Indigenous Revolution in Ecuador and Bolivia, 1990-2005

I N D I G E N O US R E VO LUTI O N
I N ECUA DO R A N D BO LIV IA ,
1990– 2005
JEFFE RY M. PAIG E
INDIGENOUS REVOLUTION
IN ECUADOR AND BOLIVIA, 1990–2005
The University of Arizona Press
www.uapress.arizona.edu
© 2020 by The Arizona Board of Regents

All rights reserved. Published 2020
ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-4014-3 (hardcover)
Cover design by Leigh McDonald

Cover photo: Bolivian Indians and peasants march enroute to La Paz demanding naturalisation of gas.
© Reuters Photographer / Reuters Pictures
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Paige, Jeffery M., author.
Title: Indigenous revolution in Ecuador and Bolivia, 1990–2005 / Jeffery M. Paige.
Description: Tucson : The University of Arizona Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019026016 | ISBN 9780816540143 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Revolutions—Bolivia—History—20th century. | Revolutions—Bolivia—His-
tory—21st century. | Revolutions—Ecuador—History—20th century. | Revolutions—Ecua-
dor—History—21st century. | Indigenous peoples—Bolivia. | Indigenous peoples—Ecuador.
| Peasant uprisings—Bolivia. | Peasant uprisings—Ecuador. | Bolivia—History—1982– |
Ecuador—History—1984–
Classification: LCC F3327 .P335 2020 | DDC 984.05/1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019026016
Printed in the United States of America

♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
Political revolution finds itself only in the
symbolic revolution that makes it exist fully.
PIERRE BOURDIEU
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ix
Preface xi
Abbreviations xvii
Prologue: The World Turned Upside Down 3

Introduction: Modernity, Indigeneity, and Revolution 11
PART I. THE NATION, THE LIVING JUNGLE,

AND THE COMMUNAL VISION IN ECUADOR 39
1. The Nation and the Living Jungle in the Amazon 41

I nt e rv i e w s w it h A m pa m K arak ras, R afael Ant uni , and
M ar l on S an t i
2. ECUARUNARI: Sumak Kawsay and the Communal Vision 77

I nt e rv i e w s w it h D el f ín Ten e sac a , H umbert o Chol ang o,
and Lui s C on t en to
3. Pachakutik: Indigenous Jeffersonians 105

I nt e rv i e w s w it h Ger ón imo Y an tal ema, S alvad or Q ui s h pe,
and A uk i T it uañ a
VIII CONTENTS
PART II. “INDIAN REVOLUTION” AND THE MOVEMENT

TOWARD SOCIALISM (MAS) IN BOLIVIA 145
4. Katarism-Indianism in the Andes 147

I nt e rv i e w s w it h F el ipe Q uispe, Eug enio R o jas,
Pabl o M a m an i, an d Eug en ia C ho q ue
5. The Sacred Leaf 195

I nt e rv i e w s w it h L eon il da Z ur ita an d Jul io S al az ar
6. MAS Unionists: Che Guevara and Túpac Katari 222

I nt e rv i e w s w it h Isa ac A val o s, F idel S ur c o,
and E d g ar P atan a
7. Indianism and Marxism 249

I nt e rv i e w s w it h A n t on io P er ed o, C é s ar Navar r o,
and R ául P rada
Conclusion: Twenty-First-Century Revolution 286

Epilogue 297
Appendix 301
Notes 307
Index 323
ILLUSTRATIONS
MAPS
1. Ecuador political divisions, 2010 42
2. Bolivia political divisions, 2009 148
FIGURES
1. Marlon Santi and Humberto Cholango, 2009 102
2. Indigenous march in Quito, 2015 103
3. Indigenous demonstrators break military lines, 2000 103
4. Lucio Gutiérrez and Antonio Vargas, 2000 104
5. Felipe Quispe, 2003 220
6. Leonilda Zurita, 2004 220
7. Aymara protesters descend from El Alto into La Paz, 2003 221
8. Deputy Evo Morales leads coca producers’ protest march, 1998 221
TABLES
1. Indigenous uprisings in Ecuador, 1990–2005 5
2. Indigenous-popular uprisings in Bolivia, 2000–2005 8
PREFACE
T
HIS PROJECT had its beginnings one quiet Sunday afternoon in the
summer of 2006 when I picked up the travel section of the Ann Arbor
News (now sadly defunct) and saw a photo of a Bolivian peasant kneel-
ing before an altar dedicated to none other than Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who
had been betrayed by that very same peasantry and killed there forty years
before. A gigantic bust of Guevara was the centerpiece of the altar and inscribed
below were the words “tu ejemplo alumbra un nuevo amanecer” (your example
lights a new dawn). I was stunned. The peasantry who had helped kill Guevara
was now worshiping him. Something big must be happening in Bolivia. It took
two years for me to finally visit Bolivia and find that not only the peasants but
the president of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, as it is now officially known,
thought of himself as an “hijo del Che” (son of Che). But the president, Evo
Morales, the first indigenous person to rule the area that is now Bolivia since
the Spanish conquest, rejected armed struggle and Marxism—what some would
say were Guevara’s core principles. He also embraced Túpac Katari, the Aymara
leader of the Bolivian phase of the great indigenous uprising of 1780–81.
Something big was indeed going on in Bolivia—the overthrow of the politi-
cal and symbolic system inherited from the Spanish conquest and the coming to
power of the indigenous majority for the first time in the history of republican
Bolivia. But it was unlike the Nicaraguan or Cuban revolution and, indeed,
unlike past revolutions in most respects. It was based on a mass uprising of
XII PREFACE
the indigenous majority that brought the affairs of a modern nation-state to a

complete stop, but Evo Morales assumed power through a democratic election
(and has subsequently been reelected twice) and the constitutional order was
not violated. Morales was a union organizer in the coca fields of Cochabamba
but is widely regarded as the first indigenous president. What was this peculiar
combination of indigeneity, massive resistance, and liberal democracy? Was it
a revolution in the twentieth-century sense of the word? Was it a combination
of mass protest and electoral democracy or, perhaps, something entirely new,
an emerging form of twenty-first-century revolution? I went to Bolivia to find
out by asking the leaders of the great upheaval themselves what they thought it
was, how it came about, and what they wanted for the future. Their answers and
my reflections on them make up the second half of this volume.
I was fortunate to be accompanied on my first trip to Bolivia in 2008 by
my friend and colleague Muge Gocek, who is always ready for a new foreign
adventure. At her suggestion we paid a courtesy call on the chair of the sociol-
ogy department at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA, Higher
University of San Andrés), Eduardo Paz Rada. Before I knew it, Eduardo had
kindly put me in touch with several of his colleagues and friends who were close
to the revolutionary process and my field research interviews were underway. I
also met Pablo Stefanoni, bureau chief of Le Monde Diplomatique in La Paz,
and his colleague Hervé do Alto, who were also helpful in providing intro-
ductions. I returned the following summer (2009) and completed my Bolivian
interviews with the aid of a talented Bolivian research assistant, Rodrigo Elio.
The details appear in the appendix but I found particularly helpful an article
in the La Paz daily La Razón that nominated the “six people closest to Evo.”
I interviewed them all as well as leaders of Morales’s party, the Movimiento al
Socialismo (MAS, Movement Toward Socialism), and delegations in the Senate
and the National Assembly. I also interviewed the leaders of the constituent
peasant unions that had come together to form MAS in 1995. The goal of the
interviews was to talk to top members of the MAS party just below Morales.
But I soon found that an important current, Katarism-Indianism, was not well
represented among them so extended the interviews to include leaders in this
group as well. I found pictures of Che Guevara in some of the MAS offices and
often the indigenous flag, the wiphala (the rainbow banner of indigeneity), or
even pictures of Túpac Katari hanging on their walls.
At the same time as I was completing my fieldwork in Bolivia, I was super-
vising an extraordinary dissertation by Mandi Bane, who had spent more than a
PREFACE XIII
year living in a Kichwa village in the Andes of Ecuador. In 1990 the indigenous
people of Ecuador had risen up in an enormous protest that shut down the
country for a week. Indeed, Ecuador was where this new form of indigenous
revolution began. It subsequently spread to most of the indigenous populations
of South America, but Ecuador and Bolivia were the places where it had had the
greatest success. In the 1990s it was commonplace to hear the Ecuadorian indig-
enous movement referred to as the strongest in Latin America. Evo Morales
even traveled to Ecuador to find out why Bolivia, with an indigenous majority,
had had so little success in contrast to Ecuador, where the indigenous popula-
tion was a minority. In the end Morales, riding the back of a huge indigenous
uprising, took national power while the Ecuadorian movement was sidelined
after it formed a successful electoral coalition to do the same. The two most
powerful indigenous movements in the history of Latin America occurred a
decade apart, one in power and the other not. The comparison was irresistible.
So in 2011 I traveled to Ecuador to replicate the research I had by then com-
pleted in Bolivia. Once again I had the enormous good fortune of having the
assistance of distinguished local social scientists—especially Carlos de la Torre
and his spouse, Carmen Martínez. Carlos assigned a graduate student, Lucía
Yamá, to me as a research assistant. This duty also fulfilled a degree require-
ment in her program. She had completed her own field research interviewing
indigenous social movement leaders in Colombia and was well connected in
the indigenous movement in Ecuador through an anonymous third party who
was himself a leader of the movement. The general political framework was
similar to Bolivia. A powerful indigenous organization had created an initially
successful political party and with Lucía’s help I interviewed many of the leaders
of both. Before Mandi Bane left Michigan for a career in public service, I asked
her to prepare a list of nationally prominent indigenous leaders. I later shared
this list with distinguished Ecuadorianist Marc Becker, who added one name
but in general found Mandi’s list to be satisfactory. As in Bolivia, I found that
the leaders were expansive in their views and happy to talk with me (see the
appendix for details). I asked the same questions, mutatis mutandis, in both
countries. Their answers and my commentary make up the first half of this
volume. The names of all those interviewed in both countries may be found in
the interviews section at the end of the appendix. They will be familiar to most
specialists.
In fact, some specialists may ask, why another comparative volume on Ecua-
dor and Bolivia? We already have available in English the foundational volumes
XIV PREFACE
by Deborah Yashar and José Lucero, to say nothing of the extensive work of the
late Donna Lee Van Cott. These works came out of the excitement generated
by the great uprising in Ecuador in 1990 or the Bolivian multicultural reforms
of the 1990s and were written either before or during the insurrectional turns
in both countries at the turn of the century. This is a book about revolution.
Indeed, the relationship between the events of 1990–2005 in the Andes and the
nature of revolution itself is its central focus. In addition, this is the first time
that interviews of the leaders of these social transformations have appeared in
English. I hope that readers will find some of the revolutionary excitement in
the edited transcripts of the interviews that I did in recording them. They bring
with them, as I heard Carl Oglesby once say, the italics of personal experience.
Finally, in terms of my own intellectual biography, this is the third and last
volume in a series that began with Agrarian Revolution (1975), which focused on
peasant revolts in Peru, Angola, and Vietnam; and continued with Coffee and
Power (1997), comparing El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica in the revolu-
tionary decade of the 1980s. I had thought that this research would complete a
triad of studies of the peasantry, their landowning opponents, and their intellec-
tual leaders. But it turned out that in the Andes the intellectuals are followers,
not leaders, of the indigenous peasantry or the intellectuals leading the great
rebellions are indigenous peasants themselves. This was one of the many ways
in which the Andes departed from the model of Latin American revolution laid
out by Che Guevara and from the concept of “revolution” as it existed in the
twentieth century. In retrospect I realize that each volume of this triad actually
focused on a phase in the evolution of the postwar world system—Agrarian
Revolution on anticolonial revolts often led by communists; Coffee and Power
on socialist-led revolts in response to the failure of the state-led development
model of the immediate postwar decades; and this volume on the collapse of
the neoliberal “Washington Consensus” model that took its place. In each phase
the system broke at its weakest link—the poorest places in the Latin American
periphery.
One thing was constant in the three revolutionary situations—my country,
the United States of America, always stood against the poor farmers in revolt.
The indigenous-military coup of 2000 in Ecuador was reversed after U.S. pres-
sure on the military high command. The United States was at odds with Rafael
Correa, who adopted much of the indigenous movement’s program despite
being in conflict with the movement itself. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
was long in sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The Obama
PREFACE XV
administration, like its predecessors, failed to declare Bolivia in compliance with

drug eradication efforts even though it was the U.S. policy of militarized drug
eradication that triggered the rise of what Evo Morales calls his “democratic
and cultural revolution” in the first place. Many in Morales’s MAS party suspect
U.S. involvement in the 2008 “civilian coup,” an armed uprising in the Bolivian
East against his government.
As I tried to make sense of these interviews as a fellow at the Woodrow
Wilson Center in 2012–13, I had the opportunity to hear distinguished Middle
Eastern specialists talk about the 2011 “Arab Spring.” I was struck by the similar-
ities with the movements I had studied in the Andes. The same combination of
massive resistance and democratic elections led to the overthrow of the political
system. Only the tragic outcome is different. I am indebted to the Woodrow
Wilson Center and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
at Harvard, where I was a Santander Fellow, for providing stimulating col-
leagues and a congenial working environment. I am particularly indebted to
the director of the Wilson Center, Cynthia Arnson, and to Steve Levitsky and
Jorge Rodríguez of Harvard’s Tuesday Seminar for perceptive questions on an
earlier version of this work. I have benefited enormously from the Office of the
Vice President of Research at the University of Michigan, which supported the
initial stages of this work as well as my research for Coffee and Power.
This work would not have been possible without Silvia Varela, who translated
approximately half of the interviews. She also compared my translations with
the original Spanish transcripts and her editing greatly improved their readabil-
ity. Let me thank two wonderful colleagues, Muge Gocek and Susan Eckstein,
who have been a continual source of critique and support from the earliest days
of this project. I owe an enormous debt to my former Harvard University Press
editor, Mike Aronson, who nursed me through the publication process. Happily
I found a good home with the University of Arizona Press, whose enthusiasm
for the book and energy in its production abounded. Special thanks to Kristen
Buckles, my editor at Arizona, for her help and encouragement. Finally, my
greatest debt is to the forty-five indigenous leaders in Ecuador and Bolivia who
were kind enough to speak with me; I will never see the world in quite the same
way again. None of these people or institutions bears any responsibility for the
conclusions I have reached.
ABBREVIATIONS
BOLIVIA
ALBA Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América

(Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas)
ASP Asamblea por la Soberanía de los Pueblos (Assembly for the
Sovereignty of the Peoples)
CIDOB Confederación Indígena del Oriente Boliviano (Indigenous
Confederation of the Bolivian East)
COB Central Obrera Boliviana (Bolivian Workers Central)
CONALCAM Confederación Nacional para el Cambio (National Confederation
for Change)
COR–El Alto Central Obrera Regional–El Alto (Regional Workers Central–El
Alto)
CSCB Confederación Sindical de Colonizadores de Bolivia (Union
Confederation of Colonizers of Bolivia)
CSUTCB Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de
Bolivia (Sole Union Confederation of Rural Workers of Bolivia)
EGTK Ejército Guerrillero Túpac Katari (Túpac Katari Guerrilla Army)
FEJUVE Federación de Juntas Vecinales de El Alto (Federation of
Neighborhood Committees of El Alto)
XVIII ABBREVIATIONS
FELCN Fuerza Especial de Lucha Contra el Narcotráfico (Special Force

for the Struggle Against Narcotrafficking)
FNMCB-BS Federación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas de Bolivia–Bartolina
Sisa (National Federation of Bolivian Peasant Women–Bartolina Sisa)
INRA Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria (National Institute of
Agrarian Reform)
IPSP Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos (Political
Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples)
MAS Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Toward Socialism)
MAS-IPSP Movimiento al Socialismo–Instrumento Político por la Soberanía
de los Pueblos (Movement Toward Socialism–Political Instrument
for the Sovereignty of the Peoples)
MIP Movimiento Indio Pachakutik (Pachakutik Indian Movement)
MITKA Movimiento Indio Túpac Katari (Túpac Katari Indian Movement)
MNR Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (National Revolutionary
Movement)
MRTK Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Katari (Túpac Katari
Revolutionary Movement)
MUJA Movimiento Universitario Julián Apasa ( Julián Apasa University
Movement)
PCB Partido Comunista Boliviano (Communist Party of Bolivia)
PIB Partido Indio de Bolivia (Bolivian Indian Party)
PIR Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (Party of the Revolutionary
Left)
POR Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers
Party)
PS Partido Socialista (Socialist Party)
TIPNIS Territorio Indígena y Parque Natural Isiboro Sécure (Isiboro
Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory)
THOA Taller de Historia Oral Andina (Andean Oral History Workshop)
UMOPAR Unidades Móviles Policiales para Áreas Rurales (Mobile Police
Units for Rural Areas)
UMSA Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (Higher University of San
Andrés)
UPAE Universidad Pública y Autónoma de El Alto (Public and
Autonomous University of El Alto)
ABBREVIATIONS XIX
ECUADOR
CONAIE Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador

(Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador)
CONDENPE Consejo de Desarrollo de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos del
Ecuador (Council for the Development of Nationalities and
Peoples of Ecuador)
CONFENIAE Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazonia
Ecuatoriana (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the
Ecuadorian Amazon)
CORPUKIS Coordinadora de Organizaciones del Pueblo Kichwa Saraguro
(Coordinator of the Kichwa Saraguro People)
ECUARUNARI Ecuador Runacunapak Rikcharimuy (Awakening of the
Ecuadorian Indian)
FEI Federación Ecuatoriana de Indios (Ecuadorian Federation of
Indians)
FENOC Federación Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas (National
Confederation of Peasant Organizations)
FENOCIN Federación Ecuatoriana de Organizaciones Campesinas, Indigenas
y Negras (Ecuadorian Federation of Peasant, Indigenous and
Black Organizations)
FICSH Federación Interprovincial de Centros Shuar (Interprovincial
Federation of Shuar Centers)
IERAC Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y Colonización
(Ecuadorian Institute of Agrarian Reform and Colonization)
ITT Ishpingo-Tiputani-Tambococha (oil field within the Yusuní
National Park)
MPD Movimiento Popular Democrático (Popular Democratic
Movement)
MUPP-NP Movimiento de Unidad Plurinacional Pachakutik–Nuevo País
(Plurinational Unity Movement Pachakutik–New Country)
OPIP Organización de Pueblos Indígenas de Pastaza (Organization of
Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza)
I N D I G E N O US R E VO LUTI O N
I N ECUA DO R A N D BO LIV IA ,
1990–2005
PROLOGUE
The World Turned Upside Down
I
T IS said that as troops of the mightiest empire the world had ever seen
surrendered at Yorktown, their band played an old English tune, “The World
Turned Upside Down.” Between June 1990 and December 2005 in two suc-
cessor states of the great Spanish Empire in the Andes, Ecuador and Bolivia,
uprisings of indigenous peoples turned the world that empire created upside
down. Mass protests shut down both countries, political systems and parties
collapsed, and for a brief instant in Ecuador and for much longer in Bolivia
indigenous people ruled the areas of these states for the first time since Fran-
cisco Pizarro invaded the Andes in 1532. The word that many indigenous people,
who still spoke the language of the Inca Empire, Quechua (Kichwa in Ecuador),
used to describe this transformation was pachakutik, the world turned upside
down. The Quechua word implies not simply a political change but a transfor-
mation in the cosmos including a new worldview (cosmovisión) to comprehend
it. Those interviewed for this book led the great overturning and have inherited
a world considerably changed by their efforts. It was as if the combined Native
American peoples of North America had overturned the governments of Can-
ada and the United States and placed one of their own at the head of each.
The indigenous uprising began in Ecuador. On May 27, 1990, indigenous
protesters occupied the Santo Domingo Church in the historic central district
of Quito. When President Rodrigo Borja refused to enter into negotiations,
4 PROLOGUE
eleven of the protesters announced on June 2 that they would begin a hunger
strike. Early in the morning of Sunday, June 3, the great uprising began. Its
scale was “unprecedented in the country and in Latin America.”1 According
to Leon Zamosc, “popular protest swelled into a general civic strike, a massive
moratorium suspending all normal activities.” For an entire week in June, “tens
of thousands of Indian peasants stopped delivering farm produce to the towns,
blocked the main highways, picketed on the roadsides and marched en masse in
regional capitals. . . . Demonstrators seized the offices of government agencies,
[and] localized skirmishes broke out where landowners and Indian communi-
ties had been enrolled in unresolved land disputes.”2 At the symbolic focal point
of the uprising in the provincial capital of Latacunga in the heavily indigenous
Cotopaxi Province, crowds estimated from ten thousand to thirty thousand
marched the streets and held a mock trial for the provincial governor and other
authorities. Alberto Taxo, a famous shaman, seized a microphone and, according
to one participant, “he made fun of [her] and oh, how the people made fun and
laughed at authority, which for us signified a new era.”3
President Borja finally agreed to negotiations, not with the protesters but
with the newly formed (1986) Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del
Ecuador (CONAIE, Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador).
CONAIE in turn was formed by a coalition of indigenous organizations from
the Andes (Ecuador Runacunapak Rikcharimuy [ECUARUNARI, Awakening
of the Ecuadorian Indian]) and the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas
de la Amazonia Ecuatoriana (CONFENIAE, Confederation of Indigenous
Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon). CONAIE President Luis Macas
undertook negotiations with the government over a laundry list of demands
divided between indigenous ethnic and cultural concerns (that Ecuador be
declared a plurinational country, bilingual education, recognition of indigenous
medicine), economic issues (water and irrigation, price freezes, fair prices), and
some that combined both (land grants to the nationalities). Despite CONAIE’s
leading role in the negotiations, its leaders were initially reluctant to call for a
rebellion and were forced to do so by the regional organizations that were being
flooded with calls for action from indigenous communities all over Ecuador.4
With the opening of negotiations, the almost entirely peaceful and orderly
protest came to an end. Ecuador and its indigenous communities would never
be the same again. The great uprising initiated more than a decade of political
action and popular mobilization by indigenous peoples (table 1). It had brought
an entire modern nation-state to a complete stop.
THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN 5
Table 1. Indigenous uprisings in Ecuador, 1990–2005
1990 June The uprising (Levantamiento)

1992 Apr. March from the Amazon
1994 June Mobilization for Life
1997 Indigenous protests; overthrow of Abdalá Bucaram
2000 Jan. Overthrow of Jamil Mahuad by Pachakutik/Military Alliance
2002 Pachakutik Coalition victory with Lucio Gutiérrez
2003 Coalition collapse; Pachakutik leaves government
2005 Fall of Gutiérrez; election of Rafael Correa
The uprising had been concentrated in the Andes. Two years later, in conjunc-
tion with the “500 Years of Resistance” campaign marking the 500th anniversary
of Columbus’s landfall in the New World, two thousand Kichwa, Shuar, and
Shiwiar people organized by the CONFENIAE affiliate in Pastaza Province,
the Organización de los Pueblos Indígenas de Pastaza (OPIP, Organization of
Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza), staged a 250-kilometer, 13-day protest march from
Puyo in the Amazon to Quito in the northern highlands. Numbers grew to five
thousand as members of indigenous highland communities joined in and became
a national sensation with extensive and generally favorable coverage in the press.
By the time they marched on the presidential palace, Borja was ready to grant an
audience to selective representatives.5 Memories of the 1990 uprising no doubt
fresh in his mind, Borja made a stunning concession to the marchers’ princi-
pal demand—recognition of territorial rights. He granted 1,115,475 hectares to
Kichwa, Shiwiar, and Achuar peoples under the aegis of OPIP.6 Subsoil mineral
rights were not included, setting up an inherent conflict between the indigenous
peoples and multinational oil companies. Nevertheless, the 1992 march once again
placed the indigenous at the center of national politics.
Two years after the Amazon march, in June 1994, in response to the govern-
ment’s Law of Agricultural Development privatizing water and communal land,
protesters from 3,500 indigenous communities again shut down the country for
more than a week in what they called the “Mobilization for Life.”7 The government
was once again forced into negotiations, and CONAIE succeeded in reversing
the water and communal land provisions of the act, although many other provi-
sions benefiting large commercial agriculture remained. Nina Pacari, who was a
CONAIE negotiator during the protests, observed that “by linking the demands
of Ecuador’s indigenous population and non-indigenous popular sector, the indig-
enous movement has moved to the forefront of the popular struggle in Ecuador.”8
6 PROLOGUE
In 1996 CONAIE capitalized on its vanguard status by forming its own

political party, Movimiento de Unidad Plurinacional Pachakutik–Nuevo País
(MUPP-NP, Movement for Plurinational Unity Pachakutik–New Coun-
try), in coalition with nonindigenous popular organizations. It enjoyed what
Marc Becker calls “moderate success” as the party elected eight deputies to the
national congress, including CONAIE leaders Luis Macas, Miguel Lluco, and
Nina Pacari; and two mayors, one of whom, Cuban-trained economist Auki
Tituaña, became one of the most celebrated mayors in Latin America.9 It ran
a candidate for the national presidency, which was won by Abdalá Bucaram.
In the midst of economic crisis, Bucaram’s presidency was cut short by a mass
uprising in February 1997 that included, but was not limited to, the indigenous
movement. Ecuador would have ten presidents in the next ten years.
The 1990s had been a time of ever ascending power and influence for the
indigenous movement. On January 21, 2000, the indigenous protesters under
the leadership of Antonio Vargas, former president of OPIP and leader of the
1992 march from the Amazon, staged mass protests in Quito and, with the
acquiescence of the military and police, occupied the presidential palace, the
legislature, and the supreme court. A “Junta of National Salvation”—consisting
of Vargas; Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez, representing midlevel officers; and the
chief justice of the supreme court—was hastily assembled and demanded the
resignation of President Jamil Mahuad. For a few hours Vargas become co–
chief executive of Ecuador, the first indigenous person to hold such a posi-
tion since the conquest. Under pressure from the United States, Gutiérrez’s
superiors replaced him with General Carlos Mendoza, who in turn dissolved
the junta and called for a transition of power to then vice president Gustavo
Noboa, who served the remainder of Mahuad’s term.10
In the 2002 elections to replace Noboa, Pachakutik formed an electoral alli-
ance with Colonel Gutiérrez and won a share of national power once again.
Nina Pacari, a leader in the 1994 Mobilization for Life, became foreign minister
and Luis Macas headed the Ministry of Agriculture. Ministries involved in eco-
nomic policies were tightly held by Gutiérrez supporters. Almost immediately
he declared himself a “good friend” of U.S. president George W. Bush, betrayed
his campaign promises, and continued the neoliberal policies of his predeces-
sors. The coalition collapsed in August 2003. Pacari, Macas, and many other
indigenous officials resigned although a significant number remained, creating
divisions in the indigenous movement. Gutiérrez himself was overthrown in a
2005 uprising of civil society that did not involve the indigenous movement.
Pachakutik made one last effort to return to power through an alliance with
a little-known technocrat, Rafael Correa, and his Alianza País movement in
the 2005 elections, but negotiations broke down and Pachakutik ran its own
candidate, Luis Macas, who received only 2.2 percent of the vote.11 Correa won
and CONAIE and Pachakutik entered the political wilderness, where they
have remained ever since. “We won but we lost” (Ganamos pero perdimos), said
longtime CONAIE advisor Pablo Dávalos of the 2000–2003 period.12 Correa,
on the other hand, served three terms in the presidency before being succeeded
by his vice president, Lenin Moreno, in 2017.
In January 2000, just as protests in Ecuador were reaching their apogee, an
epoch of mass protests began in Bolivia with the so-called Water War in Cocha-
bamba. Fought out in three “battles” (December 11–14, 1999; February 4–5, 2000;
April 4–9, 2000), the Water War was organized by an ad hoc Coordinadora
por la Defensa del Agua y la Vida (Coordinating Committee for the Defense
of Water and Life) to protest water rate increases accompanying the privat-
ization of Cochabamba water resources through their sale to an international
consortium led by a subsidiary of the U.S. construction giant Bechtel.13 The
coordinating committee was led by factory worker Oscar Olivera and eventually
brought together a wide variety of organizations and sectors, including Olive-
ra’s factory workers; traditional rural water regulators (regantes); coca growers
from the Chapare; students and homeless “street kids”; neighborhood, civic, and
professional organizations; and Aymara neighborhood committees. By the time
the protests ended on April 9, the center of Cochabamba was occupied by more
than 100,000 people, government authority had collapsed, and President Hugo
Banzer had been forced to reverse the privatization decree.
Coming in the aftermath of the “battle of Seattle” antiglobalization pro-
tests, the Water War received worldwide attention and made Oscar Olivera an
international celebrity. At home, Olivera’s influence faded and two indigenous-
peasant leaders, radical Aymara Indianist Felipe Quispe and coca producers’
president Evo Morales, emerged as leaders of the two epicenters of the con-
tinuing uprising—the indigenous communities of the Aymara heartland of La
Paz Department; and the ethnically mixed, but predominantly Quechua, coca
producers of Cochabamba. Simultaneously, but uncoordinated, with the Water
War’s final stages in April 2000, Felipe Quispe organized road blockades in
the core Aymara province of Omasuyos in pursuit of a laundry list of demands
focused on water privatization and land titling. He was joined by the coca
producers of Villa Tunari in Cochabamba, and the blockades rapidly became
8 PROLOGUE
Table 2. Indigenous-popular uprisings in Bolivia, 2000–2005
2000 Water War in Cochabamba

2000 Apr.–Sept. Aymara protests, Highlands
2001 June–July Aymara protests, Highlands
2003 Feb. Police mutiny
2003 Sept.–Oct. Aymara protest, La Paz Highlands–El Alto, sets off first Gas War
2003 Oct. Fall of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada
2005 May–June Second Gas War; resignation of Carlos Mesa
2005 Dec. Election of Evo Morales (reelected 2009, 2014)
national, spreading through both Aymara and Quechua areas. Interspersing

negotiations and road blockades, Quispe led additional protests in September
2000 and June 2001. Thus began the great Aymara uprising that would bring
down the Bolivia nation-state and make possible an electoral transition not to
Quispe but to the coca growers’ Evo Morales in 2005.
October 2003, “Black October,” was decisive. The year had begun badly
enough for the political establishment with mass protest, a police mutiny, and a
shoot-out between the police and the national army at the presidential palace in
La Paz in February. On September 8 thousands of marchers from the Aymara
countryside arrived in the capital to demand the release of Edwin Huampo,
a peasant union official charged with murder for presiding over a traditional
Aymara assembly that had condemned two cattle rustlers to death.14 Quispe’s
list of demands was now expanded to include Huampo’s release and the can-
cellation of government plans to export natural gas through Bolivia’s hereditary
enemy, Chile, to serve customers in Mexico and California. On the very same
day, September 8, a proposed real estate tax on urban property in the over-
whelmingly Aymara and poverty-stricken city of El Alto led to a civic strike.15
These rural and urban Aymara currents fused to become the first Gas War,
named after what came to be its principal demand—a firm no to the sale of gas.
Whatever the specific issue, Quispe’s dream remained the establishment
of an Aymara state modeled after the ancient Inca province of Qullasuyu. He
talked constantly of the “two Bolivias,” one of the Aymara and the second
of the Spanish “invaders.” He never said what would happen to the invader’s
descendants, of both European and mixed ancestry, whom he contemptuously
referred to as “q’aras” (naked, uncultured, uncivilized), or, for that matter, the
other indigenous peoples in Bolivia.16 On September 10, Quispe and Aymara
supporters began a hunger strike at the offices of Radio San Gabriel in El Alto,
demanding the immediate release of Huampo, the abrogation of the gas con-
tract, and progress on the demands of 2000–2001. On the fifteenth in El Alto,
the Federación de Juntas Vecinales de El Alto (FEJUVE, Federation of Neigh-
borhood Committees of El Alto) called another civic strike and road blockades
went up in Quispe’s stronghold of Omasuyos on Lake Titicaca north of La Paz.
On the twentieth the government triggered a massive response to Quispe’s call
for blockades by sending a military expedition under the command of hardline
defense minister Carlos Sánchez Berzaín to rescue a group of international
tourists who were said to be trapped in the Aymara town of Sorata by road
blockades in Warisata in Omasuyos. Three villagers, including an eight-year-old
girl, were killed when the army and police opened fire in Warisata on the twen-
tieth.17 From September 21 onward the road blockades generalized throughout
the Aymara highlands.
On October 8, a general strike was called by the neighborhood federation
and the regional affiliate of the national union confederation in El Alto, and
road blockades went up throughout the city. The demands now included the
nationalization of the natural gas industry but expanded to include calls for a
constituent assembly and, eventually, the resignation of President Gonzalo Sán-
chez de Lozada. The “October Agenda,” as these demands were called, appealed
to a wide constituency, including students, coca producers, cooperative min-
ers, urban workers, Quechua as well as Aymara peasants, and even the middle
classes. As Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thomson note, “As the struggle counted
on solidarity from miners and other sectors, it went from being an Aymara to a
broader ‘popular’ struggle led by Aymaras, rural and urban.”18
Throughout the uprising, Sánchez de Lozada took an unyielding hard line.
On October 10, protestors in El Alto blockaded the installations of the National
Hydrocarbons Company, cutting off the supply of gas to La Paz. Eleven were
killed as infantry broke the blockade on the eleventh. That same day, Sánchez
de Lozada issued his notorious “death decree,” which absolved security forces
from any legal culpability in the use of force to suppress the uprising. 19 The
next day, October 12, the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s landfall in the
New World, fifty-four additional protesters were killed. Each wave of repres-
sion provoked another wave of protests. On the thirteenth, 100,000 protesters
overwhelmed security forces and took over the La Paz city center. On the four-
teenth, the uprising spread to provinces to the south and east of La Paz, includ-
ing Quechua as well as Aymara areas. On the sixteenth, crowds in the La Paz
city center swelled to 300,000. That afternoon news arrived that soldiers at the
10 PROLOGUE
Patacamaya checkpoint had defied their orders and allowed militant Huanuni
miners marching on La Paz to pass through. Sánchez de Lozada resigned and
left the country the next day, October 17. The first Gas War was over.20
Following Sánchez de Lozada’s resignation, power passed to his constitu-
tional successor, Vice President Carlos Mesa, who tried but failed to resolve the
issues raised by the October Agenda in his two years in office. On June 6, 2005,
as many as 500,000 Aymara protestors descended once again from El Alto to
the La Paz city center in a renewal of the Gas War.21 Mesa offered his resig-
nation but protests continued until successive resignations brought Supreme
Court Chief Justice Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé to power on June 9. Faced with
continuing popular resistance, Rodríguez resigned and called for new elections
in December. The elections were won overwhelmingly not by Quispe, whose
militant ideology touched off the Gas Wars, but by Evo Morales, whose Mov-
imiento al Socialismo (MAS) party had experienced extraordinary electoral
success since its founding in 1995. Morales, at the head of the MAS ticket, had
come in a close second in the 2002 presidential elections.
The beginning of the twenty-first century marked a gigantic overturning in
the Andean world. In January 2000 the Ecuadorian indigenous moved toward
ultimate power through a coup but ultimately gained power through free elec-
tions in 2002 before beginning a stunning fall from power. January 2000 marked
the beginning of an almost continuous wave of protests that culminated five
years later in the election of the first indigenous president of Bolivia. At the time
of writing, Evo Morales remains in power in Bolivia but in Ecuador Rafael Cor-
rea held power for ten years. He successfully co-opted the indigenous agenda
but not the indigenous. Both waves of indigenous protests were unprecedented
in the republican history of Ecuador and Bolivia and indeed in Latin America.
Where did they come from? The chapters that follow attempt to answer this
question through the presentations and analysis of interviews with leaders who
were or still are central to the indigenous movement. The following chapter
presents a general theoretical frame derived from past research to guide the
analysis, but it is hoped that the interviews may provide grist for many the-
oretical mills. They have been edited for length, readability, and punctuation.
Otherwise these stories are as they were told to me by the leaders of the great
uprisings.22
INTRODUCTION
Modernity, Indigeneity, and Revolution
T
HE INDIGE NOUS upheavals of 1990 to 2005 in Ecuador and Bolivia
seemed to come from nowhere. In fact they were the result of a decades-
long process of political organization and indigenous identity forma-
tion. Ultimately they were a paradoxical consequence of the forced imposition
of modernity in the Andes after the Bolivian Revolution of 1952 and the Ecua-
dorian land reform of 1964. An increasing body of research and theory suggests
that ambitious attempts to incorporate indigenous peoples into liberal nation-
states of equal citizens and capitalist economies of competitive individuals had
the exact opposite effect. They intensified the indigenous experience of racial
humiliation, discrimination, and exclusion, and, in response, promoted the rise
of indigenous political identity and resistance. This interpretation is strongly
supported by the interviews published for the first time in this book. Only
at the end of the twentieth century did a distinct indigenous political identity
emerge. This identity was both cause and consequence of organized political
action by the people interviewed for this book. Never before had there been a
political identity or political movement that unified all the surviving indigenous
cultures of each modern nation-state into a single indigenous identity and single
national organization.
Although indigenous identity and resistance emerged only in the second
half of the twentieth century, indigenous peoples lived in the areas that are now
12 INTRODUCTION
Ecuador and Bolivia for millennia. Both modern nations straddle the Andes
and extend deep into the Amazon. The largest indigenous groups are to be
found in the Andes: the Kichwa in Ecuador and the Aymara and Quechua in
Bolivia. These groups number in the millions. Numerous small band and tribal-
level societies are found in the Amazon. They number between a few hundred
and, at the largest, tens of thousands. The intermontane valleys of the eastern
slope of the Andes in Bolivia are ecologically and politically important because
their climate favors coca production, and coca growers of different indigenous
groups became the vanguard of the political revolution. The path of indigenous
mobilization closely followed these ecological and ethnic divisions.
It is important to understand at the outset that, contrary to the claims of
many indigenous leaders, the indigenous identity that emerged at the close of
the twentieth century was not the reemergence of some pre-Columbian iden-
tity suppressed by Spanish conquerors and their descendants. As José Antonio
Lucero has definitively demonstrated, this identity was a political construct that
grew out of the political action in the late twentieth century, not some primor-
dial ethnic identity. As Lucero has also demonstrated, this political identity was
rooted in what he calls the “associational ecologies” of the distinct regions in
Ecuador and Bolivia.1 In Ecuador the core themes emphasized by leaders from
the Amazon (see chapter 1) differed markedly from those of the Andes (see
chapter 2) despite a common commitment to nationality and indigeneity. The
indigenous narrative of the coca growers in the intermontane valleys of Bolivia
(see chapter 5) is distinctly different from that of the Aymara peasant commu-
nities of the Andes and their intellectual leaders (see chapter 4).
The Amazon in both Ecuador and Bolivia is a lowland region of dense trop-
ical rain forest where slash-and-burn agriculture supplemented by hunting was
the dominant mode of subsistence. Historically, social organization was at the
band or tribal level without distinct class or caste stratification (see chapter 1).
Neither the Spaniards nor the Incas had any success conquering these regions
and only in the later twentieth century did the Republics of Ecuador and Bolivia
attempt to incorporate them. Resistance tended to be organized along ethnic,
territorial, and ecological lines and, in the absence of class stratification, class
themes were nonexistent.2
In the Andes, in both countries, by the early twentieth century a racially
stratified peasant society had emerged. In the Ecuadorian countryside the dom-
inant institution before the 1964 land reform was the Latin American landed
estate, the hacienda, worked by indigenous serfs called huasipungeros. The
MODERNITY, INDIGENEITY, AND REVOLUTION 13
hacienda emerged early in Ecuador (in the seventeenth century), and indepen-
dent indigenous communities were weak and dominated by the hacienda and its
captive indigenous communities.3 In Bolivia the hacienda emerged only in the
nineteenth century. Independent indigenous communities organized around the
kin-based, territorially localized, Andean community organization, the ayllu,
retained their autonomy and fought for a century against expansion by the
haciendas.4 The 1952 Bolivian Revolution ended the hacienda system and freed
the indigenous serfs (called pongos), but the struggle continued in new forms
even after the abolition of the hacienda.
Although the difference between the relative strength of the hacienda and
ayllu in the two countries had an enormous effect on the direction taken by
their indigenous movement, in both cases initial organization of the indigenous
was on the basis of class, not indigeneity. In Ecuador the Communist Party was
the most effective organizational force in the countryside from the 1930s to the
1960s, and most Ecuadorian leaders interviewed mentioned communist orga-
nizers Dolores Cacuango and Tránsito Amaguaña as symbolic reference points
for their own struggles.5 The communists focused on land reform and other
class-based issues of hacienda peons. There were no indigenous leaders in the
party, and doctrinaire Marxism discouraged interest in the indigenous question.
In Bolivia the victorious center-left party the Movimiento Nacionalista Rev-
olucionario (MNR, National Revolutionary Movement) organized top-down
corporatist “unions” based on what were called campesinos (roughly translated
as “peasants”) in rural areas to negotiate between the indigenous peasant com-
munities and the state (and therefore completely unlike trade unions as they are
understood in the United States or the United Kingdom). In both countries,
indigenous identity disappeared in the Marxist-inspired category “peasant.”
The upsurge in indigenous organization in the 1980s and 1990s therefore
appeared as an entirely new phenomenon—the “Return of the Indian,” as Xavier
Albó put it in 1991.6 The “Indians,” as indigenous people were then called, had
always been there. What was new was the emergence of political organization
and resistance in the name of Indians, as they first called themselves. From the
nineteenth century onward, Indian was a term of contempt used by the creole
ruling classes to describe what they regarded as their racial inferiors. Indige-
nous activists, in a tactic used by many racialized groups, reversed the valence
of Indian and used it positively to organize against the creoles. By the 1980s,
however, the term Indian had begun to give way to the new concept of “indige-
neity.” Galo Ramón dates the transition to 1981–83, although two decades later
14 INTRODUCTION
Indian continued to be an accepted term in scholarly usage.7 In my interviews

conducted in 2008, 2009, and 2011, no one spoke of Indians except in reference
to pejorative use by others, and indigenous had become the accepted term. The
partial substitution of indigeneity for class by organizations based on an indig-
enous peasantry had profound political consequences.
Some examples may illustrate the remarkable change in consciousness that
was the basis of indigenous political identity. The Shuar had ceased to exist as a
tribal people of the Ecuadorian Amazon as early as 1964. When they remerged
as the Shuar Federation in the same year, they organized themselves as associ-
ational, democratic, and bureaucratic—thoroughly modern characteristics (see
chapter 1). They at first used their tribal designation, Shuar, in political organi-
zation, but when they joined with indigenous organizations of the Andes, they
accepted their indigeneity in the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of
Ecuador (CONAIE). In the ethnically heterogeneous world of the Bolivian
coca growers, a common indigeneity was induced by the coca eradication efforts
of the United States so that indigeneity was mixed with demands for human
rights and anti-imperialist rhetoric (see chapter 5).
It is true that the Aymara in Bolivia under the leadership of Felipe Quispe
retained traditional Aymara forms of community organization that had survived
conquest by both the Inca and the Spanish Empires. But the reconstructed and
to some extent reinvented history of the Aymara was produced by a small group
of ethnically Aymara intellectuals inspired by Fausto Reinaga’s work La revo-
lución india (The Indian revolution), published in 1969 (see chapter 4). Quispe
did not know of Túpac Katari, the great eighteenth-century Aymara rebel, until
he heard about him on a radio broadcast. Javier Hurtado has shown that no
memory of Katari existed among ordinary rural Aymara as late as the 1980s.8
Similarly, to take an extreme example, Mandi Bane has shown that the Panzuelo
people, so designated by CONAIE in the province of Cotopaxi, Ecuador, did
not know they were Panzuelo although they considered themselves part of the
indigenous movement.9
To say that indigeneity is an invented tradition is not to say it was invented
out of nothing. The indigenous cultural communities that survived on Ecuador-
ian haciendas and the Ecuadorian Amazon provided the discourse and expe-
rience out of which indigenous identity was constructed. The Shuar still call
themselves Shuar and as late as the time of the interviews Ampam Karakras,
the leading intellectual in the formation of the concept of indigenous nation-
alities, could still argue that indigeneity was just a euphemism for Indian. The
ayllu of the Bolivian Andes was (and is) still a functioning entity in the Aymara
heartland even if the ethnohistory of the Aymara in political discourse was
constructed by Aymara intellectuals. On the other hand, the indigeneity of the
coca growers of the subtropical valleys was heterogeneous. based on a mixing
of different indigenous cultural groups.
Indigeneity in the Andes was something entirely new, a consequence of
modernity. Indigeneity was not the result of political calculation or “strategic
essentialism” on the part of the leaders interviewed for this book. Instead, they
reflected the experience of themselves and millions of other indigenous people
after the introduction of modernity. Most of those interviewed were at most a
generation removed from traditional indigenous life. Some still lived in tradi-
tional communities.
Modernity arrived in two phases. The first began with the Bolivian Revolution
of 1952 (sometimes called the April Revolution) and the Ecuadorian land reform
of 1964, a kind of revolution from above. Both “revolutions” destroyed the hacienda
system, threw indigenous people into the modern world of liberal citizenship
and capitalist individuality, and introduced them to a Western culture of intense
racism. The second phase began abruptly with the shock therapy of neoliberal
structural adjustment, which began in both countries at the beginning of the
1980s. The first phase of land reform reflected the nationalist state-dominated
development strategy then in favor in Latin America. It led to widespread mobi-
lization and organization on the basis of indigenous identity. The second phase,
neoliberal structural adjustment, initiated uprisings verging on the revolutionary.
Combined, they created the uprisings of the 1990–2005 period.
AGRARIAN REVOLUTION AND INDIGENEITY
In Bolivia in April 1952, activists from the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucio-

nario (MNR) led a revolution that has many similarities to other revolutions of
the twentieth or even the eighteenth centuries. As MNR activists seized power
and distributed arms, a proletariat of militant leftist miners defeated the Boliv-
ian army in pitched battles and indigenous peasants rose to assert traditional
land claims and destroy the hacienda system. The center-left nationalists of the
MNR were forced to co-opt the revolutionary miners and ratify the peasants’
seizure of land, incorporating both groups into the state, as has been noted, by
corporatist “unions.”
16 INTRODUCTION
The victorious MNR was a party of the upper middle class, dominated by
lawyers, with a program of revolutionary state-led modernization from above.
The enormous prestige of the revolution ensured indigenous peasant support
for decades even though MNR never took an official notice of the indigenous
component of their identity. Still, the reforms from above were considerably
more than cosmetic. Land reform in 1953 ratified the indigenous peasant land
seizures, the franchise was extended to the indigenous peasants for the first
time, universal primary education (in the Spanish language) was opened to all,
mines were seized by the state, and state control extended to broad areas of the
economy. The goal was to create a modern capitalist economy and a modern
liberal state on the ruins of the ancien régime dominated by three mining fam-
ilies and a backward land-holding class. In the view of the MNR, there was no
indigenous problem because the indigenous either had been or soon would be
converted into individual citizens of a culturally uniform mestizo (mixed-race)
state and into small farmers in a productive capitalist agricultural economy. The
revolution, therefore, implied the cultural extinction of the indigenous.
A little more than a decade later, another modernizing revolution swept
Ecuador. But this time there was no revolutionary upsurge from below but
rather a military-imposed land reform from above (1964–73). To be sure, fear
of revolution, in this case the Cuban Revolution, motivated the military juntas
that imposed modernization. The land reform was weak and insufficient and
was partly reversed. Still, as in Bolivia, the old hacienda system was destroyed
and capitalist agriculture encouraged. In the long run, by the beginning of the
twenty-first century the principal beneficiaries of the reform appeared to be
large capitalist farmers in the highlands. The former indigenous serfs were rel-
egated to the worst lands highest on the mountain sides.10
Nevertheless, in Ecuador as in Bolivia the hacienda system was destroyed
and halting steps were made to incorporate the indigenous peasantry into full
citizenship (in Ecuador the vote was not extended to the peasantry until 1979!).
Given the early and absolute dominance of the hacienda in Ecuador, the reform
threw millions of peasants into a capitalist economy and a Hispanic nation-state
with little or no government assistance or official support. Many entered the
casual labor market of rural towns or major cities while still retaining their ties
to rural communities. Indigenous communities, on the other hand, survived.
Former captive communities of the haciendas made use of a 1937 law to legally
incorporate themselves. The number of legally incorporated indigenous com-
munities almost doubled from 1,087 in 1960 before the reform to 1,961 by 1988.
As Ramón observes, these communities “converted themselves into the most

organized sector of civil society.”11 It was these communities that formed the
building blocks of indigenous organization and resistance.
In Ecuador there was a distinct difference between the actual community base
of indigenous organization and the theoretical organization of indigenous ide-
ology. In theory CONAIE was an organization of peoples and nationalities like
the Shuar in the Amazon or the fictive Panzuelos of the Andes. “Nationality,”
borrowed from European, especially Marxist, thought, became the core concept
of the indigenous movement in Ecuador. This theme is repeated in every single
interview granted by Ecuadorian leaders. This ideological principle has some basis
in actuality in the Amazon. But in the Andes the legally recognized indigenous
community organized along traditional lines and based on principles of consensus
and unanimity was the basic unit; a number of such communities banded together
at the parish or canton level to form an organization of the “second grade.”
Second-grade organization united to form provincial-level organizations of the
“third grade” that, in turn, joined together to form regional organizations. Finally
the regional organizations joined together to form one national-level organiza-
tion, CONAIE.12 Organization followed political rather than ethnic boundaries.
The origins of the regional-level organizations are discussed in chapters 1 and 2.
In Bolivia too the indigenous community was the fundamental unit of orga-
nization in the Aymara heartland even if it was designated a union local by the
MNR. In the province of Cochabamba, where the indigenous communities
were weaker, peasant unions were a more or less accurate description of organi-
zation in the countryside. It is of critical importance that the victorious current
in the Bolivian uprising of 2000–2005 came from the coca growers of Cocha-
bamba who organized as unions first and acquired an indigenous identity later.
In the Aymara heartland, Felipe Quispe created an extremely radical form of
Aymara “Indianism” that has no parallel in Ecuador. The Kichwa of the Ecua-
dorian Andes, despite their regional organization, ECUARUNARI, chose to
think of themselves as divided into localized “peoples,” for example, Otavaleños,
Saraguros, and Salasacas.
MODERNITY AND INDIGENEITY IN ECUADOR
It is argued by a number of scholars writing on Ecuador that land reform and

subsequent modernization created the conditions for the emergence of both
indigenous organization and indigenous identity in Ecuador. According to
18 INTRODUCTION
Amalia Pallares, “In the years following land reform and rural modernization,
Indians’ frustrated attempts to coexist with mestizos in diverse institutional
settings and in everyday life, as well as their attempts to build coalitions with
non-Indians along class lines, made their subordination along racial lines
painfully evident.”13 Ramón speaks of “the ethnogenesis [i.e., the construction
of ethnic identity] produced in the world of the Ecuadorian Indian through
the process of modernization.”14 Leon Zamosc argues that the “contemporary
Indian movement can be read as a radical critique of the kind of modernity that
has prevailed in Latin America. The ‘really existing modernity’ that befell the
Indians . . . was utterly alien to the ideal modernity that had been touted since
the Enlightenment as rationalizing progress in the service of freedom and the
enrichment of human life.”15
Pallares provides vivid examples of how land reform and the end of the
hacienda brought indigenous people into racially degrading and humiliating
encounters with mestizos in towns and cities.16 Indigenous children were pun-
ished and humiliated for speaking Kichwa or wearing traditional clothing in
the school. Police brutality, false arrests, and even torture were common. In
a continuation of hacienda practices in the public sphere, police sometimes
seized the clothing of indigenous people and required days of forced labor
on public works before it was returned. The practice of arranche (“snatching”),
in which a mestizo would simply grab an item from an indigenous market
vendor and then pay anything they chose, continued. Indigenous people were
barred from any jobs requiring contact with mestizos and relegated to the
most menial positions. All these practices were directed at indigenous people
as a group by mestizos and whites as a group. As Pallares notes, “The new
transformations and their effects were understood racially because that is how
they were experienced by many.”17
For Ramón, modernization not only exposed the indigenous peoples to racist
mistreatment but also brought them into direct unmediated contact with the
Ecuadorian nation-state for the first time. This led to increasing “Indian nation-
alism” that demanded inclusion in the state and an end to discrimination rather
than separatism.18 According to Zamosc, the early activities of CONAIE rede-
fined Indian identity “from a stigmatized group to a collectivity with rights,”
a transformation assisted by some receptivity on the part of the Ecuadorian
state.19 Jorge León describes the process of modernization in the highlands too
but places fear of cultural extinction as the motivating force in creating indige-
nous identity.20 All these sources agree that land reform and modernization in
Ecuador enhanced an oppositional indigenous identity primarily by bringing
indigenous peoples into the public sphere and exposing them to general mis-
treatment and discrimination as a racialized group.
MODERNITY AND INDIGENEITY IN BOLIVIA
Two of Bolivia’s leading social scientists, Álvaro García Linera (see chapter
6) and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, discuss the effects of modernity in similar
terms. As Rivera Cusicanqui notes, “Each modernizing step appears to gener-
ate defence mechanisms in communards [Aymara indigenous communities],
at the deepest sub-stratum of the collective memory, where the oldest wounds
still bleed, where the memory of the invader who altered the invaded society is
still painful.”21 For Rivera Cusicanqui, the April Revolution simply represented
another step in a continuing process of forced modernization. The core of mod-
ernization is “the western model of citizenship as modern, ‘rational,’ and propri-
etary capable of entering into transactions in the market and of embracing the
fetishistic logic of commodities.”22 According to Rivera Cusicanqui, the two-
fold process of the imposition of liberal citizenship and market rationality on
indigenous communities is the fundamental contradiction in Bolivian society.
Although at times she seems to argue that this contradiction creates indigenous
consciousness, at others she emphasizes the objective and essential nature of
this conflict. Modernization “generate[s] defence mechanisms” in Aymara com-
munities but “the memory of the invader . . . is still painful” (emphasis added).
Nevertheless, there are obvious commonalities with the arguments reviewed
above for Ecuador. Modernity is at the core of both.
Álvaro García Linera emphasizes the same fundamental contradictions in
Bolivian society. In his first publication, writing under the pseudonym Qhan-
anchiri and using Karl Marx’s categories from Capital: Volume I, García Linera
contrasts “the family-communal based on use values for self-sufficiency” with
“exchange value: which is ‘alien and distinct from the former.’”23 This theme runs
throughout his work. He became “obsessed” with tracking down everything that
Marx had written on the precapitalist agrarian community. The culmination of
his obsession was the mammoth, densely argued theoretical work Forma valor
y forma comunidad (Value form and community form), which was a reading of
capital informed by Marx’s writings on the agrarian community.24 The value form
in Marx is the amount of abstract labor embedded in a commodity and is at the
heart of his labor theory of value.25 To a Marxist like García Linera, it was the very
essence of capitalism and implied not simply economic change but the cultural
and political change required to make capitalist exchange relations possible. He
20 INTRODUCTION
contrasted the value form with the communal traditions of the traditional Andean
ayllu. As he said in a later work, “In sum we can speak of communities and ayllus
as structures of civilization bearing cultural systems, temporal systems, technolog-
ical systems, political systems and productive systems structurally differentiated
from the constituents of the dominant capitalist civilization.”26
Like Rivera Cusicanqui, García Linera also saw a fundamental contradiction
between the liberal idea of citizenship and the multiple civilizations that consti-
tute Bolivian society. “Bolivia is a country where various civilizations coexist, but
where the state structure only recognizes the organizational logic of one of these
civilizations—modern commercial capitalism.”27 According to García Linera,
in reality Bolivia was “composed of numerous corporate segments . . . which
reveal the fraudulent nature of the liberal ideal of society as a . . . connection of
rootless private owners.”28 This contradiction was stabilized and somatized by
race. The state was not only liberal and capitalist but white. The unrepresented
corporate indigenous communities that emerged from the revolution of 1952,
just as they did from the Ecuadorian land reform, were the rural building blocks
of the uprising against the liberal capitalist state that began in 2000. Just as in
Ecuador, these conflicts, as Pallares observed, “were understood racially because
that is how they were experienced by many.”
Rivera Cusicanqui and García Linera both emphasize the same two dimen-
sions of modernity—liberal citizenship and capitalist individuality. These
dimensions could just as well apply to Ecuador. In both cases, imposition of
these dimensions of modernity on the indigenous population after the revolu-
tion of 1952 and the land reform of 1964 led to increased organization and resis-
tance. These dimensions of modernity also led to the formation of an indigenous
political identity, although the case is made more strongly by those writing on
Ecuador than by Rivera Cusicanqui and García Linera. The same contradictions
are involved in both cases. The simple proposition suggested above that moder-
nity causes indigeneity is strongly suggested by researchers and theorists in both
countries. Agrarian modernization set the stage for the uprisings of 1990–2005.
Neoliberalism brought the drama to a revolutionary conclusion.
NEOLIBERALISM AND THE UPRISINGS
Neoliberalism, sometimes called the “Washington Consensus,” was a late

twentieth-century radical version of nineteenth-century laissez faire economic
liberalism. Although the basic elements of the new politico-economic philoso-

phy were first applied to Chile after Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup by admirers
of Milton Friedman, the doctrine attained international legitimacy, if not abso-
lute hegemony, after the elections of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in
1980. Neoliberalism was the global expression of the “Reagan Revolution” and
still forms the basis for the Republican Party’s economic doctrines. In the 1980s
and 1990s, as the Washington Consensus, it became the dominant philosophy
of the Washington-based international financial institutions the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which were strongly backed by the
U.S. Department of the Treasury. They imposed their will on the Third World,
now euphemistically (and optimistically) called “emerging markets,” through
what came to be called “structural adjustment packages.”29
The typical structural adjustment package included three main elements—
privatization, stabilization, and deregulation—which reflected neoliberalism’s
hostility to state intervention in the economy in any form and its utopian
visions of completely unfettered national and international markets. Privat-
ization meant the sale of state-owned enterprises and the end of industrial
policy, subsidies, or any other attempt to alter market outcomes by state action.
Stabilization required ending fiscal and trade deficits by draconian measures if
necessary. Social programs were terminated; state employees were fired, state
subsidies ended, and tariffs were radically reduced or eliminated. Deregulation
meant freedom from government oversight of business, particularly “reform” of
the labor market to reduce or eliminate unions and the government policies they
had promoted. Whatever the philosophical basis for these policies, in practice
they tended to fall hardest on the poorest and most vulnerable members of
society and advantage multinational enterprises.30
Bolivia was the site of one of neoliberalism’s greatest economic successes (the
virtual elimination of inflation, which, at the time, was running at an astronom-
ical 50,000 percent per year) and greatest political failures (the virtual collapse
of the Bolivian political system). Remarkably, neoliberalism was imposed by
none other than Víctor Paz Estenssoro, hero of the revolution and architect of
the “state of 1952,” the overwhelmingly interventionist state that had imposed
modernity on Bolivia and inadvertently triggered the rise of indigenous iden-
tity. A single presidential decree (21060) formulated by Paz Estenssoro and his
finance minister, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, aided by Bolivian students of
neoliberal guru Jeffery Sachs, deconstructed much of the state of ’52. Sánchez
de Lozada finished more of the work in his own term of president (1993–97).31
22 INTRODUCTION
Decree 21060 became a rallying cry for opponents of neoliberalism and is

explicitly mentioned in a number of the interviews presented here.
Álvaro García Linera argues that the neoliberal reforms had an adverse effect
on both workers and peasants and led directly to the Bolivian uprisings of
2000–2005. García Linera mentions in particular the Paz Estenssoro reforms
of 1985, the free importation of food after 1986, the closing of the agricultural
frontier as a result of export agribusiness expansion, and the destruction of small
industry and handicrafts in the cities.32 Benjamin Kohl and Linda Farthing
reach the same conclusions, pointing to the closure of state mines and dismissal
of twenty-three thousand of thirty thousand workers, a two-thirds decline in
real wages, the loss of ten thousand public sector and twenty-five thousand
rural school employees, the collapse of the tiny industrial sector, and a flood
of agricultural imports into the countryside. As a result of the shrinking of the
state, the migration of ruined farmers to the cities, and the decline of industry
and handicrafts, informal employment skyrocketed to two-thirds of the urban
workforce by 1988.33 By 1999, when Bolivia faced what Kohl and Farthing call “a
perfect storm” of economic crises, neoliberal hegemony unraveled. Although not
strictly part of the structural adjustment program, a new offensive against coca
production devastated the Cochabamba and national economies. The collapse
of the Argentine economy threw many of the 1.5 million Bolivian migrants in
what was Bolivia’s largest labor market out of work. The privatization of the
petroleum industry sharply reduced government revenues.34 The Water and Gas
Wars and Quispe’s Aymara rising followed immediately thereafter.
Although the direct consequences of neoliberalism and the simultane-
ous coca eradication program were the immediate precipitants of the 2000–
2005 risings, they could never have happened without the organizational and
identity-building work in the previous thirty years. As García Linera notes,
“The Indianist-Katarist movements of the years 1960–1980 . . . succeeded in
unifying a growing urban intelligentsia of Aymara cultural origins and whose
members took the first steps in the discursive formation and passive influence
in those communities that, twenty years later, led the most important indige-
nous uprising of the last 50 years.”35 The IMF structural adjustment packages
reliably led to mass protests but usually in what came to be called the “IMF
riot,” such as the gigantic “Caracazo” in Venezuela in 1989, not sustained mass
protest led by indigenous resistance organizations as in Bolivia and Ecuador.
Without the formation of these organizations and rise of indigenous iden-
tity in response to the imposition of modernity from above in the Bolivian
revolution of 1952 and Ecuadorian land reform of 1964, no sustained indigenous

uprising would have been possible. The gigantic wave that broke in 2000–2005
in response to the crisis of neoliberalism had been building for decades. It is
this connection between modernity and indigeneity discussed in the previous
section, not neoliberalism alone, that is the ultimate cause of the uprisings in
Bolivia.
The same is true in Ecuador. Zamosc argues that “in content, the 1990levan-
tamiento [uprising] paralleled what appeared in other Latin American countries
as ‘IMF riots,’ a display of popular protest induced by the profound impact of
the economic slump and the [structural] adjustment policies of the 1980s.”36
He found that many of those uprising participants he interviewed emphasized
the economic squeeze they felt from high prices of agricultural inputs and low
prices for farm products—both a direct result of structural adjustment. Neolib-
eral policies were imposed from above in the 1980s, beginning with the adminis-
tration of Osvaldo Hurtado (1981–84) and “with a vengeance” under the repres-
sive regime of León Febres Cordero (1984–88), and continuing up to and even
after the 1990 uprising.37 The key neoliberal reforms reduced tariffs, encouraged
foreign investment, stabilized the currency, cut corporate and individual tax
rates, raised prices, contracted the money supply, cut the public budget and
public subsidies, and privatized individual land and water rights. The result was
“continuing poverty (if not growing impoverishment), high unemployment, vast
inequality, social tensions, and inadequate public investment in education and
public services.”38 Neoliberal reforms triggered indigenous uprisings including
not only in 1990 but to some extent down to the present day. Antineoliberal-
ism is an article of faith among indigenous leaders interviewed for this book.
The reforms were a contributing factor in the election of Rafael Correa, who
co-opted indigenous opposition to neoliberalism in his campaign. Indigenous
leaders, however, believe that in office he simply continued neoliberal policies
in a new form.
In Deborah Yashar’s widely influential comparative theory of the early stages
of indigenous mobilization in the Andes, neoliberalism is at center stage. 39
Although she includes economic changes, her focus is on the political conse-
quences of neoliberalism. She claims that the replacement of the “corporatist”
mediation of state-indigenous relations with a neoliberal emphasis on the rela-
tion between the isolated individual and the state freed the indigenous to rebel
under situations in which state repression was relaxed and previous political
solidarities existed. There is no doubt that Yashar is right about the effect of
24 INTRODUCTION
political neoliberalism; it intensified the experience of isolation and racism. But

the theory immediately runs into temporal difficulties.
Indigenous resistance and indigenous identity in Ecuador as in Bolivia
long preceded the neoliberal reforms. The Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon
organized in 1964; the Kichwa of the highlands in 1972. Discussions to form
CONAIE began in the early 1980s at the outset of the neoliberal reforms.
Zamosc found that ethnic solidarity was at least as important as strictly eco-
nomic consideration among participants in the 1990 uprising whom he inter-
viewed. As one of them said, “We wanted to show that we Indians are united,
organized and can make our own demands.”40 Far from a spontaneous outburst,
the uprising was organized from bottom to top. The base of the uprising was the
indigenous communities that emerged in large part as a result of the 1964–73
land reforms, and their pressure forced the CONAIE leadership to act. As in
Bolivia, it was the imposition of modernity from above through land reform
and attempts to create individual citizens and economic actors that triggered
indigenous political consciousness. The radical neoliberal reforms brought both
societies to a crisis in which indigenous political identity was expressed in mass
mobilization and protests. The leaders interviewed for this book were key actors
in this process (see the appendix).
DIVERGENT OUTCOMES IN ECUADOR AND BOLIVA
Thus far I have stressed the common pattern of indigenous protest. Both pro-
duced national indigenous organizations that, in their time, were regarded as
the strongest in Latin America. Both culminated in massive uprisings that shut
down the entire nation-state for days or weeks at a time. Both led to the collapse
of the party system and threatened to take power at the national level. But in
Bolivia Evo Morales and his MAS party did take national power through upris-
ings and successful election campaigns. At this writing, a decade after the upris-
ing, Morales and MAS are still in power. In Ecuador CONAIE, in coalition
with midlevel army officers, did seize power for a few hours in January 2000.
This coup led directly to their greatest electoral success in 2002 in coalition with
coup leader Lucio Gutiérrez. But Gutiérrez betrayed his indigenous allies and
moved sharply to the right. The coalition broke apart in 2003 and most, but not
all, indigenous representatives resigned from his government.
The 2002 elections represented the high point of Pachakutik-CONAIE

political power. The collapse of the Gutiérrez coalition relegated them to the
political wilderness and cleared the way for the rise of Rafael Correa. At the
time of the interviews, five years into the Correa presidency, the leaders were as
militant as ever but unable to assemble the electoral coalitions that had brought
them to power in 2002 or the mass uprisings that had shaken the state in the
nineties. Although CONAIE had initially supported Correa, they soon were
at odds. Correa criminalized protests, arrested indigenous protesters as ter-
rorists, and denounced their leaders in strongly racialized terms. The leaders
interviewed in Ecuador, with one notable exception, denounced Correa in no
uncertain terms. One said that he was worse than León Febres Cordero, who
had imposed neoliberalism with an iron hand. Some Pachakutik members con-
tinued to win seats in local and national elections, but the party was a shadow
of its former self.
Why these different outcomes? Bolivia enjoyed enormous advantages that
Ecuador lacked. Indeed, what is remarkable is that the Ecuadorian indigenous
leaders enjoyed the limited success that they did. Bolivia had the largest indig-
enous population in Latin America with two-thirds of the population claiming
indigenous identity. The indigenous population of Ecuador was much smaller.
A reasonable estimate for the insurrectionary period would be 20–25 percent.41
Bolivia had a powerful tradition of left ideology and organization rooted in
militant trade unions. It had a radical independent peasant union that encom-
passed almost all the rural population. These organizations were the key to MAS
success. They were almost entirely absent in Ecuador.
The area that is now Bolivia was the site of powerful Aymara kingdoms
whose culture and language survived the Inca and Spanish Empire and the
republic to form the basis for the great Katarist risings of the late twentieth
century. The Aymara became the most militant and organized of the Bolivian
ethnic groups. The pre-Incan strucures of what is now Ecuador were weak and
decentralized and were quickly obliterated by the Incas and the Spanish. The
dominant Kichwa ethnic group never achieved similar cohesion and militance.
The hacienda dominated Ecuadorian society and economy as early as the
seventeenth century, weakening the traditional Andean kinship organization
the ayllu. Ayllus were and are much more powerful in Bolivia. The hacienda
only arrived in the nineteenth century and carried on a battle over land with
the Aymara ayllus that lasted down to the 1952 revolution. Peasant insurrections
26 INTRODUCTION
were common in Bolivia but not in Ecuador. Relations between the landlord-
dominated state and the indigenous communities were frequently close to war-
fare. In Ecuador the state was open to negotiation with a much less militant
indigenous population. Coca cultivation in Ecuador was banned by the Church
despite ideal ecological conditions. The weakness of the Church and the dom-
inance of mining interests prevented a similar ban in Bolivia. Coca production
thrives to this day, and the coca producers became one of the most militant and
insurrectionary groups in Bolivian society. It was they who emerged in power
after the revolutionary upsurge. Despite these enormous disadvantages, militant
indigenous Ecuadorians brought down the state and even placed an indigenous
leader in a position of national power.
Ideology and organization, however, also contributed to these different out-
comes. A clue is provided by the names of the peak indigenous organizations
in the two nations—the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador
(CONAIE) and the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos
de Bolivia (CSUTCB, Sole Union Confederation of Rural Workers of Bolivia).
Nationality had been the key organizing concept in Ecuador, and indigenous
resistance grew out of the corporatist peasant unions of the MNR in Bolivia.
But as early as 1979 the CSUTCB had been taken over by Aymara nationalists
with a strong peasant base. Between 1998 and 2003 it was led by radical Aymara
nationalist Felipe Quispe, who initiated major protests in 2000–2001 and 2003.
Nationality was a powerful force in Bolivia as well as Ecuador. Nevertheless, as
the interviews that follow make clear, in the end Ecuadorian peak organization
was based on a “materially informed Indianista politics” while in Bolivia Morales’s
MAS party was based on what might be called an “ethnically informed peasant
politics.”42 The difference is one of emphasis but it nonetheless had a decisive
effect on the outcome of indigenous peasant mobilization in the two nations.
Both indigenous peasant movements tried to organize broad coalitions of the
nonindigenous as well as the indigenous left, but Evo Morales was much more
successful than his counterpart in Ecuador, Luis Macas. Morales attained a clear
majority or even close to a two-thirds majority in his three election campaigns.
Macas only received 2.2 percent in his one unsuccessful campaign. The vanguard
organization in Bolivia, the coca producers union, was built first as a union orga-
nization in a region where peasant unions had always been strong. It later took
on an indigenous discourse, especially when the party began to compete at the
national level. Álvaro García Linera argues that this change was attributable to
the rise of Evo Morales with a distinctly multicultural perspective.43 Nevertheless,
Morales was strongly influenced by his Marxist advisors Filemón Escobar and
Álvaro García and supported a strong nationalist and anti-imperialist, as well as
indigenous, line.
In Ecuador the vanguard organization was the Amazonian confederation and
the key theorist of nationality was a Shuar. Nationality became the key concept
in the national organization as a result of conversations between the two regional
federations. Both CONAIE and Pachakutik retained a strong anti-imperialist
and antineoliberal discourse, but after Correa co-opted these themes, it was left
with its conceptual root notion, nationality. CONAIE’s idea of plurinationality
envisioned an organization with indigenous nations and peoples as its base even
though this contradicted the actual organization based on individual communi-
ties. The coca producers’ idea of plurinationality was a heterogeneous fusion of
different indigenous cultures at the individual, not the group, level. The Ecuador-
ian idea was supported by Aymara nationalists in Bolivia and by some intellectual
dissenters within MAS. The Ecuadorian idea of nations and peoples always func-
tioned as a conceptual limit to the inclusion of the vast nonindigenous majority.
MAS ideas of heterogeneous multiculturalism were vague enough to include not
only all thirty-six Bolivian indigenous peoples and therefore the majority of the
population but even many mestizos and some whites attracted by a rediscovered
ancestry or by the MAS’s popular leftist appeals.
In the end the “tradition of all dead generations weighed like a nightmare on
the brains” of the indigenous rebels at the turn of the twenty-first century. Histor-
ical conjuncture and associational ecologies sent the two indigenous movements
in divergent directions. But the shared experience of revolution and moderniza-
tion created indigenous mobilization in both nations for similar reasons. Liberal
modernity with its vision of individualized citizenship and rational individual
economic actors brought indigenous people into contact with equally modernist
constructions of race with the consequence of politicized indigenous identity.
Whatever way history and ecology sent the movements in Ecuador and Bolivia,
the origins of the indigenous uprisings were the same. The indigenous uprisings
shook the foundation of two modern nation-states with millions of inhabitants.
INDIGENEITY AND REVOLUTION
Are the uprisings in Ecuador and Bolivia revolutions? Adolfo Gilly, distin-
guished student of the Mexican Revolution, said that 2003 in Bolivia was “the
28 INTRODUCTION
first revolution of the twenty-first century.”44 Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thom-
son wrote, “If Latin America has been the site of the most radical opposition
to neo-liberal restructuring in the last five years [2000–2005] Bolivia has been
its insurrectionary frontline.”45 James Dunkerley, chronicler of the 1952 Bolivian
Revolution, said of Bolivia in the period 2000–2005: “A revolution is widely
felt to be underway. Many . . . want it to succeed.”46 Nevertheless, Dunkerley
points out that Bolivia 2003 does not satisfy strict social science definitions of
revolution. He quotes this well-known formulation by Theda Skocpol:
Social Revolutions are rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and

class structure; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by
class-based revolts from below.47
The same could be said of the Ecuadorian uprisings. In both cases the degree
of “societal social change” is certainly less than in the communist revolutions of
the twentieth century and the liberal revolutions of the eighteenth century, on
which Skocpol bases her definition. At this writing, Evo Morales’s “democratic
and cultural revolution” appears to be a program of social democratic reforms
combined with a modest expansion of the state sector and some state initiated
decolonization. The much heralded “nationalization” of the hydrocarbon sector
amounted to a renegotiation of royalties more favorable to the state, and the
“agrarian revolution” promised for the countryside has yet to materialize. The
owners of the means of production still own them and their workers work just
as before. Much the same is true in Ecuador, where, with the exception of a brief
moment, the indigenous rebels never took power.
Many of the characteristics of twentieth-century revolutions in general
and the Cuban and Sandinista Revolutions in Latin America, in particular,
are absent. There is no Leninist vanguard party, no armed seizure of power, no
destruction of old state apparatus including the military, no nationalization,
no revolutionary land reform, no proletarian rising. The peasant class in both
nations did revolt but under the wiphala, the rainbow banner of indigeneity,
not the red flag of class struggle. When the indigenous rebels in Bolivia took
power, they did so by entirely constitutional means, and, with the exception of
the January coup, in Ecuador as well. Their weapons were mass marches and
road blockades, the latter of which became the signature form of indigenous
protest much as street barricades became the symbol of nineteenth-century
Paris rebellions. Without these mass mobilizations, Evo Morales would not
have assumed power and CONAIE would have lost its most effective weapon.
But Evo Morales was elected (and reelected) president through reasonably free
and fair elections and the same was true of Pachakutik in Ecuador.
On the other hand, at a deeper level, things have changed profoundly. Arturo
Escobar refers to the uprisings as “ontological struggles” in which the “dualis-
tic” logic of liberal, capitalist modernity is challenged by the “relational” logic
of indigenous cultures emphasizing community and harmony with nature.48
Boaventura de Sousa Santos refers to a new “epistemology of the South” in
Ecuador that will lead to the emergence of a new plurinational state based on
respect for indigenous cultures.49 Whatever the terminology, it is clear that both
see profound change at the deepest philosophical level as a defining feature of
the Andean uprisings. At this level the changes in Ecuador and Bolivia are at
least as profound as those in classical revolutions and perhaps more so. They
represent a sharp break not only with Western modernity but also with tradi-
tional indigenous cosmology while mixing elements of both.
Elsewhere I have argued that too much attention has been given to purely
structural factors in the study of revolution and that what makes the classic
revolutions revolutionary is change at the deep philosophical level pointed to
by Escobar and de Sousa Santos. I have proposed a new view of revolution to
emphasize such changes.
A revolution is a rapid and fundamental change in the categories that order

social life and consciousness, the metaphysical assumptions on which these
categories are based, and the power relations in which they are expressed
as a result of widespread popular acceptance of a utopian alternative to
the current social order.50
This definition is intended to remedy the structural overemphasis in many

sociological definitions of revolution, including my own.51 In fact, most socio-
logical definitions, like Skocpol’s at the beginning of this section, do not include
any mention of the cultural sphere, let alone the deeper metaphysical issues
raised by my definition as well as those of Escobar and de Sousa Santos.
Yet as I demonstrated, these issues are fundamental to the understanding
of what makes revolutions revolutionary.52 My definition emphasizes not only
these dimensions but also the utopian dreams that are the driving force of rev-
olutionary action. Structural change in my definition is condensed to “power
relations” in part to emphasize the deeper cultural issues.
30 INTRODUCTION
In philosophy, metaphysics includes both ontology and epistemology. There-

fore Escobar, de Sousa Santos, and I are all pointing to the same dimension of
indigenous revolution. To avoid philosophical discussions that are beyond my
disciplinary competence and to simplify the presentation, I will adapt Pierre
Bourdieu’s terminology of “symbolic revolution” to refer to this dimension.
Bourdieu distinguishes between political revolution, emphasized by Skocpol
and other traditional definitions, and what he calls “symbolic revolution”: “Pro-
found transformations of styles and thought of life, and, more particularly, of
the whole symbolic dimension of everyday existence.”53 For Bourdieu, “polit-
ical revolution finds itself only in the symbolic revolution that makes it exist
fully . . . to think itself in its truth, that is, as unprecedented, unthinkable and
unnameable.”54 This dimension is notably lacking from Skocpol’s structural defi-
nition. Without it “the schemes with which one thinks the world overturned
are still the product of the world to be overturned.”55 Indigeneity provided the
new scheme with which thinking the unthinkable would become practical and
turning the political world upside down possible.
My definition of revolution was based not on the indigenous movement but
on descriptions of symbolic change by leading authorities on the American,
French, and Cuban revolutions as well as my field experience in Central Amer-
ica during the long decade of revolution, 1979–92. It is broad enough to include
the classic revolutions studied by Skocpol but also includes examples such as
the socialist revolution of Salvador Allende in Chile (1970–73) that achieved
power by entirely democratic means (and paid the price). Theoretically, then,
revolutions can occur “without violence, class conflict, seizures of state power.”56
The Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua tried to combine guerrilla warfare and
democratic elections, to its ultimate undoing.
The Sandinista Revolution may have marked the end of the era of armed
struggle in the pursuit of radical change inspired by the Cuban Revolution.
Remarkably, the symbolic revolutionaries in the Andean nations rejected armed
struggle and pursued their objectives through mass mobilizations and demo-
cratic elections. Democracy, including the Western liberal form as well as par-
ticipatory democracy, was a central element of their ideology and practice.
Democracy in Ecuador was initially a limited elite project introduced after
a long period of military rule. After the overthrow of Abdalá Bucaram in 1997,
popular movements were able to overthrow presidents and demand a popular
democracy. In Bolivia the transition to democracy in 1982 was led by popu-
lar forces, particularly the Aymara peasantry. Democracy was therefore linked
to popular struggle in both countries. Among the coca producers in Bolivia,

human rights and democracy became instruments of survival against forced
coca eradication. In the 2000 Bolivian elections, indigenous people for the first
time demonstrated their willingness to vote for an indigenous candidate for
president. In 1995 the coca growers, with support from the indigenous peasantry,
founded their own political party to contest democratic elections. In only ten
years this party assumed national power through free elections. The indigenous
movement founded its own political party in 1996 but had a much more mixed
experience. Still, democracy was, as Rafael Archondo argues for Bolivia, in the
DNA of the indigenous movements in both countries.57 They were symbolic
radicals but democratic reformers.
The Ecuadorian and Bolivian uprisings, 1990–2005, were a new form of rev-
olution, a twenty-first-century revolution, that combined a profound symbolic
revolution with massive but largely peaceful protests leading not to an armed
insurrection but to constitutional and democratic transfers of power. Indigenous
revolution, like its classical predecessors, was inspired by utopian visions that
found wide popular support. The symbolic revolution generated concepts that
do not fit easily either in Western modernity or the traditional Andean or Ama-
zonian thought. The particular symbolic genius of the revolutionaries was to
recognize a deep conceptual core of communalism in both traditional Andean
thought and popular socialism. The result was a revolutionary ideology I call
“indigenous socialism,” which sparked massive mobilizations in both countries.
Readers in the Global North, excepting specialists and indigenous peoples,
must keep in mind that although these concepts may appear similar to north-
ern ones, they are not the same. To understand what these people say to us
in these interviews is to experience a kind of symbolic revolution of our own.
The concept of “revolution” itself, with its images of linear temporal progress,
is a Western notion. The indigenous peoples in Ecuador and Bolivia use the
Kichwa and Aymara term pachakuti(k) in its place. As was noted in chapter 1,
this word can be translated as “the world turned upside down”—as a cosmic
transformation between one world and another in Inca history. As Pachakutik
party founder Fernando Buendia put it:
Pachakutik is an Andean myth signifying the (re)turn to old and new

times. And in Andean mythology there are 3 historical epochs: the
epoch before the European invasion, which is considered a moment
of harmony; the epoch of European invasion, which is considered a
32 INTRODUCTION
moment of suffering and anguish; and a new epoch, which is considered

a return to harmony, but in a new situation. Pachakutik is the moment
of transition.58
Pachakutik fits uneasily into the Western notion based on linear time, the
separation between nature and culture, and the distinction between the spiritual
and the material. It is both a return to a previous era and a turn to a new one.
It shakes the cosmos as well as human social organization. It is a revolution
in spirituality and consciousness, not simply politics. Pachakutik is in itself a
symbolic revolution not only through the process it describes but in the very
notion of “revolution” itself.
The symbolic revolution and the utopian dreams it inspired were in turn
a consequence of the political conflict between indigeneity and modernity as
written by the Hispanic nation-states in both countries. The imposition of
modernity in the form of a putative liberal democracy and individual capitalist
property relations had the unintended effect of intensifying the experience of
racism and threatening the very existence of indigenous society. Indigeneity as
a political category was an outcome of this “hypocritical modernity,” as Zamosc
called it, which proclaimed the virtues of modernity while to a large extent
withholding their benefits from indigenous people as long as they remained
indigenous. As Esteban Ticona perceptively observed for the case of the Boliv-
ian Aymara, to survive it was necessary to incorporate the notion that
“you will cease to be discriminated against when you cease to be Indian,”

[but] the notion of liberal equality became an unfulfilled promise that
finally led to radical Indian positions, as if to say “treat us as Indian
or stop governing us” or “one day we will be real citizens.” There is no
middle way, “that is neither the one nor the other,” and that many times
signifies a total alienation of the indigenous.59
In Ecuador the pressures were the same, but such extreme positions were
less common because the state remained open to negotiations in a way that the
Bolivian state never was. The crisis of modernity in both countries opened a
breach in the symbolic as well as the political order, generating new symbolic
categories that ultimately combined into a new utopian vision.
The chapters that follow are organized by symbolic revolutionary categories
and by region. To a remarkable degree the associational ecologies of the different
regions correspond to particular categories of the emerging utopian vision. In

