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Landscapes of Memory Katarismo in Bolivi
Landscapes of Memory Katarismo in Bolivi
Landscapes of Memory Katarismo in Bolivi
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ABSTRACT:
Emerging in the late 1960s, Katarismo is considered one of the first movements in
sought to recover histories and epistemologies that transcended the modern Bolivian
nation state even while they adapted their strategies according to its
environment and the natural world within the Katarista programme. This
dissertation shows that the relationship between nature and indigeneity in the Central
between historians and anthropologists regarding the ways in which the ‘natural world’,
or social constructions of the environment, have been understood and framed as part of
of making wider contestations against the neoliberal state. Illustrated by the slogan “We
are not the peasants of 52”, it concludes that Katarismo represents a crucial shift in how
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Illimani, La Paz, 2017. A sacred mountain. Photo: author’s own.
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CONTENTS
List of abbreviations......................................................................................................................6
Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 7
i. Sources
iii. NGOs
Conclusions ................................................................................................................................... 53
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 57
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Figure 1. Map of Bolivia. Source: UN Geospatial Information
Section http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/
bolivia.pdf
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
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INTRODUCTION
For the indigenous movement, the land is sacred. The land, the Mother
Earth, is our life.
—Evo Morales, 2007
One of the most striking developments in 21st century Latin American societies has been the
newfound visibility of indigenous peoples. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the
plurinational state of Bolivia where indigenous peoples constitute the majority of the population
(Yashar, 2005: 152). In 2006 it saw the election of Latin America's first indigenous president, Evo
Morales and his social movement-backed Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS). The President’s vision
of an ‘indigenous’ nation was subsequently codified in the 2009 constitution which declared Bolivia
The rise of indigenous concerns in the Americas and elsewhere has been closely linked with a
burgeoning environmental agenda (Krech, 2005; Murray Li, 2004). Indigenous peoples are often
assumed to attach critical importance to the environment. In the Andes, anthropologists have
consistently argued that nature is a core facet of Andean cosmovisións, or worldviews (Teijero,
2007; von Barloewen, 1995; inter alia). But in both academic literature and popular consciousness,
this has a tendency to produce essentialised and erroneous perceptions of indigenous peoples as
In the Morales era, ‘buen vivir’ (‘suma kamana’ in Aymara), or living well in harmony with nature,
has become an abiding principle of the Bolivian state. The concept is part of a state-driven narrative
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on indigenous cosmovisións and is used by the Morales regime within rhetoric and policy on
climate change (Postero, 2013: 110). However, potent and well-publicised contradictions in this
stance have become starkly apparent through the state’s extractivist policies. In 2012 Morales
attempted to build a 300km highway through the Isoboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous
Territory (TIPNIS), which has been a protected indigenous territory and national park since 1990,
and the ancestral homeland of the Moxeño-Trinitario, Yuracaré, and Chimáne peoples. TIPNIS
brought to the fore the tensions in 21st century narratives of indigeneity with their respect for
‘mother earth’ and the realities of the resource extraction model in the Andes (McNeish, 2013). In
2017 after giving the green-light to proposals once again, Morales went on to accuse critics of the
historian Waskar Ari sagely observes, ‘the spirit of nature and issues of land and territory, continues
looms at the heart of Latin American decolonisation debates in the 21st century.
Fig. 2. Evo Morales addresses the petrol workers union, August 2017. An
image of Tupaj Katari is in the background. Source: Twitter.
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In this dissertation I explore the Katarista movement in the period 1960-1990, that is to say, the
political groups and organisations which paid homage to Tupaj Katari either explicitly in their
organisational names or in their political practice. Few studies of Bolivia have attempted to trace
back the genealogy of the 21st century ‘indigenous awakening’ and its attendant environmentalist
agenda beyond the 1990s. Similarly, scholars have largely neglected to historicise the evolving
environmental historian Shawn Miller argues, ‘History without nature is not only self-serving: it is
inaccurate, shortsighted, and potentially perilous to the human story line.’(2007: 2). I locate
Katarismo as a turning point for the ways in which ecology and nature were articulated by
late 20th century Bolivia. This dissertation attempts to answer the following question. How was the
concept of ‘nature’ understood by Kataristas in late 20th century Bolivia, and how was this
anthropologists regarding the ways in which the ‘natural world’, or social constructions of the
environment, have been understood and framed as part of a revolutionary programme by indigenous
political groups. I will illuminate the enigmatic positions adopted by the Katarista movement vis-à-
vis the environment and natural world, shedding light on a facet of the movement maligned in
existing scholarship. I argue that the environment, ecology and nature assumed great importance in
Katarista discourse as way of making wider contestations against the neoliberal state, and
modernity more fundamentally. I argue that ultimately environmental traditions and ‘natural
Kataristas.
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Chapter One situates the Katarista movement within the Bolivian political milieu, and outlines its
trajectory alongside wider political trends in Bolivia and the Andes. Chapters One and Two point
out that Katarismo was the first movement in Bolivia to frame the environment as part of an ethnic-
based struggle and to tie it to a specifically decolonial agenda. Chapter Two additionally reveals
how the environment was framed both as a natural resource in political economy terms, and as an
animated force imbued with profound spiritual and cultural resonance. It explores the contradictions
and tensions that this dual meaning produced. It is argued in Chapter Three that the construction of
environmental myth and memory helped Kataristas to to invoke a counter-modernity and to build
on pre-existing decolonial intellectual currents in the Andes. The chapter unpicks intellectual
currents within Katarismo, examining the role of Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui as well
discourse.
i. Sources
In this dissertation I draw primarily on Katarista pamphlets, periodicals and publications published
in the Spanish language. All translations are my own except where otherwise indicated. Also
reviewed are pamphlets from Bolivian political parties including the Trotskyist Partido Obrero
Revolucionario (POR) and the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR), selected Bolivian
national newspapers (El Diario, Presencia and Los Tiempos) published between 1960 and 1990, and
published reports from the Bolivian trade union movement and international organisations such as
the World Bank. I also draw on interviews that I conducted in La Paz in July 2017 with academics,
Aymara activists and Katarista thinkers, as well as the plethora of digital materials such as
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It must be recognised that it is tricky to gauge the popular reception of the documents assessed here.
As with any political movement, the range of opinions expressed through spoken conversations,
debates at trade union meetings and programmes transmitted on local radio stations, for example,
can only be only partially and indirectly captured. Although Katarismo was a movement arising
from literate protagonists in urban La Paz, it aimed to also reach those who were not; in 1976,
Bolivian adult literacy rates stood at 63% (World Bank, 2017). Although some Kataristas may not
have been able to read the documents analysed here, their contents would have been transmitted
orally. Many of the publications analysed in this dissertation were shipped internationally and
reflect the transnational nature of the debates in which Katarismo participated. The written
discourse from Kataristas hence represents a fraction of the broad Katarista discourse permeating
Bolivia between 1960 and 1990, but it embodies the most outward facing positions within its
thought.
By way of background, in recent years historians of the Andes have increasingly turned their
attention to the long history of indigenous organising in the region, placing the contributions of
indigenous communities at the heart of 19th and 20th century state formation processes. Laura
Gotkowitz in A Revolution for Our Rights: Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice in Bolivia,
1880-1952 (2008), fluidly charts the long history of rural insurrection over land and civil rights
among Aymara and Quechua-speaking indigenous communities in the Cochabamba region in the
years preceding the Bolivian national revolution of 1952. Providing a picture of, in the author’s
words, ‘the revolution before the revolution’ Gotkowitz reveals that disputes over indigenous rights
were significantly more important in Bolivia’s pre-revolutionary political culture than recognised in
earlier scholarship.
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Scholarship on Katarismo itself is dominated by two groundbreaking works from the 1980s by
sociologists Silvia Rivera and Javier Hurtado. These were published amid a crisis in the Marxist
historiographical paradigm and at a time when the credibility of the Marxist left was globally
debased. Both works typify therefore, an intellectual stance which sought to move beyond solely a
class based approach to social relations. Rivera’s Oppressed But Not Defeated: Peasant Struggles
Among the Aymara and Quechua in Bolivia, 1900–1980 is a tour-de-force on the Katarista
movement and is cited in most scholarship on Bolivian recent history. It pioneers the notion of ‘long
memory’ and ‘short memory’ as defining features of Katarismo. This long memory takes the form
of the trans-generational memory stretching back to colonial era repression and resistance from
Tupaj Amaru and Tupaj Katari in the 18th century. Conversely, short memory invokes the failure of
the Bolivian revolution of 1952 to achieve drastic social change, or even to fulfil its liberal promises
Hurtado’s El Katarismo (1986), based on extensive primary source research, traces the rise of
alliances. The work is rich in detail on the institutional development and electoral efforts of
Katarismo. Throughout the 1970s Hurtado, along with fellow scholar Xavier Albó, was involved in
the Centre for Research and Promotion of the Peasantry (CIPCA), a Jesuit funded NGO which
promoted rural development, cultural initiatives and advocated the rights of Aymara and Quechua
speaking peasants.
