Indigenous Struggle in Latin America: The Perilous Invisibility

of Capital and Class

Jeffery R. Webber

Latin American Politics & Society, Volume 49, Number 3, Fall 2007,
pp. 191-205 (Article)

Published by University of Miami

DOI: 10.1353/lap.2007.0035

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lap/summary/v049/49.3webber.html

Access provided by Queen Mary, University of London (17 Feb 2014 09:26 GMT)
 Critical Debates
Indigenous Struggle in Latin America:
The Perilous Invisibility of
Capital and Class
Jeffery R.Webber

Gerlach, Allen. Indians, Oil, and Politics: A Recent History of Ecuador.

Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2003. Photographs, notes, bibli-
ography, index, 286 pp.; paperback $23.95.
Postero, Nancy Grey, and Leon Zamosc, eds. The Struggle for Indige-
nous Rights in Latin America. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press,
2004. Figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index, 272 pp.; hardcover
$67.50, paperback $27.50.
Sawyer, Suzana. Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational
Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador. Durham: Duke University Press,
2004. Photos, maps, figures, notes, bibliography, index, 312 pp;
hardcover $74.95, paperback $21.95.
Van Cott, Donna Lee. From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The
Evolution of Ethnic Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2005. Figures, tables, abbreviations, notes, bibliography, index, 300
pp; hardcover $75.
Yashar, Deborah J. Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of
Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005. Tables, abbreviations, notes, bib-
liography, index, 388 pp; hardcover $85, paperback $37.99.

I n 1997, Slavoj Žižek published an attack on the ideology of multicul-

turalism, urging leftists to recognize the futility of particularistic strug-
gles over identity. In his words, “The politicization of the series of par-
ticular struggles which leaves intact the global process of capital is
clearly not sufficient” (1997, 49). Analyzing the Latin American context,
the American anthropologist Charles R. Hale provides a more empirical
supplement to Žižek’s abstract critique of neoliberal multiculturalism.
Hale was one of the first to point out that the decade of the 1990s was
characterized both by massive indigenous mobilizations and neoliberal
capitalist expansion. He examines how Latin American states have, in
constructing an “authorized Indian,” set the parameters of acceptable
cultural recognition of indigenous peoples: “certain rights are to be
enjoyed on the implicit condition that others will not be raised” (2004,

191
192 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 3

18). Class inequities have been sustained or exacerbated during the

neoliberal period. Hale observes, “Since the culturally oppressed, at
least in the case of Latin America’s indigenous people, occupy the
bottom rung of the class hierarchy in disproportionate numbers, they
confront the paradox of simultaneous cultural affirmation and economic
marginalization” (2002, 493).
The point of this introductory aside is to highlight the necessity of
considering indigenous struggles in contemporary Latin American
within a greater system of domestic capitalist social relations, class strug-
gle, and an imperialist world order. We need to recognize the material
reality underpinning the ideology of neoliberal multiculturalism. The
gains made by indigenous peoples in achieving recognition by and
selective incorporation into the state are real; however, these should not
be celebrated uncritically when the material well-being of these same
peoples has continued to deteriorate. Any meaningful emancipation of
indigenous peoples on the continent will bear fruit only through a com-
bination of popular class and antiracist struggles that tackles at one and
the same time the devastations of neoliberal capitalist expansion and the
historical legacies of colonial and postcolonial racism.
Skepticism about what Marxism has to offer the discussion of
indigenous struggle is understandable, given that the tradition has some-
times been applied to the Latin American context in crude and Euro-
centric ways. I contend nevertheless that the best of historical material-
ism can help us understand key dynamics and obstacles in indigenous
struggles and their relationships to class struggle. Similarly, the tendency
of mainstream academe (especially in North America) to ignore the
Marxist tradition—in favor of postmodernism, discursive analysis, and
liberal institutionalism—has inhibited understanding of the complexities
of indigenous struggles. In a provocative introductory essay to a new,
abridged edition of Oliver Cromwell Cox’s 1948 classic Caste, Class, and
Race, Adolph Reed, Jr. asks us to “recognize that race is the product of
social relations within history and political economy” (2001). While
none of the five books reviewed here in this essay roots itself in the
Marxist tradition, some recognize better than others that we treat indige-
nous struggles best within a broader system of historical social relations.

