Missions, Unions, and Indigenous Organization in the Bolivian Amazon: Placing the Formation of an Indigenous Organization in Its Context

Abstract

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.

A taste for ecology: class, coloniality, and the rise of a Bolivian urban environmental movement

“…Not surprisingly, then, the scholarly literature on Bolivian social movements is quite comprehensive (e.g. Burman 2014Burman , 2015Canessa 2000;García, Chávez, and Costas 2010;Grisaffi 2017;Hurtado 1986;Pape 2009;Portugal and Macusaya 2016;Powęska 2013;Rivera [1984Rivera [ ] 2003Sturtevant 2018;Ticona 2010). Nevertheless, very little has been written on the emergent Bolivian environmental movement (see however Burman 2017;Fabricant 2013;Hindery 2013;Kaijser 2014;Perreault and Valdivia 2010; moreover, a valuable assessment of some of its initial dynamics is found in Zimmerer 2004).…”

“…Thus, the Bolivian landscape of social movements is a complex one (see García, Chávez, and Costas 2010;Pape 2009;Sturtevant 2018). This complexity is due to the vital role social movements have played, and still play, in Bolivian political life and the more or less organic growth of movements during the 20th and early 21st centuries.…”

Black hole indigeneity: the explosion and implosion of radical difference as resistance and power in Andean Bolivia

“…The second significant event of the early 1990s was the emergence of so-called neoliberal multiculturalism from within the spaces of parliamentary and governmental power. As I have argued elsewhere (Burman 2011(Burman , 2014, neoliberal multiculturalism was primarily a top-down reaction to increasingly vociferous indianista and katarista claims for social justice, decolonization and indigenous people's rights (Postero 2017, Sturtevant 2018. In 1993, the katarista intellectual Victor Húgo Cárdenas was appointed Vice-President in an otherwise right-wing, neoliberal government headed by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (Goni).…”