These two works have come to be taken, not unproblematically, as the official histories of the
movement (Portugal and Macusaya, 2016). Recent years have witnessed the growth of dynamic
new intellectual projects within both academic and grassroots circles in Bolivia which contest these
‘official histories’ of Katarismo written by Rivera and Hurtado et al. This dissertation engages with
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these recent critiques at a time when few academic projects have done so. These initiatives to some
degree, envision a new role for scholars working on indigenous peoples and encourage critical
enquiry on state-sponsored codes and histories of indigeneity which have evolved with Morales and
the MAS in Bolivia. This developing historiography is reflected in the 2016 work El Indianismo
katarista - Un análisis crítico by Pedro Portugal and Carlos Macusaya. The authors are active in
projects such as Periodico Pukara, a La Paz-based Indianista journal and the contemporary group
Movimiento Indianista Katarista (MINKA). Portugal and Macusaya reject Rivera’s notion of ‘long
memory’ specifically. They lament, ‘one of the most popularised and vulgarised ideas about the
indigenous movements of the Andes has its origin in that book [Rivera’s Oppressed but not
Defeated]: the idea of ‘long memory’, which is very attractive for certain social strata distanced
from non-indigenous scholars is evident here. They argue that notions of dormant memory are
ahistorical and fail to account for the ways in which younger-generation Kataristas actively
constructed a memory and language of past oppression unassisted by older generations (interview
Portugal and Macusaya also raise the question of the relationship between Indianismo and
Katarismo. Although I concentrate on the latter, there is often overlap between the two. They are
Macusaya, 2016: 26). Indianismo, influenced by the works of Fausto Reinaga, places primordial
emphasis on the racial oppression experienced by Indians and asserts an essential difference
between Indian and non-Indian subjects. Portugal and Macusaya conclude, ‘In short, we can say
that Indianismo was a movement and a discourse that centred its criticism and struggle on the
racialised character of the social structure in Bolivia; Meanwhile Katarismo was a movement which
focused on the economic and cultural specificities of the peasantry.’ (2016: 26). The former
approach is reflected in Fausto Reinaga’s Manifesto of the Indian Party of Bolivia, in which he
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repudiates racial or class-based alliances, declaring, ‘We are oppressed, we are enslaved, as a race.
We are discriminated against as a race. They kill us because we are Indians. Our oppression is
Fig. 2. Hurtado’s El Katarismo was republished and launched with aplomb by Álvaro
García Linera in 2016. But the lack of Katarista representation at the launch event proved
controversial for contemporary Katarista groups. The protest sign reads, ’Presenting “El
Katarismo” without Kataristas’. Source: José Luis Saavedra, 2016.
The provenance of scholarship on Katarismo is often a politically charged topic. Sociologist Jean-
Pierre Lavaud produced Identité Et Politique: Le Courant Tupac Katari En Bolivie (1982) an oft-
cited report outlining the political trajectory of Katarismo. Lavaud downplays the revolutionary
potential of Katarismo, noting that the groups ‘are somewhat regressive, all turning towards a
mythologised past from which they draw energy and assurance.’ (1982: 53). He also makes
intriguing although tentative links between Katarismo and theories expressed by Fanon and Freud,
as well as identifying parallels between Pachamama and ‘Mother Africa’ pan-African ideology.
(1984: 54). The work received (unjustified, I argue) criticism from Rivera. In a footnote in
Oppressed but not Defeated, she scathingly concludes, ‘The ultimate purpose of Lavaud’s article
seems to be that of demystifying the Indian, who in the latest trends of European romanticism
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appears to have become an idealised solution to the ideological crisis of the younger
generations.’(1987: 133).
As such, themes of historical memory seem to pervade studies of Katarismo. This typifies much of
Bolivian historiography in which the past and the present are understood to animatedly co-exist
(Dangl, 2017; Rivera, 1990; Dunkerley, 2007; inter alia). Much of this arose in the context of the
1980s when the topic of ‘memory’ attracted increasing attention from social scientists. Xavier Albó,
coined the phrase ‘great arc’ as a descriptor for the two centuries connecting the insurrection of
Tupaj Katari with the Kataristas for example (1987) . In the same vein, José Teijeiro’s La rebellion
Aymara insurrection as an historical constant in the colonial and postcolonial eras. Yet the
environment as a tangible embodiment of the past has not been explicitly placed within the
analytical framework of memory in these studies. To address this neglect, in this dissertation I
explore the ways in which the natural landscape acts as socio-spatial repository of memories
Meanwhile at the state and institutional level, much recent scholarship has focused on the Pink
Tide, or left-wing shift, in the Latin American political milieu. IMF sponsored neoliberal policies in
the 1990s and early 2000s triggered a resurgence in social movements across Latin America, and
prompted a flurry of works on indigenous activism and neoliberalism. Of these, this dissertation
draws from Marc Becker (2008), Petras and Veltmeyer (2010), Jeffrey Webber (2010; 2015)
In his work Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador’s Modern Indigenous Movements
(2008), Becker contests the claim that the 20th century Ecuadorian Left operated in an
assimilationist model which subjugated ethnicity to class. Becker seeks to bring the category of
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class ‘back in’ to studies of ethnic movements. He argues compellingly that the so-called ‘new’
indigenous organisations which developed in Ecuador in the 1990s were rooted in older modes of
class-based organisation associated with the traditional Left. As with Gotkowizc, Becker explores
the pluralistic history of indigenous activism, tracing the propinquity which characterised relations
In a similar vein, Petras and Veltmeyer enlist a Marxist framework to critique assumptions of class
homogeneity in indigenous movements. In their article ‘A Class Perspective on Social Ecology and
the Indigenous Movement’ (2010) they argue that ‘liberal writers understate the degree of capitalist
penetration, class differentiation and subsequent political polarisation’ within ecological indigenous
movements (2010: 445). The article is an important corrective to studies of Andean social
movements which fail to acknowledge the salience of class divisions within, and between,
Yet while this literature as a whole exposes an often neglected history of indigenous activism in the
Andes, there has been little attention devoted to the concurrent role of the environment as either
actor or object in these struggles. To rectify this gap, this dissertation draws heavily on
anthropological literature concerning non-human agency. The most influential of this body is the
Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds (2015), a collaborative work based on decade-long
conversations with Mariano and Nazario Turpo, both indigenous Andean shamans. José Teijero
(2015), Simón Yampara (2011) and Joanna Rappaport (2012) also make invaluable contributions to
this field of scholarship. It is generally agreed that dominant forms of euro-modernity affirm
ontological difference between nature and culture (Escobar, 2010). De la Cadena engages with the
ontological turn in anthropology which posits the existence of different if complementary ‘worlds’,
an idea which has profound decolonial implications. She argues that contemporary indigenous
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mobilisation in Peru is marked by alliances ‘between radically different and partially connected
worlds’. This involves a juxtaposition of the ‘worlds’ occupied by white-mestizo leftist politicians,
and that of the runakuna, or Quechua campesinos. (2015: 110). De la Cadena’s work thereby opens
up a new analytical framework in which historians can explore nature’s significance beyond ‘natural
reminder that ‘earth beings’ should be recognised as actors within historical processes. Adapting de
la Cadena’s approach, a central argument of this dissertation is thus that ‘nature’ was constructed
and understood by Kataristas both as a natural resource in the world of political economy, and as a
component in the Aymara world of socio-spiritual practice. Nature was ergo both an organic cultural
Likewise, this dissertation draws on works by postcolonial theorists and political ecologists which
have amply noted the ecological ramifications of colonialism throughout the 20th century. Aimé
Césaire in his famously stinging rebuke of European colonialism notes for example, ‘I am talking
about natural economies that have been disrupted - harmonious and viable economies adapted to the
agricultural development oriented solely toward the benefit of the metropolitan countries, about the
looting of products, the looting of raw materials.’(1972: 7). Specifically for the Bolivian case, Kevin
Bolivia, Blood of the Earth: Resource Nationalism, Revolution, and Empire in Bolivia (2017). This
work makes an important contribution to scholarship probing the intersections of environmental and
social history.
More broadly, the past two decades have seen a lively and occasionally acrimonious debate unfold
over the meaning and practice of decolonisation in Latin America. Research on the Katarista
movement must be placed in this context of what one could term, ‘contested decolonisation’. In
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Bolivia, as expressed in the 2009 constitution, ‘decolonisation’ has been central to the political
vision of the state and the term is now omnipresent in Bolivian policymaking and civic society
spheres. While the debate extends far beyond the confines of the academy (and indeed often in
opposition to the academy altogether), key protagonists in the academic scholarship on Latin
American decolonisation are Silvia Rivera, Javier Sanjinés, Walter Mignolo and Aníbal Quijano.
These scholars work from the assumption that there is a mutually constitutive relationship between
colonialism and modernity, a paradigm which social movements and academics in the Global South
uniquely must grapple with. The debate has profound implications for how scholars and activists
understand decolonial movements. The epistemological side of this, as Indian postcolonial theorist
Ashis Nandy expresses neatly, is that ‘The west has not merely produced modern colonialism, it
informs most interpretations of colonialism.’ (1983: 12). A paradox of coloniality, therefore, is that
decolonial movements find themselves compelled to use concepts derived from colonial knowledge
systems to articulate their vision. Chapter Three explores this question and addresses the resonance
CHAPTER ONE
‘We the Aymara, Qhechwa, Camba, Chapaco, Chiquitano, Moxo, Tupiguarani and other peasants
are the rightful owners of this land. We are the seed from which Bolivia was born and we are exiles
in our own land. We want to regain our liberty of which we were deprived in 1492, to bring our
culture back into favour and, with our own personality, be subjects and not objects of our history…’
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This chapter outlines the trajectory of the Katarista movement and analyses its interactions with
other sectors of the Bolivian political milieu. It disentangles the syndical, cultural and political
emerged tentatively in the late 1960s and is the first movement in Bolivia to blend ethnic concerns
in the Bolivian altiplano. Albó argues the Katarista perspective can be captured in the theory of ‘the
two eyes’ (1991: 311). In this way Katarismo recognised the duality of class exploitation and ethnic
oppression, ‘as peasants, along with all the exploited classes, and as oppressed peoples, along with
Fig.3. Bolivian villagers in 1975. Source: New York Public Library http://
digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/f25299e0-8751-0134-f0dc-00505686a51c
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But Katarismo was multifarious and far from monolithic. The label offers a capacious umbrella for
syndicalist, nationalist, ethnic and autonomist currents broadly aimed at the revindication of the
Indian, and the end to class-based exploitation and ethnic oppression. In its political manifestations,
from the late 1970s Katarismo can be broadly characterised as having radical and moderate camps.