CASE STUDIES: STEPPING BACK FROM

CRUDE GENERALIZATION
The Struggle for Indigenous Rights in Latin America offers individual
chapters devoted to the particular cases of Mexico, Guatemala, Colom-
bia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. Postero and Zamosc’s introduc-
tory essay is among the best interdisciplinary research on the “Indian
Question” in Latin America. Unfortunately, the rest of the essays in the
 WEBBER: INDIGENOUS STRUGGLE 193

volume are highly uneven. Here, I will focus on extrapolating the best
from the introductory essay while pointing to the strongest and weak-
est of the remaining contributions.
Postero and Zamosc argue that initial studies of indigenous move-
ments in Latin America, with their collective search for common trends
across the region, were important in revealing that indigenous peoples
had maintained a strong presence in Latin America, far from the pre-
sumptions of some dominant nationalist myths in the region. Thus the
early scholarship restored and recognized the resilience and agency of
indigenous peoples. Postero and Zamosc observe that this affirmative
perspective tended to “overlook critical questions that arise from an
examination of the movements’ particularities” (3).
The chapter sets out to discuss “the crucial issue of what kinds of
rights indigenous people should be granted as citizens of democratic
nation-states” (5), otherwise known as the Indian Question. This
includes the contexts in which the Indian Question becomes politicized,
what is at stake in different indigenous struggles, and how neoliberal-
ism has contributed to the growth of indigenous struggle. Within this
general matrix, the authors’ attention to the ambiguous relationships
between ethnicity and class and the question of demography stands out
as particularly original and valuable. Postero and Zamosc contend that
a key component of the Indian Question is “the continuing ambiguity
between ethnicity and class, which in many cases, appear as two faces
of the same coin” (12).
With the imposition of neoliberalism, the coalescence of ethnic and
class struggle has often become more apparent. While economic crises
growing out of neoliberalism “hit indigenous sectors particularly hard,
the costs were born by all of each nation’s poor” (24). This contextual-
ization of indigenous struggles within the totality of social relations is a
sophisticated step forward for indigenous studies on Latin America. At
the same time, however, several passages in this chapter indicate that
the authors still do not adequately account for the centrality of class
struggle within the Indian Question, but instead consider state reform to
be the solution.
Part of the foundation of Postero and Zamosc’s assertion that “there
is no such thing as a universal set of indigenous demands” (15) is rooted
in the diverse demographics of the countries where indigenous move-
ments are active. In Guatemala and Bolivia, indigenous peoples make
up a majority of the population; in Peru and Ecuador they are a signif-
icant minority; while in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and Chile, indigenous
peoples are a much smaller proportion of the population. How do these
varying demographic contexts affect indigenous demands, strategies,
and struggles? Postero and Zamosc argue that although most indigenous
groups hold a common aspiration for local control, the struggle for ter-
194 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 3

ritorial and political autonomy is specific to those peoples who are

clearly in the minority. Majority indigenous movements tend to be
expressed “more in terms of equality, participation, and multicultural-
ism” (16).
The introduction of demography as a factor in the analysis of
indigenous social movements is an important contribution to the litera-
ture. Nevertheless, the concept, as Postero and Zamosc develop it,
remains somewhat simplistic. The authors themselves recognize that fur-
ther research is required to properly account for the interaction of
demographics with other factors (26).
Take the case of Bolivia. More than 60 percent of the population is
said to be indigenous. Yet it was far from automatic that all these people
came to think of themselves as indigenous, and many still identify them-
selves first as specific ethnicities, such as Aymara, Quechua, or Guaraní.
The politicization of indigenous identity across a particular country, as
distinct from more localized ethnic identities, is a historical process
embedded in complex social relations. At a more general level, as Kay
B. Warren and Jean E. Jackson point out, throughout Latin America, his-
torically, there was no such thing as “indigenous” until the “indigenous”
peoples were created by European colonizers (2002, 11). Only in rela-
tion to the conquerors did the enormous diversity of peoples gain some
level of commonality. At the level of individual states, objective defini-
tions of demographic majorities do not automatically translate into sub-
jectively recognized political indigenous identity. The point here is that
it is necessary to problematize the potential political impact of demo-
graphic features in particular countries, the value of demographic analy-
sis notwithstanding.
The framework developed in the introduction is unevenly
employed in the rest of the volume. Zamosc’s chapter on the Ecuado-
rian indigenous movement stands above the other contributions. He
develops a critique of new social movement theory and institutional
analysis, arguing that economic crisis and pressure from the Interna-
tional Monetary Fund led to the imposition of neoliberal restructuring in
Ecuador. This restructuring hit the popular sectors with the bulk of the
costs of the new economic model and exacerbated the economic crisis.
All traditional parties shared in the neoliberal project and rejected
popular sector interests, leading to what Zamosc calls a “crisis of rep-
resentation.” At the same time, this process generated a “crisis of legit-
imacy,” “as the state lost respect and authority because its initiatives
were viewed as unjust and inefficient” (140). The most important con-
sequence of this process were the massive street mobilizations led by
indigenous organizations, especially the Confederación de Nacionali-
dades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE). The street mobilizations
clearly articulated a broad antineoliberal resistance that appealed to
 WEBBER: INDIGENOUS STRUGGLE 195