Ecuador the fundamental regional division is between the horticultural and
foraging societies in the Amazon (see chapter 1) and the caste division of the
landed estate in the Andes (see chapter 2). The key category of Ecuadorian
indigenous organizing, the nation, and its integral components, the “plurina-
tional” and the “intercultural,” developed first in the Amazon but then spread
to the Andes so that these concepts appear in all the Ecuadorian interviews.
The Amazon also developed the notion of the “living jungle” peculiar to its own
region. Each chapter contains an introduction to organizing in the region and
a theoretical discussion of these concepts. But ultimately these concepts are
defined by their use in political practice, and the interviews ultimately define
them in ways that are unique to each leader but common to the interviews of
a particular region. Representative interviews appear in each empirical chapter.
Chapter 2, on the Andean leaders of ECUARUNARI, introduces the “com-
munal” vision of the leaders and the related concept of sumak kawsay (living
well). Neither concept means what it seems to mean in English translation.
Once again the best way to understand the meanings of these concepts in polit-
ical practice is to read the interviews. The leaders from the Andes are deeply
committed to the concepts of nation, the plurinational and the intercultural, just
as those from the Amazon, but in the Andes there is in fact no “living jungle.”
The third Ecuadorian chapter, chapter 3, collects interviews from elected office
holders of the Ecuadorian indigenous movement’s political party, Pachakutik.
Like all Ecuadorian interviewees, they are firmly committed to the ideas of
nation, the plurinational and the intercultural. All are from the Andes, although
the secretary of the party, Rafael Antuni, is a Shuar from the Amazon (his inter-
view is included in chapter 1). But the elected officials have clear-cut models of
economic development, which appear to be a kind of indigenous Jeffersonian-
ism although they are concerned with the development of indigenous nations
rather than individuals. Nevertheless, they could also appeal to nonindigenous
peasants widening their electoral constituencies.
The nation, the plurinational, and the intercultural, are found in all the Ecua-
dorian interviews. They are also the building blocks of the fourteen nations
and eighteen peoples officially recognized by CONAIE, even if the Andes
organization is, in fact, based on the local community and regional and provin-
cial organizations. Indeed, the communal vision, based in part on an imagined
indigenous community, fits their situation better than the nations and peoples
concept borrowed from the Amazon. It is important to keep in mind that in
34 INTRODUCTION
Ecuador the vanguard of indigenous organizing was in the Amazon among the
Shuar nation, not among the millions of Kichwa in the Andes, who are divided
into the twelve peoples based on regional cultures. In its theory, the Ecuadorian
movement is composed of a collection of corporate bodies called “nations and
peoples.” The Shuar and Huaorani, along with twelve other largely Amazonian
cultures, are “nations,” and the Otavaleños and Saraguros and sixteen other
Andean regional cultures are all different “peoples” even though they are all
Kichwa in language and culture.
This vision of indigeneity based on nations and peoples is distinctly differ-
ent from the Bolivian concept of indigeneity, which brings together individual
indigenous persons regardless of their nation while recognizing the thirty-six
nations that make up the Bolivian indigenous community. In Ecuador the
indigenous movement is made of collectivities called nations and peoples; in
Bolivia it is made of individuals of different nations and peoples. These different
kinds of indigeneity are crucial in understanding the differences between the
outcomes of indigenous revolution in the two countries.
In Bolivia the regional division that counts is between the Andean peoples
organized after 1952 into traditional kinship and community units, the ayllu, and
the people of the transition zone between the eastern slope of the Andes and
the Bolivian Amazon, a semitropical and tropical region of deep river valleys
and intense and varied vegetation. The Andean Aymara people, heirs of pre-
Incan kingdoms, were the key actors in the initial phases of the Bolivian upris-
ings. They were led by their Malku (traditional leader) Felipe Quispe from his
base in Achacachi in La Paz Province. Quispe and his close comrade-in-arms
Eugenio Rojas (mayor of Achacachi at the time of the interviews) espoused an
ultraradical form of Aymara “Indianism” (as it is called in Bolivia) derived ulti-
mately from the immensely influential work of Fausto Reinaga in his book La
revolución india. Quispe called for a return of the Aymara province of Qullasuyu
in the Incan Empire and the establishment of an autonomous Aymara state.
But Quispe was no Western nationalist. His idea of the Aymara nation
included governance by traditional Aymara community forms and hierarchies;
his ideal economy was a kind of primitive communalism neither capitalist nor
socialist, as his interview in chapter 4 makes clear. He had no place for any of
the other indigenous peoples of Bolivia. It was not clear what would happen to
assimilated indigenous people or Euro-Bolivians. Quispe was both a symbolic
and a political revolutionary. His Qullasuyu utopia bore little resemblance to
any Western notion. His political program included the seizure of the Aymara
areas of Bolivia and adjoining Aymara areas of Peru and Chile by force of arms
if necessary (he began his career as a guerilla fighter). But he lacked any explicit
political program for turning the Aymara areas of republican Bolivia (to say
nothing of adjoining areas of Peru and Chile) into Qullasuyu and, after the
defeat of his tiny guerrilla army, lacked the force to do so. By 2003 the revolution
had left him behind.
It was the transition zone that produced the symbolic revolutionaries that
would eventually take power through democratic elections (see chapter 5). The
transition zone was ideally suited for the production of coca leaves. Coca had
been cultivated for thousands of years, especially in the northern La Paz prov-
ince called the “Yungas” (from the Aymara for warm earth). Coca is legal in
Bolivia and is widely used by millions of Bolivians, especially by poor workers
and farmers.
Coca, an integral part of indigenous culture, is used on ceremonial occasions
such as the blessing of a new house. Its everyday use is similar to coffee in the
United States. It has little if any euphoric effects. From the point of view of
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) at the height of the war on drugs,
however, coca served only one function—as a raw material for the production
of cocaine.
The United States undertook an ill-fated mission to end cocaine (particu-
larly crack cocaine) use in New York and Chicago by attacking the impover-
ished peasants who grew coca in Bolivia. Coca eradication through force of
arms focused particularly on a new area of production in the transition zone,
the Chapare region of Cochabamba Province. In an instant peaceful farmers
producing a legal crop were transformed into criminal outlaws, drug dealers,
and “narco-terrorists.” In fact, this “satanization” of coca was a chief reason
for resistance according to coca growers’ union leaders (see chapter 5). Having
sowed the wind, the DEA reaped the whirlwind. Forty thousand coca growers
in the Chapare, led by union leader Evo Morales, engaged in militant protests
and eventually formed their own political party, MAS, which swept to power
in 2005. But the symbolic revolution came before the political revolution. In a
remarkable symbolic transformation, the despised “narcotic” became a symbol
of national pride, resistance to U.S. imperialism, human rights, and, above all,
of indigeneity. The 2009 constitution enshrines the “sacred leaf ” as a part of the
national culture and national patrimony. The DEA is long gone. The Bolivians
are allying themselves with the Chinese. All this and more was accomplished
by the revolutionary symbolism of the sacred leaf.
36 INTRODUCTION
Political parties are, by definition, coalitions. At its founding in 1995, the

MAS was a coalition of the coca producers; the CSUTCB, which the coca
growers dominated; the Federación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas de
Bolivia–Bartolina Sisa (FNMCB-BS, National Federation of Bolivian Peasant
Women–Bartolina Sisa); and the Confederación Sindical de Colonizadores de
Bolivia (CSCB, Union Federation of Bolivian Colonizers), who later named
themselves “intercultural communities.” Strongly unionist and peasantist, these
unions nevertheless contained images of symbolic revolution. Popular under-
standings of the figures of Che Guevara and Túpac Katari ran throughout the
interviews. Guevara became a symbol of anti-imperialist struggle on behalf of
the poor and oppressed; Katari became a symbol of indigenous rebellion against
Spanish colonialism and Hispanic neocolonialism. The MAS-allied unions were
symbolic revolutionaries.
The left had enormous historical influence in Bolivia. Early in the MAS par-
ty’s existence, nonindigenous intellectuals played important roles in the party’s
electoral lists. At the time of the interviews, two former communist intellectuals
held the position of MAS delegation leader in both the national senate and
the national assembly. Both of them saw a merging of socialism and Andean
Amazonian indigenism, later called “communitarian socialism,” as the heart
of the party’s discourse. In contrast, two members of the immensely influen-
tial Grupo Comuna (Commune Group), whose best-known member is MAS
vice president Álvaro García Linera, advocated a much more radical vision of
indigenous autonomy that in some ways resembles the Ecuadorian concept of
nation. In the end Comuna broke up. The communitarian socialism of the MAS
legislative leaders and former communists drawing on two symbolically radical
traditions, of Marxism and Indianism, carried the day.
The symbolic revolutionaries of the indigenous movement in Ecuador and
Bolivia have turned the world upside down by challenging the fundamental
categories of modernity. Indigeneity per se is a challenge to modernity. Even
Evo Morales’s “communitarian socialism” acknowledges the Andean indige-
nous community as its inspiration and Túpac Katari as well as Che Guevara
as its national heroes. The Andean Earth goddess Pachamama became a fre-
quent theme in Morales’s speeches on the environment. Álvaro García Lin-
era’s dream was to merge Marxism and indigeneity into a single ideology. The
Ecuadorian leaders unanimously remain committed to a plurinational state in
which “nations and peoples” will have direct representation, and both repub-
lics have renamed themselves “plurinational states.” The indigenous visions of
intercultural community and harmony with nature deconstruct such fundamen-

tal dualisms of modernity as individual and society, and nature and culture. They
imagine a utopian alternative to the current social order.
Or perhaps as the late Fernando Coronil has suggested, the distinction
between reform and revolution has lost much of its meaning.60 What was
emerging at the turn of the twenty-first century in the Andean nations was a
new form of democratic revolution merging the symbolic radicalism of the great
twentieth- and eighteenth-century revolutions with the worldwide transition
to democracy in the late twentieth century. When 300,000 largely Aymara
demonstrators reached the center of La Paz, they formed a ring around the
presidential palace but they did not storm it. CONAIE under its then president
Antonio Vargas did seize power in coalition with the military, but the organi-
zation quickly returned to electoral politics to achieve its greatest influence. In
fact, those interviewed rarely spoke in twentieth-century terms of revolution.
The preferred term was social transformation in Ecuador and process of change or
democratic and cultural revolution in Bolivia.
In the chapters that follow, the leaders of this great transformation reveal
their own views of the process.
I
THE NATION, THE LIVING JUNGLE,
AND THE COMMUNAL VISION
IN ECUADOR
1
THE NATION AND THE LIVING
JUNGLE IN THE AMAZON
Interviews with Ampam Karakras, Rafael Antuni, and Marlon Santi
T
HE AMAZONIAN region of Ecuador (map 1) exerts a role in Ecuadorian
indigenous politics out of all proportion to its small indigenous popu-
lation. The Amazon was the site of the first indigenous organization in
Ecuador and in all of Latin America—the Shuar Federation, founded in 1964.
Only in the Ecuadorian Amazon have indigenous groups been able to form a
national coalition with highland groups. CONFENIAE was a key player in pro-
moting a national indigenous organization, identity, and ideology, and an Ama-
zonian was the first president of CONAIE. Ampam Karakras, a Shuar from the
Amazon interviewed for this book, is one of the leading theorists of the national
movement’s core concept, “nationality.” Because almost all Ecuadorian oil depos-
its are located in the Amazon, it has been the center of Ecuadorian indigenous
opposition, particularly legal opposition, to oil industry expansion. In distinct
contrast to the marginal role of Amazonian groups in the Bolivian MAS, the
CONFENIAE has been in the vanguard of indigenous organization in Ecuador.1
This section includes three interviews with national-level indigenous leaders
from the Amazon’s two largest Amazonian indigenous nationalities, the Ama-
zonian Kichwa (90,000 in the 1990s) (Marlon Santi), and the Amazonian Shuar
(40,000) (Ampam Karakras and Rafael Antuni). These two indigenous groups
supply most of the leadership of indigenous organizations at both the regional
and national level, and the Shuar in particular have been the leading force in
42 CHAPTER 1
Amazonian indigenous organization. The other smaller Amazonian indigenous

groups—the Cofán (600); the Siona-Secoya (600); the Huaorani (2,000); the
Achuar, closely related to the Shuar (500); and the Shiwiar (1,200)—are all for-
mally represented in CONFENIAE and sometimes play an important role in
indigenous and even international politics but are not prominent among national
leaders like those interviewed.2 Initial organization in the Amazon took place
among the Shuar and the Amazonian Kichwa, followed later by the other groups.
MAP 1 . Ecuador political divisions: highest concentrations of Highland Kichwa, Low-

land Kichwa, and Shuar indigenous peoples by province. Amazonian provinces (north
to south): Sucumbíos, Napo, Orellana, Pastaza, Morono Santiago, Zamora-Chinchipe.
Sierra provinces (north to south): Carchi, Imbabura, Pichincha, Cotopaxi, Tungurahua,
Bolivar, Chimborazo, Cañar, Azuay, Loja. Data from Walter Fernández, Las cifras del
pueblo indígena: Una mirada desde el Censo de Población y Vivienda 2010 (Quito: Instituto
Nacional de Estadística y Censos, 2012). Map adapted from https://d-maps.com/m/
america/equateur/equateur52.pdf.
THE NATION AND THE LIVING JUNGLE IN THE AMAZON 43
THE RISE OF THE SHUAR FEDERATION
In 1964 the Amazonian indigenous group the Shuar, aided by the Catholic Sale-
sian Order, formed what would come to be called the Federación Interprovincial
de Centros Shuar (FICSH, Interprovincial Federation of Shuar Centers) or,
more commonly, the Shuar Federation. The federation became the nucleus and
prototype for indigenous organization throughout Ecuador. In a remarkably
short period of time, the Shuar moved from a decentralized, egalitarian society
of dispersed homesteads without an authority beyond a local family head and
divided by intense internal feuding to a hierarchical, administratively central-
ized, federated structure with democratically elected leaders. Most accounts
of the rise of the Shuar Federation rightly emphasize the role of the Salesian
mission, granted administrative authority over Shuar lands in the nineteenth
century and active through most of the twentieth.3
After a half century of efforts at the beginning of the twentieth century to
extinguish Shuar culture and religion as the work of the devil, in the 1960s the
Salesians made an abrupt about-face. According to the new doctrine of “incul-
turation” emanating from the Vatican after the sea change of the Second Vatican
Council (1962–65), they attempted to find and reinforce elements of indigenous
culture that contained the seeds of Catholic doctrine. In effect the Salesians
became the chief defenders of an approved version of Shuar society and culture.4
The Shuar Federation was founded and initially led by the Salesian missionary
Father Juan Shutka, who took on the role of a traditional big man in Shuar
society. The Shuar eventually broke with the missionaries, and Shuar as well as
other Ecuadorian indigenous leaders interviewed for this book emphasize the
autonomy and independence of the currently exclusively indigenous leadership,
even to the extent of denying or minimizing the Salesians’ early role.
Not only did the Salesians found the federation; they were instrumental in
bringing about cultural changes that made the federation possible and created
a Shuar leadership cadre that would eventually displace them. The Salesians
founded mission boarding schools to take the younger generation out of the
sinful Shuar culture and indoctrinate them in Catholic teaching and Euro-
pean culture. In addition to their studies, students were required to contribute
unpaid labor to Salesian economic enterprises. Almost universally the students
described the experience as one of “slavery.” They also said, however, that the
most valuable thing they had learned at the school was the Spanish language.5
Inadvertently the Salesians had created an alienated cadre of future leaders
44 CHAPTER 1
who had mastered the basic tools, including the Spanish language, to function
in contemporary Hispanic society. All the initial indigenous leadership of the
federation were graduates of mission schools.
In order to gain greater control over the Shuar’s displaced family groups,
extinguish feuding, and facilitate evangelization, the Salesians encouraged
the Shuar to move to nucleated settlements called “centers” organized around
a chapel and central square. Local trustees and councils were chosen and
appointed by the Salesians, creating a political structure that would form the
basic building blocks of the Shuar Federation. Locally influential family groups
frequently formed the core of these centers, easing the transition from the old
social structure to the new.6 At the same time the pacification of Shuar territory
by missionaries aided by the Ecuadorian military undermined the basis of power
and influence in the traditional system—skill at killing. As late as the 1980s
federation officials and traditional leaders were still competing for influence
and authority by adopting traditional Shuar oratory to their diverse leadership
principles. For the federation officials, this meant redefining Shuar values in a
new context and promoting a new basis for legitimate leadership.7
Although the Salesians helped create the conditions that made the Shuar
Federation possible and served as a catalyst for the federation’s founding, both
the traditional structure of Shuar society and the dramatic changes in that
structure taking place in the 1960s were of equal or greater importance. Long
before the arrival of the Salesians, the Shuar had gained a well-deserved reputa-
tion throughout Latin America for their bellicosity and resistance to outsiders.
In 1599 the Shuar had organized a revolt against the Spanish, driving them
from their territory and resisting all subsequent efforts at colonization until the
twentieth century. They were and are the only indigenous population in Latin
America to successfully do so. The Shuar are described by ethnographers as
individualistic, egalitarian, fiercely independent, and intolerant of any kind of
authority, including their own.8
The traditional society lacked organized kin groups or any kind of social
stratification beyond age and gender. Power, a central concept in Shuar life and
cosmology, was an individual quality, not a consequence of social position, and
rested on personal qualities, including, in particular, demonstrated skill at killing
in internal feuds and external warfare. Feuding was endemic in traditional Shuar
society, and success at killing created reservoirs of spiritual power that had to
be periodically renewed in vision quests or combat.9 According to the distin-
guished ethnographer Michael Harner, successful pacification by the Salesians
and the Ecuadorian military in the 1960s therefore “fundamentally alter[ed]

the nature of reality upon which much of their socio-economic structure and
ideology were built.” “There are probably very few cultures in the history of the
world,” Harner continues, “that have been so rapidly and significantly disinte-
grated by the simple introduction of centralized law and order.”10
Furthermore, the Ecuadorian land reform that destroyed the traditional haci-
enda in the Highlands opened up the Amazon to colonization from displaced
Highland peasants. The 1964 reform established the Instituto Ecuatoriano de
Reforma Agraria y Colonización (IERAC, Ecuadorian Institute of Agrarian
Reform and Colonization), which was as much concerned with the latter as
the former. Much more land was declared open to colonization than was ever
distributed through land reform. The results for the Shuar were immediate.
According to Harner, by 1969, “many members of the tribe seem convinced
that the eventual goal of the whites is to wipe them out in order to seize their
land. . . . There is a climate of hostility and unrest which recalls the Jívaro revolt
of 1599 and the near uprising of 1941.”11
Despite internal feuding and intense individualism, the Shuar were, as Har-
ner points out, capable of mobilizing on a larger scale for raids against external
groups or for even larger mobilization against outsiders such as those of 1599
and 1941.12 Faced with the collapse of the traditional order and an existential
threat from Highland colonists, the Shuar had good and sufficient reasons of
their own for seeking a more effective form of collective organization in the
Shuar Federation. The Salesians provided them with the linguistic and cultural
tools, the political framework, and early leadership but the Shuar themselves
pushed the initiative forward.
The Shuar Federation moved decisively to stem the colonist advance, first
experimenting with cattle raising to claim legitimate individual titles to their
land and then organizing collectively to successfully petition for control of much
of their traditional territory and organizing regionally and locally to make the
Shuar part of national consciousness. A final observation by Harner connects
the Shuar mobilization to the general argument presented here. At its root, he
argues, the conflict between the Shuar and settlers was over different concepts
of land utilization held by the Shuar and the colonists.13 Shuar material culture
was based on shifting horticulture supplemented by hunting and fishing so that
considerable amounts of land were returning to secondary jungle and recovering
at any given time. This land, essential to Shuar subsistence and considered by the
Shuar as their territory, was, from the perspective of capitalist property relations,
46 CHAPTER 1
simply unused land. The Land Reform Law declared it fallow and subject to
colonization and individual claims based on proper utilization. Paradoxically,
the Shuar themselves were forced to adopt to the property relations of capitalist
ranching even as they continued to defend an idealized version of a horticultural
and hunting society with a symbiotic relationship with what would come to be
called the rain forest. Even so, recent research has indicated that Shuar ranchers
maintain a greater preference for maintaining secondary forest growth on their
land than highland settlers.14
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES: THE SHUAR FEDERATION

AND CORREA
On September 30, 2009, the bilingual Shuar teacher Bosco Wisum was killed by
a shotgun blast during a CONAIE demonstration against Correa’s mining and
water policies. Wisum had been director of the bilingual school in the Shuar
community of Sagrado Corazón and a longtime leftist activist. Pepe Acacho,
then president of the Shuar Federation and director of Radio Arutam, the
Federation Radio Network, denounced the killing as a “crime of the state” and
demanded indemnities for Wisum’s family. The Correa administration in turn
charged Acacho with “organized terrorism” for his alleged role in organizing
the demonstration and claimed Wisum had been killed by a shotgun blast from
another Shuar demonstrator. The death of Bosco Wisum was a key moment in
the alienation of not only the Shuar but the entire indigenous movement from
the Correa administration. Along with the prosecution of other indigenous
leaders on the same charge, it set the context for the interviews that follow
(Ampam Karakras discusses the incident directly). The Correa administration
continued to press its case against Acacho, finally obtaining a conviction in 2013.
Acacho was sentenced to twelve years in prison.15 At the time of his sentencing,
Acacho, his popularity among the Shuar undiminished by an outside threat,
was an assemblyman from Morona Santiago and a candidate for president of
CONAIE.
SARAYAKU, OPIP, AND THE AMAZONIAN KICHWA
In the 1970s IERAC proposed the colonization of lands south of the Bobonaza
River in the Amazonian Kichwa community of Sarayaku. The Kichwa then
faced the same kind of threat that had led to the organization of the Shuar
Federation a decade before. According to Andres Sirén, the indigenous deputy
magistrate of Sarayaku “arranged for a representative of the Shuar Federation to
come to Sarayaku to talk about the process of organization among Amazonian
indigenous peoples. . . . In 1976 the Sarayaku formed their first community
organization. . . . In 1977 Sarayaku took the initiative to found . . . OPIP.”16
Sarayaku has remained in the forefront of indigenous organization ever since
achieving international renown for its struggles with the Ecuadorian state and
international oil companies. Marlon Santi, whose interview appears in this sec-
tion, was president of the community in 2008 when he was elected president
of CONAIE. He still holds a traditional leadership position in the community.
Organization began in Sarayaku and Pastaza Provinces, as it had in the
Shuar lands, with conflicts with colonists over indigenous lands. But conflict
intensified with the arrival of oil companies. In 1987 the American company
ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company) acquired exploration rights to 200,000
hectares of rainforest that include the lands of Sarayaku and other Kichwa
communities in Pastaza Province. But efforts to initiate preliminary seismic
work were blocked by community members from Sarayaku. In 1989, in an effort
to conclude an accord with the rebellious community in a single afternoon,
representatives of Empresa Pública Petroecuador (State Petroleum Company
of Ecuador), ARCO and its seismic survey contractor, and IERAC flew directly
to Sarayaku. The community promptly blocked the airstrip and confiscated the
keys to the delegation’s helicopters, extending the visit (and negotiations) for
twelve days. The result was a document called the “Sarayaku Accord,” which
not only stopped seismic activity but, most significantly, legalized all indig-
enous landholdings in the Department of Pastaza. In 1990, however, Presi-
dent Rodrigo Borja renounced the accord, arguing that it had been signed
under duress. ARCO resumed operations, working through more cooperative
communities.17
Sarayaku remained in the forefront of the indigenous resistance, leading the
1992 march from the Amazon to Quito. In 1996 the struggle between Sarayaku
and petroleum exploration resumed when Ecuador granted a 200,000 hectare
concession to the Argentine firm Compañía General de Combustibles (CGC,
General Fuel Company). Sixty-five percent of the concession was within the
territory of Sarayaku. After several years of efforts to overcome indigenous resis-
tance, the company finally initiated seismic activities in 2002. Once again Saray-
aku community members physically blocked the seismic teams in the forest.
48 CHAPTER 1
In 2002–3 the Ecuadorian military intervened directly in Sarayaku territory

in defense of the company. Nevertheless, CGC withdrew in February 2003,
leaving a large quantity of buried explosives in Sarayaku territory. The conflict
drew the attention of human rights groups both national and international.
Amnesty International took up the cause of Sarayaku and the Human Rights
Commission of the National Congress visited the community. In May 2003 an
international human rights group, the Center for Economic and Social Rights,
presented the community’s position to the Inter-American Court on Human
Rights (IACHR), initiating almost a decade of litigation. The presentation of
Sarayaku’s complaint to the IACHR in San José, Costa Rica, resulted in a
resounding and precedent-setting victory for Sarayaku on June 27, 2012.18
In some respects the case broke new ground. For the first time the court
ruled that the obligation to consult with indigenous communities concerning
development processes on their traditional territories was a general principle of
international law. The court also stated that this consultation was an obligation
of the state and could not be delegated to third parties like corporations. Finally,
the court called for genuine dialogue in good faith with the goal of reaching a
consensus. In other respects, however, the court stepped back from earlier rulings
that had seemed to imply a right to free, prior, informed consent rather than sim-
ply consultation, even if conducted in good faith. The difference is critical because
even a consultation aimed at achieving consensus can fail to recognize the rights
of indigenous people if no consensus can be reached and development proceeds.
Consent would give effective veto power to indigenous communities and is likely
to be opposed by most nation-states. At this writing, the issue remains unresolved.
Nevertheless, an indigenous community of only 1,200 persons had managed to
place the questions squarely on the agenda for the entire inter-American system
(including the United States) and required a modern nation-state to live up to
its obligations under international law. As part of the settlement, on October 2,
2014, President Rafael Correa’s minister of justice, Ledy Zúñiga Rocha, flew to
Sarayaku and apologized in person to the community.19
Why Sarayaku? The causes of the rise of the Shuar Federation have been
the object of considerable scholarly attention, but the same cannot be said of
Sarayaku, despite a growing literature on the community. Nevertheless, a num-
ber of possible causal factors can be inferred from the literature. First, Sarayaku
is located in one of just ten “global hotspots” that combine abundant biological
diversity with intense ecological threat. The colonization frontier is just thirty-
five kilometers away. Yet its 135,000 hectares support one of the most biodiverse
and undisturbed areas of Amazon forest in Ecuador. The forest extends all the
way to the Peruvian border. There is still sufficient land to support a tradi-
tional Amazonian subsistence economy of shifting horticulture supplemented
by hunting and fishing and the social and cultural structures that go with it.
On the other hand, it is close enough to Puyo to make contact with the out-
side possible, if not easy. It is also close enough to the Shuar territory to make
indigenous organizing influences possible.20
Second, Sarayaku was not subject to the first wave of petroleum development
initiated by Texaco in the north. The initial ARCO concession was granted
twenty years after Texaco struck oil in the north. In the meantime a dense net-
work of local, regional, and national indigenous organizations had developed.
When ARCO and later CGC arrived on the scene, they were faced with the
center of OPIP organization rather than the smaller unorganized people of
the Ecuadorian north. The Sarayaku leadership was well aware of the northern
experience and wanted to ensure that it did not happen to them. By 1996, at
the time of the initial CGC concession, the community had already marched
to Quito and obtained titles to its lands, acquiring both resources and organiza-
tional experience. One of the largest Amazonian Kichwa communities, Saray-
aku was also one of the best organized. History as well as location helps explain
the success of Sarayaku.
Finally, in the realm of less easily quantified explanations lies the commu-
nity’s long-term reputation as a place of independent and freedom-loving peo-
ple. Anders Sirén reports the rubber boom never led to the forced servitude
that emerged in other places in the Amazon. According to Sirén, the Sarayaku
worked when they wanted to and even assaulted abusive labor contractors.21
Like the Shuar, but without their reputation for bellicosity, the Kichwa of Saray-
aku had always been difficult to subject to outside control. Also like the Shuar,
the Sarayaku Kichwa were “civilized” by Catholic missionaries, in this case for
the most part by the Dominicans, who, unlike the Salesians, were opposed to
independent organization by the Kichwa. This did not stop the Kichwas from
finding other sources of support in the previously organized Shuar communities.
NATIONALITY AND TERRITORY
The Shuar, the Kichwa, and other Amazonian peoples organized first on the
basis of ethnicity even when they later organized into provincial or regional
50 CHAPTER 1
associations. The prototype was the Shuar Federation itself, but even OPIP
linked together Kichwa, Shiwiar, and Achuar ethnicities in a single organiza-
tion. In CONFENIAE today the constituent units are overwhelmingly single
ethnicities, many of whom, like the Shuar and the Kichwa, have previously
maintained distant if not actively hostile relations. The lowland organizations
were therefore from the beginning ethnic in orientation. The preferred language
in the Amazon was “nationalities” to recognize the distinct languages, cultures,
and histories that made up each Amazonian people and to include recognition
of the demands for autonomy within the Ecuadorian nation-state. As Shuar
intellectual Ampam Karakras observed in a widely influential article, “We do
not propose state autonomy, we want the unity of the different Indian peo-
ples and the Spanish-speaking nation, but within this unity we demand space
in order to develop our essential national elements.”22 Nationality and later
plurinationality became foundational concepts not only in the Amazon but in
CONAIE itself. All those interviewed from Ecuador spoke of the nation and
the plurinational as fundamental demands of the indigenous movement.
It should not be assumed that nationality and plurinationality are expressions
of the familiar European forms of ethnic nationalism. From the beginning the
Amazonians were faced with a situation of uniting many distinct nations in a
single organization. Nor did they request a separate nation-state. They remained
Shuar or Kichwa and Ecuadorian. The exact degree of political autonomy and
inclusion remains ambiguous. In the interviews it was difficult to pin down
exactly which state functions would be devolved to internal “nationalities,”
although no one envisioned a separate military force or foreign policy, and
all wanted to have the rights and responsibilities of Ecuadorian citizens. The
most common demands were to include national representatives in government
administrative and legislative bodies, and to recognize indigenous systems of
justice.
Demands for “territory” were inherent in the idea of nationality. Although
the Shuar had originally attempted to file land claims according to the laws of
the agrarian reform, OPIP began shifting the discussion from land to territory.
As Deborah Yashar points out, “They [OPIP] proclaimed that independent of
the agrarian reform and colonization and independent of ‘working the land’ the
indigenous communities had a right to their territory.”23 This right derived from
historical use and occupation of the land. The 1992 Amazon march to Quito
demanded “territory,” not “land.” This territorial control implied some degree of
administrative autonomy as well as economic rights, and the exact nature of that
control and those rights is still a matter of dispute. So the idea of nation includes
language, culture, history, and territory. OPIP’s concept of territory was even-
tually adopted by CONAIE and applied to the Sierra as well as the Amazon.
The Amazon as a whole was responsible for the development of the concept
of “nation” and the related notions of the plurinational state and interculturality.
The interviews in this chapter include one with Ampam Karakras, one of the
principal theorists of the concept. Although Ampam Karakras is the originator
of the concept, it is most clearly explained by Mónica Chuji, a Sarayaku Kichwa.
Yes we [Amazonian Kichwa] are a nation. Why? Because we are his-

torical entities, because we have a historical process, because we have a
language we have sustained through history, because we have a histor-
ically inherited space, because we have regulated judicial structures, we
have customs, and we have been exercising our self-determination in
accord with our own uses. Despite being nations we were completely
erased from the map.24
Students of European nationalism will immediately note that this is a defini-

tion of “ethnic nationalism,” where state and culture are fused, not “civic nation-
alism,” in which individuals are considered citizens based on constitutionally
determined universal principles. As Chuji also notes, this concept was developed
by “compañeros” who had studied in the Soviet Union and reflects communist
rather than liberal thinking on nationality.25 The resemblance between Chu-
ji’s definition and Stalin’s famous answer to the question “What is a nation?”
is striking. According to Stalin, “A nation is a historically constituted, stable
community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory,
economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a common culture.”26
The core concept in the indigenous movement in Ecuador is not “indige-
nous” at all but an import from Marxism, if not Western thought more gen-
erally. It differs, however, from Max Weber’s classic definition of a nation as a
“community of sentiment that would adequately manifest itself in a state of its
own.”27 None of those interviewed in Ecuador wanted a separate state for their
own cultural community or for any cultural community. The fusion of state
and nation (they are synonyms, says Karakras) is inherent in the Ecuadorian
nation’s definition of itself as revealed, for example, in this notorious quotation
from a speech by modernizing president Guillermo Rodríguez Lara in 1972:
“There is no more Indian problem. We become white when we accept the goals
52 CHAPTER 1
of the national culture.”28 If indigenous notions fused nation and state, it was
not surprising as a reaction to the monoethnicity of the Ecuadorian state—a
monoethnicity that excluded them. They also wanted more than the liberal state
offered—representations as collectivities, not simply as individuals, as Ampam
Karakras argues. Cultures should be treated with equal respect and inequality
between cultures rejected even if it is between the culture of the Andes and the
diverse cultures of the Amazon, as Rafael Antuni points out in his interview in
this chapter. The building blocks are individual cultural communities like the
Shuar—not even, as Karakras argues, the indigenous. The ideas of nation, the
plurinational state and the intercultural, deconstruct liberal notions of individ-
uality, the mixed-race Latin American state, and, centrally, core notions of race:
the “Shuar” nation, not the “Indians.”
The concept of “nation” in Ecuadorian indigenous thought cannot be fully
understood without considering its derivatives plurinational and intercultural.
According to CONAIE:
The plurinational proposes unity in diversity, respect, reciprocity and

solidarity among the original nations and peoples that make up Ecua-
dor, defines the rights of the original nations to their territories, internal
political-administrative autonomy, which is to say to administer their
own processes of economic, social, cultural, scientific and technological
development; and at the same time to deepen democracy.29
According to Ampam Karakras, speaking for CONAIE, there are fourteen

indigenous nations and eighteen peoples in Ecuador. Each would be guaran-
teed the right to territorial and communitarian administration but only within
the existing unitary nation-state of Ecuador. In contrast to European ethnic
nationalism, there will be no effort to destroy the Hispanic Ecuadorian state
and substitute a Kichwa state or a Shuar state. There will be no ethnic cleansing.
Instead, the nations and peoples excluded from the uninational Hispanic state
of Ecuador will be given limited administrative rights within their territories
and collective rights within the administration of the Ecuadorian state. The
indigenous want to join the Ecuadorian state, not destroy it. In both Ecua-
dor and Bolivia, the indigenous (with the notable exception of the Katarist-
Indianists of Bolivia) are patriots.
The proper relationship among nationalities and peoples within Ecuador
and the relationship between each of them and Hispanic society is defined by
the word intercultural. According to CONAIE, interculturality is “the political-

ideological principle of recognition and practice of persons, communities, peo-
ples and nations to create and live in just, symmetrical, equivalent and harmo-
nious relations among the native, Afro-Ecuadorians, montubios and mestizo
peoples.”30
So despite its origins in Western thought, this contact between modernity
and indigenous organizing has created something that is far different from
the Western understanding of nation. All cultures must be respected, none is
above another, and relations must be based on mutual respect, dialogue, and
coordination, especially when conflict emerges. Each culture must have auton-
omy within the structure of the Ecuadorian nation-state. In the age of Donald
Trump, when ethnic nationalism seems to be sweeping the Western world, it is
important to consider the CONAIE definitions seriously. They suggest a rad-
ical transformation of how we in the West think concerning relations among
nations and ethnic groups. As my definition of revolution states, they “alter
the categories that order social life and consciousness [and the] metaphysical
assumptions on which these relations are based.” They are an image of utopia.
The men and women interviewed in Ecuador are practical politicians and orga-
nizers who have experienced ethnic conflict firsthand. They know that utopia
has not arrived. But it is the utopian dream that propels revolutions forward.
Plurinationality and interculturality are the stuff of just such dreams.
ECOLOGY AND “THE LIVING JUNGLE”
The Amazonian interviews in this chapter contain a powerful and passionate

ecological consciousness. Ecological issues are important in all interviews in
Ecuador and in most in Bolivia. But they are particularly pronounced in the
Amazon. Once again it is important for the reader in the Global North to
keep in mind that the indigenous idea of ecology is not the same as our own,
however similar it may appear. Like nation, ecology reflects a radically different
set of social categories and metaphysical assumptions. The indigenous meaning
is best captured by the term living jungle (kawsak sacha in Kichwa). According
to an interview with Marlon Santi:
The living jungle is a new category of space that the indigenous people
have named. There have been categories of national parks, biologi-
54 CHAPTER 1
cal reserves, ecological corridors, but we are generating a new cate-

gory with a conceptualization of our life and also as we interpret it
in regard to the jungle—why it cannot enter the market, but that this
jungle generates life through the present connection and for future
generations.
Santi is not only a past president of CONAIE but a traditional leader in

Sarayaku. He likely influenced this 2018 official statement by the community:
KAWSAK SACHA is a living being, with consciousness, constituted by

all the beings of the Jungle, from the most infinitesimal to the greatest
and supreme. It includes the beings of the animal, vegetable, mineral,
spiritual and cosmic worlds, in intercommunication with human beings,
giving them what is necessary to reanimate their psychological, physical
and spiritual facets, thus restoring the energy, life and equilibrium of the
original peoples.31
The living jungle is more than the ecology of the tropical rain forest. It is
the jungle of (indigenous) beings as represented in their spiritual, physical,
and emotional life. As Ampam Karakras says, a waterfall is not simply some
many kilowatts of electrical power or a tourist attraction. It is a place where
young Shuar men go to seek visions that will set in motion the complex
spiritual economy of Shuar souls and determine the trajectory of their entire
lives and, before pacification, their violent deaths. For the Shuar, building a
dam is like driving a bulldozer through the Sistine Chapel. For the Shuar and
other peoples of the Amazon, the living jungle is full of spiritual meaning
and neither they nor their cultures could exist without it (and vice versa).
The unrestricted exploitation of oil and other resources in the “living jun-
gle” (denounced as “extractivism” in the Ecuadorian interviews) represents
not only the loss of a biological patrimony but the death of their religion,
culture, and ultimately themselves. Invisibility and fear of ethnocide, if not
genocide, are recurring themes in the Amazonian interviews. The particular
indigenous notion of the nation, the plurinational and the intercultural, are
found throughout the Ecuadorian interviews, not simply in those from the
Amazon. What distinguishes the Amazon, as the interviews in this section
make clear, is the emerging concept of the “living jungle” (kawsak sacha) and
a deep-seated fear of cultural extinction.
INDIGENOUS VOICES
AMPAM KARAKRAS (SHUAR): IDENTITY AND INVISIBILITY
Ampam Karakras is one of the intellectual leaders of the indigenous movement.

A Shuar from the Amazon, he was educated and learned Spanish at a Salesian
mission school. He was one of the first indigenous university graduates, receiv-
ing a degree in accounting from the Universidad Central del Ecuador (Central
University of Ecuador). He has been a leader and advisor to the Shuar Feder-
ation, CONFENIAE, and CONAIE, and was the first director of the World
Bank–supported Project for the Development of Indigenous and Black People
(PRODEPINE). He has been a consultant to the Indigenous People’s Fund
and a project director for the Danish nongovernmental organization (NGO)
IBIS. His 1984 article “Las nacionalidades indias y el estado ecuatoriano” begins,
“My name is Ampam Karakras, a Shuar name.”32 Indigenous culture and iden-
tity in general and Shuar culture and identity in particular have been his central
intellectual focus, and he is one of the principal theorists of the concept of
“nationality” in indigenous usage.
W ES T ER N R EVO LU T I O N A N D T H E S H UA R
I’m going to speak for myself, from my own perspective. Most Latin
American countries always denied the existence of the various peoples
that existed before them. What has existed in recent times, in the past
few decades, is the need to acknowledge that there are various identities,
various cultures, and that is why Bolivia and Ecuador are plurinational
states. Now, what does that mean? What do they want to get out of
that? Some call it a “citizens’ revolution,” for example, in the case of
Ecuador. From my perspective, citizens’ revolution is a people’s revo-
lution. Individuals. It’s like liberalism. Like France, et cetera, et cetera
[i.e., the French and other liberal revolutions recognized individual, not
collective, rights].
But for us, all that are important are people’s thoughts, their ide-
als, dreams, and goals. They must be accompanied by the rights of the
peoples as a collective society. The current constitution acknowledges
collective rights as well as individual rights. Therefore we see Ecuador
as a unitary state but one that has diverse identities and cultures with an
equal distribution of the country’s resources and power.
56 CHAPTER 1
Power has always been concentrated in a few hands. My people, the

Shuar, fought for our freedom from the Spaniards and later struggled to
become visible on a national level. We want to be part of this formation
of the plurinational state and intercultural society. I wonder whether
or not it has to be through a revolutionary process. Does it have to be
right-wing, center, left-wing? Because those are not indigenous peoples’
own visions. They belong to Western society that brought this message
of revolution. And they stole all that land throughout the American
continent—because there were indigenous peoples from Canada to
Argentina—and then they created new republics. So there’s a whole
issue to discuss there. I’m not saying this is ideal, but we have to discuss
it. Among my people, the Shuar, there may be some people who have
conservative ideas. Others have center-left or left-wing ideas. What
matters to me is that the Shuar people are visible, have a presence and
actively participate, that others don’t talk and decide for them.
In the case of Sandinismo there was a revolution and it triumphed,
but there were others fighting for their own space. You know that real-
ity better than I do, and that’s why there is the Atlantic Coast and
the South Atlantic Coast [indigenous areas of Nicaragua]. They’re still
Sandinistas now with the Sandinista government but not the Sandinista
revolution—that is different. Sandinismo almost denied the existence of
indigenous peoples’ rights. Likewise, the revolution in El Salvador didn’t
have indigenous people’s participation either.
Black people, Indians, participated in the revolution that aimed to
gain freedom and independence for Latin American countries, among
them Ecuador, in the independence war. But we indigenous didn’t end
up independent, because others took over power again. So that left con-
cerns about whether we should join the revolution if it excludes the
indigenous.
N AT U R E , T H E CO N S T I T U T I O N , A N D T H E A M A Z O N
One of the positive things I see, for example, is that now the constitu-
tion defines nature as a subject of law. But this is in contradiction with
mining and oil exploitation, with the development mode. So the consti-
tution requires a new mode of development that must be considered on
a global level. Preexisting indigenous peoples always say: “We have an
equal relationship with nature; we don’t feel superior but rather part of
nature.” Therefore, if we exploit it whether we are Indian, black, white,
we depend on nature; nature doesn’t depend on us. Sooner or later, we’re
going to pay the consequences of overexploiting nature—one of them
is global warming. That is something that goes beyond individual coun-
tries. Rivers drying, the lack of rain, or drought—that doesn’t affect only
Ecuador. A polluted river flows into Peru and Brazil, or the boats that
get stuck in the Amazon River because it’s drying out, or streams and
glaciers that are also drying out: all these are issues that concern both
industrialized countries and southern countries. Issues to do with our
lifestyle and development model—there are people who produce too
much, but don’t eat, but there are others who can’t eat. The world could
produce enough for everyone to eat and nobody to starve, yet many
people starve. And we’re gradually running out of water. All of that
regardless of whether we are, as they say, Afro-Ecuadorian, indigenous,
mestizo, or white. In other words, that is a problem we’re going to come
up against at some point, because we have to think beyond the local and
the national; we have to think on a global level, as human beings. That’s
my point of view.
N AT I O N A LI T Y A N D N AT I O N - S TAT E
For me, more or less in my view—it’s not a finished view, but I’d still
like to share it. You have to listen to other points of view, but I’m going
to give you my own. Nation and state have always existed as synonyms,
thus the nation-state. That’s why there’s been some confusion about this.
There is the German nation-state, to give you an example, because in
German society, the population, culture, and language almost match. So
for me a nation-state, or national state, would be a state with a national
culture. I told you at the start of the interview that the intention in Latin
America was to create uniform, homogenous nations, homogenous
societies. They denied that there were Indians in Venezuela, Indians
in Argentina. Here also, there were already peoples living here, peas-
ants, and there were a few [Indians] in the Amazon; as we said before
we have diverse, different cultures and identities. In our state there are
various identities, various cultures. There isn’t a single national culture;
there are various national cultures. We actually live in an interculturality
58 CHAPTER 1
since interculturality is the relationship between different cultures. There

are fourteen nations or nationalities speaking different languages and
eighteen peoples; on top of that you have to consider Afro-Ecuadorians,
who don’t have a different language but who do have a presence and a
conscience, and they’re subjects of collective rights. The same goes for
the montubios [a mixed-race coastal group]. It’s not the same to talk
about dialogue between different cultures when they are asymmetric,
not homogenous, that is, unequal. There’s also a plurinational state; there
are various nations under construction. For example, nationality, for us,
is related to the individual; for example, I am a Shuar. We are members
of the Shuar nationality. It could be the Shuar nation but within the
plurinational state. The unity of the Ecuadorian state and the diversity
of national culture can only exist where there are both individual and
collective rights.
What is there in the United States? There is a federal state with
federal laws and states, each with their own laws. That’s how it is, more
or less, but here there’s a plurinational state that ought to have a consti-
tution, general laws, and jurisdictions, and each people and nationality
should also have other laws and jurisdictions. We say, for example, that
a nationality, a people, must have its own territory—not a separate ter-
ritory within the plurinational state but rather like an autonomy, an
autonomous regime such as is recognized in the constitution: in other
words, one that is decentralized, but it is still centralized. Everything is
still centralized in Quito, but gradually we aim to achieve the decen-
tralization of power and services. Secondly, the issue of justice. There’s
ordinary justice and indigenous justice, but there is no ordinary indig-
enous justice, because each people and nationality has its own justice
system, because they have a different reality; that is, it’s not unique. For
us, we say there should be fourteen different types of justice, or justice
systems. . . .
It’s like that, and in any state anywhere in the world there are con-
flicts, interests, and different points of view and modes of development.
For example, the issues you point out: mining, oil, water, to name a few.
There should be a prior free and informed consultation, which is also
recognized in the Constitution of Montecristo [2008] and in the UN
Declaration [of Indigenous Rights, 2007], because we are subjects of
collective rights, as well as individual rights, which are also acknowl-
edged in the constitution. If you own a property, your home, the state
has to ask your permission to enter or do something if it’s a public good,
even if it’s also a private right as an individual. A collective right is also
a collective territory with properties and collective rights and obliga-
tions, as well as the individual. Therefore they must also be consulted.
It’s complex.
CA P I TA LI S M , S O C I A LI S M , A N D S U S TA I N A B I LI T Y
Well, in general we don’t escape the [capitalist] model. I think nowhere

in the world does anybody escape the model, the existing system, for
a start. The socialist model collapsed. That’s a reality. Here they talk of
twenty-first-century socialism, et cetera. If nature is not a subject of
rights, if we overexploit nature then we’re only going to have money,
stock exchanges, shares, currency, et cetera. But if we destroy nature we
are destroying the source of everything we need for our lives. If we don’t
find a balance between using natural resources and overexploitation,
the day will come when the world—not Ecuador, the world—runs out.
The oceans are overfished; the earth is dug out; oil, gas, and forests
are exploited. In the Amazonia they produce biofuel, soy, sugar cane,
wood, cattle. If we continue applying that model, if we don’t make it
sustainable, we, the human species, will at some point destroy ourselves.
Therefore we have to find a basic balance; each of us needs to take
responsibility, both our communities and us in the jungles, the coun-
tryside and the cities, in developing countries, as they call them, and in
developed countries. If we don’t do something together, the future of
humanity is uncertain—that’s the way we see it. But the economy for
the sake of the economy? In the end we’re not going to eat money, as
they say, but we need money to do certain things: to buy something we
don’t have, to buy certain things, machinery or other things. We also
think that way; we don’t want to be left behind. Our parents, our people,
just as in many other cultures, ate what they produced—it’s not only an
indigenous thing. They didn’t need the money, but now we all need to
look for money. Money is like a drug, we could say.
It’s like a drug. It seems that without money we wouldn’t be able
to do anything, but as well as money, which is necessary, we want rela-
tionships between peoples, between cultures, to preserve the earth; we
60 CHAPTER 1
wouldn’t want to desperately overexploit the earth or industrialize the

earth and the environment for money, but to find a balance, not depend
on the God of money for everything. Sometimes people say, “If there’s
no money, I can’t do anything.” So we’d like to find a middle ground,
and if that can be achieved within capitalism with a human face, as some
people call it, or within socialism, but only if one doesn’t overexploit like
in Chernobyl, for example. But I don’t know, so I don’t have a rigid posi-
tion. And that’s why I was saying to you it’s not whether it’s a revolution
or not but rather that the relationship of any human being in any system
with life and nature should be sustainable.
R ELI G I O N A N D T H E S H UA R
When America was supposedly discovered, and also after the con-
quest, all the existing cultures, their beliefs and spiritual aspects, their
languages, etcetera were dismissed. A culture, a system, a way of life, a
lifestyle were imposed, and as you well know the cross and the sword
began to conquer, evangelize, and Christianize indigenous peoples.
We were believed not to have a soul. So the Catholic Church has
been dominant. Then came evangelicals from various traditions, and
there was a struggle between them all over America. And of course
indigenous peoples couldn’t be left out of all of this, why? Here we say
that the Summer Institute of Linguistics [Protestant] translated the
Bible into other languages for the purpose of evangelizing. So as well
as that, indigenous peoples are gradually claiming their right to their
own spirituality. Why? Their own beliefs and values were crushed and
obscured, and evangelical Catholics imposed their own beliefs instead.
So just before you arrived someone gave me this [pamphlet]—the
kingdom of Jehovah.
I spent five years at the boarding school. I prayed for five years,
enough to last me the rest of my lifetime, but we also had our own
beliefs. We have the Arutam, which is a deity that we feel identi-
fied with. All the historical and sacred places that are recognized in
the constitution should be respected. For example, a waterfall here,
a waterfall in the Amazonia, in Shuar territory, should be respected
and valued, because that’s where a Shuar person would go to find his
spirituality and strength. The same as a Christian person does when
he goes to a church or a cathedral to pray. So we must respect that

and not build a hydroelectric power plant in the name of development,
because this is a different people with different beliefs; there isn’t only
one set of beliefs.
I say, both Catholicism and evangelical Christianity were imposed on
peoples; it was a system of spiritual domination that gradually crushed
the beliefs and visions of indigenous peoples. At some point we have
to fight back with a spiritual vision that is not about crushing peoples’
existing spiritual beliefs and values, however we call them. So some
people say to us Shuar people, “But why do you have to believe in the
runas [indigenous] if you’re already a Christian, you have Jesus Christ?”
More or less that’s what they say to us. But I say, “And why does the
Virgin Mary have so many names? Maria Auxiliadora, Maria Purísima.
I’ve heard several names.” So we believe that each people had different
names for a superior being in whom they believed. That’s our point of
view and our thinking, because for example the Spaniards, when they
came to America, built their cathedral on Cuzco’s ceremonial site. And
they built other sacred places. They gradually changed, they substituted,
they made what was already there invisible. We want our own deities,
our beliefs, to be valued and respected too, the same as the others. Just
as we respect those who go to church or have other beliefs. That is, we
tolerate, value, and respect, and if one of us believes and converts to
something, we don’t reject him either.
W E A R E S H UA R , N O T I N D I G EN O U S
Well, here there have been more or less four icons. In the Andean
region Cacuango, [we have] Tránsito Amaguaña. Others in the Ama-
zonia are not well known like Jumandi. The Shuar fought against their
governor, who demanded gold. The Shuar rose [in 1599] against him
and destroyed the railway tracks of Logroño. They made the governor
swallow gold, but that is less well known. We really love our freedom.
We were never slaves, not even in Tulcán [a town just beyond the
northernmost outpost of the Inca Empire]. We weren’t conquered,
perhaps thanks to our geographical location and also our views on
Inca peoples. We weren’t part of the curse they talk about. So we have
a very strong awareness of our identity. You may not see us fighting
62 CHAPTER 1
in our traditional attire, but we’ve worked to preserve our language,

our names, our history, our culture. We’ve strongly contributed to
the process of the indigenous movement in Ecuador, even though
we don’t agree on the indigenous issue. For example, you have your
name, correct? I, Ampam, another Juan, and so on. We all have our
names as people. Likewise, each people had their name, their own
identity, which were later imposed. We, the Shuar, weren’t told that
this was an imposition. The Amazonians were called reds [colorados]
generally. So the Amazonians were generally called indigenous, native,
aboriginals, primitive, ethnic, everything. In response to that, we said,
“We’re nationalities and peoples.” That’s one of our goals—to be able
to define ourselves, as the Assembly of the First Nations in Canada
say, or original peoples, as they say in Bolivia, or natives in Peru, but
to decide in any case. So the term indigenous is a colonialist term
from over five hundred years ago, which must be gradually eliminated,
because it’s an imposed name—Indian, indigenous, all that. It’s like
perpetuating that historical role and that colonialist mentality through
these colonialist terms. We can’t still say, after five hundred years, that
the Earth is the center of the universe, when we know it’s not true.
India is in India because Columbus made four voyages to the Amer-
icas and died without knowing he hadn’t reached India. So to keep
on calling us indigenous, as they do in the United Nations, the World
Bank, the European Union is a mistake. We say that we’re Shuar, and
likewise there are Kichwas, Guaranís, Cunas. In other words, that’s
their identity. That’s what characterizes them, and they’re unique. For
example, there are three thousand Huaorani here. They’re unique in
the world, a unique culture. They’re not in Central America, North
America, Europe, Africa, or Asia; they’re here and they’re a unique
culture with their own identity, which must be recognized and valued.
Yes, well, some people prefer to use the term indigenous, and I respect
it but don’t share it.
RAFAEL ANTUNI (SHUAR): ETHNOCIDE AND GENOCIDE

IN THE AMAZON
At the time of the interviews, Rafael Antuni was national coordinator of Pacha-
kutik. Born in 1981, he is part of a new generation of Shuar leaders who worked
through the organizations developed in the first generation. He was an activist

in the Shuar Federation at an early age and became a leader of the organization
and director of the Shuar Bicultural Radio Education Network. He was elected
mayor of the Pablo Sexto canton of Morona Santiago Province and vice prefect
of the province. He was also vice president of the Consortium of Municipal
Governments of the Amazon and Galápagos. He is a primary school teacher
who received a degree in development from the Universidad Estatal de Cuenca.
He summarized his overall philosophy in a 2011 article: “From nature we learned
to live together and to fight; she provides food and health; she is generous pro-
viding us with oxygen, water, and, finally, life. Still more she condenses harmony,
beauty, and riches. The rain forest shows us life in equilibrium and diversity as
its greatest expression”.33
A N D ES A N D A M A Z O N
Nowadays, [in Bolivia] we have a republican president with an indig-

enous identity. But his identity is Andean. It also happens here in
Ecuador; there are always misunderstandings. The Andean part wants
to dominate the Amazonian part. The same occurs in Bolivia, also in
Colombia. Here in Ecuador, the Cañaris [a pre-Columbian people], for
example, wanted to dominate the Shuar. They achieved it. In the north-
ern part—Pastaza, Napo—they had churches and followers that assisted
them in their domination. Because of this the Kichwas in Pastaza have
a very different origin. They could have been Shuar but what language
did they learn? They learned from the [Kichwa-speaking] Cañaris. There
has always been this confrontation for territory.
The Amazonians demand that Bolivia not carry out its policy
of Amazonian development. This makes us think that the Indian
president of the republic [Evo Morales] hates his own indigenous
compatriots in Bolivia. Luis Macas says one thing and the Amazon
people say something else. No! The Amazon people speak for them-
selves. Luis Macas could have been president of the republic but I
speak for myself. The administration of Evo Morales makes political
distinctions and he has divided his people [i.e., the Andean indige-
nous people from the Amazonians]. We have to be very cautious that
that this does not happen here—we are working on this by raising
consciousness among ourselves. Traditionally, here in Pachakutik
64 CHAPTER 1
[the indigenous political party; see chapter 3] the coordinators and

authorities have only been from this part [the Andes].
We also have said, compañeros, participation concerns us; alterna-
tives to what was before concern us. We have had these dialogues and
now we Amazonian people are here in Pachakutik. Perhaps it will
not be very different but we are committed to inviting other sectors
so that there is real participation. The solution is that we have spread
the responsibility among us—it is not only the Shuars, not only the
Amazon people. This is the national Pachakutik coordinator, and I
am a Shuar, but we do not need to have only Shuar or Amazon peo-
ple as officials or collaborators. We need to share. We have to practice
the plurinational. We are demanding equality with, for example, the
parish councils, mayors’ offices, the prefectures—the administrative
parts and autonomous decentralized governments. Participation with
plurinational thinking and development, with the perspectives of
sumak kawsay—the relationship between man-nature-man—and
the investment of resources to improve things so that people can
take advantage of nature in a better way. To have a living, a healthy
environment, drinking water, that it rains; that trees exist; that health
really exists; that traditional medicine exists; that the medical culture
that our shamans have given us really exists; that a hospital exists
combining Western and indigenous medicine; that doctors exist and
have staff, that our shamans exist with their herbs and curative leaves
because, yes, we do cure ourselves. The two cultures, the two forms
of knowledge, two medicines, foreign teams that come to our envi-
ronments so that we may lift our voice, our songs. We think that the
different cultures and nations need to respect one another in order
to build a plurinational state based on respect. But there are those
indigenous among us who say, “we are much better than you” and we
should always rule.
A PA R K I N T H E S H A P E O F A S U N
We have to resolve the issues of poverty. Compañeros say, “We see the
dollar as a drug.” I would say we see it equally with water. We must not
think wrongly about this. Because without money I am not going to
educate my child; without money I cannot buy things; without money
I cannot do anything, I cannot travel. Elected authorities have to go

on solving their money problems by generating sources of work for a
few whose earnings are invested in improving the communal system of
life. We want to show solidarity, [to enable people] to have a little store
[where they can] sell essential goods like medicines and school supplies.
Education in business practices and supply and demand is lacking—
there is much to work on.
There is much for us to do because fifteen years after being consti-
tuted we have made little progress in terms of social development, iden-
tity, and culture. They have imposed infrastructure on us. They have built
communal houses and classrooms with an architecture that is different
from our reality. We have a very beautiful architecture that makes things
elliptical and this is being done away with. From the local governments
we are suggesting alternatives—ways to apply these technologies and
structures to form a city.
And why not think, for example, of a center, a great park in the shape
of a sun? And it is serious if we are losing that. In reality we have much
territory. In Ecuador we could say that there are many sources of water,
many jungles, many cultures. We would like a new city, a city where we
can live like human beings. We want to address the problem that no one
knows anything about the other side. Here [in Quito] if you cry out no
one comes to your assistance. This world is different from our beautiful
reality—I do not know if they will invite us in. Moving to the city has
made us think and has reinvigorated our forms of knowledge, and we
imagine a dignified population that is very different, [with an emphasis
on the] touristic and the cultural.
E T H N O C I D E A N D G EN O C I D E
This is how we see things in Ecuador—it is so rich! I believe that we

are clearly still materially poor, but we are rich in terms of nature, land-
scapes, cultures, the regions—coast, sierra, Amazon. Many lakes full of
crocodiles, of reptiles, an immense diversity that the Ecuadorian state
does not value, especially the government assuming that you are talking
of ITT [Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini oil fields located within the
Yasuní National Park, home to the Huaorani]. We have made the point
that above this subsoil full of petroleum live uncontacted peoples. Some
66 CHAPTER 1
have had contact with the city and others have not had contact with any-
thing. Their inclination is to be free—not in contact with anything—free
will. The government wants to implement plan B because plan A was to
collect money [from the world community], [in exchange for] keeping
the oil at Yasuní underground. So said the president of the republic and
the minister of nonrenewable natural resources. We have discovered
they are ordering seismic studies for Plan B. If [the world community]
doesn’t give them money, then they will extract the petroleum—putting
the compañeros that live there at risk. They have nowhere left to go
because now the territories are very limited. Through spontaneous or
directed colonization the land has been occupied and now it is privat-
ized. It is a space that CONFENIAE and CONAIE have defended so
that the Huaorani who do not want to have anything to do with this
Western world are free. But the government is threatening them.
We as Pachakutik and CONAIE face these threats and orders even
though we are telling the president about these peoples. They know
very well the constitutional arguments that do not allow this type of
extraction where there is a risk to human life, but to them this is not
important. There were more than thirty contacts with these groups,
armed contacts. There was an order from the president to push them, to
disperse them. We have collected all this information and have brought
a lawsuit against the president for ethnocide and genocide, because he
intends to take the land and destroy the human beings that live there.
Someone who plans to extract oil from the land and then leave after
polluting the environment wants the human beings that are there to
disappear. Because of this we have brought these charges, and if [the
case] doesn’t move forward with the attorney general here in Ecuador,
with Ecuadorian justice, we are also preparing to file a complaint before
international courts. We have to defend the compañeros that live there
and have no place to go.
These are the pretty serious situations we are confronting in this
country. Telling you this is a way of spreading the word about what is
happening in this country because these actions are final. Our Huaorani
compañeros have their identity and live happily. And as I said they have
nowhere left to go because to the south are the Shuar, the Achuar, and
the Kichwas, and their communities have never lived together. They have
their territory, their culture, their way of life. We want them to remain
as they are. They are being threatened by the presidency, currently led
by Rafael Correa. These situations are real and because of this we are
not happy with this government and we are moved to continue suing
because we are fighting for the life of our compañeros.
MARLON SANTI (KICHWA): CONAIE AND THE LIVING JUNGLE
At the time of the interviews, Marlon Santi had just stepped down as president
of CONAIE (2008–11). He grew up in the village of Sarayaku, Pastaza, center
of antipetroleum protests since the 1980s. His father was a traditional Karaka,
or chief, and his mother a social activist. He followed his father as Karaka of
the hamlet of Cali Cali and eventually rose to be president of the community.
He distinguished himself as the coordinator of Sarayaku’s legal case against the
Argentine petroleum company, Compañía General de Combustibles (CGC),
before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica.
On July 6, 2012, in a landmark ruling, the court ruled in favor of Sarayaku and
against CGC and Ecuador. The ruling established a standard of Free, Prior and
Informed Consent in cases in which economic exploitation was proposed on
indigenous lands. In 2010 the Correa administration initiated an investigation of
possible “sabotage and terrorism” against Santi and Delfín Tenesaca of ECUA-
RUNARI (see chapter 2) for their participation in a protest at the Alianza
Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (ALBA, Bolivarian Alliance
for the Americas) summit meeting.34
T H E I N D I G EN O U S M OV EM EN T
In 1990, with a great mobilization, the indigenous movement proposed a

reform of the constitution so that the representatives of the organizations
would participate and an assembly would be constructed where there
would be spokespersons for all. It was also proposed that the uninational
state, that is, the Ecuadorian state, recognize the plurality of peoples,
the existence of many cultures, of many nationalities. The indigenous
movement wants these laws not to be solely for the capital, Quito, for
Guayaquil or for Cuenca or for the urban sectors but rather that these
laws influence the daily coexistence, harmony, and “living well” of the
entire population whether they are mestizos, indigenous, blacks, cholos,
et cetera, et cetera. Today we can rely on a new constitution but it is not
68 CHAPTER 1
a constitution that we totally agree with—there are some parts that do

not recognize the aspirations of the social sectors and the indigenous
movement. I would say that the Ecuadorian indigenous movement, the
CONAIE, and the social sectors have created a model for demanding
rights, an example for the people of Latin America.
N AT I O N A N D S TAT E
The state, the Republic of Ecuador, was created two hundred years ago
but did not recognize the peoples that existed here, the original peoples
or original nations. These nations have been recognized through his-
tory in accords and treaties with various governments throughout the
180 years of republican life. The nationalities, such as the Shuar nation,
have a language, their own language, a culture, a territory that has been
granted by various governments under these accords and treaties. Many
of the politicians have said that we want to make ministates within the
Ecuadorian state but we say the United States has states that make up
the American nation. The indigenous peoples are also part of the Ecua-
dorian nation, but we are also peoples who have our particularity and our
historical origins. We were here long before the creation of the republic.
EX T R AC T I V E D EV EL O P M EN T V ER S U S T H E LI V I N G J U N G LE
CONAIE proposes a solidary economy that moves from an econ-

omy that accumulates resources to a reciprocal economy. We do not
understand the economy as do the economists—those who study the
accumulation of wealth. We propose a solidary economy that gener-
ates resources for all, that gives dignity, gives life, and a future where
humanity can continue to exist. It is a communal economic model, not
based on capitalizing the economy but rather an economic model that is
compatible with civil society, with families. An economy that will benefit
all, not only some groups or sectors. The economic model applied by
the current government is extractive—based on raw materials to gen-
erate an economy that supplies Ecuadorian society. It does not respect
human rights and the rights of Mother Earth. In this sense the model
that sumak kawsay proposes is an alternative to the idea that Ecuador
exploits natural resources. Maybe there are resources but they are badly
distributed. We want a fair redistribution to pay for the necessities of

civil society and also encourage development alternatives that are not
solely the extraction of natural resources.
In the seventies, one of the most productive sectors in Ecuador was
agriculture—it was even bigger than oil. The agricultural area has been
forgotten by many governments and as a result oil is a very important
economic factor. With the oil boom, agriculture moved to the tenth
place. Bringing back this communal peasant agriculture of small com-
munities in Ecuador would encourage food sovereignty in the country
and also would stimulate the production of food for other countries.
The majority of farmers in Ecuador are indigenous peasants, but cur-
rent developments in this area are being managed by great agricultural
industries such as PRONACA [Procesadora Nacional de Alimentos
C.A. (National Food Processor Inc.)], and the landowners of Guaya-
quil, for example Chiquita Banana, Bonita de Álvaro Noboa. These are
individual properties that do not answer to a collective society.
Currently the state’s development plan, sumak kawsay, has four main
axes. Within these four axes are two priorities: mining and oil. Mining
is something that Ecuador has no experience with on a large scale—it
has had experience with artisanal mining, unorganized mining. But it
has not been on a large scale. Ecuador—or the current government—is
promoting mining that would change the direction of the economy
and would also have a great environmental and cultural impact. Oil is
the second priority—it is now the first—but it will become the second
because mining will become the first. There are two priorities, then, that
the government has proposed. Beyond this, within the “sumak kawsay”
plan, is the privatization of strategic resources such as water.
The water here is going to be privatized in five years. According to
the constitution, water is a human right, but in the water law they want
to privatize it. Currently 79 percent of the water in Ecuador can be
privatized. Only bottling companies like Coca-Cola, Fanta, and Twitty
manage it. If the water law is passed by the government as planned,
water will be one of the axes of economic development and seen as an
economic resource in the country. And the fourth axis that the govern-
ment wants to privatize is the forests: humid forests, humid tropical
Amazonian forests, forests of the páramo [high treeless plain], the for-
ests of the coasts that are now involved in the charcoal market. Most of
70 CHAPTER 1
the forests are on indigenous territories. I have been in a convention in

Geneva where they proposed a bond to receive money in exchange for
the forests. They do not know clearly what processes will take place in
the future, what their effects will be, or what will happen with climate
change.
A CONAIE march, which was convened by CONAIE when I was
president, stopped the water law. It was not approved in its original
form designed by the executive because we are also co-legislators and
presented [an alternative] proposal that was water for all. There was a
discrepancy and it is stopped there, but they created a legal formula
that they call prelegislative consultation. Before approving this they
have to consult those who are going to be affected. There are many
laws made without consultation—the mineral law, the hydrocarbons
law, and others—but the water law was stopped by a mobilization at
the national level. I am personally confident that this kind of protest is
going to continue.
We in the Amazon region—well now I am speaking not as president
of CONAIE but as ex-president of CONAIE and as an activist of the
nations and peoples that are resisting in the Amazon region—we are
creating a network of Amazon peoples, a resistance, that in the future
will oppose the expansion of those axes such as mining, oil, and forests,
and we are proposing a new alternative currently being developed by
the peoples, the resistance, that is called the living jungle. It is a new
category of spaces that the indigenous people have named. There have
been categories of national parks, biological reserves, ecological corri-
dors, but we are generating a new category and concept of our life and
how we interpret it in regard to the jungle. It cannot enter the market
because this jungle generates life through present connections for future
generations. The proposal will be launched this month in Manaus, Bra-
zil, and then also in the assembly. We are going to give these details to
government representatives because it is our model of development.
I D E O L O G I CA L I N F LU EN C ES
Historically the indigenous movement was influenced by the socialist

movement in the sixties, but gradually it has assumed its proper role.
I do not share the influence of twenty-first-century socialism, or cap-
italism, which have had their time. The indigenous movement has its
own thinking and its own knowledge that is sumak kawsay [Kichwa for
“living well”], ama sua, ama quella, ama llulla [Inca proverb—don’t steal,
don’t be lazy, don’t lie], which are philosophical visions and conceptual-
izations of the nations and peoples of Latin America. And in Ecuador
the sumak kawsay is a way of thinking that is not communist, socialist,
or capitalist—it is an indigenous way of thinking; it is an indigenous
concept that is very difficult for governments to understand.
Respect among human beings, respect for Mother Earth, because we
know that without her we would not able to continue existing. Socialism,
Patria o Muerte, Venceremos is very different from indigenous thought.
I believe that Stalin or Marx founded this thinking. It was necessary in
its time but now the indigenous movement has its own conception. At
one time we said these Western influences were good for the indigenous
movement, but now we see that they do not work.
PAC H A K U T I K , G U T I ÉR R EZ , A N D CO R R E A
Pachakutik in its time had success. It had a very important political

ascendance in the year ’96. We had many deputies, around seventeen
deputies in the legislature. Pachakutik fell, took the bait, lost credibility
when it made a deal with Lucio Gutiérrez. This was a sad moment in
the indigenous movement at the base level and at the level of regional
organizations. Pachakutik had its peak but also made mistakes. I per-
sonally have confidence that Pachakutik is going to reemerge as a new
force with a new image of indigenous leaders. We are bringing a new
cadre of indigenous leaders whose actions the people can and do believe
in. Pachakutik is reconstructing itself.
We, as an indigenous movement, supported that political project
of Alianza País because it collected all the aspirations of all the social
movements. But now it is separating itself. Its initial proposals or aspi-
rations are not the national agenda. The political principles of Alianza
País did not turn out to be for Ecuadorian society. Now the laws obey
the wishes of a combination of national oligarchic groups—the mining
interests, for example. None of the articles of the mineral law, for exam-
ple, set out the rights of indigenous people. The law of hydrocarbons
does not set out indigenous rights either. The water law is worse. All the
72 CHAPTER 1
laws go against indigenous rights and against the rights of society. And
against the constitution. We now see that it is not in the interests of all
citizens, but only of those economic interests that were entrenched in
the government. And the laws are made to favor them. We said, “Follow
that path and we will not support you,” and we went into the opposition.
But they have not been able to destroy the indigenous movement in
these thirty years of organizational struggle.
THE NATION AND THE LIVING JUNGLE
The “nation” and the “living jungle” are two fundamental notions in the Ama-
zonian worldview. The concept of the nation originated in the Amazon but
then was adopted by the national confederation, CONAIE, and runs through
all the Ecuadorian interviews. As has been noted, Ampam Karakras was one of
the original theorists of the concept. Shuar intellectuals like Karakras who had
mastered Western concepts in mission schools and Ecuadorian universities were
quick to apply these concepts to their basic struggle—against ethnocide and cul-
tural extinction. What emerged was not the exclusive and homogenizing model
of Western ethnic nationalism and the Ecuadorian state but a plurinational
and intercultural concept of nationality that permitted the Shuar a distinct
existence but did not require that Ecuador transform itself into an exclusively
Shuar nation-state. Western models of nationalism provide an extremely poor
guide to the concept of “nation” as it was adopted by CONAIE and discussed
in most of the Ecuadorian interviews.
Nationality, as it is articulated by the Amazonians, is a symbolically revolu-
tionary notion. It challenges the assumption of Western liberal states that the
individual is the basic unit of society and citizenship. According to Ampam
Karakras, what is important is “people’s thoughts, their ideals, dreams, and
goals. They must be accompanied by the rights of peoples as a collective society”
(emphasis added). But there is no single indigenous state. As Karakras argues,
“There are fourteen nations or nationalities speaking different languages and
eighteen peoples.” In such a culturally diverse world interculturally, respect for
different cultures is a prerequisite for a successful indigenous movement and the
liberal state must be displaced by a plurinational state that recognizes them all.
The Amazonian concept of nation fits their own ecological situation best.
Applied to the Andes, it lumps several million Kichwa speakers into a sin-
gle nation logically equivalent to several hundred Huaorani. Furthermore, the
Andean Kichwa, while satisfying Chuji’s definition, do not have a cohesive sense
of ethnic identity. For historical reasons those identities exist only for localized
“peoples,” such as the Otavaleños, world famous for their mastery of handicraft
and ornamental textiles, hence the reference by Karakras to “fourteen nations
or nationalities . . . and eighteen peoples,” officially recognized by CONAIE.
Since in political fact the Andean Kichwa are organized by community, can-
ton, and province, not by putative nations, the use of nation in this region is a
political fiction.
The concept of the living jungle (kawsak sacha) as it is described by Marlon
Santi is the key to the metaphysical world and transformational politics of the
indigenous Amazon. It is the jungle of living beings, including but not limited
to the peoples who live there, and extends to spiritual and cultural life as well
as material life and subsistence production. It is not simply that the Shuar or
the Huaorani live in the rain forest or that it has enormous biological diversity,
or that it contributes positively to the global carbon cycle, or that many rare
and threatened species live there, but it is all these things as they are joined in
the cultural and spiritual world of the Amazonian peoples. Jaguars are at the
end of the forest food chain and one of the first species to disappear when the
forest is disturbed, but the Huaorani describe themselves as sons and daughters
of the Jaguar and the animal occupies a place of supreme importance in their
spirituality. As Ampam Karakras points out, a waterfall is more than so many
cubic feet of water falling in so many seconds, or even a point of spectacular
natural beauty to Western tourists. For the Shuar it is a sacred place where in
traditional Shuar society young men went to seek visions and, as he points out,
even now Shuar go to seek spiritual renewal.
According to the people of Sarayaku, the living jungle is “a living being” that
restores “the energy, life and equilibrium of the original peoples.” Indeed, the
two cannot be separated. The emotional, psychological, physical, cultural, and
spiritual aspects of the Amazonian peoples are tied up in the rain forest. As
Rafael Antuni has written, the rain forest not only is the source of life but also
“condenses harmony, beauty, and riches. The rain forest shows us life in equi-
librium and diversity as its greatest expression.” For Antuni the riches of a poor
country like Ecuador are in its “nature, landscapes, cultures . . . many lakes full
of crocodiles, of reptiles, an immense diversity.” For him traditional shamans, a
central element in the “living jungle,” can continue to exist alongside Western
medical teams. Antuni described the natural world of the rain forest in flights
of poetic oratory (associated with leadership among the Shuar). The rain forest
also represents freedom or a free life as illustrated by those Huaorani who have
74 CHAPTER 1
remained voluntarily removed from contact. The rain forest and the culture and
spirituality of the people who inhabit it are not separate and distinct as they are
in Western thought but are fused in the concept of the living jungle.
According to those interviewed, the living jungle is under threat from a
number of different sources. Most directly the “extractivist” policies of Rafael
Correa threaten not only the rain forest itself but the spiritual and cultural
worlds of which it is a central part. This is most directly illustrated by the pri-
vatization and commercialization of the humid tropical rainforest itself under
the Ecuadorian government’s development plan as described by Marlon Santi.
Petroleum extraction, according to Santi, one of the axes of the development
plan, brings with it the possibility of oil spills and pollution. Open-pit min-
ing, new to Ecuador, according to Santi, has the potential for similar effects.
Transcontinental highways and road construction associated with the develop-
ment axis have similar consequences because, as Mónica Chuji points out, “the
indigenous do not live in the roads.” Road construction can even pit indigenous
cultures of the sierra against those of the Amazon, as Rafael Antuni argues has
happened in Bolivia.
Even the assumptions on which public policy is based promote the legal
invisibility of indigenous people. Many people in the developed world cheered
Rafael Correa’s offer to solve the Yasuní-ITT conflict by agreeing to leave the
oil underground if the world community would put up the equivalent of half the
revenues from the deposits under the biosphere reserve (Plan A). If the funds
were not forthcoming, then Ecuador would go ahead with petroleum develop-
ment (Plan B—now being implemented). Neither plan involves the informed
and prior consent of the people who live in the reserve, both those in contact
with the West and those who still are not. For all practical purposes, these peo-
ple do not legally exist and neither does the “living jungle” of which they are
the heart and soul. The international community, the Ecuadorian state, and oil
companies legally exist. The sons and daughters of the Jaguar do not.
Invisibility extends not only to political and legal representation but to cul-
ture and even language. As Ampam Karakras points out, all Latin American
nation-states ignored the Amazonian groups in their claims for territory and
nationality and, in the case of Ecuador, continue to do so. As he explains, the
Catholic Church and later evangelical Protestant groups ignored the spirituality
of the Amazon and proceeded to try to Christianize its “savage” inhabitants.
Schools ignored Shuar language, history, and culture. According to Karakras,
even language itself submerged the existence of the Shuar first in the racist term
Indian derived from Columbus’s geographical error and later in the euphemistic
(and still current) language of indigenous. We are Shuar, he asserts, not “indig-
enous.” Similarly, he says, the “indigenous” term sumak kawsay (living well) is a
Kichwa term from the Andes, not a reflection of Shuar conceptualizations of
the living jungle; nor will a single indigenous justice system fit all the peoples
and nations of Ecuador.
For the Shuar, the Huaorani, the Kichwa, and the other peoples of the
Amazon, the policies, politics, and cultural practices of the Ecuadorian state
in general and the Correa administration in particular are existential, not sim-
ply economic or political, questions. According to Rafael Antuni, that is why
Pachakutik has undertaken a lawsuit to charge the Correa administration with
genocide and ethnocide. Without the Yasuní biosphere reserve there will be no
Huaorani because they and the biosphere are part of one single system—the liv-
ing jungle. There is only one Huaorani people, Ampam Karakras points out, and
they are there in the biosphere. This culture and other Amazonian cultures have
endured for thousands of years but they will be gone, its members dispersed or
exterminated, their cultures obliterated with the jungles that nurtured them.
The concepts of “indigenous nationalities” and the “living jungle” both rep-
resent symbolic rejections of the “fundamental categories of social life and con-
sciousness” of Western modernity. They are hybrid concepts that emerged out
of indigenous struggles against the development policies of the Ecuadorian
state and the monocultural nature of that state. They are symbolically revo-
lutionary. But the leaders from the Amazon categorically reject the Western
concept of revolution as it manifested itself in the twentieth and even the eigh-
teenth century. For Ampam Karakras, the rejection of revolution is part of a
wider rejection of liberal modernity—“From my perspective, citizen revolution
is a people’s revolution. Individuals. It’s like liberalism. Like France”—and it
includes twentieth-century Central American revolutions: “Sandinismo almost
denied the existence of people’s [collective] rights. Likewise, the revolution in
El Salvador didn’t have indigenous people’s participation either.” Marlon Santi
acknowledges the positive influence of the Marxist revolutionary traditions but
adds, “Now we see that they do not work.”
The leaders, however, also reject reform and call for a “social transformation.”
These symbolic revolutionaries want changes to be brought about by mass pro-
test and elections, as the leaders’ own biographies show, not by armed struggle.
Revolutionaries at the symbolic level, these leaders want to transform Western
understandings of the relationship between the indigenous and the state and
76 CHAPTER 1
between human beings and nature. But at the practical level of political action,
they want to accomplish their revolutionary goals through mass action in civil
society. In fact, they reject Western liberal and socialist ideas of revolution tout
court. These leaders are proposing a new model of utopian social change sym-
bolically revolutionary but practically democratic. Mass protests and elections
are their tools even if utopian dreams of interculturality and the living jungle
are their goals.
2
ECUARUNARI
Sumak Kawsay and the Communal Vision
Interviews with Delfín Tenesaca, Humberto Cholango,

and Luis Contento
E
CUARUNARI (ECUADOR Runakunapak Rikcharimuy, or “Awakening of
the Ecuadorian Indian” in Kichwa) was founded in 1972, eight years after
the Shuar Federation, and eventually came to represent all the Kichwa in
the Andean Highlands. It now calls itself the Confederation of Kichwa Organi-
zations of Ecuador although it does not represent the Amazonian Kichwa. Like
the Shuar, much of the initial organization was promoted by Catholic priests
influenced by liberation theology and the doctrine of inculturation, but unlike
the Shuar, a strong tradition of left organizing in the Sierra also influenced
and continues to influence both the organization and philosophy of ECUA-
RUNARI. Everyone interviewed for this chapter is a past or present officer
of ECUARUNARI and its affiliates, all are Highland Kichwa, and all reflect
the profound influence of progressive Catholicism and socialism as well as the
indigenous experience in their thinking and discourse. Their current views have
been shaped by decades of organizing experience, conflict, and negotiation with
the Ecuadorian state and coalition building with both progressive left and Ama-
zonian indigenous organizations.
Highland society is very different from that of the unstratified, horticultural
societies of the Amazon. The Highland Kichwa formed the lower caste in a
class- and race-stratified peasant society. From independence to the 1964 land
reform, the Sierra was controlled by the “trinity” of the hacienda, the Catholic
78 CHAPTER 2
Church, and the local representative of civil authority, the sheriff. Ecuador was
notable for the early (seventeenth-century) and almost complete agrarian dom-
inance of the hacienda. Hacienda owners (including the Church) worked their
lands through a system of serfdom (called huasipunguaje in Ecuador) in which
Kichwa received the usufruct of a plot of land in exchange for work on the
owner’s land. The owner controlled not only the land and labor but the social,
political, and even the cultural life of resident Kichwa communities on his land
and exerted considerable control over the minority of free communities. In
practical terms, the owner granted limited social and cultural autonomy to the
resident indigenous communities and relied on traditional authorities as well as
his overseer to maintain control. The system created a local, community-based
system of loyalties and tended to undermine any sense of collective Kichwa
identity in the highlands. These loyalties were, in any case, weak because of the
disruptions of the Incan conquest and the decentralized nature of pre-Inca
social structure.1
The absence of social stratification in the Amazon provided little basis for
class-based ideologies and organizations, and most of the organizing was done
by the Catholic Church or indigenous activists themselves. The highlands, on
the other hand, have a long tradition of class-based organizing by both social-
ists and communists. The Communist Party of Ecuador first organized peasant
unions on haciendas as early as the 1940s through its indigenous affiliate, the
Federación Ecuatoriana de Indios (FEI, Federation of Ecuadorian Indians).
Two of the icons of indigenous mobilization most often mentioned by those
interviewed, Dolores Cacuango and Tránsito Amaguaña, were both Commu-
nist Party members and indigenous activists. Nevertheless, the leadership of
the party and FEI were composed almost entirely of the nonindigenous. In
1972 socialists took control of the Church-based Federación Nacional de Orga-
nizaciones Campesinas (FENOC, National Federation of Peasant Organiza-
tions), originally founded by Catholics to contest communist control of the
countryside, and followed a class line emphasizing solidarity between indige-
nous and nonindigenous peasants.2
The rise of ECUARUNARI after 1972 did not so much represent a replace-
ment of class identity by indigenous identity as an incorporation of the for-
mer into the latter. The early history of the organization was replete with
internal debates between “peasantists” representing a peasant or class line and
“indigenists” representing an ethnic orientation. By 1985 the indigenists, aided
by ethnically oriented allies from the Amazon, had won both the internal
ECUARUNARI 79
and external debate but, as the interviews that follow indicate, there was no
lack of concern for such peasant material concerns as land, wages, working
conditions, water, credit, prices, development assistance, and rural economic
inequality.3 FEI, which had focused on the working conditions of serfs, lost
its raison d’être and most of its influence with the abolition of serfdom in
the 1964 land reform. FENOC, which continued to press land issues and
other peasant concerns, lost influence because of its failure to recognize the
intertwined issues of race and class in the highlands. Eventually it changed
its name to the Federación Ecuatoriana de Organizaciones Campesinas, Indi-
genas y Negras (FENOCIN, Ecuadorian Federation of Peasant, Indigenas
and Black Organizations) but it could never overcome its fundamentally
peasantist orientation.4
The 1964 and 1973 land reforms not only undermined the class line of both
FEI and FENOC; it radically changed the class structure itself. Lords and serfs
were replaced by independent communities composed of small, poor landown-
ers held together by indigenous traditions and ownership of community land.
Landowners converted their holdings to commercial operations not subject to
expropriation. Most of these communities took advantage of a 1937 law that
provided them with a legal identity.5 These communities (not ethnic groups
or peoples) became the base unit of ECUARUNARI formal organization. A
regional alliance of communities formed an organization of the second grade; a
provincial association of regional alliances became an organization of the third
grade and provincial organizations constituted ECUARUNARI. The commu-
nities were subject to rules of consensus and governed by assemblies with an
executive council (cabildo).6
Unlike FEI and FENOC, ECUARUNARI had indigenous people in posi-
tions of leadership from the start. But the initial organization was undertaken
by priests and nuns influenced by liberation theology. Since liberation theology
was itself strongly influenced by Marxism, the shift to church organizers did
not represent a sharp break with the left and in some places various strains of
Catholic theology and socialism were simultaneously involved in the organiza-
tion of ECUARUNARI affiliates.7 Monsignor Leonidas Proaño, the “Bishop
of the Indians,” became the most influential figure in the turn to liberation the-
ology. Delfín Tenesaca, president of ECUARUNARI, whose interview follows,
was a Catholic catechist and a student of Monsignor Proaño. The monsignor
had his greatest influence in the province of Chimborazo, but his influence,
even after his death in 1988, was (and is) national. He established radio schools
80 CHAPTER 2
broadcasting in Kichwa, conducted his own land reform of state-owned hacien-

das, and in 1972 sponsored the meeting at the former Church-owned hacienda
community of Teyepeque that gave birth to ECUARUNARI.8
SUMAK KAWSAY AND THE COMMUNAL VISION
True to the post–Vatican II doctrine of “inculturation,” the Church activists

emphasized those aspects of indigenous life that they found appealing. As
Barry J. Lyons notes, “Pastoral agents and indigenous activists often por-
tray indigenous tradition as economically ‘communitarian.’ They urge com-
munities to maintain communal land tenure where it exists, to continue or
revive communal labor practices, and to initiate communal productive proj-
ects.”9 Nonindigenous leftists and Catholic activists were both expelled from
ECUARUNARI in 1976 but their influence lingers, as is evident in the dis-
cussion of communitarian values, anticapitalism, and rural poverty that are so
prominent in the interviews that follow. The “preferential option for the poor”
emphasized by liberation theology also endures. As late as the 1990s, portraits
of Che Guevara were common in the offices of ECUARUNARI leaders,
and the organization strongly identified with the revolutionary struggles in
Central America.10
Today the influence of liberation theology and the traditional left is down-
played in favor of emphasizing the origins of ECUARUNARI’s discourse in
the traditions of indigenous communities. And, as Amalia Pallares points out,
the anticapitalism of ECUARUNARI is quite different from the surplus labor–
based anticapitalism of the orthodox communist and socialist left: “Instead of
focusing on the economic exploitation attributed to the capitalist system . . .
they viewed capitalism, as embodied in mestizo culture, as the culprit that led
to acculturation. . . . The recovery of cultural forms and traditions and the
maintenance of Indianness were understood as an anti-capitalist struggle.”11
Communalism favored by Catholic activists is seen as a product of indigenous
society itself and is a far cry from the utopian communism of the traditional
left. But like the traditional left, indigenous activists believe that a radical trans-
formation of existing society, if not a revolution in the traditional sense, will be
needed to infuse society with these values. The communalism stressed by those
interviewed is in fact closer to that of the utopian socialists denounced by Frie-
drich Engels than it is to the state control of traditional socialism. Nevertheless,
ECUARUNARI 81
there are clear continuities among the Catholicism of liberation theology, the
communism and socialism of the left, and the nationalist indigeneity of con-
temporary leaders of ECUARUNARI.
The communal vision is often expressed by the Kichwa phrase sumak kawsay,
often translated (or mistranslated) as “living well.” According to Luis Macas, the
phrase contains two concepts or expressions: “Sumak signifies plenty, greatness,
the just, the complementary, the superior.” Kawsay, he says, is the “interaction
of the totality of existence, movement,” “being itself.”12 So together the phrase
means, according to this definition by the official organization Consejo de
Desarrollo de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos del Ecuador (CONDENPE, Coun-
cil for the Development of Nationalities and Peoples of Ecuador), “to live in
community, plenty, solidarity, relationships between human beings and nature,
human beings and spirituality.”13 As imagined by those interviewed here, sumak
kawsay is not living well in the Western sense of material success. It is building
a rich social and community life in which the success of all is dependent on the
success of each. In development terms it signifies that it is better that all advance
together than a few get rich at the expense of the many, even if the latter leads
to faster development. The communitarian life signified by sumak kawsay is a
symbolically radical notion. It would undermine the fundamental cosmology of
Western capitalism and substitute an indigenous communal vision in its stead.
If implemented it would turn the world upside down.
The interviews that follow are shaped by these ideas. They also are shaped by
the common experience of early life in rural highland indigenous communities
and the course of indigenous struggles in recent decades.
VOICES OF ECUARUNARI
DELFÍN TENESACA: COLONIALISM, COSMOVISION, AND THE STATE
Delfín Tenesaca was born into extreme poverty in the indigenous community
of San José de Mayorazgo in Chimborazo. He dropped out of primary school
at age eleven and worked in a factory manufacturing ponchos. He completed
his education while at the same time working as an organizer in indigenous
communities, not entering high school until age thirty. He also became a
Catholic catechist, for two years was a student of Monseñor Proaño, and was
exposed to the theology of liberation. He later became director of the Leonidas
Proaño Center for Indigenous Education, which provided leadership training
82 CHAPTER 2
for indigenous students. In 1998 he was elected president of the Movimiento

Indígena de Chimborazo (MICH, Indigenous Movement of Chimborazo),
where he was twice reelected and served until 2008. In 2009 he was elected
president of ECUARUNARI, where he was serving at the time of the inter-
view. In April 2013 he submitted his thesis for the licenciatura at the Salesian
Polytechnic University in Quito.14
R EVO LU T I O N A N D S O C I A L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N
For Tenesaca it is necessary to change not only “the entire system, the structure
of the state” but also the interstate system that allows multinational companies
to destroy the natural base of life in indigenous communities and sentence them
to “certain death.”
We have colonialist states that continue colonizing. There is political

colonization, economic colonization, even spiritual colonization—the
multinational companies continue colonizing our lands and little by
little they are destroying them. Exhausting the land, doing away with
the forests, polluting the rivers, making the slopes disappear, doing away
with the sources of water—this is the certain death of the people, the
certain death of generations, and the certain death of nature. It is not
important to them that hundreds of indigenous are in these territories
and that they live off Mother Nature.
For Tenesaca, the most fundamental problem is the underlying way of thinking
of the state and the multinationals.
They all have a mentality of thinking only of money—money, money,

money, profit, profit, to hoard, accumulate and all of this. It does not
appear to them that they have to change their way of thinking. The
whole system, the laws are made by this mentality. The constitution, in
spite of our having changed it, remains only words. For example, sumak
kawsay. Sumak kawsay for us means beautiful, lovely, wonderful. Look-
ing at the scenery we see it’s nice. But within this scenery the people are
not living well, the territories are not good, the production is bad. How
are the poor living? When they have breakfast, when they have lunch,
ECUARUNARI 83
when they get sick? This is terrible. From the point of view of those who
suffer hunger in their own flesh, the republic has not changed, and is
not going to change.
According to Tenesaca, even Evo Morales, who appeared as a “continental

reference” for the indigenous movement, is being absorbed by the old structures:
“To open the highways in the jungle, take everything that is there.” “What has
to be done to govern ourselves in a better manner,” Tenesaca asks and then
answers his own question by saying the following:
The rules, the economic system, the institutions, need to change direc-
tion to say, “We should consume as people, as humans.” We are going to
spend the resources that are here and we are going to live the way you do.
This is how the exploitation of resources is going to be, but meanwhile
we have to renew them. I, like the last [ECUARUNARI president], live
in the community. We are equal. You respect me and I respect you. It
is a community of brothers. And I believe here is where sumak kawsay
happens—when we respect one another. Not killing the poor as it is
here—killing with hunger, killing with bullets, and killing with fear as
is happening now in Ecuador. Killing with fear by accusing the leaders
of being terrorists.
From this often comes the courage to even say “armed revolution” (or
even arm ourselves) as they did in Cuba. What is it that prevents us
from acting? Because if we struggle in this way they will not attend to us
because they will not respect us—what shall we do? Our proposal ulti-
mately at the level of organizations is to touch the consciousness, change
ourselves and live with ourselves. If the government, the police, the armed
forces, the companies come, to say, “Get out of these territories”—here we
are going to die, here we are going to confront them. This is the reality of
the communities. It is tremendous, this situation.
CO M M U N I T Y A N D CO S M OV I S I O N
What is important to both Tenesaca and the indigenous communities is a dif-

ferent organization and structure of life and a distinct vision of the world, or
“cosmovision,” which is threatened by the Ecuadorian state.
84 CHAPTER 2
We are completing 519 years the 12th of October [2012]. We have our
structure as indigenous peoples and nationalities. At the margin of a
state, at the margin of a government, at the margin, or perhaps forgotten,
excluded from a system—we have lived in our territories murdered and
everything. What is our practice—the care of the Pachamama? What
is our practice—the redistribution of land? What is our practice—the
sharing of water? Shared living is what we most have in common. We
have made an effort to be united and in our experience the communi-
tarian system, the collective system is very important. We are living here
with our practice and here is the confrontation with the state. What
does the state do? It does not come and say, “Look you are the people of
this place; I am bringing this project to do that.” No, they say, “We need
this territory, get out of here.” And then we say, “How’s that?” It’s ours;
it is our territory. Here we develop economically, politically, culturally,
socially. We are living here and no one can take it. If they don’t respect
my territories, I have to take up arms against he who comes and kill
them.
If they don’t respect my source of water and my territories, how do
I make them see? Kill or not kill? Those are our reflections because
before, when we didn’t do so, the police came with bombs, bullets, and
everything and we were frightened. We don’t cross our arms; we run or
we confront them. If we confront them, who wins? Will it be the army?
Us? I don’t believe we are going to win, and from here comes a collective
reflection. The millenarian experience says, “We are not men of arms; we
are men of peace.” As a result, we have our territory of harmony, our land
of peace. Instead of confrontation with the police, with the armed forces,
we say, “Mr. President, why do you send the police, why do you send the
military? We want to talk with you. But if you don’t pay attention we
are going to give our lives.”
I believe that the most important thing for us in practice is that we
need harmony between Mother Nature and human beings. Everyone
has the same right to live according to the principles of equality and
solidarity—to aid one another mutually. Also the communal principle,
the communitarian. Another principle is reciprocity and complemen-
tarity. If you lack something, I aid you; and, through reciprocity, I aid
you today, you aid me tomorrow. This is the millennial experience that
ECUARUNARI 85
we have lived. We cannot have hoarding. We cannot have inequality.