These diverged in their willingness to operate either ‘within’ or ‘without’ the mestizo-creole
capitalist system, as well as their more fundamental understanding of the relationship between
Invoking the memory of the 18th century Andean rebel movement led by Tupaj Katari, Kataristas
sought to recover histories and epistemologies that transcended the Bolivian nation state. When
Tupaj Katari was executed by the Spanish authorities on 15 November 1781, his body was
dismembered into four parts and scattered. Oral tradition holds that Katari’s dying words were:
‘Nayawa jiwtxa, nayjarusti waranqa waranqaranakawa kutanıpxa — I die, but I shall return
tomorrow as millions’ (Canessa, 2000: 125). Tupaj Katari’s execution became a mobilising myth,
serving both as a vivid reminder of the brutalities of colonial rule which resonated in the present,
and more intangibly, the fragmentation of Bolivia’s many peoples. His quartered body has hence
become a visceral signifier of (dis)unity. Vice President Álvaro García Linera indeed opined during
the commemoration act of Tupaj Katari’s wife Bartolina Sisa in 2008, “Today, the unity of Bolivia
is the unity of Tupaj Katari’s body… Katari’s body is united, Bolivia’s body is united and
Katarismo arose in the capital city of La Paz among Aymara workers, grassroots intellectuals and
students, most of whom had emigrated from rural areas and felt the loss of their rural origins with
acuity. From the late 1960s, rural migration to La Paz mushroomed. According to the 1976 census,
25% of the La Paz population was made up of Aymara migrants from the altiplano (Rivera, 1983:
139). Its protagonists were radicalised by the racial discrimination they experienced in the city;
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‘more than anything else, this handful of students created an identity based on their own experience
as peasants and Aymaras in the face of the city’s challenges.’(Albó, 1987: 391). By adopting the
name of Tupaj Katari in the name of Indian liberation in the present, discrimination experienced by
the Aymara could be understood as an historical constant. Through their intellectual projects and
political organising, Kataristas sought to recover histories which were occluded by the hegemonic
state, thereby excavating ‘the nation below the state’ (Sanjinés, 2002: 42).
Katarismo must be understood in part, as a product of disillusionment with the 1952 Bolivian
revolution which transformed the political mis-en-scene of the nation state. The abiding refrain of
the Katarista movement was “We are not the peasants of 1952” which underscores Katarismo’s
departure from these revolutionary years (Albó, 1991: 312). The revolutionary milieu was
Movement —MNR) which governed from 1952 to 1964. Its key policies were the nationalisation of
the lucrative tin mines and the consolidation of the labour movement. The years after the MNR
were followed by marked political volatility; between 1978 and 1982 alone there were three general
elections, six military coups, two of which were violent and a total of thirteen presidents (Albó,
1991: 313).
Crucially the revolution ushered in universal suffrage and thereby created new political
opportunities for subaltern groups, but also generated new inequalities and grievances in the
pan-Latin American phenomenon, mestizaje in Bolivia was ‘a cultural discourse whose purpose is
to justify the hegemony of a mestizo-criollo liberal upper class that assumed power at the beginning
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of the 20th century.’ (Sanjinés, 2002: 39). Under its banner, leaders of the revolution sought to
assimilate the Indian population into the body politic. Rather than claiming distinct ethnic
campesinos. However for Kataristas, mestizaje negated the powerful validity of Indian identity and
In the economic sphere, an objective in the revolution of vital importance for the peasantry was land
redistribution. In 1953 agrarian reform was passed, returning a modicum of land to campesinos and
ending the historic hegemony of the hacendados, or large landowners. Before land reform, 4%
percent of landowners held 82% of Bolivian land (Rivera (1987: 64). Around 300,000 inhabitants of
the highlands obtained land titles through the 1953 agrarian reform statute (Zimmerer, 1993: 316).
However, ultimately few tangible improvements in the lives of the impoverished peasantry
materialised from agrarian reform. In the 1960s, most peasants were still employed in the rural
subsistence economy, while traditional Andean community structures in the altiplano remained
largely untouched (Rivera, 1987: 151). Most agrarian development benefited Santa Cruz and the
lowlands where large commercial farmers, recipients of 60% of the land awarded through agrarian
reform, expanded crop and livestock production (Zimmerer, 1993: 316). They were assisted by
increasingly flexible credit policies, which small-scale farmers could not easily access. A policy
statement from the VII National Peasant Congress complained for example, ‘Only the cotton, sugar
and livestock entrepreneurs, etc. get credit from the Banco Agricola, benefitting from nearly 80
percent of total credit. A few peasants have received credits that do not even total five
Elsewhere in the statement, the bitter frustration at the failure of agrarian reform to address land
inequalities echoes strongly. ‘The 1953 Agrarian Reform did no more than redistribute the land and
even that was of no real benefit to us… The agrarian reform was no gift and we are under no
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obligation to thank anyone for it.’ (1978, n.p). Moreover peasant liberation was severely curtailed
under the subsequent Barrientos regime (1964-1969) which saw the introduction of the Peasant-
Military Pact, entrenching military power and enabling a series of authoritarian dictatorships
spanning eighteen years. Barrientos displaced the link between the MNR and the peasantry and
instead ensured peasant leaders were bound to the military in a clientelist relationship which
The political currents of Katarismo crystallised in two parties, the MRTK (Movimiento
Revolucionario Tupaj Katari) and MITKA (Movimiento Indio Tupaj Katari). As I will argue in
Chapter Two, both groups advanced an environmental agenda across the years 1960-1990, albeit in
differing ways. The MRTK emerged under the leadership of Macabeo Chila and veteran syndicalist
Jenaro Flores, and it adopted a more pragmatic and conciliatory line when it came to partnerships
with other political parties (Rivera, 1987: 136). In the 1978 elections it united with the left coalition
of Hernan Siles Zuazo’s Unidad Democratico Popular (UDP) for example (Albó, 1987: 402). In an
interview published in Collasuyo, a monthly Katarista periodical, Macabeo Chila states that ‘the
MRTK understands that it must work in the aim of a firm alliance between both [peasant and
worker] classes that definitively constitute the great motor of the National Revolution.’ (1978: n.p).
He envisioned MRTK to be ‘the political instrument of the Bolivian peasantry’ to win liberation
In contrast, radical Katarismo, sometimes elided with Indianismo, came to fruition under MITKA
which was founded on April 27, 1978 in Pacajes, La Paz (Lavaud, 1982: 10). It was at various
points led by Constantino Lima, Luciano Tapia, Julio Tumiri and Jaime Apaza. MITKA repudiated
alliances with conventional political parties, arguing that none adequately represented the interests
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of the peasantry, and was far more visceral in its condemnation of the creole Left, or the q’aras
[foreigners]. Anthropologist José Antonio Rocha argues that for MITKA, in contrast with the
MRTK, ‘the left is as bad as the right; Both tendencies belong to the ‘white’ world. In its
conception, Bolivian society is a world divided between whites and Indians, a society in which the
white minority exploits and subjugates the majority of Indians.’ (1992: 260). For example, Katarista
Felipe Quispe Huanca wrote in 1978, ‘The criminal act that the Bolivian Left has committed against
the Indian is to divide it into social classes, without respecting its condition of people [pueblo] or
nation. The Left thinks only of socio-economic improvements, which to the Indian means only
basic palliatives to the true problem of liberation….The political tendencies of Right or Left in
vogue are copies derived from Europe which do not accept that Indianism is the true Left, rather
In an interview with Luciano Tapia published in Boletín Chitakolla, a Katarista monthly periodical
edited by Pedro Portugal, the founder and leader of MITKA is asked whether it is necessary to form
political groups to advance Indian rights, or whether peasant unions such as the Confederacion
Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB) could be a useful vehicle. Tapia
was a former miner and agricultural worker who at the time of the interview was sixty two years
old. He replies, ‘I think that trade unionism as a political alternative is not the right way. However, I
do not discount the union as an instrument of struggle, if we consider that there is a capitalist
system that has to raise the claims of the exploited as a class. But the reality of the Indian People is
not only a reality of social class, it can not be confused with that single dimension’(1986: 5). Tapia
falls short of repudiating class struggle altogether, but couches his arguments in the language of
transcendent ethnic nationhood. He states, ‘We are first of all a concrete people, a Nation,
[within…] the State of Qullasuyu [Bolivia] with the name of Inka Atawallpa. We have not stopped
building our nation, with a thousand-year-old history and rights that date back to many civilisations.
