Emergent Conversation 27

This podcast and translation are part of the series Indigenous Politics, State Relations, and Populism in the Americas
PoLAR Online Emergent Conversation 27

By Daniel P. Gámez, Nohely Guzmán, and Pablo Millalen Lepin

January 22, 2020. Evo Morales participated in a large event in Argentina, where he received political asylum, celebrating the 14th anniversary of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. Photo: Frente Patria Grande, Brasil de Fato. CC BY NC SA 2.0.

Spanish Language Podcast

Guests

Daniel P. Gámez is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, American Indian Studies & History—University of California, Los Angeles. He is also a postdoctoral scholar for the project “Race in the Global Past through Native Lenses,” supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He received his PhD in Geography from The University of British Columbia, and is an interdisciplinary scholar-activist specializing in the study of anticolonial thought, racialization, Indigenous sovereignty, and imperial urbanism in Abya Yala (Latin America & the Caribbean).

Pablo Millalen Lepin comes from Lof Mañiuko, a Mapuche territory located in the comuna of Galvarino, in the Araucanía region, in southern Chile. He is also a member of the Comunidad de Historia Mapuche, a collective of Mapuche researchers based in Temuco. He received his PhD in Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Pablo is currently a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the American Indian Studies Center (AISC) at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Nohely Guzmán is a ch’ixi feminist and anti-colonial PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds a Master’s degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. With a decade of multi-disciplinary scholar-activist engagement in the Bolivian Amazon, she specializes in Indigenous feminist geographies, cuerpo-territorio (body-territory), sensory memoryscapes, and territorial politics of freedom and care with the rainforest.

Music

Introduction: Trompe, Musician Carlino Ñiripil, Territorio Ñielol (Galvarino). Pueblo Mapuche.

Exit: Artist, Casimiro Canchi—Pueblo T’simane. Recording: Soilo Canchi—Pueblo T’simane.

English Translation

Nohely Guzmán: In the southern Amazon region of what is now known as Bolivia, in the Indigenous lands of the well-known Gran Moxos in Beni, Carla, a renowned midwife from the Moxeño Trinitario Nation, decides to pause the services she provides to her community, because after choosing to pursue the official certification of traditional medicine offered by the state, she realizes that this is a process that could lead to her criminalization for malpractice and is also a process that involves violence that invalidates her knowledge.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: I invite you to travel to the south of our Abya Yala (Latin America), specifically to the Mapuche territory. In the case of Wallmapu, in what today is southern Chile and Argentina, this is also an area marked by the logic of recognition and violence. For example, in August of this year, during an Indigenous consultation in the Galvarino area, where I come from. At the time of this recording, military trucks were prowling the area. But not only that. It is also worrying that, in this same context of recognition, violence manifests itself in the disappearance of people. For example, the case of Julia Chuñil, who has been missing since 2024.

Daniel P. Gámez: And if we go more than 6,000 kilometers north, to the Anahuac basin, commonly known by its colonial name of Mexico City, I would like to draw attention to the case of Hortensia, a traditional authority from Atlapulco, who has fought for the autonomy of her people in recent decades. The government of Mexico City has initiated a consultation process in recent years to register the Indigenous peoples and neighborhoods of the region, and many community-based organizations are opposing this process, considering it illegitimate and rigged. In response, the government of Mexico City has criminalized, harassed, persecuted, and sent groups of political operatives to physically attack many of these authorities, including Hortensia, culminating in an attack on a demonstration in front of the Xochimilco Mayor’s Office on September 5, 2024.