We cannot take from the mother [Earth], as we say here, in order to
acquire something. I believe that the source of our ideas is our orga-
nizations, our base, our adults, our elders, our millenarian sources. The
speeches of some leaders could have transformed, in some respects, the
ideological thinking of socialism. For example, ama sua, don’t lie, ama
llulla, don’t steal, ama quella, don’t be lazy, right? You could transform
this into socialist discourse. We as indigenous living in the communities
have sources of ideas that, we say, “we have to respect.” The land is for
all, the air is for all, the water is for all. And everything that is a resource
is for everyone at the service of everyone. And another principal source
is responsibility. You take the blame if this water source dries out; you
take the blame for those damaged trees, for this land that bears no fruit.
We are responsible where we have caused something wrong. This then
is the principle of responsibility. You take responsibility if those human
beings are not well. There is responsibility then, another very important
principle. Every one of these principles comes with details and from here
comes all that they call cosmovision.
We could say, for example, “That hill there—it is angry with us.” If I
say to you, “Señor, come and see if the hill is angry or not,” you are not
able to determine if it is angry. But if I ask my mother, “Is this hill angry
or tranquil?” my mother is going to say, “Tranquil.” You are going to say
to me, “Why is the sun there?” but my mother is going to say, “It isn’t
why the sun is there, but why is it laughing?” “And how do you see that
it is laughing?” My mother is going to give you an explanation. It is a
different vision. From there comes all that they call complementarity—
with the system of education coming from other places, but also with
our principles and the cosmovision, the culture. I believe that the source
of our ideas is in that daily, everyday experience. Because of this a farmer
knows when he plants, when he harvests, when he must not plant, when
he must not cut trees. But an agronomist, also knowledgeable, will know
many reasons why this occurs. But the indigenous farmer will say, “No,
I do it in this moment for God.” Why? Because the agronomist at the
most will explain technically and the farmer is going to show practically.
Similarly in all the areas we can understand—anthropology, sociology,
politics, social, and cultural affairs.
86 CHAPTER 2
Tenesaca is an admirer of the Cuban Revolution and Che Guevara and

believes this is true for other indigenous leaders. But this is not true in the
communities and he would not “include Che in his political discourse.” Indeed,
he believes that the dominance of the left has been an obstacle to indigenous
organization.
What has happened here in Ecuador is that socialist ideology, MPDist

[Movimiento Popular Democrático (Popular Democratic Movement)],
Marxist-Leninist has interfered. We, as an organization, we are going
to celebrate forty years [in 2012], as the first organization, ECUA-
RUNARI, that included a national project. This organization arose from
the struggle for land, for liberty for education, for everything, but above
all for cultural identity. We have lived almost all our lives with perse-
cution from the great economic powers. And also in this country there
is terrible racism. They are going to say that they don’t know whether a
man with a poncho, with a sombrero, has thoughts. They don’t know if
it is in his capabilities. Faced with all this there still is discrimination.
Despite these experiences, it is difficult to maintain loyalty even
among movement leaders. What has happened recently confirms this.
The currently designated ambassador [to Bolivia], Ricardo Ulcuango,
is a leader and someone who has made the journey a process. He has
the prestige of man of experience. No one would have thought that he
would be proposed as ambassador by a government that is criminalizing
the indigenous. If he had been a decent person, rational, coherent, he
would have said, “No, stop persecuting my brothers. I will talk to them. I
will be ambassador but if and only if you lift these charges, these attacks
or change the minerals law, or stop exploiting ITT-Yasuní or stop the
water law, improve the law. Improve the agrarian revolution.” But he
didn’t say it; the only thing he was ready to say was, “I am indebted,
I need resources, I was a leader and they didn’t take notice of me and
now I am leaving.” What does this mean? In the hour of truth we drop
our pants.
R A FA EL CO R R E A A N D T H E I N D I G EN O U S M OV EM EN T
Every time we are alienated. Why are we alienated? Every time it is

surprising to us what is being done against the indigenous movement.
ECUARUNARI 87
Perhaps we are saying, “Look, Mr. President, we are face to face, talking
seriously,” and now, bam! He appears on television giving gifts to some
group. Perhaps we say, “Now stop the foolishness. We are going to talk
about the issue of water.” Bam! He is naming one of us as ambassador.
We are saying, “Leave off the bullshit, now we are going to talk about the
agrarian revolution; look, let’s sit down.” Bam! The result is someone is
sentenced to jail. As Ecuadorians we are expecting some response from
the state and bam! We receive surprises. Now, for example, we have
said, “We are going to strengthen the communal governments” and the
government tells us we are going to create another organization parallel
to ECUARUNARI.
The government is creating another organization called the Coor-
dinator of Social Movements and Indigenous Movements. What they
are doing is taking from our rank and file. They want them to see the
bad, the malaise of our organization. So they say, “Delfín Tenesaca is
negotiating with the government, Delfín Tenesaca is a puppet, Delfín
Tenesaca is a thief, Delfín Tenesaca is a drunk, Delfín Tenesaca is a
womanizer, Delfín Tenesaca doesn’t lead—don’t join or follow him.”
Clearly the intention is to silence me.
I am going to give you an example. You are a member of a commu-
nity and are the head of this community. The government is interested
in your community because there is petroleum there or because there is
water. You haven’t done anything against the government, but they are
going to attack you. Let’s see. First attempt, “Head of the community, do
you want a job, do you want money to let me enter the community and
take the petroleum?” And the leader says, “No, I can’t take the money,
nor do I want a job—I am going to defend the community.” Then the
president of the republic begins to say, “Now they can’t do it because of
him; we are going to create another leader to see if this leader accepts
my proposal and lets them enter to take everything that is there.” This
is Ecuador and because of this they are declaring war.
HUMBERTO CHOLANGO: COMMUNALISM AND EXTRACTIVISM
Humberto Cholango was born in the indigenous community of Los Andes in

Pinchina Province. He is a member of the Kayambi Kichwa people. He was sec-
retary of the community when his father was community president. He was the
88 CHAPTER 2
first indigenous person registered at the mestizo school José Acosta Vallejo and
became the best student in his class. He is a graduate of Salesian Polytechnic
University in Quito. Among his numerous civic activities and positions, he was
coordinator of the Confederation of Kayambi, founder and secretary of Radio
Intipacha, and director of youth and education of ECUARUNARI from 2000
to 2003. He was elected president of ECUARUNARI for the term 2003–6.
At the time of the interviews he had just been elected president of CONAIE,
which he served from 2011 to 2014.15
S O C I A L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A N D T H E P LU R I N AT I O N A L S TAT E
For us the struggle for the plurinational state is the transformation of

the nature of the power of the state. Currently we have a colonial state,
a uninational state, a hegemonic state with colonial principles. We have
colonial institutions—justice, executive power—practices, culture. As
a result we believe that it is fundamental that the plurinational state
should include the diversity of these people. We are fourteen very dif-
ferent peoples [nations]. We have culture, we have languages, we have
different practices of democracy, and the plurinational state includes this
and strengthens democracy through a state in union. For us the plurina-
tional state transforms the nature of power on economic issues, on issues
of participation, on the issue of the administration of justice, on the issue
of education because we do not want a scientific and cultural homoge-
nization of only one vision. Obviously for us the goal is to construct an
equitable society, not a society with enormous asymmetries that do not
permit an adequate redistribution of the national wealth. Those are the
goals, the projects of the plurinational state that we have proposed. We
want to guarantee the participation of those peoples and nationalities
in decision-making because these are peoples and nationalities that are
here. We are making a contribution, not becoming an obstacle to devel-
opment. We are strengthening democracy and making a fundamental
contribution to the development of the country.
CO M M U N A L P R AC T I C E A N D S U M A K K AW S AY
For us the fundamental characteristic is communal practice—a commu-

nal economy, intercultural bilingual communal education; a communal
ECUARUNARI 89
state; but obviously respecting individual rights, respecting individual

property. But the most fundamental question is how the individual and
the private connect and coexist with the communal. For example, in
the exercise of land administration, we have individual properties, but,
above all, we have collective properties, collective territories that are
administered by peoples and nationalities. In the administration of jus-
tice, for example, traditional judges do not exist; instruments such as
the police and jails do not exist. For us the family exists, the community
exists; purification, not sanction, exists. For us rehabilitation happens
through reintegration into human society rather than by a sanction, a
punishment, a fine, a sentence. For us the important thing is the unity
of the community, the harmony of the community, not the division that
judging and imprisoning individuals generates.
For us the issue of nonrenewable resources is a point of debate that we
have posed not only for the country but as a challenge for all humanity.
We want to build a development regime of living well, of sumak kawsay,
a harmony, an equilibrium with nature and the beings that live here. Not
just humans but the plants, the animals—all the living beings that are
in this good country, in this world we live in. Because of this we believe
that peoples and states should not depend solely on an extractivist econ-
omy; we must look at other development alternatives. The extractive
petroleum and mineral economies are leading the world to a catastrophe
and, above all, they have created a culture of corruption, have created a
culture of vices, of petroleum, minerals, and agriculture mafias. It is an
inhumane model. It is a model that does not respect the basic norms
of human beings. It contaminates rivers, destroys nature, displaces peo-
ples, and destroys cultures. It does not respect the economic, social, and
cultural rights that the United Nations has proposed. For us then the
most fundamental issue is how to build a new development regime as a
great challenge for humanity. We are not opposed to development or to
investment, but what we do want is for mineral and petroleum exploita-
tion to be banned in certain territories. It is banned in Yasuní-ITT, the
Cordillera del Condor, for example. It is not the same as in Atacama
in Chile or Potosí Bolivia. For us high levels of biodiversity and water
sources that give life to the peoples, to all living things, exist.
For us economic goals do not exist. How do you measure an eco-
nomic goal that includes perhaps a car, a nice house, a good education,
90 CHAPTER 2
some dollars in the bank—no, no. For us what is important is life—that

a human being has consciousness and lives in harmony, that he lives in
peace and tranquility. Economic objectives do not exist for us but rather
a good life. A good life includes good nutrition, a good education, a
good farm, a good crop to feed yourself, and having internal peace. But
if you pollute rivers, if you come to impose alien things from outside, if
you persecute, if you generate conditions that are going to disturb our
culture, our people, obviously this is cultural violence.
There is diversity in the indigenous movement, but the ideological
thinking of the indigenous movement is communal thinking. Communal
thinking, collective thinking. If you propose Marxism, socialism, commu-
nism, propose what you like, but we from our origin are communalists.
Our struggle is inspired by Rumiñahui, our struggle is inspired by Fer-
nando Daquilema, our struggle is inspired by many mestizos who also
struggled. The figure of Che Guevara is universal—you could not say he is
solely for the indigenous—hated by some, admired by others. I admire his
independent struggles whether they were indigenous or not, not the meth-
ods that he used but the concept, the ideology, the position that he took.
R A FA EL CO R R E A , T H E S TAT E , A N D T H E
I N D I G EN O U S M OV EM EN T
It is not only a conflict between President Correa and the indigenous

movement. It is a conflict with the state—with a uninational state, with
a vision of cultural homogenization, with various practices and vices. It
is not only conflict because before we got along well with the govern-
ments, since 1990, with this government as well. After all the dialogues
that the indigenous movement has had, all the dialogues that failed, we
have not arrived at an accord, a happy end with the government. There
exist here two visions, two cultures, two civilizations—one with an occi-
dental vision and another civilization, the indigenous civilization, with
a communal vision. Now with President Correa the conflicts are very
intense obviously on issues of the economy, on issues of the exercise of
political power, of the vision concerning natural resources. He continues
with the same idea of the extraction of petroleum, of the international
market. Obviously the country needs investment; the country needs
foreign exchange to implement public policy. But what is fundamental
for us is to begin to develop the sumak kawsay and “el buen vivir.”
ECUARUNARI 91
Extractivism is not part of sumak kawsay. It is the opposite position,

because extractivism creates pollution, devastates cultures, devastates
nature. Would sumak kawsay do this? If you extract petroleum, you
can live well for a moment. Perhaps for twenty or thirty years you have
money, but what will happen to the rest of the generations, the rest of
society afterward? Mining and petroleum pollution lasts 100 or 150 years
until nature once again regenerates, practically restores itself. But what
will happen with those people who lose their cultures? [To change this
situation] it is fundamental to have a national debate not only with the
government but with all the actors in society, with academe, with the
powers of the state, with other functions of the state. It is necessary to
debate with the intellectuals; it is necessary to debate even with the
Church or with the armed forces. A debate that is not going to be
resolved in one year, two years, three years—it is necessary to plan a
process for the long term.
Obviously mobilizations [will be necessary] but even beyond the
mobilizations there is a civilized debate, a debate about understanding,
and in this academia has to play a role—the universities, the schools
have to change their vision of the weight of their studies, their vision
of looking at a single Ecuador, not a single Ecuador but diverse in its
interior.
LUIS CONTENTO: SUMAK KAWSAY AND THE

CITIZENS’ REVOLUTION
At the time of the interview, Luis Contento was serving as vice president of
ECUARUNARI. He had previously been named mayor of an alternative indig-
enous municipal government of Saraguro. The elected mayor was eventually
forced to resign. Contento is a leader of the Coordinadora de Organizaciones
del Pueblo Kichwa Saraguro (CORPUKIS, Coordinator of the Kichwa
Saraguro People).16
The first proposal that we made in 1990 was that Ecuador had to be
a plurinational and multicultural state. Twenty years had to pass before
the proposal that we made in 1990 [was acknowledged]. Now recently
in 2008 our constitution recognized the country as a plurinational and
92 CHAPTER 2
intercultural state. This is obviously an advance on paper, but we have not

been able to see Article 1 of the constitution in practice. The Ecuadorian
state maintains the same structure and the same secondary laws. The con-
stitution says beautiful things but the secondary laws contradict what the
constitution says. We are living then in an epoch of contradictions—in
an epoch of uncertainty. Laws that we want to change so that they are
aligned with the constitution are simply not passed and remain in limbo.
This does not give us sufficient guarantees to continue thinking they will
put this constitution into practice. We are seriously worried. Nevertheless,
we maintain the firm position that Ecuador needs a total reconstruction.
We have proposed that all the laws have to have the plurinational as
their common thread. This is the difficulty—the first problem we had
with the mineral law. It was not passed. It remained in limbo. The dead-
line passed and the law was approved by the ministry. Clearly it is legal,
but for us on the other hand it was not legitimized by society because it
was approved solely by the president. The problem is that there was not
an understanding between the legislature and the executive and the law
remains in limbo. Why does it remain in limbo?
Precisely because there were no accords between civil society and the
government. We have said, first, that there should not be open-pit mining
on a large scale in Ecuador. This is the first point of total disagreement.
The other thing we have said is that there should not be mining in con-
servation sites and national reserves. Another thing we have said is that if
there are going to be sites where indigenous communities or campesinos
live, first they have to consult the communities in accord with Convention
169 of the Declaration of the United Nations, which says that indigenous
communities must be consulted where they will be affected by some law
or activity of the state. In accord with this, as we have said, and in accord
with Article 59 of the constitution where we are authorized to make use
of collective rights, we have said that if we are going to see mining in sites
of settlement of indigenous communities, they have to be consulted.
T H E N AT I O N
Nationality or nation—it is the same. We consider that a nationality or

a nation has to combine various elements. First it should have territory,
then it should have a language, its own style of dress, common ancestral
ECUARUNARI 93
roots, and its own contemporary cultural manifestations. If you com-

bine these five elements, you can define nation or nationality. Similarly
Covenant 161 [169?] of the United Nations Declaration says that each
people or nation can define itself. Here [in Ecuador], for example, are
the Kichwas. We are a nationality, a Kichwa nation that has eighteen
peoples. Here there are Saraguros, Salasacas, Otavaleños, et cetera, but
we are a nation, a Kichwa nationality that combines those elements. We
have territory in that we are in the Andes; we have a language that is
Kichwa; we have our forms of dress; we have common roots; we have
different cultural manifestations. The Shuar are another nation, another
nationality we have and so on. This is the condition of being a nation
or nationality.
But obviously we are part of a state; we are not a different state. We
have the right to receive the benefits that the state grants to the inhab-
itants of Ecuador. We also have obligations to contribute to the state
that are right and proper as Ecuadorians. But as a nation and nationality
we have our autonomy and the exercise of collective rights according to
Article 59 of the constitution—our autonomy not in the sense of iso-
lating us from the administration of the state but in the sense of having
our own education, exercising our own forms of health, making our
own forms of solidary, having a communal economy. This is what they
have not understood, because they have said that when we considered
ourselves as a nationality, as a nation, we are forming another state and
this is not so.
No one denies that in Ecuador there are various cultures. No one
denies it because it is visible. But, in contrast, we are not living the
intercultural in social relations. To be intercultural you have to have
respect toward other cultures, and we consider that here there is not that
respect. There is always racism, at times even of the indigenous toward
the mestizos, but particularly from the mestizos toward the indigenous.
While we continue to have this racism, there is not interculturality. We
are arguing that the relationship between the peoples and national-
ities and the mestizos in the rural and urban sectors has to be equal.
How can you explain, for example, the fact that the state assigns $320
annually per urban child for education but they give $120 annually per
rural child for education? Why this difference? They should have the
same treatment. Why is it that only the mestizo have access to public
94 CHAPTER 2
institutions like ministries and boards and the indigenous do not? Only
in CONDENPE, which is an institution for the indigenous, are there
indigenous representatives. In other places they make him a janitor or a
secretary, but there is no decision-making power.
ELE C T I O N S, T H E LEF T, A N D S U M A K K AW S AY
I asked Luis Contento how he would bring about the profound changes he
sought and what were the principal influences on the development of the ide-
ology of the indigenous movement. He replied:
Definitely in a democratic country it has to be through elections. We

have to create in society the conditions for our proposal to be under-
stood and accepted because the other way around we are always going
to lose. To win we would have to win the government as they have done,
for example, in Bolivia. They easily won the government but if it is to be
the same with us, we would have to ally with a strong political party. We
identify with the left sector. Not the extreme left, not the revolutionary
left, but an intelligent left, hardworking, committed. We cannot run to
ally ourselves with the MPD, with socialism; we can’t do that because
this is not our vision. They act from a party point of view. We act from
the point of view of life, of sumak kawsay. We can’t understand one
another.
Similarly, with the Right. Why? Because for them sumak kawsay is to
take everything that there is in Mother Earth to assist with education,
health, housing. For us, on the contrary, it says, “No, to respect nature is
to be reciprocal with nature.” Why? To guarantee the life of this gener-
ation and those to come. On the other hand, our form of extractivism is
to guarantee life and sumak kawsay for this generation and those that
come so that they are not without water, or with unproductive lands,
pollution, weak ozone layers. What guarantees do we leave them? It is
not only the survival of the indigenous; it is life in its broadest extension
over the universe. The life of plants, of animals, of human beings. To
be able to talk of life, then, is to talk of reducing the emission of gases
by the industrialized countries, conserve what we have at the least, not
pollute the air, not pollute the environment, and guarantee clean air,
clean water, and a healthy environment. No transgenics, no insecticides,
ECUARUNARI 95
no soy of this type, to have healthy food and be able to guarantee the life
of human beings. Our proposal is really very broad: sumak kawsay, food
sovereignty—it is not a simple question, a small question.
We are planning a total change that comes from our own experience
in life, from our own experience in the communities. I, the vice president
[of Ecuarunari], and the compañeros that I know, ten compañeros, come
from a community where we have experienced daily national problems:
the lack of work, pollution, contaminated products, the lack of money,
the absence of the state. We have experienced these problems, right?
The lack of attention to health, education, and production—we have
experienced it. This is where our proposals come from. At the most ini-
tially there was some influence but not ideological; rather, from persons
who wanted to give some guidance—from the progressive Church, for
example. Perhaps from the parties of the left. Initially there was some
relation with them, with Cuba, but recently I believe that it is our own
proposal. We are young leaders. I have no such influences, either from
the left or Russia or Cuba, not even from the Church, because we have
had our own education.
We have very important personalities, such as Dolores Cacuango and
Monsignor Proaño, who have lived in the communities, who have been
with us, who proposed a new form of work, of orienting the Church, for
example. And also compañeros who at the moment are still alive, who
are in the communities, such as “Lucho” Macas himself, for example,
who is a national leader. José María Cabascango. Nina Pacari aiding
us from the judiciary, giving us judgments. These are our compañeros
whom we believe in.
PAC H A K U T I K A N D R A FA EL CO R R E A
Pachakutik is the political arm of CONAIE but has independence.

Why? Because CONAIE is only from the indigenous movement and
Pachakutik is for various sectors, not only for the indigenous. Here there
are intellectuals, professionals, guilds, urban sectors, indigenous, cam-
pesinos, blacks—all the tendencies. Not political tendencies but rather
all the sectors—this is Pachakutik.
First, Correa is intelligent. I supposed that he was trained to govern
the country because at first he took all our proposals and presented them
96 CHAPTER 2
to the nation. As a result we said, “Clearly he is someone who is going

to execute our proposals here, we are going forward with Correa.” Our
compañeros in Pachakutik thought so to. We co-governed some three,
four months like this. We governed with him. Our compañeros were
ministers and everything. But little by little he faded and ended up on a
different side—not following the path that our political project laid out.
We said to our compañeros, “We have nothing to do here. Get out.” As
a result some of our compañeros, like Virgilio Hernández, renounced
Pachakutik and stayed with Correa to this day. Now his discourse is
vanishing and no one believes him. At the moment he talks of a “citi-
zens’ revolution” but nothing about fundamentals. He is talking about
a revolution only in words. It is the same partocracy that has governed
the country seeking immediate, not long-term, solutions. This is not our
way of thinking. Our way of thinking is life in the long run.
The principal [point of disagreement] is the economic model. We
have said, “No to extractivism”; Correa says, “Yes to extractivism.” We
have said, “No to mining”; Correa says, “Yes to mining.” We have said,
“Yes to the agrarian revolution, but redistribute the land”; and Correa
says, “No.” We have said, “Yes to the new water law,” but redistribute the
water, reform the rates, make a plurinational water council; and Correa
says, “No, the only entity that may have authority over water is the gov-
ernment.” We say, “Clearly, but a council has to issue policies concerning
the use of water.” There are these differences but more so the economic
part. We have said that they must think of a sustainable economy, sus-
tainable without affecting nature, without affecting the Pachamama, and
in this regard we do not agree with him.
The other is our vision of government. We believe always in a par-
ticipative government— alternative, democratic. This government has
only mentioned it in words. It is governing with the same political elite
that has [always] governed the country. The same officials that have
been advising and forming part of government after government. There
has not been an alternative. I am not saying that they are bad but I am
saying simply that there should be an alternative; there should be other
proposals as well.
We are proposing that Ecuador has to be refounded or restructured
in the institutional realm, in the realm of rules. They only want to pre-
pare Ecuador’s regulations, to pave the way for mining. We, on the other
ECUARUNARI 97
hand, are trying to make this legislation very clear so that people under-
stand where they can mine if they do mine. It should not be that only 5
percent of the royalties benefit the country, and the firms that come to
extract various minerals take away 95 percent. Life is different for us and
the government and we are not going to understand one another unless
Rafael has a thought transplant.
SUMAK KAWSAY AND THE COMMUNAL VISION

COSMOVISION, COMMUNAL THINKING,
AND COMMUNITY EXPERIENCE
Like all revolutionaries, the leaders of ECUARUNARI dream of a new world

built on the ashes of the old. This new world comes, to some extent, from a
romanticized version of the old world of the pre-Columbian community influ-
enced indirectly through the reigning ideologies of the twentieth century and
the organizational methods and contemporary concerns of the twenty-first. At
the core of the revolutionary mission is a “symbolic struggle” between periph-
eral capitalism as a cultural and social system and communalism as a distinct
and antithetical vision of the world and its fundamental social categories and
symbolic assumptions. This alternative vision is expressed in various terms by
Delfín Tenesaca, Humberto Cholango, and Luis Contento. For Delfín Tene-
saca, indigenous cosmovision provides an alternative philosophical frame where
suns laugh and people live together in equality, community, and reciprocity.
He rejects the capitalist culture based on “money, money, money, profit, profit”
hoarding and accumulation on which Ecuadorian society and its system of laws,
including its 2008 constitution, are based: “Everyone has the same right to live
and this principle of equality and the principle of solidarity—to aid one another
mutually. . . . Also the communal . . . the land is for all . . . everything that is a
resource is for everyone, at the service of everyone.”
Humberto Cholango and Luis Contento express exactly the same con-
cept in slightly different terms—“communal thinking” for Cholango, and
community experience for Contento. According to Cholango, “communal
practice” is a fundamental characteristic of indigenous life—“a communal
economy, intercultural, bilingual communal education, a communal state . . .
collective properties”—a system of justice that is based on reinserting the
individual into the community. Capitalism in its peripheral manifestation
98 CHAPTER 2
is “an inhumane model” that does not respect “the minimal needs of human
beings, contaminating rivers, destroying nature, displacing people, destroying
cultures.” It leads to “cultural violence.” But at an even deeper level there exist
“two visions, two cultures, two civilizations, one with an occidental vision and
another civilization, the indigenous civilization, with a communal vision.” The
alternative is communal thinking, collective thinking: “We from our origin
are communalists.” Cholango even goes so far as to say that “for us economic
goals do not exist . . . for us what is important is life—that a human being has
consciousness” and lives in harmony, peace, and tranquility supported by good
nutrition, good education, and a “good farm.” For Contento, the kind of “total
change” they are planning comes from “our own experience in the communi-
ties” and is so different from Correa’s that only a “thought transplant” for the
president would bring them into agreement.
EQUALITY, SOLIDARITY, AND COMMUNITY
All the ECUARUNARI leaders emphasize the origin of communal thinking

in the generational experience of indigenous peoples in their own commu-
nities. Communalism is now at the heart of the ECUARUNARI vision but
even Humberto Cholango—while conceding that Marxism, socialism, and
communism also emphasize communal thinking—still insists that “we from
our origin are communalists.” Given ECUARUNARI’s origins in liberation
theology and the revolutionary Marxist left, it seems unlikely that the mil-
lennial experience of communities alone gave rise to this particular pattern
of communalist thought, but such an assertion cannot be confirmed with the
materials at hand. In any case, the parallels between socialist notions of com-
munity and solidarity and indigenous “communal thought” are striking. So are
the differences. There are few Marxists among those interviewed in Ecuador
or Bolivia, and solidarity of the indigenous poor has replaced class solidarity
as the dominant narrative.
Still, “the poor” as a social category and economic inequality as a social
problem are themes in the ECUARUNARI interviews in a way in which
they did not appear in interviews from the Amazon. Close to the beginning
of his interview, Delfín Tenesaca brings up the problem of poverty directly,
“How are the poor living?” and then answers his own question by saying that
from the point of view of those who suffer from hunger, the republic has not
and will not change: “It is terrible.” For Humberto Cholango, the extractivist
ECUARUNARI 99
model does not even respect the minimum norms of human beings or the
economic, social, and cultural rights that the United Nations has proposed.
Luis Contento emphasizes not only poverty but also massive inequality in
the distribution of educational funds between urban and rural (indigenous)
schools, and in the redistribution of land in agrarian reform.
SUMAK KAWSAY AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
Sumak kawsay is a concept in general use in the indigenous movement in

the Andes and in all three interviews. As Luis Contento says, “We act from
the point of view of life, of sumak kawsay.” For Delfín Tenesaca, sumak kaw-
say means “beautiful, lovely, wonderful,” and it happens when “we are equal.
You respect me and I respect you. It is a community of brothers.” Cholango
rejects core elements of the American dream, “a car, a nice house, a good
education, some dollars in the bank,” saying that “what is important is life—
that a human being has consciousness and lives in harmony; that he lives in
peace and tranquility.” For him a development regime should reflect these
goals. Sumak kawsay is the embodiment of communal thinking in economic
practice. Individual economic achievement is replaced with the idea of living
well (and living better) collectively and equally. Sumak kawsay includes the
idea of living not only in harmony with other human beings but in harmony
with nature. According to Tenesaca, Cholango, and Contento, this harmony
is under immediate and lethal threat from the development policies of Rafael
Correa.
EXTRACTIVISM AND THE PACHAMAMA
Now, as in the past, there is a strong strain of anticapitalism in the views of the
ECUARUNARI leaders. Nevertheless, “extractivism,” as it is called by indig-
enous leaders, the form that capitalism and capitalist development have taken
in Rafael Correa’s Ecuador, is a particular target for criticism and antisystemic
mobilization. Based on these interviews and others in Ecuador, the meaning
of extractivism on the indigenous left is an economic model based on the
unrestricted and unlimited exploitation of natural resources by multinational
or Ecuadorian corporations, whatever the human, cultural, or ecological costs.
As Humberto Cholango notes, CONAIE is not opposed to investment or
development but the particular form it has taken in a dependent country like
100 CHAPTER 2
Ecuador. The country is now and always has been an export economy depen-
dent on a few or often only one primary commodity (now oil). In the Correa
version of extractivism, the revenues from the export economy are diverted
into large-scale social programs and infrastructure improvements rather than
wasted on the lifestyles and business ventures of the ruling political caste. The
ECUARUNARI leaders are adamantly opposed to the Correa model.
The basis of their objections is as much moral as material. Extractivism
violates fundamental assumptions about the natural world that are part of
communal thinking, cosmovision, and sumak kawsay. Often the figure of the
Kichwa and Aymara earth goddess Pachamama is invoked to capture this
bundle of meanings. “Our practice,” says Delfín Tenesaca, is “the care of the
Pachamama.” For him one of the most important components of cosmovision
is the harmony between Mother Nature and human beings. Cholango wants
a development regime that shows “a harmony, an equilibrium with nature
and the beings that live here. Not just humans but the plants, the animals.”
For Contento the ideas of the Right (i.e., Correa) are to “take everything that
there is in Mother Earth” while for the indigenous it is “to respect nature,” to
“be reciprocal with nature.” The consequences of “extractivism” are described
in moral absolutes: “This is the certain death of the people, the certain death
of generations, and the certain death of nature” (Tenesaca). “It is a model
that does not respect the basic norms of human beings” (Cholango). “It is not
only the survival of indigenous life; it is life in its broadest extension over the
universe” (Contento).
THE PLURINATIONAL STATE AND RAFAEL CORREA
The demand for a plurinational state was the foundational principle of CONAIE
and its constituent organizations and is reflected in all three interviews in this
chapter, although it is emphasized especially by Luis Contento. All repeat the
ethnic definition of a nation in terms of territory, language, culture, and history,
and all denounce the current Ecuadorian state and the Correa administration
in particular as uninational and unicultural. Even though they acknowledge that
the 2008 constitution recognizes Ecuador as a plurinational and intercultural
state, all deny that, at least so far, this has had little, if any, practical significance.
In fact, they claim, under Rafael Correa a bad situation has become even worse.
As Tenesaca and Contento both contend, Rafael Correa’s “citizens’ revolution”
is a revolution in words only.
ECUARUNARI 101
In the opinions of all three leaders, Correa has made a mockery of the
very notion of a state where the collective interests of indigenous groups have
formal representation through their chosen leaders. On the contrary, these
interests are ignored and the leaders criminalized and insulted in the rush to
extract natural resources from their traditional lands. Delfín Tenesaca, himself
arrested and charged with terrorism, put it most directly—“they are declaring
war.” For Humberto Cholango, “we have a colonial state, a uninational state, a
hegemonic state with colonial principles—justice, executive power—practices,
culture.” And as has already been noted, this hegemonic culture or civilization
is in direct contradiction to the communal world that Cholango represents.
Or, in Contento’s words, “We have said that they must think of a sustainable
economy, sustainable without affecting nature, without affecting the Pacham-
ama, and in this regard we do not agree with him.” Delfín Tenesaca sees his
colleague in the struggle and Correa’s newly appointed ambassador Ricardo
Ulcuango as another example of Correa’s efforts to undermine the indigenous
leadership by luring away disaffected leaders with political plums so that the
government can “take everything that is there” on indigenous community
lands.
REVOLUTIONARIES WITHOUT A REVOLUTION
A revolution, I have argued, is based on a fundamental transformation of the

categories of social life and consciousness, and the symbolic assumptions on
which these are based. To say that Delfín Tenesaca’s cosmovision is based
on alternative symbolic assumptions is to belabor the obvious. Suns do not
laugh in occidental thought; nor is land held by all. At the deepest level, as all
these leaders confirm, the leadership of ECUARUNARI thinks in commu-
nal, not individual, terms. It is a question, as Cholango says, of two different
civilizations—not simply two civilizations that are different from one another,
but two civilizations in contradiction. Such contradictions can be resolved in
ways other than revolution, and perhaps they will be. But the current politi-
cal polarization in Ecuador has made such compromise difficult although not
impossible. Still, ECUARUNARI leaders think that only a total transforma-
tion of state and society will resolve this contradiction, and although they have
retreated to their communities, they have no intention of giving up political
struggle. With power added to the equation, symbolic contradictions become
revolutionary ones.
102 CHAPTER 2
But I am not referring to revolution in the twentieth-century sense of

an armed uprising, overthrowing the state, and seizing power. The leaders of
ECUARUNARI are democrats and wish to act in civil society, symbolic rev-
olutionaries though they may be. None of them have abandoned the idea of a
mass uprising in the style of 1990. Cholango is building coalitions with other
members of the left; Tenesaca wants to change not only the structure of the state
but the multinational system that supports it, although according to him, “the
millenarian experience says, ‘We are not men of arms; we are men of peace.’”
Contento wants to follow the model of Evo Morales in Bolivia and take power
through mass protest and elections. As in the Amazon, the Ecuadorian paradox
is symbolic revolution and democratic action.
FIGURE 1 . Marlon Santi (left) and Humberto Cholango (center) hold a press conference
on September 21, 2009, to announce a protest. Courtesy of AP.
FIGURE 2 . As part of a nationwide strike that shut down most provincial capitals and
major roads in an echo of 1990, indigenous people march in Quito on August 13, 2015.
Courtesy of Reuters.
FIGURE 3 . Indigenous protesters storm military lines outside National Congress Build-
ing, January 21, 2000. Courtesy of Reuters.
FIGURE 4 . Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez (left) and CONAIE president Antonio Vargas
(right) stand in the National Congress Building and celebrate their temporary seizure
of power, January 21, 2000. Courtesy of Reuters.
3
PACHAKUTIK
Indigenous Jeffersonians
Interviews with Gerónimo Yantalema, Salvador Quishpe, and Auki Tituaña
A
T THE beginning of 1996, CONAIE began its ill-fated entry into
electoral politics with the formation of its own political party, the
Movimiento de Unidad Plurinacional Pachakutik–Nuevo País
(MUPP-NP), usually called simply Pachakutik. The entry into politics, instead
of unifying the movement, polarized it and revealed deep contradictions in
the strategy itself—between the Sierra and Amazonian wings of CONAIE;
between a social movement based on mass protest and a political party focused
on winning elections; and, most significantly, between a movement focused
on indigenous demands and a party attempting to form coalitions with the
nonindigenous left.
The Sierra leadership of ECUARUNARI had always been suspicious of elec-
toral involvement, and enthusiasm for an indigenous political party came first
from the Amazon. As early as 1990, Amazon leaders Rafael Pandam and Valerio
Grefa had been pushing for electoral involvement, and CONFENIAE was the
first to form its own political party, the Movimiento Político Pachakutik in 1995.1
The CONAIE leadership responded with its own party, Movimiento Alternativo
Plurinacional, and in a compromise the formal party title included elements of
both (Movimiento de Unidad Plurinacional Pachakutik). For the 1996 elections
the new party decided to ally with the Nuevo País movement of Freddy Ehlers, a
prominent nonindigenous television personality, hence the full title.2
106 CHAPTER 3
Coalitions with nonindigenous popular groups were essential for Pacha-

kutik, and in the 1996 elections the party allied not only with Ehlers’s Nuevo
País movement but with a broad grouping of labor, environmental, and human
rights groups and neighborhood associations, the Coordinadora de Movimien-
tos Sociales (CMS, Social Movements Coordinator).3 As Marc Becker notes,
the new party’s first outing was a “moderate success,” gaining eight deputies
and two mayors, including Auki Tituaña, who went on to become one of Ecua-
dor’s most successful mayors and whose interview follows, and Luis Macas as a
national deputy.4 Ehlers lost the presidential race to Abdala Bucaram (1996–97),
whose term was cut short by mass protests led by CONAIE. At the same time,
Amazon Pachakutik enthusiasts Rafael Pandam and Valerio Grefa supported
Bucaram in the election and accepted positions in his government. Bucaram was
removed from office based on alleged mental incompetence in what amounted
to a constitutional overthrow of the government. In the subsequent 1998 elec-
tions, a center-right candidate, the ill-fated Jamil Mahuad, was elected as his
replacement.
On January 21, 2000, Mahuad was overthrown by a coalition of indigenous
protestors lead by CONAIE president Antonio Vargas and midlevel officers in
the army. The army stood back and allowed the protestors to occupy the presi-
dential palace and the national legislative and Supreme Court buildings. For a
few heady hours, a “Junta of National Salvation”—consisting of Vargas repre-
senting CONAIE, Colonel Lucio Gutiérrrez representing the midlevel officers,
and the head of the Supreme Court to provide the appearance of legality—ruled
in the name of the Pachakutik motto and Incan injunction, ama llulla, ama
quella, ama sua (don’t lie, don’t be lazy, don’t steal). The senior command, reacting
to U.S. pressure, ordered Gutiérrez to step down and replaced him with one of
their own, General Carlos Mendoza, who promptly resigned, dissolving the
junta. The presidency then passed to Vice President Gustavo Noboa (2000–
2003), one of Ecuador’s richest men.5
The coup and the subsequent 2002 election represented both the apogee of
Pachakutik power and the beginning of its rapid decline. In the election, coup
plotter Lucio Gutiérrez ran for president in coalition with Pachakutik and with
the backing of CONAIE. In the second round Gutiérrez may have received
more than 80 percent of the indigenous vote; although Pachakutik legislative
candidates only received at most 40 percent, this vote represented a historic
high.6 Pachakutik since its founding in 1996 has never received a majority of
the indigenous vote, let alone a substantial share of the nonindigenous vote.
PACHAKUTIK 107
Nevertheless, the widespread view that Pachakutik-CONAIE was responsible

for the Gutiérrez victory gave them bargaining power in the new administra-
tion. Notably, Nina Pacari was appointed foreign minister (the first indigenous
woman to hold that office in the history of Latin America) and Luis Macas was
appointed minister of agriculture.
The coalition was short lived as Gutiérrez moved to the right, abandoning
the antineoliberal discourse of his campaign. Tensions increased as Gutiér-
rez tried to build a clientelist structure in indigenous communities, bypass-
ing CONAIE and returning to neoliberal economic policies. In August 2003
Gutiérrez declared the coalition at an end and demanded the resignation of all
Pachakutik appointees. The next day Nina Pacari, Luis Macas, and many others
resigned.7 The failed coalition with Gutiérrez was, said Nina Pacari in 2010, like
a “political cyclone” sweeping through Pachakutik. “When the hurricane passes
it uproots things. . . . At that moment some remain standing but others are
uprooted” and go with the flow. Although Pacari went on to say that the move-
ment was reconstructing itself, the Gutiérrez “political cyclone” did permanent
damage and even today Pachakutik is a shadow of its former self.8
That damage was only increased by Pachakutik’s disastrous relationship with
current Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa. Burned by its association with
Gutiérrez, Pachakutik rejected coalitions with Rafael Correa in the first round
of the 2006 elections. Luis Macas even declined an offer of the vice presidency
from Correa. Instead, Pachakutik decided to run Macas himself in the presiden-
tial voting. The results were disastrous. Despite near universal name recognition,
Macas received only 2.2 percent of the national vote and only 24 percent of the
indigenous vote.9
Although Pachakutik supported Correa in the second round and in the early
months of his administration, differences over CONAIE control of government
entities concerned with indigenous affairs and mining concessions in largely
indigenous areas broke the alliance and led to a bitter and rancorous conflict.
Correa resorted to name calling, which many indigenous leaders, as the inter-
views indicate, found insulting, if not openly racist. CONAIE criticism of Cor-
rea, as the interviews also indicate, was unrelenting. His growing popularity, as
evidenced by his subsequent success in the presidential elections of 2009 and in
2013, did nothing to diminish this conflict and may have even deepened it. By
2011 the split, as revealed in all the interviews, seemed irrevocable.
The interviews that follow are all with Pachakutik elected officials who
managed to be elected post-Gutiérrez and post-Correa. The interviews differ
108 CHAPTER 3
from those of ECUARUNARI officials that appear in chapter 4. Read along-

side findings of previous research, they suggest that the deepest contradiction
in Pachakutik was between the material discourse popular with the indigenous
base of the party (and many nonindigenous voters) and the cultural discourse
of plurinationality evoked by the party leadership and in all the interviews of
Pachakutik elected officials that appear in this chapter. Plurinationality is the
founding principle of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador
(CONAIE) and is emphasized by almost all indigenous leaders interviewed in
Ecuador. The strong emphasis on issues of economic development and the mate-
rial concerns of rural people in general and rural indigenous people in particular,
however, sets these interviews off from most others collected in Ecuador. In
the age of Correa, surviving Pachakutik elected officials share his concern with
economic development but strongly oppose his methods of accomplishing it.
VOICES OF PACHAKUTIK
GERÓNIMO YANTALEMA: EXTRACTIVISM VERSUS THE
INDIGENOUS PEASANTRY
Gerónimo Yantalema, a Puruway Kichwa, was born on March 13, 1967, on a

hacienda in Guamote, Chimborazo, where as a child he worked as a shepherd
and absorbed the culture and religion of a traditional indigenous community.
He worked as a carpenter to support his studies for an electrician’s degree at
the Riobamba extension of the Universidad Central del Ecuador. His life was
fundamentally transformed by the 1990 uprising; he associated himself with
the Indigenous Evangelical Church of Chimborazo and later founded the
Indigenous Center for Theological Studies, inspired by liberation theology. He
participated in all the major indigenous mobilizations of the 1990s and was an
adviser to the first indigenous prefect of Chimborazo. He served as an adviser
to Pachakutik campaigns in Chimborazo before being elected to the National
Assembly as deputy from Chimborazo, a position that he held at the time of
the interviews.10
S O C I A L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N
The Pachakutik movement emerges from a discussion between the

indigenous movements and the social movements. The model imposed
PACHAKUTIK 109
by the colony has no respect for nature. The people are not involved in
decision-making and only those in government decide. In other words,
this colonial state is vertical; decisions are made by the government;
indigenous peoples are excluded. It’s as if they don’t exist. The change
we’re proposing is a structural change toward a government that stems
from the diversity of Ecuador’s peoples and nationalities, and which
deepens participatory and communal democracy.
In our communities communal government is not the responsibility
of the leader, of the president, but rather it is our collective responsibility.
The most important decisions are not made by the president; they’re
made collectively. That is what we call participatory and communal
democracy, as opposed to representative democracy, a democracy based
on majorities and minorities. The majority decides through their vote.
We believe it shouldn’t be that way. Democracy has to be participatory
and communal. Every collective must take part in decision-making.
EX T R AC T I V I S M A N D AG R I C U LT U R A L D EV EL O P M EN T
With regard to the economy, we’re very concerned about this govern-
ment’s extractivist model. For them, the economy should be based on
hydrocarbons, mining, and agricultural exports. We say this is a very
limited and destructive model, which will bring in money during cer-
tain periods but not others. What’s more, it affects the Pachamama and
nature, because both oil extraction and mining destroy the biodiversity
of entire areas, and pollute the earth and water where indigenous peo-
ples live. This pollution systematically destroys biodiversity and human
life. Moreover, the state has invested all its resources in export agricul-
ture, that is, agricultural products to sell abroad [for the benefit of ] large
landowners, while it’s forgotten about peasants and indigenous people.
It’s not just this government; every government has done the same.
They’ve all scrambled to invest money on roads, irrigation infrastruc-
ture, pesticides, herbicides, all for export agriculture. Peasant and indig-
enous producers who cultivate the land every day to produce their daily
food are forgotten. They have no political, economic, or social backing,
and we believe the balance has to be restored. It can’t be that one sector
alone benefits from state policies; every sector has to benefit equally.
Just as the export agriculture sector needs state resources to enable it to
110 CHAPTER 3
export and generate foreign exchange, small-scale indigenous farmers

need not only state resources but also the redistribution of the land and
water to produce food for the country and even consider exporting their
products.
We’ve always advocated a very open culture. For example, the
Tawantinsuyu model, which dates back to the times before the colonial
conquest, demonstrates that we weren’t closed off but that there was a
great deal of engagement and an economic dynamic based on exchange.
And we wholeheartedly reject any economic model that is only con-
cerned about today and not tomorrow, and is only concerned about
money and not human beings and the Pachamama.
So that’s in terms of economics. As for society and culture, we believe
that every culture and language has to be strengthened on equal terms.
But in this country, as in the rest of Latin America, indigenous cultures
are being progressively exterminated, murdered, through state policies.
Speaking the language of indigenous peoples, using our clothing, cel-
ebrating our festivities, and carrying out our rituals, our ceremonies, is
seen as folklore, as something inferior, underdeveloped or reflecting a
lack of civilization. They believed this to such an extent that this gov-
ernment issued a decree that gave the Catholic missions permission to
civilize indigenous people.
It’s outrageous that this is our state model, and we want to change
it. That state model can’t continue to exist after five hundred years of
destroying nature and destroying human beings. It needs to be struc-
turally changed, and that’s a key element of the indigenous movement’s
proposal. Of course, part of our experience is living with the Pacham-
ama and with the land. Our culture comes from living with the land,
cultivating it, growing seeds, looking after the water, looking after the
moorlands, so the cities can have water. That’s why we ask how there can
be a system of government that ignores the sector that feeds the people;
that ignores the sector that looks after the water so there’s water for
everyone; and that instead invests in this extractive, agricultural export
model. So those are broadly the structural changes we’re proposing in
the political, economic, and social spheres.
These are deep changes totally opposed to the current model, which,
as I said earlier, seeks to make money from everything, regardless of
whom it hurts. It’s money-centered, and wants money for everything.
PACHAKUTIK 111
They think that they can solve everything just with money, bureaucracy,
projects, everything. But that money comes from exploiting nature, so we
say you don’t need money first for everything. We say you need to learn
to live in harmony with other human beings and with the Pachamama.
L A N D R EF O R M
That’s another key issue in structural change. In Ecuador, 1 percent of

the population owns and privatizes the water and the land, and 65 per-
cent of the water is in the hands of agricultural exporters, which make
up 1 percent of the population. In other words, it’s in the hands of large
banana- or sugar-producing haciendas and other production systems,
while barely 12 percent of the water is in the hands of small-scale indig-
enous peasants, who produce food to guarantee our food sovereignty.
The Montecristi Constitution [2008] gave the government two years
to carry out a comprehensive audit of all the water concessions and
implement a redistribution plan, especially for small-scale indigenous
peasants, but absolutely nothing has been done. It’s the same with the
land. There are vast expanses of land [in the sierra], but the best land for
cultivation is concentrated in the hands of 1 percent, 4 percent of the
population. It’s a major business, land. Meanwhile, small-scale indig-
enous peasants, the productive units of food sovereignty, barely have
access to small areas. In the Andean sierras, each property is no larger
than a block, or a hectare.
[Land reform] has been been practically useless, because all it’s done
is hand out land that had been destroyed by the haciendas’ monocul-
tures without accompanying policies to improve salaries, for example.
Another major problem that the indigenous-peasant sector faces is the
fact that their products have no value in the market, while the price of
agricultural exports is regulated, with minimum and maximum prices.
Indigenous peasants’ products aren’t regulated by the government. The
market regulates them.
In other words, one can work the land for a whole year, or six months,
and end up with a useless product. In many cases one has to sell, for
example, a sack of potatoes for as little as a dollar, at best five, even
ten dollars. But imagine, a sack of sugar now costs forty dollars, which
means I have to sell ten sacks of my product to be able to buy the other
112 CHAPTER 3
agricultural export product. These are specific examples of the fact that
even though the constitution now describes our country’s new model as
a popular solidarity economy, in reality that’s not applied. The markets
or middlemen still set the rules of the game
There’s been no concern for other sectors. It’s not enough to hand
over land to the peasants. Investment is required to make the land usable
and to implement basic irrigation infrastructure so that water that is
mostly going to hydroelectric dams, which in many cases are private,
goes to indigenous peasant producers and to use the water that is going
to the agricultural export sector for indigenous peasant producers too.
In the Andean highlands of Ecuador we still use flood irrigation, and
the state hasn’t considered investing in new technology to improve irri-
gation such as sprinkler or spray irrigation systems.
That’s where we see a lack of policies. Certain lands were redistrib-
uted but others remained intact. For example, here in Cotopaxi and
Pichincha, there are vast swaths of land still in the hands of haciendas.
It’s even worse in the coast; it’s brutal there, you can see how irrigation
channels go straight through to the banana plantations, straight past the
Montubios, but it’s no use to them or the peasants, no use.
All this requires a huge structural change, a change in the way we
think, because people, governments, have so far only been concerned
with generating foreign exchange in the medium term. Because they
know that in the short term those lands will be destroyed and eroded,
don’t they? So that’s the principle behind what we’re proposing.
N AT I O N A N D N AT I O N A LI T Y
Well, our starting point is the fact that the colony, the Spanish con-
querors, claimed that there was only one civilization here, the coloniz-
ers’ civilization, and those that were already here were uncivilized, they
didn’t have a civilization. We’ve argued that they were wrong. Here in
Ecuador, as in the whole of Latin America, there are many other peoples
and civilizations. In Ecuador, we have verified and proved the formal
existence of fourteen nationalities and eighteen peoples, which is to say
there isn’t a single civilization. Each of these fourteen nationalities has
its own government, its own language, and its own territories, as well as
its memory and history.
PACHAKUTIK 113
Why are they called nationalities? Because they have their own lan-
guage; that’s why I’m Kichwa. My nationality is Kichwa, and we’ve just
had a meeting with the people of Shuar, Ashuar nationality, etcetera.
Each has its own language, through which it communicates and creates
its own thought structures, its own way of seeing the world, which is
expressed through its language.
So, for example, you do so through English, right? We do so through
Kichwa, and Spaniards through Spanish. Therefore we’ve said that
Ecuador shouldn’t be a nation but a plurinational state, that is, plural.
There is a territory, or diverse territories, diverse languages, diverse sys-
tems of justice or of law. Because people here also used to think that
there was only one justice system in Ecuador, one legal system, but we’ve
argued that isn’t the case. There are also different jurisdictions, there’s the
ordinary jurisdiction that comes from the West, but each nationality also
has its own jurisdiction, which we call indigenous justice.
That means that the law under the ordinary justice system is not nec-
essarily the same, or even similar to the law of indigenous peoples, which
in Ecuador we call indigenous justice. That’s why in Ecuador there’s a
serious confrontation when we say, “OK, let ordinary justice do what it
must in its own jurisdiction, and indigenous justice will enforce the law
in its indigenous jurisdiction.” So a nationality, as we see it, is a group
of human beings who speak the same language, who inhabit a common
territory, who share a historical memory, and of course who have the
same form of government and economic system. Because the Amazon
is not the same as the mountains, is it? We have different economic
systems in the mountains and in the Amazon.
That’s why we say that Ecuador is a plurinational state. That is, it’s
not just another state. It is a state where there are many nationalities that
come together, each with its own indigenous justice system. That’s why
we say we have to establish a plurinational government, not a colonial or
uninational government. Well, under Article 171 of our current constitu-
tion, all internal conflicts of the communities, peoples, and nationalities
must be handled internally by the indigenous justice system.
So when conflicts in the communities end up in the hands of ordi-
nary justice—not state justice, because the state encompasses both,
but Western justice—they should be sent back to indigenous justice.
When there’s a conflict between the two jurisdictions, the body respon-
114 CHAPTER 3
sible for resolving such conflicts, according to the constitution, is the

Constitutional Court of Ecuador. The court must decide whether or
not the indigenous justice system acted according to its own laws and
whether or not it respected human rights—to a judge or a prosecutor;
they belong to a different jurisdiction. Indigenous justice has no judges
or prosecutors. It works through assemblies and their authorities who
are the leaders of the communities.
Well, our thinking is based mainly on our people’s ancestral heritage—on

all this wisdom accumulated over thousands of years, about economics,
society, government, and politics, even spirituality or religion. We say
our starting point is our thousands-of-years-old heritage, which is a way
to see and live in the world. However, over these thousands of years of
colonization there have been many external influences, for example, the
Catholic Church itself, which practically legitimized the violence of the
conquest. They legitimized it through the Bible and the cross, because
these uncivilized people needed to be civilized. These earthly creatures
needed to know God, the Catholic God, right?
Even though we have our own spirituality that is very much based
on the acknowledgment of the divinity of the Pachamama, in the past
few decades certain radical tendencies have emerged within Catholicism
that seek to civilize us to make us children of God. Though there are
others within the Catholic Church who are saying no, they’re also chil-
dren of God even if they don’t become Catholic. It’s liberation theology
that begins to argue that there’s a possibility of finding God outside the
Church.
In fact, indigenous peoples were very spiritual. Right here we have a
sanctuary, opposite a mountain, the most important holy place for the
Quitu Cara people. And where I come from, Chimborazo, the highest
mountain is a major spiritual center for the Puruháes, and there’s also
the Colca lake, so we had very important spiritual centers. In Chim-
borazo the first Catholic church was built exactly on the most import-
ant spiritual site for the Puruháes. They gradually built their statues
there, the symbols of their Gods, to systematically destroy indigenous
spirituality.
PACHAKUTIK 115
So there’s a very strong influence of the Church, but also other sec-
tors such as Proaño in the case of Chimborazo, who begins to see the
face of God in indigenous peoples, and begins to doubt himself. For
example, Proaño begins to question the seizure of indigenous peasants’
land; he believed that it had to be returned. He leads an initiative to
give back the land the Church has seized, because it’s stolen from our
grandparents. So they didn’t have to buy the land; they had to give it
back to us. That was very important.
And then there is a Protestant sector that came to Ecuador one hun-
dred years ago and established missionary stations in Chimborazo and
elsewhere in the country. They also had a strong influence on the indig-
enous movement’s current thinking. Their influence has to do with the
fact that one of the key measures of the Protestants in Ecuador is that
they begin to work in the language of the communities. They research
the language, they speak the language, they even translate and refine the
Kichwa language. The first translation was done in Chimborazo. And
that opened up the possibility of establishing indigenous evangelical
churches, with no control from the pope, or an office in the United
States or anything even though the missionaries were from the United
States. And that independence allows them to begin to value their own
spirituality.
Because, of course, the strategy was to accept Protestantism in order
to be able to experience indigenous spirituality—they were independent;
they didn’t depend on anyone from outside. Then in 1967 the Indigenous
Evangelical Association is created. In other words, it wasn’t a Methodist
Church or Lutheran Church association but an association of indige-
nous evangelicals from Chimborazo. It was a very important break.
Then they begin to practice their worship, with their music; they
invent their own chants; they begin to meet up to eat like they used to
do during festivities, and that allows them to value their spirituality but
also their identity. The missionaries were very much against identity.
They disagreed with our music because they wanted us to sing North
American music.
They didn’t agree with us going to school, because they said we might
go out into the world and sin. They didn’t like us driving cars either. They
didn’t even drive themselves. But all of this made indigenous people
react by doing the opposite, sending their kids to school, buying cars and
116 CHAPTER 3
driving them. So the indigenous movement in Ecuador was influenced

by Catholic violence, but there was also another line that was beginning
to understand us, and also by the Protestant violence that imposed cer-
tain things on us but also gave us other options.
Yes and of course we were very influenced by politics, in this case
by the Communist Party, because it had a lot in common with the
communal aspects of our ancestral heritage. Communism begins to
have points in common with the communal, and it begins to exert its
influence, particularly in the way we assert our demands. So we could
say we’ve had religious and political influences, and of course also
from the right.
Protestantism in particular comes from a right-wing line of thinking,
doesn’t it? We’re God’s children, and therefore we’re the richest in the
world. We’re not far behind the United States. So we could say those
are our influences, among others. But in the face of all this we’ve had
the strength of our own culture—our language, our wisdom, the way
we dress, the way we do things, our products, our food. We always say
that, to date, no other culture in Ecuador has been able to produce
what we’ve produced: quinoa, potatoes, amaranth, and corn—these are
all produced by our cultures, by our peoples. Spain hardly brought any
products to contribute to this dynamic. All of this has led to a need
to not do everything from a single point of view but rather from this
diversity that coexists in Ecuador.
S Y M B O L S A N D F I G U R ES
They are both indigenous and nonindigenous figures. Proaño was one of
the precursors of liberation theory, particularly the fact that he began to
see indigenous people as a civilization when the trend was to see them
as uncivilized people who needed to be civilized. Among the women,
in Chimborazo, we talk of Dolores Cacuango; Tránsito Amaguaña on
a national level, currently and for the past few decades; Nina Pacari, a
brilliant woman who has brought a lot to the debate and is now a min-
ister of the Constitutional Court. There’s also Blanca Chancoso, another
woman leader who has contributed a great deal.
Among the men, in Chimborazo we talk of Ambrosio Lasso, for
example, who led the struggle to reclaim the land. He was even sent
PACHAKUTIK 117
to jail in the Galápagos, but he came back and continued to organize

the people to reclaim the land. Luis Macas has also contributed a lot
to the resurgence of the indigenous movement. There have been many
men and women who have contributed and, of course, men and women
who gave their lives in these struggles. There’s a very important man
in Chimborazo, Fernando Daquilema, who led an uprising against the
haciendas and alcabalas [sales taxes] that involved more than ten thou-
sand men and women. That means we never just stand by.
All along we’ve resisted but also made proposals, just like we do now.
Now, in the decade of 2011, we continue to resist, while we also make
proposals. We are in the assembly, but that doesn’t mean we sit down;
rather, we do a lot of collective work with the communities, with the
peoples and nationalities. When they’re not being listened to at the
assembly, we take the assembly to the communities. With the water
law, we mobilized around ten thousand people to close the assembly, to
ensure the opinion of the communities was also heard.
Pachakutik has been very successful in local elections; not so in
national elections. Locally, we have parish councils, municipalities, and
provincial governments. We control five key provinces in Ecuador:
Chimborazo and Cotopaxi in the mountains, and Orellana, Morona
Santiago, and Zamora Chinchipe in the Amazon. Those provinces are
where most oil exploitation and mining takes place, and the provinces
that produce food for domestic consumption, or food sovereignty, are
located in the Andean highlands. Where we haven’t been successful is
at the national level.
That’s been due to several factors. It’s been partly due to the fact that
certain groups that identify themselves with indigenous causes were
initially with us but later went with the highest bidder. Yes, for example,
in the last elections, when we went with Lucho Macas, these nonin-
digenous sectors that were with Pachakutik went with the other side.
Nonindigenous sectors still can’t understand the indigenous movement’s
proposal, and they’re only concerned with the media—they don’t think
about the long term. They’re concerned with gaining a seat in govern-
ment; they think being in government is the answer, but they’re wrong.
We don’t believe being in government is the solution; we believe that
structural changes have to be effected on every front—communities,
peoples, nationalities, and the central government.
118 CHAPTER 3
Initially we [indigenous people] backed our own proposal, and later

we had no choice. We had to decide between Álvaro Noboa and Correa.
Of course, we chose the least bad alternative, apparently; only it turned
out we’d chosen the worst.
So we’ve been very successful in terms of everything we’ve incorpo-
rated into the new constitution: participatory democracy, participatory
budget, the empty chair, indigenous justice, collective rights, the new pop-
ular solidarity economy, because we began to implement these measures
in the local governments. When we took office in the municipalities, we
began to establish parliaments for them to legislate and supervise, so it’s
no longer the mayor who decides for everyone. The changes we made
when we took office in local governments are now part of the constitution.
Thus we could say that we’ve been very successful and we’ve shaped the
new structure of the state. Unfortunately, those currently in government
see this as a hindrance. It’s no longer what they want. A case in point is
Ecuador’s justice system. First, the constitution establishes that citizens
can change the members of the Council of the Judiciary through a public
merit-based competitive process, but they say, “No, that’s no use to us, to
the interests of the government; let us select the members ourselves.” It’s
a step back from everything we achieved in the constitution, because their
logic is the Western logic of a vertical government imposing everything.
Of course, their strategy of controlling the justice system is designed
to cover up the government’s corruption and the deals they’re making
under the table with transnational corporations: for example, the deals
they’re making with oil and mining companies; not with community or
local businesses but with multinational corporations. And credits too. In
the past, governments were very tough on the external debt. Now this
government happily borrows from other countries, and makes bad loans
too. For instance, they’ve just sold Ecuador’s oil to China for four years.
And at the same time, China has just loaned Ecuador $2 billion. Wow.
China’s making an excellent deal there.
CO R R E A A N D T H E I N D I G EN O U S M OV EM EN T
Well, there’s a very simple explanation. We indigenous people have

learned to know the others. First, we speak the others’ language, Span-
ish. Because we speak their language, we know their thought structures,
PACHAKUTIK 119
and we’ve also studied at their schools and universities, so we know how
they think, how they design the state, how they do things; but the others
don’t know our language, haven’t studied our thinking, and don’t know
what it is we’re proposing.
[Correa speaks] some Kichwa. The only thing he can do is to speak
badly. You know very well that you can’t communicate with others if
you don’t speak their language, much less understand their thought
structures. That’s why there’s this contradiction in Ecuador. That’s the
greatest discrepancy, in my view. But also, initially Correa claimed that
[his policies] were based on the ideas of the indigenous movement, on
the sumak kawsay.
What is sumak kawsay? It’s to achieve harmony between human
beings and nature. But Correa comes along and says, “Yes, sumak kaw-
say, but exploiting oil, mining, and destroying the Pachamama.” We say
that’s not sumak kawsay. That’s destroying the lives of human beings,
and it’s not something new. In Ecuador, 80 percent of the rivers and
streams have already been contaminated by the mining and hydrocar-
bons industry, and every city dumps its waste in the river. The only city
that processes its water is Cuenca. Every other city is dumping polluted
water into the rivers—hospital, industrial, and household waste; in other
words, total destruction.
And Correa is nowhere to be heard saying, “Let’s put an end to
this” and “That’s where we need to invest money.” They have no interest
in investing in that. They only want to invest in roads, huge things,
monuments, buildings that show that the government is doing some-
thing, bridges. But what’s the use of a beautiful bridge when the river
is dead? What’s the point of beautiful roads when indigenous peasants
have no means to produce and get a fair price for their products? What’s
the point of having so many built-up cities if below them indigenous
peasants are drinking their wastewater? And not just that—those peas-
ants’ produce comes to the city, and city dwellers eat that contaminated
produce. Now Correa says, “I’m going to build more hospitals and buy
more equipment,” but unless he nips the problem of pollution in the
bud, people will continue to crowd hospitals. That’s not sumak kawsay.
It’s all back to front, isn’t it? He’s continuing the same extractive,
colonial model; that’s why there’s a confrontation. And it’s going to be
the same with every government. When governments arrive they have
120 CHAPTER 3
good ideas, but when they get into office they realize that power does
not belong to those who govern but to the companies they hire. They’re
the ones that call the shots: mining companies, oil companies, export
companies. Take, for example, the issue of flour in Ecuador. There is a
single importer of flour, Álvaro Noboa, and he sets the rules of the game
in Ecuador. The government doesn’t promote the production of barley
or wheat in Ecuador because it follows the orders of this importer, on
whom Ecuador depends for its bread.
If we had a sumak kawsay government, right now rural areas would
be active to ensure that there’s flour available, and that there are no
mafias telling you this is the price, even though they’re the biggest tax
evaders. The biggest tax evader is an exporter that controls the country’s
economy, and so on with the rest of them. Every government in Ecua-
dor has ended up handing itself over to these companies, which control
everything—most of them are international, transnational corporations.
And now they are also countries—public corporations from China, Ven-
ezuela, Brazil, which do the same as private corporations.
Of course, they buy your oil, process it, and sell it back to you. We’re
selling them oil at sixty, forty dollars, but we buy it back at twice, three
times that price as gasoline, diesel, and lubricants. It’s a brutal, unre-
solved relationship. So the greatest conflict is not that Correa is who he
is but that his government surrendered to the same old model, and later
began to defend that model and confront the poor, whereas if he were a
true revolutionary he’d be fighting those corporations, those mafias, and
defending the poor. But instead he fights the poor.
He gives alms to the people. He doesn’t give us social assistance
programs. Indigenous peasants have taken care of our own health. I
come from Cebadas, where the doctor only works four hours a day; for
the remaining twenty hours there’s no medical care. It’s the same with
education in the communities; there are no classrooms, no equipment,
no infrastructure, but he claims he’s running millennium schools. I think
he’s built fifteen in the whole country, and there are over three thousand
schools in Ecuador. That’s the main problem, and he’s given indigenous
people subsidies, charity, to keep them quiet.
But he hasn’t invested, even though it’s us, indigenous peasants, who
cultivate the land to guarantee the food supply. Go to any market from
Quito to Riobamba and you’ll find none of the products of the export
PACHAKUTIK 121
agriculture sector; you’ll find the indigenous peasants’ products. We are

the main food suppliers in Ecuador, and not only do we provide food,
but we do so at subsidized prices; that is, the consumer doesn’t pay us
even 20 percent or 50 percent of the value of our products. We’re giving
away food to the state. Of course, because if I produce a sack of potatoes
for ten dollars or twenty and I sell it in the market for one dollar or five
dollars I’m giving away the difference to the state, but the state has done
absolutely nothing about this.
There are no [price] controls; that’s the main problem. Correa says,
“I’m supporting indigenous people, I’m lifting them out of poverty,” but
as long as he keeps handing out charity subsidies, people are going to
continue depending on them and casting aside their wisdom and ability.
That’s why we say, “Why doesn’t he invest?” For example, state banks
don’t give credits to indigenous peasants, but they should, and their
work, the food they provide, should be enough of a guarantee. But since
they don’t own vast swaths of land, they can’t mortgage their land and
therefore have no access to loans.
I’ve just visited the corn producers from the coast, the Montubios,
and they say, “The government barely gives us urea; they hand out herbi-
cides and pesticides, but they deliver the urea two months late, when the
season is over and it’s no longer any use.” We believe policies like these
further impoverish the poor instead of lifting them out of poverty. For
example, the government invests several million dollars in development
bonds. Those resources could instead have been invested in productive
enterprises, and we’d now have a great economic momentum in the
community. Instead, each person receives their thirty dollars and that’s
how much I spend each month, so it’s no use to me whatsoever.
It creates dependency and reduces capacities. With the subsidies I
don’t develop my capacities; rather, I wait for the next installment so I
can buy something. Before we didn’t need that, we didn’t need a dol-
lar to survive. We knew how to rotate crops so we could eat our own
products, as well as generating a surplus to enable us to deal with other
issues. Regarding education, indigenous people were forced to migrate
to big cities because there are no good schools in the parishes and the
cantons. Where’s the government’s investment? Rather, it forces us to
come to Quito or Riobamba to study, to work as hired workers, to buy
our food, to buy everything. Since we can’t live like that, we quit uni-
122 CHAPTER 3
versity after one or two years. So the government has no social policies
for indigenous people.
It’s even worse in the Amazon, where in some places there isn’t even
a phone line, no television, no radio; they are completely abandoned and
isolated. To get there you need to travel up the river by boat for several
days. There are no government policies in those areas, so it’s not true that
there are policies that serve the interests of the peoples and nationalities.
On the other hand, we have established four indigenous institutions in
Ecuador: the Secretaría de Salud Indígena [Indigenous Health Secre-
tariat]; the Peoples’ Secretariat [CONDENPE]; the Dirección de Edu-
cación Intercultural Bilingüe [Directorate for Bilingual Intercultural
Education]; and the Fondo de los Pueblos y Nacionalidades [FODEPE,
Peoples and Nationalities’ Fund]. The purpose of FODEPE is to give
loans. Indigenous children receive $250 toward their bilingual education.
SALVADOR QUISHPE: MULTINATIONAL MINING