the popular sectors. In Ecuador, attempts at imposing neoliberalism

from above have been perpetually stymied through street mobilization
and class struggle: “what remains to be explained is precisely that
which, in recent times, appears as the most salient factor: the veto
power of the masses that go out to protest in the streets” (132).
Zamosc’s chapter is an important reminder of the role of class strug-
gle in indigenous movements.
Lamentably, all the contributions are not of this calibre. Jonathan W.
Warren’s chapter on what the then-recent presidential victory of Brazil-
ian Workers’ Party candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva might mean for
racial politics in the country is particularly weak. He manages to carica-
ture “the Latin American left,” “socialism,” and “Marxism” in just a few
pages. Because the portrayal of his opponents is so one-sided and
unfair, his knocking them down is of little significance. The liberatory
possibilities of the antiracist Indian politics he highlights are similarly
unconvincing, given that they are counterpoised so sharply to class pol-
itics, Marxism, the left, and socialism. For reasons cited above, I believe
these struggles need to be conjoined.

ETHNOGRAPHY AND INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE

Anthropologist Suzana Sawyer wrote Crude Chronicles after spending
18 months in Ecuador during 1993 and 1994 collaborating with the Ama-
zonian Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza (OPIP). Setting
aside any “pretension of ‘objectivty,’” Sawyer asserts that her project was
“unabashedly invested and engaged” (22).
The book analyzes indigenous opposition to neoliberal globaliza-
tion in the Ecuadorian context. Sawyer seeks to flesh out the basic con-
tradictions that flow from the expansionary project of transnational cap-
italism and the ways indigenous movements have taken advantage of
these contradictions. Indigenous peoples have emerged as a powerful
counterhegemonic opposition, which includes nonindigenous popular
classes and roots itself in street politics and extraparliamentary mobi-
lization. Against this backdrop looms the struggle over what constitutes
the Ecuadorian nation. The book explains the role of neoliberal ideol-
ogy in obscuring conflicting class and racial interests in society, and
their expressions in the state, by portraying the law and the state as neu-
tral arbiters in a sea of equal actors and interest groups.
The strengths of Crude Chronicles are many. Of central importance
is the evidence Sawyer deploys to argue that throughout the neoliberal
period, the Ecuadorian state has served the interests of transnational
capital (especially multinational oil corporations) and certain factions of
domestic capital, as against the interests of the popular classes and
indigenous peoples. With reference to the specific neoliberal character
196 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 3