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Later in 1985 another of the more moderate factions, Movimiento Revolucionario Tupaj Katari de
Liberación (MRTKL) formed as an off-shoot of the MRTK. Meanwhile, occupying the more
militant end of the spectrum lay the rebel groups Ofensiva Roja de los Ayllus Tupakataristas
(ORAT). Yet despite this seemingly disparate array of Katarista tendencies, in many ways the
differences between the groups were more apparent than real. Lavaud concludes for example that
all the Katarista elements ‘have in common the wish to exalt certain parts of history obscured or
trivialised by official historiography. They highlight the achievements and heroic actions of the
Indian resistance to Spanish colonisation, and magnify traits of the pre-Columbian era.’ (1982: 13).
In an opinion piece published in the run-up to the 1978 elections, MITKA leader Isidoro Copa Cayo
states that ‘the other Tupaj Katarist movements, if they are such, are flesh of our flesh and blood of
our blood. The differences between us are not substantial and refer to tactics or strategy of struggle
and to emphasise different positions. Indeed the many Kataristas movements reflects the sense of
pluralism that animates our thinking and political action.’ (Presencia, 1978: n.p). The viscerality of
these linkages is conveyed in Copa Cayo’s bodily metaphor, [son carne de nuestra carne y sangre
de nuestra sangre]. Meanwhile in the same year, an article in the Mink’a/MRTK periodical
Collasuyo states that although ‘the Katarista movement must unify definitively …public opinion
considers the division [between MITKA and MRTK] circumstantial and…logical because the
Aymaras, Quechuas and others that make up the 80% of the population used not to have any
political base, while 20% of dominant caste had 50 parties and political fractions.’ (1978: 8).
Clearly for both the MRTK and MITKA, pluralism was a logical and relatively unproblematic result
of strategic differences.
25
iii. Katarismo and the vindication of the Peasants’ Union
The syndicalist expression of Katarismo was arguably its most enduring and successful. It heralded
a turning point in efforts to forge an autonomous peasant trade union structure, undermining the
government sponsored apparatus of the Military-Peasant Pact. At the Potosí Peasant Congress in
August 1971, Katarista penetration of the peasant movement led to the appointment of Jenaro
Flores as the highest leader of the Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia
structure allowed Kataristas to make propitious links with other labour sectors. Katarista
representatives in the CNTCB attended the miners’ congress at Corocoro and assisted the infamous
miners’ strike of June 1976, which earned them immense support although also incurred
imprisonment and exile for many Katarista leaders under the military dictatorship of Banzer
26
The syndicalist strengths of Katarismo are epitomised in the ascent of its new peasants union in
1979, the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (Single Trade
Union Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia - CSUTCB). The organisation arose out of the
First Congress for Peasant Unity in La Paz in 1979 which was sponsored by the Central Obrera
Boliviana (COB), the main trade union body. It was the product of dissatisfaction with the formerly
dominant CNTCB which had suffered an irreparable dent to its legitimacy following its handling of
the 1974 massacre of Quechua peasants in Cochabamba who had been demanding higher prices for
agricultural products (Korovkin, 2006). At the CNTCB congress in 1978, most of its departmental
federations voted to adopt the Katarista programme and the union dissolved into the CSUTCB.
Kataristas thus emerged as a crucial force in the radicalisation of peasant politics that took place in
the 1970s.
Under the Kataristas, the CSUTCB served as a forum to debate proposals about peasant labour as
well as the Bolivian state and society more broadly. In 1983 the political manifesto of the CSUTCB
included the declaration, ‘We the current leaders, refuse to accept and will never accept class
reductionist ideas which transform us to the status of mere “peasants”. Nor do we accept ethnic
reductionism which transforms our struggle into a confrontation between “Indians and “whites”.
27
(1983: n.p). In 1984, under the leadership of the Kataristas the CSUTCB presented a draft Agrarian
Fundamental Law that contained the embryo of a new plurinational state model (Albó, 1991: 303).
This trend was propelled by groups such as MITKA, which had consistently pointed out the
colonial dimensions of the nation state model and its erasure of ethnic pluralism. In 1978, MITKA
electoral candidate Isidoro Copo Cayo declared ‘there is no such Bolivian Nation. This is a fiction
and an aspiration that the oppressive elites try to forge through national integration based on the
A synthesis of these Katarista currents — political, cultural and syndical — can be discerned in the
Tiahuanaco Manifesto. It was written in 1973 and symbolically unveiled at Tiahuanaco, the pre-
Columbian archeological site near La Paz. In essence, the Manifesto is a syncretic rallying cry on
behalf of Bolivia’s peasantry. It calls for their emancipation and freedom from exploitation, and
condemns foreign and internal colonialism, economic under-development, corruption within the
peasant movement and governing class, and defective rural education policies, among other evils.
The product of a coalition of grassroots organisations, the document’s signatories are the National
Association of Peasant Teachers, The Peasant Students Association of Bolivia, the Túpac Katari
Peasant Centre, MINK’A and the Puma Aymara Defence Union. On 23 January 1974, one year after
the manifesto was unveiled, over one hundred Indian campesinos protesting against price increases
and food shortages under the Banzer regime were massacred by the army. The president went on to
prohibit all leftist political parties and curtail trade union activities. In these years the Manifesto was
used by Kataristas clandestinely organising at the local level to inspire and train cadre.
A preoccupation with ‘development’ is a defining feature of the Manifesto and indeed the Katarista
movement more widely. The Manifesto proclaims, ‘We peasants want economic development, but it
must come from our own values. We do not want to give up our noble ancestral integrity in favour
of pseudo-development. We believe that the false "developmentalism" imported from abroad is not
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genuine and does not respect our deep values.’ (1973: n.p). T he Manifesto does not eschew a
materialist analysis of social relations, but nor does it consign culture to the superstructure. It states,
‘Economic and political power are the basis of cultural liberation. We must incorporate new
technology and modernise while not breaking with our past.’ (1973: n.p).
In his interview in Boletín Chitakolla, Luciano Tapia reflects, ‘The Aymara-Quechua people are not
from outside and an oppression from within which is the reality of our people.’(1986: 6) Here Tapia
refers to the processes of internal colonisation that informs the Katarista programme of social
change. Internal colonisation in Latin America historically involved the supplanting of colonial
elites with postcolonial elites in the new Republics of Latin America. Indigenous populations
remained subjugated under the relationships of domination that remained. Yet it also points to a
of inferiority generated in colonised peoples through systems of racial and social domination. It is
an argument which echoes the postcolonial scholarship of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks
(1952) and subaltern studies works such as Ashis Nandy’s The Intimate Enemy (1983) for example.
In a rupture with class-based analyses dominant on the Bolivia left in the post-revolutionary era,
Kataristas asserted a new political role for culture in the peasant movement. As will be argued in
Chapter Two, this was intricately connected with a discourse on the environment. Rivera affirms
that within Katarismo ‘the cultural dimension and the political dimension appear …relatively
undifferentiated’ (1983: 143). This was particularly evident in the growth of urban-based cultural
centres such as the El Taller de Historia Oral Andina (THOA - Andean Oral History Workshop)
founded in 1983 by a group of Aymara students under the direction of Silvia Rivera who met at the
29
Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA) in La Paz. THOA produced books, and radio programs
aiming to recover native epistemological roots and challenge the erasure of indigenous peoples
from the Bolivia national imaginary. In later years, the September 1985 edition of Boletín
Chitakolla announced the creation of a cultural centre in La Paz named ‘Qullasuyo’. Its general
objectives are listed as revitalising the Aymara-Quechua music and dance among young people and
promoting the spread of cultural projects among Aymara-Quechua immigrants to urban centres
(1985: 3).
Fig. 6. ‘To rescue our culture is to make it an instrument for the liberation of
the Bolivian people’. Illustration in Los Campesinos Opinan, 1978. Source:
Bodleian Libraries.
Prior to this, in the late 1960s, a group of Aymara students formed a study group known as the
Fausto Reinaga were debated. On May 27 1969 Aymara residents in La Paz created the Centre for
the Coordination and Promotion of the Peasantry - MINK’A, which became a legal entity in 1971
(Collasuyo, 1978:3. Hurtado, 1984: 38). MINK’A promoted education and cultural activities for
both rural and urban indigenous peoples, as well as disseminating radio programmes in the Aymara
30
language. These cultural initiatives reveal that Katarismo was movement in which culture and
CHAPTER TWO
CONTESTED LANDSCAPES
‘For whom do the polluted waters, the animal species cornered to extinction, the barren land, the
dirty air, vote for? Where do we place the ballot of a dying world?’
Zapatista communique, 2016
This chapter analyses the role Katarista environmental discourse played in the movement’s
decolonial political project. I argue that over the period 1960-1990, ‘nature’ was constructed in the
evident that Kataristas were acutely aware of the ecological facets of imperialism, and the
environment’s importance within indigenous identities abstractly. But as Joni Adamson cautions,
particular ethnic groups to “Nature.”’ (Westling, ed., 2014: 175). Kataristas drew on traditional
knowledges surrounding the environment but they also strategically adapted them to make wider
This chapter derives its analytical framework from the arguments made by de la Cadena vis-à-vis
ontological distinctions between indigenous and non-indigenous experiences (2015). She argues
31
that these ‘indigenous worlds’ are disavowed by the Peruvian nation state, and that indigenous
This is not to argue that Katarista attitudes towards the environment, ipso facto, mirror those of the
framework for understanding the ways in which indigenous-ecological politics frequently operate
on more than one ontological level. She exposes how claims around ‘earth beings’ such as the
mountain Ausangate can discursively slip into those for natural resources depending on the ‘world’
with which one is engaging. De la Cadena explains, ‘In the story I am telling, land was “not only”
the agricultural ground from where peasants earned a living—it was also the place that tirakuna
[people of the ayllu] with runakuna [nonhuman beings] were… As the convergence of both, land
was the term that allowed the alliance between radically different and partially connected worlds.