Nohely Guzmán: These different and geographically distant experiences and contexts throughout our Abya Yala are bringing us together here today in Los Angeles to explore in depth the violence of recognition. So today we are going to talk about recognition as violence, and we will evaluate how states employ strategies, legal procedures, and political mechanisms to erode the struggles for autonomy and the defense of territory. We are going to zoom in on progressive regimes and their instruments which, even when dressed up in multicultural and inclusive rhetoric, end up strengthening the monopolistic power of the state and its political parties. As a result, as we will see, these processes extend new forms of control and administration that are rarely explored in depth. So, let’s begin our discussion today, which will be enriched by three colleagues. Next to me is Pablo Millalén Lepín, who is a member of the Lof Mañiuco, a Mapuche community located in the Araucanía region in the south of what is now called Chile. Pablo is part of the “Comunidad de Historia Mapuche,” a collective of social sciences researchers based in Temuco, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the American Indian Studies Center in the University of California, Los Angeles.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: Thank you, Nohely, for that kind introduction. As Nohely said, we are here in Los Angeles, California, which is also Indigenous territory. And next to me is Daniel Gámez, who is also a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of History and at the American Indian Studies Center. Daniel is originally from Juan Aldama, Zacatecas, Mexico, and has worked with grassroots organizations in Anáhuac in recent years, which seek to build autonomy for Indigenous peoples.

Daniel P. Gámez: Thank you, Pablo, for the kind introduction. Now, let’s introduce Nohely Guzmán, who is a doctoral student in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. She also holds a master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin and is a member of a collective of anti-colonial feminists in her home country of Bolivia, where she has been working in the Moxos communities for 10 years. Thank you very much for this opportunity and for bringing us together here to talk about this topic and the experiences that we introduced at the beginning of the podcast, which are very complex, but help us address the issue of recognition as violence in the progressive regimes of Abya Yala, colonially known as Latin America. Now, what do we mean by progressivism? I want to clarify that from the outset. Specifically, I am referring to governments in Latin American nation states that call themselves or describe themselves as left-wing. And more specifically, in the case of Mexico, the government of the National Regeneration Movement, or MORENA. In the case of Bolivia, the MAS government or the Movement Toward Socialism. And in the case of Chile, the government of the Frente Amplio, which are understood and describe themselves as progressive.

That is, a rhetoric and a series of policies and laws that seek inclusion, multiculturalism, and plurinationality but which, as we will argue throughout this podcast, hide deeper mechanisms of colonization, dispossession, and assimilation of the Indigenous peoples who are fighting for autonomy. To respond to the different questions and issues we were raising, I would like to start with one of these mechanisms that are deployed in these progressive regimes and that we were already exploring in the testimonies, which is state violence, the deployment of state violence, which is, let’s say, the most visible aspect, the easiest to demonstrate. And how does it relate to these processes of building autonomy and self-determination among Indigenous peoples? What do we mean by state violence? How does it manifest itself? Who perpetrates it? Which actors participate in this violence? Pablo, would you like to tell us more about what is happening with this consultation process you mentioned in Galvarino, in Wallmapu?

Pablo Millalen Lepin: Yes, thank you very much, Daniel. Indeed, in the case of Chile, talking about state violence has historically been synonymous with what happened during the military dictatorship between 1973 and 1990. However, in recent decades it has also impacted Indigenous peoples, specifically the Mapuche people. And this is manifested in the following. Before the current president, Gabriel Boric, came to power, there was Sebastián Piñera, who is situated on the ideological and political wing that we could describe as conservative, right-wing, and center-right. Why am I bringing up Piñera? Well, because in the last months of his government, he invoked a key political decree that led to the military patrolling the area during this consultation process in Galvarino, right? Piñera invoked a constitutional state of emergency in the regions of Bío Bío, Malleco, and Cautín, which are areas where there are many Mapuche communities. The point is that once Gabriel Boric’s administration took office, it paused the measure. But some time later, it also invoked it, arguing that in this territory there were also issues of drug trafficking, timber theft, permanent road blockades, and attacks on civilians, among other things. So, it’s like the justification that both presidents have used and agree on. The same strategy is being used not only to place the military there, but also to safeguard private and colonial capital, which in the Mapuche case manifests itself in forestry companies and also in the lands that are in the hands of settlers who arrived in the territory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Daniel P. Gámez: And it strikes me that you emphasize the aspect of militarization and how there is continuity between conservative and progressive governments in terms of how they deploy militarization, specifically in territories that have historically been dispossessed and marginalized by nation-states. This dates back to the 19th century, as you rightly said, and it is no coincidence that militarization focuses on these territories, right? And it is deployed specifically in these places, which also generates a process of stigmatization, right? Because in the case of Mexico, the increasing presence of the National Guard, for example, in the territories of the Indigenous peoples of Xochimilco, specifically in Atlapulco, where you often see them patrolling with machine guns, heavily armed, in trucks, armored, very threatening and very intimidating.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: By the way, something very similar is also happening here in Los Angeles with the profiling, the stigmatization against our own friends, relatives, our accent, our profile, our phenotype, etc. The persecution we have been experiencing since the current government took office.