of the state, Sawyer deftly separates image and reality. According to its
proponents, the neoliberal state has been engaged in the process of dis-
solving its own power and economic role. Instead of disappearing,
however, “the state was being redefined such that it increasingly
assumed the role of an administrative and calculating organ that facili-
tated the workings of transnational capitalism” (116).
Another strength of this book stems from its ethnographic method-
ology. Sawyer intricately describes the lived, subjective experience of
humiliating racial oppression and class exploitation, as well as self-
organized resistance and struggle from below. Not satisfied with a one-
sided perspective, however, Sawyer wisely incorporates a dialectical
treatment of the responses and strategies of the other side. So, for exam-
ple, we learn how multinational oil corporations utilize expressions of
official multiculturalism, mixed with clientelist, petty handouts, to co-opt
and divide indigenous communities and to breed compliant indigenous
factions against a more general background of radical indigenous dis-
sent. Both the state and the multinationals employ a depoliticizing “tech-
nical” approach to extractive oil policies, appealing repeatedly to the
neutrality and universality of the law. On this basis, they paint insurgent
Indians as incorrigible delinquents, perpetually acting in bad faith and
outside the law with no good reason.
Also quite compelling throughout, but especially in chapter 5, “Con-
tested Terrain,” are the descriptions of the formation of powerful
alliances between indigenous peoples, peasants, and, in some cases, the
urban poor. The formation of a shared consciousness of antineoliberal
resistance is powerfully conveyed. Sawyer writes, “Not only were Indi-
ans determined to no longer be the sacrifice essential for Ecuador’s des-
tiny; they also were expanding their struggle to embrace nonindigenous
poor” (158). Worth noting here is Sawyer’s critique of essentialist, atem-
poral depictions of Latin American indigenous peoples. Still alive in
Ecuador is the notion that “Indians are essentially different: they love
dirty fingernails and are content in their primitive ways” (203). They are
poor because they choose to be, in other words, or are culturally and
even biologically suited to that “lifestyle.” Such stereotyping obfuscates
indigenous peoples’ “historical exploitation and their indispensability for
elite success” (205). Sawyer reminds us that ethnicity “is a relation, not
a thing, and, consequently, a terrain of struggle” (221).
Crude Chronicles does have limitations. The legacy of influential
postmodern approaches to anthropology, with their common tendency
to make every concept plural and vague, leaks into the text at times.
Also, while Sawyer goes farther than many contemporary writers in
taking class and capitalism seriously in relation to indigenous struggle,
her detailed theoretical exploration of the themes of “ethnicity” and
“nation” occasionally obscures their material foundations.
 WEBBER: INDIGENOUS STRUGGLE 197

INSTITUTIONS, SOCIETY, AND THE STATE

Having addressed the ethnographic approach to indigenous move-
ments, let me now turn to two texts in political science that seek to
make wider comparisons and generalizations across cases. These books
deal with state institutions and how they shape indigenous movements
and parties in Latin America. The authors are interested in showing how
indigenous movements can enhance the legitimacy and stability of lib-
eral (capitalist) democracy. They also portray this system as at least
potentially favorable to Latin American indigenous peoples.1 I will deal
quite extensively with Deborah Yashar’s Contesting Citizenship in Latin
America before turning to a briefer analysis of Donna Lee Van Cott’s
From Movements to Parties in Latin America.
Yashar’s book is the product of years of investigation, including more
than 150 interviews with indigenous peasant leaders and ministers of
agrarian reform, education, and indigenous affairs. In addition, it draws
from focus group discussions, observation at indigenous conferences,
policy reviews, newspaper studies, and extensive secondary sources, all
spanning the five Latin American countries with the largest indigenous
populations: Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. Contesting
Citizenship seeks to explain “the uneven emergence, timing, and location
of indigenous protest in contemporary Latin America: why indigenous
movements have emerged now and not before; and why they have
emerged in some places and not others” (5). Yashar stresses the impor-
tance of institutions in shaping identity politics and, in particular, the role
of the state. In this way, I see Contesting Citizenship as linked to the tra-
dition of “Bringing the State Back In” (Evans et al. 1985; Skocpol 1979).
Yashar adds some complexity to this perspective, privileging the auton-
omy of the state even while not assuming its effective reach or coherence.
The argument in the text has three fundamental concepts: citizen-
ship regimes, transcommunity networks, and political associational
space. “In the context of Latin American indigenous movements,”
Yashar argues, “contemporary changes in citizenship regimes politicized
identities precisely because they unwittingly challenged enclaves of
local autonomy that had gone largely unrecognized by the state” (8,
emphasis in original). The transition to neoliberal citizenship regimes
challenged the indigenous enclaves of autonomy that previous corpo-
ratist citizenship regimes had provided for. Yashar points out that this
structural change is necessary but not sufficient to explain the rise of
indigenous movements. In addition, political associational space is
required to provide movements with political opportunity, while
transcommunity networks are necessary for diverse local indigenous
communities to coalesce at more general regional or countrywide levels
in order to confront the state effectively (8).
198 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 3

