The elusive promise of territory: an ethnographic case study of indigenous land titling in the Bolivian Chaco

TY - BOOK

T1 - The elusive promise of territory

T2 - an ethnographic case study of indigenous land titling in the Bolivian Chaco

AU - Anthias, Penelope Fay

PY - 2014/1/30

Y1 - 2014/1/30

N2 - This PhD combines insights from postcolonialism, political ecology and critical development geography to interrogate the ambivalent role of land titling in indigenous struggles for decolonisation – that is, in addressing colonial legacies of racialised exclusion, dispossession and inequality. It does so through an ethnographic case study of one Guaraní indigenous group’s struggle to gain legal rights to their territory – “Itika Guasu”, located in Bolivia’s Chaco region – as a Communal Land of Origin (Tierra Comunitaria de Orígen, TCO), a collective land title created under Bolivia’s 1996 INRA Law. Through an exploration of the dynamics and outcomes of this land struggle – which is emblematic of a wave of indigneous counter-mapping and land titling that took place across the Americas during the 1990s – I trace the gradual unravelling of a multicultural project of indigenous territory, predicated on the creation of bounded spaces of ethnic cultural difference, amidst the “entangled landscapes” (Moore, 2005) of postcolonial and neoliberal development. Specifically, I argue that governmental efforts to “spatialise race” through collective land titling – which both responded to and fuelled indigenous peoples’ own historically-grounded aspirations for “recovering territory” – were undermined in practice by entrenched state and settler geographies, persistent colonial power relations and discourses of rights, and new reterritorialising processes of extractive industry development. The result, I reveal, is a territory that is internally fragmented, incompletely titled, and subject to protracted conflict over land and resources.I argue that the insurgent identities and frustrated aspirations this produced are essential for understanding the emergent dynamics of “post-neoliberal” development under the government of Evo Morales (2005 – present). As the case of Itika Guasu shows, despite Morales’s discursive support for indigenous territorial rights and decolonisation, indigenous territorial claims have continued to be subordinated to colonial and neo-colonial capitalist geographies – in particular, to the nation-state’s own claim to hydrocarbon resources, now framed as the economic basis for a state-led project of decolonisation and social redistribution. The creative and surprising ways in which the Guaraní of Itika Guasu have responded to this scenario – abandoning state land titling in favour of transnational negotiations over gas rents – challenge us to rethink common assumptions about indigenous development, autonomy and decolonisation. Specifically, I argue that emerging territorial imaginaries and strategies in Itika Guasu are illustrative of indigenous peoples’ place-based and historically-grounded engagement in an emergent regime of “hydrocarbon citizenship”.The first in-depth and ethnographic study of indigenous TCO land titling in Bolivia, this thesis makes an important contribution to current debates in political ecology, postcolonialism and critical development geography – including on the production of territory; neoliberal territorial governance; extractive industry development; indigenous rights; and Latin American “post-neoliberal” development. More broadly, it highlights the contested meanings and ongoing challenges of decolonisation in the contemporary (post)colonial world, and the value of a critical geography perspective for interrogating and addressing these.

AB - This PhD combines insights from postcolonialism, political ecology and critical development geography to interrogate the ambivalent role of land titling in indigenous struggles for decolonisation – that is, in addressing colonial legacies of racialised exclusion, dispossession and inequality. It does so through an ethnographic case study of one Guaraní indigenous group’s struggle to gain legal rights to their territory – “Itika Guasu”, located in Bolivia’s Chaco region – as a Communal Land of Origin (Tierra Comunitaria de Orígen, TCO), a collective land title created under Bolivia’s 1996 INRA Law. Through an exploration of the dynamics and outcomes of this land struggle – which is emblematic of a wave of indigneous counter-mapping and land titling that took place across the Americas during the 1990s – I trace the gradual unravelling of a multicultural project of indigenous territory, predicated on the creation of bounded spaces of ethnic cultural difference, amidst the “entangled landscapes” (Moore, 2005) of postcolonial and neoliberal development. Specifically, I argue that governmental efforts to “spatialise race” through collective land titling – which both responded to and fuelled indigenous peoples’ own historically-grounded aspirations for “recovering territory” – were undermined in practice by entrenched state and settler geographies, persistent colonial power relations and discourses of rights, and new reterritorialising processes of extractive industry development. The result, I reveal, is a territory that is internally fragmented, incompletely titled, and subject to protracted conflict over land and resources.I argue that the insurgent identities and frustrated aspirations this produced are essential for understanding the emergent dynamics of “post-neoliberal” development under the government of Evo Morales (2005 – present). As the case of Itika Guasu shows, despite Morales’s discursive support for indigenous territorial rights and decolonisation, indigenous territorial claims have continued to be subordinated to colonial and neo-colonial capitalist geographies – in particular, to the nation-state’s own claim to hydrocarbon resources, now framed as the economic basis for a state-led project of decolonisation and social redistribution. The creative and surprising ways in which the Guaraní of Itika Guasu have responded to this scenario – abandoning state land titling in favour of transnational negotiations over gas rents – challenge us to rethink common assumptions about indigenous development, autonomy and decolonisation. Specifically, I argue that emerging territorial imaginaries and strategies in Itika Guasu are illustrative of indigenous peoples’ place-based and historically-grounded engagement in an emergent regime of “hydrocarbon citizenship”.The first in-depth and ethnographic study of indigenous TCO land titling in Bolivia, this thesis makes an important contribution to current debates in political ecology, postcolonialism and critical development geography – including on the production of territory; neoliberal territorial governance; extractive industry development; indigenous rights; and Latin American “post-neoliberal” development. More broadly, it highlights the contested meanings and ongoing challenges of decolonisation in the contemporary (post)colonial world, and the value of a critical geography perspective for interrogating and addressing these.

KW - Faculty of Science

KW - indigenous peoples

KW - territory

KW - land

KW - extraction

KW - Bolivia

M3 - Ph.D. thesis

BT - The elusive promise of territory

ER -