VERSUS CÁPAC RAYMI
Salvador Quishpe, a Saraguro Kichwa, was born on March 15, 1971, in Piuntza,
Zamora. He studied locally in Loja and Zamora Chinchipe before advancing
to the Universidad de San Francisco in Quito, where he received a sociology
degree with subspecialties in Kichwa and English. He was an exchange stu-
dent at Eastern Mennonite University for the 1996–97 academic year. He has
participated in the Ecuadorian indigenous movement since childhood and has
served in various positions, including director of the Federation of Saraguros
of Zamora Chinchipe, president of ECUARUNARI, and political coordinator
of CONAIE. A longtime Pachakutik militant, he was elected to two terms as
deputy from Zamora Chinchipe (in 2002 and again in 2006). Since 2009 he has
been prefect of Zamora Chinchipe.11
Yes, we’re proposing many things that were never part of Ecuador’s
constitutional and political framework. Maybe, in some respects, what
we want is not a reform. In some respects perhaps we’re talking about
reform, but one of the points we’ve proposed is plurinationality, right?
And plurinationality includes many aspects, minor issues that can dis-
PACHAKUTIK 123
rupt the political, economic, cultural, and social modus vivendi but it’s
not like we’re proposing a revolution in the Cuban or leftist style. No,
we’re not proposing a revolution of that nature, because today revo-
lution is understood as a Cuban-style revolution. Isn’t it? Abolishing
private property. That’s Cuba. And we’re not proposing to abolish private
property. I think this is important to note in order to compare it to the
changes we’re proposing in our own style. Then what are we talking
about? That’s why I wouldn’t want to talk about a revolution, because
today a revolution is understood in relation to private property. That’s
the concept of revolution nowadays, to abolish private property, and
we don’t propose to do so; therefore I don’t want to talk of revolution.
We propose including certain changes in Ecuador’s political, economic,
social, and cultural context. We need the territory to be seen not just as
an economic instrument but also as a living space that is about much
more than buying and selling. Territory is a priceless good, since life is
priceless. For example, we propose that certain resources, such as water,
be considered collectively owned resources, and we’ve managed to write
into the constitution a ban on privatizing water. We want to guarantee
that water remains a common good, to be used by all. Of course it’s
necessary to pay the infrastructure cost for the use of water, but in itself
it’s a resource that can’t be privatized; those resources must be at the
service of the general public. Like water, land is essential to our lives.
That’s why I use water as an example, because it’s essential for life,
and so is land. Perhaps this is somewhat hard to understand for the
political sectors currently in power in Ecuador. Even the revolutionary
left has problems because in practice we’ve seen the revolutionary left
use the land as merchandise, especially natural resources: oil, gold, cop-
per. We think we need to properly assess whether there’s a lot of gold
in this territory, but is it better to exploit it or to leave it? This question
hasn’t been taken into account in the history of humanity, because wher-
ever a resource such as gold or oil has been found, it’s been a cause for
celebration.
But today we can already see that the exploitation of natural resources
has had a very serious impact, and that the planet is more than sick, so
we say this is not the time. We don’t share the view that finding gold
or copper is cause for celebration; it’s cause for respect. That’s why we
disagree a lot with Cuba and now Venezuela, a country going through a
124 CHAPTER 3
revolution. In Ecuador they say they’re going through a revolution. But

with regard to natural resources it’s the same. Capitalism or revolution,
they’re doing exactly the same.
EX T R AC T I V I S M V ER S U S “ I N FA N T I LE E CO L O G I S T S ”
If they find gold or copper, they’re not thinking about the consequences
of exploiting those resources for the peoples, for the future; they’re only
thinking, “I have to extract this copper, because if I don’t I’ll die and
Ecuador may fall apart.” So we say, “We don’t agree with that. Stop for
a moment; let’s properly evaluate it first.” I live in the province fiur-
thest south in the southernmost tip of Ecuador. And my province is
known for its mining resources: gold, silver, copper, and there are fifty
other metals. Of course, if we start thinking of today’s profits, perhaps
I should’ve said, “OK, no problem, we’ll start to exploit the land and
I’ll get 10 percent, 15 percent, let’s negotiate and that’s that, everything’s
alright.” But it’s not only about what percentage I’m going to get, even
if it’s 50 percent; it’s about what’s going to happen to that territory.
Here we strongly disagree with the current government, because it
says that the gold must be extracted, and we must agree with them. The
current government says we’re sitting on a chair made of gold and we’re
begging for alms. Of course, this might make sense from a capitalist
point of view, but from the perspective of our people it’s the other way
round. For us, those mountains, that water, is not only giving us life but
also guaranteeing the life of the rest of Ecuador and the rest of human-
ity. In those mountains here in South America and the Amazon, there
is still so much flora, so many biological reserves. There are reserves in
other places in the world too. They are small lungs that are still alive and
which allow us to go on living.
We believe it’s about time that humanity takes into account the value
of food supplies in its thinking. Otherwise we’re all on our way to die.
How many more years can the Earth resist if we keep using natural
resources at this rate? It’s a difficult issue for our governments to under-
stand, be they right-wing or left-wing. We have the same problem with
both right-wing and left-wing governments, since both think only of
obtaining dollars for the present moment; they don’t think of water,
PACHAKUTIK 125
or biological reserves, or the Earth’s forests for the future. I think it’s
necessary. What we’re doing is love.
That’s the problem; the government doesn’t want to have anything
to do with this. When we talk about these issues, it turns out we’re
“infantile ecologists.” Yes, we’re the stupid left, the pawns, the Indian
clique. Those are the names the government has given us on account of
our views. But we can’t not say these things given our past experience
with oil.
S TAT E EN T ER P R I S E A N D F O R EI G N CA P I TA L
Here they created a state-owned mining company. Now there’s a state-

owned mining company, but Ecuador’s major copper and gold reserves
are not in the hands of the state-owned mining company but in the
hands of companies like Kinross, which you probably know. Kinross is
a Canadian company. Copper is in the hands of Corriente Resources,
which is also Canadian, with capital from many other countries. Now
copper is also in the hands of Chinese businessmen. The Chinese own
97 percent of my province’s copper. They bought 97 percent of the shares
of the mining project for $600 million last June. It is one of the largest
copper projects in southern Ecuador. So what is the government talking
about? They’re not even doing what Cuba did back in the day, bringing
assets back into state ownership. No, they’re not doing that. I don’t know
why people abroad are scared that there’s a supposedly statist govern-
ment in Ecuador. There isn’t such a thing in Ecuador. Otherwise, let
them tell us of a single piece of land anywhere in Ecuador that has been
nationalized. There aren’t any.
I think a market model is necessary, but a market model that’s a bit
fairer and does not play into the hands of this or that private company
to the detriment of the people’s interests. We’re not proposing alterna-
tive models in these cases. I repeat, we’ve never proposed to privatize,
to confiscate, to nationalize, to expropriate. We’ve not proposed that. If
you look at the Ecuadorian movement’s proposals, there’s nothing about
nationalizing, confiscating. There’s none of that, but there is, let’s see,
strengthening the state to allow it to compete with the private sector
under better conditions. How hard is that? We don’t think it’s that hard;
126 CHAPTER 3
I think it’s possible. All it needs is the ruler’s willingness, but if there’s
no such willingness, nothing happens.
LI V I N G W ELL ( S U M A K K AW S AY )
Sumak kawsay is part of our conception. Basically, what’s the relation-

ship between the peoples and nature? That’s sumak kawsay. A harmony
between peoples and nature. So look, harmony doesn’t mean banning;
harmony means everything is allowed, but with some judgment and
respect, because without respect there is no harmony. So I need cop-
per to manufacture something. OK, let’s extract copper, but let’s do so
thinking that the Earth has its own rights. That’s where we disagree
with investment as seen by neoliberalism, investment based on speed,
competition, on who gets larger profits quicker. What do I have to do to
increase the price of my shares in the stock market? That is the concept
of neoliberalism.
Speed, paying what you can as fast as you can. If in a year you can
extract all the copper in a given area, all the better. Your investments
grew, your profits grew, you’re like the best company in the world, right?
Your profits increased by 1,000 percent. But for us it’s not about profit;
it’s about taking what we need to live. That’s the difference.
Therefore we’re not banning, we’re not saying zero mining. It’s the
same with oil, copper, gold, silver, water, even the land itself if it’s not
essential to life. The thing is we’re not businessmen who are here today,
tomorrow in Africa, after that in Russia, then in Australia or anywhere
else. We’re the people who live here, and we’re thinking of today and also
tomorrow, but we’re also thinking of the rest of humanity. Perhaps this
is a silly idea for the neoliberal concept, which is based on investment,
profits, earnings, but we think it’s necessary.
CAT H O LI C I S M A N D I N D I G EN O U S O B S ERVA N C E
The Catholic Church has influenced us a lot, but it’s been very harmful.
It’s taught us to be poor from a capitalist point of view, and it’s made
us poor in spirit, poor in personality, and for me that’s the worst thing
the Church could’ve done. They’re still repeating the same things to this
day; that’s why I haven’t sent my kids to catechism and I’m not going to
PACHAKUTIK 127
do so. I consider myself a Catholic, but there are a lot of things I don’t
agree with: for example, when they tell me, “You must suffer patiently,
for you’ll be rewarded in the next life.” Then my granny tells me, “If
they take your land you mustn’t complain, better to leave it. We’ll be
rewarded in the next life.” They’ve drummed these phrases into our
heads, like, “It’s easier for a poor man to go through whatever than a
rich man.” They’ve made us believe that we have to be submissive, we
have to be quiet; we mustn’t take part. Nowadays, they’re still saying
that politics is corrupt, that we shouldn’t get into politics, that politics
is only for the corrupt, but who is saying that? Politicians themselves.
So of course, they’re probably stealing so that nobody gets involved and
tries to discuss and debate things. They’re probably praying to keep the
political stage to themselves, and to govern by themselves.
When we talk about plurinationality we’re proposing that we try
to understand the other, respect the other, as far as we can. I think we
need to give indigenous peoples back their philosophy and allow them
to frame themselves in that philosophy and use their own judgment in
their daily lives. That way, those peoples will grow; otherwise we’ll do as
we’re told, but we won’t be creators. What we need is to create ourselves.
Fortunately, today interesting things are emerging.
Where I come from, until a few hundred years ago, there was a winter
solstice festival on December 21. December, right? December 21, and
that was cause for a massive celebration. Then Christianity came along
and told us that was a pagan celebration, and that we had to celebrate
baby Jesus, the birth of baby Jesus, and they lay Christmas on top of our
Cápac Raymi. It wasn’t on December 21, but three days later, on Decem-
ber 24. And in order to make people go to Mass they put a very large
sun outside the churches. From then on it was no longer called Cápac
Raymi but Christmas, though the content of the celebration remained
exactly the same.
That’s why Christmas where I come from is something else. It has
nothing to do with Christmas in Quito. Christmas where I come from
is a huge festival. People come from every village, from every home,
from every community; we all share food. There are some very strange
costumes that have nothing to do with Christmas elsewhere—anyway,
there are lots of things that I’d need more time to tell you about, but it’s
called Christmas.
128 CHAPTER 3
In the past few years we’ve said, “Well, this isn’t called Christmas;
this is called Cápac Raymi, and we’re going to celebrate Cápac Raymi.”
It’s been very tough, very difficult, because our parents had Christmas
and baby Jesus in mind and the birth of Jesus, and all those things
based around Jesus, but we have continued to say, “No, what’s the
meaning of Jesus? We have something much more real here: Decem-
ber 21.” This changed even the atmosphere of all these things; it’s the
new year in terms of production and all that, and we’re going to cele-
brate Cápac Raymi, and little by little it’s become Cápac Raymi, Cápac
Raymi.
And now happily even the elders are beginning to talk about Cápac
Raymi. But we have problems with the priest, who says, “You’re being
pagan. We have to respect Christmas here.” So to avoid fighting with
the priest, we say, “No problem. If you pay for Mass, we’ll go to Mass.
But we’re also going to do what we want.” But what’s important about
all this is that in the context of the celebration people begin to create
things. The guys begin to create crafts, to create employment, even small
businesses, tourism. Before, what interest did tourists have in going to
Mass? Jesus?
That didn’t attract anybody’s attention. So to change things, when it’s
Cápac Raymi, as a prefect I invite other prefects from other provinces
and we celebrate in our own style, let people come to the festivities, then
a lot of people start coming. That’s what we’ve been doing for the past
two years, since I became a prefect for my province. Before, this wasn’t
done, it was harder, but now it’s become a bit easier. Of course, the fact
that I’m a prefect helps a lot, it attracts people, and we’re going to con-
tinue doing these things. We began to create things, to do what used
to be done before: for example, building a bridge, a metallic structure,
cement, iron, a bridge, that’s it. The bridge is done, and vehicles cross it,
and that’s that. We began to build bridges so that vehicles can cross, but
we were also sending a message about what nature means to us and all
that: culture, peoples, traditions, our gastronomy, all our affairs. I think
we need to put diversity into practice. That’s why I can’t say, and we’re
never going to say, “Out with Christianity! From now on nobody can
be a Christian; we’re going to be what we used to be.” No, we’re not
proposing that, we’re proposing that we share. How did we get to the
point of sharing? That’s what we’ve called plurinationality or intercultur-
PACHAKUTIK 129
ality. In my province I talk a lot about interculturality, and people have

understood; otherwise I wouldn’t be a prefect.
PAC H A K U T I K
We’ve made a lot of mistakes. I think some of my compañeros haven’t

had the breadth of vision that’s required when you talk of intercultur-
ality. Some of my compañeros have limited themselves excessively to
indigenism. That’s a mistake. Pachakutik isn’t an indigenous movement.
In my province we’re a minority of the population, perhaps 8 percent if
you include all the indigenous peoples. The rest is a mestizo Hispanic
population, and yet the province has put its trust in us. This is not my
first time as a prefect. I’ve represented the province twice already before
the National Congress.
I think we’ve managed to put forward a very clear message and pro-
posal. We don’t want to work only for ourselves, we’re not out to get
revenge for history, we’re aiming to create a new historical moment
based on sharing and cohabitation. And this is what’s allowed us not
only to succeed in some other provinces, especially in provinces where
there isn’t a majority indigenous population. Nowadays it’s very different
to win the elections in Cotopaxi or in Chimborazo than to win elections
in my province. More than 70 percent of the population of Chimborazo
is indigenous, so it’s different. It’s a case of sending a message in our
own language, clearly telling them what we’re going to do, and they can
all rally around that person. In my province it’s different, because only
a small percentage of the population is indigenous. I think we need to
do this also at the national level. There have been some mistakes there,
but also this isn’t just Pachakutik’s job. It’s not just about Pachakutik
finding its way to power, and that’s what I’m telling my compañeros. We
must come together in a much broader space, of which Pachakutik is
one of the members, but which also includes other sectors, many other
nonindigenous sectors.
LE A D I N G F I G U R ES : D O L O R ES CAC UA N G O
She’s a woman who fought politically, especially for children’s education,

by establishing clandestine schools, since at that time schools for indig-
130 CHAPTER 3
enous children were banned. Dolores Cacuango lived here, very near
Quito, and she set up schools behind the mountains to prevent them
from being destroyed. And of course she always fought for the land
too. There are many; from the times of the conquest we can mention
Atahualpa, Rumiñahui, and many others. More recently, we can men-
tion Dolores Cacuango, and Tránsito Amaguaña, who died recently, two
years ago. Both these women set life examples for our people. There’s a
lot of unacknowledged history that only we talked about—names that
years later begin to be recovered and slowly start to be featured in his-
tory textbooks. Although you won’t find those sorts of characters in the
history of Alonso de Mercadillo—you will find Pizarro and all those
other people. You won’t find much literature about those people, but
they are in our minds and they are a source of inspiration because their
ideals remain the same.
They’ve always been the same. The problems have also remained very
similar. Five hundred years ago the problem was also natural resources.
The term wasn’t used at the time; it was gold. Either they looked for man-
ufactured gold, or they sent people to the mines to extract it; either way it
was a serious problem. And that problem isn’t over; it’s still relevant today.
Now the company comes along and offers you a wage of $300 to come and
work in the mines, and since there are no jobs, of course a lot of people
go to work in the mines for $300. So it’s very similar, because what is $300
dollars today for a worker at one of the company’s most important mines?
So the problem is still relevant, and so are the reasons behind Atahualpa’s,
Rumiñahui’s, and Dolores Cacuango’s struggles.
P R ES I D EN T CO R R E A
I don’t think President Correa is going to stay in power for much longer.
No, he has his tactics, he has his agreements, his strategies, but he’s not
going to last long. Because people find out about deceit. It would’ve
been better for President Correa to tell Ecuadorians the truth, and he
would’ve lasted as long as he lasts, but based on the truth. President
Correa has lied a lot here. And it’s not deceit in the sense that I promised
you public works, I promised you a bridge, I offered you a school and
I let you down. We’re not talking about that kind of confusion. We’re
talking about concepts, deceitful concepts. There’s talk of recovering the
PACHAKUTIK 131
homeland, when there is no such recovery of the homeland. There’s talk

of emerging from the long neoliberal night, and in practice these are
times of new privatizations: of telecoms, of electric power through the
investment of Chinese capital to create new plants controlled by the
Chinese. These are times of giving away our mining reserves to foreign
corporations. In other words, there is a huge contradiction between what
they say and what they do.
They have certain advantages, some very good strategies. Since they
have a very good income from oil at the moment, they have a lot of money
to cover whatever they want in the media. They have control of the four
main TV channels, or the three largest, I think: Gama TV and Ecuador
TV. Perhaps the three channels are not the largest, but they’re the ones
that have national coverage. They control some newspapers; they control
print media. Now very few dare to write what they’d like to write, and
those that do go to jail, like Emilio Palacio. The ruling against the newspa-
per El Universo is a problem, not for El Universo but for all of us, because
nobody wants to publish articles that speak truth to power anymore. In
my province, radio stations are very scared of giving me air time. They’re
worried that if they do so the president is going to remove their license.
The indigenous movement isn’t looking for just a discourse. In fact,
the president has even spoken a few sentences in Kichwa, and indigenous
peoples have applauded. You’ve seen his suits, his clothes; occasionally
he’s worn shirts embroidered with indigenous motifs. The president has
done all that, yet the indigenous movement has said no. The president may
come up with a discourse to the indigenous peoples’ liking, but as long as
the government keeps offering up the land as merchandise, be it to extract
gold, copper, or silver, indigenous peoples will not listen to the discourse.
They’ll look at the facts. I don’t think the government can recover in the
eyes of the indigenous movement, because at this very moment the gov-
ernment is planning to exploit indigenous territories. Even if he wants to
reconcile, in four years this problem is going to be much more serious. So
yes, I don’t think there’s going to be a reconciliation.
ETHNOCIDE
What else did I want to talk to you about? Let’s see. We oppose mining
on various grounds, not only for environmental reasons. Environmental
132 CHAPTER 3
concerns are one of the reasons: water, forests, mountains, the land;
pollution is one of the reasons. But there’s another reason: the problem
of our territories, where indigenous peoples live. That’s one of the main
problems. For example, in my province—here’s Peru, and here’s Ecuador.
Here’s the Cordillera del Cóndor. It’s partly in Ecuador and partly here.
All of this used to be Shuar territory, but they’ve gradually been cornered
by colonization, and now they only have a few spaces left. And it turns
out they’re going to start mining right here. So we’re also concerned
about the cultural survival of the peoples that live here. Then it’s not just
an environmental problem; it’s also a cultural problem: the survival of
the peoples who live here. Mining companies tell us that they’re going
to employ the Shuar who live here. Well, even if they give us not $300
but $1,000, they’re not going to solve the cultural problem. Cultural
extermination is in sight; that’s one of the issues we’re concerned about.
EX T R AC T I O N A N D P U B LI C I N V ES T M EN T
There are no plans to invest the profits from copper or gold exploita-
tion. There is no planning in Ecuador. If I were president, I would take
that money. First, to increase production in the fields, to increase food
production, and I’d have food for export. Obviously, education—you
need education so that you don’t have to keep selling wheat, grains,
right? So that you don’t have to keep selling gold as a raw material, oil
as a raw material, which means then we have to continue buying diesel
from Venezuela or anywhere; we’re buying diesel. We need to develop
our ability to do things. Invest in tourism, for example, in tourism infra-
structure. We have many tourist attractions here.
AUKI TITUAÑA
“CHE AS SYMBOL OF LIFE AND SONG”
Auki Tituaña, an ethnic Kichwa, was born on January 6, 1965, in Cotacachi,

Imbabura. He studied at the Universidad Central del Ecuador in Quito, where
he won a scholarship to study economics in Cuba. He lived in Cuba for six
years, first in Camagüey and then in Havana. He remains a strong admirer of
both Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. A founder of the Pachakutik party, he was
PACHAKUTIK 133
elected as one of the first indigenous mayors in Ecuador in 1996, and reelected
in 2000 and 2004 before being defeated in 2009 by a candidate from Rafael
Correa’s Alianza País party. He became internationally famous for his stew-
ardship of Cotacachi, winning four international awards. Particularly notable
were his literacy campaign (backed by Cuba), his introduction of participatory
budgeting, and his health policies that succeeded in drastically reducing infant
mortality. In 2002 he emerged as the popular choice as Pachakutik candidate for
the presidency but division within CONAIE caused him to withdraw. Ten years
later, in October 2012, he was denounced by CONAIE leaders and expelled
from the organization after accepting the vice presidential nomination on an
anti-Correa ticket headed by ex-banker Guillermo Lasso.12
T H E CO N S T I T U T I O N A N D S O C I A L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N
The indigenous movement in Ecuador has experienced significant

political and organizational development since the ’70s. After a stage
of demands and reforms in the areas of education, health, and access to
the land in 1990, [the movement] became a political actor with much
greater influence in the economy, politics, and democracy, and indeed
it demanded structural changes in the Ecuadorian state, based on con-
stitutional reforms.
In 2008 there was new drive to establish a new constituent assem-
bly to write another constitution. I’d say that indigenous peoples were
listened to and somehow included in this new constitution, but it’s not
enough, because this new constitution was led by a group of people
with rather disparate ideologies—right-wing parties, extreme left-wing
parties—and there was a lack of clarity regarding indigenous peoples’
demands and their proposal to include sumak kawsay, the concept of
buen vivir (living well) in the new constitution.
It doesn’t say anything about crime, insecurity, the failure to carry out
land reforms, about genuine support for bilingual, intercultural educa-
tion, about the fact that there isn’t a single indigenous minister. There-
fore buen vivir is nothing more than words, and the current government,
which appeared to be a friend of indigenous peoples and nations, took
advantage of this phrase and other issues—the environment, participa-
tion, for example. So I’d say this constitution is still empty of the indig-
enous peoples’ and nations’ historical proposal. Pseudo-revolutionaries
134 CHAPTER 3
in Ecuador think they understand the indigenous movement, and they

simply hand out subsidies and houses among the communities. What is
needed is structural change, a change in democracy, from representative
democracy to participatory democracy, which is real, genuine, inclusive,
and pluralist. I’d say that indigenous peoples weren’t direct protagonists
in these stages of the constitution in 1998 and in 2008.
I N D I G EN O U S D EM A N D S
Land reform. Well, there are different currents within the indigenous
movement: some are very radical, others very democratic, others very
conformist. Some accept what the political parties and the mestizos are
doing; others want radical changes, like the nationalization of oil. And
today, a significant part of the indigenous movement is working on initi-
ating structural reforms by democratic means, not by means of violence or
armed struggle. I think our management of public policy has proven that,
as I say, simply by complying with 50 percent of the law you can achieve
important results. It all depends on whether we act with transparency and
discipline, and have an organizational process. In my view, citizen par-
ticipation must be at the heart of any decision-making and any political,
economic, and environmental changes promoted in a society.
The fundamental demand of indigenous groups in general is for genu-
ine land reform, which has never happened in Ecuador. In 1964, when the
military was in power, what they did was to distribute the most inhospi-
table lands, land in the mountains with no irrigation, unsuitable for crops.
So the military didn’t even give up the state’s land; rather, they forced the
Church, which also owned a vast amount of land, to give some of it up for
certain indigenous communities. Of course, this stemmed from the desire
to put a stop to the popular struggle, the peasants’ struggle that was on the
rise in the 1960s after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
Agrarian reform was already underway in Cuba, and in order to pre-
vent that from happening here they pretended to do the same, but they
handed out the worst lands. Later, another government tried to carry out
another land reform, and created the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma
Agraria y Colonización [IERAC]. In the ’80s there was talk of colonizing
areas inhabited by indigenous populations, which was the wrong idea, and
since then there hasn’t been a genuine process of agrarian reform.
PACHAKUTIK 135
There has been talk of revolution. To this day, yes? So in ’64 there was
an attempt to conduct agrarian reform, but no government has put for-
ward a clear proposal to solve the issue of agrarian reform, because they
think that the sole source of revenue for the state is oil, and there’s no need
to coordinate with other economic sectors. But I think Ecuador should
make agricultural development its first priority, to conduct an agrarian
reform that involves land, water, training, credits, markets—a compre-
hensive proposal. Not merely handing out land and credits, there has to
be a complete proposal, and the state must concern itself with output and
fair trade.
S U M A K K AW S AY
Sumak kawsay has a different connotation. It’s not just material well-
being; it’s not merely access to a salary, to a job. Sumak kawsay is a
balance between nature, human beings, the earth—a material and spir-
itual issue. That’s something governments don’t understand. So agrarian
reform would be an element of the goal of sumak kawsay and well-being.
Personally, I don’t use the term buen vivir, because it’s been prostituted.
This proposal—this experience of the indigenous peoples, communi-
ties, and nation—sounds very hypocritical, very empty, in the hands of
President Correa’s current politicians, doesn’t it? There will come a time
when we’re able to find another term that allows us to communicate
the message that we don’t just want material change but total, spiritual
change, to go back to our roots, to spirituality, and also toward a differ-
ent organizational process, a real, transparent democracy without per-
secution. Today indigenous leaders are declared terrorists. It’s the only
country in the world where a social activist is considered a terrorist. The
FARC [Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia)], for example, aren’t declared terrorists, are
they? That isn’t revolution, that isn’t sumak kawsay, even for an appren-
tice politician, is it?
I think in Ecuador there’s been a sort of resurgence of the indigenous

movement with a degree of autonomy. Until the ’80s we went through a
136 CHAPTER 3
stage of tutelage under the union movement, the left-wing parties, the
right-wing parties, the Church; and everyone at the UN gave speeches
about combating poverty. Who were the poor? Indigenous people—and
they spoke in our name. They managed humanitarian aid funds for the
poorest rural populations. Who were they? Indigenous people. And the
discourse of poverty was also used to manage domestic resources. Who
were the poor? Indigenous people.
We gradually overcame that tutelage through the constitution of the
CONAIE, in 1986. We’ve also had the support of certain sectors of the
Church, of liberation theology, and also of different left-wing intellectu-
als, some more influenced by what was going on in Eastern Europe and
others by China, although none of them have been able to understand
the idea of plurinationality, for example. It’s even been hard for us to
write about our proposal for plurinationality. It’s an innovative proposal,
not separatist, as Correa has stated.
Around twenty years ago, the social democratic government of
Rodrigo Borja responded to our demand for the recognition of peo-
ples and nations’ ancestral lands by saying, “These indigenous peoples
want to create a state within a state; they’re separatists.” So there’s a
sort of fear of recognizing the true and legitimate rights of peoples
and nations, because that would imply redistributing the budget and,
instead of “assistentialism,” of paternalism, it would mean acknowl-
edging the right of peoples and nations not merely to a communal
house or a small church, or paved roads, but to invest in development
plans.
It’s important to have a bank, for example a bank that gives financial
assistance to peoples and nations, and to have a tourism industry in all
our territories, in our communities. We could build great hotels, finance
projects, create employment, move forward in the industrialization of
our production. Today we produce, but only for our own use or for direct
sale. We don’t manufacture products. We could also promote the new
artisan markets in the cities. That way, resources would come to us as our
right, by law, not by the goodwill of whoever happens to be in power.
That’s why we think that, in terms of politics and economics, Ecuador
is still waiting.
PACHAKUTIK 137
S Y M B O L S A N D P ER S O N A LI T I ES
[Che Guevara is] much loved. Yes, our [indigenous] emblematic figure
is Rumiñahui—Rumiñahui, who resisted the invasion of the Spanish
conquerors. He’s an example, isn’t he? Of the history of resistance, dig-
nity, struggle, and as I say in a poem I wrote, Rumiñahui preferred to
set Quito on fire rather than let them have the gold and the city. He
gave us his life as an example; he chose to die rather than be a prisoner.
So for us indigenous peoples, and I think also in the history of Ecuador,
he’s seen as one of the main examples of resistance and struggle against
the Spanish invasion.
T H E I N D I G EN O U S M OV EM EN T A N D CO R R E A
Well, the indigenous movement made a serious mistake when it backed

Correa’s political project. Personally, I’ve always been critical of, and
opposed to, Rafael Correa. The indigenous leaders currently in the
CONAIE have ended up admitting that they made a mistake; they were
initially confused by Correa’s antisystem, radical, leftist discourse. Of
course, now it’s hard for them to admit their mistake. As I said earlier, a
real revolutionary would not accuse indigenous social leaders, however
wrong they may be, of being terrorists.
Or use language loaded with racist ideology as Rafael Correa has
done. To call us the Indian clique is a very strong statement, isn’t it? It’s
an acknowledgment of the past, of the hacienda system, of landowners,
even slavery. It’s refusing to recognize identity and the current moment
of humanity, which has moved toward universal principles and rights.
It’s loaded with racist ideology, isn’t it? A revolutionary wouldn’t call us
“infantile ecologists,” would he?
A real revolutionary wouldn’t hand out lambs to indigenous people
in times of election, because he’d be buying their vote. A human being
deserves a modicum of respect. Look how this attitude and behavior of
Rafael Correa’s government reveals the fact that he belongs more to a
neoliberal political current. We said, “Go on and be right-wing, because
you’re governing with right-wing ministers, populist ministers, ministers
138 CHAPTER 3
from other governments.” In the end, after four years the leaders that
made that mistake have acknowledged that we were right and they were
wrong. He’s still a liberal. His priority is the extraction of oil, gold, and
copper, which affects forests, rivers, the coexistence of communities, and
handing over our wealth to the same transnational firms. So while there
may be a pretty new road, or an increased health or education budget,
the results are not reflected in our well-being.
That’s why I believe that this stage of pseudo-revolution is devoid of
political content. Initially it was called twenty-first-century socialism,
but they haven’t given it any content. [The main] brain behind this idea,
this theory, the German Heinz Dieterich, said that neither Chávez,
nor Correa, nor Morales are following his theory. Nor Morales either,
nobody. Yes, but he is an indigenous person who aligned himself too
closely with Chávez’s politics and lost his identity, and obviously he’s
not wholly connected with the indigenous movement itself. I think there
are internal problems. Populism, left-wing or right-wing, is not good for
the country, and Morales is handing out subsidies like Plan Cuaderno
and Plan Leche. No way; that’s not how you change things. Populism
has done a lot of harm, and left-wing populism has the same effect as
right-wing populism.
So I think we need to be more self-critical about the movement’s
own mistakes. At some point we left our own ideals to follow an elec-
toral trend. Our participation must be different. We must recover our
political project and believe that if we’re directly in charge of a process
of political change, based on our own dynamics and cosmovision, we
will ensure important changes—changes regarding our language, which
the current government has refused to recognize as an official language.
He refused, and later accepted it as a nonofficial language. We went
through such an important stage where we fought for the recognition
of our languages, and now a supposedly revolutionary government. A
revolutionary socialist government, on top of everything.
The currency should’ve changed, but we’re still dependent on the
United States, aren’t we? So there’s no legitimacy, I’m a revolutionary,
but I preserve the dollar as my national currency. Ours is the only con-
stitution in the world that doesn’t specify the official currency, whether
it’s the sucre, or the dollar, nothing. That’s a great hypocrisy. In my view,
this stage will pass, no doubt, but there’s absolutely nothing revolution-
PACHAKUTIK 139
ary about it, and I’m telling you as someone who has known a genuinely
revolutionary process, as it was in Cuba.
I had the opportunity to study there, to analyze and understand the
process. I’m not a Fidelist or a blind follower of the Cuban Revolution.
Each country has its own idiosyncrasies; each culture its own realities,
its cosmovision, but nobody can say Fidel wasn’t a genuine revolutionary.
That kind of figure, of personality, of politician, undoubtedly inspires a
great deal of respect in me, inspires me to follow their path and their
struggle against powerful interests, against imperialism, but without
populism or lies, or racism. That’s why one of the catchphrases of our
struggle was, “Correa, racist, false socialist,” because to me a genuine
revolutionary respects human beings above all, respects proposals of
interculturality, and practices real democracy.
[Correa’s economic model] is populist, neoliberal, and Christian
democratic. It’s the same old right, now with a leftist discourse. You
shouldn’t have a problem with saying that Correa’s model is neoliberal.
He believes that the extraction of natural resources is the solution to the
problem. High oil prices have earned him extra resources, but there have
been absolutely no changes in the productive structure and apparatus. At
least I saw from the beginning that it was clearly a pseudo-revolutionary,
populist, neoliberal, Christian democratic model.
For example, four years ago this government was a great friend of the
indigenous peoples. Correa even gave speeches in Kichwa and every-
thing, but two or three years on, we’re an obstacle, we’re useless infantile
Indians. Why didn’t he see that indigenous people were weak, opportu-
nistic, leftist, as he calls us now, four years ago, when he was starting his
electoral project? So it turns out that when we’re no use to him elector-
ally we’re an obstacle. He has certain control over other populations, the
disabled, or the Montubio groups in the coast. Simply, the various actors
are useful to him for just a moment. The mistake that the leaders, the
old actors, the old guard made was to follow a man who had no political
trajectory, merely because they wanted to win an election—a citizen like
Rafael Correa, an academic at the university for the country’s elite, the
most expensive university. He was an economics researcher, and I think
he taught a little.
Then he jumps onto the political stage without any struggle, with
no prior training or experience, and he improvises a convenient dis-
140 CHAPTER 3
course against the system, against imperialism, against transnational

companies, against corruption, against partocracy. I think that was a
mistake on the part of our leaders, which had an impact because the
bases are expecting results, and they wonder, “Why are they fighting
up there, when we’re being given subsidies down here?” The lambs,
as I call them, because it’s a very populist policy; many of them have
gone with the government; they’re second, third in line in certain pub-
lic institutions. The system absorbs people, doesn’t it? A secure job, a
secure salary; many take that alternative. Many leaders have even sold
certain bills of law, by not fighting to ensure they legitimately reflect
the original proposal but instead making only very lukewarm, very
superficial changes and reforms. Certain elements of the indigenous
movement have some influence; for example, the peoples of the Ama-
zon are opting to leave CONAIE and create their own organization,
but that’s because those nations are where the oil is. Of course, the
government offers them $7 million in development plans for territorial
districts, and they leave for 7 million. So there has been confusion,
desertions, and a weakening within the movement due to the mistakes
of the indigenous leadership.
T H E I N D I G EN O U S M OV EM EN T A N D LU I S M ACA S
The movement as such may inspire sympathy, respect, in society, but

there also needs to be a figure that puts forward a message and a pro-
posal that society can engage with. Luis Macas has been around for a
very long time, and important steps have been taken under his leader-
ship, but he didn’t perform while he was in public office. When he was
a minister, he wasn’t one of the most important ministers—unlike Nina
Pacari, who was a diplomat at the Foreign Ministry; she was the first
female indigenous minister in Latin America. She was very skillful and
capable, and stood out as a minister, but Luis Macas didn’t see plans
through. He was very simplistic. He wasn’t the right figure.
Unfortunately, that was another mistake of the leadership, who,
having other options, among them myself, didn’t give us the chance
to represent ourselves with greater energy, youth, with positive results.
We talked of an innovative mayoralty, recognized nationally and inter-
PACHAKUTIK 141
nationally, but they chose the old ways. The indigenous movement at
times gives out the message that indigenous people are going to gov-
ern, that it can’t be done without us, an intercultural country led by an
indigenous person—cool, it’s positive, isn’t it? Because it demonstrates a
change in the exercise of the country’s politics, but this person shouldn’t
only represent the views of indigenous people; they should represent the
diversity of the country; they should be capable, dynamic, most impor-
tantly honest, and open to dialogue, to interacting with every sector:
business, banks, unions, students, environmentalists—we must try to
bring together every sector.
In the case of Ecuador, in particular, I think a totally leftist proposal—
nationalizing, making education completely public, all that—would
have no chance of succeeding at this moment due to all the mistakes,
all of these governments’ improvisations. The previous government of
Gutiérrez, which called itself left wing and was military, ex-military,
failed. The current government, led by an academic who came from
nowhere with a leftist discourse, is failing. It will hold on thanks only
to the budget, but it will not have any future relevance or lead to real
democratic changes.
As I said earlier, there’s an extremist current that believes that only
indigenous peoples have rights, and that we’re capable of making
major changes. Others veer more to the center; we believe that pos-
itive changes have to include diverse actors, and have clear rules and
participative, innovative legislation that is sustainable in the medium
and long term. Then there are others who believe we have to follow
whichever government or party happens to be in power. And that’s
where I place Luis Macas. We leaders have the duty to leave our own
imprint. So if Macas, as a traditional leader, is unable to engage with
the changes that are taking place in national and international pol-
itics, his proposal is obviously outdated and unfeasible. I insist, and
some professional politicians and experts agree, that Ecuador may have
an indigenous president one day, but one that governs for the whole
country, not necessarily an indigenous government for indigenous
peoples. I’m aligned with this current, which believes in fighting so
that an indigenous person may become a national authority, but with
a multicultural team.
142 CHAPTER 3
EXTRACTIVISM VERSUS AGRARIAN DEVELOPMENT
Given that Pachakutik is the political arm of CONAIE, it is not surprising that
many of the themes of Pachakutik elected officials mirror those of the national
indigenous confederation, in general, and its Sierra affiliate, ECUARUNARI,
in particular. All call for a plurinational state and discuss it in some detail.
Definitions of nation follow those of the national indigenous confederation.
For Gerónimo Yantalema, each nationality “has its own government, its own
language, and its own territories, as well as its memory and history.” Ecua-
dor should be a state, he adds, “where there are many nationalities that come
together, each with its own indigenous justice system.” For Auki Tituaña, pluri-
nationality is recognizing “the true and legitimate rights of peoples and nations.”
Similarly, the core organizing principle of the ECUARUNARI interviews,
sumak kawsay, is recognized by all these Pachakutik officials. All are opposed
to the “extractivism” and other policies of Rafael Correa, whom they harshly
criticize. Dolores Cacuango and Tránsito Amaguaña, along with indigenous
figures like Rumiñahui and Daquilema, are listed as leading figures just as they
are in the ECUARUNARI interviews. Where Pachakutik elected officials differ
from the other interviews in the Sierra and the Amazon is the strong emphasis
they place on economic development based on the peasant producer. Each has
his own variant of an agricultural development plan.
Although the plans differ in detail and emphasis, all share one critical
component—they benefit indigenous and nonindigenous peasant farmers
equally. This outreach to the nonindigenous farmer echoes Pachakutik’s early
emphasis on broad, inclusive coalitions and is indispensable for an official like
Prefect Salvador Quishpe, elected in a province with an indigenous population
of only 8 percent. It is not surprising then that Quishpe cites the excessive
indigenism of some CONAIE and Pachakutik leaders as a cause of Pachakutik
loss of power at the national level. Auki Tituaña also rejects an “extremist cur-
rent that believes only indigenous peoples have rights” and supports a centrist
position that would include “diverse actors.”
Instead they emphasize the economic concerns of the small farmer and the
development of the nation as a whole, not simply its indigenous sector. Gerón-
imo Yantalema complains that “the state has invested all its resources in export
agriculture” for the benefit of “large landowners, while it’s forgotten about peas-
ants and indigenous people. . . . Small-scale indigenous farmers need not only
state resources but also the redistribution of land and water to produce food
PACHAKUTIK 143
for the country and even consider exporting their products.” He regards land
reform as another key issue: “There are vast expanses of land [in the sierra], but
the best land for cultivation is concentrated in the hands of 1 percent, 4 percent
of the population. . . . Meanwhile, small-scale indigenous peasants, the produc-
tive units of food sovereignty, have access to small areas.” Furthermore, it is not
enough to hand over land to the peasants; investment is required to make the
land usable. Price supports are necessary not only for agricultural exports but
for peasant food crops. Overall Yantalema is advocating U.S.-style development
based on productive small farmers and the internal market, aided by the govern-
ment, rather than the traditional “extractive colonial model” favored by Rafael
Correa: “That’s why there’s a confrontation.”
Salvador Quishpe, prefect of the mining department of Zamora Chinchipe,
emphasizes controls on the mineral export economy to benefit small peasant
food producers: “We believe it’s about time that humanity takes into account
the value of food supplies in its thinking. Otherwise we’re all on our way to die.
How many more years can the Earth resist if we keep using natural resources at
this rate?” If he were president, he would take the profits from mineral exports
“to increase food production, and I’d have food for export.” Quishpe also argues
for increasing the value added in mining exports by, for example, exporting
refined copper ore and reclaiming mining revenues for the state rather than
turning them over to foreign corporations and the Chinese. Quishpe shares
with Yantalema an emphasis on internal food production by small farmers,
indigenous and nonindigenous. He adds a particular concern with capturing
revenues from export mining to be reinvested in development projects and,
particularly, for food production. Both propose a development plan distinctly
different from Correa’s extractivism.
Like Yantalema and Quishpe, Auki Tituaña believes that “Ecuador should
make agricultural development its first priority, to conduct an agrarian reform
that involves land, water, training, credits, markets—a comprehensive proposal.”
Tituaña believes that “the fundamental demand of indigenous groups in gen-
eral is for genuine land reform.” The 1964 land reform, inspired, he says, by fear
of the Cuban Revolution, only gave away the worst land. But “merely hand-
ing out land and credits” is not enough. “There has to be a complete proposal,
and the state must concern itself with output and fair trade.” He also calls for
“a bank that gives financial assistance to peoples and nations” to “move for-
ward in the industrialization of our production.” He rejects Correa as a “racist,
false socialist” and condemns his economic model based on “the extraction of
144 CHAPTER 3
natural resources.” Like Yantalema and Quishpe, Tituaña wants a structural

transformation of Ecuadorian development from the colonial export model to
one based on the small farmer and the internal market. The divisions between
Correa and Pachakutik elected officials run deep. They want a revolution in
economic structure leading not to Cuban-style socialism but to American-style
government-assisted small, farmer-based development. On this the three offi-
cials agree.
Elected Pachakutik officials, like leaders from the Amazon and the Andes,
reject both reform and armed twentieth-century-style revolution. Even Auki
Tituaña, who studied in Cuba and admires both Che Guevara and Fidel Castro,
said, “A significant part of the indigenous movement is working on initiating
structural reforms by democratic means, not by means of violence or armed
struggle.” Salvador Quishpe says, “What we want is not a reform . . . but it’s
not like we’re proposing a revolution in the Cuban or leftist style. . . . We’re not
proposing to abolish private property . . . we’re proposing [changes] in our own
style.” Insofar as these officials share the CONAIE commitment to plurination-
ality, they are proposing a symbolic revolution in the Western concept of the
nation-state. But even their proposals for internal agrarian development rather
than export-oriented “extractivism” would require massive structural change in
Ecuador even if the outcome would be Jefferson-style agrarianism. This is rev-
olution in the Ecuadorian style.
II
“INDIAN REVOLUTION” AND THE
MOVEMENT TOWARD SOCIALISM
(MAS) IN BOLIVIA
4
KATARISM-INDIANISM IN THE ANDES
Interviews with Felipe Quispe, Eugenio Rojas, Pablo Mamani,
and Eugenia Choque
T
HE REVOLUTION of 1952 in Bolivia brought with it vastly expanded
horizons for the Aymara peasants of the altiplano but at the same time
created an enduring existential dilemma that had reached crisis propor-
tions by the beginning of the twenty-first century. As Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui
eloquently puts it, “massive rural schooling, the expansion of the internal mar-
ket, the universal vote, a smallholder based agrarian reform of vast extent,” but at
the same time completing the tasks of “individuation and ethnocide” began with
the liberal reforms of the nineteenth century.1 The plan of the victorious MNR
was “civilizing the Indian by means of Creole racial amalgamation, Hispani-
cization, the subdivision of land and the commercialization of agriculture . . .
which was summed up in the phrase ‘integrating the Indian into the nation.’”2
The dilemma described by Rivera Cusicanqui can be simply put. The Aymara
could only join the nation defined by the revolution if they ceased to exist. The
structure of the ayllu dating to preconquest time, the Aymara language, Andean
norms of reciprocity and solidarity, and indeed any element of Aymara culture
or history would be absorbed by a “mestizo” nation, modern and Hispanic in
all respects. Individual citizenship would replace ayllu membership, electoral
democracy would replace consensual decision-making and customary leader-
ship, individual landholding would replace what remained of community lands,
the possessive individual would replace the community, market mechanisms
148 CHAPTER 4
would replace reciprocal exchange, Creole heroes would replace Aymara ones,
and of course Spanish would replace Aymara. The Aymara and their ancestral
cultures would remain in the monuments at Tiwanaku, dancing the morenada,
popular festivals and codified folklore.
MAP 2 . Bolivia political divisions: highest concentrations of Aymara and Quechua

indigenous peoples by department. Eastern lowlands (north to south): Pando, Beni,
Santa Cruz. Data from Xavier Albó, Movimientos y poder indígena en Bolivia, Ecuador y
Perú (La Paz: Centro de Investigacíon y Promoción del Campesinado, 2009), 17. Map
adapted from https://d-maps.com/m/america/bolivia/bolivie/bolivie48.pdf.
KATARISM- INDIANISM IN THE ANDES 149
The enormous prestige of the 1952 revolution, its utopian vision and real
accomplishments, generated unquestioning support for the generation of
Aymara peasants who had experienced these changes firsthand and even
endured the military overthrow of the revolution in 1964 by General René Bar-
rientos and the imposition of his “anti-communist peasant military pact.” It even
survived the death of Barrientos in a suspicious helicopter crash in 1969, although
subsequent military rulers lacked his fluent Quechua and folksy appeal to the
peasantry.3 But the existential dilemma remained unresolved, and as time passed
and the educated children of the altiplano communities made their way through
the Hispanic education system, some even reaching the university, another ele-
ment of the dilemma became apparent. Even those Aymara who were willing to
accept the conditions of the MNR’s assimilationist vision were deprived of real
participation in the society and state of 1952. The higher ranks of the government,
the military, the universities, and both private and state enterprises remained
closed to Aymara, who were met everywhere by a racism undiminished by the
Revolution of 1952. The greater the contact with the city and the mestizo world,
the greater the disillusionment. It turned out that even ceasing to be culturally
Aymara was insufficient for assimilation into Bolivian society. Racism insured that
an apartheid-like structure existed in public and private institutions.
The great Aymara uprising of the first five years of the twentieth century
reflected not only the dilemmas of the revolution of 1952 but a long history of
polarization between Aymaras and Creoles that dated to the conquest. As René
Zavaleta famously observed:
All the nation’s centuries are marked by uprisings or rebellions, it is

as if Bolivia were nothing but that which had been built between the
walls of defensive barricades erected against a territory populated by the
Indian masses.4
The colonial epoch had pitted the Spanish overlords against the Aymara
ayllus in a system based on forced labor in the mines of Potosí, forced sale of
Spanish merchandise, and direct tribute. The republican era had substituted
Creoles and fictive “whites” (mestizos) for the Spanish but otherwise the system
was little changed. Toward the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the
twentieth century, haciendas expanded at the expense of the Aymara ayllus
and tribute was eventually abolished.5 The revolution of 1952 put an end to
this structure but replaced it with new forms of domination and exclusion. As
150 CHAPTER 4
Xavier Albó summarizes the Aymara experience, it had been “to fight together
against the Spanish/creole q’ara and that although the latter might pretend to be
a friend, the story always ended with betrayal.”6 Acute ethnic (and later racial)
polarization always existed in the altiplano; the 1952 revolution did not end it.
Furthermore, the Military Peasant Pact that replaced the revolutionary state
always depended as much on coercion as consent and consistently promised
more than it delivered. At the first sign of serious resistance, the military reverted
to that tried and true Bolivian method of social control, the Indian massacre.
The so-called Massacre of the Valley in Tolanta in Cochabamba on January 29,
1974, was a turning point. Peasants protesting price increases had assembled, or
so they thought, to meet the paternalistic president of the “military-peasant-
pact.” Instead they were shot down by armored cars. The massacre was the
beginning of the end not only of the “pact” but of military rule and, in a wider
sense, of the utopian imaginary of the revolution.7 As Albó notes, it was the
Aymara of the Altiplano, not the Quechua-speaking peasants of Cochabamba,
who first drew the lessons of the massacre.8 The existential dilemma of the
Aymara was acute because of the profound ethnic polarization on which it was
based and the bloodshed with which it was imposed.
THE INDIAN REVOLUTION AND THE RISE OF

KATARISM- INDIANISM
No matter how acute the existential dilemma of the Aymara, it could not rise
to the level of insurgency without a symbolic revolution to give it meaning
and undermine the social narrative of the old order. A single work, La revolu-
ción india, self-published by the Quechua intellectual Fausto Reinaga in 1969,
provided that symbolic revolution.9 It is difficult to overstate the importance
of this work for subsequent events. Asked in 2001 what politician he admired
most, Evo Morales replied, “More than any politician I admired a writer, Fausto
Reinaga and his works like La revolución india. . . . He allowed me to under-
stand who we are as Quechuas and Aymaras.”10 Esteban Ticona Alejo argued
in 2005, “In the post 2000 uprisings of indigenous people and campesinos . . . it
is not an exaggeration to say that his [Reinaga’s] ideas have been present among
indigenous actors urban and rural.”11
Reinaga’s account, told from the indigenous perspective, turns Bolivian his-
tory upside down. That history begins with the betrayal and murder of the Inca
emperor Atahualpa and the destruction of his empire, not with the triumphal
conquest of Pizarro. The Bolivian independence struggle did not begin with the
“shout” of liberty by Diego Murillo celebrated on independence day every year
but with the revolt of the indigenous leader Julián Apasa (nom de guerre, Túpac
Katari) and his siege of La Paz (1781). Murillo is portrayed as the conqueror
and executioner of Katari. Reinaga discusses at length the other leaders of the
revolt, including Katari’s wife, Bartolina Sisa, and his own direct ancestor Tomás
Katari. The hero of the liberal revolution of 1899 is not creole General Pando but
Zárate Willka, the leader of Pando’s indigenous allies. Willka, like Atahualpa
and Túpac Katari before him, is betrayed and murdered by the Western or West-
ernized elite. The 1953 land reform is ushered in by the indigenous peasantry,
but once again they are betrayed as the victorious MNR gives the best land to
the former land owners and imposes private property on the indigenous ayllus.
National heroes, statues on the Prado (the main boulevard of La Paz), and even
the national anthem celebrate not the vast indigenous minority of Bolivia but
their conquerors and murderers.
La revolución india denounces the hypocrisies and evasions of Bolivia’s
Westernized elite and its history in no uncertain terms. This elite has created
a fictitious nation and a powerless state—“democratic-bourgeois ideas coming
from Europe float like the clouds over the economic reality of the feudal-slave
exploitation of the Indian” not only in the colonial past but today (1970). Rein-
aga makes the following observations. The Spanish conquest: “Western feudal-
ism imposed on Incan communism.” The republic: “The Viceroyalty [of colonial
Peru] in the disguise of a Republic.” The Bolivian state: “‘The committee that
administers the interests’ of Euro-Yankee capitalism . . . the West.” The Bolivian
armed forces: “A conglomeration of uniformed people [that] . . . specialize in
their office of killing Indians.” Christianity: “For the Indian . . . hunger, stupidity
and slavery.”12
As the quotes indicate, the language is blunt, unforgiving, and often intem-
perate. The Westernized Bolivian elite, some of which has some indigenous
ancestry, is denounced as “the cholaje” (chola is a pejorative term for a Western-
ized indigenous person), the “blancos-mestizos” (“whites” and people of both
indigenous and European ancestry who have adopted European ways), and in
conjunction with the frequent racialized depiction of the bearers of European
civilization in general as “white” or sometimes “blonde” beasts. There are two
Bolivias, says Reinaga, “a chola Bolivia and an Indian Bolivia,” and the Indian
revolution will liberate one and eliminate the other. Given the frequency of
152 CHAPTER 4
racial epithets, it would be easy to read these passages as racist calls for the
destruction of all European and their various colonial descendants in Bolivia
and elsewhere. But Reinaga claims that his real goal is to liberate not only the
Indian Bolivia “but also the chola Bolivia” by creating a real nation and real
state out of the fiction that is contemporary Bolivia.13 In any case, according
to Reinaga there is only a “minimum minority white” in a country that is “95
percent” Indian.14
Reinaga sees the Indian revolution as a Third World liberation movement
against a neocolonial regime and favorably quotes Frantz Fanon, Stokely Car-
michael, and other Black Power advocates in the United States. This is a work
that clearly evokes the global ethos of the 1960s, not the rights talk or envi-
ronmentalism of the later part of the twentieth century, however important
these ideas would become decades later. Like the contemporaneous liberation
movements in Africa, the problem is liberation from a colonial—or, in this case,
neocolonial—ruling elite. Reinaga’s response to the dilemma of national assim-
ilation and societal exclusion is simplicity itself: “The problem of the Indian is
not assimilation, it is liberation.” This liberation is not to come through armed
struggle but through the ballot box. “Because of this our motto is: the indian
vote for the indian.”15 Thirty-six years later, in December 2005, this is
exactly what happened even though Reinaga’s own Partido Indio de Bolivia
(BPI, Bolivian Indian Party) never had any electoral success.
The Indian revolution is clearly a national revolution, but Reinaga also claims
that it is a “racial revolution.” The concepts of nation, culture, and race are com-
pletely confounded in Reinaga’s writing although it is clear that the racial binary
Indian/white is for him the fundamental contradiction, not Marx’s proletariat/
capitalist. He writes, for example, “The problem of the Indian . . . is not a
problem of class (campesino class) but of race, spirit, culture, of a people, of a
Nation.” His definition of nation repeats nearly word for word Stalin’s classic
definition. “It is a stable human community, formed historically and arising
from the base of a community of language, territory, economic life, psychol-
ogy and culture.”16 Yet at the same time nation equals race. This contradiction
remains unresolved in La revolución india.
But his real target is Western culture and especially its Bolivian imitators.
The Indian revolution is an “impetuous confrontation of Indian ideology with
Western culture. . . . What the Indian wants is to liberate themselves, precisely,
from Europe.”17 Neither Western liberalism nor Western communism is spared
since both want to assimilate the Indian into Western culture and the Indian
ideal is “to be, not to disappear.” Despite Reinaga’s own background as a Marx-
ist, communism, in particular, comes in for unflinching criticism.
The Indian in the ranks of the Communist Party “suffers brutal racial dis-
crimination,” and all the party bosses are “of white skin, always of the white
cholaje.” Even more fundamentally, the party has tried to squeeze the Indian
into the class category of “campesino,” which is totally inappropriate for a soci-
ety like Bolivia without developed capitalist property relations.
Nevertheless, Reinaga’s Marxist background and previous socialist commit-
ments are evident in his insistence that the Indian revolution will be a socialist
revolution—not the socialist revolution of the communists but rather a social-
ism rooted in an “Indian socialism” based on a romanticized utopian image of
the Inca Empire as “a perfect society, in which every person was happy.”18 In
the conclusion of the “Bolivian Indian Party Manifesto,” he proposes that a
syncretic collection of principles be inscribed in gold letters everywhere in his
Indian socialist republic.
Ama llulla, ama sua, ama quella [Don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t be lazy]
He who does not work does not eat
From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.19
The first principle is one of moral maxims of the Inca Empire; the second,
an unacknowledged homage to colonial Virginia. But the last quote indicates
how deeply Marxist ideas have been fused with “Indianism” in Reinaga’s social-
ist utopia. Nevertheless, at the close of Reinaga’s “Manifesto” it is the Indians
of Bolivia, not the workers of the world, who are exhorted to unite. Reinaga,
both in his life and in his greatest work, has fused the principal currents of rev-
olutionary imagery in Bolivia: nationalism, Marxism, and Indianism. Despite
Reinaga’s famous aphorism, “Neither Christ nor Marx,” his Indian revolution
cannot exist without the latter.
Although Reinaga would not live to see his ideas explode into the mass
mobilization of millions in the first decade of the twenty-first-century, La rev-
olución india had immediate and far-reaching political effects. As Marcia Ste-
phenson points out, “His thought led to numerous movements derived from
his own Partido Indio de Bolivia, Julián Apasa University Movement (MUJA),
including the Túpac Katari Indian Movement (MITKA), the Túpac Katari
Revolutionary Movement (MRTK), and the Red Ayllu Offensive of Felipe
Quispe [see interview in this chapter].”20 These movements came to be called
154 CHAPTER 4
the “Kataristas” after the eighteenth-century rebel Túpac Katari.21 Their influ-
ence and thereby Reinaga’s echoes to this day.
The Katarist movement began with a small group of Aymara students at the
Villarroel high school in La Paz who called themselves the 15th of November
movement after the date of Túpac Katari’s martyrdom in 1781. All these students
had come of age after the revolution and all came from the same province,
Aroma, where haciendas had never been strong and Aymara ayllu bonds were
correspondingly most powerful. All maintained their ties to the villages where
they were born and often returned to assume positions in the traditional civil
religious hierarchy after completing their studies. They began by reading the
works of Fausto Reinaga, and most went on to be members of his Bolivian
Indian Party.22
Many continued to UMSA, where in 1971 they founded another student
group, the Movimiento Universitario Julián Apasa (MUJA, using Túpac Katari’s
civilian name), which was most active in the years 1978–83.23 MUJA became the
student branch of the Katarist movement and the source of many of its principal
leaders, including such luminaries as Raimundo Tambo and Genaro Flores. It
also became the intellectual wellspring of the other Katarist organizations men-
tioned by Stephenson and, eventually, the Aymara mobilizations of 2000–2005.
The intellectual roots of Katarism were to be found among those Aymara who
most acutely experienced the existential dilemma of the state of ’52. As Silvia
Rivera Cusicanqui notes:
In the 1960s there emerged a new generation of young Aymaras, who

felt they were “foreigners in their own country,” despite their formal
inclusion in the citizenry, since they experience the daily phenomena
of ethnic discrimination, political manipulation and humiliation. This
oppressive everyday reality, which to the Indians was anachronistic,
contradicted the “integrationist” rhetoric that prevailed in the official
ideology of revolutionary nationalism.24
The MUJA had in fact begun to fight discrimination among students and
faculty at UMSA in La Paz.
At the intellectual level, one of the most important offshoots of MUJA was
the Taller de Historia Oral Andina (THOA, Andean Oral History Workshop),
founded in 1983. THOA set itself the task of documenting indigenous move-
ments in the period 1900–1950 and produced a number of important works of
scholarly historical reconstruction.25 But it also had a critical impact on Aymara

consciousness by creating soap operas (radio novellas) based on the lives of
significant Aymara leaders, like Santos Marka T’ula or intellectuals like Edu-
ardo L. Nina Qhispi. As Eugenia Choque notes, these shows were broadcast in
Aymara and had a widespread impact on peasant communities in the Altiplano,
some of whom were inspired to investigate their own community’s history and
search for legal titles dating back centuries. THOA had a significant impact in
building a positive Aymara consciousness, which directly contradicted the racist
stereotypes and the assimilationist assumptions of the state of ’52.
MUJA and its alumni also opened the intellectual space for a new generation
of “Aymara intellectuals,” as they are called in Bolivia, who were also strongly
influenced by these ideas and those of Reinaga. Eugenia Choque, whose inter-
view follows, is representative of this new group of Aymara intellectuals, which
includes other MUJA alumni such as Roberto Choque Canqui; prominent offi-
cials of the MAS government, including his first education minister, columnist
and sociologist Félix Patzi Paco; and vice minister of community justice and dis-
tinguished anthropologist Esteban Ticona Alejo; Fausto Reinaga’s son Ramiro
Reinaga; and a rising star of Bolivian sociology, Pablo Mamani Ramírez, whose
interview is also included in this chapter. Mamani has emerged as a leading
theorist of the Indianist strains of the Katarist movement. He was a leader in the
movement to found a separate university for El Alto, the Universidad Pública y
Autónoma de El Alto (UPAE, Public University of El Alto), where he is now a
member of the faculty. These Aymara intellectuals have had an enormous effect
on public discourse in Bolivia and many, like Mamani and Choque, remain in
close touch with Aymara communities in the Altiplano.
The social movements spawned by MUJA actually contained two competing
intellectual positions. The first, the Indianists, were faithful followers of Reinaga
and placed the racial issue at the forefront of their analysis and program. As
Albó notes, “Their thesis was centered on the idea that the root of the prob-
lems was the Spanish conquest of the Andean ‘Indian’ peoples.”26 In 1978 this
tendency created its own political party, the Movimiento Indio Túpac Katari
(MITKA, Túpac Katari Indian Movement). Although the party had little elec-
toral success, it remained a presence both in Katarism and in the Confederación
Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB, Sole Union
Confederation of Rural Workers of Bolivia).
The second tendency also organized its own political party, the Movimiento
Revolucionario Túpac Katari (MRTK, Túpac Katari Revolutionary Movement),
156 CHAPTER 4
but, despite its name, it took a more moderate position combining elements of
Indianism and peasantist class analysis and working through both the electoral
system and the government-controlled CSUTCB. In 1979 it succeeded in seiz-
ing power in the peasant confederation. In 1993 the leader of one of its splinter
parties, Víctor Hugo Cárdenas, was elected vice president of Bolivia on a ticket
with Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in his first administration (1993–97).
The first, Indianist, tendency in MITKA had equally far-reaching effects. A
radical faction of the tendency formed a caucus, Ofensiva Roja de Ayllus Túpac-
Kataristas (Red Offensive of the Túpac-Katarist Ayllus), within and, eventu-
ally, outside the CSUTCB. Its principal theorist was none other than current
Bolivian vice president and distinguished sociologist and public intellectual
Álvaro García Linera. Its political leader, however, was the outspoken Aymara
revolutionary Felipe Quispe. Together with García’s partner, Raquel Gutiérrez,
and a core of Aymara militants they organized the Ejército Guerrillero Túpac
Katari (EGTK, Túpac Katari Guerrilla Army), which was active in 1990–91.
By 1992 the principal leaders, including García, Gutiérrez, and Quispe, had
been captured and the three of them and other leaders spent the next five
years in Chonchocoro prison. On their emergence, however, they immediately
became heroes in the eyes of many Aymara peasants and creole intellectuals
disaffected by a dozen years of neoliberal economic restructuring. García was
appointed as a professor in the Department of Sociology at UMSA in La Paz,
where one of his colleagues was the distinguished social scientist Silvia Rivera
Cusicanqui, who was also the founding director of THOA. Quispe, however,
found himself suddenly proposed as president of the national peasant feder-
ation as a compromise candidate to resolve a conflict between two peasant
leaders from Cochabamba, Evo Morales and Alejo Véliz. Beginning in 2000 in
step with the Cochabamba war, Quispe led a series of ever more militant pro-
tests, which culminated in the Gas War of 2003 that finally brought down the
regime of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. By that time the protests had moved
beyond Quispe’s or anyone else’s control. In 2002, however, in a bewildering
change of tactics for the old revolutionary, he ran for president with his own
newly formed party, the Movimiento Indio Pachakuti (MIP, Pachakuti Indian
Movement), which reaffirmed his commitment to Indianism and, at least sym-
bolically, to revolution, which is one of the ways the Aymara word pachakuti
can be translated.
Quispe’s narrative is the first of the interviews in this section. He is as unre-
pentant, revolutionary, and vituperative as ever, dismissing Evo Morales as a
“mestizo” and calling for even more Indian revolution until the Aymara have
their own state, even if it takes “rivers of blood.” As John Crabtree notes, “The
strident and sometimes violent tone of Quispe’s language also finds an echo
among people fed up with corrupt officials, self-satisfied NGO representatives,
and even churchmen who do less than they promise to tackle poverty and mar-
ginalization.”27 But Crabtree also notes that Quispe has had “a major impact on
helping build up a sense of self-respect and assertiveness among a people who
believe they are second (if not third) class citizens in today’s Bolivia.” But when
the government collapsed and the revolutionary found himself on the verge of
power, he demurred and left his supporters without any plan of action, let alone
governance. Having already spilled blood for Quispe’s Indian revolution, his
supporters rapidly abandoned him. In 2003 he was unceremoniously voted out
of the peasant union at a meeting to which he was not even invited. Today he
is almost completely marginalized both in politics and increasingly in histories
of the rise of MAS written by sympathizers of the ultimate victors in the revo-
lution that Quispe did so much to initiate.
Even in his former revolutionary capital, Achacachi, the mayor at the time
of the interviews (2009), elected on Quispe’s MIP slate, had abandoned him
and joined MAS. Eugenio Rojas, whose interview follows Quispe’s, had been
with Quispe from the beginning, first in the EGTK and later in electoral pol-
itics. His interview makes clear that the ideas of Reinaga and Quispe of a
twenty-first-century Qullasuyu (one of the four provinces of Tawantinsuyu)
had great currency in the Aymara Altiplano in the early years of the century.
Aymara cosmovision and the indigenous community still remain the core of
power in Achacachi, no matter who rules from La Paz. Rojas, who became a
MAS senator from La Paz, has decided that Aymara nationalism is not the
root of national power in a country as diverse as Bolivia. Many other Aymara
appear to have discovered the same thing. In the presidential election of 2005,
Evo Morales swept the Aymara heartland that, three years before, had been
Quispe’s (and Rojas’s) base.
Through MITKA, Ofensiva Roja, the EGTK, and Felipe Quispe, radical
Indianism has had a profound influence on the thinking of Aymara and other
indigenous people. But the influence of the other tendency in the Katarist
movement, the MRTK, may have been even more profound. Through the work
of Raimundo Tambo and, after his death in 1975, Genaro Flores, the movement
worked to create an independent Katarist peasant union movement within the
very union structure created by the MNR and the Peasant Military Pact. The
158 CHAPTER 4
tendency would culminate in the formation of the MRTK in 1978 and the
establishment of a new peasant union confederation, the Confederación Sindi-
cal Única de Trabajadores Rurales de Bolivia (CSUTCB) in 1979. From the
beginning this was the dominant current in the Katarist movement, however
spectacular the results of the radical tendencies of Quispe and the MITKA. The
close connection between the Aymara leaders and their base communities and
the profound changes brought to the latter by the April revolution extended its
influence far beyond intellectual circles.
Tambo and Flores and the other members of this tendency always combined
Indianist themes with class analysis, claiming to see oppression of the Aymara
peasantry with “two eyes,” one of class and one of ethnicity. Their famous “Man-
ifesto of Tiwanaku,” issued in 1973, in distinct contrast to Reinaga’s PIB Mani-
festo, issued only four years earlier, strongly emphasizes peasant class concerns,
anathema to Reinaga. Nevertheless, from the outset it combines class and cul-
tural themes:
Inca Yupanqui told the Spaniards, “A people who oppress another peo-
ple cannot be free.” We, the Qhechwa and Aymara peasants and other
indigenous people of the country feel the same. We feel economically
exploited and culturally and politically oppressed.28
Twenty years after the revolution they did not want to be considered second-
class citizens, and in a much-quoted phrase they wrote, “We are foreigners in
our own country.”29
Although the Manifesto speaks of revolution, their immediate goal is to
“start a powerful autonomous peasant movement”—a goal that in the midst of
the brutal dictatorship of Hugo Banzer, under the control of a national peasant
union established by the MNR at the height of its revolutionary power and
maintained at gunpoint by the Peasant Military Pact, seemed if not utopian
then almost impossible. But six years later they did just that, changing the
history of Bolivia forever. The powerful combination of Indianist thought and
class analysis made it possible to respond to the very real material privations
of the “peasantry” while at the same time speaking to their indigenous souls.
The CSUTCB eventually became an organization of more than three million
members.
The Kataristas, however, began to splinter politically almost immediately, and
their hold on the CSUTCB was eventually broken by Evo Morales’s cocaleros,
who seized power in 1990. The election of Víctor Hugo Cárdenas in 1993
marked the end, not the beginning, of their political power despite the import-
ant reforms, such as the Law of Popular Participation (1994), which radically
shifted power to local government and provided an opening for Evo Morales,
who was first elected as a deputy in 1997. The creation of an independent peasant
movement was nonetheless a decisive step in the political process that would
lead to Morales’s “democratic and cultural revolution.” Although Morales came
from Quechua-speaking Cochabamba, where ethnic nationalism, traditional
communities, and indigenous culture had always been weaker and unions, the
MNR, and peasantist themes had always been stronger, he had to come to terms
with the changed world that the Kataristas in both their radical “Indian” and
their moderate “revolutionary” form had left behind. During and after the 2005
election campaign, his discourse became notably more indigenist and by 2009
MAS party posters pictured him with Túpac Katari.
The spread and popularization of Fausto Reinaga’s ideas and the rise of
Katarism provide the alternative symbolic frame that promised the resolution
of the economic abandonment of the countryside and the extinction of indig-
enous culture and identity that the state of 1952 imposed, and the system of
apartheid it left behind. Reinaga’s Revolución india was a symbolic inversion
of Bolivian history that placed the indigenous and indigenous identity at the
center of Bolivian history and society. The Kataristas who both transformed and
communicated his ideas throughout Bolivian society provided a positive, even
triumphant, image for second-class citizens who felt they were strangers in their
own land. At the moment of its triumph on April 9, 1952, the MNR-led revolu-
tion contained the contradictions that would eventually lead to its demise (and
the demise of its leading party). Indigenous people in general and the Aymara in
particular had to live simultaneously with their full enfranchisement as citizens
and their planned extinction as Aymaras. Racism was the societal glue that
held this unlikely combination together. If the Aymara accepted the negative
image of themselves presented by a racist history and society, the contradiction
was resolved. Their role as second-class citizens was exactly what they, as racial
inferiors, deserved. Reinaga and Katarism changed all that.
Radio programs, political organizers, and indigenous intellectuals brought
them a new history and a new identity. Ultimately these influences undermined
the one category from the old order that Fausto Reinaga did not challenge—
race. Quispe’s efforts to polarize the society between the Aymaras and the q’aras
ultimately failed, not only because of vacillating tactics but because his appeal
160 CHAPTER 4
was too narrow and ignored the increasing number of urban migrants and oth-
ers who found themselves caught in the middle. Evo Morales, with his class
and plurinational appeals, captured a much broader audience and in the end
his vision prevailed at the ballot box and very likely in history. Race, that indis-
pensable ingredient in the old order, seems to be dying an ideological, if not yet
popular, death. At his second inauguration, Morales stood before portraits not
only of Túpac Katari and Apiaguaiki Tumpa (a Guaraní) but also of the liberator
and proponent of Western civilization Simón Bolívar.
As has been noted, the interviews that follow include a wide range of stories
of the continuing influence of Fausto Reinaga and Katarism. The interviews
begin with Felipe Quispe himself, the most radical Indianist of them all and
a loyal follower of Túpac Katari and Fausto Reinaga. Eugenio Rojas fought
with Quispe but now is a senator for MAS supporting a plurinational, not an
Aymara, state. Pablo Mamani and Eugenia Choque are part of that flowering
of Aymara thought that Reinaga and the Katarists did so much to stimulate.
Mamani was an activist and founder of one of the most important intellectual
institutions in Aymara society, the public university of El Alto. Choque was a
member of the Movimiento Universitario Julián Apasa and a founding member
of the Taller de Historia Oral Andina. Together these interviews show the over-
whelming importance of the indigenous revolution (and La revolución india) in
the transformation of contemporary Bolivia. Evo Morales is the head of that
revolution but La revolución india may be its soul.
The interviews that follow demonstrate the enduring influence of Reinaga
and Katarism for the revolutionary transformations of the twenty-first century.
It is striking how many ideas that began with Reinaga appear in the inter-
views: the restoration of Qullasuyu/Tiwantinsuyu, “two Bolivias”; Túpac Katari,
Bartolina Sisa, and Zárate Willka; the wiphala; the sacred site of Tiwanaku;
the indigenous New Year ( June 21); the q’ara or blanco-mestizo clique; and
of course the idea of indigenous revolution itself. Reinaga’s Revolución india
reversed the categories of Hispanic modernity and provided the symbolic rev-
olution that, decades later, climaxed in the political revolution of 2000–2005.
FELIPE QUISPE: REVOLUTIONARY INDIANIST
“El Malku” Felipe Quispe was born in 1942 to a poor Aymara campesino family
in the province of Omasuyos not far from La Paz. He was, as he says in this
interview, “born a revolutionary.” During his military service in the 1960s he
was indoctrinated in the strict anticommunism of the time and emerged in 1964
with a burning desire to read Marx in the original to see if what they had told
him was true. After reading The Communist Manifesto, he concluded that he had
been lied to, and Marx became a fundamental influence on his radicalism. He
was also influenced by Fausto Reinaga and in 1978 was one of the founders and
permanent secretary of the MITKA until Luis García Meza’s military coup in
1980, when he was expelled from the country. He traveled to Mexico and Cen-
tral America, where he trained with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation
Front in El Salvador and the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP, Guer-
rilla Army of the Poor) in Guatemala. In 1983 he returned to Bolivia, where he
assumed a leadership role in the CSUTCB La Paz and then in February 1986
formed the Ofensiva Roja de Ayllus Túpac-Kataristas, from which emerged the
short-lived EGTK, active in 1990–91. By 1992 Quispe and other leaders such
as Álvaro García Linera, his brother Raúl, and social partner Raquel Gutiérrez
along with many Aymara activists from the altiplano were arrested. Quispe
spent the next five years in Chonchocoro prison. On his emergence he found
himself selected in 1998 as a compromise candidate to head the CSUTCB and
resolve a leadership conflict between Alejo Véliz and Evo Morales. In 2000–
2001 he led militant protests in the altiplano that culminated in September 2003
in a protest that touched off a nationwide rebellion.
In 2002 Quispe formed his own party, the Movimiento Indio Pachakutik
(MIP), and ran for president, receiving 6 percent of the vote, and elected six
deputies, including himself. By 2003, however, his power began to decline at
the very moment that a Quispe-inspired protest brought down the govern-
ment. In that same year he was voted out of his union position in a meeting
to which he was not invited. In 2004 he resigned his seat in the assembly.
In 2005 Evo Morales carried the Aymara altiplano and Quispe’s MIP was
reduced to 2 percent of the vote. He has remained at the margins of Bolivian
politics ever since.30
It has cost us much blood to have an Indian president. We have had

mestizos such as Andrés de Santa Cruz, of a Spanish father and an
Indian mother, such as Víctor Hugo Cárdenas (although he changed
his [Aymara] name) but he has been vice president with Gonzalo
Sánchez de Lozada, but this last one, Evo Morales Ayma, his name
162 CHAPTER 4
is not Indian; he is a mestizo. Augustín Morales has governed in this

country—many Morales have governed in this country. We Indians
maintain our original surname, Quispe or Quispe Huanca, Mamani,
Condori. We have not become absorbed by the imperialist capitalist
system. Morales is there because he is a mestizo puppet that has been
put in the palace.
He is a puppet because he dresses differently than we do. He is a
fake in the first place because he does not dress like an ordinary and
normal Indian. Secondly, he does not think with his own brain but
others think for him, and, finally, I should say that the ministers are
not Indians. Juan Ramón Quintana, Álvaro García Linera, Walter San
Miguel, and including Alfredo Rada: all these people have nothing to
do with Indians. Clearly the Morales people put on a poncho, pretend
they are Indian, but are just figureheads in the palace. I see that in this
respect there is change. Because before the president was white and
the Indians were excluded. Now the president is an Indian but they
continue having white ministers, white ambassadors—the bosses are
white. Because of this he is just a servant. Evo Morales is servile.
Now if you arrive at my community, where we had planned a mech-
anization of agriculture, it does not exist. We have overthrown Gon-
zalo Sánchez de Lozada, we have overthrown Carlos Mesa Quisbert,
including [Hugo] Banzer, three presidents. We have proposed mecha-
nization, electrification—bringing power to our communities; we have
proposed indigenous social security, but we are not insured. We are like
those animals that are in the hills, in the mountains; we do not count.
We have proposed to have our own university; we have proposed
autonomy, our own state, not the blanco mestizo state but rather an
Indian state. In ancient times we would have been in Qullasuyu, but
things changed after the Spaniards arrived in the year 1532—Pizarro,
Almagro, Valverde. The situation changed and then the republic
arrived and now Evo Morales has not changed anything. We will con-
tinue being the same until tomorrow or until tomorrow is past. They
are going to record the bicentennial, the two hundred years from the
death [sic] of Pedro Domingo Murillo, and who was Pedro Domingo
Murillo? He was the murderer of our ancestors. Who fought Túpac
Katari? Murillo saw the quartering of Túpac Katari. The most ignorant
people celebrate a murderer. The streets, the plazas, the names of the
universities, high schools, military academies, police academies con-
tinue to bear the name of our murderer. Nothing has changed. There
is no decolonization; there is no change.
There is no [refoundation of the state] because if we had arrived in
power, I am certain that this country would not be called Bolivia. We
would have changed it to our original name, Qullasuyu. We would
have our own laws, code, language, religion; all that surrounds us. They
do not know how to extinguish Qullasuyu because it was a very strong
culture—petrified like the stones of Tiwanaku. In an Indian state the
culture differs greatly, the language is different; for example, it is like
German and English.
T H E M A K I N G O F A R EVO LU T I O N A RY
Señor, I have been doing politics since I was standing in my mother’s

roadside restaurant. When I was born, I was shouting “patria o muerte
[motherland or death]” when my community washed me all over in
urine. I wasn’t born in a hospital. I screamed for milk. I was born a revo-
lutionary and a politician and until I go under to the Pachamama, when
they bury me, I will continue to be a revolutionary politician. Even if
those mean sons of bitches exterminate me I will still be a revolutionary.
As a boy I even thought myself capable of making war. This I have not
renounced. It is clear that they have slandered me; politics is dirty, mean,
but I was born for this—I am made of this. I am part of this model that
wishes to follow the path traced by our ancestors—the struggle for total
and definitive liberation.
You know that founding a political party is easy; it is set out in laws.
Whoever doesn’t agree with the system or does not share the ideology of
the government in power is persecuted, is clandestine, is a conspirator. In
the nineties I spent five years in jail for my revolutionary ideals. When I
came out of prison I organized mass mobilizations—from 2000 to 2006.
I continue to think the same as before, but now this requires looking for
human resources in order to make the revolution, because to do so in a
legal context is not easy. It is expensive to file a lawsuit, but we have to
do so in order to fight.
164 CHAPTER 4
T H E C S U T C B A N D T H E M O B I LI Z AT I O N S, 2000 – 2 0 0 5
I had been elected [president of the CSUTCB] in the year 1998, ’99. I
was in the process of redefining and reorganizing the union cadres and
finding people at the national level, particularly here in La Paz. In 2000
I went public with my first and last name, organizing the mobilizations
using the same tactics as Túpac Katari. The life of Túpac Katari had
inspired us. We blockaded roads and highways; we blocked agricultural
products from the country and laid siege to cities in order to strangle
our captors. We managed things very intelligently. Between 2000 and
2006 we overthrew the governments of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada,
Banzer, and finally Carlos Mesa Quisbert, but we have not been working
for ourselves—the devil does not know for whom he works. We have
worked for Evo Morales. Evo Morales had been a leader from 1988,
but he had not done anything. He was simply a guy who moved from
one party to another. He never had a political line, but in 1999 they
bought this emblem of MAS that came from the Bolivian Socialist Pha-
lange and with this party he has reached the palace. We are not envious
because the values still remain with us. Our political culture still is here.
The flag that we have flown is not that flown by the MAS party and
Evo Morales. We still have the flag. We can return to the political scene
at any point through mobilizations or democracy, or through another
more united and more revolutionary way.
I had done my military service in 1963, ’64. I was green clearly. My
parents did not tell me to be political because they did not have a party.
There was a master sergeant of the army named Aureliano Tórrez, an
anticommunist. We shared pamphlets and the pamphlet said that Marx
was an atheist, that communism was going to take our lands, our ani-
mals, that communism was going to kill our parents, our grandparents.
This scared me—it entered into the depths of my heart. When I left
the barracks I bought The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. I wanted
to find where he said they were going to take my land, that they were
going to kill, and there was nothing. Everything Tórrez told me was a
lie—from that moment I was political. I learned to be political thanks
to the military. Because of this I was working from ’64, through the sev-
enties, from ’80 to ’84, more or less, in organic work, going through the
communities, sleeping with our brothers in the countryside and there-
fore dirty, without bathing, without washing, sharing the same lice, the
same fleas, eating the same food, talking in Aymara, Quechua, winning
people over to make a great revolt. In the ’90s we did not know how to
do it and we fell into the hands of state intelligence. In 2000 all of these
people responded. What we had been organizing now emerged. I did
not utilize money but used the strategy and the tactics of our ancestors.
One day I stopped at a community, went in from 7:00 a.m., spent the
night, departed the following day, went into another community—there
was rotation. Sometimes when we were going in we were unlucky and
collided with the army. Sometimes we didn’t collide with the army; then
we could last a year, two years. Collisions with the army did not affect us
because one, two, three communities enter a blockade and other com-
munities are working, agricultural work. At night we went in with flash-
lights while the others were resting. We used communal food so that we
didn’t even spend ten cents. My compañeros were not mercenaries but
instead were aware that we needed a good discourse. We needed con-
cepts and terms, categories in accord with our realities; sweet words, to
speak well to our people. Our people responded in the year 2000 when
we dealt with the issue of water—clearly partly thanks to our discourse.
For example, in 2000 [2003] on September 5 we began with mobi-
lizations; on the tenth, eleventh we kidnapped the ministers at Radio
San Gabriel, we went on a hunger strike. It was incredible that we could
go on a hunger strike for almost two months from September until
October 17, until the overthrow [of Sánchez de Lozada]. This we man-
aged with considerable intelligence. First we studied the government of
Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, minister by minister—who was the more
intelligent, who was the most foolish—because Goni was nothing for
us. Carlos Sánchez Berzaín [defense minister] was crazy, demented—he
wanted to make Goni kill. First he provoked confrontations between the
police and the army. We studied the psychology of the people—if you
strike an Aymara so that he sees his blood, he is capable of killing you.
Furthermore, if there is death the Aymara people become furious—all of
this we have studied. A leader cannot be a fool, cannot be a sheep, but a
leader has to know how to balance, manage, like chewing gum, pulling
little by little until it breaks—that is what we did. There were many
people who only wanted to participate in two weeks of demonstrations.
Then we ordered them back to the community for a week and another
166 CHAPTER 4
community demonstrated—we were replacing demonstrators because

our people are as hard as a rock. But I do not believe we have this type of
leadership now in Bolivia. The government says do you want money or
do you want to die—two things, nothing more. The leader has to choose.
If you get the money, it does not accomplish anything—now you have
totally fallen. If you raise the revolver, you are going to die with dignity.
I always choose the revolver. I say, “I am not a fool.”
Because of this they imprisoned me in San Joaquín [San Pedro].
It has cost me a piece of flesh, but this is the story. But I would tell
you there are gains; there is value in this enthusiasm, this revolutionary
spirit. We could return—the members of the confederation. I know
that if there was a mobilization, this government of Evo would fall in
five minutes. I know members of the Morales government. I know Juan
Ramón Quintana; he was my lecturer in the Universidad Mayor de San
Andrés. I took general sociology with him. I know Roberto Aguilar. I
studied political economy with him; Magdalena Cajías, studied guerrilla
movements in Latin America, and so on. I know all of them so that I
can study how to make them fall, what issue we are going to work with.
In 2003 we worked on the issue of gas and oil; now autonomy is fash-
ionable and this I can handle. I know that with this we can make great
mobilizations but currently the confederation [CSUTCB] is controlled
by MAS. They are eunuchs that are not going to do anything; they only
protect the government.
T H E D R E A M O F Q U LL A S U Y U
As I just told you a moment ago, [our dream is] to reconstitute our
nation, Qullasuyu [name of the region of the Inca Empire that corre-
sponds to modern Bolivia], Tawantinsuyu (literally “four regions,” the
name of the entire Inca Empire) because we have Aymaras in Peru,
where there are eight provinces, Aymaras in Chile, in the north of
Argentina—all of this. We Aymaras have another nation that does not
have a border but is implied at the international level. We are not now
talking simply of the autonomy of one province. Our proposal goes far
beyond what the government proposes. We have made much progress
with the people in Peru, where we continue working, because for the
Aymara there are no borders. Today I am going to Chile and I am going