Contesting Citizenship is the product of detailed, sophisticated

analysis covering a broad swath of time and geographical area. It is
tightly argued and written in a persuasive, clear prose, mostly free of
bulky academic jargon. It presents formidable critiques of the prevailing
theories of the emergence of indigenous movements, including primor-
dialism, instrumentalism (rational choice), poststructuralism, and global-
ization. Indeed, I would argue that this is the most important and coher-
ent book to date from an institutionalist, state-centric perspective on
identity politics in Latin America. This is precisely why I intend to
devote the bulk of the limited space I have to at least touching on some
of its deficiencies. I want to raise four points of concern: generalizing
about “indigenous” movements; citizenship and the state in the absence
of capitalism and class; internal ambiguity about “political associational
space”; and normative shortcomings of seeing indigenous “success” in
the 1990s while not seeing clearly the limits of liberal democracy.
In Yashar’s general theory, the successful indigenous movements in
question are presumed to be similar in their predominant focus on eth-
nicity. This approach conceals vast differences in ideology and politics
between movements across countries and even within countries. It also
impedes alternative hypothesizing around the general features of recent
popular mobilizations in the Latin American countryside. James Petras’s
insightful, panoramic 1997 survey of left resurgence in rural Latin Amer-
ica over the course of the 1990s, by comparison, includes analyses of
the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil and the Para-
guayan National Peasant Federation.
In excluding such movements a priori—presumably because they
occur in countries with small indigenous populations and are generally
considered to be class-based—Yashar precludes, from the outset, com-
parisons between these movements and the “ethnic” ones in the selected
cases with large indigenous populations. This is one way to minimize
visibility of the class content of the indigenous movements under study.
This class character of rural indigenous movements might become more
visible if the movements were analyzed in the context of the larger wave
of peasant mobilization throughout the region in the 1990s. Despite the
subtlety and nuance in Yashar’s treatment of various cases, her more gen-
eral theoretical apparatus leads potentially to ethnic reductionism.
The earlier literature on “bringing the state back in,” as Paul Cam-
mack persuasively points out, effectively glossed over and domesticated
“the central preoccupation of Marxists and neo-Marxists alike with class,
and in this connection with the relationship between class forces and the
state” (1989, 265, emphasis in original). Granted, Yashar is quick to
point out that “We can assume that neither states nor societies persist
independently of one another” (8). But note the privileged agency of
the state: “States (and those in power) set the stage, but societies do not
 WEBBER: INDIGENOUS STRUGGLE 199

always conform to the script” (8). The sources of historical agency are
blurry throughout. Yashar takes the position at various points that the
key obstacles to meaningful indigenous reform are lack of political will
on the part of individual presidents, in combination with weak state
institutions. She does not adequately account for the class interests at
the intersection of these individuals and institutions that complicate the
official politics of identity.
The notion of “political associational space” requires fine tuning.
The variable is defined as “the de facto existence of freedom of associ-
ation and expression” (76). It is one of the necessary conditions for the
emergence of successful indigenous movements. Undoubtedly, this is
often the case. But how do we account for moments of repression, or
the closing of political associational space, that foster the development
and radicalization of movements? In the case of Bolivia, the 1974 peas-
ant massacre orchestrated by the state under Hugo Banzer was instru-
mental in spurring the Katarista movement to greater potential; it did not
restrict the movement, as Yashar’s general theory would suggest. This
was true, too, of the impact of state repression in Bolivia during the
October 2003 “Gas War,” which fueled the fires of that popular-indige-
nous insurrection. Under certain conditions, it would seem that limited
and conjunctural restriction of “political associational space” can actu-
ally foment movement growth.
Another instance of the ambiguous role of political associational
space in the overall framework becomes clear in Yashar’s discussion of
Peru and Guatemala. Key to the explanation of the Peruvian anomaly in
Yashar’s account is that the “civil war in the 1980s and early 1990s had
a devastating impact on both transcommunity networks and political
associational space” (240). But why have the Peruvian indigenous peo-
ples not rebuilt these networks or created new ones since the end of
the civil war? Is it because even after the close of the war, Fujimori did
not allow sufficient political associational space?
If so, the case of Guatemala is not sufficiently explained in relation
to Peru. Why does Guatemala pose an “intermediate case” of indigenous
movement success after its “staggering history of repression in the 1970s
and early 1980s” and a “rise in political violence in the late 1980s and the
1990s” (78)? That it had a period of “some political associational space in
the mid-1980s and mid-1990s” still leaves this variable hanging somewhat
loosely. If intermediate success is achieved in the case of Guatemala,
with its genocidal history, how does lack of political associational space
help to explain the weakness of Peruvian indigenous movements? It is
not obvious that Guatemalan indigenous movements have had superior
access to political associational space compared to Peru since the end of
both civil wars. To be clear, I think political associational space does
matter, but the concept needs further revision and development.
200 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 3

Contesting Citizenship also has some normative shortcomings.