The world inhabited by leftist politicians was public; the world of the ayllu, composed of humans
Likewise with the Kataristas, landscape was profoundly political but in ontologically different
ways. In earlier discourse from the 1970s, the emphasis is more overtly on nature as resource,
expressed in language comprehensible to the creole left and other non-indigenous potential allies.
But from the early 1980s, Kataristas increasingly proposed that (neo)colonial modes of exploitation
compelled a common cause between humans and nature in a more spiritual sense. Indeed as Victor
Flores Aiquile, a Katarista union leader from Cochabamba put it, “Throughout the last 500 years
we peasants have been stepped on by the wealthy, the mestizos, and the Spaniards; the trees and
animals similarly have been abused and are being extinguished, and thus we share much suffering
along with the environment.” (Zimmerer, 1993 :323) Invoking the exploitation of natural resources
in the language of conventional politics on the one hand offered an easily digestible metaphor for
Indian exploitation within Katarista discourse. But the elision of human suffering with
32
environmental suffering also departed from the merely symbolic or rhetorical level. This chapter
explores Katarista discourse on the environment firstly as resource, and secondly as animated spirit
From 1960-1990 the Katarista movement participated in an evolving, transnational dialogue on the
ecological dimensions of indigeneity. Nature was understood both as resource and as a site of ethno-
cultural memory. Aymara people and Andean inhabitants more generally, have long been
considered by anthropologists to share profound and far-reaching relations with the natural world.
As José Teijero argues, ‘For the Aymara, nature is part of themselves, that is, the communion
between nature and man becomes the synthesis of life’ (2007:122). Inge Bolin meanwhile
highlights the role of animism, noting ‘the Andean people …believe that, like animals and people,
all elements of nature live, feel, and breathe. Pachamama, the Apus, lakes, rocks, springs, and
animate and inanimate beings — all aspects of nature need food and drink, love and
consideration’ (2010: 43). Constantin von Barloewen invokes temporality, noting that in Inca times
‘Notions of the sacred stood side by side with the development of agriculture: the earth was situated
at the midpoint of indio cosmology and could not be summarily subjugated or technologically
exploited.’ (1995: 65). Rather than being civilisers of nature, in the western tradition, human beings
were in fact, part of nature itself, as one facet of a wider and inter-connected cosmos.
Elsewhere, anthro-linguistic approaches to the Andes have pointed out that in Quechua and
Aymara languages there exists no single term for the zoological category of ‘animal’ (Dransart,
2013: 3). Clear-cut divides between humans and animals, or indeed other natural beings such as
trees and plants, do not possess resonance in Andean cosmovisións therefore. Nature instead, in
33
these anthropological readings, is a site of multiple but connected communities comprising human
In studies more explicitly linked to historical memory, cultural historian Carolyn Dean points out
how natural objects provided outlets for Inca people’s interaction with what they considered to be
sacred beings. ‘Mountains, rivers, lakes, boulders, outcrops, caves, and springs were (and still are)
kratophanic. They were sacred places where humans encountered and interacted with powerful
numina.’ (2015: 8). Writing on the Paez of the Colombian Andes, historical anthropologist Joanna
Rappaport has used the concept of ‘sacred geographies’ to capture the spiritual import of nature for
this indigenous community. She asserts, ‘The people of Tierradentro have encoded their history of
struggle in their sacred geography, so that past meets present in the very terrain on which they live,
farm and walk. Memory has built upon memory, connecting events of the distant past, the more
recent past and the present in the topography of Tierradentro (2012: 8).
Over the period 1960-1990, Katarista discourse shifted from a preoccupation with control of natural
resources, to one which additionally stressed spiritual and cosmological facets of the natural world.
This is reflected in the articles and excerpts appearing in the Katarista press. The February 1986 of
Boletín Chitakolla edition features an excerpt from a Peruvian work entitled Raiz y Vigencia de la
Indianidad (Origins and Validity of Indian ideology) by Virgilio Roel, published in 1980. The
excerpt reads: ‘That is why the stars, clouds, hills, seas, lagoons, rivers, valleys, trees, stones,
condors, birds, butterflies, flowers, in short, everything which belongs to Pachamama, maintains a
It goes on to offer an anti-imperialist reading of the ecological disasters that afflict the countryside.
‘As a counterpart to Western aggression, we Indians know that if we do not return what we have
taken from the land, if we do not treat Pachamama with respect, that if we attack the beautiful
34
animals which are also her beloved children, it will mean that in her anger, the farming areas will
turn into deserts and the animals will disappear.’ (1986: 3) This depicts Pachamama, or the Andean
holistic Earth Mother concept, as a wilful life-force with agency. It invokes ideas of reciprocity that
are considered core components of Andean cosmovisións. Antipathy to imperialist power relations
is evident in the reference to ‘Western aggression’, although this does not derive from a steadfastly
economic critique of European hegemony. Nature is instead invoked as site suffused with spiritual
Meanwhile in a pamphlet, the MRTK proclaims ‘And the message of our leader Tupaj Katari
continues to resonate in our valleys, ravines and mountains.’ (1981: 3). Similarly, in an earlier
article published on 23 May 1978 in the national daily newspaper Presencia, Isidoro Copa Cayo, a
Quechua-speaker from Potosí and a MITKA electoral candidate outlines the objectives of the party
and advocates ‘Life in communion with nature as a mode of civilisation and culture’ (1978: np). He
goes on, ‘[MITKA] emerges as a historical political response, as the shout of a wounded social
body, as a cry of an oppressed people, like a voice crying in the altiplano, valleys and
plains…’ (1978: np). For both MITKA and the MRTK, the natural world is invoked as the carrier of
Tupaj Katari’s spirit. The social memory of past struggles finds form and significance in the natural
surroundings of the Andes, with the landscape maintaining the continuity between pre-colonial and
post-colonial conditions.
Collasuyo (arsusipxanani), a monthly magazine produced in La Paz by MINK’A. The June 1978
edition runs a feature, ‘Proyecto ‘Anallajchi’ en marca’, on proposals to intensively farm llamas and
35
‘the total transfer of technology will not be considered [in the proposals],
but rather the re-evaluation of the ancestral technique which has allowed
were only used for the transfer of minerals, and today, the white-mestizo
contemptuously considers its meat of little importance, fit only for the
The proposal to farm llamas and alpacas, can be understood therefore, as part of a broader Katarista
philosophy which asserts self-pride in indigenous agricultural traditions and seeks to award them
Similarly, the MRTK places great emphasis on the ayllu as a political and economic model with
links to past and present Andean society. A pamphlet from the MRTK declares, ‘The community
practice for example subsists in numerous aillus [ayllus] of Kollasuyo (today Bolivia). Its persisting
practice is the umbilical cord that connects us with our historical past.’ (1981: 3). Ayllus are not
political assemblages along the lines of the nature-culture divide in the Western political tradition
(Escobar, 2010). Yampara instead points out that ‘To speak of ‘economy’, in addition to being a
borrowed and inappropriate concept practiced by other cultures … does not explain the communal
sense and development of the ayllu’ (1992: 143). Ayllus instead are structured in part around the
environment and the spirits and life-forces contained within nature, including humans. By invoking
the ayllu, the MRTK was hence advocating a political structure that encompasses both humans and
The belief in human-nature reciprocity as an integral part of the peasant’s social world is further
reflected in the spate of discussions around Pachamama which took place in the peasant movement
at the behest of Kataristas in the late 1980s. Proposals from the group Ofensiva Roja de los Ayllus
36
Tupakataristas (ORAT), to the Fourth Regular Congress of the CSUTCB in Tarija, September 1989
included a sub-section entitled ‘Pachamama or Death’. Led by veteran guerrillero Felipe ‘El
Mallku’ Quispe, ORAT was a more marginal and militant Katarista group, comprising an
assortment of mestizo intellectuals including the current Vice President Álvaro García Linera,
indigenous peasants and urban workers. Its armed wing was the Ejercito Guerillero Tupac Katari,
(Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army — EGTK) whose adherents became known as ‘egetecos’ (García
ORAT’s proposals state that, ‘The reasons that compel us to present this document are to make it
known to all the brothers and sisters of our race, who come from the brown Pachamama, that we
cultivate and till our lands in the highlands, valleys, tropics and in the east from sun to sun, our
foreheads dripping with sweat for Mother Nature…’ [emphasis added] (1989: n.p). The reference to
‘brown [morena] Pachamama’ asserts a critique of ‘whiteness’ as a hegemon in the Global South.
