Indigenous Peoples and the New Extraction: From Territorial Rights to Hydrocarbon Citizenship in the Bolivian Chaco

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X16678804
• Author: Penelope Anthias
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• Date: 01 September 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 222, Vol. 45 No. 5, September 2018, 136–153

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X16678804

© 2016 Latin American Perspectives

136

Indigenous Peoples and the New Extraction

From Territorial Rights to Hydrocarbon

Citizenship in the Bolivian Chaco

by

Penelope Anthias

A growing body of literature examines how the rise of “neo-extractivist” states in Latin

America is reconfiguring the relationship between resources, nation, territory, and citi-

zenship. However, the implications for indigenous territorial projects remain underex-

plored. Ethnographic research in the Bolivian Chaco reveals the ways in which indigenous

territorial projects are becoming implicated in and being reimagined amidst the spatial-

izing struggles of a hydrocarbon state. The tension between indigenous peoples’ desire for

inclusion in a hydrocarbon-based national development project and their experiences of

dispossession by an expanding hydrocarbon frontier has given rise to competing modes of

“hydrocarbon citizenship” in the Guaraní territory Itika Guasu, where a vision of corpo-

rate-sponsored indigenous autonomy is pitted against new forms of state-funded develop-

ment patronage. These dynamics challenge resistance narratives and resource-curse

theories, revealing how resources act as conduits for deeper postcolonial struggles over

territory, sovereignty, and citizenship.

Un creciente cuerpo de literatura examina cómo el surgimiento de los estados “neo-

extractivistas” en América Latina está reconfigurando la relación entre los recursos, la

nación, el territorio y la ciudadanía. Sin embargo, las implicaciones para los proyectos ter-

ritoriales indígenas han sido poco exploradas. Investigaciónes etnográficas en el Chaco boli-

viano revela cómo los pueblos indígenas están repensando sus proyectos territoriales en el

contexto de las luchas espaciales de un estado extractivista. Destaco la tensión entre el deseo

de los pueblos indígenas para su inclusión en un proyecto de desarrollo nacional basado en

los hidrocarburos, y sus experiencias de despojo por la expansión de la frontera hidrocar-

burífera. Esta tensión ha dado lugar a modos opuestos de “ciudadanía de hidrocarburos” en

el territorio Guaraní Itika Guasu, donde una visión de autonomía indígena patrocinada por

una empresa petrolera se enfrenta a nuevos proyectos de desarrollo financiados por el estado.

Estas dinámicas cuestionan narrativas de resistencia y teorías de “la maldición de los recur-

sos,” revelando que los recursos actúan como conductos para luchas postcoloniales por el

territorio, la soberanía y la ciudadanía.

Keywords: Indigenous peoples, Extraction, Bolivia, Neo-extractivism

In a 2007 speech, the Bolivian vice president and academic Álvaro García

Linera laid out his vision for “dismantling neoliberalism,” a model he associ-

ated with social fragmentation, privatization, and an erosion of the state and

678804LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X16678804LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESAnthias / INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND THE NEW EXTRACTION

research-article2016

Penelope Anthias is a postdoctoral fellow in the Rule and Rupture Program of the Department of

Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen.

Anthias / INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND THE NEW EXTRACTION 137

democracy. In his vision, state development of and distribution of rents from

Bolivia’s subsoil resources—the “socialization of collective wealth”—would go

hand in hand with the construction of a new, unified Bolivian national society.

This society, characterized by grassroots participatory democracy and sus-

tained social movement activism, would be overseen by an “empowered state”

that would provide “an international armor” for social struggles while being

“controlled and permeated by their demands,” including, implicitly, the

demand for economic distribution. He summarized his vision as follows:

This struggle against neo-liberalism is based on four fundamentals: varying

forms of democratic expression (community-based, territorial-based, direct,

and participatory), the recovery by society of its collective wealth, the rein-

forcement of the state—subordinated to society—for the sake of international

protection, and, lastly, unification of the social movements. Country and city

come together, also indigenous people and peasants, young and old workers,

the unemployed and the homeless, and the landless and the destitute.

As García Linera made clear, Bolivia’s “new extraction” is more than an eco-

nomic project or a set of pro-poor policies; it is a project of nation making—of

redefining the national community and the state’s social contract with its citi-

zens—on a par with Bolivia’s 1952 agrarian revolution and illustrative of oil’s

capacity to “elevate and expand the centrality of the nation-state as a vehicle

for modernity, progress, civilization” (Watts, 2001: 208).

In this paper, I draw on ethnographic work in the Guaraní territory of Itika

Guasu in Bolivia’s gas-rich Chaco region to explore how lowland indigenous

peoples1 are situated within this new hydrocarbon-based national develop-

ment project. I argue that, while lowland indigenous peoples seek inclusion in

the Movimento al Socialismo (Movement toward Socialism—MAS) project of

state-led decolonization, the state’s continuing refusal to recognize their ter-

ritorial rights in the context of extraction produces feelings of exclusion and

betrayal. This has given rise to competing modes of “hydrocarbon citizenship”

in Itika Guasu, where a vision of corporate-sponsored territorial autonomy

based on direct negotiations with hydrocarbon companies is pitted against

efforts to integrate the territory into new forms of gas-funded state develop-

ment patronage. These dynamics demonstrate that indigenous peoples are

becoming implicated in the competing spatializing modes of a hydrocarbon

state in ways that challenge both resistance narratives and resource-curse the-

ories. They must be placed in the context of a longer indigenous struggle for

territorial autonomy in the Bolivian lowlands, a struggle that predates the

election of Evo Morales and has unfolded in articulation with an expanding

extractive-industry frontier.

The paper is structured as follows. I begin by reviewing previous work on

oil and the (post)colonial nation, arguing that resources must be understood as

conduits for deeper postcolonial struggles over territory, authority, and citizen-

ship. I then examine the intimate and unstable relationship among hydrocar-

bons, nation, and territory in Bolivia and its evolution under the MAS

government. I go on to trace the evolution of the Guaraní struggle for territorial

rights in Itika Guasu, highlighting the way a project of multicultural citizenship

became articulated with and undermined by conflicts over the governance of

gas. The final section examines the competing modes of hydrocarbon citizenship