Christopher Carter’s The Long Shadow of Extraction: The Origins of Indigenous Autonomy is a welcome return of attention to Indigenous politics in Latin America for comparative politics. Since the surge of interest around the work of Deborah Yashar and Donna Lee Van Cott more than a decade ago, there has been relatively little attention to Indigenous politics in the field. This book, which offers a historically grounded multi-method account of variation in Indigenous demands for autonomy in Bolivia and Peru, is an exciting addition to the literature. The project is based on an impressive 18 months of fieldwork in Peru and Bolivia, original surveys of more than 1,000 Indigenous respondents in Bolivia and 300 Indigenous leaders in Peru, and over 30 field visits to Indigenous communities in both countries.
This book focuses on the question of variation in Indigenous claims related to autonomy: What explains whether Indigenous political demands are focused on (1) autonomy, (2) assimilation, or (3) integration? Carter argues that subnational variation in the content of Indigenous demands today can be traced back to the massive interventions in Indigenous life around resource extraction in the early twentieth century. Carter describes two very different modes of disruption to Indigenous communities, lands, and self-governance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the newly independent states of Bolivia and Peru. Some Indigenous communities experienced “state-led extraction,” which was characterized by forced labor and military drafts to use Indigenous people as workers in infrastructure, mining, and military projects, often brutally removing people from their communities. Others, in contrast, experienced “rural elite extraction,” which took the form of the imposition of large hacienda land tenure, where Indigenous communities were often trapped in precarious and violently enforced debt peonage systems, where Indigenous labor was exploited on their own traditional homelands for the gain of the hacienda owners.
Carter’s main argument is that Indigenous communities reacted to these violent interventions into Indigenous life (already brutalized by Spanish colonial rule) with resistance that took different forms depending on the type of labor extraction in process. Under conditions of state-led extraction, Indigenous communities tended to resist in ways that strengthened Indigenous community institutions. The state, represented by agents who violently kidnapped Indigenous people and forced them into labor, lacked legitimacy in the eyes of Indigenous people and leaders, who continued to mobilize resistance and invest in Indigenous local institutions. Even decades later, these communities are more likely to support Indigenous autonomy.
On the other hand, areas that were forced into hacienda systems (“rural elite extraction”) experienced more disruption to traditional Indigenous governance as elites were co-opted into managing communities’ labor for the hacienda. In these areas, Carter argues, labor unions and class-based organizing held a greater appeal, and today there is more support for assimilation strategies, “which entails sacrificing ethnic institutions and subordinating cultures to the economically and politically dominant group,” including a focus on individual rights over collective rights (6). Finally, he details a third path of communities that experienced both types of extraction and invested in both class-based and Indigenous institutions. In these cases, communities were more likely to pursue integration, pursuing “inclusion through state-sanctioned institutions (rather than Indigenous ones) while maintaining their ethnic identities” (73).
This is a rigorous and careful book that makes wonderful use of mixed methods tools of political science—clear thinking about causal mechanisms, variation and alternative explanations, an original survey of Indigenous people in Bolivia, extensive archival work, and interviews. It is well-written, thorough, and well-argued. The attention to subnational variation and variation among Indigenous communities is innovative and well-suited to the research questions and research design.
Like any good book, this one left me with questions. Throughout the book, I puzzled over two issues. First, I found myself returning to the difficult question of agency and how best to weigh long-term versus short-term causal factors. And second, I continue to wonder about the concept of autonomy, especially how difficult it is to meaningfully conceptualize a scale of Indigenous independence from states that have spent hundreds of years violently persecuting Indigenous communities, enslaving them, uprooting them, and denying their existence and humanity.
How do we weigh factors that happened to our great-grandparents with the choices we have in front of us? Like Mahoney, Carter makes a compelling case that pivotal moments in history have observable implications today. This is undoubtedly true. And the evidence Carter presents is thoughtful and compelling. But I continue to puzzle over what share of the variation is explained by historical patterns versus the creative, committed activism of Indigenous communities today.
Why do Indigenous people want autonomy? Carter lays out a standard political science answer to that question. For example, he writes that “Indigenous leaders have generally preferred autonomy because it protects their Indigenous institutions from which they derive their power” (52). This is plausible, and certainly in political science, power and legitimacy are important elements of modern Western institutions and governance. But for many Indigenous groups and peoples who have long fought for the recognition of self-determination and autonomy from colonial rule—including fighting for it to be recognized as a human right under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—autonomy may also be something greater. These nuances may not matter for Carter’s impressive results, but they do raise important questions about how political science speaks to and interacts with Indigenous studies research that can provide greater context for these important concepts. I very much like that Carter resists painting Indigenous demands with a broad brush. He offers careful attention to variation throughout the book, especially in Chapter 5, where he presents the results of his original survey showing that Indigenous respondents do not all agree on autonomy. But I am still pondering the content of the demands—what does autonomy mean to Indigenous peoples and communities today? And what do the alternatives mean? More research is needed.
As an example, early in the book, Carter motivates the puzzle of variation in autonomy demands with the observation that very few of the Indigenous-majority municipalities in Bolivia that could have pushed for autonomy under the 2009 constitution did so. I appreciate the attention to variation within Indigenous communities, but I wonder if opting out of a formal municipal process might reflect other priorities under the national Indigenous government of the MAS. Perhaps subnational autonomy became less important once the national government was pursuing a project of decolonization, including Indigenous language and cultural revitalization?
Carter’s book is an impressive effort to think carefully about assimilation, integration, and autonomy and bring attention to the legacies of disruption and violence Indigenous communities have endured—and the remarkable ways Indigenous communities continue to resist, mobilize, and make demands on states.
