A review of scholarly work on indigenous movements in Latin America conducted by Jackson and Warren a few years ago convincingly argued ‘why certain dichotomies and concepts, usefully employed in earlier analyses, now hinder more than help’. It referred to oppositions between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples and between traditional and modern practices. Coming to terms with several ways of ‘being indigenous’ and understanding multiple and fluid identities is better enhanced by equally sophisticated analytical tools than by conceptual dichotomies. The review also identified the ‘equivalent need’ to examine different kinds of citizenship emerging in new ‘civil society’ discourses and practices.Footnote 2 Without citing them explicitly, these ideas were taken up by Edward Fischer for a project that led to the edited volume under review here.
Under neoliberal dominance, the concept of civil society rose to prominence as a domain to which a retreating state delegated decentralised responsibilities, as well as one from which robust citizens and their associations were to emerge, either by choice or necessity. Within this ideological context, civil society and the market were perceived as the opposites of an obese and increasingly dysfunctional state. While the market would guarantee wealth and efficient resource use, civil society would spawn an active citizenry and become the foundation of democracy. However, as Goldstein et al. make clear in their contribution, things turned out differently, and this volume contains interesting and thought-provoking case studies of indigenous movements and practices that explain why. In all their diversity and on the basis of rich ethnographic research, the chapters share a critical stance towards unified indigenous identities and towards a one-dimensional view of civil society. Fischer summarises this point at the beginning of his introduction when he points to the complexity of civil society as ‘simultaneously a point of resistance and of hegemonic collusion’. By the end of the book the dichotomy of state and civil society has dissolved in a web of interconnections.
One way of elaborating this general point is the argument that indigenous movements or organisations can neither be taken for granted, nor assumed to automatically emerge or exist and exert a favourable influence on the consolidation of democracy, rule of law and participation. In a well-informed historical analysis of the Andean region, Baud makes abundantly clear how for a long time indigenous peoples actively engaged with the wider political and social environment, which shaped their own political evolution and that of the state. A contemporary lawsuit of indigenous and non-indigenous groups from the Ecuadorean Amazon against ChevronTexaco, analysed by Sawyer, did not arise spontaneously but was actively achieved through a politics of articulation. Similarly, the concept of ‘vernacular statecraft’ (Colloredo-Mansfeld) indicates how indigenous organising and demand making are the outcome of coping with increasingly plural local communities in social, economical and cultural terms (instead of coming out of some pre-existing homogeneous subject), and how these experiences were subsequently ‘uploaded’ to national-level politics. Studying Colombia's oldest indigenous organisation, Rappaport examines changing indigenous discourses as key instruments in the politics of articulation and highlights the way in which an indigenous movement continuously (re)positions and aligns itself to other social actors. Indigenous combativeness and ethnic difference carry various meanings over time, generating ‘different degrees of acceptance by the state and by middle-class civil society’.
The supposedly beneficial and uncontroversial nature of civil society is effectively refuted in the contributions by Goldstein et al. and Pitarch. The first deals with a particularly violent form of popular agency in the barrios of Cochabamba: popular lynchings. It uncompromisingly but rightly concludes that these violent expressions of civil society are inherently undemocratic and harmful for the rule of law. However, extra-legal violence also seeks to address feelings of insecurity and defend citizen's rights. It is even instrumental in the construction of communitarian solidarity and civil society itself. Pitarch, on the other hand, concentrates on the politics of ‘indigenous doctors’ in the highlands of Chiapas. In a case study of the internal workings of civil organisations of indigenous peoples in a heavily politicised environment, the author questions the issue of indigenous representation and legitimacy. A careful look at the experiences of three organisations of indigenous medicine and practitioners shows that in some cases these organisations are effectively ‘kidnapped’ by non-indigenous outsiders for political purposes. These outsiders – unfortunately the author never specifies who they are – supplant the indigenous voice, reduce the plurality of positions and thereby effectively undermine practices of multiculturalism while formally defending them. Pitarch speaks unequivocally of ‘uncivil effects’ and calls the practice ‘ventriloquism’, a term also used by Baud for nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Latin America, and suggests that Zapatista spokesman Marcos is the master of it. Does this mean that every form of outside intervention necessarily leads to ventriloquism and the manipulation of indigenous interests? The contributions of Sawyer on the interconnections between transnational NGOs and local indigenous activism and of Dickens on the consequences of externally financed development intervention and ecological conservation in Guatemala certainly refute this by pointing to the negotiations that took place between insiders and outsiders.
Such a subtle approach can hardly be found in Cojtí's study, perhaps more a pamphlet, which at the beginning sets out to argue that the state in Guatemala ‘remains structurally colonialist and racist’. Is this something typical of the harsh realities of Guatemala (just as Pitarch suggests ventriloquism to be something very Mexican, which Baud would probably deny)? No, at least when we read Casaús Arzu's contribution about the role and discourses of Guatemala's Maya intellectuals in bringing about a more just and inclusive state and society. She sees evidence of ‘the influence and growing participation of indigenous movements and Maya intellectuals in the creation of a new, plural state’. It is a pity that the editor of the volume, a specialist on Guatemalan indigenous activism, does nothing more than note these ‘very different perspectives’ on developments in Guatemala. With respect to this country, the reader is left with the glass half-full, or indeed, half-empty.