to continue looking for people to organize. I believe that Qullasuyu will
be one day. It is going to cost blood, mountains of dead bodies perhaps,
or we will have to cross rivers of blood.
To have our own nation again: an Aymara nation with our own
state, our own laws. To have our police, our armed forces, to have
everything, to no longer depend on the Bolivian nation. Quechuas and
Guaraní—all three are large. But the Quechuas also think the same. In
Peru there are also Quechua. Here in the north of La Paz we have two
or three provinces that are Quechua; the departments of Cochabamba,
Potosí, and Chuquisaca are Quechua. I believe that the Quechua also
have another plan. The Guaraní also because to this day they still do
not belong to the CSUTCB. The Guaranís do not have their own
nation. They are working on this. But since they are managed by the
current government, by MAS, the people are now silenced, but little by
little they are going to smash this—because there has been no change.
They could have various remedies, because the government has a lot of
money at the national and international level. For example, the dignity
voucher pays 200 bolivianos to seniors [similar to U.S. social security],
then they are going to pay the mothers [maternity care], the Juancito
Pinto cash grant for children [cash transfer program conditional on
children remaining in school], and with this they are going to bring in
more people, since people are happy to be seeing money for the first
time. There are very poor people living in extreme conditions, and it
helps them. This is their policy. You know that in the Aymara culture
no one remains in power forever; everyone takes their turn. If the
government or Evo Morales wants to stay in the [presidential] palace
forever, I believe that it is not going to go well for him. He is thinking
as a Westerner; he wants to be like Castro—die in the palace. But this
is not going to happen. Many presidents have thought the same thing.
Villarroel, for example; he wanted to govern for twenty years at gun-
point, but he was not able to do so. The same with García Meza, who
wanted to govern for twenty years and ended up in jail. Our people
are rebellious. It is because we are not made of a single race or culture.
Here there are different races and cultures; therefore it is difficult to
manage the nation—we have to be very conscious of this.
168 CHAPTER 4
CA P I TA LI S T A N D CO M M U N A L E CO N O M I ES
Although money has not been eliminated, the barter of products for
products survives in the communities and in the towns. But this is our
model in the communities. I would like you to visit my community as
an example. You are not going to see rich people—the majority has
two cows, three cows, some ten sheep. The richest may have some fifty
sheep. We are almost equal then. Some have six children, others will
have twelve children; they are all equal. We cannot multiply the land
but the population grows. There no one begs; thieves are punished by
community justice; immoral people are thrown out of the community. I
believe this system can be implemented in the cities, in other places—it
is applied in El Alto in many places.
On Sunday everyone does communal work. Yesterday I was doing
communal work because we are bringing water to the community. My
people are going to get three [cubic] meters, the other side three meters.
There is no inequality; because of this there are no great entrepreneurs.
People always think of the community. We have lived in that way for
years. But what brought inequality? Colonialism did. I believe in a com-
munitarian economy and a communitarian state. We believe this still. It
is not as cruel as the capitalist system where one person owns ten houses
or five hundred hectares of land as in the East. But now we need to
create a communal economy. We are talking and forming commissions
to theorize the economy.
T H E B O D Y O F T Ú PAC K ATA R I
I believe that any change is going to come about with blood. We are
going to shed our blood on Pachamama. I believe that this is so. I am not
going to lie to you; I cannot tell you that we are going to make changes
democratically. I do not believe it. In order to move from one system to
another system, one day we are going to say “war” in this country.
You do not see the standard of living of your slave. We are as slaves
in this country. Look—the person who works at this hostel is an Indian;
the cook here is also an Indian; the person who sweeps the patio here,
an Indian; the person who drives the car is an Indian; the policeman, an
Indian. We do the most difficult jobs. The bosses here in this country, the
managers, are white; the workers are Indian; in the military academies it
is the same. The colonel, the boss has Spanish European blood. We are
lower than them here; we are on the floor. Those who are below have to
rise and own themselves. We must own the political power that we lost
with the death of Atahualpa. We must control the land, the territory,
the soil, the subsoil, over the soil, including flight paths. We are not
owners—the state is the owner.
I am thinking of doing something they call conquest—to win the
war. I remember in ’82, in El Salvador, the Front for Social Libera-
tion [in fact the Peoples Liberation Army] led by Joaquín Villalobos. I
knew Comandante Marcial [Salvador Cayetano Carpio]. He died at age
seventy-six at that time. I was forty. I was in Guatemala. I know Rolando
Morán of the EGP. After that they formed an organizing committee.
But I was there in passing. It is how one learns. It is like, for example,
going to Colombia now to see the FARC; how they are, because the
science advances. We have prepared for another war, but now the context
is different. It would be the same if I went to Colombia, but here we are
just organizing. But we have held out. Our own comrades have played
dirty with us—more than anyone, Álvaro García [Linera]. We are not
sorry because there are new people, a more intelligent new generation.
You can organize; you can put the body of Túpac Katari together again.
It is not very far—almost in our hands. It depends on the wisdom of
the Indian.
EUGENIO ROJAS: FROM FELIPE QUISPE TO EVO MORALES
Achacachi had the reputation of being the radical capital of the Aymara during
the 2000–2005 protests and was Felipe Quispe’s home base. At the time of
the interviews, Eugenio Rojas was completing his term (2005–9) as its mayor.
Elected originally on Felipe Quispe’s MIP party slate, his association with
Quispe dated back to his days as a member of the EGTK. But by 2009 he
was supporting Evo Morales and in 2010 was elected MAS senator from the
Department of La Paz and eventually elected president of the Senate. He was
also the leader of the Achacachi-based Aymara militia, the Ponchos Rojos,
which by 2007 had, at least symbolically, integrated themselves into the national
army by appearing in the army’s annual parade. He received his bachelor’s
degree in sociology at UMSA but taught mathematics in various secondary
170 CHAPTER 4
schools. He was a teacher in the famed Normal School in Warisata (the first
indigenous school in the nation) immediately before his term as mayor. As he
notes in the interview, opinions of leaders can shift rapidly in Achacachi. In 2011
he was voted the second most distrusted politician by residents of Achacachi
(Vice President Álvaro García Linera was first) because of his role in building
a dam that collapsed after a rain. To add insult to injury, in September 2012 he
was briefly held hostage in El Alto by a group of Ponchos Rojos from Achacachi
demanding the resignation of two of Evo Morales’s ministers.31
Q U LL A S U Y U A N D T H E T WO B O LI V I A S
For us democracy at that time [before 2005] was another scam. Democ-
racy meant giving power to a few people in the ruling government.
The MNR came in; then the ADN [Acción Democrática Nacionalista
(Nationalist Democratic Action)] came in; then the MIR [Movimiento
de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left Movement)]—they
took turns among themselves. They all made their plan to perpetuate
themselves in government and in power and, above all, to take advantage
of the economy for the benefit of a few families and regions. Democracy
for us has meant massacring people, tricking people, selling state enter-
prises or giving away our businesses. They have had us; they have used
democracy to fool us, and people realized this. They could no longer live
in this kind of democracy, a false democracy that did not favor us. This is
why the mobilizations come to be. Because this region had been aban-
doned by governments for a long time. All of this high plateau region
was rarely or never aided by the governments that came and went. With
the exception of health and education. But even then only a little—they
worked with us, nothing more. The government did not aid us. They gave
us almost nothing. Few roads, little education—education depends on
the teacher and the teachers were not well trained. The conditions—for
example, the school rooms, the infrastructure, furniture, equipment—
abandoned. [The agricultural sector] is poor and got almost nothing
from the government, nothing to improve, nothing for agricultural pro-
duction or ranching; until now there was nothing. That is what people
were asking for—to see roads, education, health, the improvement of
production, agricultural mechanization—those are the requests. Those
requests bothered the government.
At bottom the uprisings were to destroy the government, overthrow

the government. But the people at the grassroots, the communities, still
did not understand this—they simply fought. But for those who led,
in all the movements, it was to take the government and destroy the
government. The strategy was the blockade of roads—a better strategy.
The government was going to militarize us—it is always going to use
repression—[with a] state of siege, persecution of leaders, confinement
of leaders in other regions. The government has had the same posi-
tion for years, from the military governments to the dictatorial to the
democratic governments. Every strategy that you use for a long time
becomes a losing strategy. These strategies are not permanent. In many
cases there was no persecution. In many cases the strategy was to buy
the leaders—to give them money, to give the leaders positions. This is
one of the strategies. But in this period of rebellion this strategy did not
work. Now they could not buy all the leaders; they bought only some.
They were buying some but they could not buy the base. That strategy
failed the government. So the rebellion emerged.
In this region we are mostly Aymaras. The Aymaras call for the
reconstitution of Qullasuyu, for the reconstruction of our own ways of
doing politics, our own ways of defining our economy, our values, our
religion, and above all the territory and the government. From there
arose the idea that “we are millions”—why can’t we govern ourselves?
Then there emerged these very profound messages. We should govern
among ourselves. That another should not govern us. We have always
considered them others, not ourselves, although we are of one country,
but we said they are others; they are not our own. Because of this a
very different Aymara message emerged that says, “We will vote for our
blood.” When we say for our blood, for our own people, we mean we
will vote for ourselves. And they still do not understand the word blood
when we say we are voting for our blood. For us the idea of blood is like
a family, but bigger. These words were emerging.
We are managing our own Bolivia and reconstituting a new Bolivia.
Then they spoke of the reconstitution of Qullasuyu. And many peo-
ple were frightened, were appalled. For them, to reconstruct Qullasuyu
meant going back one hundred years, two hundred years. Never, you
cannot do that. And many in the universities, intellectuals, politicians,
said to us, “You are lost because this is not reality. You cannot deny
172 CHAPTER 4
cell phones, roads; you cannot deny the other modern tendencies; we’re
in another era.” They did not understand, and still do not understand,
but we are making progress. When we talk of the reconstitution of
Qullasuyu, we are talking of two Bolivias: the Bolivia of the rich and
the Bolivia of the marginalized, the millions. Then they told us that to
speak of two Bolivias was very bad for them—there are not two Boliv-
ias; only one Bolivia exists. But the society of the Aymara was totally
marginalized. There were some who wanted to perpetuate themselves
in power, in the economy, in politics, but others were simply used in the
elections even though they may be dying of hunger—we protested for
this Bolivia. They worked hard using various strategies: street blockades,
marches to the city of La Paz; the final siege of the city of La Paz; armed
confrontation with the army, here in Achacachi. In Warisata there were
deaths so we also armed ourselves. They thought, How do we destroy this
Bolivia that is doing damage?
Before, in the eighties, the nineties, they thought of arming guer-
rilla groups, here in Achacachi and in other regions, the EGTK, Ejér-
cito Guerrillero Túpac Katari. This was headed by Felipe [Quispe] and
Álvaro García Linera. And this aided us a lot. These people, when they
were talking of the guerrilla they were not talking of you but rather of
our people—a lot of people with a very radical commitment and a very
strong discipline. We are the fruit of that. When I was very young I
was committed to the guerrilla. And when you are formed in that dis-
cipline, you never forget. And many people were formed. These people
propelled the rebellion—not as persons but within all the organizations.
The guerrilla was some two thousand strong but at that time they were
not able to overthrow the government because they had the army, the
police; they had all the apparatus. But this time around, when there were
two thousand of us, the two thousand got into the communities. We, the
two thousand, stirred up many people—we mobilized ten thousand, one
hundred thousand, many more. The guerrilla formation was not in vain.
Many more who are now not guerrillas, normal people but very tough,
served with us. If that had not been the case, perhaps they would not
have mobilized in 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005. There would not have been so
many people. The mobilization would not have been possible because
those who served with the guerrillas inspired, talked to the people, shap-
ing them, explaining why we wanted to fight. There was consciousness-
raising from the base. They stirred up people in the meetings, saying,
“We are going! We are going! We are going!” If this had not been the
case, perhaps there would not have been this mobilization. That has been
a great help as we struggle together with the people.
Now we were no longer clandestine. We are public now; publicly we
said, “Now we are going to do this, we are going to blockade, we will
do it like this, brother.” We spoke of the strategies—the road blockade
is the strongest. The road blockade is not easy to set up. You must raise
consciousness among the people. Three or four persons are not a block-
ade because the same number can come and take down the blockade.
We have to raise consciousness among these people because we have to
get the people’s approval to organize blockades—not the leader’s. The
leader gives us guidance; the assemblies give us their approval. Here
the most important thing is that the base approves it by a majority—it
could be 60 percent or 70 percent. We have to respect the minority, but
a decision is made to blockade. We decide in an assembly; we cannot
decide alone. If only a few decide, nothing will last—not even for
one day. They will throw you out; they will expel you. Deciding alone
means treason to the people. You have to always obey the masses. If
you decide alone, you betray them. You are expelled and they will
almost never welcome you. If they receive you, they will receive you
with indifference. “No, this one is a traitor,” they will say. They will not
want to see you. They will talk, yes, they talk to you, but afterward they
do not respect you.
P E AC EF U L R EVO LU T I O N
Now ideas have changed. Now not Qullasuyu, but Bolivia. Bolivia, yes,
and our own Bolivia. Nor do we want to impose our thinking. When
we talked of Qullasuyu it was not bad, but others did not understand.
When you talk of Qullasuyu, it is not accepted in urban centers like La
Paz. In Santa Cruz it is even worse—yes in La Paz, no in Santa Cruz.
It is bad in other cities like Cochabamba, Chuquisaca, Tarija, or Beni.
When you talk of Qullasuyu they see evil, so now it is better to talk
of Bolivia and feel more Bolivian. Why? Because before only the elite
were Bolivians. They decided who was going to rule as Bolivians. They
had everything in their hands—the army, the Supreme Court of Justice,
174 CHAPTER 4
the government. They dominated everything. Only small things were

handed to us and because of this we did not feel Bolivian; because of
this we said, no, we must destroy this Bolivia. If this is the Bolivia they
want to strengthen, we want our Qullasuyu. At the time people agreed
with the reconstruction of Qullasuyu—not Bolivia, just Qullasuyu. But
for so many years—200 years, or 180 years—it has been the Bolivia of
the elite. They have introduced their Bolivia in our minds. To remove
this from our minds is very difficult. It may create more problems—
instability, for example.
It is a revolution for us, but it is a very peaceful revolution. So peace-
ful. Not like in other times and places, such as the revolution of ’52 and
other revolutions. For example, in Peru the revolution of Sendero Lumi-
noso [Shining Path] was very violent. Our strategy was very different.
I say that we have made a very peaceful revolution. It was limited so
that there were not more deaths. It was limited so that it did not cause
confrontations with the army—ultimately, the soldiers are our sons. It is
our sons who join the police. The police are our brothers who come from
the communities and we have tried to avoid confrontation. I believe that
few countries have done this.
Here the people said to me when I was a leader, “Alcalde, we will take
the barracks of the Ayacucho Regiment; we have to take the barracks.”
It would have been easy, but how many deaths would there have been?
Let’s see, who would have died? Our sons, the soldiers. I asked the
elders. It is good to always ask, not to decide alone. This is our people.
They are characterized by asking, by consulting among ourselves, espe-
cially with the oldest. I consulted, “What would you do?” They said to
me, “Eugenio, it’s bad.” Why? “Because if we go and enter the barracks
we’re going to kill our sons.” Here in this region, for example, the non-
commissioned officers, even some officers, are from this region. We have
many from here so it’s better if we don’t act; we will wait, and that’s what
I did. I could have taken the barracks as vengeance or to take weapons.
But this is terrible. It is better always to look ahead and avoid more
deaths. We’ve tried to avoid causing more deaths. That’s what we asked
for—to avoid more confrontations. Clearly it was the government that
killed in El Alto; they provoked it. If the government had also tried to
avoid causing more deaths, perhaps the mobilizations of 2000–2005
would not have happened.
The government has been very stubborn. [Carlos] Sánchez Berzaín

has been very stubborn. Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada—also very stub-
born. He was very violent. We understood that this government was very
weak. When one is more reactive, wants to do things rapidly, to force
things, one is going to lose. That’s what the government was. It was so
weak, so reactionary, wanted to kill rapidly, introduce bullets—we saw
these disadvantages in the government. Another disadvantage is that
people no longer believed in the government at all. We saw the govern-
ment was hanging by a thread. We had worked toward this moment.
Above all we had understood its weaknesses. It had nothing in the way
of strengths. Its weaknesses were compounded by its previous record.
Those were studied by the leaders. The leaders talked to the people of
the base, little by little, about other things. We said to the people that
they did not give us education, health, roads. That they imprisoned us
for carrying out community justice, for Pucarani [a notorious case of
such imprisonment]; we will turn it around and liberate the prisoners.
But this was no more than an excuse. It was not the truth; basically the
purpose was to overthrow the government.
We are waiting. The people here say that we have to wait for another
five years at least. Four more years. We are expecting that Evo will act
and most people are observing. What they are doing with the new con-
stitution now is a fundamental step for us—the Constitución Política
del Estado [Political Constitution of the State]. The people are awaiting
nationalizations. They have recovered some businesses. This is more or
less how the government is proceeding, but much more is needed. The
new constitution requires regulations, new laws. That is what the people
are expecting. Now it is a little distorted with the election; the govern-
ment must be ratified. The people are going to ratify the government
in this region.
CO S M OV I S I O N
Above all is the cosmovision. Our language also. When they come, the
people always want them to speak our language. If they do not speak it,
they say go away. Clearly, in your case, not so much. They are not going
to bother you, because you are visitors. But for anyone who wants to
be an authority, they say, “Let’s see how well he speaks Aymara first;
176 CHAPTER 4
his language, his religion, the actions that he takes.” Clothing also; the
poncho is very common even though a proper poncho is not our cus-
tom. We have appropriated the poncho. The poncho is good; the way
you behave and eat also matters. If you do not eat, ah no, this will not
do. They will say, “What do you eat?” It looks like they have nothing to
feed you if you do not eat, so you have to eat. It is good if you drink beer
and you dance—dances are good. Those things are like the identity of
a people, like culture. Also observe the people and their ways of doing
things—this is what drives them. Above all you have to get their way of
thinking. The Aymara religion, their thinking. There are others who do
not adapt and then the people are very distrustful. Or it might be you
lie about something; they will quickly exclude you. You have to speak
the truth. Where have you come from? What do you want? What are
you going to do? Be smart. But if you lie, they will quickly kick you out
and show you the whip. The people are very zealous.
This is the cosmovision—Aymara thinking—for this region. Cosmo-
vision charactizes the Aymara people above all. Our language also. We
are also characterized by our form of organization and our discipline.
Now there are other peoples like us, but they are not equal to us because
they do not have discipline; they do not respect our authorities; they do
not even respect their own leaders. Here we have to have respect among
ourselves. Because of this if one makes a mistake, they will punish it.
Even we mayors have to obey them because every time they ask us for
some report, we have to do it just right. For me, to be mayor of La Paz
is easy. It is very screwed-up to be mayor of Achacachi. It is a rebellious
people, a disciplined people, a controlling people, a vigilant people. With
these people, if you miss one word you are screwed. Because of this I
have to say the truth—this I can do, this I cannot do, this we will do—
and the people show respect. This is how it is. It is good if you do not lie.
P O N C H O S RO J O S
Yes, I am the leader of the Ponchos Rojos [an Aymara militia]. It is not
unusual to have two or three functions. I have to mobilize the people,
but as mayor it is against the law to mobilize the people, to lead the
people, to protest, to order people to go to Sucre or Santa Cruz. For
me it is against the law, but nevertheless we have to do it. We cannot
ignore the municipal norms, but we also have to respect the communal
norms. Because of this I am here in Achacachi, as mayor. The Ponchos
Rojos function. They are here. They are going to parade here, and this is
always going to be the case while the rural communities exist. They are
going to function if this people are to exist and continue its struggle. The
communities must be strengthened. That is our law; our communities
have to exist. They are going to be maintained with basic services like
education. People who had migrated to the city are returning in order
to fulfill their function in the community, even though they do not own
land. They return for the pride of having been born here—this is the
blood. I was born here and I should become an authority—this is good.
Since Achacachi is close to La Paz, the majority of the authorities here
are those who came back. Those who live in La Paz do not forget.
Yes, the Ponchos Rojos are important in this process. Who has sup-
ported the government and who took the initiative in 2003, 2001? It
was very tough, but this region led the uprising—not El Alto. They just
rose up in 2003. This region is adjacent to El Alto. El Alto helped us,
because they are our brothers; our people are neighbors in this region
and neighbors of the other regions.
“AYMARA INTELLECTUALS”
PABLO MAMANI: NEITHER MARX NOR CHE GUEVARA
Pablo Mamani was born in the Aymara Ayllu of Jila Uta Manasaya in Oruro
and retained close ties with the community up to the present day. Educated at
UMSA in La Paz, he received a master’s in social science from the Facultad
Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO, Latin American Faculty of
Social Sciences) in Quito and is now a doctoral candidate at the Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM, National Autonomous University of
Mexico). He has emerged as a major interpreter of Bolivian indigenous social
movements in general and the period 2000–2005 in particular through such
books as El rugir de las multitudes, Gobiernos microbarriales, and Geopolíticos indi-
genas. He has taught and been a researcher at UMSA and is a faculty member
at the Universidad Pública y Autónoma de El Alto (UPAE), and past chair of
the Department of Sociology, and an editor of the journal Willka. As an activist,
he participated in the protests that led to the founding of UPAE in 2000. He
178 CHAPTER 4
himself was one of the founders. He sees those events as part of the birth of
indigenous consciousness in Bolivia. For him Achacachi / El Alto and Chapare/
Cochabamba are the two epicenters of rebellion in twenty-first-century Bolivia.
He is part of the process he studies.32
R EVO LU T I O N A N D R EF O R M
Obviously it has not been a violent taking of power through force of

arms. That which preceded it, the indigenous and popular uprisings, has
been sufficiently hard and also violent but ended in an electoral dem-
ocratic era for now. By all the indicators that one can read, the Boliv-
ian process could be categorized as a reform—a reform with structural
intentions of fundamental change in the state, its institutions, and the
society; a reform in the middle range that structurally transforms the
state and symbolically transforms the social imaginary. I believe that
that could be interesting. In colonial or neocolonial societies, there is a
sense in the mind of the dominated that they do not believe themselve
possessors of political power.
In the subjective plane, it is important to strengthen the self-esteem
of the collective. In cities such as this, self-esteem is an element too
much denigrated. You do not feel it is a project of the nation. At the
symbolic, cultural level self-esteem in this moment has a fundamental
impact. [We have an] Indian president who does not have a bachelor
or even university studies, much less postgraduate or doctoral degrees,
but who can talk politics, can talk of dignity, can talk of daily life and,
furthermore, is seen as one of the people, who talks with the people. It is
a vital subjective element for the process of deconstructing the colonial.
I believe that it is fundamental on the symbolic level.
Now obviously at the level of structurally transforming the state
and its political and judicial institutions, to install a regime of greater
democratic breadth, including the indigenous popular and mestizo
world, could follow but would still be a reform. That is to say there
is a type of intention to include the indigenous in the state, but this
inclusion has still recently arrived. The totality of power among the
indigenous and peasant, the popular sector, should be normal in a
country with an indigenous majority. But there are still sectors in the
state that see the indigenous as incapable of public administration. It is
necessary to train indigenous people with administrative and bureau-

cratic experience, and since they do not exist, there are ideas in the
state, in the government of Evo Morales itself, that the indigenous
should learn how to administer the state. This is something that the
government itself still needs to overcome. In this sense this process of
transformation remains questionable.
Have you seen our journal article where we called this phenomenon
“The White Clique Around the Indian President?” It is important how
they managed the state at the symbolic level, as well as the practical
level. The white clique can expropriate the struggle of the people—the
deaths in El Alto, the deaths in Achacachi, the deaths in the Chapare,
the deaths in other places—taking the voice of the people who should
be actors in the palace. It is not to say that whites and mestizos should
not be in the government—they should be, but not in the hegemonic
manner that they are now. This I believe is a foundation that still has not
been realized, so in many ways I categorize this government as a govern-
ment of reform—more of the mestizo, indigenous, and nationalist left.
It is complicated. An important sector of mestizo intellectuals is part
of the government. There are indigenous people—Román Loayza, Félix
Patzi, who was in the government for a short time—who support the
complexity of the issue: an indigenous, mestizo, and left reform. This is
a difficult nomenclature, but more or less this is the situation.
What I said in this article is that there is a local and regional micro
dynamic rich enough in strategic construction and liberal discourse at
the local-regional level. In the case of Omasuyos, Felipe Quispe, after-
ward Eugenio Rojas; in the case of the Chapare, Evo Morales; in the
case of El Alto, Roberto de la Cruz or FEJUVE; COR [Central Obrera
Regional (Regional Workers Central)]; Dionisio Núñez in the Yungas;
CIDOB [Confederación Indígena del Oriente Boliviano (Indigenous
Confederation of the Bolivian East)] in the Amazon. In my conception
this very rich social potential could end in a social revolution in its hor-
izontal articulation and in its social struggle and forms of organization.
But the Right to a certain extent is trying to contain it any way it can.
It is also clear that if this process goes more or less in this direction,
the Right will interrupt the government of Evo Morales. They will cut
short his mandate or there will be a coup d’état or something violent
like that so the Right can take back the government—it is not certain.
180 CHAPTER 4
There would be a reaction on the other side through violence or, in more
classical terms, by revolution.
But it would not be a revolution in my thinking because of the socio-
demographic condition of the country: more indigenous or Indian than
worker or proletarian. Because of this it is not happening, because the
government is committed to a reform, for now, and the Right is trying
to contain that process of reform. But what I say to you is that if this
thing comes from the right, the people are much stronger because of
the manner in which they are organized. They can reverse the Right and
come back—a revolution this time by force. It is possible. If there were
an extreme action by the Right, the people in the southern sector—
where I was this weekend, Potosí, Cochabamba, Oruro, as in La Paz—
are prepared to take the momentous decision, as in ’52, to undertake
revolution through force of arms.
HOUR OF THE SOCIOLOGISTS
Now is the hour of the sociologists, the sociologists in power—not state

or governmental power but a generation of Aymara young people as you
have seen. We are Aymaras. Félix Patzi is Aymara. There are young and
old and very old Aymara intellectuals who are the motor of the process
both now and previously. It is the old Katarist-Indianist intellectuals
who burst into this colonial country in the ’70s and ’80s, after the rev-
olution of ’52. The issue is very long and complex but there is this very
powerful Aymara intellectual movement in this country. It is not simply
from egocentrism that I say this—it is a reality.
There are various intellectuals, young and old, some more visible,
some less visible, all over. Some produce studies on the economy, politics,
sociological studies, studies on social movements, studies about discrim-
ination, and now finally studies on racism and elites. We Aymaras want
to study the Bolivian elites. It is a challenge because we were objects of
study ourselves. Anthropologists from all over the world came to study
us—it is OK, but we want to study them now. Do you know Rich Neal,
North American, Rich Neal? He is a sociologist. If you are part of the
elite, you could be part of my vision.
It could be two things that are the axis of change in Bolivia—class
condition or ethnic condition. Campesino could be a condition of social
class. Indigenous could be a condition of ethnicity or nationality or peo-

ple. I believe that these two things serve as frameworks in this process,
plus the popular factor: the nonindigenous sector in the urban spaces
that is not necessarily indigenous or has lost its indigenous roots but is a
wage worker. It could be a matrix—indigenous-campesino-popular—as
the axis of the process in Bolivia. Of course it is the Katarism of Tiwan-
aku of ’73 that has to see reality with two eyes—the left eye and the right
eye—but it is also a metaphor for class and ethnicity.
I D E O L O G I ES A N D S Y M B O L S
Katarism has been a great influence in those moments but not as a dis-
course. The movements are more indigenous, more national, more anti-
imperialist. They are not an overt expression of Katarism-Indianism.
Katarism has remained but in the background. The influence is there in
the wiphala. Without Katarism, without Indianism you cannot under-
stand the wiphala. The wiphala is a reinvention by Katarism-Indianism.
The wiphala is a modern thing. In the time of the Inca they had their
own forms of wiphala and a variety of wiphalas. The wiphala of seven
colors and squares is a modern wiphala. It has been redesigned. The
modern wiphala has many more squares and more colors, but it is the
wiphala that is in use. It is the wiphala of Qullasuyu. There are also
wiphalas of Antisuyu and Kuntisuyu; there is the red wiphala, the white
wiphala. There are a variety of wiphalas in the indigenous world. There
is also the gay wiphala—that is a wiphala that is not ours!
In reality Che does not mean much for the Aymara world. Aymara
historic symbols include Túpac Katari, Bartolina Sisa, Zárate Willka,
Túpac Amaru in Peru, Tomás Katari in the north of Potosí. Che Gue-
vara is a kind of imposition of certain sectors of the government to make
a revolutionary ideal, the humanist Che—the “new man”—but he is not
an Aymara. If you see iconography of Che, he is portrayed with a beard
and whiskers. He looks like the same white person who oppressed us.
So there is no direct link.
For the people here, clearly Che is white. For the English or the
North Americans, the concept of white is different. Those we call the
whites here are not whites for you. We say white here for descendants
of the Spanish or European. When we say whites it is a kind of disre-
182 CHAPTER 4
spect. In reality they are mestizos, but we call them whites as a form of
disrespect. Whites and mestizos are two distinct categories, but there
could be white mestizos. There are more mestizos than whites. But since
they believe themselves to be “whites,” we use the term whites. Che
Guevara, whose roots are Basque, is Argentine. For us he is a white like
the Bolivian white but obviously his ideas were never like theirs. It is
also true that he was a fighter against the bourgeois, imperialist system.
But if you show people who do not have a historical education or an
ideology a picture of Che and ask, “Who is he?” they will answer, “He is
a white who oppresses me equally.” It’s the same with Marx, Karl Marx,
the great Marx, an icon of revolution. If you set his picture beside the
indigenous Túpac Katari and ask, “Who is who?” they will say Marx is
a white and an oppressor of the people.
But the people who have not gone to university, if you simply show
them the photos they will say this one is the same as the other one
who tramples on me, who exploits me, who oppresses me—what is the
difference? It is a visual colonialism and an imposition by force. Che
thought differently, but for the people it is not so. He is the same as
the other whites. Because of this, Che was not welcome in Ñancawasú
in the Guaraní world. Che, the great revolutionary, comes and expects
the indigenous peasants to join the guerrilla, but they didn’t. Afterward
the Guevarists treated them like traitors to the Bolivians and to the
Guaranís in general terms. They said these ignorant peasants can never
understand the revolution. The old leftists and young people too, even
with their humanist ideals, still do not understand that this is not the
reading of the people. Their reading is more about indigenous icons like
Túpac Katari, Bartolina Sisa, Pablo Zárate Willka, Tomás Katari, Túpac
Amaru, Micaela Bastidas, as the ideal leader. Or at least they want Felipe
Quispe or Evo Morales—those are their ideals. And the next time that
Álvaro García puts himself forward for the presidency, I am not going
to vote for him and many people will not vote for him because he is
white and mestizo.
A week ago they inaugurated a monument of Che in the Ceja that
they call “Liberty Square.” I feel that it is an outrage from circles that
did not think well enough about the images, the symbols. My opinion is
that in that place there should be a monument to the fallen of October
of 2003 and not Che Guevara, who had nothing to do with October
and means nothing to El Alto. I agree that they should get rid of it. It
is not a symbol of El Alto.
M I C RO G OV ER N M EN T A N D T H E S TAT E
The current Bolivian state does not fit the logic of neighborhood
microgovernments that arose during the mobilizations. Another type
of state will arise with the microgovernments but it will not be a
colonial, liberal, republican state such as this. The category of state has
a historical burden, a philosophical burden, a military burden—not
simply for now. What emerged in October in El Alto was another type
of social and sociopolitical organization—horizontal, decentralized,
decentered, autonomous leaders on every side, rotating systems of the
organization of power, systems of territorial control from the commu-
nities or neighborhoods, food self-sufficiency, childbirth in families.
The medical clinics in El Alto collapsed in October. There were no
hospitals, there were no nurses, there were no medicines to cure the
wounded, but other types of medicine emerged, the medicine of indig-
enous customs—plants, herbs, k’oas [ceremonies of reciprocity with
Mother Earth]. For children who could not sleep, the grandparents
did those types of actions to balance the psychology or the psyches
of the children. Another thing that emerged was the seventeenth of
October organizations. They were absolutely well planned inside each
neighborhood, ways of organizing shifts of vigilance. We would call it
perhaps a horizon of an indigenous kind of state, a type of confedera-
tion of ayllus, a confederation of neighborhoods that acted, articulated
autonomously—out with Goni, gas, no to Chile; out with centralized
politics because everyone dispersed in every direction.
I believe, then, this is the Bolivian context. I believe that we are
much more than a Venezuela. Venezuela is an interesting era and very
important without a doubt, but here things came from below with much
greater force. In Venezuela things develop from above, from the pres-
ident. They generate movements from the government and here it is
the reverse—it comes from below toward the top and that could be a
distinct, historical horizon but with a great popular, indigenous, historic
trunk; two historical matrices that can found a new system of state and
civilization. This is the great challenge of designing a new type of state.
184 CHAPTER 4
CO N C LU D I N G CO M M EN T S
Bolivia really is a laboratory—a social laboratory. I wish good luck to

the sociologists. I have been born in this historical time and it is a time
of abundance. If this time arrived when I was much older or much
younger, suddenly I would not have all the tools. I know you are in this
time. It is a privilege for me also. I am in this exact historical time in a
country such as this.
MARÍA EUGENIA CHOQUE: THE REVOLUTIONARY

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE PAST
Eugenia Choque was born in the Aymara province of Tiwanaku in the depart-
ment of La Paz. In 1980–82 she was a leader of the MUJA, where she inter-
acted with the founders of Katarism. She was a founder of the Taller de la
Historia Oral Andina (THOA). As she notes in this interview, THOA was
active not only in historical investigations of the indigenous movement in the
period 1900–1940 but also in returning this work to indigenous communities
through radio programs and direct outreach. THOA has been a critical force
in the reconstruction of Aymara identity. She has also been an advisor to the
Consejo de Ayllus y Markas de Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ, Council of Ayllus
and Markas of Qullasuyu) and has worked on the role of women in the recon-
struction of Ayllus since 1986. In her many articles and pamphlets, she has
explored Andean history and the role of women in Aymara society. She has
traveled widely both in Latin America and around the world to participate in
conferences or serve as a consultant and speaker. She graduated from UMSA
in 1986 in social work and received a master’s in Andean history at FLACSO
in Quito in 1991.33
T H E J U LI Á N A PA S A U N I V ER S I T Y M OV EM EN T ( M U JA )
The Julián Apasa University Movement appeared more or less in ’70,

’76 until ’80. The leadership was very strong in the university. At the
Universidad de San Andrés I had the good fortune to accompany
this process in the eighties. Today it is very easy to talk indigenous
issues. Everyone puts on a little hat, a little poncho, chews their coca,
and thinks that is what it means to be indigenous. In the ’80s, ’70s in
open repression by García Meza they began to speak in the streets. At

the university level it was particularly difficult because of the racism
and discrimination that existed in the university itself. This has a very
tight relationship with the Julián Apasa University Movement and
with Indianism. For example, in the various manifestos that came out
in the Bolivian press, they said that García Meza was the continua-
tion of a government elite; that in practice he had a continuity with
a colonial government, of a class, an elite government, that looked
down on, hated, discriminated against, was racist against the indige-
nous movement.
We are talking of a period where the indigenous theme is very, very
strong. Clearly it has been the Indianist who has shown an Indian face.
They showed to Bolivian society that within the majority population
are workers, peasants, street vendors, factory workers, masons, drivers
who have an indigenous identity and are part of the people. They made
up the Julián Apasa University Movement that in the eighties, more
or less, began to participate in national elections as the Indian party
of Bolivia closely linked to Fausto Reinaga. Since then MUJA has
had political independence in its work. That does not imply that there
was no debate on Reinaga’s books. After that came some encoun-
ters in Tiwanaku itself. Tiwanaku has been the site of the recovery
of memory.
The colonial haciendas and communities are the original local social
organizations. Because of this we have two forms of organization in
Bolivia: one form is the union, which is currently in power. The whole
country is practically unionist after 1952. The other organizations are
the organizations of the ayllus and markas, traditional organizations
that are pre-Columbian. We realized that Indianism has an earlier base
of authorities among the caciques. Katarism, on the other hand, has
strong links to peasant unions and began to stand in elections as in the
Katarism of Don Víctor Hugo Cárdenas.
The indigenous movement of the Indianist line should be under-
stood in the context of its own intellectuals—the Aymara intellectuals.
I believe that there are no Quechua or Guaraní intellectuals. There are
Aymara intellectuals who have to do with the MUJA such as Ramón
Conde, Carlos Mamani. Later there are other very, very recent people
such as Simón Yampara, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Javier Hurtado who
186 CHAPTER 4
come from the Katarist, not the Indianist, wing. They worked very hard
with the Union Confederation, with Genaro Flores, who in his time
had an element of vanguardism. In the ’90s, the Taller de Historia Oral
Andina appeared and began the process of reconstitution of the ayllus
in open confrontation with the peasant union. The peasant union and
the ayllus and traditional indigenous authorities have always lived in
contradiction and opposition.
T H E A N D E A N O R A L H I S T O RY WO R K S H O P
The Andean Oral History Workshop has been working on the polit-
ical recovery of identity: To remake history based on oral history. To
ask our own grandparents and parents, how was it in the time of the
haciendas; how were the authorities; what role they fulfilled; what was
the system of positions; what was the system of elections; what was
the ritual; what force did ritual have in this movement of reclaiming
territories? There are historical documents where they say this territory
had been bought for fifty charges of gold, twenty charges of silver.
Every time the king of Spain was paid, this territory was bought. We
have collected this rich history and made it into radio programs in the
Aymara language.
In the ’70s, radio programs began at seven in the morning, and the
whole day was Spanish. So what the radio broadcasters did—they were
not broadcasters by profession; they were the ice cream salesman, the
shoe shiner, the mason—was to fill up the radio spaces from five in the
morning in the Aymara language. The boss, the owner of the radio, did
not know what they were talking about, but fundamentally they were
creating identity and consciousness. The discrimination they experi-
enced in the street was presented in Aymara. The first radio drama in
Aymara came out in ’70, called Túpac Katari. Rooted in this experience,
we retook the radio. The history of the network of caciques from 1800
to 1942 that we created was presented as radio dramas in the Aymara
language. We created the radio drama. When the people listened to
this, they came and brought their colonial titles dating from 1600 or
1700 and they said we want our history—here are the documents.
Really their consciousness was born. It is a continuous process that
was stirring a very long process, very, very strong and very profound.
EVO M O R A LES A N D M A S
We have met Don Evo Morales numerous times, in Geneva, for the
issue of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples [2007].
All the people were expecting a good speech. Clearly in the national
and above all international context, he gave his speech an indigenous
connotation, but earlier he did not have an indigenous connotation.
No, he had an entirely peasantist vision. We believe that there is a
strong presence of union leadership and not of indigenous peoples.
All the ministers and vice ministers follow a unionist line. There is
not a vision of the indigenous peoples. But it is part of the process
of struggle—it is not that MAS is opposed to this process. We have
fought for this process; we have been beaten for this process; we have
lost the lives of human beings for this process. But the inauguration
of this process is also related to historical antecedents that come from
much further back. I have told you, more or less, how the movement
arises and all the circumstances that it made possible. They crowned a
very important era in this country.
The process is the consciousness of identity. It is the consciousness
of recovery of land and territory. The national struggle, the struggle for
recovery, has an influence in the external context as well, the Declara-
tion on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. How do they relate to this?
They relate this process of identity and of recovery to the degree of dis-
crimination that they feel on their skin. One interprets the expressions
because we are the majority and have lived in a racist society. We always
have lived in a racist society. We are very conscious that the level of
racism is such that it is not acceptable. It is naturalized.
I have published a few writings on the women of the city of El Alto
describing chacha-warmi, reciprocal relations between men and women.
You can see the degree of racism, the degree of crisis of chacha-warmi.
We are speaking of the women of El Alto. Aymara women who have not
been born in the community, they have been born in the city of El Alto,
but they live this conflict, they live this problem. How do they relate
with the movement? How do they insert themselves in the movement
for water, or how do they insert themselves in 2003 after the massacre
by extremists? Was it simply the question of gas? No, but in this country
the life of an Indian is not valued; they killed them [in El Alto]. This
188 CHAPTER 4
was the last straw. Now it was not the issue of gas. It was simply that
Goni be gone.
As one who is not a MAS or Evo supporter, I believe that there is a
natural alliance with Don Evo Morales. We are still not well-off. If you
observe the standard of living of the people, you will see that they have
less money in their pockets. It is not good, but the people are conscious
that this process has certainly allowed an indigenous government. It is
the first time. It is the first time that there is a brown face governing in
this country. There never was. The wiphala never flew. There is a refer-
ent. If you ask the taxi driver or ask in the town halls, they will tell you
that the next authority, whoever he is, has to be indigenous. There is a
consciousness, this we have won, a consciousness of identity that ended
the government for the mestizos and for the whites—that is the hope.
Before there was not a social referent or a political referent. Now there
is a political referent. The ideal of the children is to study to be in gov-
ernment, something that before would not happen to anyone but now,
yes. The people say it is possible. If Evo did it, why not me?
In some ways I would say the MAS party has been very intelligent to
mount a process of identity recovery itself, because MAS intellectuals do
not think at all of what we have been talking about, such as the feeling
of the people. They don’t understand this struggle. They understand the
indigenous, but for them it is merely discursive. We gambled in the
elections. We voted for MAS because if we want another process in
Bolivia, the people need to keep voting. I believe that the people of the
hard wing of MAS do not take this process into account because they
say “decolonization” when they sing the national anthem. They say to us
“decolonization” when they continue paying tribute to Pedro Domingo
Murillo. The issue of decolonization is not understood. But for decol-
onization, at the very least we must speak Aymara. We aspire to speak
English so we have to make the effort to speak it. Similarly they have
to make the effort to learn to speak Aymara. They are not going to do
it themselves. That will be a long process that we will continue fighting.
AY M A R A CO S M OV I S I O N
The CSUTCB has a peasantist vision. They think that because they are
peasants and now are in government they do not have to consider who
speaks for the indigenous people. CONAMAQ speaks for the indige-
nous because they are traditional authorities. Because what do the peo-
ple of CONAMAQ say? We, they say, [are] “indigenous government.”
And Don Evo recognizes this. In Jachicaranga Don Evo said, “I am
going to visit the government of Jachacara [the traditional ayllu].” Don
Evo is very conscious. He knows where this process is leading. The prob-
lem is that his bureaucratic apparatus does not understand the process.
But Don Evo is clear. He knows where he is going.
S P E A K I N G AY M A R A
For us language has been a weapon of political recovery. I at times see the
people in their indigenous community with their chamarrita [dance], their
aguayito [woven cloth], their chuspita [woven coca bag]. That is nothing
compared to language—the effort we make so that our children speak the
language. The people construct knowledge through language. I don’t know
which part of speech—subject, predicate, verb—is individual and which
is collective. For example, the concept of jake, that is a concept of unity
between man and woman. It can be neither man nor woman alone. If they
do not arrive in a couple, jake is not appropriate. It is the unity of the man
and the woman; it is not chacha, nor is it warmi. When they combine they
are jake. It is the institutionalization of the family. You can even talk of
relations, of how the people construct relations between men and women
through jake. If I do not know the language, if I do not know the cos-
movision of that language, the interpretation of that language—what can
I contribute? Because of this the language has a very powerful potential.
Because the language is not only to speak, it is not only to communicate,
it is the profound cosmovision of the peoples, the profound sentiment
of the peoples. I found clearly, as we talked of chacha-warmi, the theme
of jake was necessary; how the people interpret jake, what is jake. That
epistemological process is part of the internal construction.
REVOLUTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS
The core of the MAS party was and is to be found among the cocaleros of the
Chapare and the closely allied and geographically proximate organizations of
190 CHAPTER 4
colonizers and indigenous peasants and, after 2003 and before 1998, the national-
level organization CSUTCB. These organizations have a pronounced peasantist
orientation, as Eugenia Choque points out, with a very strong subtext of indi-
geneity. To build a national movement and to become the electoral successors
of a popular rebellion, it was necessary for Evo Morales and MAS to harness
the enormous mobilizing of Aymara Katarism-Indianism. The Aymara protests
of 2000–2001 led by Felipe Quispe paralleled the Water War in Cochabamba,
and water was the key, although far from the only, issue they raised. The decisive
2003 protests, the Gas War and the El Alto uprising, were all initiated under
Quispe’s leadership although they soon became self-sustaining and organized
at the local level, as Pablo Mamani argues. Aymara indigenism, particularly the
revolutionary Indianism-Katarism of Felipe Quispe, was the major force in all
these uprisings and in the final denouement in 2005. Although the most radical
strains of this discourse lie outside the politics and discourse of MAS, Evo has,
according to Eugenia Choque, adopted many themes from Aymara indigenism
in his public pronouncements, and the MAS organization has attempted to
recruit Aymara leaders into the informal alliance that constituted the party at
the time of the interviews.
Felipe Quispe continues to enunciate a pure revolutionary form of Aymara
Indianism-Katarism, but all those whose interviews are included in this section
reflect to a greater or lesser extent his principal themes. Despite the putative
inclusion of the indigenous in the postrevolutionary state of ’52, the Aymara
indigenists talk of abandonment, exclusion, and state violence. For Quispe him-
self, “We are like animals who live in the hills; we do not count.” For Eugenio
Rojas, a “false democracy” had abandoned the Aymara region of the high pla-
teau for a long time—“the government did not aid us. They gave us almost
nothing”—while a rotating door of political parties enriched themselves at the
countryside’s expense. “Democracy for us has meant massacring people, tricking
people, . . . giving away our businesses.”
According to Quispe, oppression and exclusion are rooted in Bolivia’s history
as a colonial state, a history that has been concealed by the official history of
that same state. “Who was Pedro Domingo Murillo?” asks Quispe, noting the
celebration of his bicentennial in 2009. “He was the murderer of our ances-
tors. Who fought Túpac Katari? Murillo saw the quartering of Túpac Katari.”
Reconstructing the history of the millenarian peoples is the explicit aim of the
Taller de Historia Oral Andina founded by Aymara intellectuals. Not only did
they collect oral histories of the caciqueal struggles from 1900 to 1940 but they
converted them into radio dramas that were then widely broadcast in Aymara.
As Eugenia Choque points out, the first of these radio novellas in Aymara was
the telling of the story of Túpac Katari himself. It is clear that reconstructing
and decolonizing the history of Bolivia has been an act of symbolic transforma-
tion but also a source of a new base of mobilizing identity. As Pablo Mamani
notes, this reconstituted history and symbols like Túpac Katari, the wiphala, and
the Aymara New Year were inherited from the early Túpac Katarists such as the
student group Julián Apasa but continue to be sources of revolutionary identity
and mobilization in the present.
For all those interviewed in this section, Aymara identity and world-
views are the basis for their political mobilization and political thinking. For
Eugenio Rojas, the rebellious people of Achacachi are characterized by “the
cosmovision—Aymara thinking—for this region. . . . Our language also.” For
sociologist Pablo Mamani, “self-esteem is an element too much denigrated,” in
understanding consciousness in the cities, and the “symbolic, cultural” impor-
tance of the first indigenous president is not to be underestimated.
All these people have been active participants in the revolutionary upsurge
of Aymara consciousness that led to and accompanied the great uprising of
2000–2005. All have contributed in significant ways in forging that conscious-
ness. And all owe an intellectual and emotional debt to Fausto Reinaga. Felipe
Quispe, now and in the past, has dedicated his life to the restoration of Qulla-
suyu, wrote a popular book of his own on Túpac Katari, and traces his political
lineage to the original Katarist study groups reading Reinaga. Eugenio Rojas
fought with Quispe in the name of Qullasuyu to destroy Reinaga’s two Bolivias
and still finds sustenance in an Aymara worldview that Reinaga above all helped
define. Mamani’s complaints about the “white clique” surrounding Evo Morales
echo Reinaga’s denunciation of the blancos-mestizos who rule Bolivia.
The four interviews presented in this chapter describe two distinct Aymara
routes to revolutionary consciousness. Quispe and Rojas emphasize the EGTK’s
consciousness-raising efforts in the communities rather than its minimal mil-
itary achievements. For Rojas the two thousand guerrillas “stirred up many
people—we mobilized ten thousand, one hundred thousand, many more. . . .
If that had not been the case, perhaps they would not have mobilized in 2000,
2001, 2003, 2005.” The guerrillas “inspired, talked to the people, shaping them,
explaining why we wanted to fight.” Quispe used the “tactics of our ancestors.
One day I stopped at a community, went in from 7:00 a.m., spent the night,
departed the following day, went into another community.” This process lasted
192 CHAPTER 4
for years before the guerrillas declared themselves; as Quispe said, “Going
through the communities, sleeping with our brothers . . . dirty, without bath-
ing, without washing, sharing the same lice, the same fleas, eating the same
food, talking in Aymara, Quechua, winning people over to make a great revolt.”
Whatever the particular issue, both Rojas and Quispe emphasize that the guer-
rilla goal was always to overthrow the government and reestablish Qullasuyu.
Equally important were the consciousness-raising efforts of the “Aymara
intellectuals” such as Pablo Mamani and Eugenia Choque. Mamani is an
internationally known sociologist and political activist, and was influential in
the movement that established the public university of El Alto, Universidad
Pública y Autónoma de El Alto. Eugenia Choque was a founding member of
two institutions key in the revival of Aymara consciousness—the Movimiento
Universitario Julián Apasa and the Taller de Historia Oral Andina. The MUJA,
organized to study and debate the works of Fausto Reinaga, was the precursor
to many other Aymara resistance organizations. The THOA, through its inno-
vative use of radio transmissions in the Aymara language, spread the ideas of
Kastarism-Indianism throughout the countryside. The Aymara intellectuals also
diffused their ideas through the CSUTCB, which was under Katarist control
from 1979 until a MAS takeover in the 1990s. Quispe himself led the organiza-
tion from 1998 to 2003. Most Katarist-Indianist intellectuals remained in close
contact with their home villages, some returning to assume traditional positions
in their civil-religious hierarchies. The two prongs of the consciousness-raising
movement, the guerrilla and the Aymara intellectuals, prepared the ground
years before the culminating mobilization in 2000–2005. The Aymara uprising,
not Evo Morales’s cocaleros, was the force that actually overthrew the “blanco-
mestizo” government.
It should be noted that there was no similar consciousness-raising movement
in the Kichwa-dominated Andean region in Ecuador. There was no cohesive
Kichwa identity. The Kichwas thought of themselves as local “peoples,” such as
the Salasacas or Otavaleños. There was no guerrilla movement in Ecuador. There
were intellectuals of Kichwa origins but no social group of “Kichwa intellec-
tuals” and no specifically Kichwa consciousness-raising institutions. Although
ECUARUNARI is a Kichwa organization, it divided into eighteen peoples
in the “nations and peoples” framework of CONAIE. The ayllu was a vastly
stronger institution in Bolivia than in Ecuador. It provided the framework for
consciousness-raising efforts. Ecuadorian leaders sometimes mentioned indige-
nous heroes like Rumiñahui, but they more often mentioned communist leaders
Dolores Cacuango and Tránsito Amaguaña. There could be no analogue to the

Bolivian Katarist movement in Ecuador because there was no equivalent to
Túpac Katari.
The interviews reveal not only the enormous importance of Aymara
Katarism-Indianism in the events of 2000–2005 but also its continued impor-
tance in Bolivian cultural and intellectual life. This Aymara revolution grew out
of the racism, exclusion, isolation, and outright murder of indigenous people
even after the revolution of 1952. It was felt most acutely by intellectuals like
Mamani and Choque, but clearly it was shared by organic intellectuals like
Quispe and Rojas who rose with the social movements. Aymara cosmovision,
Aymara identity, and Aymara history represent a sharp break with the Western-
ized categories of the Bolivian variant of European thought. Even the category
of race, which still haunted Reinaga, has been deconstructed. Only Quispe still
uses the polarizing language of “Indian” versus “q’ara,” and all those interviewed
placed a strong emphasis on the ethnocultural term Aymara. In any case, the
negative connotations of Indian could hardly survive the positive identity that
emerged among the Aymara since the rise of Katarism. To be Aymara meant
not simply an identity but an entire symbolic philosophy radically at odds with
the Western tradition. This vision could not be contained by the old categories
of Bolivian social life, and the writings of Reinaga and the rise of Katarism and
Indianism provided a symbolically revolutionary alternative.
The dream of Qullasuyu was not the dream of a Western nation-state but of
a coordination of local Aymara ayllus united by the common dream of a roman-
ticized Inca imperial province. The economy would not reflect socialist dreams
of a communist system but an idealized vision of the village economy without
great inequalities of wealth or power. Traditional Aymara religion would replace
European Catholicism: Inti Rani, the traditional Aymara winter solstice festi-
val, not Christmas. Aymaras would replace whites and mestizos in the ruling
elite in the state, commerce, and intellectual life. The Ponchos Rojos would
replace the army. Aymara ethnic borders would replace the Peruvian, Chilean,
and Argentine frontiers. Túpac Katari would replace Pedro Domingo Murrillo
as the national hero. Western ideas of gender would be abandoned in favor of
chacha-warmi and jake. Local government would be managed not through
Western democracy or by Western trade unions but by those who who had
gained respect in the traditional civil religious hierarchy. A communal vision,
not Western individualism, would govern interpersonal and economic relations.
Wholesale symbolic revolution would be the order of the day. Quispe believed
194 CHAPTER 4
that such a revolution could only be guaranteed by force of arms. He had no

such force. This in the end proved his undoing.
Those interviewed in Ecuador remained committed to mass protest and
democratic elections to achieve the symbolic revolution. Felipe Quispe and
his Indianist followers disagreed: “I cannot tell you that we are going to make
changes democratically. . . . One day we are going to say ‘war’ in this country. . . .
It is going to cost blood, mountains of dead bodies perhaps, or we will have to
cross rivers of blood.” For Eugenio Rojas, who fought with Quispe, democracy
meant massacring the people, although in the end he allied with MAS and its
electoral strategy and now says, “We have made a very peaceful revolution.”
Pablo Mamani acknowledges that at the time (2009), a violent revolution was
still possible in the event of a coup from the right. But Quispe and his allies did
not take power though armed struggle. Instead, Evo Morales and his largely
electoral strategy prevailed, as we shall see in the following chapter.
5
THE SACRED LEAF
Interviews with Leonilda Zurita and Julio Salazar
I
N MARCH 1995, representatives of the most important indigenous-peasant
organizations in Bolivia met in Santa Cruz to form a new kind of polit-
ical party intended as an instrument of indigenous peasant people and a
coalition of their constituent organizations. Ten years later the candidate of
this “political instrument,” Evo Morales, was elected president of Bolivia, a
position he still holds after reelection in 2009 and 2014. His party now controls
two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress. After divisions in the party,
name changes, and finally the loan of another party’s name to achieve offi-
cial recognition, Morales’s party is now called the Movimiento al Socialismo–
Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos (MAS-IPSP, Movement
Toward Socialism–Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples).1
The meteoric rise of Evo Morales and MAS reflects in turn the improbable rise
of his coca growers’ movement to national and even international prominence
and to a position of leadership in the indigenous peasant unions that continue
to form the core of MAS.
The dynamic core of these organizations was and is the Coordinadora de
las Seis Federaciones del Trópico de Cochabamba (Coordinating Committee
of the Six Federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba), whose president was
and continues to be Evo Morales. By the late 1980s the coca growers had dis-
placed the Katarists as the dominant force in the CSUTCB and by 1992 the
196 CHAPTER 5
organization “had become devoted mainly to the defense of the coca growers,
notwithstanding the fact that they made up approximately 10 percent of the
national campesino population.”2 Although the Six Federations functioned
independently, they were organically linked to the other three organizations.
Three of the six coca growers’ federations were formally affiliated with the Con-
federación Sindical de Colonizadores de Bolivia (CSCB) and three with the
CSUTCB.3 The women coca growers of the Chapare were the most militant
local of the Bartolinas, and their leader, Leonilda Zurita, also became executive
secretary of the organization in 2001–3 and again at the time of the interviews
(2009).4 She has been a close confidant and comrade-in-arms of Evo Morales
since the beginning of his career.
THE METEORIC RISE OF THE COCA PRODUCERS
The coca leaf has been cultivated in Bolivia for millennia. It is been consumed
by chewing (acullico) and functions as a mild stimulant much as do coffee
or tea in the United States. It is particularly important for workers in the
mining industry but is widely used among poor and working-class Boliv-
ians. It has also played a central role in Andean ritual life from before the
time of the Incas to the present day. Coca leaves may be legally bought and
sold in Bolivia. Coca leaves are, however, the raw material for the production
of cocaine hydrochloride, sold as cocaine or crack in its largest market, the
United States. It is the identification of coca leaves with cocaine in U.S. for-
eign policy that has determined the fate of the coca producers of Bolivia and
other Andean countries.
In response to an unprecedented explosion of demand and a spike in prices
for cocaine in the United States, the price of coca leaves in Bolivia skyrocketed
in the early 1980s. At the same time, Bolivia entered into a profound economic
crisis characterized by hyperinflation and, in response, a draconian structural
adjustment program (1985). The combination created enormous incentives for
coca cultivation by ruined peasant farmers and downsized miners from the
Altiplano who migrated in large numbers to the subtropical forested slopes
and valleys of the Department of Cochabamba known collectively as “the
Chapare.” From the later 1970s to the mid-1980s, the area of coca cultivation
in the Chapare increased from 10,000 to more than 50,000 hectares and the
population exploded from 33,000 in 1977 to 350,000 in the mid-1980s.5
THE SACRED LE AF 197
As Allison Spedding describes it, coca is ideally suited to production by a

peasant semiproletariat of former miners and ruined farmers.
The simple techniques of coca plantation in the Chapare allow any per-
son to immediately involve themselves in production (they can learn
in a couple of days through transfer of knowledge from one peasant to
another). . . . Coca, like coffee, is a classic crop of small peasant producers,
because it requires much labor and in some periods of production, espe-
cially the harvest, is resistant to mechanization. . . . Coca is superior to
coffee because the initial investment, although high, is almost all in the
form of labor and once established yields harvests three times a year . . .
for some thirty years, while coffee in the same ecological niche, only yields
once a year and, contrary to coca, does not thrive on exhausted soils.6
Coca can be grown in conjunction with subsistence crops and provides year-
round work for all members of a peasant family. As in other Andean countries,
large areas of subtropical Bolivia are suitable for coca cultivation. Even after
the price spike of the early eighties had passed, coca continued to provide a
living for peasant farmers and their families with few, if any, other employment
opportunities in Bolivia. Attempts to develop alternative crops in the Chapare
have largely failed through ignorance of the economics of coca and lack of
understanding of the limited (or nonexistent) markets for other tropical crops
in this remote region of a very poor country.7 Most coca leaf production in the
Chapare is destined for the international drug trade but it also commands a
domestic market among traditional users, where its lower price offsets its lower
quality in comparison to leaves from the traditional area of production in the
Yungas region of the province of La Paz.8
Although the peasant union had existed in the Chapare as early as 1953,
immediately after the revolution, the coca boom of the eighties brought about
a massive expansion. The number of unions increased from 183 organized into
two federations in 1980 to 892 organized in six federations in the late 1990s.
In 1992 the federations formed the Coordinadora de las Seis Federaciones del
Trópico de Cochabamba.9 Approximately 85 percent of the Chapare unions are,
however, organized into just two of these federations and the strongest, the Fed-
eración del Trópico (Federation of the Tropics), affiliated with the CSUTCB,
controls the Coordinating Committee. Its president since 1988 has been (and
still is) Evo Morales. The Coordinating Committee of the Six Federations has
198 CHAPTER 5
been the springboard for the coca growers’ ascent through the national peasant
union and, through its CSTB affiliates, in that organization as well. The rural
unions have in turn given the Six Federations an influential position in the
national workers movement and, in coalition with left parties and finally in their
own party, MAS, in a national political party.10 Remarkably, just forty thousand
extremely well-organized and militant coca growers under the leadership of
Evo Morales have succeeded in leading a mass movement that overthrew the
political structure of a nation-state with nine million inhabitants!
How did they do it? They could not have succeeded without the U.S. war
on drugs, which sought to reduce drug consumption in the United States
by targeting peasant coca producers in the Andes. As Kevin Healy argues,
“The international war on drugs . . . has succeeded in antagonizing coca leaf
growers to the point that anti-US sentiment is widespread throughout the
countryside.”11 The antagonism was well justified according to Andrea Viola
Recasens.
In July 1986 the Bolivian government, under United States pressure,

authorized the introduction of American troops backed by Black Hawk
helicopters and established a permanent base in the Chapare for two
United States financed and trained Bolivian coca eradication forces, the
Unidades Móviles para Áreas Rurales [UMOPAR, Mobile Police Units
for Rural Areas] and the shock units of the Fuerza Especial de Lucha
Contra el Narcotráfico [FELCN, Special Force for the Struggle Against
Narcotrafficking].12
The Bolivian drug enforcement units, particularly UMOPAR, earned a

fearsome reputation for violence and repression, including “economic coercion,
arbitrary arrests without due process, physical abuses, verbal threats, intimida-
tions, warnings of forced eradication of coca plants by armed security forces and
arbitrary confiscation of personal belongings, cash and coca.”13 On June 7, 1988,
UMOPAR troops machine-gunned a peaceful demonstration in Villa Tunari
in the Chapare with a toll of sixteen dead or missing and ten wounded. The
massacre further radicalized the coca growers. As a direct consequence, June
27 was declared National Day of Commemoration of the Sacred Leaf [i.e., the
Coca Leaf ], celebrated by collective coca chewing demonstrations to this day. A
month later, the Federation of the Tropics inaugurated a new and more militant
leadership headed by Evo Morales himself.14
In that same year (1988), the Bolivian Congress passed Law 1008, Ley del
Régimen de la Coca y Sustancias Controladas (Law for the Regulation of Coca
and Controlled Substances), which dramatically tightened the legal structure
of coca eradication and intensified conflict with the coca producers. In effect
all coca production in the Chapare was declared “excess” and therefore illegal
and subject to eradication over a ten-year period. With the stroke of a pen,
Bolivia had made peasant producers of a traditional crop with an ancient social
and cultural history into outlaws.15 The repeal of Law 1008 and the expulsion
of UMOPAR and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from
the Chapare became the coca producers movement’s two principal demands.
Protest marches, demonstrations, and road blockades (the signature form of
indigenous-peasant protest in the Andes) multiplied, culminating in the August
1994 March for Life, Coca and National Sovereignty that ended in La Paz with
general celebration by a massive turnout of supporters. A year later the women
producers of the Chapare, in a move unprecedented in the history of Bolivian
social movements, staged their own exclusively feminine march to La Paz and
received the same kind of celebratory welcome. By the 1990s the coca producers
had moved “to occupy the role of ‘vanguard of the popular movement’ in the
country’s political imagination that the miners had occupied before the struc-
tural adjustment of 1985.”16 They had also come to occupy as strong a role in
Bolivian revolutionary consciousness as the Katarists of the highlands.
The coca producers’ rise to national prominence was aided by a change in
their discourse. Before the 1980s the coca growers were focused on narrow eco-
nomic demands within the general framework of a class-based peasant move-
ment. With the rise of Evo Morales and a more militant leadership, however,
increasingly, issues of indigenous identity came to the fore inspired in part
by the indigenous movements in the Highlands and in Ecuador and in part
because the repression was seen as targeting the indigenous in particular (almost
all producers were indigenous).17 In coca producers’ declarations, eradication
represented “the social ethnocide of the original nations.” Paradoxically indig-
enous identity became even stronger among the recent migrants from a variety
of different indigenous groups (predominantly in the Chapare) than it was in
the traditional and ancient coca-producing areas of La Paz Province that were
homogeneously Aymara.18 It is important to note that, as a result, the indi-
genism of the coca producers was inherently a plural national identification
including not only the predominant Quechua and Aymara migrant populations
but also smaller groups like the Yuracaré who were indigenous to the Chapare
200 CHAPTER 5
region. In the 1990s the offices of the Six Federations in Cochabamba were
decorated with “chuspas [pouches for carrying coca], garlands of coca leaves,
wiphalas, a pre-Columbian calendar, Yuracaré bows and arrows, a portrait of
Che Guevara and the national shield of Bolivia in a large golden frame.”19 Por-
traits of Guevara and wiphalas were common but not universal in the offices of
those interviewed for this book.
The shift to an ethnic discourse and the elevation of coca to “the sacred leaf ”
enabled the coca growers to appeal to the association of coca with Andean reli-
gious and cultural traditions and to the large number of coca users outside the
coca zone. The coca leaf became a symbol of indigenous cultural identity and
national pride. The prominence of U.S. troops and Bolivian forces trained and
financed by the United States in the eradication enabled the coca producers to
forge a sharp dualism between their symbolic representation of the nation and
the “antination” of U.S. troops, coca eradication forces, and the compliant creole
political class that submitted to U.S. demands.20 The coca eradication effort soon
found itself in a vicious circle. The more violence used to suppress coca growing
the greater the solidarity and ethnic identity of the producers. The stronger the
ethnic identity of the producers the greater their ability to appeal to broader
issues of indigenous cultural traditions. The greater the strength of coca-based
cultural traditions the easier it was for the coca producers to appeal to deep-
seated anti-imperialist nationalism that extended back to the revolution of 1952.
All these themes are evident in the interviews that follow.
Paradoxically the violence of the eradication effort and criminalization of
the producers did not lead to any significant support for armed struggle and,
despite the images of Guevara, created a struggle for human rights and dem-
ocratic process. The coca producers took advantage of the modest democratic
openings in the 1990s to entrench themselves in the political system of the
Chapare, where they were the overwhelming majority, and then work their way
up the national political system. In 1997, two years after founding of MAS, it
elected four national deputies in coalition with a left-wing party. One of them
was Evo Morales. In 1999 in municipal elections it won nine mayor’s offices.
To the great surprise of political analysts and the MAS party members them-
selves, in the national elections of June 2002 it became the second largest party
in the legislature and came within a hair’s breadth of electing Evo Morales as
president. In 2005, ten years after its founding, Evo Morales won the presidency
outright. In interview after interview, leaders described this extraordinary rise as
if they could hardly believe it themselves. Through their emphasis on the coca
leaf as a cultural and national symbol and the ruling party elites as sellouts to the
United States, forty thousand coca growers in part of one of Bolivia’s nine prov-
inces had become a symbol of a new popular nationalism based on indigenous
identity. The coca producers did so, however, while remaining a peasant-based,
class-oriented party.
The voices in this chapter speak from positions of leadership in the coca
producers’ movement in the Chapare (Leonilda Zurita and Julio Salazar), and
the FNMCB-BS (Zurita). Both were enthusiastic members of MAS and both
are among the six people ranked by MAS vice president Gerardo García as
politically “closest to Evo.”21 Together they represent an expression of what
the national leadership of this party of social movements was thinking in the
year (2009) just before Evo announced that the ideology of his movement was
“communitarian socialism” and so provide insight into this discourse while still
in formation. Just as MAS is not a conventional political party, neither does
it have anything that might be called a political ideology in the formal sense.
Indeed, Pablo Stefanoni and Hervé do Alto have referred to the “inscrutable
ideology of MAS” while nevertheless attempting to decipher it.22 Some themes
in these interviews are, however, more prominent than others, and together
they delineate if not a formal ideology then at least a discourse that shares some
common elements. The heart of this discourse as well as the core of the peasant
organizations is to be found in the coca fields of the Chapare.
COCA PRODUCERS: THE CHAPARE

LEONILDA ZURITA: LIFE AND DEATH IN THE COCA FIELDS
Leonilda Zurita was born on April 22, 1969, in what would be the epicenter
of the coca producers’ movement, Villa Tunari in the Chapare. Her Quechua
parents were migrants from the highland portions of Cochabamba and, like so
many others, became coca producers. Forced to drop out of school to help in her
mother’s coca farm (her father died when she was two), she completed only her
primary and one year of secondary schooling. Leonilda began her union career
by cooking and cleaning up after the men’s union meetings and, eventually,
being named secretary for minutes. In 1995 she founded the first women’s asso-
ciation in the Chapare and in 1997 a women’s organization parallel to the male
Six Federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba. She has been a close colleague
of Evo Morales since those early years. In 2001–3 she served as secretary general
202 CHAPTER 5
of the Federación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas de Bolivia–Bartolina Sisa

(FNMCB-BS), and was serving in that capacity once again at the time of the
interviews. She also served as director of international relations of MAS. She
has traveled widely and become an international spokesperson for coca growers
and Bolivian women. She continues to work her own coca farm.23
R EVO LU T I O N A N D S O C I A L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N :
EVO M O R A LES A N D T Ú PAC K ATA R I
For us it [poster of Evo and Katari] means that our ancestral brothers
and sisters such as Túpac Katari, Bartolina Sisa, and other martyrs, who
had given their lives for the liberation of our people, now move us to
carry on the revolution to liberate our peoples from things imposed
on us in different areas—political, economic, social. Because of this
we say that our ancestors have made a rebellion and today comes the
revolution—revolution to recover, to defend, to free us to have every-
thing that is ours, for our country. And because of this Túpac Katari has
struggled and today our brother Evo Morales struggles for our peoples,
for our countries, recovering riches that have been capitalized, turned
over to the empire, to the rich, today recovered for the people.
For us our democratic and cultural revolution is the hope that we
will recover our cultures, our identity, our language, our discourse. The
democratic and cultural revolution is to recover. It is democratic, partic-
ipatory, and based on the people. Culturally the revolution will recover
our wisdom, our intellectual traditions, our clothes, our discourse—all
that we have—thirty-six cultures, thirty-six languages. To recover for
our people what they lost under previous governments that imposed
their own cultures. For example, we were ashamed to speak Aymara
or Quechua. But today with the democratic revolution headed by our
president, it is a duty and a right to recover the wisdom, the discourse,
the languages, the cultures that we have lost.
The rich are like this above [gestures] and the poor below [gestures].
What we want with the democratic and cultural revolution is to equalize
ourselves, the rich and the poor, because we have the same rights. The
rich cannot be above and the poor below. Under this process of change
that President Evo Morales directs, one day we may have “living well,”
everyone equal. It cannot be that you eat meat and I only eat cooking oil.
To eat, then, what the rich eat. It cannot be that a poor person continues
working as a slave, as a worker for the rich person and the rich person
becomes richer. Today the struggle is between the rich and the poor.
We want “living well.” The democratic revolution is there because the
capitalists and their socioeconomic, political models want us to continue
as workers, continue enriching the rich. But what we want is equality
through “living well,” suma qamaña, sumak kawsay as they say in Aymara
and Quechua.
We are in the process of recovering everything. We are working for
the people, serving the people and not serving ourselves from the people.
We lack many things to live in equality. But there is consciousness that
we want to put our constitution in practice—to implement it. Afterward
laws have to be put forward with the participation of the people. There-
fore it is down to us to participate democratically and make ourselves
equal. But we are still here [gestures] and we are going here [gestures]
little by little. We have to arrive at being equal.
T H E CO N S T I T U T I O N
With the new constitution [2009] we will refound the nation. They have
proposed new constitutions more than eighteen times and the camp-
esinos and the women have never been taken into account. Today the
constitution proposes equality and opportunity for women in education.
Before, women did not have the right to schooling. If you had money
you studied. If not, you did not. From the times of our grandparents,
only men with a little poncho on their shoulders studied. Women did
not, because the women get pregnant and only the men have to study.
But today it is mandatory for both men and women to go to school until
they leave as college graduates or professionals—in the economic realm
as well, where before a male secretary earned 700 but a woman secretary
earned 500 bolivianos. Today there is equality—700/700. In theory there
is no discrimination. But it is still necessary to put this idea into practice.
From the democratic and cultural revolution also comes health—
today in our day. Now there is health, with health comes the Juana
Azurduy [maternity] benefit, for the children Juancito Pinto [a cash-
transfer program contingent on school attendance], from there comes
the pension [social security] that the grandmothers and grandfathers
204 CHAPTER 5
can receive and much more. In the political realm we can achieve wom-
en’s equality. Today we are thinking of having women mayors. Of the 140
[130] deputies in the national assembly, I dream that at least there will
be 40 or 50 women deputies, but this still has to be put into practice [in
2014 there were 69 women deputies constituting 53 percent of the total,
the second highest number of women deputies in the world]. There is
also the issue of land. Historically the land was solely in the name of
the man. They used to say, for example, Mario Guzmán and Señora. We
didn’t know which of the señoras. Now I can have my title in my name.
President Evo is turning over titles to the women. For us this is more
important than all the articles in history that did not say we have that
right. The constitution recognizes our nationality, our languages; it also
speaks to us of the young. Now young people at eighteen can be officials.
Before it only said you could vote. In previous constitutions you can only
elect but you cannot be elected. Now it says to you, you can be elected as
a woman. We see then that it has been very important because with the
democratic revolution for change, we are putting it in effect step by step.
We are going to succeed because there are also the social movements
such as Bartolina Sisa; the Confederation of Original, Indigenous, Peas-
ant Women of Bolivia; Bartolina Sisa [also known as FNMCB-BS];
the CSUTCB; and the intercultural communities [CSCIB (Feder-
acíon Sindical de Comunidades Interculturales de Bolivia, formerly the
CSCB)]. The three organizations have founded this process of change
and therefore have to ensure that boys and girls are pointed in the right
direction. We are the hope of continuing to deepen this democratic rev-
olution and also the process of change. We want to create respect for the
Political Consitution of the State and its implementation through other
regulations. And because of this it remains for us to continue working,
unifying, defending.
We have, as social movements, proposals, agreements that we have
made—such as the pact of unity with 155 organizations. Furthermore,
now a deputy does not have immunity. Right now a senator has immu-
nity, but soon he will not. Those who are elected as assembly members of
the plurinational state do not have immunity. If I am stealing, they will
take me directly to jail. The state cannot defend me as they now defend
the petty thieves, the corrupt, because those who have immunity are not
charged. Now it says to us you cannot have immunity for the deputies.
We all want autonomy. Tomorrow at three in the afternoon we have

a meeting in the Ministry of Autonomy to put forth the indigenous
original peasant autonomies. This launch of autonomy is important for
us as we want the structure in each province, department, county. For
us autonomy is to define, to decide what structure we want, how we
want education, how we want our counties, and how we want our OTBs
[Organizaciones Territorial de Base (Territorial Base Organizations)].
It is a very important advance that today the people are consulted. Pre-
viously what was done by those of the east was illegal, unconstitutional,
because no law had said that they may create their autonomies. The con-
stitution creates its autonomies under the Political Constitution of the
State: legal, legitimate, and constitutional. This is what we are doing now.
[The indigenous] have entered the constitution [for the first time] in
history; the voice of the campesino, of the indigenous, had never been
heard. Because of this each sixth of August, seventh of August we march
together with all our indigenous brothers. So we are included.
CO CA
I am a coca producer; having been born in the Chapare it is in my per-

sonal history. I have, in Article 83, 84 [384], that our coca is included in
the Political Consitution of the State as never before. It has never been
included, but now more than ever our sacred coca leaf is included. First,
it is not cocaine; second, it is a natural medicine; and third, for me it is
the computer of our people—like technology for the rich. For us it is
our computer. Because you can read the fate that is going to come to
you and furthermore when you chew sweet coca, things are going to
go well; when you chew bitter coca things are going to go badly. And
so we have coca in two areas—the Tropics and the Yungas of La Paz.
They are preparing to make coca flour, to make chewing gum and other
things. Before, under Law 1008, coca was satanized. But today it is not;
our sacred leaf is constitutionalized. The important thing is to defend
the coca leaf, as they say, a cato [a plot forty meters by forty meters] of
coca for our peoples.
We have coca in Cochabamba and La Paz. Before it was being erad-
icated. Now there is reduction, but before there was violence, deaths,
wounded, detained, jailed. They ate our foods; they threw poison on
206 CHAPTER 5
the food; they grab you and you are a drug dealer, they say. We have
always struggled against drug trafficking; they have never fought against
the drug traffickers. But today, our government has a program saying
coca, yes, drugs, no. Before there was violence, with bullets, with gas.
Today the colonel comes, talks with the leader, in consensus, leaves a
cato of coca and eradicates the rest. It is consolidated. They enter into
an agreement, talking; now there is no violence. From the moment that
they signed an agreement on the third of October 2003, 2004, until
this minute not even one death, not one wounded, no one arrested. But
before 2003 every day there were deaths, wounded, confrontations, once
again deaths. We want that plot of coca to survive. Not to become rich
but to survive. Because of this today our president is for “coca, yes, drugs,
no,” and social control comes from the communities. A compañero can-
not increase the cato of coca a little bit more—he cannot. Nor can he
become a drug dealer. Because of this we are in the struggle against drug
dealing. But now they are saying to us it is a path to drug dealing. But we
are fighting against drug dealing, because if not what will we become?
We must comply, as our president does.
Until 2004, every day, death. They were telling us in 1980, in three
years they were going to do away with the coca. After that a quinquen-
nial plan, in five years. Afterward in ten years, Law 1008. Now in 2008
[1998] comes the Dignity Plan with the military, like Plan Colombia
for Colombia, with fumigation. And here is the Dignity Plan with mil-
itarization. Every day deaths and wounded but today, thanks to the
agreement not even one death, not one—chatting, talking, conversing.
The cato of coca measures forty meters by forty meters And they respect
that. And for the rest they have to reduce it and that is coordinated by
talking, not with violence now, not with bullets. Because, clearly, we
know that there has been a lot of money but it has not come to us, only
to the very rich—salaries, real estate: it goes to those things.
S O C I A L M OV EM EN T S
We, as social movements, are the founders of the process of change.