Daniel P. Gámez: Yes, exactly. This problem is hemispheric. There can be a far-right government like Donald Trump’s that replicates the same practices as a government that claims to be progressive leftist, such as that of Mexico City or Claudia Sheinbaum’s in Mexico. So, this constant presence of military forces also generates a process of stigmatization, of pointing fingers, as we were saying. Where certain places are seen as dangerous, as outside the law, as outside public order, and as essentially incapable of governing themselves. And this is the strategy that is being mobilized and that is also complemented by less obvious forms of violence, so to speak. Smear campaigns, media manipulation, and also sabotage of assemblies. And here I want to draw attention to this aspect because in the case of Atlapulco, the governments, the mayor’s office, which is the municipal government of the area, it is well known by the people of the pueblo and other communities that this government mobilizes networks of what are known as political operatives, who are people from the same community but who have a long history of collaborating with the political parties in power, right? They are associated with the powers of the state and have resources, literally state resources, to organize, for example, groups of people who sabotage the assemblies of the pueblos, who physically assault those they consider to be their “opponents,” that is, people who are not affiliated with their political party.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: If you don’t join us, we’ll beat you up.

Daniel P. Gámez: Exactly. I harass you, I watch you, I smear your reputation, and these types of violent strategies are also very focused on women. There is a very specific aspect of gender violence, of marginalizing women who are politically active. All of this, once again, in the name of order and legality, which function more as weapons than as tools for empowering communities.

Nohely Guzmán: Yes, and the truth is that this state violence you are describing really brings to mind the idea that violence, in addition to the state, is usually understood as this type of clash, let’s say, as quite direct, as there is a tangibility to these processes. And yet, it also reminds me of one of the lessons I learned from my collaborator Carla, the community’s midwife I mentioned at the beginning, who, despite having several decades of experience in her community, decided to renounce official recognition by the state. She did so precisely because of the multiple forms of violence that this process of being certified and recognized engendered.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: Of course.

Nohely Guzmán: Right, specifically this was a process in which she felt that her knowledge, rather than being recognized, was being devalued and invalidated. So, I think it’s super important to dot the i’s and cross the t’s here about the continuities we’re seeing and analyzing specifically. Because, as we know and as has already been mentioned, Bolivia is known as an Indigenous country and, in fact, for many, it is the first Indigenous state in the world. So, understanding and looking at Bolivia, which has decolonization and the Indigenous paradigm of Buen Vivir at the heart of its political project, this case, which seems minor in terms of traditional medicine, allows us to have another angle on forms of state violence. And I also think it paints a pretty clear picture of what it means to “pluri-nationalize” the state. Specifically, I would like to mention that, although traditional medicine is recognized as a sovereign body of knowledge for healing, this very recognition is what has facilitated the criminalization of people like Carla, who, despite having a foundation, having verified the scientific basis and her knowledge over several decades and hundreds and hundreds of years, finds herself invalidated in her encounter with the state, right? So, it is also very interesting to think about this case of traditional medicine, especially because it comes from and is a story told from within an autonomous Indigenous jurisdiction that the state is also supposed to recognize as sovereign. But, as I say, it allows us to see very clearly that the mechanisms of recognition, of those practices that attempt to verify how you do this, in what proportions you do it, and of confirming it specifically through the use of external criteria in which your knowledge emerged, in itself exercises deeply harmful, colonial violence.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: And it’s very invasive, isn’t it? That someone can come and say to you, hey, what are you doing?

Nohely Guzmán: Yes, that’s right. These are the forms of violence perpetrated by the state that are perhaps more intangible, but which, disguised as this benevolent idea of recognition, end up causing very deep damage. Ultimately, dismantling a system of care, dismantling and weakening a system of community care, community trust, and community health and well-being.