The year before, a report from the CSUTCB congress held in Potosí in July 1988 similarly included
the statement, ‘We cultivate with all our dedication and care [esmero] for Pachamama, from dawn
until dusk to subsidise and maintain the production of our agricultural produce…’ (1988, n.p). For
ORAT, ‘these q'aras [foreigners] of different ideological currents inherited from European invaders,
have only come to mutilate, trample, loot and desecrate the riches of our beloved
Pachamama.’ (1989: n.p). The gender connotations in this rhetoric are marked. Historical
colonialism is invoked not solely through the lens of capitalist exploitation, but as a spiritual assault
on the earth and its ecological integrity. Moreover, it implies that the extraction of natural resources
from the earth is analogous to the sexual violence inflicted through historical European conquest.
Extraction of resources by neocolonial elites thereby replicates the same patterns of assault
experienced five centuries earlier. This serves to blur the distinction between human, (or
specifically, the feminine) and environmental experiences, and further underpins the role the natural
37
This colonial memory is further reflected when then proposals state, ‘Since before Christ, we
worshiped the hills, pukaras, wak'as, stones, apachites, in ceremonial and cosmic places. We are
older than Western Christianity. Like our grandparents both in the time of Tiwanakinses and in the
Incanate, the sacrifices made with gold and silver, coloured wool, coca etc, every year to our Tata
Inti (Sun), moon, stars, and the Pachamama endure from generation to generation to the present
day.’ (1989: n.p). Spirituality is inextricably tied to place, with the natural world representing the
locus of precolonial spiritual practice. The hills and ‘cosmic places’ form vessels of memory, as a
38
As such, one of the group’s aims was, ‘To revive our cosmic religion, prayers from the hills and
ceremonial centres, our cosmic Pachamama, and the sun, the moon, the stars, the w’akas, the
achachilas, the illas, etc.’ (1989: n.p). In Andean cosmovisións, achachilas are spirits linked with
geographic entities such as hills, caves, rivers, lakes, etc, which according to Aymara belief, are
animated and watch over people (Teijero, 1997: 85). However if the achachilas are not presented
with ritual offerings, or ch'allas, they may become irate and inflict storms or other natural disasters
Yet in a somewhat different realm, grievances at the volume of food imports in Bolivia emerges as
an equally germane issue in the group’s proposals. In emotive rhetoric they lament, ‘Unfortunately
it is terrible that instead of producing wheat, barley, quinoa, kañawa, beans, rice, maize, cassava,
banana, potato, tubers, beans, etc, we are living off the foreigners and waiting for the gringos to
send us their rotten leftovers from their rubbish dumps, [so] we are falling into food
dependency.’ (1989: n.p). The 1980s was a particularly fraught time for agricultural production in
Bolivia. According to a USAID report, in 1983 severe droughts in the highlands and flooding in the
lowlands caused so much damage that agricultural output fell by 23% in 1983, meaning substantial
amounts of food had to be imported for many years afterwards (1986: 5). These natural disasters
are explained by ORAT as symptoms of Pachamama’s wilful anger and vengeance. The group
states, ‘the communities that we live in, “MACH’AS” [a communal unit comprising several ayllus],
no longer produce crops, the animals die, it no longer rains and day by day we receive the
punishments of our Mother Nature with hail, frost and drought. The once fertile Pachamama
becomes sterile and no longer gives her produce to us native children as before.’ (1989: n.p)
On the face of it, this might appear to be a de-political normative argument. Rather than making
structural critiques, for example at the lack of state support for small-scale agriculture and the
state’s neoliberal retrenchment policies, natural calamity is attributed to the non-human, and
39
therefore ostensibly non-political sphere. However, in actual fact, I argue this is reflective of
Katarista attempts to transform nature, or Pachamama, into a contentious political terrain in itself.
criticise ‘not only’ (de la Cadena, 2015) the lack of material assistance for peasants, but the contours
of the modern state which disentangles land from its spiritual dimensions and other-than-human
agencies. Katarismo thereby is departing from a western episteme and contesting hegemonic
approaches to agricultural policy which omit the Aymara cosmovisión. This argument echoes de la
Cadena’s ‘partially connected worlds’ thesis (2015) as well as Bolivian sociologist Fernando
Calderón’s theory of mixed temporalities, that is to say, the notion that Latin America is defined by
a coexistence of modern, pre-modern and postmodern conditions (1995: 55). Calderón argues that
colonialism has not been experienced in a linear fashion in Andean societies; elements of
precolonial social formations overlap with the new. This produces societies in which ‘the
coexistence of faded or residual identities with strong emergent ones’ is a defining feature
(Calderón, 1995: 59) In this way, it can be seen that Kataristas were contesting the exploitation
associated with modernity by invoking their lived experience of Pachamama as a symbol of the
pre-modern.
Natural resources have a long and contentious history in Latin America, and especially so in
Bolivia. Since the colonial era, land and resource use has been structured around race in Latin
American societies (Galeano, 1973). In Bolivia, under colonial rule, ayllus were dismantled and
Indians were compelled to work in the silver mines (Fabricant, 2012: 3). This was a highly lucrative
enterprise; between 1556 and 1783, 41,000 metric tons of silver were mined from Cerro Rico in
Potosí (Fabricant, 2012 : 27). The Spanish colonial project was hence based on sustained natural
40
I argue that in Katarista discourse, debates over natural resources reflected broader visions about
how the economy and society should be arranged. Claims to natural resources and discursive
appeals to restore the highland ayllus are used to make wider claims for rights and justice in the
post-revolutionary, neoliberal era. It marked the first time that a self-consciously ‘indigenous’ vision
of natural resources, and the natural world more broadly, was articulated at the political level. In
this way, Katarismo represented a major shift from the ethno-assimilationist nationalism of the
Consistent throughout Katarista political discourse is resentment at the perceived absence of rural
development rooted in the needs and wishes of the peasants themselves. The economic exploitation
of the peasantry is tied up with lack of control over natural resources and means of production in the
rural setting. Nature represents therefore a profoundly contested terrain of political economy. At a
CSUTCB congress, ORAT laments for example, ‘We small farmers do not have any kind of
economic aid, we are practically excluded from national life and seen as simple beasts of burden,
treated as foreigners in our ancestral soil … we are unable to develop a coherent agricultural policy
nor modernise or mechanise our fields …’(1989: n.p). Likewise Macabeo Avila, a leader of the
MRTK, believed that development policies did little to remedy the overarching problem of capitalist
penetration in rural areas. ‘Backwardness and misery is another problem that can not be overcome
with the development policy of so-called de-naturalised and Fascistic nationalists; happiness and
prosperity can not be achieved through stopgap measures [remiendos], but through a total change of
the system of capitalist exploitation by another system of community character.’ (Collasuyo, 1978:
4).
The neoliberal policies developed under successive dictatorial regimes in the 1970s and 1980s
fuelled the peasantry’s grievances over privatisation of natural resources. In 1972, President Hugo
41
Banzer passed the General Law of Hydrocarbons. The law outlined that ‘hydrocarbon deposits,
regardless of the physical state in which they may exist or appear, are of the direct, inalienable and
imprescriptible domain of the state.’ (1972: Article 1). A report from the Departmental Congress of
Tupaj Katari Peasant Workers held in Cochabamba in May 1978 expresses for example, ‘In the face
of the permanent privatisation of the riches and natural resources of this country, the peasants of
Cochabamba believe in the uncompromising defence of these riches and resources.’(1978: n.p). At
the IV Ordinary Congress of the CSUTCB, held a decade later, an identical concern is iterated, with
‘defending the land against any attempt to privatise’ stated as a key objective (1988 :9). The report
contains a section on the Commission on Natural Resources and Land Tenure in which it declares
‘We want the preservation of the environment, the natural resources of flora and fauna, the air we
breathe, the forests and the rainforests, because without them we can not live’ (1988: 12).
Moreover in 1982, conclusions and resolutions from the Fifth National Peasant annual general
meeting in La Paz included the statement, ‘We ratify our repudiation of the “Military Peasant Pact”
because it is an instrument of political control and official manipulation which divides the peasant
family and allows the use of deadly pesticides in the countryside,’ —my emphasis added (Rivera,
1987: 183). The issue of pesticides is here as importantly ‘political’ as the state picture, while the
political challenge to the Military Peasant Pact sits seamlessly alongside concerns of a more
It is clear that the exploitation of Indian labour under capitalism, for the MRTK is tied up with the
Avila explains, ‘Discrimination, either social or racial exists, but it exists as a pejorative means of
exploitation and pillaging of our natural wealth. Consequently for the MRTK, there is no mere
circles of the financial oligarchy relative to the capitalist system of exploitation.’ (Collasuyo, 1978:
42
4). Here, the erosion of natural wealth, or natural resources, is understood to fall under the same
colonial architecture as racial oppression. Avila goes on to express frustration with the existing
state of land ownership and the cooption of the peasantry, professing ‘The problem is that land that
was once communal, today, due to agrarian reform has passed into feudal ownership and has
neutralised the combative spirit of the peasantry by turning them into private owners of pathetically
small plots that are subjugated under the minifundio which is propped up by the legal system
Even within MITKA, a more Indianista and less class struggle-driven organisation, the issue of land
distribution was profoundly salient. In an interview, Luciano Tapia explains, ‘The agrarian
revolution is one of the main approaches of MITKA but for us, agrarian revolution is not
‘AGROPODER’, it is not 're-distribution of agrarian reform'. For us, the agrarian revolution is a
to aid exports and agricultural development launched in 1985 and concentrated in the Santa Cruz
region. Victor Paz Estenssoro had been elected in July 1985 on the back of a free market
programme with austerity measures and was highly lauded by international institutions. In a World
Bank report from 1986 for example, the AGROPODER programme was described as ‘the only
feasible economic route open to Bolivia for the future’(1986: 4). The report advocates the
development of Santa Cruz soybean exports, which would require a drastic expansion of the
transport network around Santa Cruz. This in turn, would likely reduce the sphere of influence of La
Paz, the locus of the tin mines, a sector which historically was powerfully unionised. Indeed in 1980
strikes by tin workers caused a loss of $30 million in export earnings (CIA: 1980: 12).