Yashar’s political conclusions on the current situation of indigenous
movements in relation to Latin American states is rather complacent.

Given the fundamental challenges that the postliberal agenda poses,

it is perhaps all the more remarkable then that the recent politiciza-
tion of ethnic cleavages in Latin America has not unleashed ethnic
conflict but has led to an explicit effort to accommodate a diverse
ethnic population in a more plural form of democracy. (300)

If we consider the correlation of subordinate ethnic and class posi-

tions in Latin America, we cannot be so sanguine with regard to state
recognition of diversity while the material class condition of those rec-
ognized deteriorates. Yashar’s normative theory would be more persua-
sive if it put front and center the necessity of fundamentally challenging
the structural economic order that facilitates the class exploitation of
most indigenous peoples in Latin America.
In her extensive exploration of theories on citizenship, Yashar does
not contemplate how capitalism, in uniquely separating the political
sphere from the economic (Wood 1995), has circumscribed dramatically
what citizenship can possibly mean as long as capitalism is the framing
context. Many readers will take Yashar’s perspective as commonsensi-
cal, given the current world order and reigning ideological doctrines.
Such a view is certainly hegemonic in mainstream North American acad-
eme. But revolutionary, anticapitalist politics has a much wider berth in
discussions in contemporary Latin American popular movements,
including some of those in Yashar’s study. The separation of ethnic pol-
itics from the wider sphere of capitalist social relations leads Yashar to
weak political conclusions: “the democratic challenge in Latin America
is not simply of creating more stable institutions, but also and more fun-
damentally of redesigning those institutions in ways that can incorpo-
rate and respect diverse ethnic communities” (308). Institutional change
is insufficient. I maintain that socialist transformation of capitalist social
relations remains necessary for a meaningful end to racial and cultural
oppression in Latin America.
From Movements to Parties in Latin America is a logical next step to
Van Cott’s earlier book, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past (2000). The
earlier work is a key reference point in scholarly debates on indigenous
movements in Latin America, especially in political science. The puzzle
of From Movements to Parties is that before the 1990s, despite its ethnic
diversity, Latin America had few political parties that successfully sought
to politicize ethnicity. Such ethnically defined political parties did not
emerge until traditional party systems in the region began to disinte-
grate. Van Cott therefore poses two primary research questions: “(1)
Why did Latin American indigenous peoples’ organizations form ethnic
 WEBBER: INDIGENOUS STRUGGLE 201

parties in the 1990s? and (2) Why were some of these parties relatively
more successful than others?” (18).
In answering these questions, Van Cott analyzes six South American
cases: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.
Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru are included as most likely cases of ethnic
party formation, while Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela stand in as
least likely ones. Drawing on the literature of institutions, party systems,
and social movements, Van Cott stresses the necessity of a “compre-
hensive approach.” She argues that shifts to more permissive electoral
environments or shifts to more open party systems—especially a decline
or absence of left parties—are necessary but not sufficient conditions for
the formation and better performance of ethnic parties (9). Social
movement theory is required to account for the critical role of indige-
nous organizations in the formation of ethnic parties.
One serious question that can be raised is whether or not the par-
ties under investigation can legitimately be conceived of as ethnic par-
ties. For Van Cott, among other defining characteristics, an “ethnic
party” is one “whose electoral platform includes among its central
demands programs of an ethnic or cultural nature” (3). Such a defini-
tion treats ethnicity and culture as separate spheres from material or
economic reality. Van Cott defines as “ethnic” those parties, such as the
Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) in Bolivia, that do indeed treat
indigenous issues centrally but also include among their demands
socioeconomic justice and an end to neoliberal capitalism. The latter
components are leftist characteristics that, if acknowledged more thor-
oughly in the theoretical framework, would render confusing, in many
instances, the idea that left party decline facilitates ethnic party forma-
tion. In the case of Bolivia, for example, I find more compelling per-
spectives that treat the cycle of mobilization and new dissident party
formation since 2000 as a case of the combined phenomenon of left-
indigenous struggle; this reconstituted left takes indigenous liberation
as a central part of its project but does not abandon “old” leftist
demands relating more obviously to the economy (Hylton and Thom-
son 2005; Webber 2005; García Linera 2005).2
Another question concerns party system fragmentation throughout
Latin America in the 1990s. The severe “stress and decomposition” (1–2)
of Latin American party systems is central to the institutional explana-
tion that Van Cott offers for the formation and performance of ethnic
parties in Latin America. This raises the question, what caused the stress
and decomposition of party systems? A reasonable hypothesis is that the
exhaustion of the neoliberal economic model throughout Latin America
and the attachment of traditional parties to that dying model facilitated
the crisis of party systems that Van Cott describes. To understand this
dynamic, it is necessary to step outside institutional analysis and think
202 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 3