Daniel P. Gámez: Yes, precisely these three women we have been mentioning, Carla, Hortensia, and Julia, are very representative of how this violence is exercised, this dimension, let’s say, of subtle state violence.

Nohely Guzmán: As if it were masked.

Daniel P. Gámez: Even under the rhetoric and through a series of inclusive or multicultural or indigenista policies.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: Plurinational in the case of Bolivia.

Nohely Guzmán: That’s right.

Daniel P. Gámez: And that leads me to reflect on the second crucial issue I would like us to address, which has to do with the deployment of legal mechanisms. You already touched on this a little, Nohely, how legal mechanisms for inclusion are very important in many ways for the state to make the forms of organization and self-determination of Indigenous peoples functional for its political party system and its intentions to certify, control, administer, but also to extract, to continue advancing extractivist megaprojects in Indigenous territories. And it is also very clear that, in the case of Atlapulco, this is manifested in what I mentioned earlier as the registration system for Indigenous peoples and neighborhoods, as well as for Indigenous communities residing in Mexico City, where the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and Neighborhoods of Mexico City published a catalog of authorities that, according to them, are the valid authorities that all Indigenous peoples and neighborhoods of Mexico City should have.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: A catalog?

Daniel P. Gámez: Yes. Literally, and the word is very important. The unfortunate thing about this catalog is that it is issued without a real process of negotiation or broad consultation with all the pueblos and neighborhoods. This Ministry only recognizes 50 out of 100 pueblos. So, to begin with, there is already a fairly clear process of elimination. And in this same catalog, despite the fact that this Ministry recognizes the community assembly as the highest authority of the pueblos, it establishes three types or three subcategories of recognizable authorities. The first are the political-administrative authorities, followed by the agrarian authorities, and finally, the traditional authorities, which I find quite strange. It is strange because in what is known as Mexico City, in Anahuac, there is an enormous variety of authorities, representative figures, and mechanisms—this is also very important—mechanisms for choosing these authorities. And what this catalog does is to reduce all that complexity to three subcategories.

Nohely Guzmán: A simplification, let’s say.

Daniel P. Gámez: Yes, exactly. A simplification that is once again functional for the state. And what I also want to highlight is that this classification also introduces, very quietly, three representative figures that do not exist in any pueblo or neighborhood, but which are once again very useful for having people affiliated with political parties and close to the power of the state as representatives in the pueblos. I am referring specifically to the figures of the territorial coordinator, the sub-delegate, and the liaison coordinator. These three figures, as established in the law, are government employees. They receive their salaries from public funds collected by the government and are generally people who are affiliated with the political party in power, in this case, MORENA. What is also quite negative is that these figures end up acquiring greater responsibilities, getting involved in other appointments in the same pueblos, and end up acting in an opaque manner or in a way that is closely associated with the mandates of the government in power. The people of Atlapulco have recognized this process of making illegitimate appointments, and they have sought to reverse it by disregarding these illegitimate authorities and forming community government councils and permanent general assemblies. In response, the government has discredited them in the media and through the mobilization of its networks of political operatives. So, we are faced with a rather complex context of inclusive rhetoric but violent political reality.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: Yes, of course. And that makes a lot of sense to me because in the Mapuche case, in Chile, it sounds very similar when Mapuche people and organizations want to navigate, for example, with Indigenous policy. What the legal institutions tell you is that you have to organize yourself in a certain way, displacing your own organizations, right? Just as you pointed out, Daniel. At the same time, this displaces not only community organizations, but also ancestral authorities, right? Because now there has to be a president, there has to be a secretary, a treasurer, and so on. A coordinator. In some cases, this also creates a problem of clientelism and tutelage, because in order to interact with government authorities at the local, regional, and national levels, you have to have a certain degree of connection, and that connection is created, as you said again, by political affinities. And if there is political alignment between them, they say “go ahead.” But if there is no alignment, then don’t. In this case, those who do not conform to these structures, well, what we know is what we have already been talking about, right? Repression, persecution, stigmatization. So, this logic of displacement also applies in the Mapuche case, not only in terms of public policy or Indigenous policy, but also in terms of what lies behind it, right? Nor is it mentioned that all this is being carried out in a historically dispossessed territory which, in the case of the Mapuche, according to a figure we have and which is agreed upon by historians and social researchers, has been reduced from 10 million hectares to 600,000 hectares. So, when people talk about territorial recovery, they are talking about the recovery of ancestral lands, right? And that’s more or less the issue at hand.