The report concedes that, ‘The adoption of an agricultural export strategy is likely to have
significant implications for the economic and political center of gravity of Bolivia.’ (1986: 5). It
muses over whether the government will ‘take a long, cool statesmanlike look at the strategy’ and
43
adopt it in the face of popular disapproval (1986: 5). The report exposes the degree to the
geopolitics of agriculture assumed great significance in Bolivia in the 1980s, with international
Expansion into the Santa Cruz department was part of wider strategies from neoliberal international
organisations in collaboration with the Estenssoro regime, to weaken the political influence of La
Paz, a Katarista and CSUTCB stronghold. Naturally, this generated new difficulties for the
Indeed, there is ample evidence to suggest that ‘modernity’ in farming techniques became an
overwhelming concern in Bolivia from the 1970s. In 1976, an Annual Report of Work on Peasant
Development Courses, an initiative from Tomás Frías Autonomous University to promote the
modernisation of agriculture in highland Potosí, concluded cheerfully that ‘More than 1,200 peasant
leaders have been trained in agricultural education in the different targeted zones, and [the project]
has successfully brought modern technology to peasant communities and production centres’ (1976:
20). The report goes on to say that there was ‘Interest in, and requests by all the communities
assisted through the courses for the continuous provision of: seeds, pesticides, breeding animals and
other materials of a modern technical nature, such as agricultural machinery equipment (1976: 20).’
Interestingly the report suggests there was enthusiasm for pesticides, contrary to the hostility of the
Fifth Peasant’s Annual Meeting towards them in 1982. Indeed, many photographs from the report
depict campesinos wielding chemical sprays. This might suggest that the peasantry experienced the
state, and modernity itself, in part as a series of negotiations; material offerings could be reclaimed
in some ways, and rejected in others. It also serves as a reminder that within the peasantry,
44
Fig. 8. Agriculture courses in Potosí, 1976.
Source: Senate House Special Collections.
In a 1993 article, U.S geographer Karl Zimmerer offers an intriguing study of social discourses on
soil erosion in Cochabamba. Zimmerer’s findings were based on observation and interviews
conducted with Katarista campesinos in the agricultural regions of Cochabamba. Zimmerer cites
figures showing that 64 percent of the land surface in Cochabamba was eroded, with annual soil
45
erosion varying between 50 and 150 tonnes per hectare (1993: 313). At national level, up to 41% of
the countryside in Bolivia suffered from moderate or extreme soil erosion (Zimmerer,1993: 313).
Accordingly, from the 1970s soil erosion was identified by Bolivian campesinos as well as foreign
divergent political perspectives on soil erosion arose from three sectors; governmental and NGOs,
peasant communities and rural trade unions. (1993: 317). Both foreign NGOs and Bolivian
development agencies ascribed soil erosion to the failure of campesinos to adopt ‘modern’ farming
techniques, and to a belief in peasant backwardness more generally. But for the peasants, Zimmerer
observes that wrath from supernatural deities and failure to complete reciprocity rituals to
Pachamama, are named by campesinos from both older and younger generations, as the causes of
increasing soil erosion. Zimmerer argues that Katarista peasant unions skirted around the issue of
soil erosion in their political programme because its cause could not be neatly blamed on extra-local
political actors such as multinationals or neo-imperialist powers. This was a common tactic in
Katarismo. For example, in a booklet entitled Los Campesinos Opinan, the authors identified U.S.
military action as factor in climate change experienced by Bolivian peasants, declaring, ‘in the last
years North American technology (atomic bomb, capsule launch) has caused changes in the climate,
In contrast, soil erosion was considered by both peasants and development organisations, as
attributable in different ways to the peasants’ own actions. As much is evident in the report from IV
Congress of the CSUTCB in 1988 which includes a suspiciously small section on the issue and
phrases the solution in terms of improving campesino education. The authors state, 'We urgently
demand awareness, through an education programme, to curb this disaster [of soil erosion].’ Soil
erosion therefore did not sit comfortably within the Katarista critique of ecological imperialism.
Ecological problems were routinely used to augment broader critiques of imperialism and
46
exploitation. Soil erosion’s omission from widespread discussion in the CSUTCB hence reflects the
CHAPTER THREE
‘INDIANS OF BOLIVIA, the Wiphala and the Pututu call to us from the top of the Illimani to come
together in struggle. They tell us that our hour of LIBERATION has come.’
This chapter explores the intellectual currents which shaped Katarista discourse. It places
Katarismo in a context of late Cold War debates on subaltern theory, (post)modernity and
discourse on environmentalism and indigeneity which gained global traction from the 1970s.
It is amply acknowledged that the writings of Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930)
have a noticeable influence in 20th century Bolivian radical tendencies (Webber, 2017). Labelled a
‘Romantic’ Marxist (Lowy, 1998), Mariátegui was a heterodox figure in the Marxist wing of the
indigenista movement in Peru which flourished in the 1920s. In 1928 he was a founder and general
secretary of the Peruvian Socialist Party, which later became the Communist Party. In his magnum
opus Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (1928) he made crucial contributions to the
theory of uneven and combined development of capitalism in ‘peripheral’ countries and tailored
Marxist theory to the Latin American reality. Although Mariátegui did not claim indigeneity
himself, I argue that of crucial importance for the Kataristas decades later was Mariátegui’s
47
invocation of the Indian as a revolutionary subject as well as his pioneering embrace of ‘mystical’
rhetoric.
The avant-garde magazine Amauta, which he edited between 1920 and 1930 (the title translates as
teacher in Quechua), frequently contained articles with telluric references to Andean landscapes
and Indians, as well as trenchant critiques of land ownership iniquities in Peru. The presence of
large but marginal indigenous populations which did not fit neatly into European-derived social
categories had long presented a theoretical conundrum for Latin American Marxists. Mariátegui
argued that the socio-economic improvement of Peru could not be extricated from improvement in
the conditions of its indigenous populations. In a 1924 essay he centres the Indian in the discourse
of Peruvian development, lamenting, ‘by postponing the solution of the Indian problem, the
republic has postponed the realisation of its dreams of progress. A policy that is truly national in
scope cannot dispense with the Indian; it cannot ignore the Indian. The Indian is the foundation of
our nationality in formation.’ (Vanden and Becker, 2011: 141). In this way, the Indian was
identified as a potentially disruptive social force that could form the antidote to European-derived
capitalist modernity. Rather than being a marginal demographic, Mariátegui locates Indians at the
Similarly to the Kataristas, Mariátegui drew on a long history of indigenous social practice to
Communist Parties in Buenos Aires in June 1929, he writes, ‘The [Indian] "communities," which
have demonstrated truly astonishing capacities of resistance and persistence under the harshest
oppression, represent a natural factor of socialisation of the land. The native has deep-rooted habits
of cooperation…’ (Vanden and Becker, 2011: 323). He aimed to vindicate indigenous traditions,
stating ’We believe that of the "backward" populations there is none so much as the indigenous
population of Incan origin that presents such favourable conditions for primitive agrarian
48
communism.’(Vanden and Becker, 2011: 323). This asserted to an international audience the
Similarly, the natural world, as for the Kataristas, forms a crucial node within Mariátegui’s rhetoric
of Indian liberation. I argue that in Mariátegui’s work, the natural environment is ‘indigenised’, that
is to say, it becomes a site in which the revolutionary potential of the Indian is incubated. This was a
vision that was re-interpreted within Katarismo. Cultural theorist Jorge Coronado asserts that for
Mariátegui, ‘the image of Andean nature and the indio himself are inseparable.’ (2009: 44).
Mariátegui frequently depicts the Andean highlands as a mystical space of utopian revolutionary
potentialities. This is reflected for example, in the statement, ‘The highlands awaken gestating hope.
A race unanimous in resignation and renunciation no longer inhabits it. A strange gust of wind
blows through the highland village and fields. The “new indios” appear: here the teacher, the
agitator, there the farmhand, the shepherd, they who are no longer the same ones as
before’ (Coronado, 2009: 48). Coronado points out that ‘the Indio is thus made the repository of
those elements - tradition, nature, a communal ethos - that are most oppositional and most
threatening to an effacing neocolonial ideology’ (2009: 44). Indigenous social practices such as the
ayllu therefore presented a practical basis through which to contest European capitalist paradigms
and construct an Andean counter-modernity. While Mariátegui did not claim indigeneity himself,
his theoretical contributions to the question of Marxism in agrarian societies is strongly reflected in
Katarista positions on the environment, land and class struggle. Reading Mariátegui through this
lens reveals that Kataristas were responding to a longer radical tradition that established profound
49
ii. Subaltern theory
Katarismo was, and remains, tightly bound to evolving scripts on decolonisation. This became
perhaps all the more important as radical Katarismo entered its nadir in the 1990s. Although Víctor
Hugo Cárdenas from the MRTK-L was elected as the first indigenous Vice-President of Bolivia in
1993, his alliance with Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who in later years would violently suppress
The Katarista situation in many ways typified developments across Latin America. Although the
revolutionary movements were in retreat. Peru was reeling from the atrocities of the Maoist
guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (as well as attendant brutality by state military forces), the
Sandinistas lost control of the Nicaraguan state in 1990 and the Cuban revolutionary project was
imperilled by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It was in this climate that the postmodernist
Latin American Subaltern Studies Group arose, inspired by the South Asian Subaltern Studies
group.