through theories of economic crisis and the shifting correlations of class

forces in society.
The most original component of the book is its treatment of the left.
The left’s relationship to indigenous movements is widely ignored in the
extant literature. Van Cott is correct to point to problems of racism
within the “old” left in many cases, and the extent to which indigenous
liberation was not made a priority. Even on this score, however, Greg
Grandin’s masterful Last Colonial Massacre (2004), which examines the
lives of Mayan communists in Guatemala, demonstrates how earlier cur-
rents of Marxism in Latin America could also be liberating for indige-
nous peasants. Van Cott’s treatment of the “left” is therefore often one-
sided and excessively general. Furthermore, it is hard to understand
how Van Cott can reconcile her “ethnic” label with her own recognition
that “indigenous movements in South America demand redistribution
and challenge the neoliberal model” (37). We can dismiss this reconsti-
tution of the left by calling movements and parties “ethnic” only if we
treat the left as an atemporal, ahistorical fossil, rather than as an assort-
ment of moving ideological and political currents that have, in many
cases, embraced antiracism despite past failures in this area.3
When Van Cott reflects on the dangers and opportunities facing
indigenous peoples in Latin American democracies, she adopts an essen-
tialist conception of ethnicity, which lacks nuance, history, and com-
plexity. Any notion of a self-contained or “uncontaminated” indigenous
culture would quickly wither under the scrutiny of a relational approach
to ethnicity such as the one proposed by Sawyer and discussed at length
above. From Movements to Parties in Latin America contains much valu-
able empirical and historical information, and will no doubt be an impor-
tant point of reference for scholars and students of indigenous move-
ments and parties in Latin America. Taking its theoretical weaknesses
into account will be important in moving debates forward.

OIL AND INDIGENOUS STRUGGLE

IN THE HISTORY OF ECUADOR

Allen Gerlach’s Indians, Oil, and Politics is a serious introduction to the

complex dynamics of Ecuadorian history. The second half of the book
is devoted to understanding contemporary politics and indigenous
struggle in Ecuador and how several presidents came to be ousted
through popular revolt. These contemporary dynamics are rooted in the
deeper history of Ecuador, which the first half of the book covers.
Although the transition in the text from past to present is somewhat
abrupt, the emphasis on the legacies of Ecuadorian history that are
imprinted on the country’s contemporary reality is exemplary. While
eschewing any complex theoretical apparatus to frame the book, Ger-
 WEBBER: INDIGENOUS STRUGGLE 203

