The new war of identities in Bolivia

Pablo Mamani

03/10/2013

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The Plurinational State of Bolivia is faced with a "new" and unforeseen reality following publication of the results of the National Census of Population and Housing of 2012. What is this unexpected reality? One could say there was a census ethnocide of the indigenous population, which fell to 41% with respect to the 62% of the 2001 census. The other "novelty" is that these data have been celebrated by the ideologues of mestizaje, something that appears to involve old Darwinist ideas [the survival of the fittest - Translator’s note]. Among these we find Andrés Soliz Rada (former Minister of Hydrocarbons in the government of Evo Morales) or Carlos Cordero (political analyst), if only to name a few of those involved.

What is obvious here is that this is a resurgence of the old idea: "at last the indigenous people no longer exist." This is simply a new way to impose the old hegemony of creole Darwinism.

Cordero, for example, believes that it expresses a rejection of "indigenous racism", and this would explain the fact that 58% of those questioned in the census with respect to ethnic origins answered: "none."

Here, those who suffered from racism historically now appear as racists. Finally all this leaves Bolivia facing the old existential problem: to be or not to be.

Is this part of the colonial mold of the Bolivian State? There is no doubt that it is. The history of the Bolivian state has always been based on the physical extermination of the pre-colonial peoples, combined with an integrationist policy to make these peoples disappear through self-negation.

Why do we think that the central narrative of the extermination of the Indian is maintained? Here are some historical data that provide a context for the "celebration" that we observe today.

In the census of 1900, the disappearance of the indigenous people was celebrated. "At the present time, the proportion of those of indigenous race, including savages, is the same as it was 54 years ago, while white and mestizo races have increased considerably. Thus in a short time, looking at the progressive laws of statistics, we will find that the indigenous race, if not completely eliminated, will have been reduced to a minimal expression" (General census of the population of the Republic of Bolivia, 1900).

The Darwinists of that time had a blind faith in the laws of statistics. A fact that appeared in the presidency of José Manuel Pando, a “liberal" who ruled the country thanks to the Aymara troops of General Pablo Zárate Willka, whose contribution made possible the defeat of the Sucre Conservatives in the Federal War of 1899.

In this period there was a profound anti-Indian racism, as one can read in the work of Ramiro Condarco on the "fearful" Willka. Because of this, and due to shame for the Indians, the contribution to the liberal cause of the three Willkas was denied.

This context appears appropriate to our present situation. Why? Because the celebration of the mestizo nation brings us precisely to the fact that, underlying it, is the dream of a new end to the Indian, either as identity or as a people.

This is a final triumph which should open the way to a fervent modernity and the final triumph of a capitalist civilization with its totalitarian cultural, without denying that the Aymara have a large part in the functioning of the market.

And who are targeted here? The Aymara and Quechua peoples, given that they make up the major part of the indigenous population of Bolivia. Only thus can one understand the celebration of the census ethnocide of the Aymara and Quechua populations, in the hopes of seeing an end to the two peoples as a substantial part of colla civilization.

Is this simply a matter of statistical fact, or does it have a political meaning? One could say that this is a matter of politics, since the Aymara and Quechua in history, and indeed today, are the nuclei of an anti-Darwinist and anti-colonial political project, even though this project has problems of its own.

For thirteen years now there has existed a struggle for their own Government of the country, today badly represented by MAS (Movement to Socialism). In this sense, the Darwinists of the twenty-first century see a real danger in the Aymara and Quechua because these are a threat to the interests of those who look back to Pizarro and Almagro.

Hence the idea of a mestizo country is nothing more than a country based on a creole and oligarchical imaginative narrative. In fact the assertion of mestizaje is a discursive artifice to resurrect the old creole Darwinism along the lines of Nicomedes Antelo or Gabriel René Moreno.

Although the creole Darwinism today has changed, since the white-mestizo admires the ideal and symbolic Indian, something that in the past was unthinkable, this does not extend to the real and autonomous Indians. These are criminalized and made a minority.

In other words, the "good Indian" is admired, one who is submissive and is the enemy of the "rebellious Indian"; these are basic principles of colonial Government. In fact the Government of Evo Morales and Alvaro García Linera have exalted the symbolic indigenous people in order to criminalize the autonomous and critical Indian.

Here the new rule is to praise the ideal Indian in order to assassinate the real Indian, a phenomenon that is typical of nation states in the Americas. This is the logic behind the disastrous organization of the National Census of Population and Housing of 2012, in which there was a notorious lack of interest in bringing up to date the census cartography, along with the lack of serious planning and abysmal training of those doing the census.

Many Aymaras, for example, have denounced the fact that those doing the census never came to their homes, so that they had to go looking for them, which is extremely curious in a period characterized by digital and satellite technology.

In perspective, this could have a serious blowback because it has opened a new war of identities. In the Aymara and Quechua world there are already reactions, indignation at the danger of "disappearing again", which could radicalize the struggle of identity.

Being a minority brings with it levels of incrimination, discrimination and the loss of political representation. Thus they are once again building the historical walls of a social frontier between Q'aras and Indians, something could well be a sign of a reemergence of the war of identities.

- Pablo Mamani is a sociologist.

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

Source of the Spanish version: Página SIETE, Domingo 1 de septiembre de 2 013

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/79828