Nohely Guzmán: Absolutely, and in fact, Pablo, what you say makes me think and also resonates a lot with the experiences I have been a part of, specifically in terms of the recovery of ancestral lands, but also in terms of the profound transformations that take place in the process, on the path to that recovery, and that in the end, it seems that states would have us believe that this is the only way in which we can truly and effectively carry out the recovery of territory and self-determination. So, what you say actually brings to mind a very specific example, which is the certification of ancestrality, which is an essential requirement for those Indigenous peoples and territories that are seeking to be officially recognized as autonomous by the state. And well, I wanted to tell you that this Certificate of Ancestry is a…

Daniel P. Gámez: What an interesting name!

Nohely Guzmán: Yes, I know, exactly. It’s a mechanism through which the state seeks to verify that those pueblos who claim to have an ancestral presence and relationship with the land they live on actually do, right? So, this premise, although undoubtedly riddled with colonial notions that we are discussing in detail here, paradoxically emerges within the framework of operationalizing the plurinationality and multiculturalism of the Bolivian state, right? Recognition for the certification of ancestrality requires that Indigenous peoples demonstrate a series of external and deeply monolithic criteria regarding indigeneity in order for the state to be able to recognize the group of people as “legitimately” Indigenous, right? This process includes an examination lasting several months by anthropologists and archaeologists from outside the territory in question, as always, in which these experts assess whether community members truly have an Indigenous language and speak it, whether they have traditional practices, such as, clothing, dances, food or agricultural practices, celebrations or rituals on specific dates. And there is also this examination of archaeological remains. Among many other requirements like these that are subject to verification, in order to access Indigenous autonomy, there is also this requirement to verify the functionality of the governance structures within Indigenous territories, which resonates a lot with what you two were discussing. In short, this last verification of functionality seeks to determine whether there is a system of authorities with specific hierarchies, to assess whether the processes for electing territorial and communal authorities have transparent and democratic procedures in the eyes of the state, and a series of other elements that ultimately require a compartmentalization of the roles of each territorial authority, all under the rubric of governance and legality. And at this point, I would like to mention that I vividly remember the words of my colleague David, from the Moxeño Ignaciano Nation, who from the beginning told me that this process of recognizing autonomy was fundamentally rigged and to a certain extent a trap, right? And he explained it to me in the following words. He told me that for there to be autonomy, the state has to be able to recognize you, and you have to show that you have the same elements and institutions as the state, because autonomy is nothing more than an administrative transfer of tasks from the state to the Indigenous government of the territory.

Daniel P. Gámez: That’s very, very important because I notice that we’re talking about two extremely worrying trends. The first is precisely this tutelary autonomy or this transfer of power from the state, almost like a gift that the state gives to the pueblos so that they can “govern” themselves. And apart from this tutelary autonomy or this capacity for constrained self-government, we are also seeing a tendency to create a stratum or class of permitted Indigenous leaders, right? Permitted in terms of being accepted and certified by the state and its political parties, who then become elites who do not necessarily have representation at the community level, but who do have legitimacy in the discourse of the state. And these two trends that are reproduced in the progressive regimes we are talking about, in Mexico, Bolivia, and Chile, show a permanence of colonial structures, and of the colonial character of nation-states. Whether they call themselves republican, plurinational, or whatever they call themselves, liberal, etc., right?