A key concept which emerged from the group’s intellectual orbit was ‘coloniality of power’, a term
introduced by Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano (2000; 2007). The concept describes how
modernity and colonialism are mutually constitutive forces. Coloniality exists as a system of power
established under formal colonialism and its enduring socio-racial classifications. Coloniality as a
Moreover, coloniality extends into the epistemological realm through the production of knowledge.
In The Darker Side of Modernity (2011), Mignolo outlines how a core matrix of colonial power is
communicating and producing knowledge such as folklore and myth. This decolonial scholarship
50
echoes the Foucauldian theory of ‘subjugated knowledges’, or ways of knowing that western
are below the required level of erudition or scientificity.’ (Foucault, 1997: 7).
These ideas possess particular pertinence in relation to Katarismo as movement, which, in part, was
an epistemological project which aimed to recover subaltern knowledges marginalised by the state
(Sanjinés, 2002; Rivera, 2012). Regarding ‘lettered knowledge’, as Isodoro Copo Cayo, the MITKA
leader stated, ‘In our [pre-Columbian] culture there are no books, (Bible, Koran, Vedas, Capital),
there is no letter, because what is important is life.’ (1978, n.p). Meanwhile, the CSTUCB
demanded, ‘We want to regain our liberty of which we were deprived in 1492, to bring our culture
back into favour and, with our own personality, be subjects and not objects of our history…’(1979:
n.p). The emphasis here is on de-privileging dominant temporalities; 1492 does not herald the
arrival of Spanish ‘civilisation’ but rather, the cultural annihilation of indigenous peoples.
Indeed one could go further and posit that Quijano’s coloniality of power paradigm can be used to
unpick why the politics of the environment gained traction with the Kataristas. The relationship
between colonialism and the environment has been well documented. Beinart and Hughes coined
the concept of ‘commodity frontier’ for example, to describe the allure of overseas raw materials in
the European imperial imaginary (2007: 2). As has been outlined in Chapter Two, this relationship
was explicitly recognised by the Kataristas. Colonialism had deprived the environment and nature
of agency, and served to invalidate the non-material relationships between humans and the natural
world in which they lived. It can be seen therefore, that the Latin American Subaltern Studies
group excavated new intellectual pathways which allow historians to situate Katarismo in a broader
51
ii.NGOs
In the 1970s and 1980s increased attention was focused on indigenous peoples at international
policymaking levels. In 1984, Amazonian indigenous organisations formed the Coordinadora de las
Indigenous People's Organisation of the Amazon) to mobilise around territorial, cultural, economic,
and political rights, in alliance with environmental groups. In Mexico, the National Council of
Indigenous Peoples was formed in 1975 and in Guatemala, the Council of Maya Organisations in
the late 1980s. The movement also stretched globally. In 1977 the United Nations convened a
conference on discrimination against indigenous people in the Americas. That this climate
generated new interest in international dialogue from indigenous groups such as the Kataristas is
reflected in the June 1978 issue of Collasuyo which ran an extended feature on ‘The Indian
Movement and the West’ (1978: 6). It includes interviews and reports on the mobilisation efforts of
indigenous peoples across the Americas, from Mexico to Argentina on a country-by-country basis.
The transnational potential of Katarista organising are also hinted at in Luciano Tapia’s 1986
interview in which he states, ‘I believe that there is at present a conscience in all oppressed peoples:
an awareness of the struggle for liberation. There are differences according to the realities
themselves, but the common goal is the liberation of oppression.’(Boletín Chitakolla, 1986: 4).
Oppression is here understood as neither confined to a particular indigenous group in Bolivia nor to
a specific class.
In 1989 the first International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention No. 169 concerning
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples was drawn up. It states that, ‘The rights of the peoples concerned to
the natural resources pertaining to their lands shall be specially safeguarded. These rights include
the right of these peoples to participate in the use, management and conservation of these
resources.’ (1989: Article 15). This created opportunities for groups to mobilise in opposition to the
government under the ‘indigenous’ banner. In 1990 for example indigenous groups in the Bolivian
52
lowlands organised a mass demonstration for ‘Territory and Dignity’, marching from the Amazon to
La Paz. Likewise, the rise of green parties across the world, as well as the priority given to
‘sustainable development’ meant the emergence of new policy infrastructures which increasingly
valorised ‘indigenous’ communities. Albó argues that ‘it is more due to these considerations than to
the rights of the peoples who own the territory that the indigenous groups, especially the
silvicultural ones, have begun to be taken into account by projects of international institutions such
Closely related to this trend is the proliferation of NGOs in Bolivia and the Global South more
broadly throughout the 1980s. Prior to 1980 there were 100 NGOs in Bolivia; by 1992 there were at
least 500 (Petras, 1997: n.p). Esteban Ticona locates the proliferation of NGOs from the 1970s as a
turning point in how discourse on the environment was formulated in Bolivian society. He argues
that;
CIPCA and other similar ones, opened the margins to allow thinking in another
ways. Above all, the relationship between the ayllus and the communities with
intelligent, creator of life and with feelings, was the background to recognising
Other scholars have noted that the ayllu was an ethno-cultural concept enthusiastically championed
by NGOs operating in Bolivia (Coronado, 2009: 163. Fabricant, 2012: 30). This opened up avenues
for administrative and material assistance for indigenous communities recovering their perceived
‘lost’ ayllu heritage. But James Petras is more acerbic, arguing that ‘of the tens of millions allocated
to the NGOs, only 15 to 20 percent reached the poor. The rest was siphoned off to pay
administrative costs and professional salaries. The Bolivian NGOs functioned as appendages of the
53
state and served to consolidate its power … The NGOs, with their big budgets, exploited vulnerable
groups and were able to convince some leaders of the opposition that they could benefit from
working with the government.’ (1997: n.p). It is hence clear that the rise of NGOs drastically altered
the political terrain in which Kataristas operated. The agenda of NGOs made it strategically useful
for Kataristas to emphasise the natural world as a vital component of their ethnic identity, as
CONCLUSIONS
This dissertation has shown that the environment assumed greater prominence and salience within
Katarista discourse than has been hitherto recognised by scholarship. This study of Katarista
decolonisation struggles in Latin America and beyond. Understanding the role the environment
played in Katarismo has profound implications for the study of indigenous social movements across
the Americas. Katarismo was one of the first political movements in 20th century Bolivia, and
indeed Latin America, to mobilise explicitly around ethnic oppression as well as class exploitation.
Kataristas advanced ideas around indigeneity from their own self-consciously indigenous
which engaged in theoretical and practical political struggle, Katarismo offers a rare lens through
which historians can understand the unfolding politics of indigeneity in the Andes from the
perspective of indigenous peoples themselves. Katarismo thus constituted a rupture with earlier
20th century Andean indigenista projects which advocated Indian emancipation but from non-
In this dissertation I have concluded that arguments around the natural world in Katarismo were
used to make broader arguments about the economic and political arrangement of the Bolivian state,
54
and the geopolitical dynamics of modernity. A close reading of Katarista discourse reveals a
sustained engagement with environmental ideas. It is argued here that this was reflected in two key
frames; nature as resource and nature as animated socio-spatial repository. Both discourses reflected
the twin importance of the natural world to the Kataristas as peasants, and as indigenous peoples, or
in class and ethnic terms respectively. As part of this, Kataristas drew on organic beliefs regarding
the natural world, or what I call ‘landscapes of memory’. These spiritual notions surrounding
Pachamama, ayllus and human-nature reciprocity were rooted in longstanding Aymara worldviews
But crucially, the ways in which this environmental concern was expressed by the Kataristas
evolved over time and responded to changing political imperatives. Cultural identities, as Stuart
Hall reflects, ‘come from somewhere, have histories. But far from being eternally fixed in some
essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture and
power’ (1990:225). In short, it was not a static discourse and new discursive scripts on
environmental questions were actively constructed and negotiated in response to structural shifts
including the rise of neoliberal state policies and the proliferation of NGOs and international bodies
with an ‘indigenous’ ecological agenda. In particular, the increasing interest in the environment
from international organisations made it strategically useful to invoke the natural world and to
emphasise its role in Aymara belief systems. But invoking ecological spiritualism also provided a
discursive framework in which the contours of the state, and modernity itself could be challenged
from a decolonial perspective. It is apparent that because the environment was depicted by
became bound up with more fundamental narratives around indigeneity. Environmental traditions
and ‘natural memories’ thus found reinvention through the revindication of indigeneity promulgated
by the Kataristas. Katarismo’s legacies are sharply apparent therefore, in the environmental
55
rhetoric of Bolivia’s first indigenous President, Evo Morales and it is argued in this dissertation that
a genealogical link must be drawn between the two. This dissertation has shown that Kataristas
opened a discursive space in Bolivian politics in which the environment could serve as a vehicle for
other contestations around nation, state and class. As such, it raises wider historiographical
questions about the relationship between environmentalism and indigeneity which extend far
56
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