-making is itself a hotly contested process. Access to specific social and economic resources is differentially available to those members of the community who are able to make more convincing claims to belonging. In this context, community members are engaged in an on-going process of making claims to belonging which work by constructing the social space in the image of the claimant as much as by producing the subject. They constitute an important citizenship practice through which subjects assert their rights in various instances of local governance, but they work by constructing the community as well as the citizen-subjects who populate it. Rather than yield clear categories of included and excluded, though, these practices and discourses result in fluid and unstable differentiations among actors, and, in fact, a fluid and unstable constitution of the community as a social space.
En San Ignacio de Moxos, el nombre de Lorenza Congo es tomado frecuentemente como un símbolo de la identidad indígena y de un tiempo anterior, cuando los indígenas mojeños eran dueños de riquezas en ganado y oro. Sin embargo, más allá de un par de características comúnmente reconocidas –su baja estatura, riqueza y generosidad– las historias acerca de ella, contadas por distintos narradores, varían significativamente. Las diferencias incluyen desacuerdos sobre su edad, su etnicidad y su grado de parentesco con varios descendientes, además de su comportamiento respecto de valores morales y políticas de particular importancia local. Este artículo explora una gama de variaciones de estas historias, tomando nota de las posiciones sociales, perspectivas ideológicas, y agendas políticas de los narradores. Las diversas historias sobre Lorenza Congo se entrelazan con procesos de producción de una versión autoritativa de la historia. Al explorar este entrelazamiento observamos la narración de historias como una práctica social y la adopción de prácticas narrativas y formas asociadas a la historia como elementos que permiten a los narradores reclamar un grado de autoridad que no deriva de la veracidad de los hechos históricos registrados y comunicados, sino de su capacidad para cumplir ciertas funciones sociales.
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