lach presents nonetheless a thesis that sees the rise of indigenous move-
ments and the political economy of oil as the two most consequential
components of the country’s recent history.
The opening two chapters stretch broadly over the geographic, eco-
nomic, demographic, social, and political aspects of Ecuadorian history
until 1972. Chapter 3 documents the foundations of the country’s “oil era”
and illustrates how this lucrative natural resource commodity came to have
a profound impact on every aspect of modern Ecuador. The detailed dis-
cussion of the dynamics of oil in Ecuador and the way the domestic econ-
omy is tied, through oil, to the global capitalist system acts as an effective
historical frame for the subsequent discussion of the rise of neoliberal eco-
nomics and the popular-indigenous resistance it engendered.
The following five chapters document the rise of the indigenous
movement with all its regional complexities, and a four-year period of
massive popular mobilization (1996–2000), which saw six different
national presidents come to power. The most significant flaw in the text
emerges here, where Gerlach relies too heavily on presidential memoirs
and other elite sources that predictably emphasize elite negotiations
during periods of state crisis. Gerlach certainly does not ignore popular
struggles, especially the indigenous movement; but with regard to the
falling of presidents, he might have devoted more print to the dynam-
ics from below. Indians, Oil, and Politics is most useful as an under-
graduate text, painting, as it does, the broad picture of Ecuadorian his-
tory while highlighting in more detail the contemporary period.
Specialist scholars in history, sociology, and political science will also
benefit from a close reading of the second half of the book.

FUTURE RESEARCH
These five books are situated in different ways within a now-expansive
literature on indigenous movements in Latin America. As this field of
study ages and engages with different disciplines, the depth and breadth
of our understanding increases. Nevertheless, at least seven research
areas around indigenous politics need development or refinement.
Perhaps the most obvious lacuna in the existing literature is the role
of indigenous struggle in urban settings. The existing literature tends to
treat the Indian Question as though it were simply an update on the
Agrarian Question of the past. This does not reflect the demographic real-
ity of contemporary Latin America. For example, 82 percent of the popu-
lation of the Bolivian city of El Alto identify themselves as indigenous.
The interaction of demography and politics, society and economy
introduced by Postero and Zamosc will be a second fruitful area of fur-
ther investigation. Postero and Zamosc bring important ideas to the fore,
but the political consequences of bigger or smaller proportions of
204 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 3

indigenous peoples in the general populations of various Latin Ameri-

can countries require more exploration.
Third, the relationship between indigenous movements and parties
and the continent’s shift to the left in recent years needs much deeper
analysis. What are the diverse politics and ideologies of different indige-
nous movements and how are they incorporated into or set against left
movements and parties? How do the different trajectories of indigenous
movements on this score connect to the long history of indigenous rela-
tions with left politics in particular regional and country settings?
Fourth, case studies and comparative analyses that emphasize the
relationships between class exploitation and racial oppression in Latin
America are surprisingly underdeveloped. These issues ought to be
addressed further and connected to questions of uneven capitalist
development and state formation in the region.
The emphasis on the newness of contemporary indigenous move-
ments needs to be interrogated through studies that compare indige-
nous struggles of today with those of the last several centuries. Further-
more, how are imperial core states, especially the United States, likely
to respond if indigenous-left movements begin to represent more of a
serious challenge to neoliberal capitalism?
Seventh, and finally, there is still plenty of room for normative cri-
tiques of the dominant liberal, multicultural approach to indigenous
movements. One fruitful way forward in such an engaged scholarship
could be renewed attention to nondogmatic Marxism as a path into
processes of liberation from racial oppression, freedom from class
exploitation, and fundamental challenges to capitalism.

NOTES
Thanks to Jasmin Hristov for insightful comments on an earlier draft of this
essay. I am also indebted to Deb Simmons for her searching critique that forced
me to clarify many points.
1. Yashar argues that these movements are pushing Latin America’s democ-
racies in postliberal directions. Judging from her own description of the move-
ments and their demands, however, they seem to be pushing for a liberal
embrace of multiculturalism along the lines of liberal multiculturalism theorist
Will Kymlicka (1995), rather than for a “postliberal” democracy.
2. Allow me one further illustration. Shortly after the publication of From
Movements to Parties in Latin America, Evo Morales, leader of the MAS, won the
Bolivian presidency, on December 18, 2005. He quickly visited Fidel Castro in
Cuba and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, emphasizing the necessity of an antine-
oliberal and anti-imperialist bloc in Latin America. Describing the party as
“ethnic” cannot capture these fundamental dynamics.
3. In a brief discussion near the end of the text, Van Cott suggests that the
“new left” in Latin America “may be more willing to share control with indige-
 WEBBER: INDIGENOUS STRUGGLE 205

nous organizations than were leftist parties in the past” (223). This perspective
still treats indigenous struggle as an autonomous sphere separate from “the left,”
and does not weigh significantly against the problematic general treatment of
“the left” throughout the rest of the book.

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