Nohely Guzmán: I find what you’re saying really interesting, Daniel, because it’s also putting your finger on this sore spot of reducing autonomy to an administrative task. I think it’s something that is, let’s say, deeply perverse in a certain sense and very, very violent. I know we’re going to have to wrap up the podcast now, but I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to say that it’s also important not only to talk about and to the state, but also among ourselves, among us here and with the community members with whom we work and live, about the risks of this trap of handing over autonomy, self-determination, and life in freedom to the state? I think that in many ways this podcast has shown us that this can be a process riddled with distracting strategies that, when we least realize it, we have been caught up for a decade in complying with a lot of bureaucratic requirements and we have neglected the revitalization of our languages, the care of our crops, the strengthening of our healing centers and procedures, right? So it seems to me that this process of examining elimination through the process of “making citizens” (ciudadanización) and this idea, this perverse state strategy of reorganizing everything so that, in the end, nothing changes, calls us to remember precisely what is essential and to emphasize that there is a long memory of making and weaving life and continuity in the midst of these processes, new forms of resistance, new ways of exercising and appropriating autonomy and putting it into practice, of living in freedom without asking for anyone’s permission. I don’t know if you would like to share a little bit of what you observe.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: Yes, thank you, Nohely. And as we are now entering the last part, ending this interesting podcast, I would like to mention three aspects in the case of Wallmapu, or the Mapuche territory. The first is that, even though there is this militarization regardless of which government is in power, even if now it is maintained by the current progressive government, the recovery of territories is also on the rise, right? They are there; they are present. And understanding territories as essential spaces for the sustainability of Indigenous life and the lives that exist in those spaces. Although, of course, the methods used to maintain a community’s territories employ practices that are politically criminalized. In the Mapuche case, there are a number of Mapuche political prisoners who are in different prisons, but these are costs that people and community organizations have also assumed precisely to keep us alive. On the other hand, there are also the questions and methods that challenge the practices and content of Indigenous consultations, which are supposedly based on good faith and attempt to make it feasible for the state to supposedly solve what they call “Indigenous problems,” in this case the Mapuche problem. And finally, there is also the memory, the history of the territories themselves, which was not taught in historical texts, in the national curricula, or in the hegemonic history, but which also take on relevance from these same processes that also feed individual and collective struggles and, of course, cross different borders like the wind.

Daniel P. Gámez: Of course, yes. And that leads me to think about the peoples and organizations and territories that exercise autonomy without asking permission from the state, that exercise it de facto. On the question of recognition, when it may be desired, it comes later, once autonomy is already being exercised in fact.

Nohely Guzmán: Of course.

Daniel P. Gámez: And another thing you mentioned, Pablo, that I also want to highlight, is literally the recovery of land, of communal land, of the land of the pueblos, or basically wresting control of communal lands from the state.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: And from the settlers and colonial extractive companies.

Daniel P. Gámez: And here, I want to conclude by drawing attention to the case of the Casa del Pueblo Tlamachtiloyan de Atlapulco, in the pueblo of Atlapulco, in Xochimilco, which was recovered two years ago because it is part of the communal lands of the pueblo and is now being used as a meeting house, for political events, cultural activities, for language revitalization, and for reconnection with the community’s territory, especially by the younger generations. So, these kinds of initiatives, the exercise of autonomy, are crucial.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: Of course.

Nohely Guzmán: I think one of the most important reflections on this process, and not just looking upwards, as if talking to the state, but this time talking to those people in the territories, the peoples, the communities we come from and work with, as if talking among ourselves, is this question of not neglecting each other. This issue of autonomy and handing over freedom, self-determination, and autonomy to the state level is a trap, and it is a trap that is not only very dangerous once it is formalized, made official, and legalized, but also because it often distracts us, keeps us busy with bureaucracies that are full of requirements that entangle us and literally transform community life to a large extent. As a result, you have legal recognition of autonomy, but your practices, the seed of autonomous living, can often be neglected. I wanted to close with that and also by thanking my colleagues for teaching me that it is precisely in homes, in kitchens, in community meetings, in the process of preparing medicines, and even on soccer fields. This is where the dispute on the state’s sovereignty over Indigenous lands, knowledge, and bodies that ultimately live freely without asking anyone’s permission begins.

Pablo Millalen Lepin: So, that’s it. Thank you very much, thank you very much. Greetings. Greetings and see you next time. Bye.