We have a role in the government. It is therefore a duty and a right to
defend the process of change. Previously governments worked only for
themselves and not for the people. Because of this there was migration.
Because of this, misery; there was no work; they capitalized on this;

they did what they wanted but not today. Things have changed. Before
the nationalization of hydrocarbons, out of every one hundred dollars,
they took eighty-two dollars to the exterior and left eighteen dollars for
Bolivia. Today, with nationalization this has changed—eighty-two dol-
lars for Bolivia and eighteen dollars to the exterior. We have pensions,
Juancito Pinto, the Juana Azurduy benefit. We have so many things that
our president has done for us. Because of this it is a duty and a right to
defend him with the social movements.
The government coordinates with each department, with us, and with
the president. The United States says with the ATPDEA [Andean Trade
Protection and Drug Enforcement Act] that unionism was being made
to disappear by Evo Morales. When Evo Morales was born, unionism
emerged—the U.S. cannot change it.
JULIO SALAZAR: THE EMPIRE AND THE CHAPARE
Julio Salazar was born in the province of Tiraque, Cochabamba, on December

10, 1965, of Quechua origins. He completed his primary and secondary educa-
tion while working as an agricultural day laborer. In 1984 he migrated to the
Chapare, where he became a coca farmer and a close friend and colleague of
Evo Morales. In 2004 he was elected to a six-year term as general secretary of
the Six Federations (the presidency of the federation was held by Evo Morales)
after many years of work in the federation and in MAS beginning as secretary
of sports at a local union (like Evo, he loved soccer) in 1987. In 2009 he was
elected to a five-year term (2010–15) as senator for Cochabamba. He is fluent in
both Quechua and Spanish.24
The Tropics of Cochabamba have gone through historic, difficult

moments and now from the Tropics of Cochabamba history in Bolivia is
changing. The empire, the United States, has invented the fight against
drug trafficking in order to suppress the people, to intervene among
the people. This is how the struggle in the Chapare began. For me the
principal author of this is the multilateral convention of 1961 where
they prohibited our coca leaf as a narcotic, as a drug. This is totally false.
208 CHAPTER 5
Because of this all the governments have drawn up plans to get rid of
coca in five years, in three years. Because of this there was the draconian
Law 1008 that created traditional, excess, and prohibited zones. Chapare
is an excess zone in transition. Therefore all the governments always
proposed alternative development, substitution, eradication—get rid of
the coca, change to another product. But there is no other plant that can
replace the coca leaf. Our brothers in the United States should know
that the coca leaf is part of our cultural identity: it is medicine, it is food;
it represents our ritual uses. Every Friday we always say k’oa [ceremony
to Mother Earth]. We use coca to dedicate your business, your land,
to give food to Mother Earth, and this is sacred. It is used especially
when there are deceased. Because of this the conflict in the Chapare has
begun—the fault of the neoliberal system.
Why? Because in 1985 the neoliberal system was implanted and
therefore they have privatized our strategic enterprises, the mining
centers have closed, and as a result there were massive relocations to
the Chapare in the ’80s. I recall that there were eighty-five thousand
hectares of production of coca leaf and now we are only fighting for
seven thousand hectares for traditional legal consumption and for our
customs. Before clearly much production used to go to narcotics traf-
ficking and thus all the governments have massacred us, so many deaths,
so many wounded, but this was the fault of imperialism. They had their
military base in Chimore, the American DEA operated from Chimore.
The North American military came to Chimore and directed the police,
the combined forces. It used to be the police, the army, and combined
forces, as for example in UMOPAR.
The economic arm of the North American DEA was involved in
indemnifying, paying, and buying leaders. We proposed to defend coca
and the governments proposed eradication—here the struggle began, as
I told you, to let the international community know. To have a dialogue
we had to have a death. Imagine a week or two weeks of road blockades
just so the government would pay attention to us, just so they would sign
an agreement. But they never fulfilled these agreements and from here
the struggle began. We have gone from union struggle to political strug-
gle. In the Chapare we began with the defense of the coca leaf, which
is a renewable natural resource, and have gone on to defend our other
natural resources such as our hydrocarbons. In this way we have realized
that in Bolivia foreign people were governing. Sánchez de Lozada, as

you see—you can speak better Spanish than Sánchez de Lozada.
Sánchez de Lozada came to impose neoliberal policy and occidental
culture. He only thought about his person, about his ideology, his secto-
rial views, his personalistic leadership and did not think of the rest. The
people were not important; the environment was not important. What is
important is money—for this they are going to cause the destruction of
humanity, especially planet Earth. Meanwhile in the indigenous culture
of the Amazon, we think of everything. We think of equality; we think
of justice; we think of equilibrium. Because of this we would say that
at some point we have to care for Mother Earth. Imagine every Friday
they have to give coca to the Earth, in other words, value the Earth. But
this does not exist in occidental culture—loot, loot, the natural resources.
And this is totally contrary to our culture. We have said we are not
going to be a ladder for the neoliberal parties. For us neoliberalism is
privatization of natural resources, looting of our natural resources, and,
furthermore, economic and political dependence on the United States.
The United States was defining who could be a minister. Imagine, the
North American Embassy was deciding which project is executed, what
project is not executed, to which sectors aid is being given, to which
sectors aid is not being given. In other words, put away your coca and
we will give you aid. Imagine in this time they have interfered polit-
ically, have financed the parties of the Right, have bought our lead-
ers, have made us fight among ourselves. It has cost us to consolidate
this process of change. What have we said? In Bolivia 80 percent are
indigenous peoples, thousand-year-old people, historically owners of
this Mother Earth. We were left without land, without work, relocated,
and meanwhile a few families, looting our natural resources, owning
our land. Because of this we said that we have to have our political
arm. Yesterday we began to form our political instrument, to have our
own political party, our own candidate, our own mayor. In this way we
have put in force the ideological principles of the indigenous peoples.
Political parties decided everything—where they were going to execute
some project, how much they were going to finance. But we have put
this idea to the test in the Chapare, where the social movements met
and approved the POAS [Planes Operativos Anuales (Annual Operat-
ing Plans)] that the mayor executes. They cannot be modified without
210 CHAPTER 5
consulting the communities. In this way we have put our principles into
practice and it has gone well for us. In the beginning, with so much dis-
crimination, there were only a few mayors. I recall what they said when
we won—how are these idiots with sandals going to administer the city?
But we have demonstrated honesty, transparency, and created consensus
for many projects so we went on to win some counties. Then we won
a seat as deputy for compañero Evo Morales. We ratified compañero
Evo Morales in the following election, and after that launched him to
the presidency. Imagine, compañero Evo Morales in his first candidacy
as a leader. Like any other compañero he had nothing; we had more
to give. We also wanted them to know that in the Chapare we do not
depend on any government. Because our base contributes union dues we
do not depend on anyone. This is how democracy, dignity is practiced.
Now we believe patriotism has been born in Bolivia—civic pride, love
of country, love of our people. Now there are volunteers who want to
help the campaign.
Recently the oligarchs have understood and say, “How is this Indian
going to govern—he will last three months; he will last six months.”
But after one year the oligarchs were shocked—the Santa Cruz oli-
garchs who manage 93 percent of our economy; the state manages only
7 percent. Because of this our country was a beggar country. When
November, December came our president used to go abroad to ask for
charity to pay annual bonuses in exchange for coca, a decree, a law, a pri-
vatization, but now this has totally changed because, as I told you, now
this consciousness has arisen. No one wanted to put MAS flags on their
car—whoever talked of the political instrument was a drug trafficker.
But [now] we feel proud of the political instrument. Why? Because we
are changing. Refounding our beloved Bolivia; we are going to recover
our natural resources; we are going to recover our lands, live in harmony
with nature. We say, “Do not seek to live better than others.” We all
want to live well in complementarity, with equality and justice. All the
measures our president has taken are based on these principles, many
of which you know. Bolivia was considered the poorest country, with
great infant mortality, with illiteracy; you would see our compañeros and
compañeras begging in the main plaza. Now thanks to the recovery of
our hydrocarbons, of our natural resources, our economy has grown. At
the moment the state manages 30 percent but we have not recovered
the 70 percent still in private hands. Some of our strategic enterprises

are still privatized, for example electric power. It has been very diffi-
cult to get the constitution approved. The new constitution is clear that
basic services should be a human right and not a private business. What
does this mean? The state has the obligation to provide basic necessities.
Before they wanted to privatize water; they wanted to privatize light,
everything privatized.
The most important thing in our new constitution is that there will
never be foreign military bases in Bolivia. Other important things are
that they will never privatize basic services and, furthermore, that the
department of lands bans large landholdings (latifundios) of more than
five thousand hectares. But before a few families owned expanses of
land and the majority that were Aymaras, Quechuas did not have land.
It appeared that they were without land in their own country. Further-
more, the constitution recognizes our thirty-six nationalities. Before, the
official religion of Catholicism was obligatory; now there is freedom of
religion so that I can be of whatever religion. We lacked confidence in
some members of the Church because in all the mobilizations when the
government massacred us, they never said anything. When the people
overthrew the government, they came out to defend the government.
This is the history of the Tropics but now there is tranquility, peace.
There is economic stability; there is economic growth. Before it was a
debtor country and a country with a fiscal deficit. Now there is no fiscal
deficit—even better there is a surplus—and because of this there is more
public investment; there are more public works. There is more work and
if there is more work there is more money. Because of this we are con-
tent. Our president once said we are not going to suffer this global crisis,
because we were eating the garbage of the United States. Bolivia was
the garbage can of the United States. They gave us used clothes, wheat
that was not useful to them, and external debt. Now we are becoming
dignified and are aiding the small and medium enterprises. We are able
to export some products and are aiding production. Bolivia can now
survive with our own products. Before we imported and the Santa Cruz
oligarchs did not make claims to the ATPDEA; they did not pay taxes
here or in the United States. They were only selling abroad, not even
producing for internal use, only to export, and we had to import and
subsidize many products in order to eat. Now thanks to the aid that our
212 CHAPTER 5
government has given to production, there has not been a shortage of

rice this year; there has not been a shortage of many products. We are
well with this economic stability and because of this we are going to
continue to promote this process of change.
What the United States imposed always generated conflict between
peoples. Bolivia, a poor and indigent country, was obliged as a condition
of aid to do away with coca and incite confrontation. I recall, I believe it
was in the government of Banzer, they were saying that there would be
decertification; there would not be aid for Bolivia. In order to have aid
we would have to reduce our coca leaf crops. United States aid to Bolivia
was totally conditional. As I should say, not the United States, but the
empire has taken advantage of us. I would say Obama-Bin Laden [sic],
Obama the president of the United States, made great changes but they
are going to remove him or kill him. We see this from Bolivia. Why?
Because the empire is not going to change so simply. Even in Bolivia at
the moment, yes, we are the government, but we are not the real power.
Judicial and legislative power is against the process of change. The gov-
ernment does not have a majority in the legislature and, as a result, it is
governing by decree. The electoral power, the electoral court in Bolivia
is against this process of change to extend democracy. If we win with
80 percent on the sixth of December [2009], there will be elections in
the Supreme Court; there will be democratic elections. If there is a two-
thirds majority surely many decrees will be constitutionalized and in
this way Bolivia will continue seeking equality between human beings.
Before, they self-described it as representative democracy; they were
representing us. Now it is participatory democracy. Many decisions on
natural resources, on our authorities have been submitted to the people.
The people decide on the nationalization of the hydrocarbons, on the
constituent assembly, on the new constitution, on the recall of some
authorities. Therefore in Bolivia it is not a representative but a partici-
patory democracy. Now surely the people will continue to be consulted
with regard to specifics and the people will continue deciding the des-
tiny of the country.
You know that democratic revolution is making a democracy without
bullets, without deaths. Cultural revolution is making great changes.
Before, indigenous peoples were hidden. He who spoke Quechua, he
who did not speak good Spanish, was marginalized. Review the data,
brother. Only the whites, the higher-ups, had the right to be military
officers. The class of what I would call indigenous—Aymara, Quechua—
had no rights. Now thanks to our government they can be officers. Sim-
ilarly in the police, they were marginalized according to their surname.
Until now you could not find a colonel Mamani in Bolivia! It is incred-
ible but we were below, indoctrinated in Western culture. But now in
the cultural revolution we no longer remain in another language, our
customs to the rear. Some have been born and have lived in this Western
culture. Clearly the young are already forgetting—our grandfathers and
grandmothers still, I would say, practice this humanity in the commu-
nity. They give us an example. Surely you should know of the Bolivian
history of colonization. With the colonization they have wanted to
annul our cultural roots, but they have not been able.
EVO M O R A LES, T H E S I X F ED ER AT I O N S, A N D M A S
Compañero Evo is our leader and president and the rest of us are his
followers. When we have to meet, even if it is 5:00 in the morning, we
meet. Sometimes in an emergency it is necessary for the high command
of the people, the principal leaders, mayors, city council members, to
decide. The maximum authority, however, is the meeting of the Six Fed-
erations. All the leaders of all the Tropics participate and decide and that
is law. We always support the decision of the broadest authority. In many
cases even our president has to support the decision of the majority. That
is the way it is, compañero. At the least every two or three months we
meet to make evaluations of our economic and social policies. We make
better decisions when we are well informed, still better ones if there is
consciousness.
The organizations are an instrument to unify us, an instrument to
communicate, to understand one another. Some are unionists, some
are indigenists, but we are the largest peoples—we are the Aymara-
Quechuas. Some are Catholics, some are evangelicals, but in the end
we belong to the indigenous Andean culture where we understand one
another perfectly. In Bolivia we have thirty-six nationalities, but we
understand one another on the basis of complementarity, on the basis
of unity. The oligarchs want to divide Bolivia and continue making a
joke of it. To prevent this we have to maintain the consciousness that
214 CHAPTER 5
has been achieved. We have always mobilized to defend Bolivia. Andean

cosmovision is important because we have a trilogy: Ama sua, don’t be a
thief; ama llulla, don’t lie; and ama quella, don’t be lazy—on the basis of
these principles the political instrument is advancing as the Movement
Toward Socialism.
Clearly Che Guevara and Túpac Katari are our ideological leaders
who have thought of liberating the people. You know that in Bolivia in
the colonization there was serfdom. Everyone was subjugated by the
patron; everyone worked for the patron. The ideology of Che, the MAS
ideology, goes against the exploitation of man against man. They are our
leaders—Che Guevara—there are many indigenous leaders and because
of this on the basis of our principles we are advancing.
Before, the unions were only for seeking economic demands, but now
they seek not only social but political demands. Before, to talk of the
political was prohibited. Now it is necessary to say that the organization,
the political, the organic are one. Sometimes we speak freely of politics.
We know politically that we have been dominated for so much time
and now we are confronting; we are speaking politically; we are going
to change this bad history.
IMPERIALISM, COCA, AND INDIGENOUS IDENTITY
As Leonilda Zurita and Julio Salazar persuasively argue, the conflict that brought
Evo Morales and his “democratic and cultural revolution” to power began in
the coca fields of the Chapare region. According to Zurita, “We proposed to
defend coca and the governments proposed eradication.” For both Salazar and
Zurita, the turning point was “draconian” Law 1008, adopted under pressure
from the United States in 1988. By essentially declaring all coca production in
the Chapare (but not in the Yungas) region excess and subject to eradication, it
instantly criminalized what had been an agricultural activity enshrined in tradi-
tional Andean cultural practice and an economic escape valve for thousands of
farmers and others displaced by neoliberal economic policies. Since, as Salazar
notes, none of the alternative agricultural activities proposed in the various erad-
ication plans could substitute for coca, in effect Law 1008 made the quotidian
round of life in the Chapare economically perilous, physically dangerous, and
existentially meaningless. The basic categories of everyday life and the political
and social structures associated with them were under direct legal and physical
threat. There was no alternative.
The unrelenting nightmare of state violence that engulfed the Chapare was
described in vivid terms by both Zurita and Salazar. Particularly in the case
of the former, these descriptions were the most intensely emotional and per-
sonal parts of the interview: “Violence, deaths, wounded, detained, jailed . . .
violence, with bullets, with gas. . . . Every day there were deaths, wounded,
confrontations, once again deaths” (Zurita); “To have a dialogue we had to
have a death. . . . All the governments have massacred us, so many deaths, so
many wounded” (Salazar). In essence the eradication of coca had become the
eradication of coca growers. As Zurita notes, people in the Chapare could be
treated with an absolute contempt for their lives and liberty. Their food could
be poisoned; they could be arrested at any time as “drug traffickers”; they could
be shot, gassed, or beaten without legal recourse or consequences. As Salazar
notes, political organization on the part of coca growers in the Chapare was
automatically denounced as “drug trafficking.” Zurita points out that the war
on drug trafficking was not directed at the drug traffickers themselves but at
the most accessible, vulnerable, and defenseless part of the rural coca-growing
population. The increasing militarization of the anti-coca-grower struggle under
former dictator but subsequently elected president Hugo Banzer only expanded
the war on the poor. Human rights for coca growers were not so much violated
as simply unrecognized.
As Leonilda Zurita points out, Law 1008 “satanized” coca by equating coca
with cocaine and conflating cocaine use in the United States with the produc-
tion of coca in Bolivia. As Salazar himself notes, much of the coca production
in the Chapare was diverted to cocaine production in the eighties, but sataniz-
ing the leaf was part of a process by which coca growers became criminals and
terrorists subject to draconian countermeasures and militarized eradication. It
also imposed the categories of the U.S. drug war on a much larger group of
Bolivian coca users, many of whom, like the producers, were poor and indige-
nous. The close connection between coca use and indigenous culture meant that
the satanization of coca was to satanize the indigenous poor, who made up a
majority of Bolivia’s inhabitants. As Fernando Coronil has argued, state violence
in Latin America is as often a means to degrade and marginalize its targets (as,
for example, in the response to the Caracazo in Venezuela in 1989) as it is a cal-
culated instrument of control.25 The satanization of the coca leaf and the violent
degradation of the coca-grower indigenous poor were part of the same process.
216 CHAPTER 5
In both interviews with the most prominent leaders of the cocalero move-
ment, there is a close connection between coca use (and production) and indige-
neity. For Leonilda Zurita, it is always “our sacred leaf.” For her it is not cocaine
but instead a natural medicine and “the computer of our people” because with
it “you can read the fate that is going to come to you.” Salazar hopes that “our
brothers in the United States” know that “the coca leaf is part of our cultural
identity, it is medicine, it is food; it represents our ritual uses . . . to dedicate
your business, your lands, to give food to Mother Earth, and this is sacred.” It
is especially important, he says, in the treatment of the dead.
Satanization of the coca leaf and the promiscuous use of violence against
coca growers, almost all of whom are indigenous, raise broader questions of
racism and Bolivian history. “Surely you should know the Bolivian history of
colonization,” Julio Salazar said to me. “With the colonization they have wanted
to annul our cultural roots, but they have not been able.” For Leonilda Zurita,
“we were ashamed to speak Aymara or Quechua,” but that is changing with the
election of Evo Morales, and “it is a duty and a right to recover the wisdom, the
discourse, the languages, the cultures that we have lost.”
Degradation through promiscuous violence, satanization of the culture of
the coca leaf, and humiliation of the indigenous are all part of the story the
coca growers’ leaders tell. These mechanisms are intensified and nationalized
by the association of the United States, particularly its Drug Enforcement
Agency, and the complicity of the Bolivian political elite and traditional
political parties in the war on the coca growers. For Salazar, “the empire,
the United States, has invented the fight against drug trafficking in order to
suppress the people, to intervene among the people. This is how the struggle
in the Chapare began.” In Zurita’s view, “Evo Morales struggles for our peo-
ples, for our countries, recovering riches that have been capitalized, turned
over to the empire, to the rich, today recovered for the people.” According to
Salazar, the struggle for coca led him to the realization that “in Bolivia foreign
people were governing,” epitomized by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, whose
policies were made in the United States and who came to impose neoliberal
economic policies and occidental thinking on Bolivia. Salazar explains that
the American Embassy made not only the important decisions but unim-
portant ones as well. An obsequious and mendicant Bolivian elite went to
Washington every year to beg for aid in exchange for policy adjustments
such as outlawing coca in the Chapare. This narrow foreign elite, serving U.S.
interests, is counterposed to the 80 percent of Bolivians who are “indigenous
peoples, thousand-year-old people, historically owners of this Mother Earth.”

For Zurita, “The voice of the campesino, of the indigenous, had never been
heard” before the promulgation of the 2009 constitution. The conflict between
indigenous identity and Western cultural, political, and economic imperialism
is a fundamental principle for these leaders. The Westernized Bolivian elite
and the Bolivian drug enforcement units are simply a part of the project of
the “empire.”
The drug war heightened perceptions of foreign, imperial control by the
United States and the division between a narrow Westernized and largely
European-descended elite and the indigenous coca growers and coca users.
The coca war was certainly a matter of economic survival for the producers.
But it was also a violation of their persons, their culture, and their indigenous
selves.
Even if the coca growers unions were established, as Julio Salazar notes,
to achieve economic objectives for the producers the struggle, they said, rap-
idly generalized to social and political questions first at the local and ulti-
mately at the national level. Salazar was one of a number of MAS leaders
who retold with a mixture of celebration and wonder the story of the coca
growers’ meteoric rise from control of municipal government to the national
legislature and ultimately to the presidency just ten years after the founding
of the party. Indeed, the MAS party was not a conventional party at all, as its
original name—Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos (IPSP,
Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the People)—indicates. Instead it
was, as Julio Salazar notes, an expression of the “ideological principles of the
indigenous peoples,” and an expression of the will of the social movements
expressed first at the local level in the Chapare and ultimately at the national
level. “We, as social movements,” says Leonilda Zurita, “are founders of the
process of change. We have a role in the government.” It is therefore a duty
and a right to defend the change process. Political success, in turn, required
rejecting the degradation of the indigenous as sandal-wearing idiots who
were incapable of government, as Julio Salazar notes for the local level in the
Chapare. For Zurita, the process of change that culminated in the election
of Evo Morales and the new constitution meant that the indigenous “have
entered the constitution [for the first time] in history.”
Symbolically represented by the inclusion of the indigenous in the Indepen-
dence Day military parade, a new definition of what Salazar calls “our beloved
Bolivia” has emerged through the rise of Evo Morales and the cocaleros—a
218 CHAPTER 5
nation in which an inclusive indigeneity is at its core. Furthermore, this rise has
been accomplished not only through protests, road blockades, and other forms
of direct action but through a stunning ascent through the preexisting electoral
system. The result, as Leonilda Zurita notes, is Evo Morales’s “democratic and
cultural revolution.” The result of this “revolution” or “process of change,” as it is
more commonly called in the interviews, is a reversal of the symbolic degrada-
tion, demonization, and racial humiliation of the drug war. The use of violence
as symbolic degradation and practical repression ended with an agreement with
President Carlos Mesa Gisbert in 2004 limiting each coca grower to one “cato”
of coca (1,600 square meters), a principle that has been ratified by Evo Morales.
Leonilda Zurita claims that since that time there has not been “one death, not
one wounded, no one arrested.” At an end too was the treatment of coca grow-
ers as “excess” producers to be eradicated rather than citizens with rights that
even drug enforcement agencies must respect. Not only is coca not satanized;
it is, as Leonilda Zurita notes, “constitutionalized” in Article 384 of the 2009
constitution.
The State shall protect native and ancestral coca as cultural patrimony,
a renewable natural resource of Bolivia’s biodiversity, and as a factor
of social cohesion; in its natural state it is not a narcotic. Its revaluing,
production, commercialization, and industrialization shall be regulated
by the state.
The categories of the coca war are here reversed. The 1961 categorization of
coca as a narcotic is legally and symbolically revoked. The criminalization of the
Chapare production in Law 1008 is ended. The drug war’s implicit equation of
coca and cocaine is denied. The cultural and social uses of coca in indigenous
Bolivian society are not only recognized but elevated to the level of cultural
patrimony. Coca is, as Julio Salazar argues in his interview, a renewable natural
resource of the Bolivian nation and as such is under the control of the Bolivian
state. “In the Chapare we began with the defense of the coca leaf, which is a
renewable natural resource, and we have gone on to defend our other natural
resources such as our hydrocarbons.”
The result, evident in both interviews, is a resounding sense of pride in a
new Bolivian nation where for the first time those marginalized in the coca
war and the creole nation—the poor and the indigenous—have come to define
the nation “to have our own political party, our own candidate, our own mayor,”
and finally their own poor indigenous coca grower as president. The new nation
has thrown out foreign military bases; eliminated fiscal deficits and with it
dependency on foreigners; taken control of its natural resources, including but
not limited to coca; defeated the disloyal oligarchs from Santa Cruz; provided
opportunities for small producers and other small business people like Zurita
and Salazar; incorporated the indigenous into the national political system for
the first time; created opportunities for women that had never existed before;
and provided social programs like maternity care, state pensions, and school
attendance subsidies. The coca growers and their political party had gone from
being pariahs and outcasts to being the core of a new “beloved Bolivia.” And
Bolivia itself had gone from being the “garbage can” of the United States to a
self-supporting member of the international community. According to these
leaders, national humiliation that came with the drug war has been reversed
under MAS.
Concepts of an exclusionary ethnic nationalism, however, are of little use in
understanding the particular concept of the plurinational and the intercultural
that emerges in these and other MAS interviews. It is inclusionary rather than
exclusionary. There are thirty-six different nationalities in Bolivia, says Zurita,
and now all can be constitutionally included. The coca growers union has
both Quechua and Aymara, evangelical and Catholic members, says Salazar.
In the Chapare interviews, the opposition is defined in class, economic, and
nationalist terms—the Santa Cruz oligarchs, lackeys of the United States or
the rich more generally—not in the racial language of “blancos y mestizos” or
“q’aras.” And in any case the objective is to create greater equality among pro-
ductive citizens, not eliminate the rich in a communist revolution. Leonilda
Zurita’s gestures indicate that she wants a reduction, not the elimination, of
economic inequality. The “sacred leaf,” however, became a symbol of an indig-
enous nation repressed by a narrow Hispanic elite. This extraordinary reversal
of coca from dangerous narcotic to sacred leaf was at the core of symbolic
revolution in the Chapare. By destroying the categories of social life and
consciousness associated with coca, it undermined the symbolic foundations
of the old order. It was a decisive step in the symbolic and political revolution
that brought the coca producers to power.
FIGURE 5 . Felipe Quispe
holds a press conference
in occupied Radio Station
San Gabriel, Septem-
ber 27, 2003. Courtesy of
Reuters.
FIGURE 6 . Leonilda Zurita leads a protest in La Paz, October 19, 2004. Courtesy of Reuters.
FIGURE 7 . Aymara protesters
descend from El Alto to the
hollow of La Paz to join a crowd
that would reach 100,000, over-
whelm the security forces, and
seize the La Paz city center,
October 13, 2003. Courtesy of
Reuters.
FIGURE 8 . Newly elected deputy Evo Morales leads a coca growers’ protest march from
the Chapare to La Paz, August 11, 1998. Courtesy of Reuters.
6
MAS UNIONISTS
Che Guevara and Túpac Katari
Interviews with Isaac Avalos, Fidel Surco, and Edgar Patana
W
HEN MAS was founded in 1995 by the coca producers, there were
three closely affiliated organizations. The Confederación Sindical
Única de Trabajadores Campesinos (CSUTCB) had been founded
in 1979, as we have seen (chapter 5), as a consequence of the rise of Katarism.
By 1995 it was an independent labor union that had a presence in almost every
rural community in Bolivia and claimed, in 2009, three million members. Most
were members of Aymara- or Quechua-speaking indigenous communities.1
The Federación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas de Bolivia–Bartolina Sisa
(FNMCB-BS), commonly called the “Bartolinas,” was the parallel women’s
organization founded in 1980 as a result of the increasing importance of women
in peasant indigenous mobilizations and the exclusion of women from the
CSUTCB leadership. The Confederación Sindical de Colonizadores de Bolivia
(CSCB) was founded in 1971 to provide an organized voice to highland peasants
who were encouraged to migrate to the subtropical and tropical frontier by
official government “colonization programs.” The Confederación Indígena del
Oriente Boliviano (CIDOB) was founded in 1983 with substantial assistance
from international NGOs in response to increasing commercial encroachments
on the traditional territories of indigenous groups in the Bolivian tropical low-
lands.2 CIDOB eventually drifted away from the original MAS coalition and
by 2011 it was in direct conflict with the MAS government over a road project
MAS UNIONISTS 223
that would pass through traditional indigenous territory in the lowlands.3 The
other three organizations remain the core of the party and have ex-officio rep-
resentation in the party’s ruling council.
The Bartolinas “moved in the shadow of the CSUTCB” and, with the excep-
tion of some regions, functioned as an affiliated organization with some auton-
omy rather than a fully independent women’s organization.4 Even though it
was in no sense a feminist organization, some women, such as Leonilda Zurita,
achieved considerable prominence through their positions in the Bartolinas. The
“Colonizers” (CSCB), who eventually rejected that title and renamed themselves
Confederación Syndical de Comunidades Interculturales de Bolivia (CSCIB,
Union Confederation of Intercultural Communities of Bolivia), were strongest
in the transitional zones between the highlands and the lowlands in the depart-
ments of Cochabamba and adjoining areas of Santa Cruz; in the province of
Caranavi in the department of La Paz; and in Beni among peasant producers
of a wide range of tropical and semitropical crops, including, significantly, coca.
Paradoxically, the very dependence of the colonizers on the state and the state
prohibition of unions pushed the colonizers to militant independent unionism.5
When the MAS reached out to form alliances with the militant Aymara of
the province of La Paz, they found a critical ally in Edgar Patana, at the time of
the interviews secretary of Central Obrera Regional–El Alto (COR–El Alto).
He was later elected mayor of the entire city of El Alto. The almost entirely
indigenous and largely Aymara city on the plains above La Paz was at the core
of the great uprising of 2003 and 2005. Although a unionist to the core, he shares
a deep commitment to Aymara identity. He was one of the six named as “closest
to Evo” by La Razón.
A dialectic between the symbolic meaning of Che Guevara and Túpac Katari
runs throughout the union leaders’ interviews. They bring the symbolic revo-
lution to large areas of Bolivia outside the MAS base in the Chapare. Neither
symbol is exactly what it appears to mean. As Luis Tapia observes, “The MAS
party is not a party that favors armed struggle, and they don’t have in mind the
economic program that Che proposed, not only in his thinking but also as a
minister [in Cuba]. It’s like a form of anti-imperialist identification . . . and in
favor of change, of revolution.”6 He also notes while there are few actual Gue-
varists in Bolivia, there is widespread identification with Guevara among the
popular classes and the young. Túpac Katari is a symbol of indigenous identity
and rebellion. He is also a symbol of an intercultural Bolivia. Together they
symbolize an intercultural and indigenous revolution against imperialism.
224 CHAPTER 6
But the intercultural in Bolivia is very different from the identical term in
Ecuador. The concept of nation is seldom mentioned in Bolivia so that intercul-
turality means relations not between different indigenous nations but between
individuals with different national origins. Furthermore, the term indigenous
original peasant, as used in the interviews and in the 2009 constitution, suggests
a merging of indigenous peoples in the Amazon, the Aymara and Quechua
peoples of the Andes, and even mestizos from Santa Cruz. The Bolivian term is
widely inclusive and invites all the popular classes to unite against U.S. imperi-
alism. This reading of the intercultural allows the Bolivians to combine in ways
that were not theoretically possible in Ecuador. These themes run throughout
the interviews that follow.
ISAAC AVALOS: COLLAS, CAMBAS, AND CAMPESINOS
Isaac Avalos was born in June 1966 in Vallegrande in Santa Cruz Depart-
ment—a place where the legend of Che Guevara has achieved the status of a
religious cult. He is a “camba,” as residents of Santa Cruz are familiarly called
(in contrast to the “collas” of the highlands) and therefore not self-identified
as indigenous. He completed only two years of formal education. He has spent
more than twenty-five years in union work, including as executive secretary
of the Santa Cruz regional branch of the CSUTCB and leadership of the
regional Central Obrera Boliviana (COB, Bolivian Workers Central) before
he assumed the post of executive secretary of the national CSUTCB. He was
a founding member of MAS and served as a supplementary deputy from
Santa Cruz before being elected to the national Senate from Santa Cruz for
the 2010–15 term.7
I am from the Bolivian East. I am from Santa Cruz. I am from the

province where they killed Che Guevara. My name is Isaac Avalos C.
I am the leader of the CSUTCB—three and a half million members
counting men, women, adults. When I was twenty we did not have
the right to go to school. I studied first, second grade—basic, nothing
more. The governments in power they forgot about the campesinos—
the Quechua, the Aymara, the Guaraní—the indigenous people, the
campesinos. They forgot them. There was no health; there were no roads;
MAS UNIONISTS 225
there were no markets; there was no production; there were no credits—

there was nothing.
We have been educating ourselves to liberate ourselves, to advance
and look for a change in our country, and a leader appeared in our
path—Evo Morales, cocalero: in reality a llama herder from Oruro
who went to the coca sector. He, I—coming from the east—leaders
of the altiplano, all of us made a team, people with consciousness, and
we have been advancing democratically in elections in the country. We
have been advancing against the neoliberal right in Bolivia with their
own weapons, because for them democracy is a fantasy. Because there
was slavery, there was mistreatment, discrimination; even today it still
exists between “collas” and “cambas” but we do not want this—the
politics of division.
But now we want a change, in the issues of the economy, politics,
land, water, electricity for all the Bolivians without discrimination. We
are not spiteful; we do not want it for ourselves—the poor—only but
also for everyone: the city, the countryside, the middle class. This is our
desire and because of this we are seeking this process of change, this
transformation of our country. This is why we the leaders at the head of
the social movements are aiding the process of change from our bases—
and at the head is President Evo Morales—by necessity, because now
we do not want to be excluded. We are a country rich in resources, in
oil, wood, in land, but we are poor. The governments devoted them-
selves to selling, to giving away, to submitting to the North American
government. I give you a hundred million dollars so that you give me a
business that is going to come in to extract your oil. We need to capital-
ize ourselves; we need to let them in; we need to leave nothing with the
Bolivians; everything must be taken by the foreigner. We do not want
this. We want partners, but we do not want them to exploit us. We want
our riches to improve our way of life to “live well”—this we look for in
this process of change.
T H E E CO N O M Y
We are content because when President Evo Morales took office we

had international reserves of 1.7 billion. Now we have 8 billion. If there
were to be a crisis in our country, we could take 2 billion from this and
226 CHAPTER 6
resolve the economic problem, food, everything. If there is no money

in a country, poverty comes, or if you do not have money it is bad. Then
all the people would be hungry, would suffer, and even die. But we feel
content because there is money and there is aid from all the nations. The
most important thing for us is that there are programs, for example, in
the issue of production, where yes, there are problems, but it has to go
on improving. There are campesino credits, which never existed before,
also with problems, but they are there. We have a program called the
Indigenous Fund [Fondo para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas
de Latin America y El Caribe]—$120 million for the year—and we are
going to execute productive projects directly. This country has begun to
change. The economy will not be at 100 percent. It has not reached that;
it should improve but it is advancing.
D E CO L O N I Z AT I O N A N D I N D I G EN O U S AU T O N O M Y
Decolonization means various things. First, we must end racism, and

second, we must end the issue of personal interest and also outside
interests. We want to decolonize. We want all to be equal. The rich can
remain, but we want an honest rich, not crafty, not thieves. We want to
put in the mentality of our people that the colony that dominated the
country, a group of persons, is finished. For us this is decolonization. To
make our people understand that Bolivia is for all the Bolivians—not
for a few, nor for a colony, nor for a group of people.
We have Quechuas, we have Aymaras, and together the indigenous
population makes up 65 percent of the total population of Bolivia. The
largest population is the Quechua and the second population is Aymara
and after that come the Guaraní people, or the Chiquitanos, who are
now, I would say, the third. There are around a half-million Chiquitanos
[< 200,000] and after the others the peoples are smaller. We have then
around 70 percent indigenous people and white people such as me, if
you want, this “camba” of shit [a play on the racist expression Indian of
shit], we are 25 percent, more or less.
We have accommodated indigenous autonomy well in the constitu-
tion. Campesinos are working on creating regional autonomies. Indig-
enous peoples are working on making indigenous, original autonomies.
MAS UNIONISTS 227
We have worked on the constitution to a great extent so that no one

will remain outside, especially the campesinos, who are more numerous
in the East. We cannot leave the campesinos of the east outside the
constitution: original indigenous autonomies, as well as regional auton-
omies and within the regional autonomies are the campesino, such as
me, for example. I am in that category because I am not indigenous. I
am the national leader of the indigenous peoples, Quechuas, Aymaras.
It is good that there are organic, democratic things that work in this
country regardless of ethnicity.
When there were neoliberal governments, they wanted to exter-
minate our race, our culture. Now we are strengthening them. This is
thanks to the president because he is indigenous. The indigenous people,
the Aymara people, are becoming stronger. The Quechua people are
becoming stronger. In Potosí there are more than fifty kinds of people
who have not been taken into account, but they are there. With this
government they are being strengthened, the Quechua, the Aymara, the
Guaraní. The indigenous peoples are strengthening themselves more;
they are being strengthened more. There is diversity.
Andean cosmovision came from five hundred years ago, our grand-
parents’ way of life. Túpac Katari, Bartolina Sisa were our grandpar-
ents. They used to have their way of life, their way of working, their
way of organizing, and their way of struggling. We remember this
Andean cosmovision; we remember until today and we bring them
to the present. They are stronger now because the ancestral cultures,
the Andean cosmovision, the Aymara, the Quechua, our grandparents
were peoples who were subjugated by the Spaniards; sadly, extermi-
nated; killed by the Spaniards, but they carried our blood—this will
never end.
Now we have constitutionalized the wiphala. The Bolivian flag is the
wiphala; the putujú [a traditional horn] is also official. We have consti-
tutionalized the flag of our struggle; it is in the constitution. And fur-
thermore in the old Constitution the Quechuas, the Aymaras, the indig-
enous were not recognized; they were not part of the constitution. Now
the thirty-six peoples, thirty-seven peoples [including Afro-Bolivians]
are in the constitution; we are part of the constitution. Because we have
made this constitution ourselves.
228 CHAPTER 6
C H E G U EVA R A A N D T H E F U T U R E
Che reminds us of the considerable struggle. We the Bolivians have

great respect for Che because he struggled for our riches; he was strug-
gling for us, the poor. Sadly, we did not understand him in that moment
and had him killed. But we make Che present in every way, with photo-
graphs, with anything, we make him present as a leader of the struggle,
just like Bartolina Sisa, Apiaguaiki Tumpa of the East, equally. In reality
they are our symbols of struggle. They are grandparents who have left
us. As when they were going to kill Túpac Katari, he said, “They kill me,
but I will return as millions.” And here in Bolivia we are millions; now
we are millions; now we are millions.
To liberate, to live united, to live well, eat well, to be attended to; we
do not want there to be discrimination—this is gringo, this is cholo—we
want a single country, wherever we may be, without racial discrimina-
tion. We want an organized country; we want a country in order to live
well—this is what we want. Because of this we support the process of
change. And as we see President Evo Morales is walking forward, we
also are going to support him from below, strengthening him, and also
sending him proposals, ideas, proposals that we send in writing, legal
projects—he listens and makes them reality. This is what we want.
FIDEL SURCO: INTERCULTURAL COMMUNITIES

AND CHE GUEVARA
Fidel Surco, the son of Quechua activist Jacinto Surco, was born on November
30, 1975, in the department of La Paz. He began his union activities in Alto Beni,
province of Caranavi, department of La Paz, and progressed from being a local
confederation leader to CSCB executive secretary at the time of the interviews
(2009). That same year he was the target of a letter bomb. His wife, who mistak-
enly opened the envelope, was blinded and seriously wounded in the blast. He
stepped down from the CSCB leadership in 2011. He served one term (2010–15)
as MAS senator from La Paz. As executive secretary (2008–10) of the Confed-
eración Nacional para el Cambio (CONALCAM, National Coordinator for
Change), an umbrella organization including a range of more than 130 social
movement organizations, he was one of the most powerful men in Bolivia. He is
a part owner of one of the largest transportation firms in Bolivia, Turbus Totaí.8
MAS UNIONISTS 229
THE CSCB
We [the CSCB] are an organization that has been around for thirty-
seven years. The CSUTCB is now thirty years old. We are thirty-seven
years old. This organization was founded on February 11, 1971. We began
with a few confederations in the country. They have been adjusting,
consolidating throughout all this time to be able to carry forward the
objective of our organization—to be a combative organization. In the
times of the dictators there was total oppression. The governments were
racist and classist with no element of participation. We made contested
decisions to orient the union leadership not as a political party but as
a union organization. We wanted a leader who would defend his base
organization, his colonies, his communities. What was the base of this
organization? At the time of the relocation of the miners of the west
to the east in colonies, the Right imposed the name “colonizers” on us.
This type of community existed, with the name of colonies. We were
colonizers until last year. We do not see ourselves as colonizers, but the
colonizers, who migrated from the west to the east, are Aymaras and
Quechuas, and include the local indigenous—Guaranís, Mosetenes,
Tacanas, Tsimanés—all types of indigenous. Now the collas have joined
the indigenous in an interculturality.
We have had good times; we have also had bad times. Our orga-
nization has suffered crises along with other parallel organizations.
Before there were two confederations. Our organization of colonizers
of agricultural products was the CSCB; the other added P and A for
“agricultural producers.” They were more to the right and more allied
with yellow unionism. We were a union more organically linked to the
left. Not to the center-left, neither fish nor fowl. Whenever we have
had an imbalance, we have held congresses of unity. We have always
been strengthening ourselves and now more than ever. We are the first
organization in the country, more united than ever. There are not two
organizations even when there was a division in the CSUTCB. They
had two leaders, two heads. Now this process is being consolidated as
the people themselves have realized.
But in 1995 our organization was one of the fundamental pillars—
when Gerardo García was the executive—of consolidating [the political
process]. In the Central Obrera Boliviana [COB] they told us, “You
230 CHAPTER 6
never should intervene in politics. Your politics are the axe and the
machete.” We always carried the axe and the machete on our logo and,
below, the national map on our flag. Because we cultivate; we live from
agricultural production. We are not timber companies, we are not busi-
nessmen; we are small producers of ecological and organic products in
the north of La Paz. We are characterized by the production of coffee,
by the production of bananas, by the production of citrus, by the pro-
duction of cane or other ecological products. We could say cacao in the
north of La Paz; in small quantities, livestock, also pigs. We know how
to handle these products.
But from ’95 on we began to change the statutes, to debate the issues
of the political process. We saw how as organizations it was useful to
organize ourselves politically to take power locally. We did not govern
even a municipality. We did not govern a department, nor at the national
level; nor did we have the right to be deputies, to be senators. We did not
have anything. Everything was imposed from above. The politicians put
forward those to whom they were going to give the victory—the whites.
We were always discriminated against. The campesinos, the Indians, the
indigenous could never even enter parliament, congress.
On the basis of this, Evo Morales was in the Tropic of Cochabamba,
still a young leader at this time. In ’95 with Gerardo García there was
the first march from the Tropic of Cochabamba, on bicycles; they were
going to Santa Cruz, to a congress, to shape a political direction. But
those of the Tropics proposed that it was going to be a political instru-
ment, ASP [Asamblea por la Soberanía de los Pueblos (Assembly for
the Sovereignty of the Peoples)]. And in ’98 there was conflict in this
congress. We always supported the ASP and we are the only ones who
stayed. Our affiliates in the Tropic of Cochabamba had always had a
firm position. In ’98 in Cochabamba, in the Universidad Mayor de San
Simón, the political instrument [Instrumento Político por la Soberanía
de los Pueblos (IPSP)] was formed. We, as the Confederation of Col-
onizers [CSCB], were always part of this. We worked together with
all of them until we consolidated the entire process, and were part of
the party [MAS] that the CSUTCB, Colonizers, and Bartolinas con-
structed politically.
Now after all of this we arrive at the decade of 2000 onward. We
developed a more revolutionary process with mobilizations and every-
MAS UNIONISTS 231
thing, to put pressure on, even to remove, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada,

who had alienated the national resources of our country. We were one of
the fundamental pillars in the north of La Paz in trying to put a stop to
all of that. We came here ourselves to hit Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.
When our brothers were shot here in El Alto, here in the hollow, peo-
ple filled the city of La Paz. This is where our organization itself was
involved in the refoundation of the country and made a commitment to
the Bolivian people. We have now changed our name to “intercultural
communities” as recognized by the Constitución Política del Estado.
Article 3 of the current constitution recognizes all the organizations,
including Afro-Bolivians, in our country. We are involved, we say, within
the constitution as intercultural communities. This is where our organi-
zation stands at the moment.
[The interview is interrupted by a press conference.]
CO M M EN T S O N P R ES S CO N F ER EN C E
Clearly the only patron who is behind buying the election of 2002
for Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada is the Embassy of the United States,
USAID, including some financiers, that are carrying out antidemocratic
coups d’état in Latin America, even in Europe. And I know that Bolivia
does not want foreign interference.
Víctor Hugo Cárdenas was an indigenous candidate. Indigenous? He
does not have anything indigenous. An Aymara? He has sold out; he
has lowered his pants with Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and has been
his solitary Indian llama herder. From there [first Sánchez de Lozada
administration, 1993–97] comes capitalism, decentralization, various
laws that have sold, alienated our hydrocarbons, our natural resources
to transnational corporations.
[The interview then continues.]
R EB ELLI O N , N O T R EVO LU T I O N
Our indigenous brothers and sisters Túpac Katari, Bartolina Sisa,

Micaela Bastidas, Túpac Amaru, and many others rose in rebellion—
such as, for example, Juana Azurduy de Padilla, who was not even
Bolivian; she was Argentine. She was defending our land, the territory
232 CHAPTER 6
of our country. The theme of land and territory has always been cen-
tral to our struggle. When we are talking of land and territory, we are
speaking in general. We are speaking of natural resources, the forest,
the environment—everything that involves the issue of territory. It has
always been our struggle to live well. We would say clearly that it is
still our objective. It has been laid out in congress after congress that
the confederation has held. Recently we concluded a congress at the
national level in Santa Cruz. I was once again reelected in order to be
able to advance with this process.
Because of this we have great admiration for Fidel Castro; we have
admiration for Che Guevara and we always remember him. Because
of this we say we are brothers of Che, we are brothers—now including
Venezuela. Also, ALBA was formed based on Venezuela, Cuba, and
Bolivia. Now there are more of us. We are the same number as the Rio
Group. It is Central America and South America. Now the constitu-
tion recognizes us as an intercultural community; we are firm in our
commitment to the process of change. Our political line is clear: it is
the Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos, the Movi-
miento al Socialismo. This is our ideological, political, organic principle
that will not be taken away; nor will we distance ourselves from it. We
have always had some leaders who have passed through this organi-
zation who disguised themselves as lambs. Afterward they have gone
with other groups. But now we continue firmly in this process. We
have a goal of social, political, cultural change—in production more
than anything. All of this is at the national level. And this is our fun-
damental work.
The democratic, cultural revolution comes from the revolutionary
process of our social movements. Our country has been able to con-
struct nothing without mobilizations. This is an ideological, political,
and structural principle that carries forward. Our position and what
Evo Morales wants and everyone thinks of after the new constitution
is participatory democracy that involves everyone, everyone. Because
before there was imposed democracy such as what occurred in Hon-
duras. Surely it is not a crime to speak of participatory democracy and
a revolutionary, democratic, and participatory process. We speak of a
cultural, democratic, and revolutionary process—cultural because there
are diverse cultures in our country: thirty-six nationalities plus the Afro-
MAS UNIONISTS 233
Bolivians. The constitution now recognizes the blacks, the browns. Then
there are thirty-seven. We are intercultural, each with its own culture,
with its own way of life, its own living—all of this. The democratic
revolutionary process is to make a revolution, including a democratic
revolution, in the sphere of production. Because we must develop the
area of production in our country. Because at this time we lack much in
the area of technical development, development in the area of credits, in
mechanization, and the improvement of organic ecological production.
Bolivia is the best, a rich country, in organic and ecological production.
Bolivia is independent, sovereign—a people with dignity and sover-
eignty. The constitution says this clearly. The Bolivians are not simply
concerned with having to live well. The Bolivians are concerned about
who they are and that their country lives in peace, in tranquility, in
harmony—this is what Bolivia wants. Bolivia does not want interfer-
ence, does not want to divide the country. Here we want the country
to develop, but not as some bad politicians here, who do not want the
process of change, wish. The process of change is going to continue
changing the way things were; from colonialism to the interculturality of
a plurinational state. Before we were subjugated by colonialism because
all our enterprises were in the hands of the transnational elite. Because
of this we are nationalizing little by little—a change that brings dignity
and sovereignty to Bolivia. The issue of cosmovision is much talked
about. We are in the cosmovision, including Andean cosmovision, Ama-
zonian cosmovision. There three types of cosmovision. We are in all of
this working and coordinating.
EDGAR PATANA: CHE GUEVARA AND TÚPAC KATARI
Edgar Patana has been a leader in the urban equivalent of Achacachi, the largely
indigenous and overwhelmingly Aymara city of El Alto on the plain above La
Paz, during the 2000–2005 uprising and before. He was the oldest in a family
of twelve children of Aymara immigrants to El Alto from the countryside.
Born in 1967, he began his career as a bookseller and in 1987 became president
of an association of small street traders. He helped organize the construction of
barricades in the Gas War of 2003. In 2005 he was elected executive secretary
of COR–El Alto and from that position led his organization in the so-called
second Gas War in 2005. In April 2010 he was elected mayor of El Alto with a
234 CHAPTER 6
little more than 50 percent of the vote. In 2009 he received the title of architect
from UMSA.9
M O B I LI Z AT I O N I N EL A LT O
OK, the city of El Alto has two representative institutions: the COB
that represents workers on union and political issues and the FEJUVE
in civil matters. We believe that in the ongoing process in our country
since the ’80s—in the coup d’état—somehow it is the popular neigh-
borhoods of La Paz that react in order to bring democracy back to our
country. In 1985 the city of El Alto was created by the pressure and ini-
tiative of these organizations. Before, the COB was CUTAL [Central
Única de Trabajadores de El Alto (Sole Union of Workers of El Alto)]
and the Federación de Juntas Vecinales. We achieved independence in
the town hall in ’85 and the mobilization and political formation of the
compañeros at the union level and the political leadership in the city of
El Alto began.
The vice president [Carlos Mesa Quisbert, 2003–5] comes to power,
promising everything but does nothing. We noticed that in El Alto
they were organizing big demonstrations but they were not preparing
leadership and they did not teach how to lead the country in the future.
Two years later, President Carlos Mesa does not respond to our main
ideas—not to sell gas to Chile, nationalization of the hydrocarbons,
bringing Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to justice, and other claims we
made in the protests of October 2003. We called a new strike. The leader
of the FEJUVE, Abel Mamani, is not present. We took advantage of
that. In my second month as a member of the executive branch in the
COB, we organized the movement. We said: “Carlos Mesa has to either
answer or not.” “Sell gas or not.” Based on those demands, we started
the movement. The regional workers union [COR–El Alto] organized
a great strike and permanent demonstrations. In the end, because of
fear, it dismissed Carlos Mesa and not just Carlos Mesa, the others
too—they had to leave. We settled with Rodríguez Veltzé, president
of the Supreme Court. In that regard, I believe that we made another
mistake. I was new; it was not even my second month in the executive
branch. We resigned ourselves to Rodríguez Veltzé and hoped for a
general election.
MAS UNIONISTS 235
EVO A N D EL A LT O
President Evo Morales resurfaced, the only one who was visible, a former
congressman, who also had his demands at the level of the cocaleros, and
it allowed him to assume the responsibility of leading the country. And
at that time we supported any representatives on condition that they
demand what is right for the city of El Alto. Initially, we supported Luis
Vázquez Villamor from the MIR [Movimiento de Izquierda Revolu-
cionaria]. Then we chose Carlos Palenque, former populist leader from
La Paz, even a neoliberal opponent like José Luis Paredes. But then we
turned over our votes to MAS, led by Evo Morales. What do you expect
from a president? At least he remembers the poor, his people. We belong
to the people, because of identity, race, and origin. Second, we saw him
as a fighting leader, we saw his position. Third, he was the only option
among similar alternatives.
But honestly, so far we have seen changes at a general level; some
small things reach the public, but they forget the development of the
city of El Alto on the issue of job creation, input to the productive sec-
tor, further improving all necessary basic services. But given the lack of
consolidated leadership at the moment—some conflicts in the city of El
Alto prevent the rise of new leaders—we have to support Evo Morales
and hope he responds to us the next time. If not, if he does not respond,
we are sure that he is not going to complete his next mandate. We can
rise again, and El Alto can sweep out even Evo Morales if he does not
help us. It will not be fast. It can take three years or so, but if he helps us,
people will support him for another five or ten years depending on what
the president does. Internally, we have been developing leaders of the
city of El Alto. From here, in the absence of leaders who can represent
us in government, we have been building other leaders who can join the
fray in the coming years—who will serve the people of the city of Alto.
We have to support the president to make them respect us. We also
have been maturing. Nowadays we have ideology, thought, judgment,
and the strength to say we gave you the power, but you have to give
something to El Alto. Before, we were shy and did not talk. Now we can.
So we have to do it in an effective way. We have been seeing and hop-
ing the president would govern as the people want him to. People will
not forgive him if he becomes a neoliberal or rightist. They loved him
236 CHAPTER 6
fiercely and they can hate him fiercely. Alteño people are that way. They
are rebels; even I don’t trust the city of El Alto. One day they praise me,
the following they curse me. One day they congratulate you, they greet
you, and then they kick you. The city of El Alto is terrible. A coup from
the right can happen. Recently a coup was mentioned, but El Alto will
bleed a lot because most of the population does not fear, would rather
die or be beaten than surrender. The first place they will be shot down
and the last to fall, El Alto.
A CO U N T RY LI K E T H E U N I T ED S TAT ES
There are two forms of ideology. For me, when I consider myself, I am
a little bit conservative and a little bit not so radical. But there are many
radical compañeros, in distant sectors or in the city itself. A little exam-
ple: 100 percent of the hydrocarbons, in taxes and profits, must belong to
Bolivia. Even with the control we do have we have many problems in the
international and external level. Just imagine if we had complete con-
trol. Imagine trials, international blockades—no assistance for Bolivia.
It would be incredible. Radicals think in another way.
We think, indeed, what we said a moment ago. Create more jobs,
more money for the productive area, the chance to sell, export, or just
make what we produce known. We are not given that chance. Subsis-
tence: that is all we do. We don’t have alternatives. I personally debated
and listened. Some are against the U.S. because in their view America
is an empire that takes out natural resources through transnational cor-
porations, not only here but also in other Third World nations. I, who
knew a little—I don’t know the United States; I have to go—but I knew
something of the countries of Europe. When I was young, until I was
twenty-one, I dreamed of traveling to the U.S. It was the American
dream to overcome and prosper. I worked as a waiter in Argentina but
since I started in the area of leadership, I have felt new ideals. In the year
’97 I was leaving Bolivia forever but instead returned from Argentina
and I said, “I will make my country, my city, a city, or a country like the
United States.” So, what do we want? We do not want to immigrate
to the U.S.; we want to have economic conditions to emerge in our
country—that is the only thing we want. The people are content to have
dignified employment but we do not have it.
MAS UNIONISTS 237
Yesterday we talked about the labor exploitation in El Alto. Ter-

rible. There are children, people who are being exploited by the same
compañeros of the city of El Alto and that is because of lack of union
orientation or simply the lack of opportunities that are given to many
colleagues who have to tolerate these conditions because there is no
work, bad hours, and abusive exploitation by their fellow workers. That
worries me, and it is a boom. Honestly it worries me sometimes.
We would want, honestly, sincere help from the U.S. although we
would not want to reach out, because that doesn’t characterize us. It is
only sincere when such support comes to the people and helps you reach
the people, for the people know how to return it with products. They
can even repay the United States. That has not come as of today; if it
comes it is to control and silence the majority, and we do not like that.
That is the only thing we ask. Opportunities, but real opportunities for
the people. In the past only whites had opportunities. They had oppor-
tunities for education, generation after generation.
Today, the president has given opportunities to all but we have been
confused. What does confused mean? Anyone thinks they can be presi-
dent. It is not correct. Even I, honestly, I am not ready to be the president
in my condition. It is a step, a process, and we have to have the idea of
when we will reach the limit. But people start to dignify themselves and
feel Bolivian, very Aymara, in origin and in the language that everyone
has, Aymara or Quechua, and says, “I can have an opportunity someday.”
If not now, maybe in two, five, or ten years we will have it. If it is not
me, maybe my son, they say. And yes, we are almost there. I will not say
equality, but we are dreaming too; at some point it will arrive and do a
lot for our city, our country, and for our department.
EVO A N D T H E F U T U R E
That is what, at the least, is valuable about this government. With little
things, it made people love it and, despite the feeling of my people,
the demands we have, personally, I am going to support President Evo
Morales until the end, because I saw in him their values. I will support
President Evo Morales because I have seen his personal and particular
values and his gift and innate vocation for leadership that is not seen in
many. I will back him and we will do it with determination, despite hav-
238 CHAPTER 6
ing no position in government. We will support him and many feel the
same. Here we debate. There are opponents. Moments before I said that
we have to go on with this process, but we do not want to mix it with the
political-union issue. They go hand in hand. I told the compañeros as a
union we will defend ourselves, but also with the MAS with President
Evo Morales. I will support Evo Morales and I am one of those who
helped him. It was a debate. Here, 80 percent; eight out of ten support
him. Two do not because of different motives—resentment, opposition.
In general, we will keep the eight—we are sure about that. We are going
to reach nine, but now eight.
The October agenda was not fulfilled. We have to move in the direc-
tion that the president wants, but telling him not to tease us. He did
recover, during his administration, some of the resources, some of our
sold hydrocarbon resources, yes, but they said it was nationalization, and
that is wrong. Though the population got lost and confused when we
explained, so we said there was nationalization. Another pillar was the
Constitutional Assembly. The Assembly was called; we said, “Take the
best leaders—El Alto representatives.” They took others from the party
for political reasons. The president was wrong. It did not succeed. We
did not have the best results in the Constitutional Assembly. Those who
were bad we had to get approved by the organizations and the mobilized
people. What we have now under the new constitution is the continuity of
neoliberalism in disguise. Some things are playing the indigenous theme;
it rescues some things. The worker is given more dignity; the new con-
stitution includes respect for union charters. It is well developed and we
experienced it firsthand when they fired fifty unionized compañeros with
seniority. I am sure if I came out with that speech I would stir up a com-
motion here in El Alto and they would begin a revolt. My last declaration
on Tuesday was shocking. It was published in La Razón and I put it there.
So, if I have to debate, I will do it. Now is not the time. My people
are dizzy with the mobilization and support of Evo Morales. But when
we actually have the ability to discuss, yes sir. But for now, honestly, we
disagree. We feel a bit sad because there is a new constitution but it
is not being implemented as such now. There is an excuse, they say, to
consolidate and change the laws, to strengthen existing laws, or simply
repeal them; there must be a Plurinational Assembly and for this we
need an election and we support this a little and we say it is going to
be done. But when, alas, they do not respect what they have written,
MAS UNIONISTS 239
then we are going to lead the movements. Perhaps we will perish. I do

not know, because when you tell the truth, when you come to the fore,
the number one response is to discredit you. They call you corrupt, or
sold out, or a traitor, or a rightist. Despite that we will continue going
forward. Everything has a limit, as they say, but it will give El Alto and
Bolivia a lot to talk about for a few good years.
I D E O L O G I ES A N D S Y M B O L S
COR–El Alto has always been revolutionary, leftist, militant, longing

for a better future for the population. In addition, we believe that El Alto
is sui generis. They have never thought only about El Alto; they thought
at the country level. They have thought about the “camba” [Easterner],
the “chapaco” [Grand Chaco region], the “cochala” [Cochabamba], of
La Paz. But how sad it was when we fought from El Alto, we mobilized
ourselves, we sacrificed, we did hara-kiri, but in the end they carried the
profits to Santa Cruz, Tarija, and little remained. That is what worries us
then. We have always been nationalists; we are very patriotic in the sense
of protecting and caring for our resources, the interests of our country,
but we have forgotten regionalism. Today regionalism is floated more,
so we say dignity, identity, regionalism in El Alto. Indeed, when we say
the Aymara identity in the city of El Alto, we mean that we just want
sources of employment and dignity and quality of life.
COR–El Alto is more unionist. It is also a bit worrying because the
vast majority is rural-urban migrant people. They lose their identity as
indigenous peasants when they enter the city and urban life. So we have
the way of the parents, perhaps migrant, and they have a new generation.
The new generation, the first in El Alto, the young Alteños, sometimes
do not know where to find their own identity. But that’s why sometimes
they become rappers, even assimilate American trends. But in the end
they realize and say, “What am I doing?” and return to their origin, even
to their culture or other things. We are in that now.
B E T W EEN C H E G U EVA R A A N D T Ú PAC K ATA R I
Túpac has more feeling, more patriotism. I prefer Túpac Katari. I can fit
in with Túpac Katari. I could say for you, brother, we are here. But not
for Che [a statue in El Alto]. It was an imposition of MAS support-
240 CHAPTER 6
ers and the Guevara Foundation. We here are more likely to support
Túpac Katari. The wiphala theme. At the level of the West [the Andes],
we respect the wiphala flag. That really is our war flag. We respect the
red, yellow, and green; we respect all our symbols, and also respect the
wiphala that has given us identity as well. But Che was an imposition
and soon, when I am mayor, I will change it to another place. I like it.
I like arts, sculpture, but we need something else next to it. It’s in the
middle for us.
It is being done now—Túpac Katari and Bartolina Sisa. In El Alto
the tendency is for duality in the Aymara culture. There is Father Sun
and Mother Earth and chacha-warmi, husband and wife, Túpac Katari
and Bartolina Sisa, and in El Alto. Look, it is not an organization that
leads all of El Alto forward. When we act together, any movement
succeeds—chacha-warmi, couple and duality. Incredible. Another thing,
for example; we do not have institutions for the elderly. The old man is
cared for in his own house and he is respected and venerated.
Yes, women fight more. For example, I have many compañeros here,
but when the moment for any action, a protest, arrives, women come
without fear. Their first weapon, just in case: their blankets with hooks.
It is a hook, don’t you see? Bam! The point hits you. Yes, we respect the
compañeras.
If he adapts and goes in the people’s direction, he will be supported.
If he does what the people want, he will be supported. But if he is wrong
about some things, like choosing false representatives, the people can
stir again; he may have problems. Some demonstrations can occur and
that is worrying. There is the option to create different movements; we
will see what happens in the next administrations. We have an uncer-
tain future. We the people of El Alto protected this government in the
process of change. This has cost us—not the president—the people of El
Alto, us. If one day the president came up here, we would say it. Right
now! Who is taking hold strongly and firmly? It is the city of El Alto,
simply. There is no other.
CO N C LU D I N G T H O U G H T S
I wanted to travel to America in 2006 but I couldn’t. That very day I

was demonstrating against the previous governor, José Luis Paredes. I
MAS UNIONISTS 241
had to travel and when I went to Europe, I realized the importance of

speaking English. Each country has its own language, but English is
universal. I want my children to speak English. I only know Aymara,
Quechua, and Spanish.
INTERCULTURALITY AND ANTI-IMPERIALISM
For Isaac Avalos, the leader of the peak peasant confederation CSUTCB; Fidel
Surco, leader of the renamed CSCIB colonizers; and Edgar Patana, COR–El
Alto, issues of peasant subsistence farmers and small urban producers are clearly
at the forefront. The goals of Avalos and Surco are strongly peasantist—health,
roads, credits, markets, electricity, land, water, technical development, mecha-
nization, and ecological organic production are mentioned by one or more of
the leaders. “We are small producers,” says Surco, of organic products, coffee,
bananas, citrus fruits, sugar cane, and pork. Edgar Patana identifies his organi-
zation (COR–El Alto) as “more unionist, concerned with the ‘labor exploitation
in El Alto’” He worries that the “lack of union orientation” will lead colleagues
to tolerate these conditions because “there is no work, bad hours, and abusive
exploitation.” All of these unions are radical. The CSUTCB was strongly influ-
enced by Katarism and Indianism, the Colonizers were originally organized by
Maoists, and COR–El Alto was, as Edgar Patana says, always “revolutionary,
leftist, militant.”
Despite unionist materialism, indigenous cultural identity (symbolized by
Túpac Katari) and anti-imperialism (symbolized by Che Guevara) are empha-
sized by all the peasant leaders. All four organizations are culturally heteroge-
neous. Surco notes the “colonizers,” “who have migrated from the west to the
east, are Aymaras, Quechuas” and include the “local indigenous—Guaranís,
Mosetenes, Tacanas, Tsimanés—all types of indigenous.” Avalos, a self-described
“camba of shit” and campesino from Santa Cruz, nevertheless presides over
an organization overwhelmingly composed of Aymara and Quechua peasants.
Edgar Patana, a strong Aymara nationalist, speaks Quechua and Spanish along
with his native Aymara.
The coca growers of the Six Federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba are
similarly heterogeneous with regard to indigenous identity, and the Bartolinas
core support base is to be found among the women of the Chapare and in
nearby regions of Santa Cruz Province. The founding organizations of MAS,
242 CHAPTER 6
the CSUTCB led by the coca growers of the Chapare, the Bartolinas, and the
Colonizers are all based in culturally heterogeneous areas and all must appeal
to a “plurinational” or “intercultural” indigenous base. Insofar as it is a national
organization (and not simply an expression of its vanguard, the coca grow-
ers), the CSUTCB is inherently plural in cultural identity, including Aymara,
Quechua, and mestizo campesinos from the East. In contrast to the Ecuadorian
movements that are based on culturally homogeneous communities organized
into culturally homogeneous “nations and peoples,” the MAS social move-
ments and Evo Morales himself needed to have multiple indigenous nations
appeal from the beginning to succeed even at the base level. They are culturally
heterogeneous.
The leaders contrast this broadly defined indigenous “people” against a Euro-
pean cultural, economic, and political elite allied with the United States. Decol-
onization for Avalos is the end of a mentality that saw “the colony . . . a group
of persons” dominating the country. Quoting Túpac Katari’s famous words at his
execution, “I will return as millions,” Avalos repeated three times with some sat-
isfaction “we are millions.” For Surco, politics before Evo Morales was a game in
which the goal was to turn over power to “the whites.” In his comments on the
2009 election campaign, Surco equates Sánchez de Lozada with the American
Embassy, USAID, and “financiers” trying to produce an antidemocratic coup
in Latin America. Avalos says much the same thing: “Governments devoted
themselves to selling, to giving away, to submitting to the North American
government.” For Surco as for other MAS leaders, the story of the rise of MAS
is the story of the rise of the indigenous peoples excluded from the political
system. For all three union leaders, the end of the racism of the previous system
(including conflict between “collas” and “cambas”) is one of the principal goals
of the process of change.
Both Isaac Avalos and Fidel Surco have pictures of Che Guevara on the
walls of their offices (Avalos sat at a desk in front of a large wiphala on the
opposite wall during the interview). For Avalos, Guevara is a symbol of strug-
gles for the poor and for the “riches” of Bolivia. Born in Vallegrande, he is well
aware of Che Guevara’s campaign but took pains to contrast Guevara’s method
of armed struggle with the bottom-up process of democratic change that had
brought him together with Evo Morales at the outset. For Surco, “brother of
Che,” he embodies struggle but he also symbolizes international solidarity
among Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela. Surco too emphasizes that the Boliv-
ian process of change is a revolution in participatory democracy and popular
MAS UNIONISTS 243
mobilization from below, not armed struggle. Nor do Avalos or Surco share
Guevara’s admiration for a command economy. Avalos sounds like an official
of the IMF praising the surplus state of Bolivia’s foreign exchange reserves,
and Surco values production (by smallholders) more than anything else. Edgar
Patana, on the other hand, favors replacing the statue of Che Guevara erected
by MAS enthusiasts in El Alto with a statue of Túpac Katari. Guevara emerges
as a symbol of struggle for the poor and oppressed, especially the indigenous,
and of anti-imperial Latin American internationalism. Guevara’s unorthodox
communism and armed struggle are not part of the Bolivian process of change.
CHE GUEVARA AND TÚPAC KATARI
Those interviewed in this chapter are leaders of three of the four peasant orga-
nizations that formed the IPSP in 1995 and one unionist ally in the Aymara city
of El Alto. They continue to be the organic base of the current MAS. All three
leaders were among the six people regarded as “closest to Evo” in 2009. The fourth,
Avalos, in addition to Surco and Salazar were elected to the Bolivia Senate on the
MAS ticket subsequent to the interviews and Edgar Patana was elected mayor of
El Alto. Their views then represent those of the core leadership of the indigenous-
peasant base of MAS at a time before the party had tried to develop a uniform
ideology. They are a window into what constituted the “inscrutable ideology of
MAS” and provide a base for some tentative generalization on the discourse of
MAS, particularly in contrast to the indigenous-peasant discourse of Ecuador.
First, peasant themes are much more evident in these interviews than in those
from the Ecuadorian Andes or Amazon. The coca producers began as a purely
peasant organization with an economic interest in a particular commodity. The
current leaders of the CSUTCB and the Colonizers are centrally focused on
peasant concerns. For the CSUTCB this represents a distinct change from the
Quispe period (1998–2003), when the organization was dominated by radical
Aymara indigenism, or even the Katarist period, in which the leadership was
dominated by Aymara intellectuals. Quispe’s defeat and the triumph of MAS
allied leaders restored peasant-oriented leaders to power. Isaac Avalos, a peasant
leader from Santa Cruz, is not indigenous himself but speaks movingly about
the Aymara, Quechua, and poor cambas, such as himself, as a single oppressed
indigenous group. Although the other leaders share a common indigenous iden-
tification, they too do not talk about any “nation or people” in particular.
244 CHAPTER 6
This is not to say that indigeneity is not an important theme in the inter-
views. In the minds of these leaders, the central polarity in Bolivian society is
between an indigenous Bolivia and U.S. imperialism and its Bolivian agents.
The core of this ideology developed in the coca fields of the Chapare, but it
runs through the interviews with union leaders as well. The attempt to eradicate
coca by criminalizing its producers actually produced increasing identification
with the “sacred leaf ” and induced a sense of ethnic solidarity through resistance
and persecution even among a diverse group of migrants to the Chapare. But
in the Chapare, coca producers were not organized into Aymaras, Quechuas,
or Yuracarés as separate people or nationalities (even though local federations
sometime had an ethnic tinge) but into a single producers confederation that
included many different indigenous groups. Although in practical terms the
organization of indigenous peoples in both Ecuador and Bolivia was based on
the local community, in ideological principle they were supposed to be based on
indigenous nations or peoples in Ecuador but (with the exception of the Quispe
period) multiethnic union federations in Bolivia.
Although both countries eventually declared themselves “plurinational” and
“intercultural,” the terminological similarity disguises significant difference.
Consider the odd phrasing of the definition of citizenship in Article 3 of the
MAS-influenced Constitución Política del Estado (2009):
The Bolivian nation is composed by the totality of Bolivian women and

men, the indigenous original peasant nations and peoples, the inter-
cultural communities and Afro-Bolivians that together constitute the
Bolivian nation.
While the opening phrase includes all Bolivian women and men and, log-
ically, would include indigenous and Afro-Bolivians, the constitution finds it
necessary to explicitly give these groups separate legal definition and citizenship.
But in the phrase indigenous original peasant, the language of the constitution
reflects the language of indigenous peasant leaders in this chapter. Indigenous is
a term used more commonly for the lowland peoples organized into CIDOB
(and not part of MAS directly); original is commonly used for highland Aymara
and Quechua, and peasant could refer to any poor rural highland (and some
lowland) residents no matter what their ethnicity, including in particular a poor
peasant like Isaac Avalos with no identification with any indigenous group.
The phrase intercultural communities in the title of the renamed CSCB also
MAS UNIONISTS 245
captures the heterogeneous and inclusive nature of MAS indigeneity. It is broad

enough, says Surco, to accommodate “all types of indigenous. Now the collas
have joined the indigenous in an interculturality.” Joining the “collas,” the indig-
enous Aymara and Quechua peoples of the Highlands, with the “indigenous”
makes sense only if indigenous is being used in the restrictive Bolivian sense to
emphasize the lowland peoples mentioned. Interculturality includes all of them.
It would not be accurate to refer to MAS peasant leaders as pure peasantist
even though peasant demands are much more prominent in these interviews
than in those of the Ecuadorians (they are hardly absent in the latter). The
strong “indigenous original peasant” identity is a powerful current in all the
Bolivia peasant interviews and in the Bolivian constitution. But the definition of
indigeneity is broad enough to include indigenous people in the highlands and
the lowlands, those living in traditional homogenous ayllus in the highlands,
and those living in diverse immigrant communities in the semitropical and
tropical regions, and even those who claim to have no indigenous identity at
all. Evo Morales himself is representative. He was born in a traditional Aymara
highland community to a Aymara father and a Quechua mother, spent most
of his career as a peasant leader in the Quechua-speaking but intercultural
Chapare, and is fluent only in Spanish, not in either of the indigenous languages
that he knows but cannot speak well.
The sense of indigeneity that evolves from these interviews is even more
inclusive because the idea of the Bolivian nation, although strongly indigenous,
is broad enough to include everyone who is not part of the “antination” of sell-
outs and lackeys of U.S. imperialism. Strangely the indigenous nation seems to
include people who do not think of themselves as indigenous and even creole
aristocrats like Vice President Álvaro García Linera. In fact Vice President
García Linera, who fought with radical Aymara nationalist Felipe Quispe, is
even more committed to an indigenist line than is Evo Morales himself. With-
out this inclusive notion of indigenous nationalism, it is unlikely that the coca
growers would ever have been able to extend their political instrument beyond
the narrow but powerful base of the Chapare. As it was, the powerful combi-
nation of anti-U.S. imperialism, indigenous nationalism, and the symbol of the
sacred leaf sparked the most successful indigenous-peasant movement that the
Andes have ever seen.
Evo Morales and most of those interviewed spoke of their process of change
as a “democratic and cultural revolution.” The roots of the cultural revolution
should now be clear. But what of democracy? The vivid history of the violence
246 CHAPTER 6
and repression of the coca eradication process as described particularly by

Leonilda Zurita and Julio Salazar and the general support for revolutionary
leader Che Guevara, who even in death left an indelible mark on Bolivia (see in
particular Isaac Avalos’s reflections on Guevara as “Present!”), raises the ques-
tion of why MAS from the beginning committed itself to electoral democracy
rather than to the armed struggle that Guevara advocated. As Bolivian political
scientist Rafael Archondo has observed, “The first experience that they [the coca
producers] took in was the advantage of the legal struggle. . . . This is a central
element in their experience in contrast to the whole left . . . that proposed an
armed struggle.”10 Even when in 2005, after five years of almost continuous
uprisings, marches, and demonstrations, power lay in the streets, Evo Morales
refused to lead a “revolutionary junta.” There is no evidence that he ever seriously
considered it. In the end Morales came to power through the entirely legal and
constitutional process of a reasonably free and fair democratic election.
Why this extraordinary commitment to democracy—one of the key features
of the transformation of the revolutionary dream in the twenty-first century?
Several factors stand out. First, from its inception the coca growers union had an
intensely organized base in the Chapare and had great success in gaining power
through the peak peasant unions. As early as 1982 they had succeeded in taking
effective power away from the Katarists in the CSUTCB. Mass organization
and political struggle were part of the DNA of the organization. Second, in the
same year eighteen years of military dictatorship ended and a democratic regime
dominated by the left was installed in power (only to squander their mandate
through disastrous economic policies). By the time the most violent phase of the
eradication began with Law 1008 in 1988, the coca producers were already a mass
union organization with a national presence. Furthermore, as Donna Lee Van
Cott has pointed out, the political opportunity structure in the 1990s was espe-
cially advantageous for the emergence of a political party rather than a guerrilla
band. The Law of Popular Participation (1994) had for the first time opened up
municipal government to popular vote and created an extraordinary opportu-
nity for indigenous actors who rapidly achieved a substantial presence in local
government. At the same time uninominal districts were declared (rather than
through election by national party lists) so that concentrated base areas like the
Chapare could elect national delegates.11 As a result, Evo Morales was able to
become a senator as early as 1997. The incredible success of MAS rising from
obscurity in 1995 to become the nation’s second largest party in 2002 and then
electing Morales as the first indigenous president in 2005 only ten years after
MAS UNIONISTS 247
its founding solidified the democratic strategy’s dominance. In retrospect the

dominance of an electoral strategy seems overdetermined. Yet the armed strug-
gle was not only a historical possibility but realized in fact by Quispe, Eugenio
Rojas, and García Linera in the EGTK.
Anti-imperialism; peasant interests; an inclusive, heterogeneous, and non-
group, specific indigeneity with the coca leaf as its center; and democracy were
all key building blocks of MAS. But Evo Morales could not have been elected
president without absorbing and co-opting the radical Aymara nationalism of
Felipe Quispe. Quispe, using the traditional Aymara leadership title El Malku,
dominated the CSUTCB and Aymara protests of 2000–2001. As Félix Patzi
pointed out, he suffered a stunning collapse of his popularity in 2003 when
Aymara and Quechua protests brought down the government of Gonzalo Sán-
chez de Lozada. Quispe had no practical plan to govern and no clear route
back to the political structures of Qullasuyu. After many of them had died in
his cause, supporters were disillusioned by his failure to use the power their
protests had brought him and because of his vacillation between electoral and
revolutionary strategies.12 In the 2002 national elections, Morales and Quispe
had both emerged as prominent national leaders. By 2005 Quispe was gone as
a practical political force. As Rafael Archondo points out, “In 2005 what hap-
pened was that Evo Morales obtained the votes of the [Aymara] La Paz high-
lands that had previously supported Felipe Quispe. They transferred their votes
to MAS and also transferred their flags, their ideas, their demands, and their
struggles.”13 Aymara nationalists like Eugenio Rojas, whose interview appears
in chapter 4, transferred their loyalty from Quispe to MAS. At the time of the
interview, Rojas was MAS mayor of the Malku’s bastion of Achacachi, famous
for its combative Aymara nationalism. Edgar Patana was a natural union ally
of MAS because of his leadership of the street peddlers association but also
remained at heart an Aymara Katarist who preferred statues of Túpac Katari to
those of Che Guevara. The transfer of these leaders, their followers, and their
ideas to MAS solidified the party’s national hold and shifted MAS in a more
indigenist direction. Evo held his 2006 inaugural ceremony at the indigenous
historical site of Tiwanaku and celebrated both Che Guevara and Túpac Katari.
Katari became almost as central to MAS imagery as the sacred leaf.
Although the Aymara highlands became a key part of Evo Morales’s elec-
toral coalition, the connection was always more tenuous than with the MAS
founding organizations. Eugenio Rojas has achieved a leadership position in
MAS as a national senator but his (and Quispe’s) base in Achacachi is no longer
248 CHAPTER 6
with him. He was actually surrounded and taken prisoner in La Paz by protes-
tors from the town. Edgar Patana has gone on to become mayor of El Alto, but
as he himself admits, the people of this Aymara city are with Morales as long
as he responds to the needs of the city. The discourse of Aymara nationalism as
described in chapter 4 remains a significant part of MAS discourse but it has
never been its core conception of indigeneity. That core is to be found in the
ethnically heterogeneous coca producers of the Chapare and their allied union
leaders.
The symbolic revolution substituted the sacred leaf for a dangerous narcotic
despised by the modern world. It welded popular images (not the historical
figures) of Túpac Katari and Che Guevara into a symbolically revolutionary
combination of indigenous interculturality and anti-imperialist nationalism.
The symbolic revolution subverted the old order based on the repression of
the indigenous and the dominance of the United States. Instead of provok-
ing the guerrilla war favored by Guevara or the indigenous uprising favored
by Katari, this symbolic transformation brought to power a modern political
leader through democratic elections and at least formally constitutional means.
Quispe’s Aymara revolt and the great indigenous uprisings of 2003 and 2005
that left Quispe behind brought down the old order. The MAS is in the process
of building a new one. This potent combination of symbolic revolution, mass
uprising, and democratic elections characterized both Ecuadorian and Bolivian
uprisings at the turn of the twenty-first century. They may have invented a new
form of twenty-first-century revolution that shares the symbolic revolution and
mass uprisings of earlier revolutions but adds to them the democratic legality
emerging in Latin America at the end of the twentieth century.
7
INDIANISM AND MARXISM
Interviews with Antonio Peredo, César Navarro, and Rául Prada
T
HE BASE of MAS was formed by the heterogeneous indigeneity of the
Chapare symbolized by the sacred leaf. The co-option of Katarism-
Indianism expanded that base. The party also constructed coalitions
with left intellectuals. The left has a long and influential history in Bolivia, and
alliance with the largely creole left intellectual leadership broadened the par-
ty’s reach. This chapter includes interviews with representatives of two strains
of the left allied with MAS—the Partido Comunista Boliviano (PCB, Com-
munist Party of Bolivia) and the radical, heterodox Marxism of the Grupo
Comuna (Commune Group) around Vice President Álvaro García Linera. At
the time of the interviews, these strains of Marxism had enormous influence
in government. Antonio Peredo, a self-described Guevarist and longtime com-
munist activist, was Evo Morales’s vice presidential running mate in 2002 and
later served a term as senator for MAS when he chaired the MAS delegation.
César Navarro, who began his career as a communist youth leader, was elected
deputy and leader of the MAS delegation in the assembly. Comuna had direct
influence through Vice President Álvaro García Linera. Raúl Prada and Luis
Tapia were his two closest Comuna colleagues. Prada held a position in the
MAS government (from which he resigned in 2010) and Luis Tapia does not
consider himself a MAS member. Their indirect intellectual influence through
Vice President García Linera was considerable.
250 CHAPTER 7
TROTSKYISTS, STALINISTS, AND COMUNA
The Communist left, both Stalinist and Trotskyist, had disproportionate influ-
ence in Bolivian society and politics, largely through their role in the min-
ers’ union and the labor movement more generally.1 The Trotskyists may have
reached their apogee with their famous “Thesis of Pulacayo” (1946), ratified
by the mine workers’ union and applying Leon Trotsky’s thesis of permanent
revolution to Bolivian conditions. Although they remained influential in some
unions (e.g., the teachers) into the twenty-first century, they did not ally them-
selves with MAS, which they regarded as reformist, not revolutionary, and
remained in the political wilderness. Nevertheless, the famous Trotskyist mine
workers organizer Filemón Escobar eventually moved to the Chapare, where
he declared that “the revolution will come from the Chapare not the mines” and
became one of Evo Morales’s principal advisors.2 The Communist Party, whose
controversial role in Che Guevara’s 1967 revolutionary expedition to Bolivia is
still being debated, moved to wholehearted support for MAS and, as noted,
at the time of the interviews former communists controlled the leadership of
the MAS delegation in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.3 As a
Bolivian intellectual with long experience on the left (and now an ambassador
for Evo Morales) noted, there are many “sleeping Stalinists” in MAS. He was
alluding to the old Soviet Empire, where, he said, after Nikita Khrushchev’s
destalinization campaign, covert Stalinists used to begin the party meeting with
the invocation “Stalin Sleeps” (and therefore could still awake!). So far, at least,
the Bolivian Stalinists have not woken up and, indeed, according to this same
source, cannot believe their good fortune in having their revolutionary dreams
realized in the form of Evo Morales.4
According to the distinguished Bolivianist Herbert S. Klein, the left, both
communist and noncommunist, had its origins in the radical change in the
consciousness of the predominantly white upper middle class after the disas-
trous Chaco War with Paraguay (1932–35). Klein points out that three left to
center-left parties emerged from the Bolivian defeat—the Partido Obrero Rev-
olucionario (POR, Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers Party) founded in 1934; an
orthodox communist party first called the Partido de la Izquierda Revolucio-
naria (PIR, Party of the Revolutionary Left), founded in 1940 and later (1950)
reorganized as the Partido Comunista Boliviano (PCB, Bolivian Communist
Party); and the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), initially a
party with fascist sympathies, but, after cutting ties with Axis powers during
INDIANISM AND MARXISM 251
World War II and moving to the center left, it would become the leader and
heir of the 1952 Bolivian Revolution.5 It was still contesting elections as late
as the 1980s when it became the tribune of U.S.-backed neoliberalism under
the leadership of some of the very same leaders as in 1952. After the return of
democracy in 1982, a unified left (including the communists) took control of the
government (1982–85), but its disastrous economic policies triggered hyperinfla-
tion and the return of the MNR to power in its guise as neoliberal avatar.6 The
subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union’s empire in Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union itself (1989–91) discredited the Leninist left everywhere, including
Bolivia, and opened the way for alliances with MAS.
The leader of the left in the twenties and thirties, the distinguished man of
letters Tristán Marof (Gustavo Navarro), was strongly influenced by the indi-
genist Marxism of the great Peruvian theorist Carlos Mariátegui and early left
ideology reflected his combination of proletarian and indigenous revolution
summarized in the slogan “Land to the Indians, Mines to the State.”7 By the
time of the thesis of Pulacayo, however, strict Trotskyist orthodoxy had pre-
vailed. The first principle of the thesis was this: “The proletariat, even in Bolivia,
constitutes the revolutionary class.” “The mine workers,” it continued, were “the
most advanced and combative sector of the national proletariat.” The remainder
of the thesis followed Trotskyist orthodoxy. In accord with his thesis of “perma-
nent revolution,” the revolt of the proletariat and peasants would “grow over”
into a socialist revolution without the need for a “bourgeois” revolution first
(the position of the Stalinists of the PIR).8 The thesis did not say a word about
the indigenous (except indirectly as subsumed by the class category “peasant”).
In late 1952 and 1953 the Quechua and Aymara peasants rose on their own and
destroyed the hacienda system and seized its lands. Although the left recognized
their indigeneity, subsequent organization under the MNR was on class, not
indigenous, lines. Having regained their lands, the indigenous peasantry became
a conservative force allied first with the right wing of the MNR and then with
a succession of military regimes under the notorious military peasant pact. The
left, outlawed during the military period, found its base in the miner proletariat,
some student groups, and teachers’ unions.
In a break with these Trotskyist and Stalinist party traditions, Álvaro García
Linera, a young Bolivian Marxist intellectual, later professor of sociology at
UMSA in La Paz, and, since 2006, Evo Morales’s vice president, argued that
the Bolivian left had forsaken its roots in the work of Marof and Mariáte-
gui and represented only a “primitive Marxism” that ignored indigeneity and
252 CHAPTER 7
thought only in class categories.9 García Linera became the leader of Comuna
that developed a critical Marxism that attempted to combine Indianism and
Marxism and rejected both the orthodox communist and Trotskyist traditions
in Bolivia. As he said in a 2005 interview with Jeffery R. Webber, “I think we’re
in a new historic effort after almost 100 years, of a much more fruitful dialogue
between the two grand readings of the transformation of Bolivia, that is Indi-
anism and Marxism.”10
García Linera came of age during the tumultuous transition between mili-
tary and civilian rule in 1979–82. His experience of the 1979 Aymara blockades
of La Paz demanding the restoration of democracy was transformative. “Who
were these actors that had blockaded the city, demanding democracy, talking in
a language that I didn’t know, with flags I didn’t understand,” he told Webber.11
The experience set in motion years of reading, study, and practical experience
to try to understand who these (indigenous) people were.
A self-taught sociologist, he devoted his undergraduate studies (1981–85)
to mathematics at the Universidad National Autónoma de México (UNAM).
There he came in contact with Central American revolutionary support groups.
He was particularly impressed by the Salvadoran guerrilla fighters and by the
Guatemalans’ efforts to organize the indigenous Maya into an armed revolution.
He returned to Bolivia in 1985, became more involved in miner and indigenous
politics, and also began what he called a ten-year “obsession” with tracking
down everything Marx had written about precapitalist economic formations,
even going to Amsterdam to consult unpublished manuscripts.12 García Linera
became more involved in revolutionary politics, eventually joining with Felipe
Quispe (see chapter 6) to found the Ofensiva Roja de Ayllus Túpac-Kataristas,
and later in the armed guerrilla group Ejército Guerrillero Túpac Katari
(EGTK). He was arrested on April 10, 1992, shortly after the EGTK began
armed action with attacks on utility poles. He spent five years in Chonchocoro
prison, where he continued his intellectual work.
When indigenous revolution swept Bolivia (2000–2005), Comuna and
García Linera became its chief interpreters. García Linera argued that neoliber-
alism radically undermined the condition of the traditional agrarian community
by introducing new land titling legislation, permitting the import of low-cost
foreign food, decentralizing political activity, and privatizing natural resources
like water. The result, he said, was the “rising of the clans” led by Felipe Quispe.13
These risings, García Linera argued, would precipitate a state crisis because
of the particular vulnerabilities of the Bolivian state. “Mono-ethnicity or
mono-nationality in a multiethnic society is therefore the primary fracture in

an efficient and democratic relationship between state and society.” Or to put
the same principle in another way, “Bolivia is a country where various civili-
zations exist but where the state structure only recognizes the organizational
logic of one of these civilizations, the modern merchant capitalism.”14 Capi-
talism or the “value form” was recognized in the individualized, “white” citizen
of liberal democracy but the other civilizational logics—artisan, peasant and
informal economy, the communal agrarian, and the Amazonian—were not.
Since these different civilizations cross-cut different indigenous ethnic groups,
Bolivia is a “motley” or “disjointed” society (abigarrada) with a fictive liberal
democratic state run by whites. It is racist and exclusionary. In the 2000–2005
uprisings, “[that] the social leaders are indigenous and [the] new Lefts are
now led by Indians certainly tells of a cataclysm in the symbolic structures
of a profoundly racialized society with respect to its forms of mentally sig-
nifying and ordering the world.”15 The legitimacy of the monoracial state as
well as its administrative structures and ruling coalitions were brought into
question. The result is what García Linera (after Marx) calls a revolutionary
epoch, which was finally resolved by the election of Evo Morales and Álvaro
García Linera as president and vice president of Bolivia in 2005, positions
they still hold.
The Comuna group chronicled and analyzed these changes and proposed
a decolonized and decentralized state to defuse the state crisis. Among
García Linera’s closest colleagues in Comuna, Raúl Prada joined the new
MAS administration while Luis Tapia remained independent. Eventually
both Prada and Tapia broke with García Linera and the effective end of the
Comuna group was marked by a bitter public exchange between a group
of critics, including Prada and the vice president, in 2011. 16 Nevertheless,
García Linera and Comuna had not only emerged as the principal interpret-
ers of Bolivia’s late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century history; they
had played a role in changing it. They had also broken definitively with the
Stalinist and Trotskyist formulations that had dominated the thought of the
Bolivian left since the 1930s. In the interviews that follow, the late Antonio
Peredo and César Navarro, both former members of the Communist Youth
League and then leaders of MAS legislative delegations, represent the com-
munist tradition. Both Prada and Tapia of Comuna were interviewed for this
book but only the interview with Prada is presented, in abridged form. The
Tapia interview, however, is discussed in the conclusions.
254 CHAPTER 7
ANTONIO PEREDO: ANDEAN COSMOVISION AND CHE GUEVARA
Antonio Peredo was born in Trinidad, Beni, in 1936. He was politically active from
an early age, joining the Young Communists in 1950 at age fourteen. He was an
active journalist, radio commentator, and columnist throughout his life. In 1979,
together with Jesuit Priest and follower of liberation theology Luis Espinal, he
founded the weekly Aquí. Espinal was assassinated by the military in 1980 but
Peredo continued writing for the journal throughout his active life. His brothers
also died in the revolutionary struggle. Both Guido “Inti” and Roberto “Coco”
Peredo fought with Che Guevara in his disastrous 1967 campaign. Coco was killed
in an ambush. Inti survived but died in a confrontation with the military in La
Paz in 1970. After the Communist Party betrayed Guevara, Antonio joined the
Guevarist Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN, Army of National Liberation).
Antonio Peredo was imprisoned by the military from 1975 to 1979 and spent
long periods in exile in Mexico, Chile, and Nicaragua. Returning to Bolivia with
the transition to democracy in 1982, he resumed publishing Aquí and became a
leading critic of neoliberalism. He was a supporter of the Aymara and Quechua
movements and agreed to become Evo’s vice presidential candidate in 2002 and
later served as leader of the MAS delegation in the Senate (2005–9). According
to his obituary in La Razón, “His ideological, political and symbolic support
for the transformations that the country experienced after the year 2006 was
indisputable.” At the time of his death (2012) he was professor emeritus at the
Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz.17
The people put forward a very clear proposal of what is needed to change
the situation: a new hydrocarbons law and a new Constituent Assem-
bly to change the laws in the country. Another alternative could have
been street clashes and the imposition of a new revolutionary junta
that would’ve thrown out the existing legality and established a new
legality. This alternative would’ve caused many more casualties than the
repression ordered by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in October 2003. So
the people have been very wise, and have accompanied the process with
much clarity. I don’t think there are similar examples of such a massive
level of participation in all the consultations and elections that have
occurred in Bolivia.
D EM O C R AT I C T R A N S I T I O N
[A violent transition] has been tried more than once, and it could have
happened anytime, couldn’t it, the apparently easier way, violent imposi-
tion? Yet, even though the Right now accuses this government of being
authoritarian, what it has done is to follow a process of understanding,
of seeking consensus with society as a whole. There is a very clear vision
of how processes have been carried out in our country. We have many
experiences, all of which are frustrating. Probably the most recent, and
the best known, is the national revolution of 1952. It was a violent pro-
cess, in which the people won after three days of battle. It was never
known how many people died. Here in La Paz there were more than one
thousand dead. The process radically transformed the social structure,
and responsibility for taking forward the process of change was handed
to one party. But the change that this party wanted was not the change
the people were looking for. There was something like a betrayal in the
eyes of the people. The people considered it a betrayal when seven years
later, in 1959, the Central Obrera Boliviana [COB], which had been
one of the instruments created by the revolution, breaks with the gov-
ernment and says, “We can’t go along with this government, which is
giving itself to the old structures and rebuilding them. We’re not going
to follow that road.” In the sixties there were a series of actions, most
notably the guerrilla exploits of Commander Che Guevara. That road
was not viable either. So we had to find this other road, which is taking
us to a different situation, and we acknowledge that one of the points
in its favor is that it’s not taking place only in our country, isolated from
the rest of the continent, but in a group of countries where the popular
movement is demanding a structural change.
D EM O C R AT I C A N D C U LT U R A L R EVO LU T I O N
Democratic, in the sense that we aim for this revolutionary change to

be effected through permanent consultation and under the people’s
supervision. That is democracy. Cultural, in the sense of recognizing
that we are a country made up of many cultures, which have to emerge
to express the different forms of development in this country. In the
liberal structure of the previous constitution and of the constitutions
256 CHAPTER 7
of most Latin American countries, the economy privileges two types

of actions: public, or state, and private. In Bolivia’s cultures there is a
community economy that is not recognized, or was not recognized, by
any laws. That economy needs to develop, because it has always been
active, even when it’s been underground. Now it is emerging. It’s part
of the economic structure of the country, and it’s going to be a factor in
the development of the country. Socially, it means the participation of
these cultures with their habits, with their customs, in the development
of the justice, education, and health sectors, all of which is recognized
in the new constitution. Politically, these cultures are going to be prop-
erly represented in the three branches. This is the cultural aspect of the
revolution we are carrying out.
E CO N O M I C M O D EL
A fundamental change is the inclusion of the community economy.

The recognition of private property is guaranteed by the constitution,
because we consider that nationalizing the private economy is not a
favorable response for the country. Experience shows that it would hin-
der private initiative and make people disregard economic development,
which would become the sole responsibility of the state. And we con-
sider that society is responsible for the development of the country. So
it’s a substantial change in the fact that the community economy was
included alongside the private economy and the state economy. There
are strategic sectors that cannot be left in the hands of the private econ-
omy; the first major struggle against the neoliberal model was the fight
against privatization, giving away water management. Water is a good
that cannot be privatized; it belongs to the whole of society.
D E CO L O N I Z I N G T H E S TAT E
The recently created Ministry of Culture has a vice minister for decol-
onization. What does this mean? One, we have an ideal model that is
the European model for politics, social issues, culture, art, even beauty—
there are beauty contests. Miss Bolivia—even the name is foreign, isn’t
it—is subject to certain measurements. What is a perfect woman? 90-
60-90. What does that mean? It’s a European model. It has nothing to
do with the way our people are. Latin Americans, people from these
lands, are men and women of shorter stature, with black hair, in coun-
tries where being blond means being better, more beautiful. To have blue
eyes, instead of our gray eyes, is to be prettier. But it’s not just that. What
does the theater mean? Latin American culture has different perceptions
from European culture, and yet for us, Shakespeare, Cervantes are still
the parameters, the cultural references. Our own references are nonex-
istent—we have hidden them; we have driven them under. In politics,
we form parties in the same way and style as in Europe, yet it’s not the
way in which parties and politics should develop in our countries. And
we could go on; there is a need to decolonize every area. But it’s not a
technical issue. It’s about decolonizing our mind; our mind is colonized.
I D E O L O G I CA L C U R R EN T S I N M A S
There are various currents. There are various ideological currents. Around
the ’90s, ’88, ’89, ’90, labor organizations began to debate the issue of
political representation. They didn’t feel represented by the parties, nei-
ther the right-wing nor the left-wing parties. They felt that the parties
told them, “You know, this is our program. Thanks to this program, we
are going to move forward.” Their choice was between “yes, I’ll go with
you” or “no, I will not go with you.” But it was something alien to them.
Then they thought about it and concluded that the people’s social orga-
nizations ought to have their own political instrument. There were many
attempts until this was materialized in the Asamblea por la Soberanía
de los Pueblos [ASP], led by Alejo Véliz and Evo Morales. There was a
break, and Evo Morales begins to develop the political instrument for
the sovereignty of the people in Chapare. The grassroots organization
is not a militant core. It’s the coca growers’ labor organization, and this
spreads throughout [the] Chapare. Later, when this reaches the city, us
city dwellers will organize ourselves through the municipal districts.
So people take part with the idea that there is a need for change, but
with different ideologies. I think, among others, there are three ideolo-
gies in the MAS that are worth highlighting: The Andean-Amazonian
perspective, an indigenous perspective that is about coexisting, searching
for the integration of nature and human beings and the expression we
have adopted: that our goal is to live well, not to live better, but to live
258 CHAPTER 7
well, that is, to reach a point where we don’t keep outdoing ourselves, but
to have what we need, just enough, without harming nature. That’s the
ideology of the Andean-Amazonian perspective. There is also liberation
theology. Some people in the MAS followed the principles of liberation
theology. And there is Guevarist thinking, which also guides us—I am a
Guevarist—it guides us in the sense that it’s the people that must gov-
ern; the people with all their traits, virtues, and flaws. And we all come
together under one program, the program to change this country. That
is the meeting point of all these ideologies, and I don’t think the time
will come when the MAS will have a single ideology; it will always be
the combination of many ideologies.
SYMBOLS OF MAS
[Che Guevara] and Túpac Katari and Zárate Willka; Marcelo Quiroga.
Yes, Luis Espinal.
CO M B I N I N G CO S M OV I S I O N A N D C H E
Those who think that the Andean-Amazonian cosmovision is closed

forget the fact that in this perspective there was a large world called
Abya Yala, that is, we were talking about a continent. They weren’t peo-
ple limited to this space but people who thought about the world. The
cosmovision also integrates all of humanity’s knowledge. It’s not simply
our knowledge versus humanity’s knowledge. People talk about tradi-
tional medicine, for example, but the Callahuayas, who are traditional
doctors, have studied Western medicine, European medicine. And they
have done so in Cuba. And at the same time they are Callahuaya doc-
tors. In other words, it’s not as if each of these things is a closed-off idea.
When we mention Che, most people say, “Oh, guerrilla!” That is not the
case. Che writes about it: they push us to war because there is no other
alternative. If there are any alternatives, we will take those alternatives.
And when Che was in Bolivia, there were no other alternatives. Power
was contested with force; there was no other way of doing it. But if
there are other ways to do it, you take those other ways. It is not about
going to war first and then deciding what to fight for. No. First we are
going to see what we are fighting for, and if that requires war, we will
go to war. But if war is not necessary, why do it? We are not soldiers of
fortune; we are revolutionaries.
P E O P LE A N D C H E
I thought the same as you [that there was no popular support for Che]
and I was worried. In 2002 I ran for vice president with Evo Morales. We
toured [the] Chapare. And when we started in Bulo Bulo, in Chapare,
on the border with Santa Cruz, I asked myself the same question: “If I
speak to them about Che, how are they going to react? No, I don’t think
peasants are going to be interested in hearing about Che.” And they
started to ask me to speak about him. Throughout the whole campaign,
Che was the subject of my speeches. And people expected me to talk
about Che, and people in rural areas wanted to learn more about him.
It was different in the cities. And when peasant deputies and senators
had business cards made, they featured the Virgin of Copacabana and
Che Guevara.
G OV ER N M EN T A N D S O C I A L M OV EM EN T S
It’s a relationship built on personal contact: first, of the president with

social organizations and second of the ministers—Evo is constantly
demanding that they have contact with social sectors. Like every hyper-
active person, Evo starts his day at five in the morning and usually
finishes at two in the morning. He uses all that time to meet with social
organizations. Initially he thought that everybody else should do the
same, so he organized cabinet meetings at five in the morning. He real-
ized that it didn’t work. People in the city are different, they can’t do
anything at that time; they can’t reason at that time. Now he knows a
city man is awake at nine in the morning; he is not the same as a man
from the country. So he uses those hours to meet with peasant orga-
nizations, mainly. He talks about the relevant issues with each of the
social organizations. We have been discussing a new pension law with
the social organizations for the past two years. It has not been passed yet
because some points still need to be addressed with the social organi-
zations. This morning I have a meeting with the miners’ cooperative to
talk about the pension law. So the people in government are always, one
260 CHAPTER 7
way or another, consulting social organizations. This does not mean we

are going to do everything they say. There are criteria, precise guidelines,
but we have to discuss with them, sometimes convince them, and other
times understand the reasons behind their approach.
CHE’S VISION AND MAS
We live in a world, Latin America, where to live well means, humbly,

to have basic services. If you read Che’s speeches from the conference
he gave in Punta del Este [August 8, 1961] or at the UN Assembly
[December 11, 1964], you will find that he puts this very clearly. It is
what we need, nothing more. How can we achieve this? Very simply:
Buy what we produce at a fair price. Sell us what you produce at a
fair price. That is what we ask the whole world. It’s certainly diffi-
cult, because it means sharing. And a society based on waste, like rich
societies, cannot accept that there are fair prices. I still meet Europe-
ans who think we put on a suit to go to Europe, that here we wear
loincloths and feathers, and who think that in Latin America we still
carry out human sacrifices, not considering that in Yugoslavia there
were human sacrifices considerably more barbaric than anything that
could have been imagined in Latin America. But understanding who
we are will go side by side with understanding who the people that
live in rich countries are. That is Che’s thinking, and the thinking of
liberation theology, and the thinking of the Andean cosmovision. Per-
haps later there will be differences. But at the moment we are fighting
for people’s basic welfare, for peasants in our country to have access
to drinking water, electricity, sewer services, housing, education, and
healthcare. We ask for nothing more. When people take to the streets
to fight in our countries, they fight because they lack water. When
people go out to fight in Europe, they fight because they lack butter.
Butter is still not part of our welfare system.
CO N C LU D I N G EXC H A N G E
JP: This conversation was very valuable.

AP: Very kind. It is important, because these are the conversations
that help rich countries begin to understand our people.
CÉSAR NAVARRO: “ANDEAN COSMOVISION AND MARXISM”
César Navarro was born in Potosí on July 8, 1967. Like Antonio Peredo, he
joined the Communist Party at an early age (fifteen) but left the party at
twenty-five and later joined the Partido Socialista (PS, Socialist Party) and
finally MAS in 2002 at age thirty-five. He was a student leader in both sec-
ondary school and law school and, after graduation, became vice president
of the Asamblea Permanente de Derechos Humanos de Potosí (Permanent
Assembly of Human Rights of Potosí) and was also city councilor for Potosí.
In 2005 he was elected MAS deputy from Potosí and then elected chief of
the MAS delegation in the Assembly, where he was serving at the time of the
interview. In May 2008, at the height of separatist tensions in the East, he was
attacked by a mob in Sucre while returning to his district. He survived the
attack and later served as vice minister for social movement and civil society
(2010–2013). In 2014 Evo Morales appointed him minister of mining and met-
allurgy. He is the author of Crímenes de la democracia neoliberal: Movimientos
sociales desde la masacre en Villa Tunari a El Alto (La Paz: Fondo Editorial de
los Diputados, 2006), among other works.18
T H E Y E A R 2000
Many thanks for the interview and many thanks for giving us the oppor-
tunity to tell our political truth based on our political experiences. I
think the gas war of 2000 is the culmination and the beginning. It is the
culmination of various social struggles that had been going on since 1985,
when neoliberalism was imposed through a state of emergency. And
while there were various acts of social resistance, the state’s political logic
of neoliberalism imposed itself in the end. We resisted, for example, the
privatization of lithium in the department of Potosí. In 1989 the govern-
ment of Jaime Paz Zamora wanted to hand over nonmetallic reserves
to the Lithium Corporation, and we opposed their privatization. We
opposed the privatization of hydrocarbons, but they were privatized. We
opposed the privatization of social security, but it was privatized. We
opposed the INRA [Instituto Nacional de la Reforma Agraria (National
Institute of Agrarian Reform)] law, which legalized mass ownership of
land, but the law was passed. The cocalero comrades opposed Law 1008
in 1988, but it was passed, signaling the beginning of the massacre of
262 CHAPTER 7
several comrades in May 1988. In other words, at various times there

were different political and social acts of resistance to neoliberalism,
and 2000 signaled a confluence. I think it happened through a political
coincidence of three concurrent events with different demands. First, in
April regantes [traditional water distributors] and users in Cochabamba
protested against the privatization of water and basic sanitation. Second,
there were the demands of indigenous comrades from the Altiplano
with Felipe Quispe in Achacachi, and finally there was also the strike
of our police comrades.
P O LI T I CA L C YC LES
I think that through the years our political struggle has been marked
by political cycles, and those political cycles are a very significant
form of political accumulation. For example, 1990 marks the five-
hundred-year political cycle of resistance against the Spanish inva-
sion. The ’60s and the ’70s are the struggle against North American
neoliberalism. So I think that each decade, and what we lived through
in 2000, is the result of political accumulation at different times, in
different territories, with different leaders. One can see that in 2000
there is a combination of the urban and rural modes of organization
for political struggle, but salaried workers’ unions do not play a role.
Resistance against the military dictatorship, against state capitalism,
against North American imperialism, was based on the salaried work-
ers union. Salary was the identity. There was a union organizational
model. Today there is still a union organizational model, but identity
is territorial and cultural. That is the difference with this union orga-
nizational model. So I think 2000 is the result of several decades of
struggle and several decades of scattered struggles. In my case, for
example, we resisted neoliberalism as university students; we were
arrested, persecuted everywhere, and often that struggle ended there,
and after they graduated, our comrades went over to the other side. It
would seem, then, that we felt politically frustrated, or that we were
romantics from a failed generation. But I think 2000 is a political
result of that great social and political struggle of so many years. And
I think that is what we experienced in 2000.
LI V I N G W ELL ( S U M A Q A M A Ñ A )
Professor, the president, before he became the president, as a leader, and

based on his daily experiences, defined himself as anti-imperialist. But
the struggles of the peasant movements are also the struggle against
external and internal colonialism. That is why anticolonialism is a central
element, and we have resisted neoliberalism. Therefore, the three cen-
tral elements of our struggle are anti-imperialism, anticolonialism, and
antineoliberalism. They are reflected in the new Constitución Política
del Estado and in the new organizational structure of the Bolivian state.
I remember when we began to discuss the government plan, in August
2005, around the corner at Hotel Torino; when we announced that
Álvaro was going to be our vice presidential candidate, one of our com-
rades, comrade David Choquehuanca, said, “Our goal is to live well,” he
said, “to live well.” I remember another comrade from Cochabamba said
to him, “No, the goal is to live better.” And David Choquehuanca stood
up and said, “If we live better, others live worse. To live well means that
we can all have what we need to live.” Then it’s about balance, harmony.
So it’s also like the maxim of socialism. To live well is, in a philosophical
sense, for some not to have more while others have nothing, to achieve
a balance. That does not mean stripping the wealthy from their riches
and distributing them among the poor. We are not about Robin Hood
politics. The goal of 2005, our philosophy, is to live well. That is a key
central element that we must put into practice.
I N T ER N A L CO L O N I A LI S M
But we cannot fight for better living conditions unless we overcome the
internal barriers of internal colonialism. It cannot be that some speak
Quechua, others speak Aymara, but their language is merely a lexicon
and we are all dependent on Spanish. Or that the legal organizational
model is Western, the political organizational model is Western, liberal.
Where is our experience? Therefore it wasn’t just about fighting against
capitalism, against neoliberalism, in the sense of anticolonialism, but
about fighting against the internal colonial structures imposed by the
Spanish invasion. That is why the cultural revolution aims not only to
264 CHAPTER 7
reclaim our identity but to translate our cultural experience into polit-
ical organization, the reproduction of society, the economy, the land,
and Bolivian state institutions. The cultural revolution is very clearly
expressed in Article 1 of our constitution when it says that Bolivia is a
plurinational communal state. That is the meaning of the cultural and
democratic revolution.
Why democratic? Because we consider that democracy is not just
about procedure; it is also about participation. Democracy used to be
about participation. You are obliged to vote, full stop. And you are
obliged to accept whoever is elected president. Nowadays, for us, you are
not only obliged to vote, but you have a right to decide who your presi-
dent is; that is why there is a second round, if a majority is not reached.
That is why we have the recall referendum. If I voted for a certain deputy,
a certain senator, because I trust him, and two and a half years later I see
that he has done nothing, I have a right to tell him to go. So democracy
is not just about procedure; it is also about participation. That is why
the purpose of the cultural revolution is to break with all the structures
of internal colonialism imposed on us by the Spanish invasion and later
the various political processes we experienced in 1600, 1700, 1800, 1900,
and in 2000. And the democratic revolution is not only about procedure
but about the mass participation of Bolivian society.
The revolution not only has an academic meaning; it has a profound

historical and political meaning: to see commander Ernesto Che Gue-
vara speak of the revolution here, to listen to his speeches, to see Fidel
and understand that the revolution is a way to alter, to overcome, to
transform, but also to build. That is why we consider that our current
revolution is a very constitutive event. Why? For us 2000 is the third
constitutive moment in the country’s republican life. The first constitu-
tive moment is 1825 and 1826, when the cry for freedom begins in 1809
in Charcas, Sucre, from some pro-Spanish bourgeois people who didn’t
want to be under Spain’s rule. They cry for freedom and after fifteen
years of struggle throughout the Bolivian territory, the Bolivian republic
is founded. But it’s founded essentially under the logic of liberalism, with
neocolonial traits. That is the first constitutive moment in the founda-
tion of the republic. The second constitutive moment, in our view, is the
revolution of 1952. Because it breaks up the mining-feudal clique that
owned the mines, the land, and not only did they own the renewable and
nonrenewable natural resources; they also owned and exercised political
power. They wanted to vote into power whichever president they saw fit.
And today we are going through a third constitutive moment. We are
reclaiming, recovering those rights that achieved constitutional status
in ’52. Today we are expanding them, we are overcoming the old logic of
colonialism imposed on us in 1800–1825, and we are considering a new
kind of state. The kind of state we have today—its legal, political, and
ideological superstructure—is completely different from it was in 1825.
And that third moment is the third historical moment of our republican
life. Therefore it’s not merely a change in government; the country is
experiencing a new era. Evo, in my view, is a continental leader, without
precedent in the history of Latin America. Evo is an unprecedented
worldwide icon at the moment. So today we are promoting and leading
a continent-wide process, and this is the third cycle of our republican
life. [Is there a revolution?] Yes, the refounding of the state.
E CO N O M I C M O D EL S
I think each political moment is the antithesis of the previous one. What
do I mean by this? Until 1952, three people—Hochschild, Patiño, and
Aramayo—owned the large mining centers. Then, on October 31, 1952,
mining is nationalized. The major tin barons’ property is confiscated and
it becomes the property of the state. So there is a social appropriation
by the state. But the state doesn’t have a vision of how to invest the
surplus from social appropriation. That ends up degenerating, because
COMIBOL [Corporación Minera de Bolivia (Mining Corporation of
Bolivia)] is still a firm, a firm with no ability to invest in the country. The
state lacks vision to reinvest the economic surplus in the country. The
year 1985 is the antithesis of state capitalism: everything that had been
nationalized was privatized and given away. In 2000 we cannot repeat
what happened in the revolution of ’52. That is why when the presi-
dent returns from Europe, before he is sworn into office, he very clearly
defines what he wants from nationalization. He says, “We don’t want
bosses; we want partners.” These four words and this phrase absolutely
266 CHAPTER 7
define the hydrocarbons nationalization policy in the country. That’s

why the purpose of nationalization is not to expropriate investment but
to control production, control transport, control sales, and increase rev-
enue for the Bolivian state, without reducing private investors’ revenue.
With Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, with the hydrocarbons law, out of
every one hundred dollars exported, eighty-two dollars remained in pri-
vate hands and eighteen dollars in the hands of the Bolivian state. How
was this distributed? Of the eighteen dollars, eleven dollars went to
producing departments, as royalties; one dollar went to Beni and Pando
because those departments don’t get royalties; and the remaining six
dollars went to the National Treasury, to invest in hydrocarbon fields. It
was daylight robbery. Then when we arrived in government we changed
the relationship and generated a very significant income. That is why,
when Evo says, “We don’t want bosses; we want partners,” he is saying
to them, “You are going to earn less than the state. But you are going to
make money.” That is the vision.
But it’s not just about this. In 1985 economic policy was centered on
the key role of the market, the market, the market, and in this case the
private investor. But neither the market nor the private investor had
the vision or the ability to develop our own internal productive poten-
tial. I am from the department of Potosí, a mining department. Since
the Spanish invasion and the foundation of Potosí in 1545 until now, it
has always produced mineral concentrates. Sadly, lead and silver ingots
are made in Africa and Asia, and what we export is raw materials; we
export economic surplus. So our president has set himself the goal of
transforming production. This means that in the twenty-first century, a
century behind our neighboring countries, we are about to enter the age
of industrialization of natural resources. There is lithium in Bolivia, in
Potosí. There is iron in El Mutún. The previous government wanted to
sell iron, to exploit it for export. Today we transform iron. In the case of
lithium, in the ’90s they wanted to sell it for export. Today we are going
to transform Potosí.
And in Potosí, for example, we are also working on a plant to man-
ufacture silver and lead compounds, and building a zinc plant to pro-
duce lead, silver, and zinc ingots instead of exporting concentrates
and allowing other private investors to take our riches. The goal of
a vision based on the exploitation of natural resources is to increase
their domestic value-added, and that is what our constitution says, the
transformation of raw materials. We are going to do what the republic
didn’t do, what liberalism, state capitalism, and neoliberalism didn’t
do, because it is the only way for the state to accumulate wealth and
reinvest it. That is a key element. But also, professor, our constitution
recognizes four types of economic organization. The first is the state
economy. The second is the social cooperative economy. The third is the
private economy, and the fourth is the community economy. We are
recognizing what has existed before. We are not inventing anything.
And by recognizing what has existed before we are ensuring that the
four economic axes become institutional state policies. Neoliberalism
does not support the community sector. With neoliberalism, the state
economy disappears. With neoliberalism, the cooperative economy
survives, but it receives no financial help. But with neoliberalism we
give a lot of money to private investment; the other sectors are over-
looked by the state, and there is a single private sector. With us, on
the other hand, there is also going to be a private sector, but it is not
going to be the only privileged sector; it’s just going to be another
sector—that is the difference.
I N D I G EN O U S AU T O N O M Y
And when we say plurinational, community state it’s not just a word,
not just a concept; it is a pillar of the constitution. Plurinational means
the decolonization of the state. And decolonization means recognition
of the land that belongs to the country’s indigenous populations. And
we cannot just recognize them symbolically; we must recognize their
land but also their mode of government. That is indigenous autonomy.
It doesn’t mean taking rights away from people like me, who live in the
city. It means for them to exercise their rights in their own land. Thus,
the goal of indigenous autonomy is the reconstitution of indigenous
territories but only in rural areas, not in urban areas. This is perhaps a
backward step, because we are saying to indigenous peoples, you only
live in the country, not in the city. We have to acknowledge that this is a
backward step that we agreed to during October last year’s negotiations
to adopt the constitution. So the purpose of indigenous autonomy is to
reconstitute indigenous territories, be they municipalities or provinces.
268 CHAPTER 7
The way they define things is through internal consultation, that is, a
referendum; the way they elect their authorities reflects their usages
and customs.
What are our usages and customs? I, César Navarro, a citizen, want to
run for president, so I need a political party and people can vote for me.
That is the liberal Western logic of the organization of the state and uni-
versal society, I would say. On the other hand, according to indigenous
usages and customs I don’t need a political party; my ayllu will put me
forward. Who will elect me? The popular vote or the cabildo [council]?
If it’s the cabildo then I am elected through deliberative, horizontal
participation. It’s not whoever has more money to manipulate the appa-
ratus but whoever has greater legitimacy. Liberal usages and customs
are written into the Bolivian constitution, whereas the communities’
usages and customs used to be unknown, formally acknowledged but
constitutionally unknown. Today they are acknowledged by the consti-
tution. In this indigenous autonomy a mayor or governor will be elected
according to ancient usages and customs. That is not violating rights but
exercising a valid state policy in practice. Indigenous autonomy is about
the reconstitution of its territories, the form of political organization
of its government, and the administration of its own resources, but it’s
also about another fundamental pillar, which is the administration of
justice. That is why I said earlier that the political superstructure used to
be the executive and the legislative, full stop. Today it’s the executive, the
legislative, but also the autonomies. The political superstructure has been
expanded. The legal superstructure was just the ordinary justice system.
Today it includes the indigenous-peasant jurisdiction. There has been
an expansion of the justice system. The superstructure has been substan-
tially transformed. Today, thanks to indigenous autonomy, there is an
indigenous justice system. It would make no sense to have an indigenous
political identity unless we also recognized its judicial mode of organi-
zation, under which the administration of justice is the responsibility
of the eldest member. There are no lawyers; it is the eldest. All this is
being acknowledged as part of the process of decolonization, which
is why the plurinational issue is not merely a concept but is already a
constitutional institution reflected in the economic, political, territorial,
legal, and cultural realms.
IDEOLOGY
There are two currents: the Andean cosmovision and Marxism. Some
say also liberation theology, but I think what you find through time is
the Andean-Amazonian cosmovision and Marxism. My background
is Marxist, communist, and other comrades are left wing but don’t
have a Marxist, a nationalist background but rather a reading of our
sociocultural and sociopolitical context shaped by our Andean mode
of organization. We managed to come together, I think, thanks to Evo.
That is why there can be a struggle against neoliberalism, but it doesn’t
necessarily have to be against imperialism or colonialism. There can be
a struggle against neoliberalism while racist, colonialist struggles persist.
There can be a struggle against neoliberalism but not against capital.
Here we have a combination of the three axes of imperialism, neolib-
eralism, and neocolonialism, which have been structures of subjugation
and domination in Latin America and also in our country. Our ideology
is based on that identity, on that Andean-Amazonian cosmovision. That
is the meaning of living well, the concept of living well that David was
talking about, and that is why, when Evo promulgated the constitution
on February 7 this year, in El Alto, he said our goal is communitarian
socialism. He is giving a deep meaning to our revolution. We seek com-
munitarian socialism. That means our socialism has our own identity; it’s
not the Cuban version, or the Chinese version, or the Vietnamese ver-
sion, or the Soviet version—it is the Bolivian version. We seek socialism.
CO M M U N I TA R I A N S O C I A LI S M
I think it’s the meeting of the two [Marxism and Andean cosmovision].
I think it’s a concurrence. Evo talks of complementarity. Because there
can be decolonization while there is also capitalism. We can have indig-
enous structures in a framework of capitalist dominance. We can fight
against neocolonialism at the same time as there is neoliberalism. The
goal of communitarian socialism is to find a common historical objec-
tive. It’s not the sum of two concepts but their complementarity, their
concurrence, a historical encounter. There cannot be socialism without
decolonization. There cannot be decolonization without abolishing neo-
270 CHAPTER 7
liberalism. Therefore community socialism shows a concurrence. That

is why Marxism and the Andean cosmovision are two axes that come
together under the leadership of Evo, but also that ideological union
raises the possibility of a historical strategic project: communitarian
socialism.
PA RT Y S Y M B O LI S M
Professor, I think the MAS has managed to overcome that old logic of
ideological patrimonialism of the ’60s and ’70s. As an active member of
the communist youth, my figures were Marx, Engels, Lenin, full stop. For
the Trotskyists, it was comrade Leon Trotsky, full stop. And for the ELN
comrades it was Commander Ernesto Che Guevara. Instead of figures,
we had patrimonial symbols, and I think that’s been a political mistake
of the left and communist parties in Latin America. On the other hand,
our leaders today are the leaders who gave birth to the revolution and the
struggle for freedom in Bolivia: Túpac Katari, Túpac Amaru, Bartolina
Sisa. They are not just names; they are examples of key moments in our
struggle against the Spanish invasion. Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz is
not just a name but the expression of a generation: in the ’60s in favor of
a second nationalization, in the ’70s against the military dictatorship, and
in the ’80s of the struggle for democracy. Che is the image that symbolizes
organized armed struggle against North American imperialism. Father
Luis Espinal looked deeply at us. He is a Jesuit father who came from
Spain and was murdered by the military dictatorship of García Meza.
And he said in his poems and in his prayers, “Perhaps the poor find in
communism what you always predicated, the hunger and thirst for jus-
tice.” Nowadays, Luis Espinal, Marcelo Quiroga, Ernesto Che Guevara,
Bartolina Sisa, Túpac Katari, Túpac Amaru are our symbols, because
they reflect our country’s struggle for freedom. Today we cannot say Che
belongs to the MAS. He belongs to every man and woman fighting for
freedom. We don’t claim ownership; we assume an ideal. There are several
comrades who reflect our ideal of the revolutionary struggle for freedom.
The wiphala is a symbol of resistance to the Spanish invasion. But nowa-
days it is a symbol of our national identity. It’s not about discrimination.
The wiphala doesn’t replace the Bolivian flag. The Bolivian flag, with its
three colors, represents every Bolivian. But the wiphala also has its own
cultural and territorial mode of representation.
D EM O C R AC Y
Representative democracy is no use. It is insufficient. Very insufficient,

because I think we not only have the obligation to choose; we have the
right to participate. And that’s why democracy has been transformed in
the country. Today we have representative democracy, but we also have
participatory and community democracy. And I think the three are very
complementary. Representative democracy means that people elect their
representatives through popular vote. It means society is a user, not the
subject. Every four, five years, it has to elect its president or its mayor, and
then forget about it. No, we say no. Representative democracy is no use. It is
insufficient. It has to be expanded, improved. Today, we also say participa-
tory democracy. That means referendum. It means Constituent Assembly.
So if as a government tomorrow we want to, say, privatize the hydrocar-
bons industry and the people are against it, there will be a major national
consultation. That means participatory democracy. But also, if we choose
our authorities and they begin to lose touch with the people, the people
will say, “I voted for this person, for this authority, and they let me down; I
want them to go, and I will also use my vote to remove them.” Recall refer-
endum. We also included community democracy, which doesn’t mean one
day all ten million Bolivians will sit together in a stadium to deliberate—we
would never fit in! Rather, community democracy means recognizing the
various deliberative arenas, cabildos, general meetings, and assemblies that
can take place in the country and the city, recognizing them as deliberative
arenas where things can be proposed. Then the proposals of a neighbor-
hood council can be taken on board by the municipal government in a
democratic setting such as the cabildos, the general meetings. In other
words, the different forms of democratic participation must be absolutely
recognized. A community or deliberative democracy is not going to refuse
to recognize the authorities elected through representative democracy. It
would be political chaos. A general meeting, a cabildo, is not going to say, “I
don’t like this mayor” or “This deputy has to go.” A deputy who was elected
through representative democracy will leave according to the same rules.
So nowadays we are transforming or substantially modifying the political
meaning of democracy. As I said to you earlier, democracy cannot be just
about procedure—I participate according to the rules—but it also has to be
about social, active participation. Thus democracy is transformed, because
it acquires a totally different political meaning.
272 CHAPTER 7
T H E PA RT Y A N D S O C I A L M OV EM EN T S
It’s very difficult, professor, because it’s not a classic revolution, and the
MAS is not a classic party. We don’t have what Lenin talked about,
and then the communist parties made their central committee, their
political bureau. That bureaucratic form of politics collapsed. It’s a form
of politics that has prevailed in many liberal parties. This is sui generis
and not a classical revolution, because the MAS party was founded by
decision of the social movements. We are going to have our own polit-
ical instrument. Then in ’95 the social movements define a strategy: the
current social and political, electoral and political strategy. The social and
political strategy is about social struggle, mobilization, organized clashes
with the state. And that means marches from La Paz, from Cochabamba
to La Paz, et cetera. And the electoral political fight is about taking part
in municipal or national elections, which in the short term generates
an amazing, unprecedented encounter. Because they say, “Our mayoral
candidate is going to be our leader; he’s being elected at a cabildo, or
a general meeting in Cochabamba.” And everyone votes for him. And
the political parties that were presenting their candidates in ’95, in ’97,
lose. The first example of participative and community democracy I was
telling you about a while ago is when they nominate a candidate and use
representative democracy to legally help their candidate rise to power.
And there are councilors and mayors in ’95 and deputies in ’97, and
councilors and mayors in ’99. That is, in four years an interesting political
practice begins to develop in the country. But the political instrument
of the MAS was dependent on the union.
I was the first secretary of the communist youth of Bolivia, in Potosí.
And the student youth organizations depended on the party. The party
was the ruler, the boss. Nowadays, the party is dependent on the union
boss. The union is the CONALCAM, which is led by a colonizer
leader, comrade Fidel Surco [see chapter 6]. The CONALCAM brings
together various social and productive organizations, such as coopera-
tives. They don’t necessarily have to belong to the MAS; they just have to
politically share the social struggle of the revolutionary people. So when
we talk of government, party, social organizations, I would say that, at
the moment, the social base of the government are social organizations.
The greatest political triumph for the social organizations was the pass-
ing of the law that called for a referendum to adopt the constitution.
Never in the democratic history of the country had there been such a
mobilization, with almost half a million people marching for ten days,
headed by the president, to force us congress members to pass the law.
This had no precedent in history, none at all, and it shows with great
political clarity that social movements have taken over and are leading
this revolutionary process.
Therefore there is a relationship between the government, the social
movements, and the political instrument. Yesterday comrade Andrés
Vilca, president of the Federación Nacional de Cooperativas Mineras
de Bolivia [National Federation of Mining Cooperatives of Bolivia], was
made senator. How is he going to become a senator? Through the elec-
tions. For which party? For the MAS, which is the political instrument.
That is why this is a particular revolution. The party doesn’t rule; the
party is ruled. That is what Evo says, paraphrasing Che [Subcomandante
Marcos], “We are going to rule by obeying.” That is a central element.
Two days ago we met with the president at the palace, for four hours:
deputies, senators, and him. Three weeks ago the cabinet and several
deputies met with the president at Huajchilla to talk about government
policy for four, no, eight hours. The president meets with the social
movements and then the MAS. So the president meets with political,
social, and legislative sectors, with what aim? Not only to maintain the
horizontal relationship but because Evo receives feedback from mem-
bers of parliament, social leaders and political leaders, and this allows
Evo to have a complete picture of the political reality. That contributes
to Evo’s strength and greatness as a leader.
RAÚL PRADA: MARXISM AND COMUNA
Raúl Prada is a prolific author, a demographer, and a lecturer-researcher at

UMSA in La Paz. In 2009 a colleague described to me his and Luis Tapia’s
relationship to Álvaro García Linera in Comuna as “like this,” squeezing
his thumb and forefingers tightly together. He played a leading role in the
Constituent Assembly (2006–7) that drafted the new constitution ratified in
2009. He also served briefly (February to September 2010) as vice minister
of strategic planning in the first administration of Evo Morales. He has
been advisor to the Bolivian indigenous organizations’ Consejo Nacional de
274 CHAPTER 7
Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ) and Confederación Indígena

del Oriente Boliviano (CIDOB). He was an enthusiastic supporter of MAS
and the “process of change” at the time of the interviews (2009), but after
his resignation as vice minister he became a bitter critic of Evo Morales and,
eventually, broke with the Comuna group. In June 2011 he signed a manifesto
demanding “The Recuperation of the Process of Change for the People and
with the People,” which drew a bitter book-length response from Álvaro
García Linera, who accused him and the other signatories of being “infantile
rightists.”19
Well, in some ways I agree with [Pierre] Bourdieu’s idea that the para-
digms of the revolution emerged roughly in the nineteenth or twentieth
century, and they concern a solution with certain insurrectional and
revolutionary traits. I think the paradigm of the revolution belongs fun-
damentally to the twentieth century—that is when the great attempts to
radically transform society take place. But it seems that in the twenty-
first century we entered a new condition that alters the nature of social
transformations. I think what takes place in the twenty-first century in
a rather complex way is globalization, differentiation, the eruption of
difference, interculturality, the erosion of revolutionary processes once
they are in government.
Because the main issue, the main problem in Bolivia, in America, I
would say, in the whole continent, in Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Ecua-
dor, Bolivia, and also other countries, is the indigenous question. These
countries have not been able to decolonize; meanwhile they didn’t solve
the indigenous question, and their democracies were theatrical, sym-
bolic. They were not real democracies, because they were not solving
the main problem, which was the indigenous problem. Now, however,
the indigenous question has been raised as a fundamental issue. So it’s
a deep change. I would say it’s a decolonizing change, which aims at
developing a different kind of institution, incorporating indigenous
institutions to the state form. These are deep changes with very strong
cultural, political-cultural projects. Yes, they are deep changes, but deep
changes are happening differently.
I N D I G EN O U S AU T O N O M I ES
In the part of the 2009 constitution concerning the territorial organi-

zation of the state, you see the indigenous autonomies. I think the form
in which we have resolved the plurinational question is the indigenous
autonomy. I think that it could be a revolutionary change. That is why
I say it could be radical. It could be radical if we give full validity, full
consequence, total freedom to the indigenous autonomy to allow it to
turn administrative-political decentralization into true indigenous self-
management and self-government. And that would also imply review-
ing the state itself. That is, the organization of the state cannot remain
the same—not only because there is a central level and decentralized
levels but also because the state form, as you said, is now a different idea.
Really, it is a state form that needs to move forward toward institutional
pluralism. Yes, how to incorporate indigenous organizations, indigenous
institutions, to the state form: that is the issue, not only as an indigenous
autonomy but at the central level. How do we organize ourselves? How
do we incorporate the indigenous into the organization of the state at
the central level? I think there is a challenge there, precisely to leave
behind the liberal legacy of the state. So I think we are facing very seri-
ous challenges. I think whether they are radical depends on practices.
I think the struggle is not over. I mean, I think the constitution has to
be understood as a living constitution. And the living constitution will
depend on the extent to which social movements and indigenous move-
ments stand their ground and manage to materialize and make viable
the constitution. It all depends on that.
M A R X I S M A N D CO M U N A
I would say I belong to Comuna, which is part of the political instru-

ment, and some of the members of Comuna are Álvaro García, vice
president; myself; Luis Tapia; Raquel Gutiérrez; Oscar Vega; also
Karina Monasterios; and there are several groups. Most members of
Comuna have declared themselves Marxist. Critical Marxism, yes. From
contemporary Marxist currents they have taken on their criticism of the
old Marxist and economistic schools. I think our main discussion has
276 CHAPTER 7
been with economistic Marxism, and perhaps with a Marxism that is

very much based on a tremendously linear notion of the modes of pro-
duction. So I think it has been a critical Marxism, a critique of Marxism,
but also I think it is a Marxism that, from the outset, faces the challenge
of the indigenous question.
Perhaps the most significant precursor was Mariátegui, who tackles
the indigenous question as a key issue in the interpretation of Marxism.
I think what happens in Mexico at the end of the twentieth century is
very important. Because, what happens with the group that goes to Chi-
apas, to the Lacandón jungle? It was a guerrilla group from Monterrey,
in the north of Mexico, who saw themselves losing and came down;
one went to Guerrero and another went to the Lacondón jungle. But in
the Lacandón jungle, when they came into contact with the indigenous
authorities, they criticized Marxism from the perspective of Indianism,
from the Mayan viewpoint. And they understood the indigenous issue
from the perspective of Marxism; they do not renounce Marxism. I
think something similar happens with Comuna, with Álvaro, Raquel
Gutiérrez. We take on the indigenous issue as a key issue, but we con-
ceive our critique of capitalism from the perspective of Marxism. We
cannot separate the two.
That is the difference with culturalist positions. There are culturalist
positions, which are not Marxist, that take the indigenous position
but from a culturalist perspective. They tackle the indigenous question
independently from capitalism; they do not criticize capitalism. And
we believe that a critique of capitalism is essential. Without it, we
would not be able to propose a transformation, and decolonization,
and the liberation of indigenous people. It is essential to understand
capitalism, and even colonialism in terms of capitalism, of the cycles of
capitalism. Conquest is not only a problem of territorial conquest, but
the problem of conquest was fundamentally an expansion of Genovese
capitalism.
So you cannot understand the indigenous question without a critique
of capitalism. And the critique of capitalism is Marxist. So we consider
ourselves Marxist. Why? Because we believe the fundamental critique
of colonialism, of modernity, of the modes of development, of inequal-
ity, of the multiple forms of exploitation, etcetera is a struggle against
capitalism. Now, within that struggle, it was necessary to understand
the historical nuances, and sadly traditional Marxism never saw the
indigenous issue as a key issue. So that is our critique of Marxism. Tra-
ditional left-wing parties didn’t understand the indigenous issue, except
for Mariátegui and perhaps Tristán Marof, who brings up the issue of
indigenous land when he talks about land reform before 1953.
There were very interesting signs that pointed to an understanding
of the indigenous question, but traditional Marxism never quite under-
stood it. It remained stuck in a “workerist” vision and never understood
the indigenous question. So I think that is the great sin of traditional
Marxism, which was very closely linked to leftist parties, and that now,
after the experience of the socialist states of Eastern Europe, Marxism
has opened up to a much richer understanding, acknowledging that
the socialism we have experienced so far was also an extension of cap-
italism. They hadn’t quite broken with the value form, and they haven’t
quite broken with capitalism’s ways of making a profit. I think with
the experience of the socialist states of Eastern Europe, Marxism was
strengthened. That Marxism goes beyond that socialism. That Marxism
is aiming at a kind of communism but understood as a movement based
on reality, not a utopia. So most members of the Comuna consider
themselves Marxist.
CHE
But they don’t like this statue of Che [in El Alto], because they want a
statue of Túpac Katari instead of Che Guevara, and how do you solve
this contradiction? Which is more important? What is the symbolism
of MAS? Or are all of the above symbols of MAS? Well, the thing is
that MAS is very complex. There are many currents. In El Alto, Félix
[Patzi] and Pablo [Mamani], mainly, have a more Indianist position, and
the neighborhood association of El Alto is more influenced by Indian-
ist positions, and obviously there is a tendency to think that a Túpac
Katari monument should be there instead of Che. Where is the Che
vision stronger? Where are there more Guevarists? In the Chapare. Yes,
of course, in the Chapare. Really, the cocaleros. Really there is a sense
of respect for Che Guevara. People from Chapare come from a strong
mining tradition; that is, many of the unions of Chapare were miners’
unions before the relocation. When the relocation took place in 1985,
278 CHAPTER 7
many miners went to Chapare. So the union of Chapare, really, is based

on the miners’ union, and miners were traditionally closer to traditional
leftist parties, and in the Chapare there are Guevarist groups, and Gue-
varist groups are from Chapare and they are made up of young people,
especially in Santa Cruz, for example.
But MAS does its own thing. Really, MAS has several symbols. It has
Túpac Katari, it has coca, it has the wiphala, it has the Pachamama, the
chakana—the Andean cross—but it also has Che Guevara. So there are
several currents; it’s part of the discussion within MAS. I think it’s also
part of the diversity of sources and currents within MAS. But obviously
there has been a tendency, from 2000 to the present, to have a portion
that is more markedly Indianist. However, there are still issues that have
not been resolved by the different organizations of the MAS, that is,
how to conduct the process.
D E CO L O N I Z AT I O N
I think an important issue that needs to be discussed and is under dis-

cussion with the Indianists is the issue of decolonization. Pablo Mamani,
Félix Patzi, Roberto Choque himself, and Simón Yampara have different
views on decolonization. But the issue of what decolonization means is
not very clear—not just decolonization but decolonization in the insti-
tutional sense, in the political and economic sense. I think these issues
have still not been resolved. I think they are expressed in abstract terms.
I think they cannot be resolved if we don’t understand, if we don’t link
the issue of decolonization with the issue of the struggle against capital-
ism: decolonization, coloniality, colonialism; the structuring of societies
according to social class but ethnified social classes, based on racial dis-
crimination, which is basically the basis of colonialism, has been built
on the expansion of capitalism and the way in which capitalism has
turned indigenous people into a labor force. So there you have an issue
that needs to be discussed, that is unresolved. So I think there are still
issues to be resolved. Because it is not about having a general heading,
decolonization, and then it doesn’t change things much. What does
decolonization mean? As well as speaking Aymara, Quechua, Guaraní,
Mojeño, as well as making the languages and cultures official, what does
it mean from the point of view of the constitution of institutions and
subjects? I think there are issues that have been raised in theory that we
are going to have to raise in practice. The issue of the colony has been
raised by [Aníbal] Quijano, in postcolonial studies, in subaltern studies,
but still in terms of theory and research. Now that there is a government
tasked with decolonizing, these problems become practical problems.
These problems are not solved; they are expressed theoretically. I think
we still need to solve those problems.
COMUNITARIAN SOCIALISM
Remarkably, the two former members of the Communist Youth League (Peredo
and Navarro) have embraced the then (2009) emerging ideology of “communi-
tarian socialism,” even though they have to shed almost all the elements of both
the Stalinist and Trotskyist orthodoxy to do so. Gone is the orthodox ideology,
the armed struggle, the socialist command economy, obeisance to Lenin (or
Trotsky) and his principles of democratic centralism, the vanguard party and
its political ideological work, the primacy of the working class, and even the
idea of revolution itself. The rejection of armed struggle is particularly striking
in the case of Antonio Peredo, a self-described Guevarist, who has personally
experienced his share of the personal violence that characterized the old meth-
ods of struggle—two brothers lost to Che Guevara’s failed 1967 expedition and
a life of exile and imprisonment: “[A violent transition] has been tried more
than once, and it could’ve happened anytime, couldn’t it, the apparently easier
way, violent imposition?” But in Bolivia “that road was not viable.” For Navarro,
the movement led by Evo Morales is the third major revolution (after 1825 and
1952) in Bolivia; it is not about armed struggle but about “mass participation in
Bolivian society.”
The command economy is as dead as the former Soviet Union that gave
birth to it. In fact, both Peredo and Navarro are opposed to a particular from
of capitalism—neoliberalism—rather than to capitalism per se. There is plenty
of room for private capitalists; perhaps the state sector will be strengthened a
bit, and communal and cooperative forms given more space and public support,
but the overthrow of capitalism has been consigned to the dust bin of history.
Indeed, for Antonio Peredo, the message of armed revolutionary and heterodox
communist Che Guevara amounts to providing water for all, if not yet butter.
“We live in a world, Latin America, where to live well means, humbly, to have
280 CHAPTER 7
basic services. If you read Che’s speeches . . . you will find he puts this very
clearly.” “We are not about Robin Hood politics,” says César Navarro, indicating
the limited nature of redistribution. Nevertheless, providing basic health care,
nutrition, employment, social security, and a more equal income distribution,
to say nothing of water, in the context of neoliberal Bolivia is a transformation
of no small compass. From 2000 to 2005, battles were fought and won by thou-
sands of protestors to bring public water and natural gas to ordinary people.
And of course the “democratic and cultural revolution” adds “decolonization” to
the basic social democratic demands.
In fact, Peredo and Navarro agree on the basic ideological tendencies within
MAS-Guevarism—socialism, liberation theology, the Andean-Amazonian
perspective—and the symbolic figures revered by the party: Che Guevara, Túpac
Katari, Marcelo Quiroga, Luis Espinal. But like all others who commented on
the subject for this book, they argue that there is no single MAS ideology or even
ideological tendencies within the party. Ex-communists, even Stalinists, there may
be but as individuals, not as members of their former party. There are no literal
followers of the ideologies of Lenin, Stalin, or Trotsky among leftists or even Che
Guevara among Guevarists. There is no vanguard party, no central committee, no
politbureau, and no work of ideological production. There is simply Evo Morales
and the social organizations tied together by a “hyperactive” leader who meets
constantly with all of them beginning, as Peredo observes, with the peasants at
5:00 a.m. and not ending until two in the morning. Following the example of
Subcomandante Marcos (Rafael Guillén Vicente), according to Navarro, Morales
“rule[s] by obeying.” His ministers and subordinates are expected to do likewise,
but still this is a system enormously dependent on one man.
At the time of the interviews, the party had recently adopted (at the Seventh
Party Congress, January 10–12, 2009) “communitarian socialism” as the party’s
guiding principle. This was meant to be a particularly Bolivian style of social-
ism linked to the communal principles of traditional Andean communities.20
For Navarro, this idea had its origins in the fusion of Andean cosmovision
(or worldview) and Marxism and indeed for him the idea of living well (suma
qamaña in Aymara) and the ideals of socialism converge. Peredo too thinks that
MAS (insofar as there is ideological analysis at all) represents a convergence
of Amazonian-Andean cosmovision and Marxism. Both are enthusiastic and
optimistic about the possibilities for “decolonization” of Bolivia’s centuries-old
racially stratified society: for Peredo, in particular, not only the liberation of
indigenous peoples but the liberation of Bolivian intellectuals enslaved to the
models of Shakespeare and Cervantes. The former communists have abandoned

their old faith in its entirety and embraced the ideas of Amazonian-Andean
cosmovision and democratic socialism as their guiding principles. In this respect
they are faithful followers of Vice President Álvaro García Linera, who has
always dreamed of just such a fusion.
His colleagues in the Comuna group could not, in the end, disagree more.
The cleavages in their positions and those of Álvaro García Linera and the ex-
communists Peredo and Navarro have become evident over time. As has been
noted, Prada and Tapia have both broken with MAS and Comuna and become
bitter critics of MAS in general and García Linera in particular. With the aid
of hindsight, it is easy to see the lines of cleavages forming at the time of the
interviews. The cleavage can be simply stated. Peredo and Navarro believe in
“decolonization”; Prada and Tapia were doubtful in 2009 and are certain today
that MAS has no fundamental interest in the project. The late Antonio Peredo,
at the time of his death, was still actively working with MAS as vice minister
of tourism, marking the points of Guevara’s march through Bolivia. Navarro
had risen to cabinet rank as minister of metallurgy and mines. Raúl Prada
resigned his post as MAS vice minister of strategic planning the year after the
interview (2010) and is one of MAS’s most vehement critics. Luis Tapia never
was a member and could not now be more opposed to MAS and its program.
The two closest comrades of Álvaro García Linera in Comuna have parted with
him finally and definitively.
The emerging cleavages, as revealed in the 2009 interviews, were based on
distinct, although converging, lines of thought. For Prada, it is a question of the
distinction between the ringing decolonizing principles annunciated in the con-
stitution and their limited implementation. For Tapia, the MAS commitment to
“decolonization” was never more than a “superficial discourse” cynically adopted
by a fundamentally class-based party. For both, the “indigenous” question still
remains unanswered by MAS in 2009 and answered in the negative by 2011. For
both, the democratic revolution praised by both Peredo and Navarro is either
not a revolution at all (Tapia) or a new kind of twenty-first-century revolution
based on indigenous rights (but only if they are implemented). Otherwise it is
not a revolution. In practical terms the treatment of “indigenous autonomies”
and indigenous representation in the state are the key issues. Like the leaders
of CONAIE in Ecuador, Prada and Tapia demand the autonomy of “nations
and peoples” as such, not simply the predominance of an indigenous-based
movement in a centralized government.
282 CHAPTER 7
Furthermore, although Prada saw many of the same currents in MAS as

did Peredo and Navarro—unionist currents, indigenist currents, socialist cur-
rents, old Marxist and old leftist currents, currents like Comuna, with a critical
Marxist vision—like others he agreed that “the overall ideological-political con-
ception of MAS hasn’t quite been resolved.” There is, he said, no “ideological
political activism” in the sense Lenin understood it. This is not true of the “crit-
ical Marxism” of Comuna, of which he was still a member. Comuna member
though he was, Prada’s heart is clearly with the Indianists (whose organizations
he advises) rather than the communitarian socialists and former Marxists who
dominate the MAS legislative leadership. In 2009 he still thought that the
details of practical implementation would save the revolution. By 2011 he was
writing of a revolution betrayed.
In his 2009 interview, Luis Tapia expands on traditional Marxist class cate-
gories to analyze the Bolivian “process of change” and the social base of MAS.
But surprisingly he arrives at exactly the same end point as Prada—the indige-
nous revolution was betrayed. Unlike Prada, Tapia doesn’t have “a very positive
opinion about” indigenous autonomies. He has an even lower opinion of efforts
to implement Article 2 of the constitution on collective indigenous rights and
representation: “The system of representation—how the parliament is going to
be configured—in my view is at least as bad or worse than the previous one.
What does it mean if you announce there is going to be a plurinational state
but then you opt for a system of majority representation in single member dis-
tricts?” It means that there will be no guarantees of indigenous representation
except for the seven designated seats in the assembly: “That is not going to affect
parliamentary decisions, is it? I would say it’s symbolic.” Still worse, he fears the
indigenous autonomies are “going to generate many fights among indigenous
peoples over territorial boundaries.”
Along with the other left intellectuals, Tapia views MAS as a “party with
limited ideological production. It’s not an ideological party. . . . The cores of
ideological production are elsewhere and the MAS brings them together.” The
elements include internal colonialism from Katarism, nationalization from the
nationalists and socialists, and the mentality of Che Guevara from Guevarist
members (e.g., Antonio Peredo), and other ideas from the people who used
to belong to the Communist Party or other left-wing organizations (Peredo
and Navarro): “Since originally the MAS stems from a union, albeit a peasant
union, it takes on all the experience of Bolivian unionism and combines it with
elements of the Indianist-Katarist discourse.” But “there are also many Indianist
activists who come from another discourse, more centered on reclaiming the
identities and cultures of the peoples.” Tapia agrees with other left intellectu-
als that none of these tendencies form political factions and that members of
other left organizations participate as individuals, not as representatives of their
former organizations. He also agrees that MAS is organically committed to
democracy externally but that “it looks like there is not much internal democ-
racy,” describing the same sort of whirlwind consultations with Evo Morales as
did the other intellectuals. What he calls the “cocalero core” actually runs MAS.
But for Tapia, MAS is fundamentally “a class party” with “no strong indig-
enous identity.” An “invisible world of workers” in the new informal working
class, as described by García Linera (quoted directly by Tapia), is a key com-
ponent of that class base. So are proletarianized agricultural workers in the
east. In the relentless class analysis of Tapia, MAS is a workers’ party—their
principal opponents are agrarian capitalists in Santa Cruz; agrarian reform and
fundamental changes in the economic arrangements are dead because of oppo-
sition from the latter. Indigenous autonomy is an attempt to contain the drive
for departmental autonomy in the east. Indigenist trends are a superficial dis-
course of a class-based party with a cocalero core, not a policy position reflecting
Andean-Amazonian thought. No revolution occurred because class relations
did not change.
It is not surprising that Tapia in 2014 would argue that the MAS government
was “the most anti-indigenous in the history of Bolivia” since he believes this
class-based party had no serious interest in the indigenous question from its
beginnings.21 Paradoxically, the optic of Tapia’s keen class-based analysis reveals
the MAS failure to address the indigenous question, just as does Prada’s indig-
enous perspective. For both, the revolution betrayed the indigenous. This may
seem like an odd conclusion concerning a political and symbolic revolution that
has brought an indigenous party to power with indigenous majorities in parlia-
ment and a new indigenous consciousness to the entire society. But Prada and
Tapia want more. They want the same representation for the collective rights
of peoples and nations as do leaders of CONAIE. In the Territorio Indígena
y Parque Natural Isiboro Sécure (TIPNIS, Isiboro Sécure National Park and
Indigenous Territory) protests of 2011, these two conflicting perspectives on the
meaning of indigeneity came to open conflict and police repression.
Felipe Quispe led both a symbolic and political revolution not only for
Aymara independence but for a radical restructuring of the modern nation-state
and modern capitalist political economy. Quispe did not want the kind of cap-
italist protonations that emerged after the fall of capitalism in Eastern Europe.
He wanted Qullasuyu. So did his followers such as Eugenio Rojas and, in an
284 CHAPTER 7
earlier epoch, Álvaro García Linera and many Aymara intellectuals, including
in this book Pablo Mamani and Eugenia Choque. Katarism-Indianism wanted
a symbolic and political revolution. It failed.
The coca producers’ core of MAS and its allied union wanted a different
form of symbolic revolution. But pace Prada and Tapia, they always considered
themselves indigenous and oppressed as indigenous—not by whites per se but
by the forces of imperialism, neoliberalism, and colonialism. The evidence from
their interviews is unambiguous. MAS did build alliances with mining cooper-
atives and members of the new neoliberal-created invisible working class. But
they also constructed alliances with the Aymara heartland, as interviews with
Rojas and Patana clearly showed. But as Prada perceptively noted, the Aymara
were already a majority in the areas they controlled. All that was needed was a
change in consciousness so they would be willing to vote for indigenous candi-
dates instead of white populists, which the Bolivian revolution accomplished.
Who would have believed that the five-hundred-year-old ethno-political
order could be turned upside down by forty thousand coca farmers from the
Chapare? But the kind of anti-imperialist heterogeneous indigeneity developed
under MAS also represents a sharp symbolic break with what had gone before.
The plurinational assembly actually is plurinational, even with only a handful
of designated indigenous districts. The partidocracy of the ancien régime has
completely collapsed, to be replaced by the first indigenous-led mass party in
Bolivian history. The constitution has been rewritten, including, as all the left
intellectuals agree, some of the most radical language on indigenous rights seen
in the Western Hemisphere.
The central symbolic structures of CONAIE leaders and those of MAS are
distinct. Suma qamana / sumak kawsay—buen vivir, or living well—is clearly
a central notion for the ECUARUNARI leadership. They discuss it at length
and give detailed and informed illustrations from Ecuadorian community life.
Except for intellectuals like Navarro, the concept is scarcely mentioned except in
passing among MAS leaders. Similarly, the living jungle of the Amazonians in
Ecuador has no equivalent in MAS. This is to be expected since the Amazonian
groups that could produce such a discourse drifted away from MAS early on
and for that reason were not included in this book. Still, there is no doubt that
the Ecuadorians are symbolic revolutionaries with an indigenous-peasant base.
MAS is an indigenous peasant party in which symbolic revolution is central.
These are different kinds of symbolic revolution. The Ecuadorians and the
Bolivian theorists of indigeneity want some form of confederation of indigenous
peoples and nations with broad power and territorial authority devolved to
them. The Bolivians of MAS want an indigenous political party to take state
power and use it on behalf of the poor, indigenous majority. In the context of
the twentieth-century Andes, these are both proposals for a radical symbolic
break. But they have different political possibilities. The indigeneity of the MAS
is heterogeneous and open ended. The indigeneity of the Ecuadorians and the
dissident Comuna intellectuals is closed and circumscribed by territory and
ethnicity. Alliances with a powerful left were both symbolically and practically
possible in Bolivia but not in Ecuador, where there was no powerful left and the
theoretical commitment to “nations and peoples” had limited outreach.
The different outcomes of indigenous peasant movements in the two coun-
tries are striking. The analysis thus far suggests that the differing constructions
of indigeneity may play a role. The strong but heterogeneous indigenous base of
MAS and its roots in peasant unionism and the left more generally enable it to
ally broadly with millions of Aymara and Quechua voters who are at the same
time workers and peasants. MAS has an electoral interest in including those of
mixed or ambiguous indigeneity and even those of pure European ancestry as
long as they are not aligned with the imperialists. As long as the Ecuadorians
stick strictly to the nations and peoples playbook, such broad alliances with
those indigenous people who call themselves mestizo and those who do not
are more difficult.
CONCLUSION
Twenty-First-Century Revolution
T
HE SHUAR of Ecuador, according to Rafael Antuni, are a society based
on the ellipse, not a rectilinear society like the West. He imagines “a
great park in the shape of a sun.” For Delfín Tenesaca’s Ecuadorian
Kichwa mother, hills can be angry and the sun can laugh. Tenesaca argues that
such concepts reflect a separate vision of the world, a “cosmovision,” distinct
from Western thought. For Eugenio Rojas, the rebellious people of Achacachi,
Bolivia, equate this “cosmovision” with “Aymara thinking.” There is little doubt
that most people in these interviews have a symbolic worldview distinct from
that of the West. They are symbolic revolutionaries who demand “change in
the categories that order social life and consciousness [and] the metaphysical
assumptions on which these categories are based,” as I have argued elsewhere.
They have a utopian vision that would make these categories real social facts
even if this vision, as the interviews attest, has not come to pass, their constitu-
tions notwithstanding.
ECUADOR
Both the Ecuadorian and Bolivian leaders were symbolic revolutionaries, but
the new worldviews they advocated were not simply returns to the Andean past
TWENTY- FIRST- CENTURY REVOLUTION 287
but modern reconstructions of that past and its worldview. CONAIE’s core
notion of “nation,” for example, is not indigenous at all but was imported from
Western Marxism. It developed out of resistance to the modernizers’ attempt to
impose a culturally homogeneous Hispanic nation-state on the diverse cultures
of Ecuador. Although the concept developed in the Amazon (see chapter 1), it
became the official doctrine of CONAIE and is repeated again and again in
the Ecuadorian interviews. The same defining characteristics are repeated each
time: common language, culture, history, territory, administration, and systems
of justice. It is an ethnic, not a civic, notion of nation and includes collective
rights as well as individual rights.
It is clearly distinct from Max Weber’s classic definition of a nation as a
community of sentiment that would manifest itself in a state. Those interviewed
do not want a separate nation-state with its own military and foreign policy.
They want to join the state, not replace it. They want national autonomy, not
ethnic cleansing; Canada, not Yugoslavia; a plurinational, not an indigenous,
state. The notion of interculturality demands respect for each individual indig-
enous culture but also for the dominant Hispanic version of modernity. Those
interviewed want respect for indigenous language, culture, history, justice, and,
in some cases, traditional territories. They want recognition of indigenous jus-
tice. Beyond this there was little agreement on the exact state functions to
be devolved to the indigenous. More common was an insistence on including
indigenous representatives at all levels of the state, from local to national power.
Nor do they want to cede their individual rights as citizens of Ecuador. They do
not want to destroy modernity but want to extend it to include collective rights
for indigenous peoples.
The Amazonian notion of “the living jungle” (kawsak sacha) as defined by
the people of Sarayaku—the jungle of beings restores “the energy, life and equi-
librium of the original peoples”—also represents a symbolic break. As former
Sarayaku leader and CONAIE president Marlon Santi put it, “we are proposing
a new alternative currently being developed by the peoples, the resistance, that
is called the living jungle. It is a new category of spaces that the indigenous
people have named.” Like “nation,” “the living jungle” is a modern concept
developed as a tool of resistance against the “extractivism” of Rafael Correa and
his modernizing predecessors. It obviously resonates with the contemporary
environmentalism of the developed world, which constitutes a large part of the
narrative of Ampam Karakras, but it is not identical to it. It also resonates with
the Shuar conception of the rain forest, as described by Rafael Antuni, which
288 CONCLUSION
is “providing us with oxygen, water, and, finally, life . . . condens[ing] harmony,

beauty, and riches.”
The concept of “the living jungle” (kawsak sacha) challenges the dualism
between the human and the natural; between the spiritual and the material;
between the individual and the community in Western modernity. In the Ama-
zon beneath the Shuar nation, the Kichwa nation, and the Cofán nation is
the living jungle, which unites all these nations in a common way of life and a
common cosmology. It provides a common point of resistance not only against
the oil companies but against the extractive capitalism of which they are a
part. Indigenous people “do not live in the roads,” says Mónica Chuji, however
useful they may be for open-pit mining. The profit motive, the stock exchange,
and even money itself are outside the living jungle. “Money is like a drug,” says
Ampam Karakras. For Antuni, the real riches of Ecuador lie in its “nature,
landscapes, cultures . . . many lakes full of crocodiles, of reptiles, an immense
diversity that the Ecuadorian state does not value.”
Kichwa leaders in the Andes share the view of nation of the Amazonians and
define it in identical terms. Like the Amazonians, they regard the promises of
plurinationality in the 2008 constitution to be unfulfilled or even reversed under
Rafael Correa. Instead of the living jungle, however, they emphasize communal-
ism and the related concept of sumak kawsay (living well together) in symbolic
contrast to Western notions of individualism and materialism. Indeed, Hum-
berto Cholango argues explicitly that there exist “two visions, two cultures, two
civilizations—one with an occidental vision and another civilization, the indige-
nous civilization, with a communal vision” (emphasis added). The communal vision
emphasizes solidarity, reciprocity, and mutual aid based on a communal economy,
a communal state, and community justice. Occidental justice is based on separat-
ing the offender from the community through imprisonment; community justice
is based on integrating the individual back into the community after suffering
punishment. Those interviewed in the Andes are well aware of the symbolically
radical nature of their communal vision. It would take a “thought transplant” for
Rafael Correa to think in communal terms, says Luis Contento.
The term sumak kawsay (Kichwa) has come into general use in the indige-
nous movements in Ecuador and Bolivia (in Aymara, suma qamaña) and is a
core notion of the Andean interviews in Ecuador.1 According to the official
definition of the Consejo de Desarrollo de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos del
Ecuador (CONDENPE), “SK [sumak kawsay] . . . is to live in community,
plenty, solidarity, relationships between human beings and nature, human
beings and spirituality.” Similarly, for Delfín Tenesaca, sumak kawsay means
“beautiful, lovely, wonderful,” and it happens when “we are equal. You respect
me and I respect you.” The CONDENPE definitional statement goes on to say
that sumak kawsay is not a romantic notion but defines “profound transforma-
tions in our societies, in opposition to the capitalist logic of economic growth
and profit accumulation.”2 Humberto Cholango rejects the American dream of
a “car, a nice house, a good education, some dollars in the bank,” saying that “for
us what is important is life—that a human being has consciousness and lives
in harmony, that lives in peace and tranquility.” Both dream of a change in the
fundamental categories of social life and consciousness and both recognize the
profound transformation required to realize their dreams.
The ECUARUNARI leaders invoke the Andean earth goddess, Pachamama,
in opposition to the resource-based development model of Rafael Correa, which
they decry as “extractivism.” Mama is the Aymara and Quechua word for mother,
but pacha is much broader than the English word earth, including the cosmos
and time as well as space.3 “What is our practice?” says Delfín Tenesaca. “The
care of the Pachamama.” According to Luis Contento, extractivism threatens
“not only the survival of indigenous life; it is life in its broadest extension over
the universe.” It “is the certain death of the people, the certain death of gen-
erations, and the certain death of nature,” says Tenesaca. The 2008 Ecuador-
ian constitution grants legal rights to nature in the name of the Pachamama,
although all those interviewed consider this clause to be nullified by President
Correa’s development policy. The leaders want a symbolic break in which the
Pachamama replaces the Western notion of development not only constitu-
tionally but practically.
At the heart of classical revolutions, I have argued, is a “rapid and funda-
mental change in the categories that order social life and consciousness; [and]
the metaphysical assumptions on which these categories are based.” There is
little doubt that just such a fundamental change was and is advocated by the
leaders of the indigenous movement in Ecuador whether it is expressed as the
plurinational, kawsak sacha, sumak kawsay, the Pachamama, or a broader com-
munal vision. As Arturo Escobar argued, they demand a symbolic (ontological)
change from the categories of Western modernity to the relational categories
of indigenous thought, from the occidental vision to the indigenous vision, as
Humberto Cholango puts it. They could and did, for a few hours on January 21,
2000, unfold, as did the classical revolutions, through an armed seizure of state
power by an (indigenous) vanguard backed by a mass uprising.
290 CONCLUSION
But in the end the Ecuadorian indigenous movement rejected armed strug-
gle and followed the route of mass protest and electoral politics. Not one of the
Ecuadorian leaders interviewed for this book advocated armed struggle, and
their own life trajectories show their commitment to mass organization, protest,
and even electoral politics. Humberto Cholango was one of the most symbol-
ically radical of any of these interviewed and called for a fundamental change
to an indigenous communal vision. But he rejected a classical revolution and at
the time of the interviews was attempting to build a political coalition with left
groups in civil society. The paradox of the Ecuadorian indigenous movement is
that it sought the symbolic upending of the liberal democratic order by liberal
democratic means.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the Ecuadorian indigenous move-
ment’s political party, Pachakutik, the Kichwa and Aymara word for the cosmos
turned upside down. But the Ecuadorian political party Movimiento de Unidad
Plurinacional Pachakutik–Nuevo País (MUPP-NP) plays by the rules of liberal
democratic modernity and in many respects is a conventional Western political
party with an indigenous core. Pachakutik elected officials embrace not only
the party name but the concept of nation as it is understood by CONAIE.
“Plurinational unity” in the party’s official title depends on a radical rethinking
of the Western nation-state. These leaders may dream of pachakutik and a rad-
ical reconceptualization of the nation but at the time of the interviews all held
elected office in a Latin American nation-state that they condemn as unina-
tional, constitutional provisions notwithstanding. In most respects the Pacha-
kutik elected officials share the Ecuadorian indigenous paradox—revolutionary
dreams and democratic politics.
They differ from other indigenous leaders, however, in one important respect.
All those who commented on the subject had detailed plans for smallholder-
based economic development that would benefit both indigenous and non-
indigenous farmers. They closely resemble the development plans of FENO-
CIN as expressed by its leader and deputy, Pedro de la Cruz. In the context of
contemporary Ecuador, the shift from an export-based colonial economy to a
smallholder economy producing for the domestic market would be a radical
change. But unlike other themes in the Ecuadorian interviews, it does not call
for replacing Western civilization with indigenous civilization in whole or in
part. In fact, the economic plans of Pachakutik elected officials closely resemble
American-style smallholder development aided by the government and focused
on the internal market. Further land reform, credit, and technical assistance
for peasant producers are all needed. This relatively moderate platform enables
Pachakutik representatives to be elected even in places like Morono Santiago
with a small percentage of indigenous people. Despite the cosmic overturning
implied by the party’s name, Pachakutik elected officials favor both Western
democracy and a Western model of economic development.
In the context of Ecuador and Latin America in general, the replacement of
the colonial model of primary product “extractivism” with smallholder devel-
opment would be a radical act. Together with concepts of the plurinational and
the intercultural, the living jungle, sumak kawsay, and the communal vision, it
describes a revolutionary utopia that deconstructs the metaphysical assumptions
of Western capitalist modernity. The Ecuadorian leaders imagine a world in
which different cultures (including Western culture) can interact with solidarity,
autonomy, and respect; where people are a spiritual part of nature rather than its
conquerors; and in which solidarity, community, and reciprocity, not individual
material success, are the standard of a society’s worth. They dream of a utopia
that would apply not only to the indigenous but to us all.
BOLIVIA
It was in Bolivia, however, where the most symbolically radical and politically
revolutionary discourse emerged in the “Indianism-Katarism” of Felipe Quispe
and the “Aymara intellectuals” associated with him. For them the 1952 Revo-
lution brought not participation but intensified marginalization and exclusion.
As Quispe himself said, “We are like those animals that are in the hills, in the
mountains; we do not count.” “In this country,” said Eugenia Choque, “the
life of an Indian is not valued; they killed them [in El Alto].” This exclusion is
interpreted through the framework of Fausto Reinaga’s inversion of the history
of the “two Bolivias.” “Who was Pedro Domingo Murillo?” asks Quispe. “He
was the murderer of our ancestors. Who fought Túpac Katari? Murillo saw the
quartering of Túpac Katari.” The Western history of Bolivia is rejected along
with the worldview of those who wrote it.
For Eugenio Rojas, the people of Achacachi are characterized by “the
cosmovision—Aymara thinking—for this region.Our language also.” Edgar
Patana reflects on the duality of Aymara culture that influences the people of
El Alto and himself. For Eugenia Choque, the work of the new Aymara uni-
versity is to raise revolutionary consciousness. For Quispe, the ultimate goal of
292 CONCLUSION
his movement is to restore the lost Incan province of Qullasuyu and return to
the communal economy of his home village. For Quispe and the other Boliv-
ian “Indianists,” the goal is a symbolic revolution that would turn the world
upside down and bring about the Indian revolution that Reinaga dreamed of.
But unlike the Ecuadorians, Quispe’s idea of revolution was and still is a mass
uprising to overthrow the government by force of arms if necessary. He makes
clear in his interview that he regarded the protests of 2000–2001 as a stepping
stone to his version of Indian revolution.
Yet when Black October 2003 came and the largely Aymara people were in
control of the streets, Quispe offered no plan to assume power and the people
surrounded but did not seize (as in Ecuador in 2000) the presidential palace.
Quispe lacked any independent military force or any allies in the military, and in
any case the rebellion has passed behind his or anyone else’s control. According
to his 2002 vice presidential candidate, Antonio Peredo, Evo Morales resisted
all calls for a “revolutionary junta” and remained strictly in the democratic path,
and the transition in Bolivia occurred by constitutional means. Morales had no
plan to restore dictatorship. Quispe lacked any concrete plan for seizing power.
It is unlikely that a dictatorship by either would have gained support from the
people whose protests had created a democratic society to begin with.
Despite the iconography of Che Guevara in MAS’s discourse, the party
rejected armed struggle and was firmly committed to electoral democracy from
its origins in 1995 to today. It also retained a strong peasant orientation from
its origins in a coca growers union to its takeover of the CSUTCB. Are Evo
Morales and his party then simply “peasantists,” as Eugenia Choque contends?
The interviews indicate that this is only partly true.
The coca leaf became a much broader symbol of indigeneity, anti-imperialism,
and national sovereignty. The “satanization” of the coca leaf and the lawless
violence of the U.S.-backed eradication campaign induced a strong sense of
indigeneity based on the “sacred leaf ” that attracted the support of a much
wider group of indigenous Bolivians, including those who chewed but did not
produce coca themselves. This indigeneity differed markedly from that of the
Ecuadorians based on the recognition of individual “nations.” It was a hetero-
geneous and inclusive identity that defined the indigenous people in opposition
to the United States and its Bolivian allies. The coca leaf then became a unifying
national symbol in a way that the Shuar or the Aymara nation could never be.
The 2009 constitution reversed the valence of coca in the Western pharma-
copeia and made it a national patrimony, not a national addiction. Its growers
became patriots, not stigmatized drug dealers. The close symbolic association of
the coca leaf with indigeneity and indigeneity with the Bolivian nation created
a new definition, a “plurinational state” in the sense that the original inhabi-
tants were specifically included. The plurinational was broad enough to include
“cambas” like Isaac Avalos or even Euro-Bolivians like Antonio Peredo. The
antination, as René Zavaleta called it in an earlier period, consisted then of the
American imperialists and their Bolivian allies.
The sacred leaf then had enormous symbolic power, overturning imperial
thought and imperial power. So did the popular images of Che Guevara and
Túpac Katari that interacted to produce revolutionary anti-imperialism (sym-
bolized by Guevara) and indigenous rebellion (symbolized by Katari). As we
know, Evo Morales considered himself a “son of Che.” Fidel Surco consid-
ered himself Guevara’s brother. Isaac Avalos continually reminded himself that
Guevara was “present.” Antonio Peredo’s brothers fought with Guevara. The
Katarist-Indianist movement had brought Túpac Katari to national conscious-
ness as early as the 1980s. A popular campaign poster in 2009 showed a picture
of Evo Morales superimposed on one of Katari with the caption, “Túpac Katari,
the Rebellion. Evo Morales, the Revolution.” Together they symbolized an
indigenous–anti-imperialist revolution. Coca, Guevara, and Katari were central
to MAS iconography. Together they made the symbolic revolution.
Communitarian socialism combined all these elements into a single utopian
vision. MAS dreamed of a new Bolivian nation in which all thirty-six indige-
nous groups, as well as the Afro-Bolivians and the Hispanic Bolivians, would
live together in “interculturality” and mutual respect. The symbol of this new
intercultural nation, improbably, became the coca leaf. The new vision, symbol-
ized by Guevara, would throw out the American imperialists and their Bolivian
allies on behalf of the poor and indigenous majority. For the first time the
indigenous would rule and their history—from Atahualpa, to Túpac Katari, to
Evo Morales—respected. Communitarian socialism would combine the com-
munal values of the traditional Andean communities with the common-sense
socialism of the left and, ultimately, Marxism.
WHY BOLIVIA AND NOT ECUADOR?
Why did the Bolivian Revolution have greater success? As was noted in the
introduction, the demographic and structural obstacles facing the Ecuadorians
294 CONCLUSION
were substantial, but the analysis of interviews from both countries reveals
another important and perhaps decisive factor—the different kinds of indi-
geneity advocated by the two movements. Indigeneity in Bolivia began as a
homogenous and exclusive from of Aymara nationalism. But the ultimately
successful cocalero movement was heterogeneous and inclusive. It was so broad,
in fact, that it united all but the American imperialists and their Bolivian allies.
It brought in almost the entire left indigenous and nonindigenous, as the inter-
views in chapter 7 clearly show. In Ecuador CONAIE’s theory of nations and
peoples divided the country into homogenous indigenous cultures opposed to
the Hispanic state. Once Correa co-opted the more inclusive leftist message of
the early indigenous protests, they were left isolated.
Both indigenism and socialism influenced the rebels in both countries, but
the balance between them was different. As we have seen, the concept of the
indigenous nation was the focal point of Ecuadorian activism although the
Pachakutik party drew on a popular socialism and early communist organiz-
ing as well. In Bolivia this popular and historical socialism was vastly stronger
and was incorporated explicitly into the official ideology of “communitarian
socialism.” Evo Morales’s principal advisors, Filemón Escobar and Álvaro
García Linera, but not Morales himself, were both heretical Marxists. Morales
had come up through the socialist-influenced and vastly powerful labor union
movement. Both societies recognized indigenous nationalities and declared
themselves “plurinational states,” but the Bolivians’ socialist tradition enabled
them to appeal to poor Bolivians who did not think of themselves as indige-
nous and to Bolivia’s powerful left parties vastly expanding their electoral reach.
Especially after Rafael Correa co-opted the left-socialist part of their message,
the Ecuadorians increasingly became a lobbying movement in favor of indig-
enous nations, limiting their electoral outreach. These differences do much to
explain the greater success of the Bolivians.
INDIGENISM AND SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
In both Bolivia and Ecuador, the symbolic revolution was carried out by mass
demonstrations and elections. Proponents of armed struggle, Antonio Vargas
in Ecuador and Felipe Quispe in Bolivia, lost out while the greatest success
was attained by indigenous-based political parties. Nevertheless, at the level of
the fundamental categories of social thought and consciousness, the changes
have been enormous and the collapse of the traditional political system, if not
the state itself, was stunning. What was emerging at the turn of the twentieth
century in the Andes was a new form of revolution that combined the symbolic
radicalism of the classical revolutions with democratic practices emerging in
Latin America as a consequence of neoliberal doctrine.
In the Andes, political change came through a simultaneous rejection and
acceptance of modernity. The indigenous movements were born of the rejection
of what Leon Zamosc called the “hypocritical modernity” of the agrarian trans-
formation of 1952 and 1964 that declared liberal rights to property and person for
all except the enormous indigenous populations. For them it meant intensified
racism and exclusion at the same time they acquired the political tools and,
eventually, the democratic rights to resist. This combination led to the revolu-
tionary journées of the uprising in Ecuador and Black October in Bolivia when
the political systems of both countries were on the verge of collapse. Without
the symbolic and political radicalism of these days, there would have been no
transition to a new political order, democratic or otherwise. There were calls in
both countries for a revolution of the classical sort, but in the end the popular
forces stopped just at the edge of power and returned to the methods of liberal
modernity to win by democratic elections.
The symbolic revolutions in both countries resemble those of other classi-
cal revolutions. So do the militant popular mobilizations. Indigeneity as the
mobilizing identity of the movements is new at least for Latin America; so is
the resolution of the revolutionary crisis through democratic means. So after
this long inquiry into the nature of revolution, are these events revolutions?
It depends on the definition of revolution. If the reigning twentieth-century
definition of revolution is used, they are most certainly not. Only Quispe and
his allies thought they were creating such revolutions. Everyone else inter-
viewed rejected the language of revolution and spoke of “social transforma-
tion” (in Ecuador) or “process of change” (in Bolivia). In both cases they meant
profound changes and not simply reforms. What happened might be best
understood as a new twenty-first-century form of revolution that combines
the radical dreams and mass mobilizations of the twentieth-century revolu-
tions with the democratic legality of late twentieth-century Latin America.
This new form of social transformation has implications far beyond the region
that gave it birth. It suggests that utopian dreams can be compatible with
democratic politics—but not without massive resistance to set the democratic
changes in motion.
296 CONCLUSION
Delfín Tenesaca, one of the most philosophical of all those interviewed,

observed that “the speeches of some indigenous leaders could have transformed,
in some respects, the ideological thinking of socialism.” He thinks that indige-
nous discourse could easily be translated into socialist discourse. It is at this deep
symbolic level that the transformations of the indigenous revolutions are great-
est. They have created a new form of democratic socialism that makes issues of
ethnicity and culture as central as class transformations. Evo Morales’s “commu-
nitarian socialism” makes the symbolic equation explicit, but it is also explicit in
the Ecuadorian interviews, especially among leaders of ECUARUNARI such
as Tenesaca. Only the Bolivian left intellectuals speak explicitly of Marxism and
Indigenism. But the traditions of a more popular, less sectarian socialism are
widespread in both Ecuador and Bolivia. It was the genius of the revolutionaries
to combine this popular socialism with the millennial experience of indigenous
communities to create something entirely new—indigenous socialism.
EPILOGUE
On May 24, 2017, Rafael Correa completed his third successive turn as president
of Ecuador and was succeeded by his vice president and democratically elected
successor Lenín Moreno. The long-term consequences of this succession remain
to be seen, but in the short run, particularly at the discursive level, the changes
are substantial. Gone is the insulting, racist, and bitterly resented language
used by Correa in his frequent attacks on indigenous leaders. Instead, Moreno
opened a dialogue with CONAIE (suspended for eight years under Correa) and
declared that the organization was a “fundamental pillar of the New Ecuador.”
He granted a one-hundred-year lease to CONAIE’s headquarters in Quito.
He moved to restore the intercultural bilingual education program that had
been suspended under Correa and granted pardons to seven indigenous leaders
charged with “terrorism” for participation in demonstrations. He announced
that the former Unión de Naciones Suramericanas (UNASUR, Union of South
American Nations) building in Quito would be the site of a new indigenous
university. After a meeting with indigenous leaders, Moreno suspended all min-
ing and petroleum concessions until they had satisfied the condition of prior
consultation with indigenous communities.1
On the other hand, CONAIE still complained that there had not been any
advance in the economic model, which remained extractive as many of those
interviewed had noted in 2011. Indeed, the most ambitious of Correa’s extractive
298 EPILOGUE
initiatives, the Coco Codo Sinclair Dam and associated projects, financed by
Chinese loans, is deeply mired in scandal, broken machinery, and accumulating
silt, sand, and trees, and it may never achieve its ambitious goal of supplying a
third of Ecuador’s electrical output. Ecuador owes $19 billion in Chinese loans
and has mortgaged 80 percent of its oil output to repay them. Moreno has
inherited this mess and has had to slash social spending to make up for the
losses.2 Even if he wanted to, Moreno cannot recover the sunk cost of extractiv-
ism. There is little evidence that he will change the model. On the core issue of
extractivism versus the Pachamama and agrarian development, the president
and CONAIE are still far apart. Nevertheless, the indigenous revolution had
finally earned them a position in Ecuadorian society that they had never held
before.
Evo Morales is still in office after being resoundingly reelected twice in
internationally recognized free and fair elections. He will complete his third
successive presidential term in January 2020. The October 2019 election race
has already begun. Thanks to a Supreme Court decision, Morales will be able
to run for an unprecedented fourth term and is very likely to do so. His likely
opponent is former center-left president Carlos Mesa, who was forced to resign
after the massive 2015 protests and yield the presidency to Morales. The Trump
administration expressed “deep concern” over the Supreme Court decision,
although it has not, as yet, assigned Bolivia to National Security Advisor John
Bolton’s “Troika of Tyranny” (Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela). The results of
such a classification have recently taken shape in Venezuela. Whether such a
fate awaits Bolivia remains to be seen but already the Bolivian opposition has
warned of an imminent “Venezuela-Cuban-style” dictatorship if Morales runs.3
Such concerns are even being expressed in more moderate language in the New
York Times.4
Whatever the future holds, it is clear that Morales has established a lasting
legacy, including such startling achievements as the highest economic growth
rate in Latin America (2018), the longest period of political stability in Bolivia’s
tumultuous history, the highest ratio in the world of financial reserves to the size
of its economy, and (by 2018) the largest percentage of female legislatures in the
world (despite the almost total neglect of the issue among Bolivian male leaders
interviewed for this book).5 Spinning overhead is the Túpac Katari telecommu-
nications satellite (supplied by China). In his first term, Morales moved quickly
to settle the gas issue that had ignited the mass mobilizations in the first place
by radically reversing royalties from hydrocarbons from an 82–18 split in favor
EPILOGUE 299
of the producers (mostly transnationals) to 82–18 in favor of the government.6

Morales called this “nationalization” even though it was nothing of the kind.
Increased hydrocarbons revenues enabled Morales to rapidly expand social
welfare expenditures. He moved quickly to establish a cash transfer program
contingent on poor Bolivian families keeping their kids in school and placed the
social security system on a sound financial basis with a retirement age that was
eventually reduced to fifty-eight in recognition of the short life span of many
Bolivian workers, especially miners. He introduced a maternity care program
for childbirth and later pregnancy contingent on frequent health checkups for
mothers.7 Limited nationalizations took place in industries that are often public
utilities in other countries such as telecommunications, railways, and electricity.
Including hydrocarbons, the state sector increased from 12 percent in 2005 to 32
percent in 2010.8 A mixed capitalist economy remained in place with bankers in
particular enjoying an especially privileged position.9 In many respects Morales’s
policies mirrored the extractivism and social welfare spending of Rafael Correa
in Ecuador but on a much more ambitious scale.
Morales also quickly moved to recognize indigenous nations in Bolivia by
holding an assembly to draw up a new constitution that was eventually ratified
in 2009. The new constitution declared Bolivia a “plurinational state” and offi-
cially recognized all of Bolivia’s thirty-six indigenous societies in its first article.
State employees were required to study indigenous languages, three new indig-
enous universities were founded, and an official office of “decolonization” was
established. The new plurinational assembly had more indigenous members (25
percent) than ever before in Bolivian (or Latin American) history even though
the constitution only reserved seven indigenous seats. A 2010 antiracism and
antidiscrimination law criminalizes such activities in private businesses and the
media. In the same year a new education law was passed, emphasizing instruc-
tion in indigenous culture and requiring each student to study an indigenous
language (or English).10 As Leonilda Zurita noted, indigenous Bolivians are no
longer afraid to speak their own languages in the streets.
Morales did not, of course, neglect the “sacred leaf ” that had brought him to
power in the first place and enjoyed widespread consumption among indigenous
people. He continued to support the so-called cato accord that allowed one cato
(1,600 square meters) per producers and limited total hectarage. Violence sub-
sided almost immediately.11 Morales achieved another surprising and significant
victory when Bolivia convinced the United Nations Convention on Narcotic
Drugs to reverse a sixty-year-old policy and recognize the traditional use of coca
300 EPILOGUE
as nonnarcotic.12 By 2014 Morales’s policies had not only stopped the expansion
of coca cultivation but reduced it by 12 percent.13 Remarkably, there is almost no
cocaine (as opposed to coca) use in Bolivia.
The long-term results of these policies and a favorable commodity price
environment have been striking. The IMF reports that moderate and extreme
poverty rates were reduced from 66 and 45 percent to 39 and 17 percent, respec-
tively, between 2000 and 2014. The Gini index of inequality dropped from 0.62
to 0.49 in the same period. Bolivia’s gross domestic product (GDP) in terms
of per capita purchasing power increased 42 percent in the same period. The
IMF accurately describes these changes as “dramatic.” The report notes that “a
high proportion of these new resources were allocated to vulnerable jobs con-
centrated in low-skilled and informal activities.”14 Morales’s “communitarian
socialism” has clearly and markedly improved the conditions of all Bolivians
but the poorest by the most. But his prudent financial management, enormous
financial reserves, and rapid economic growth have also endeared him to the
international financial community. Morales was even spotted playing soccer
with World Bank president Jim Yong Kim despite his frequent denunciations
of just that institution.15
In Morales’s second and third terms, the pace of social reforms slowed but
did not end. At the same time, he struggled to fend off defections within his
own coalition. An economically sensible plan to reduce subsidies and raise
prices for combustibles led to mass uprisings throughout the country and forced
Morales to retreat.16 A proposal to cut a road to Brazil through TIPNIS pro-
voked a violent struggle between ecologists and lowland indigenous on one side
and coca producers and the federal government on the other.17 Nevertheless,
Morales and MAS continued to hold widespread popular support. Perhaps the
greatest changes, however, were at the symbolic level, as was noted by Edgar
Patana, Pablo Mamani, and Eugenia Choque: “If Evo did it, why not me?”
Any indigenous child could dream of becoming president. Perhaps this was
Morales’s greatest achievement of all.
APPENDIX
INTERVIEW SELECTION AND ORGANIZATION
This book began as a study of the MAS party in Bolivia. The goal was to con-
duct open-ended interviews with leading figures in the party and its constitu-
ent social movement organizations. Those interviewed fall into two groups: (1)
thirteen critical intellectuals-—five independent intellectuals, three intellectuals
from the Comuna group centered on Vice President Álvaro García Linera,
and five Aymara intellectuals identified with indigenous rights (and Aymara
ethnicity) but not, in most cases, with MAS (Felipe Quispe, the revolutionary
Aymara leader, has been included in this group because of his enormous influ-
ence in formulating indigenous discourse); and (2) twelve MAS legislative and
social movement leaders. This population was defined through nominations by
a prominent Bolivian social scientist (Eduardo Paz), a prominent Argentine
journalist (Pablo Stefanoni), and a French field worker (Hervé do Alto); by
others that I interviewed; and by citations in secondary sources and in the press,
particularly an article in La Paz’s leading daily La Razón ( June 23, 2008). In
that article MAS’s vice chair lists the six leaders “closest to Evo.” All of them
were interviewed.
I also interviewed the leaders and sometimes past leaders of each of the
social movement organizations most closely associated with MAS (the national
peasant confederation) CSUTCB; the union of Bolivian colonizers, CSCB;
302 APPENDIX
the national women’s peasant organization, FNCB-BS; the cocaleros of the Six
Federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba; COR–El Alto; and the leaders of
the MAS delegation in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. I also inter-
viewed the secretary of international relations of MAS, Evo Morales’s former
party treasurer and administrative assistant, and a longtime left and MAS activ-
ist (who asked for anonymity) now serving in the diplomatic service. For rea-
sons of length and intellectual coherence, the interviews with the independent
intellectuals are not reproduced in this volume. A number of interviews were
not included because they duplicated material already selected. Two interviews
were not recorded and a few interviews were not included simply because they
did not fit into the major chapter groupings.
In Ecuador the goal of selecting nationally prominent leaders of the leading
indigenous party Pachakutik and its constituent organization (CONAIE) was
the same but the process was different. I asked my student Mandi Bane, who
had recently completed an outstanding dissertation based on fieldwork in an
indigenous community in Ecuador, to propose a list of such leaders, including
both contemporary and historical leaders. I then showed this list to a leading
Ecuadorianist, Mark Becker, and asked for additions or deletions. He liked
Mandi’s list and made one addition. I worked from this amended list. Some on
the list were out of the country or were otherwise unavailable. There were only
two refusals but unfortunately they were Blanca Chancoso and Nina Pacari—
both very visible national leaders of the indigenous movement and, unusual
in the male-dominated indigenous leadership in both Ecuador and Bolivia,
both women. Their absence could affect not only the almost complete absence
of women’s issues in the Ecuadoran interviews published here but might also
influence their ideological balance. I wish I could have talked with them.
Trained as I was in mid-twentieth-century quantitative social science, I take
matters of population definition and selection seriously. I am less comfortable
talking about myself and my relationship to the leaders interviewed; not only
is this now the fashion but I too now believe that this is indispensable to a
complete understanding of what was said and why. At the time of the inter-
views, I was a white male in my late sixties; 5'11", 185 pounds, with the bearing
of the Alpine skier that I was; with thinning, longish gray hair and blue eyes;
and neatly dressed in what might be called business casual. I was a professor
at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and this fact alone opened many
doors. In both countries, but especially in Bolivia, intellectuals are much more
highly valued than they are in the United States. As a matter of fact, I look like
APPENDIX 303
the image a Trump supporter might have of those “tenured radicals” who have
supposedly taken over the country. Harvard educated and of colonial English
background, I also appear to be the quintessential Yankee.
Almost everyone was glad to talk to me. Most knew exactly what my status
was in the global stratification system and one (Luis Macas in Ecuador) had
even been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan. They knew that
I would be publishing work based on this research in the United States and
looked forward to the opportunity to explain themselves to this audience. Par-
ticularly in Ecuador, many of those interviewed held advanced degrees and were
multilingual. In Bolivia, Edgar Patana apologized for not speaking English,
saying he only knew Quechua and Aymara in addition to the Spanish we were
speaking. Particularly in Bolivia, some of the peasant leaders, like Evo Morales,
had a grade-school education or less but these were sophisticated men and
women of affairs with long experience in union and political life. At the same
time, many retained ties to their natal villages despite functioning in a Hispanic
environment for most of their adult lives. Most were accustomed to giving
interviews to the press and social scientists. Their names are well known by
specialists.
A bit shy and awkward myself in social situations, I have found interviews
in Latin America to be fascinating. The ethnographic question might be: did I
enjoy myself too much? I found myself in broad agreement with the views of
the leaders and they assumed I was a sympathizer. Since I am a lifetime demo-
cratic socialist and a 2016 supporter of Bernie Sanders, this convergence was not
surprising. Nevertheless, I strived for scholarly objectivity and distance and only
asked, but did not answer, questions myself. Rarely did I feel that I was being
fed a party line. Most of those interviewed were emotionally and intellectually
engaged. I was fascinated by what they had to say and it showed. This might be
my greatest talent as an interviewer and served me well when I was interview-
ing Central American aristocrats with whom I did not agree politically. Race, a
concept being undermined by the indigenous leaders themselves, did not seem
to be a hindrance (although those interviewed may feel differently).
Those interviewed were asked the following questions, although in practice
many issues were discussed at the same time. All the interviews were in Spanish.
1. How would you describe the process of social change from 2000 [1990]
to the present. Would you say it is a revolution, an insurrection, a reform, a
refoundation, or some other sort of change (e.g., pachakutik)? Why?
304 APPENDIX
2. Is there a new economic model emerging in Bolivia [Ecuador] after the

collapse of neoliberalism? How would you describe this model? What are its
key elements?
3. What are the most important elements in the new constitution in regard
to indigenous rights? Will they be [have they been] implemented?
4. What do you believe to be the most important ideological currents that
have influenced MAS [CONAIE]?
5. What symbols or images do you think are most important in the social
movements and MAS [CONAIE and Pachakutik]?
6. Could you explain to me your understanding of the relationship among
the party, the government, left intellectuals, and the social movements?
INTERVIEWS
ECUADOR
Alberto Acosta, Quito, August 11, 2011

Rafael Antuni, Quito, June 15, 2011
José María Cabascango, Pijal, July 18, 2011
Humberto Cholango, Quito, July 28, 2011
Mónica Chuji, Quito, July 8, 2011
Luis Contento, Quito, June 27, 2011
Pablo Davalos, Quito, June 13, 2011
Pedro de la Cruz, Quito, July 25, 2011
Miguel Guatemal, Quito, July 13, 2011
Ampam Karakras, Quito, June 15, 2011
Jorge León, Quito, June 14, 2011
Luis Macas, Quito, June 9, 2011
Luis Madonado, Quito, June 28, 2011
Rafael Pandam, Quito, July 25, 2011
Salvador Quishpe, Quito, July 31, 2011
Marlon Santi, Quito, July 1, 2011
Delfín Tenesaca, Quito, August 11, 2011
Lourdes Tibán, Quito, July 29, 2011
APPENDIX 305
Auki Tituaña, Quito, July 14, 2011

Ricardo Ulcuango, Quito, June 7, 2011
Gerónimo Yantalema, Quito, June 30, 2011
BOLIVIA
Anonymous MAS militant, La Paz, summer 2008

Rafael Archondo, La Paz, summer 2009
Isaac Ávalos, La Paz, July, 27, 2009
Eugenia Choque, La Paz, August 25, 2009
Pablo Mamani, El Alto, July 15, 2008
César Navarro, La Paz, July 30, 2009
Edgar Patana, La Paz, summer 2009
Félix Patzi, La Paz, July 14, 2008
Eduardo Paz Rada, La Paz, June 12, 2009
Antonio Peredo, La Paz, July 30, 2009
Rául Prada, La Paz, summer 2009
Marcelo Quezado Iporre, La Paz, summer 2009
José Antonio Quiroga, La Paz, summer 2009
Felipe Quispe, La Paz, July 14, 2009
Julia Ramos, La Paz, July 29, 2009
Eugenio Rojas, Achacachi, July 21, 2009
Julio Salazar, Villa Tunari, August 8, 2009
Ximena Soruco, La Paz, June 15, 2009
Pablo Stefanoni, La Paz, summer 2009
Fidel Surco, La Paz, August 6, 2009
Luis Tapia, La Paz, July 17, 2009
Oscar Vega, La Paz, summer 2009
Lino Vilca, La Paz, summer 2009
Leonilda Zurita, La Paz, July 2, 2009
NOTES
PROLOGUE
1. Amalia Pallares, From Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance: The Ecuadorian Andes
in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), x.
2. Leon Zamosc, “Agrarian Protest and the Indian Movement in the Ecuadorian
Highlands,” Latin American Research Review 29, no. 3 (1994): 37.
3. Mandi Bane, “Social Change in the Neoliberal Era: The Indigenous Movement in
Saquisili, Ecuador” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2011), 72.
4. Zamosc, “Agrarian Protest,” 62.
5. Susan Sawyer, Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neolib-
eralism in Ecuador (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004), 25–26.
6. Deborah Yashar, Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous
Movements and the Postliberal Challenge (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 127.
7. Nina Pacari, “Taking on the Neoliberal Agenda,” NACLA Report on the Americas
29, no. 3 (1996): 23.
8. Pacari, “Neoliberal Agenda,” 24.
9. Marc Becker, ¡Pachakutik! Indigenous Movements and Electoral Politics in Ecuador
(Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 51.
10. Xavier Albó, Movimientos y poder indígena en Bolivia, Ecuador y Perú (La Paz:
CIPCA [Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado], 2008), 143–48.
11. Kenneth J. Mijeski and Scott H. Beck, Pachakutik and the Rise of the Ecuadorian
Indigenous Movement, Ohio Research in International Studies, Latin American
Series, no. 51 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011), 107.
308 NOTES TO PAGES 7–13
12. Quoted in Albó, Movimientos, 143. Translations from published sources are mine
unless otherwise noted.
13. Rachel Gutiérrez Aguilar, Levantamiento y movilización en Bolivia (2000–2005)
(Mexico City: Sísifo Ediciones, 2009), 83–84, table 1.
14. Félix Patzi, Insurgencia y sumisión: Movimientos sociales e indígenas, 2nd ed. (La
Paz: Ediciones Yachaywasi, 2007), 259. Patzi notes that the death penalty was not
customary in Aymara traditional law.
15. Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thompson, Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present
in Bolivian Politics (London: Verso, 2007), 111.
16. Six years after the Gas War, in an interview for this book, Quispe’s positions
remained essentially unchanged. The definition of q’ara is from Bruce Mannheim,
The Language of the Inka Since the European Invasion (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2013), 88; “uncultured” and “uncivilized” are from the point of view of tradi-
tional Andean society.
17. Luis A. Gómez, El Alto de pie: Una insurrección Aymara in Bolivia (La Paz: Waldo
Gutiérrez, 2006), 45–46.
18. Hylton and Thomson, Revolutionary Horizons, 114.
19. Gutiérrez Aguilar, Levantamiento, 261.
20. The October sequence of events is from Hylton and Thomson, Revolutionary Hori-
zons, 113–17.
21. Hylton and Thomson, Revolutionary Horizons, 124.
22. Those interviewed in Ecuador had been out of power six years at the time of the
interviews (2011). Those in Bolivia were very much part of an ongoing revolutionary
process when they were interviewed in 2008 and 2009. In both cases they were
asked about their current views.
INTRODUCTION
1. José Antonio Lucero, Struggles of Voice: The Politics of Indigenous Representation in

the Andes (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008): constructivism, 23;
“associational ecologies,” 119.
2. Deborah Yashar, Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous
Movements and the Postliberal Challenge (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 132–33.
3. Amalia Pallares, From Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance: The Ecuadorian Andes
in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 10.
4. Galo Ramón Valarezo, El regreso de los runas: La potencialidad del proyecto indio en
el Ecuador contemporáneo (Quito: COMUNIC [Comunidades y Desarrollo en el
Ecuador]-Federación Interamericana, 1993), 60.
5. On the Communist Party in Ecuador, see Marc Becker, Indians and Leftists in the
Making of Ecuador’s Modern Indigenous Movements (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 2008).
6. Xavier Albó, “El retorno del Indio,” Revista Andina 9, no. 2 (1991): 299–345.
NOTES TO PAGES 13–20 309
7. Ramón Valarezo, El regreso, 266.

8. Javier Hurtado, El katarismo (La Paz: Instituto de Historia Social Boliviana [HIS-
BOL], 1986), 230.
9. Mandi Bane, “Social Change in the Neoliberal Era: The Indigenous Movement in
Saquisili, Ecuador” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2011), 76.
10. Pallares, Peasant Struggles, 51.
12. Bane, “Social Change,” 12.
15. Leon Zamosc, “Agrarian Protest and the Indian Movement in the Ecuadorian
Highlands,” Latin American Research Review 29, no. 3 (1994): 64.
16. Pallares, Peasant Struggles, 59–69.
20. Jorge León, “Las organizaciones indígenas: Igualdad y diferencia: La afirmación
de los conquistados,” in Indios: Una reflexión sobre el levantamiento indígena de 1990,
ed. Ileana Almeida et al. (Quito: Ediciones Abya Yala, 1992), 385.
21. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “Liberal Democracy and Ayllu Democracy in Bolivia:
The Case of Northern Potosí,” Journal of Development Studies 26, no. 4 ( July 1990):
115.
22. Rivera Cusicanqui, “Liberal Democracy,” 117.
23. Álvaro García Linera [Qhananchiri], Crítica de la nación y nación crítica naciente
(La Paz: Ediciones Ofensiva Roja, 1990), 10.
24. Álvaro García Linera, Forma valor y forma comunidad: Aproximación teórica abstracta
a los fundamentos civilizatorios que preceden al ayllu universal (Conchocoro, Bolivia:
n.p., 1995).
25. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (New York: Penguin Classics, 1992), 125–77.
26. Álvaro García Linera, “Sindicato, multitud y comunidad: Movimientos sociales y
formas de autonomía política en Bolivia,” in Tiempos de rebelión, ed. Álvaro García,
Raquel Gutiérrez, Raúl Prada, and Luis Tapia (La Paz: Muela del Diablo Editores,
2001), 57.
27. Álvaro García Linera, “Estado plurinacional: Una propuesta democrática y plu-
ralista para la extinción de la exclusión de las naciones indígenas,” in La transfor-
mación pluralista del estado, ed. Álvaro García Linera, Luis Tapia Mealla, and Raúl
Prada Alcoreza (La Paz: Muela del Diablo Editores, 2004), 45.
28. Álvaro García Linera, “Citizenship and Democracy in Bolivia (1900–1998),” in Ple-
beian Power: Collective Action and Indigenous, Working-Class and Popular Identities
in Bolivia (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 102.
29. For the defining statement of the “Washington Consensus,” see John Williamson,
“The Progress of Policy Reform in Latin America,” in Latin America Adjustment:
How Much Has Happened?, ed. John Williamson (Washington, D.C.: Institute
for International Economics, 1990), 353–420. For a critical perspective, see David
Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
30. Benjamin Kohl and Linda Farthing, Impasse in Bolivia (London: Zed Books,
2006), 18–22.
31. Kohl and Farthing, Impasse in Bolivia, 65.
32. García Linera, “Sindicato,” 55–56.
33. Kohl and Farthing, Impasse in Bolivia, 73.
34. Kohl and Farthing, Impasse in Bolivia, 149, 151.
35. García Linera, “Sindicato,” 57.
36. Zamosc, “Agrarian Protest,” 52–53.
37. Jeanne A. K. Hey and Thomas Klak, “From Protectionism Towards Neoliberalism:
Ecuador Across Four Administrations (1981–1996),” Studies in Comparative Inter-
national Development 34, no. 3 (1999): 66–97.
38. Hey and Klak, “From Protectionism Towards Neoliberalism,” 92.
39. Deborah Yashar, Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Move-
ments and the Postliberal Challenge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
43. Álvaro García Linera, Marxa Chávez León, and Patricia Costas Monje, Sociología
de los movimientos sociales en Bolivia: Estructuras de movilización, repertorios culturales
y acción política (La Paz: Diakonia/Oxfam, 2005), 440.
44. Adolfo Gilly, “Bolivia: A Twenty-First-Century Revolution,” Socialism and Democ-
racy 19, no. 3 (2005): 41–54.
45. Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thompson, Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present
in Bolivian Politics (London: Verso, 2007), 41.
46. James Dunkerley, Bolivia: Revolution and the Power of History in the Present (Lon-
don: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2007), 25.
47. Quoted in Dunkerley, Bolivia, 23.
48. Arturo Escobar, “Latin America at a Crossroads,” Cultural Studies 24, no. 1 (2010): 4.
49. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Refundación del estado en América Latina: Perspectivas
desde una epistemología del Sur (Quito: Ediciones de Abya Yala, 2010).
50. Jeffery M. Paige, “Finding the Revolutionary in the Revolution: Social Science
Concepts and the Future of Revolution,” in The Future of Revolutions, ed. John
Foran (London: Zed Books, 2003), 24 (emphasis added).
51. Paige, “Finding the Revolutionary in the Revolution,” 19–20.
52. Paige, “Finding the Revolutionary in the Revolution.”
53. Quoted in Jeremy F. Lane, Pierre Bourdieu: A Critical Introduction (London: Pluto,
2000), 84.
54. Pierre Bourdieu, “Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field,” in Business as
Usual: The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown, ed. Craig Calhoun and Georgi
Derlugian (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 37.
55. Bourdieu, “Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field,” 37.

56. Paige, “Finding the Revolutionary in the Revolution,” 25.
57. Interview with the author, La Paz, summer 2009. As mentioned in the preface,
interview translations are by the author or Silvia Varela.
58. Quoted in “Mitos Andinos,” May 2, 2010, accessed June 25, 2019, http://
perezcanhotmailcom.blogspot.com/2010/05/mitos-andinos.html.
59. Esteban Ticona, Organización y liderazgo Aymara: La experiencia indígena en la
política boliviana, 1979–1996 (La Paz: Universidad de Cordillera, 2000), 133.
60. Fernando Coronil, “The Future in Question: History and Utopia in Latin America
(1989–2010),” in Business as Usual: The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown, ed.
Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derlugian (New York: New York University Press,
2011), 231–64.
CHAPTER 1
1. On the national role of Amazonian organizations, see Deborah Yashar, Contesting

Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Post liberal
Challenge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 131–33; and Robert Ando-
lina, “Colonial Legacies and Plurinational Imaginaries: Indigenous Movement Pol-
itics in Ecuador and Bolivia” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1999), 44. On oil
in the Amazon, see Susan Sawyer, Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational
Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004).
2. Population estimates for Amazonian ethnic groups are from Amalia Pallares, From
Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance: The Ecuadorian Andes in the Late Twenti-
eth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 6. Published results
from the 2010 Census indicate similar numbers for most groups, but the Shuar
have almost doubled to 79,709 and the Achuar have increased more than tenfold
to 7,865. No separate numbers are given for the Amazonian Kichwa. See Walter
Fernández, Las cifras del pueblo indígena: Una mirada desde el censo de población
y vivienda 2010 (Quito: Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos, 2012). For
current constituent members of CONFENIAE, see the organization’s website,
accessed July 3, 2019, http://www.ecuanex.net.ec/confeniae/.
3. Carmen Martínez Novo, “Building an Anti-Neoliberal Nation with the Indig-
enous Movement: The Salesian Missions of Ecuador,” in Bridging the Gaps:
Faith-Based Organizations, Neoliberalism, and Development in Latin America and
the Caribbean, ed. Tara Hefferan, Julie Adkins, and Laurie Occhippinti (Lanham,
Md.: Lexington Books, 2009), 213–29; Steve Rubenstein, “Colonialism, the Shuar
Federation, and the Ecuadorian State,” Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space 19, no. 3 (2001): 263–93; Ernesto Salazar, “The Federation Shuar and the Col-
onization Frontier,” in Cultural Transformations and Ethnicity in Modern Ecuador,
ed. Norman E. Whitten Jr. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), 580–613; Yashar,
Contesting Citizenship, 119–21.
4. Martínez Novo, “Building an Anti-Neoliberal Nation,” 214–15.

5. Rubenstein, “Colonialism,” 272, 276.
6. Salazar, “The Federation Shuar,” 595.
7. Janet Wall Hendricks, “Power and Knowledge: Discourse and Ideological Trans-
formation Among the Shuar,” American Ethnologist 15, no. 2 (1988): 216–38.
8. Michael J. Harner, The Jívaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls (1972; repr., Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984), vii–viii, 1; Salazar, “The Federation Shuar,” 589.
9. Harner, The Jívaro, 135–43.
10. Harner, The Jívaro, 210.
11. Harner, The Jívaro, 213.
12. Harner, The Jívaro, vii–viii.
13. Harner, The Jívaro, 213–14.
14. Thomas K. Rudel, Diane Bates, and Rafael Machinguiashi, “Ecologically Noble
Amerindians?: Cattle Ranching and Cash Cropping Among Shuar and Colonists
in Ecuador,” Latin American Research Review 37, no. 1 (2002): 144–59.
15. “Bosco Wisum es símbolo de lucha para amazónicos,” El Universo, October 4,
2009, https://www.eluniverso.com/2009/10/04/1/1355/bosco-wisum-simbolo-lucha
-amazonicos.html; Front Line Defenders, “Imminent Arrest of Pepe Acacho,” n.d.
[October 2018?], accessed June 25, 2019, https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/
case/imminent-arrest-pepe-acacho.
16. Anders Sirén, “Changing Interaction Between Humans and Nature in Sarayaku”
(PhD diss., Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, 2004), 134.
17. Sawyer, Crude Chronicles, 64–66.
18. Rommel Lara, “La construcción de la etnicidad en el conflicto entre Sarayaku
y el estado nacional ecuatoriano” (master’s thesis, Facultad Latinoamericana de
Ciencias Sociales [FLACSO]Sede Ecuador, 2009), 76–77.
19. See Carol Y. Verbeek, “Free, Prior, Informed Consent: The Key to Self Determi-
nation: An Analysis of The Kichwa People of Sarayaku v. Ecuador,” American Indian
Law Review 37, no. 1 (2012–13): 263–82; Lisi Brunner and Karla Quintana, “The
Duty to Consult in the Inter-American System: Legal Standards after Sarayaku,
“American Society of International Law Insights 16, no. 35 (2012): 1–19; and “Ecua-
doran State Asks for Forgiveness in Sarayaku,” Telesur TV, October 2, 2014.
20. Sirén, “Changing Interaction,” 40–43.
21. Sirén, “Changing Interaction,” 126.
22. Ampam Karakras, “Las nacionalidades indias y el estado ecuatoriano” (1984), repr.
in Biblioteca básica del pensamiento ecuatoriana, vol. 34, Pensamiento indigenista del
Ecuador (Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador, 1988), 645.
23. Yashar, Contesting Citizenship, 126.
24. Mónica Chuji, interview with the author, Quito, July 8, 2011. All subsequent ref-
erences to Chuji in the book are from this interview.
25. Marc Becker, in ¡Pachakutik! Indigenous Movements and Electoral Politics in Ecua-
dor (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 13–14, confirms the communist
origins of the nation concept.
26. J. V. Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” in Collected Works, vol. 2 (Mos-
cow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953), 307.
27. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
(Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 1991), 176.
28. Norman E. Whitten, Sacha Runa: Ethnicity and Adaptation of Ecuadorian Jungle
Quechua (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), 268.
29. CONAIE, Proyecto político para la construcción del estado plurinacional (Quito:
CONAIE, Consejo de Gobierno, 2012), https://conaie.org/2015/07/21/proyecto
-politico-conaie-2012/.
30. CONAIE, Proyecto político.
31. “Declaration,” accessed July 3, 2019, https://kawsaksacha.org.
32. Karakras, “Las nacionalidades indias,” 637.
33. Rafael Antuni, “Unir lo diverso para construir un Ecuador intercultural y equita-
tivo,” Agora Política, September 2011, 67.
34. “Marlon Santi, New Amazonian President of CONAIE,” Redamazon, Janu-
ary 15, 2008, https:// redamazon.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/marlon-santi-new
-amazonian-president-of-conaie/.
CHAPTER 2
1. Barry J. Lyons, Remembering the Hacienda: Religion, Authority, and Social Change in
Highland Ecuador (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006); Amalia Pallares, From
Peasant Struggle to Indian Resistance: The Ecuadorian Andes in the Late Twentieth
Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 7–11.
2. Marc Becker, Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador’s Modern Indigenous
Movements (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008), 95, 157.
3. Pallares, Peasant Struggle, 160–64.
4. Pallares, Peasant Struggle, 149; Becker, Indians and Leftists, 146–56.
5. Galo Ramón, El regreso de los runas: La potencialidad del proyecto indio en el Ecuador
contemporáneo (Quito: COMUNIC [Comunidades y Desarrollo en el Ecuador]-
Fundación Interaméricana, 1993), 111.
6. Mandi A. Bane, “Social Change in the Neoliberal Era: The Indigenous Movement
in Saquisili, Ecuador” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2011), 62.
9. Lyons, Remembering the Hacienda, 286.
10. José Antonio Lucero, Voices of Struggles: The Politics of Indigenous Representation in
the Andes (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), 99.
11. Pallares, Peasant Struggle, 158.
12. Luis Macas, “Sumak Kawsay: La vida en plenitud,” in Sumak Kawsay Yuyay:
Antología del pensamiento indigenista ecuatoriano sobre Sumak Kawsay, ed. Anto-
nio Luis Hidalgo-Capitán, Alejandro Guillén García, and Nancy Deleg Guazha
(Huelva: Centro de Investigación en Migraciones, Universidad de Huelva, 2014), 184.
13. Quoted in Santiago García Álvarez, “Qué es el sumak kawsay o buen vivir,” accessed
July 4, 2019, https://www.academia.edu/6429107/Qué_es_el_sumak_kawsay_o
_buen_vivir.
14. “Seguidor de la Teoría de Liberación en la Ecuarunari,” El Universo, December
27, 2009, https://www.eluniverso.com/2009/12/27/1/1355/seguidor-teoria-liberacion
-ecuarunari.html; ECUARUNARI, “¿Quién es Delfín Tenesaca?,” December 24,
2009, accessed August 11, 2011, http://ecuarunari.org/portal/Qui%C3%A8n%20es
%20Delfín%20Tenesaca%3.
15. ECUARUNARI, “Hoja de vida de Humberto Cholango, Presidente ECUA-
RUNARI,” April 25, 2003, https://movimientos.org/es/enlacei/show_text.php3
%3Fkey%3D1574.
16. “Construyendo gobiernos locales alternativos,” May 24, 2004, accessed October 12,
2012, http://qollasuyu.indymedia.org/es/2004/05/769.shtml.
CHAPTER 3
1. Marc Becker, ¡Pachakutik! Indigenous Movements and Electoral Politics in Ecuador

(Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 44.
2. Donna Lee Van Cott, From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The Evolution
of Ethnic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 121.
3. Becker, ¡Pachakutik!, 46.
4. Becker, ¡Pachakutik!, 51.
5. Becker, ¡Pachakutik!, 46; Kenneth J. Mijeski and Scott M. Beck, Pachakutik and the
Rise and Fall of the Ecuadorian Indigenous Movement, Ohio Research in Interna-
tional Studies Latin American Series 51 (Athens: Ohio University Press), 66–67.
6. Mijeski and Beck, Pachakutik, 82.
8. Marta Harnecker, “Gobierno de Correa y movimiento indígena: Entrevistas a
Osvaldo León, Ricardo Patiño, Alberta Acosta, Daniel Suarez, Miguel Lluco
y Ricardo Carrillo” (unpublished manuscript, October 12, 2010, in author’s
possession).
10. Gerónimo Yantalema, Asambleísta por Chimborazo, accessed November 12, 2012,
http://geronimoyantalema.com/geronimo-yantalema-asambleista.php.
11. Salvador Quishpe Lozano, Atento Ecuador, accessed December 9, 2015, http://
atentoecuador.blogspot/ p/ salvador -quishpe -lozano -salva -html; “Salvador
Quishpe Lozano: Student at the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito,” accessed
October 12, 2012, http://www.saraguro.org/salvador.htm.
12. “El admirador de Fidel que acompaña al ex banquero,” El Telégrafo, October
29, 2012, https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/informacion/1/el-admirador-de
-fidel-que-acompana-al-ex-banquero; “Auki Tituaña: Una parte de mi corazón
está en Camagüey,” Camagüeybax, accessed July 20, 2011, http:// camagüeybax
.awardspace.com/generos_periodisticos/auki_tituana.htm.
CHAPTER 4
1. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “Pachakuti: Los horizontes históricos del colonialismo

interno,” in Violencias encubiertas en Bolivia, ed. Xavier Albó and Raul Barrientos
(La Paz: Ediciones Aruwiyiri, 1993), 33.
2. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “Oppressed but Not Defeated”: Peasant Struggles Among the
Aymara and Quechua in Bolivia, 1900–1980 (Geneva: United Nations Institute for
Social Development, 1987), 83.
3. Xavier Albó, “From MNRistas to Kataristas to Katari,” in Resistance, Rebellion, and
Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, ed. Steve J. Stern
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 386–88.
4. Quoted in José Antonio Lucero, Struggles of Voice: The Politics of Indigenous Repre-
sentation in the Andes (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), 49.
5. Brooke Larson, Trials of Nation Making: Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the
Andes, 1810–1910 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
6. Albó, “MNRistas,” 412.
7. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “Luchas campesinas contemporáneas en Bolivia: El
movimiento ‘Katarista,’ 1970–1980,” in Bolivia Hoy, ed. René Zavaleta Mercado
(Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1980), 146.
9. Fausto Reinaga, La revolución india (La Paz: Ediciones PIB [Partido Indio de
Bolivia], 1969. This edition includes Reinaga’s political manifesto, “Manifiesto del
partido indio de Bolivia,” as chapter 6.
10. Quoted in Jose Antonio Lucero, “Fanon in the Andes: Fausto Reinaga, Indianismo and
the Black Atlantic,” International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 13.
11. Esteban Ticona Alejo, “La necesidad de investigar sobre la vigencia del pens-
amiento de Fausto Reinaga en Qullasuyu—Bolivia,” Mallki 3, no. 10 (2005), http://
www.faustoreinaga.org.bo/mallki/revistas.
12. Reinaga, Revolución, 168, 170, 176, 187, 203, 330.
13. Reinaga, Revolución, 373.
15. Reinaga, Revolución, 141, 342.
17. Reinaga, Revolución, 76, 141.
20. Marcia Stephenson, “Fausto Reinaga y el discurso Indianista en Bolivia,” accessed
February 4, 2013, http://faustoreinaga.com/index/.php?view=article&catid=51
%3Arevista-nro-10&id=136%3.
21. The fundamental source on the Katarist movement remains Javier Hurtado, El
katarismo (La Paz: Instituto de Historia Social Boliviana [HISBOL], 1986). See
also Rivera Cusicanqui, “Oppressed but Not Defeated”; and Albó, “MNRistas.” An
excellent source in English is Deborah J. Yashar, Contesting Citizenship in Latin
America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005).
22. Hurtado, El katarismo, 33.
23. Yashar, Contesting Citizenship, 168.
24. Rivera Cusicanqui, “Oppressed but Not Defeated,” 149.
25. Marcia Stephenson, “Forging an Indigenous Public Sphere: The Taller de Historia
Oral Andina in Bolivia,” Latin American Research Review 37, no. 2 (2002): 99–118.
27. John Crabtree, Patterns of Protest: Politics and Social Movements in Bolivia (London:
Latin American Bureau, 2005), 86.
28. Quoted in Rivera Cusicanqui, “Oppressed but Not Defeated,” 117.
29. Quoted in Rivera Cusicanqui, “Oppressed but Not Defeated,” 118.
30. Martín Cúneo, “Bolivia: Felipe Quispe: El último Mallku,” Viejo Topo, no. 284
(September 2011), http://losmovimientoscontraatacan.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/
bolivia-felipe-quispe-el-ultimo-mallku/.
31. Jeffery R. Webber, “Evismo—Reform? Revolution? Counter-Revolution,” Inter-
national Viewpoint: Online Magazine 4, no. 382 (October 2006), http://www
.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1149; Rugen Roxas, “Fides Survey
Shows That Eugenio Rojas Former Achacachi’s Mayor Is Considered the Most
Deceitful and Corrupt Personality,” Achacachi Post: Online News, April 13, 2011,
http://achacachi.blogspot.com/2011/04/fides-survey-shows-that-eugenio-rojas
.html; “Ponchos rojos retienen al gobernador Cocarico y al senador Rojas en El
Alto,” El País, September 12, 2012, http://www.opinion.com.bo/opinion/articulos/
2012/0912/noticias.php?id=71033.
32. “Pablo Mamani Ramírez,” accessed November 30, 2012, http://revistawillka.org/
index.php?option=com_contact&view=contact.
33. “Curriculum Vitae: María Eugenia Choque Quispe,” accessed October 25, 2016,
www.reduii.org/cii/sites/default/files/7mariaeugeniachoque.pdf.
CHAPTER 5
1. Hervé do Alto, “El MAS boliviano, entre la protesta callejera y la política insti-
tucional,” in Reinventando la nación en Bolivia: Movimientos sociales, estado y post
colonialidad, ed. Karin Monasteros, Pablo Stefanoni, and Hervé do Alto (La Paz:
CLASCO/Plural Editores, 2007), 75, 79.
2. Donna Lee Van Cott, From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The Evolution
of Ethnic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 67.
y acción política (La Paz: Diakonia/Oxfam, 2005), 390–91, 456, claim that there are
four CSCB affiliates and only two CSUTCB. They classify the most powerful fed-
eration, that of the Tropics, as part of the CSCB even though Evo Morales himself
says (quoted on 390n67) that his organization is affiliated with the CSUTCB.
Kevin Healy, “Political Ascent of Bolivia’s Peasant Coca Leaf Producers,” Journal
of International Studies and World Affairs 33 (Spring 1991): 93, agrees with Morales.
Andrea Viola Recasens, “¡Viva la coca, mueran los gringos!”: Movilizaciones campesi-
nas y etnicidad en El Chapare (Bolivia), Estudis D’Antropologia Social I Cultural
6 (Barcelona: Departament d’Antropolgia Cultural i Histria i Africa, Universitat
de Barcelona, 2001), 45, lists only three federations associated with the colonizers
and does not include the Federation of the Tropics.
4. García Linera, Chávez León, and Costas Monje, Sociología de los movimientos socia-
les, 456, 529.
5. Viola Recasens, “Viva la coca,” 22, 24.
6. Allison Spedding, Wachu wachu: Cultivo de coca e identidad en los Yunkas de La Paz
(La Paz: Instituto de Historia Social Boliviana [HISBOL], 1994), 42.
7. Spedding, Wachu wachu, 38.
8. Viola Recasens, “Viva la coca,” 25.
9. Donna Lee Van Cott, Radical Democracy in the Andes (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), 181.
10. Healy, “Political Ascent,” 93.
13. Harry Sanabria, “The Discourse and Practice of Repression and Resistance in the
Chapare,” in Coca, Cocaine, and the Bolivian Reality, ed. Madeline Barber Léons
and Harry Sanabria (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 177.
14. Viola Recasens, “Viva la coca,” 34–35.
16. Viola Recasens, “Viva la coca”: demands, 31; marches, 30; quote, 57.
les, 438–40.
18. Viola Recasens, “Viva la coca”: quote, 66; Yungas/Chapare comparison, 65; based on
data from H. C. F. Mansilla, Repercusiones ecológicas y éticas del complejo coca/cocaína (La
Paz: Sistema Educativo Antidrogas y de Movilización Social (SEAMOS), 1994), 71.
21. La Razón, June 23, 2008. The two others were Achacachi mayor and now senator
Eugenio Rojas (see chapter 4) and COR–El Alto leader and now El Alto mayor
Édgar Patana (see chapter 6). The article was prescient. Five of the six went on to
hold high office after the article was published (and the interviews were finished).
The conspicuous exception was Leonilda Zurita—the one woman in the group.
22. Pablo Stefanoni and Hervé do Alto, Evo Morales: De la coca al palacio (La Paz:
Imprenta Cervantes, 206), 64.
23. Benjamin Dangl, “Leonilda Zurita: Growing Coca in a Fight for Survival in
Bolivia,” Canadian Dimension 40, no. 5(September–October 2006), https://
canadiandimension.com/articles/view/leonilda-zurita-growing-coca-in-a-fight
-for-survival-in-bolivia-benjamin-da.
24. “Senador Julio Salazar: Datos Personales,” Agencia Boliviana de Información,

accessed November 30, 2012, http://senadorjuliosalazarcbba.blogspot.com/p/leyes
-aprovadas.html.
25. Fernando Coronil, “Dismembering and Remembering the Nation: The Semantics
of Political Violence in Venezuela,” Society for Comparative Study of Society and
History 33, no. 2 (April 1991): 327–28.
CHAPTER 6
1. Isaac Avalos, interview with the author, La Paz, July 27, 2009.
2. FNMCB-BS: Esteban Ticona Alejo, CSUTCB: Trayectoria y desafíos (La Paz: Centro
de Documentación e Información [CEDOIN], 1996), 24–28; CSCB: Xavier Albó,
“From MNRistas to Kataristas to Katari,” in Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness
in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, ed. Steve J. Stern (Madison: Uni-
versity of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 389–90; CIDOB: Deborah J. Yashar, Contesting
Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal
Challenge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 198–218.
3. Nancy Postero, “‘El Pueblo Boliviano, de Composición Plural’: A Look at Pluri-
nationalism in Bolivia” (paper presented at the conference “Power to the People,”
University of Kentucky, April 2012).
y acción política (La Paz: Diakonia/Oxfam, 2005), 507–8.
les, 319: Ticona Alejo, CSUTCB, 10.
6. Luis Tapia, interview with the author, La Paz, July 17, 2009.
7. Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia, Plan
estratégico de vida 2008–2017 (La Paz: Confederación Sindical Única de Traba-
jadores Campesinos de Bolivia: Coordinadora de Organizaciones Indígenas Cam-
pesinas de Bolivia, 2008), 1.
8. “Fidel Surco Cañasaca: Ex senador transportista,” La Razón, September 13, 2015;
“Surco: ‘Atentados son inicio de una guerra sucia contra el proceso de cambio,’”
August 13, 2009, www.eabolivia.com/political/1795-surco-qatentados-son-inicio
-de-una-guerra-sucia-contra-el-proceso-de-cambioq.html.
9. “Biografía oficial: Edgar Patana,” accessed November 30, 2012, www.edgarpatana
.com; “Edgar Patana, de vendedor ambulante a Alcalde de El Alto,” Bolpress, April
4, 2010, http://www.bolpress.net/art.php?Cod=2010040414.
10. Rafael Archondo, interview with the author, La Paz, summer 2009.
11. Donna Lee Van Cott, “Exclusion to Inclusion: Bolivia’s 2002 Elections,” Journal
of Latin American Studies 35, no. 4 (November 2003): 754–55.
12. Félix Patzi Paco, Insurgencia y sumisión: Movimientos sociales e indígenas, 2nd ed. (La
Paz: Ediciones Yachaywasi, 2007), 231.
13. Rafael Archondo, interview with the author, La Paz, summer 2009.
CHAPTER 7
1. The important Siglo XX miners’ union was founded by the communists. As late
as 1953 the Trotskyists may have controlled as many as half of the seats on the
peak workers organization the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB). James Dunkerley,
Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia, 1952–1982 (London: Verso, 1984),
16, 64.
2. Pablo Stefanoni and Hervé do Alto, Evo Morales: De la coca al palacio (La Paz: Mal-
estata, 2006), 29, quoted in S. Sandor John, Bolivia’s Radical Traditions: Permanent
Revolution in the Andes (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009), 232.
3. For a summary of the controversy, see John Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revo-
lutionary Life (New York: Grove, 1997), 682–87.
4. Anonymous activist, interview with the author, July 22, 2008.
5. Herbert S. Klein, A Concise History of Bolivia (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), 185, 196–97.
6. In 1984–85 inflation reached the astronomical level of 20,000 percent. Benjamin
Kohl and Linda Farthing, Impasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal Hegemony and Popular
Resistance (London: Zed Books, 2006), 55.
7. Klein, A Concise History, 184–85.
8. NACLA, “The Thesis of Pulacayo,” September 25, 2007, https://nacla.org/article/
thesis-pulacayo.
9. Álvaro García Linera, “Indianism and Marxism: The Disparity Between Two Rev-
olutionary Rationales,” in Plebian Power: Collective Action and Indigenous, Working-
Class and Popular Identities in Bolivia (2005; repr., Leiden: Brill, 2014), 306.
10. Álvaro García Linera, “Marxism and Indigenism in Bolivia: A Dialectic of Dia-
logue and Conflict,” interview with Jeffery R. Webber, Znet Bolivia, April 25, 2005,
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/marxism-and-indigenism-in-bolivia-a-dialectic-of
-dialogue-and-conflict-by-lvaro-garc-a-linera/.
11. García Linera, “Marxism and Indigenism in Bolivia.”
12. Álvaro García Linera, interview with Franklin Ramírez and Pablo Stefanoni, La
Paz, April 22, 2006, translated from the Spanish by Agatha Huan for the website
Axis of Logic, www.tlaxcala.es/pp.esp?lg=en&reference=170.
13. Álvaro García Linera, “Sindicato, multitud y comunidad: Movimientos sociales y
formas de autonomía política en Bolivia,” in Tiempos de rebelión, ed. Álvaro García
Linera, Raquel Gutiérrez, Raúl Prada, Felipe Quispe, and Luis Tapia (La Paz:
Muela del Diablo, 2001), 55–56.
14. Álvaro García Linera, “Estado plurinacional: Una propuesta democrática y plu-
ralista para la extinción de la exclusión de las naciones indígenas,” in La transfor-
mación pluralista del estado, ed. Álvaro García Linera, Luis Tapia Maella, and Raúl
Prada Alcoreza (La Paz: Muela del Diablo, 2004), 45.
15. Álvaro García Linera, “The Crisis of State and Indigenous-Plebeian Uprisings
in Bolivia,” in Plebeian Power: Collective Action and Indigenous, Working-Class and
Popular Identities in Bolivia (2005; repr., Leiden: Brill, 2014), 275.
16. Colectivo Manifiesto 22 de Junio, “For the Recuperation of the Process of Change
for the People and with the People,” Dialectical Anthropology 35, no. 3 (September
2011): 285–93; Álvaro García Linera, El “oenegismo”: La enfermedad infantil del dere-
chismo (O cómo la “reconducción” del proceso de cambio es la restauración neoliberal) (La
Paz: Vicepresidencia del Estado Plurinacional, 2011).
17. “Hombre sin mancha,” La Razón, June 10, 2012.
18. “Bolivia’s Racial Onslaught,” New Statesmen, June 16, 2008, https:// www
.newstatesman.com/south-america/2008/06/bolivia-violence-indigenous; César
Navarro, Crímenes de la democracia neoliberal: Movimientos sociales desde la masacre de
Villa Tunari a El Alto (La Paz: Fundación Editorial de los Diputados, 2006), cover
flap.
19. García Linera, El “oenegismo.”
20. Federico Fuentes, “Bolivia: National Revolution and ‘Communitarian Socialism,’”
Green Left Weekly, March 27, 2009, https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/41334.
21. Katy Watson, “Indigenous Bolivia Begins to Shine Under Morales,” BBC News,
December 27, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-29686249.
CONCLUSION
1. Antonio Luis Hidalgo-Capitán, Alejandro Guillén García, and Nancy Deleg

Guazha, eds., Sumak Kawsay Yuyay: Antología del pensamiento indigenista ecuatori-
ano sobre Sumak Kawsay (Huelva: Centro de Investigación en Migraciones, Uni-
versidad de Huelva, 2014).
2. Quoted in Santiago García Álvarez, “Qué es el sumak kawsay o buen vivir,” accessed
July 4, 2019, https://www.academia.edu/6429107/Qué_es_el_sumak_kawsay_o
_buen_vivir.
3. According to a Quechua vocabulary collected by Philip Jacobs, Pachamama lit-
erally means “our mother in time and space,” and it can be understood as both
the spirit of Mother Earth and a cosmic divine feminine principle. Philip Jacobs,
Runasimi, s.v. “Pachamama,” accessed July 11, 2019, http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aria/
quechua/dict/PolyglotDictionary.Readme.htm.
EPILOGUE
1. “Lenín Moreno se reúne con la CONAIE y afirma que ‘es un pilar fundamen-
tal,’” NODAL, September 12, 2017, https://www.nodal.am/2017/09/lenin-moreno
-se-reune-la-conaie-afirma-pilar-fundamental/; “Ecuador: Renewed Dialogue
Between President Moreno and Indigenous Movement Yields Important Steps
Forward,” Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organization, September 21, 2017,
https://unpo.org/article/20345?id=20345; “Conaie a la expectativa por gobierno
de Lenín Moreno,” El Comercio, August 9, 2017, https://www.elcomercio.com/
actualidad/conaie-expectativa-gobierno-ecuador-leninmoreno.html; “El presi-
dente de Ecuador convertirá la sede de Unasur en Quito en una universidad indí-
gena,” EFE, July 6, 2018, https://www.efe.com/efe/america/portada/el-presidente

-de-ecuador-convertira-la-sede-de-unasur-en-quito-una-universidad-indigena/
20000064-3675570; Isabel Riofrio, “Ecuador: Lenín Moreno detiene entrega de
concesiones mineras y petroleras tras reunirse con líderes indígenas,” MONG-
ABAY, December 15, 2017, https:// es .mongabay.com/ 2017/ 12/ ecuador -lenin
-moreno-detiene-entrega-concesiones-mineras-petroleras-tras-reunirse-lideres
-indigenas/.
2. Nicholas Casey and Clifford Krauss, “It Doesn’t Matter If Ecuador Can Afford
This Dam. China Still Gets Paid,” New York Times, December 24, 2018.
3. Laurence Blair, “Evo For Ever? Bolivia Scraps Term Limits as Critics Blast ‘Coup’
to Keep Morales in Power,” The Guardian, December 3, 2017.
4. To whit, “With the election set for next year, the issue of a boundless presidency
has become a broader concern for a Latin America where threats to democracy are
mounting.” Nicholas Casey, “In Bolivia, Morales’s Indigenous Base Backtracks on
Support,” New York Times, December 8, 2018.
5. “Bolivia Closes 2018 Among the Highest Economic Growth Rates,” Telesur,
December 8, 2018, https:// www.telesurenglish.net/news/ Bolivia-Closes-2018
-Among-The-Highest-Economic-Growth-Rates-20181208-0022.html; William
Neuman, “Turnabout in Bolivia as Economy Rises from Instability,” New York
Times, February 16, 2014; World Bank, “World Development Indicators: Women
and Development,” data for 2018, http://wdi.worldbank.org/table/WV.5.
6. Martin Sivak, Evo Morales: The Extraordinay Rise of the First Indigenous President
of Bolivia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 199.
7. Jeffery R. Webber, From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous
Liberation, and the Poltics of Evo Morales (Chicago: Haymarket, 2011), 198–200.
8. Webber, From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia, 203.
9. Pablo Stefanoni, interview with the author, La Paz, summer 2009.
10. Linda C. Farthing and Benjamin Kohl, Evo’s Bolivia: Continuity and Change (Aus-
tin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 107, 58, 65, 106.
11. Farthing and Kohl, Evo’s Bolivia, 133.
14. José P. Mauricio Vargas, “Preserving Bolivia’s Impressive Reduction in Poverty and
Inequality,” Diálogo a fondo (blog), January 13, 2016, https://www.imf.org/external/
np/blog/dialogo/011316.pdf.
15. Neuman, “Turnabout in Bolivia.”
16. Carlos Alberta Quiroga, “Bolivians in Streets to Protest Fuel Hikes,” Reuters,
December 30, 2010.
17. Nancy Postero, “‘El Pueblo Boliviano, de Composición Plural’: A Look at Pluri-
nationalism in Bolivia” (paper presented at the conference “Power to the People,”
University of Kentucky, April 2012).
INDEX
Page numbers for interviews are indicated in bold; page numbers for illustrations and
figures are indicated in italics.
Acacho, Pepe, 46 ayllu, 13, 15, 25, 34–35, 154, 185–86

Afro-Bolivians (people), 232–33, 244 Aymara (language), 155, 175–76, 188, 189
Afro-Ecuadorians (people), 57 Aymara (people): region and history of, 12,
agrarian revolution. See land reform 148, 167–68, 226; sociopolitical identity
agriculture, 69, 230. See also coca; food of, 14, 25, 155, 157, 167–68; uprising of, 8,
sovereignty; land 8–10, 34–35, 37, 147–48, 165–66, 170–73,
Albó, Xavier, 13, 150 190, 192, 247–48, 251, 292
Alianza País movement, 71
Amaguaña, Tránsito, 13, 130 Bane, Mandi, xii–xiii, 14
ama sua, ama llulla, ama quella, 71, 153, 214 Banzer, Hugo, 7, 158, 162, 164
Amazon, 12, 33, 41–42, 48–49. See also kawsak Bartolinas. See Federación Nacional de
sacha; Kichwa; Sarayaku; Shuar Mujeres Campesinas de Bolivia–
Andean Oral History Workshop. See Taller Bartolina Sisa
de Historia Oral Andina Becker, Marc, 6, 106
Andes, 12–14, 33. See also Aymara; Quechua Black October (2003), 8–10
Antuni, Rafael, 33, 41, 52, 62–67, 73–75, blockades, 7–9, 28, 47–48, 164, 171–73, 199,
286–88 208, 252
Apasa, Julián. See Katari, Túpac Bolivia: comparison with Ecuador, 25–27,
April Revolution. See Bolivian Revolution 284–85, 291–94; constitution of (see
(1952) constitution); demographics of, 226;
Archondo, Rafael, 31, 246, 247 economy of, 225–26, 265–67, 298–300 (see
ARCO, 47 also hacienda system); geography of, 12;
Argentina, 47–48 plurinationality of (see plurinationality);
Avalos, Isaac, 224–28, 242–43 sociopolitical transformations of, xi–xiii,
324 INDEX
7–10, 8, 21–23, 264–65, 291–94 (see also 200, 205, 219, 292–93, 299–300; war
revolution); as “two Bolivias,” 170–75 (see against, 22, 35, 207–17, 245–47
also Reinaga, Fausto) coca growers: indigeneity of, 15, 17, 199–201;
Bolivian Revolution (1952), 13, 16, 19, 147–54, political mobilization of, 12, 26, 31, 199–
159, 255, 291 201, 244; unions, 17, 26, 195–98 (see also
Borja, Rodrigo, 3–4, 5, 47, 136 Six Federations); women, 196, 201–2
BPI. See Partido Indio de Bolivia Cochabamba, 7, 8, 22, 35, 156, 207–13, 230
Bucaram, Abdalá, 5, 6, 30, 106 colonialism, 152, 190–91, 256–57, 263–64
colonists, 45–46, 229. see also peasantry
Cacuango, Dolores, 13, 95, 116, 130–31 colonization, 82. see also capitalism; decolo-
Cápac Raymi, 127–28 nization; extractivism; neoliberalism
capitalism, 59–60, 82–83, 97–98, 110–11, 123– communal vision. see also cosmovision;
26, 209, 260, 275–77. See also extractivism; sumak kawsay: summarized, 80–81,
neoliberalism; socialism 97–99, 101–2; according to interviewees,
Cárdenas, Victor Hugo, 156, 159, 161, 231 83–86, 88–91, 168, 267; as challenge to
Catholic Church, 43–44, 49, 60–61, 74, 77– neoliberalism, 256, 288; as organizing
80, 114–16, 126–29, 134. See also incultura- principle, 33–34, 109, 183, 256
tion; liberation theology Communist Party, 13, 78, 116, 153, 250, 270,
Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), 234, 254 319n1
Central Obrera Regional–El Alto communitarian socialism. see socialism
(COR–El Alto), 234, 239, 241 Compañía General de Combustibles
CGC. See Compañía General de (CGC), 47–48, 67
Combustibles Comuna. see Grupo Comuna
Chaco War, 250 CONAIE. see Confederación de Nacionali-
the Chapare, 196–97 dades Indígenas del Ecuador
Che. See Guevara, Ernesto “Che” CONALCAM. see Confederación Nacional
China, 118, 125, 297–98 para el Cambio
Cholango, Humberto, 87–91, 102, 288, 289, 290 CONAMAQ. see Consejo de Ayllus y
Choque, María Eugenia, 155, 160, 184–89, Markas de Qullasuyu
190, 292 CONDENPE. see Consejo de Desarrollo
Choquehuanca, David, 263 de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos del
Christianity. see Catholic Church; Ecuador
evangelicals Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas
Christmas, 127–28 de la Amazonia Ecuatoriana (CONFE-
Chuji, Mónica, 51, 288 NIAE), 4, 40, 50, 66
CIDOB. see Confederación Indígena del Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas
Oriente Boliviano del Ecuador (CONAIE): history and
citizenship, 16, 19–20, 27, 72, 147, 244 political activities of, 4–7, 24–27, 37, 46,
class. see Marxism; peasantry 66, 137–40, 297–98; plurinationality of,
COB. see Central Obrera Boliviana 27, 52, 108, 287; political vision of, 17, 27,
coca: place in indigenous culture, 35, 196, 41, 52–54, 66, 108, 287
205, 208, 215–16; production of, 12, 26, Confederación Indígena del Oriente Bolivi-
196–97, 205–6, 218; as “sacred leaf,” 35, ano (CIDOB), 179, 222–23
INDEX 325
Confederación Nacional para el Cambio CSCB. see Confederación Sindical de Colo-

(CONALCAM), 228, 272 nizadores de Bolivia
Confederación Sindical de Colonizadores CSUTCB. see Confederación Sindical
de Bolivia (CSCB), 196, 223, 229–31 Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de
Confederación Sindical Única de Tra- Bolivia
bajadores Campesinos de Bolivia Cuban Revolution, 28, 30, 86, 134
(CSUTCB), 26, 161, 164–66, 188–89, 192,
195–98, 222, 241 DEA. see United States
CONFENIAE. see Confederación de Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazo- Peoples, 58, 187
nia Ecuatoriana decolonization, 188, 226–27, 242, 256–57,
Consejo de Ayllus y Markas de Qullasuyu 263–64, 269, 274–75, 278–79. see also
(CONAMAQ), 184, 189 colonization
Consejo de Desarrollo de las Nacionali- democracy. see also plurinationality: as
dades y Pueblos del Ecuador (CON- means of revolution, 30–31, 94, 170–73,
DENPE), 81, 288–89 200, 206–7, 271–73, 292, 294–96; partic-
consent, right to, 48, 67, 74. see also consult, ipatory, 109, 212–13, 232–33, 254–56, 264,
obligation to 271; representative, 270–71
constitution. see also plurinationality: deregulation, 21. see also neoliberalism
Bolivian, 175, 203–5, 210–11, 227, 231, 238, development, 56–67, 99–100, 225–26, 265–67,
244–45, 267–68, 292–93, 299; Ecuadorian, 290–91. see also extractivism
56, 91–92, 113–14, 133–34, 289 do Alto, Hervé, 201
consult, obligation to, 48, 58–59, 92, 205. see
also consent, right to ecology, 53. see also kawsak sacha
Contento, Luis, 91–97, 288, 289 Ecuador: comparison with Bolivia, 25–27,
Coordinadora de las Seis Federaciones 284–85, 291–94; economy of, 25–26, 297–
del Trópico de Cochabamba. see Six 98 (see also hacienda system); geography
Federations of, 12, 42; sociopolitical transformations
Coordinadora por la Defensa del Agua y la of, xii–xiii, 3–7, 5, 23–24, 286–91, 293–94
Vida, 7 Ecuador Runacunapak Rikcharimuy
COR–El Alto. see Central Obrera Region- (ECUARUNARI), 77–81
al–El Alto education, 43–44, 60, 74, 91, 121–22, 162,
Correa, Rafael: economic policies of, 65–67, 169–70
74, 90–91, 96, 99–100, 118–22, 130–31, EGTK. see Ejército Guerrillero Túpac
138, 140, 287–88 (see also extractivism); Katari
indigenous self-presentation of, 131, 139; Ejército Guerrillero Túpac Katari (EGTK),
relationship with indigenous Ecuador- 156, 172–73
ians, 25, 46, 65–67, 86–87, 95–97, 99–100, El Alto, 8, 233–36, 239
107, 118–22, 130–31, 137–40, 287–88, 297 El Salvador, revolution in, 56, 75
cosmovision (worldview), 83–85, 97–98, 101, Escobar, Arturo, 29, 289
175–76, 188–89, 227, 233, 240, 258–59, 286. evangelicals, 60–61, 74, 115–16
see also communal vision; socialism; extractivism. see also capitalism; Correa,
sumak kawsay Rafael; neoliberalism: alternatives to, 56–
326 INDEX
57, 110–11, 287–89; indigenous criticism hacienda system, 12–13, 15–16, 25–26, 78–79,
of, 54, 68–70, 89–91, 99–100, 109–11, 119, 111. see also land reform
123–26, 131–32, 142, 225 Huampo, Edwin, 8, 9
Huaorani (people), 42, 65–66, 73–74, 75
Febres Cordero, León, 23, 25 hunger strikes, 165
Federación de Juntas Vecinales de El Alto Hurtado, Javier, 14
(FEJUVE), 9, 234 hydrocarbons. see also extractivism; Gas
Federación del Trópico, 197 Wars: environmental effects of extract-
Federación Ecuatoriana de Indios (FEI), ing, 56, 74, 119; indigenous resistance to
78–79 extraction of, 9, 47–49, 65–66, 68–70,
Federación Interprovincial de Centros 90; laws and policies concerning, 69,
Shuar (FICSH). see Shuar Federation 71–72; nationalization of, 28, 207, 210, 238,
Federación Nacional de Mujeres Cam- 265–66, 298–99; private control of, 8, 22,
pesinas de Bolivia–Bartolina Sisa 69, 120, 266
(FNMCB-BS/Bartolinas), 196, 204, 222, Hylton, Forrest, 9, 28
223, 241
Federación Nacional de Organizaciones IACHR. see Inter-American Court of
Campesinas (FENOC), 78–79 Human Rights
FEI. see Federación Ecuatoriana de Indios ideology, role in organizing, 26
FEJUVE. see Federación de Juntas Vecina- IERAC. see Instituto Ecuatoriano de
les de El Alto Reforma Agraria y Colonización
FENOC. see Federación Nacional de Orga- IMF riots, 22, 23
nizaciones Campesinas inculturation, 77, 79–80. see also Catholic
FICSH. see Shuar Federation Church
FNMCB-BS. see Federación Nacional indigeneity: comparing Ecuadorian and
de Mujeres Campesinas de Bolivia– Bolivian, 17–20, 34, 192–93, 223–24, 292,
Bartolina Sisa 294; erasure and invisibility, 51–52, 57–58,
food sovereignty, 67, 111, 117, 124, 142–43 147–48, 202, 299 (see also racism); as
modern political identity, 11–15, 20–24,
García Linera, Álvaro, 19–20, 22, 26, 27, 156, 34, 61–62, 75, 161–62, 184–85, 190–94,
245, 249, 251–53 241–48, 275–77; overlaps with class, 13–14,
Gas Wars, 8, 8–10, 156, 190, 233, 234, 262 241–48, 275–77 (see also peasantry); rela-
global warming, 57 tionship to modernity, 17–24, 32, 36–37,
Grupo Comuna, 36, 249, 253, 275–77 62, 75–76
Guaraní (people), 167, 226 indigenous communities, 16–17, 57–59, 205,
guerrillas, 172–73 209–10, 226–27, 267–68, 274–75. see also
Guevara, Ernesto “Che”: Bolivian expe- ayllu
dition of, 254; El Alto monument to, indigenous movement, 67–68, 87, 103, 109,
182–83, 239–40, 277; as inspiration and 116, 135–36. see also Katarist-Indianist
role model, xi, 80, 86, 181–82, 214, 228, movements; coalitions with nonindig-
258–59; as symbol for MAS, 36, 223, 242– enous interests, 95–96, 117, 129, 281–85
43, 277–78, 292–93 (see also Movimiento al Socialismo;
Gutiérrez, Lucio, 6, 24–25, 71, 104, 106–7 Movimiento de Unidad Plurinacional
Gutiérrez, Raquel, 156 Pachakutik–Nuevo País)
INDEX 327
indigenous peoples. see also specific groups: land, 45–46, 47, 79, 204, 232. see also territory
critiques of and alternatives to capital- land reform: in Bolivia, 15–17, 151, 211; in
ism, 59–60, 82–83, 97–98, 110–11, 123–26, Ecuador, 15–18, 24, 45–46, 79, 111–12, 134–
209, 260, 275–77; demographics, 25, 41– 35, 142–44
42, 42, 226; discrimination against, 13–14, language, 43–44, 118–19, 155, 175–76, 188–89,
17–20, 62, 74–75, 110, 149–50, 178–79, 190, 241
212–13, 291 (see also racism); identity of La Paz, 34, 172, 221, 223
(see indigeneity); opportunities for, 237; La revolución india. see Reinaga, Fausto
participation in government, 56, 178–79, Law 1008 (Ley del Régimen de la Coca y
217–19, 229–31; spiritual beliefs of, 60–61, Sustancias Controladas), 199, 214, 262
114–16, 127–29, 211; threats to and vio- Law of Agricultural Development, 5
lence against, 82–83, 131–32, 150, 187–88 the Left, 36, 123–25, 249, 250–53. see also
(see also racism) Marxism
infrastructure, 74, 112, 211. see also Levantamiento (uprising) (1990), 3–5, 5
development liberation theology, 77, 79–80, 98, 114, 258. see
Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y also Catholic Church; Marxism
Colonización (IERAC), 45, 46–47 lithium, 266
intellectuals, 36, 91, 177–78, 180–81, 184–
86, 192, 250–52, 301. see also specific Macas, Luis, 4, 7, 26–27, 81, 107, 117, 140–41
individuals Mahuad, Jamil, 6, 106
Inter-American Court of Human Rights Mamani Ramírez, Pablo, 155, 160, 177–84,
(IACHR), 48, 67 191, 194
interculturality: as basis for political orga- Manifesto of Tiwanaku, 158
nization, 52–53, 231–33; Bolivian versus marches, as protest strategy and tactic, 28,
Ecuadorian, 244–45; conceptions of, 199
57–58; as counter to racism and discrim- March from the Amazon (1992), 5, 5, 47
ination, 93–94, 255–56; understandings Marxism, 19–20, 27, 75, 77–80, 98, 152–53,
of, 33, 223–24 161, 164, 249–53, 268–69, 275–77. see also
interviews, methodology of, 301–4 Communist Party; Grupo Comuna;
Ishpingo-Tiputani-Tambococha, 65–66, 74, socialism
89. see also Yasuní National Park MAS. see Movimiento al Socialismo
Massacre of the Valley, 150
jungle, living. see kawsak sacha media, 131. see also radio
Mesa Quisbert, Carlos, 10, 234
Karakras, Ampam, 14, 50, 54, 55–62, 72–75 Military Peasant Pact, 150
Katari, Túpac, 14, 36, 164, 202, 223, 293 miners, 15–16, 196–97, 208, 229, 250, 273, 277,
Katarist-Indianist movements, 22, 25, 34–35, 319n1. see also colonists
150–60, 181, 191, 193, 247–48, 251–53, 283, mining, 16, 68–72, 74, 90, 92, 126, 130–32,
291–92. see also Quispe, Felipe 265–66. see also extractivism
kawsak sacha (living jungle), 33, 53–54, 70, MIP. see Movimiento Indio Pachakutik
72–76, 287–88. see also cosmovision; missionaries, 43–44, 114–16. see also Catholic
Pachamama Church; evangelicals
Kichwa (people), 12, 17, 24, 41–42, 42, 46–49, MITKA. see Movimiento Indio Túpac
77–81. see also Quechua Katari
328 INDEX
MNR. see Movimiento Nacionalista MUPP-NP. see Movimiento de Unidad

Revolucionario Plurinacional Pachakutik–Nuevo País
Mobilization for Life (1994), 5, 5
modernity, 17–20, 32 nationality, 17, 26, 33, 49–53, 57–58, 67–68,
Morales, Evo: criticisms of, 138, 156–57, 161– 72–76, 93–94, 112–14, 287
62, 164, 179–80; indigeneity of, 161–62, Navarro, César, 261–73
187, 188, 245; leadership of, 28, 157, 160, neoliberalism, 15, 20–24, 126, 207–13, 238, 256,
178–80, 213, 221, 235–39, 245, 259–60, 280, 261–63, 267, 269
292; peasant background of, 187, 245;
policies and priorities of, 187, 225–26, oil. see hydrocarbons
298–300; political career of, xii, 10, 26–27, Organización de Pueblos Indígenas de
200, 210, 298–301 Pastaza (OPIP), 5, 47–49, 50
Moreno, Lenín, 297–98
Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS). see also Pacari, Nina, 5, 108, 140
Morales, Evo: anti-imperialism of, 223, Pachakutik. see Movimiento de Unidad
241–43, 284; as coalition, 36, 241, 243–53, Plurinacional Pachakutik–Nuevo País
272–73; engagement with the indige- pachakutik (the world turned upside down),
nous, 157, 187–90, 243–45, 257–58, 281–82, 3, 31–32. see also revolution
292; ideology and priorities, 223, 241–48, Pachamama, 84–85, 100, 209, 289, 320n3. see
257–58, 280–85, 292–93; interculturality also cosmovision; kawsak sacha
of, 223–24, 241–45; peasantist base of, 36, Paige, Jeffery M., xii, xiii, 302–3
189–90, 243–48, 258, 292; political success Pallares, Amalia, 18, 80
of, 24–27, 200, 217–19; symbols of, 223, Partido Indio de Bolivia (BPI), 153
278, 292–93 Patana, Edgar, 223, 233–41, 291
Movimiento de Unidad Plurinacional Paz Estenssoro, Victor, 21–22
Pachakutik–Nuevo País (MUPP-NP/ peasantry, 13–17, 25, 78–79, 142–44, 185–86,
Pachakutik), 6–7, 25, 33–34, 63–64, 66, 71, 222–23, 241–48. see also coca growers;
75, 95–96, 105–8, 129, 290–91 colonists; hacienda system; indigenous
Movimiento Indio Pachakutik (MIP), 156, peoples
161 Peredo, Antonio, 254–61, 292
Movimiento Indio Túpac Katari (MITKA), petroleum. see hydrocarbons
155, 161 plurinationality: as basis for political
Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario organization, 50, 52–53, 72–73, 91–94,
(MNR), 13, 15–16, 149, 159, 250–51 112–14, 142, 183, 213–14, 231–33, 267–68;
Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Katari conceptions of, 33, 52, 57–58, 88, 136, 287;
(MRTK), 155–56, 157–58 constitutional recognition of, 91–92,
Movimiento Universitario Julián Apasa 267–68; goals and priorities of, 27, 90–91,
(MUJA), 154–56, 184–86, 192 100–101, 127–29, 136, 141, 167, 219, 226–27,
MRTK. see Movimiento Revolucionario 244–45, 252–53, 274–75
Túpac Katari Ponchos Rojos, 169, 170, 176–77
MUJA. see Movimiento Universitario Julián poverty, 82–83, 98–99, 120–22, 170, 202–3,
Apasa 224–25, 260, 279–80, 300
multiculturalism. see interculturality; Prada, Raúl, 273–79
plurinationality Presidential Decree 21060 (Bolivia), 21–22
INDEX 329
price controls, 111–12, 119–21 Shuar (people), 14, 24, 34, 41–46, 42, 53–54,
privatization, 5, 7, 8, 21, 69–70, 211, 261, 265. 61–62, 73. see also Confederación de
see also neoliberalism; water Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador;
Proaño, Leonidas, 79–80, 81, 116 Shuar Federation
Shuar Federation, 14, 43–46, 47. see also
Quechua (people), 12, 148, 167, 226. see also Shuar (people)
Kichwa Sirén, Andres, 47, 49
Quishpe, Salvador, 122–32, 143, 144 Sisa, Bartolina, 151, 160, 181, 182, 202, 227, 270
Quispe, Felipe, 220; biography and Six Federations, 195–96, 197, 213–14
interview of, 160–69; political rise and Skocpol, Theda, 28, 29, 30
fall, 7–10, 14, 26, 34–35, 156–57, 163, 166, social assistance, 167, 203–4, 207, 219, 225–26,
291–92; radicalism of, 17, 156–57, 159–63, 299
168–69, 191–94, 247 socialism, 31–32, 59–60, 70–71, 77–80, 138–39,
Qullasuyu, 8, 34–35, 163, 166–67, 171–74, 193 294. see also Marxism; Movimiento al
Socialismo; communitarian, 36, 268–69,
racism, 13–14, 62, 74–75, 86, 93–94, 137, 168– 279–85, 293
69, 178–80, 187–88, 212–13; as shaping Spaniards (people), 44
indigenous identity, 18–20, 149–50, 184– Spanish (language), 43–44, 118–19
85, 215–16, 253 stabilization, 21. see also neoliberalism
radio, 46, 63, 79, 88, 131, 155, 186. see also Taller Stefanoni, Pablo, 201
de Historia Oral Andina sumak kawsay (living well). see also communal
Ramón, Galo, 13–14, 17, 18 vision; cosmovision: as basis for gov-
Reinaga, Fausto, La revolución india, 14, 34, ernment, 133–34, 210, 225–26, 257–58, 263;
150–60, 161, 191, 291–92. see also Katarist- explained and described, 75, 80–83, 89–91,
Indianist movements 94–95, 99, 119, 126, 135, 202–3; at odds with
revolution: according to interviewees, 82–83, extractivism, 68–70, 82–83; as organizing
91–92, 97, 122–24, 178–80, 254–56; defined vision, 33, 64, 70–71, 142, 288–89
and summarized, 27–32, 101–2, 163, 286, suma qamaña. see sumak kawsay
293–96; goals and priorities of, 75–76, Surco, Fidel, 228–33, 242–43
143, 151–53, 178–80, 191–92, 212, 218, 248;
rejection of violence in, 173–75, 245–47, Taller de Historia Oral Andina (THOA),
254–56, 279, 290, 292; use of violence in, 154–55, 184, 186, 190–91, 192
168–69, 171, 180, 193–94, 245–47 Tenesaca, Delfin, 67, 79, 81–87, 289
Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia, 19, 20, 147, 154 territory, 5, 50–51, 205, 232. see also indige-
Rojas, Eugenio, 157, 169–77, 190–92, 194, 291 nous communities; land; nationality
Rumiñahui, 137 Thesis of Pulacayo, 250, 251. see also Marx-
ism; miners
Salazar, Julio, 207–14, 214–16 THOA. see Taller de Historia Oral Andina
Salesians, 43–44. see also Catholic Church Thomson, Sinclair, 9, 28
Sánchez de Lozada, Gonzalo, 9–10, 21–22, Ticona Alejo, Esteban, 32, 150
209, 216, 231 Tituaña, Auki, 132–41, 143–44
Sandinista Revolution, 28, 30, 56, 75 Tiwanaku, 160, 163, 185, 247
Santi, Marlon, 53–54, 67–72, 73, 74, 102, 287
Sarayaku, 46–49 Ulcuango, Ricardo, 86
330 INDEX
Unidades Móviles Policiales para Áreas whiteness, 181–82

Rurales (UMOPAR), 198, 199, 208 wiphala, 181, 227, 240, 270
unions: miners, 15–16, 250, 273, 277; peasant, Wisum, Bosco, 46
12, 17, 25–26, 197–98, 222–23, 241; workers, women, 116, 184, 187–88, 196, 199, 201–4, 219,
7, 9, 22, 121, 183, 262 302. see also coca growers; Federación
United States, 21, 58, 236; involvement in Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas
Bolivia, xv, 14, 35, 196, 198–200, 207–17, de Bolivia–Bartolina Sisa; individual
236–37, 242 (see also coca); involvement women
in Ecuador, xiv, 6, 106 workers, urban, 7, 9, 22, 121, 183, 262
Vargas, Antonio, 6, 104, 106 Yantalema, Gerónimo, 108–22, 142–43

Villa Tunari massacre, 198 Yashar, Deborah, 23–24, 50
Yasuní National Park, 65–66. see also
war on drugs, 14, 35, 198–200. see also coca; Ishpingo-Tiputani-Tambococha
United States
water, 5, 7, 8, 69–70, 71–72, 123 Zamosc, Leon, 4, 18, 23, 24, 32
Water War (1999–2000), 7, 8 Zurita, Leonilda, 196, 201–7, 214–19, 220
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeffery M. Paige is a professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of Coffee and Power: Rev-
olution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America (1997), The Politics of Repro-
ductive Ritual (1981), and Agrarian Revolution: Social Movements and Export
Agriculture in the Underdeveloped World (1975). His work has also appeared in
academic journals such as Nature, Society and Thought, American Journal of Sociol-
ogy, Latin American Research Review, and Journal of Developing Societies. From
2014 to 2015 he was a Santander Fellow for the David Rockefeller Center for
Latin American Studies at Harvard University, and from 2012 to 2013 he was a
Fellow in the Latin American Program for the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars. Between 1990 and 2005, Paige served as the associate editor
of Political Power and Social Theory. He earned his PhD from the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1968.

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I N D I G E N O US R E VO LUTI O N

© 2020 by The Arizona Board of Regents

ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-4014-3 (hardcover)

Cover design by Leigh McDonald

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Printed in the United States of America

Prologue: The World Turned Upside Down 3

PART I. THE NATION, THE LIVING JUNGLE,

1. The Nation and the Living Jungle in the Amazon 41

2. ECUARUNARI: Sumak Kawsay and the Communal Vision 77

3. Pachakutik: Indigenous Jeffersonians 105

PART II. “INDIAN REVOLUTION” AND THE MOVEMENT

4. Katarism-Indianism in the Andes 147

5. The Sacred Leaf 195

6. MAS Unionists: Che Guevara and Túpac Katari 222

7. Indianism and Marxism 249

Conclusion: Twenty-First-Century Revolution 286

the indigenous majority that brought the affairs of a modern nation-state to a

administration, like its predecessors, failed to declare Bolivia in compliance with

ALBA Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América

FELCN Fuerza Especial de Lucha Contra el Narcotráfico (Special Force

CONAIE Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador

Table 1. Indigenous uprisings in Ecuador, 1990–2005

1990 June The uprising (Levantamiento)

In 1996 CONAIE capitalized on its vanguard status by forming its own

Table 2. Indigenous-popular uprisings in Bolivia, 2000–2005

2000 Water War in Cochabamba

national, spreading through both Aymara and Quechua areas. Interspersing

Indian continued to be an accepted term in scholarly usage.7 In my interviews

AGRARIAN REVOLUTION AND INDIGENEITY

In Bolivia in April 1952, activists from the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucio-

As Ramón observes, these communities “converted themselves into the most

MODERNITY AND INDIGENEITY IN ECUADOR

It is argued by a number of scholars writing on Ecuador that land reform and

MODERNITY AND INDIGENEITY IN BOLIVIA

NEOLIBERALISM AND THE UPRISINGS

Neoliberalism, sometimes called the “Washington Consensus,” was a late

liberalism. Although the basic elements of the new politico-economic philoso-

Decree 21060 became a rallying cry for opponents of neoliberalism and is

revolution of 1952 and Ecuadorian land reform of 1964, no sustained indigenous

political neoliberalism; it intensified the experience of isolation and racism. But

DIVERGENT OUTCOMES IN ECUADOR AND BOLIVA

The 2002 elections represented the high point of Pachakutik-CONAIE

INDIGENEITY AND REVOLUTION

Social Revolutions are rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and

A revolution is a rapid and fundamental change in the categories that order

This definition is intended to remedy the structural overemphasis in many

In philosophy, metaphysics includes both ontology and epistemology. There-

to popular struggle in both countries. Among the coca producers in Bolivia,

Pachakutik is an Andean myth signifying the (re)turn to old and new

moment of suffering and anguish; and a new epoch, which is considered

“you will cease to be discriminated against when you cease to be Indian,”

regions correspond to particular categories of the emerging utopian vision. In

Political parties are, by definition, coalitions. At its founding in 1995, the

intercultural community and harmony with nature deconstruct such fundamen-

Amazonian indigenous organization. The other smaller Amazonian indigenous

MAP 1 . Ecuador political divisions: highest concentrations of Highland Kichwa, Low-

THE RISE OF THE SHUAR FEDERATION

and the Ecuadorian military in the 1960s therefore “fundamentally alter[ed]

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES: THE SHUAR FEDERATION