Neither natives nor nationals in Brazil: the ‘Indianisation’ of Bolivian migrants in the city of São Paulo

Bolivian migrants in Brazil are commonly categorised as ‘indians’ who are ‘enslaved’ in São Paulo's garment industry. Simultaneously, self-identified indigenous peoples in Brazilian urban centres are constantly challenged as to the authenticity of their claims to indigeneity. This article explores the racialisation of migrants based on an ethnography of two Bolivian street markets in São Paulo, as social and spatial mobilities articulate race and class hierarchies. It proposes that such racialisation is entrenched in colonial socio-spatial hierarchies that continue to represent indigenous peoples as excluded from humanity, modernity and the city, reinforcing their subaltern insertion in the labour market

Brazil’s so-called invisibles will need more than resilience to redress the unequal impacts of COVID-19

Brazil’s 13 million favela dwellers have often been asked to show resilience in the face of the country’s sharp inequalities. Getting through the coronavirus crisis, however, will require more than the ability to make ends meet. Community-based initiatives have done much to protect local people from the most damaging impacts of the Bolsonaro government’s deficient response and toxic rhetoric. But now as in the long term, the deep inequalities revealed by coronavirus must be kept visible and properly addressed, write Aiko Ikemura Amaral (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre), Gareth A. Jones (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre), and Mara Nogueira (Birkbeck, University of London) as part of a series of blogs linked to their British Academy-funded project Engineering Food: infrastructure exclusion and ‘last mile’ delivery in Brazilian favelas

Os impactos do COVID-19 no precarizado mercado laboral brasileiro demandam politicas abrangentes como a renda basica universal

A crise do coronavirus no Brasil se converte em crise econômica, aprofundando e escancarando desigualdades históricas. Com um mercado de trabalho heterogêneo e alto índice de informalidade, a garantia de renda para trabalhadores vulneráveis é essencial no combate à pandemia. Nesse contexto, a renda básica universal ressurge no horizonte de políticas públicas como forma de inclusão e expansão da cidadania, escrevem Mara Nogueira (Birkbeck, University of London), Aiko Ikemura Amaral (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre) e Gareth A. Jones (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre) como parte de uma série de artigos vinculados ao seu projeto “Engineering Food: infrastructure exclusion and ‘last mile’ delivery in Brazilian favelas“, financiado pela British Academy

When the (face)mask slips: politics, performance and crisis in urban Brazil

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, masks and the act of masking have become emotive subjects for social and political debate. In Brazil, one of the countries most severely affected by the pandemic, the seemingly mundane act of mask-wearing has become part of a deep social, political and economic crisis at the centre of which is the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. In this paper we explore the politics of (un)masking in Brazil from three vantage points in which the mask serves to dramatise the country’s current moment. Firstly, we trace the connections and disjunctions between the politics of mask-wearing and the genealogies of hygienist policies associated with the modern aspirations of the Brazilian republic. Secondly, we consider how masks are incorporated into the everyday life of the city through popular economies, which reveal the potentialities and limitations of work beyond the modern ideals of waged labour. Finally, we explore the incorporation of masks in urban street-art. We approach graffiti and murals as situated performances of symbolic resistance that contest and reveal the incoherences of Bolsonaro’s anti-science discourse. In tandem, these three perspectives foreground practices of (un)masking that expose long-standing tensions and new contemporary challenges that characterise the politics of a ‘crisis society’

The impact of COVID-19 on Brazil’s precarious labour market calls for far-reaching policies like universal basic income

Brazil’s coronavirus crisis is also an economic crisis that both reveals and deepens historical inequalities. Given the country’s high levels of informality, guaranteeing the income of vulnerable workers is an essential step in tackling the pandemic and its economic effects. In this context, the idea of a universal basic income has resurfaced as a public policy that has the potential to promote inclusion and an expansion of citizenship, write Mara Nogueira (Birkbeck, University of London), Aiko Ikemura Amaral (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre) and Gareth A. Jones (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre) as part of a series of blogs linked to their British Academy-funded project Engineering Food: infrastructure exclusion and ‘last mile’ delivery in Brazilian favelas

Mixing food with politics: how COVID-19 exposed inequalities in Brazil’s food supply chain

The impact of the coronavirus crisis on livelihoods and prices has limited access to food in Brazil, particularly for those on lower incomes. Supply chains that fail to cover the “last mile” into poor urban communities are a significant part of the problem, and impressive community initiatives to meet nutritional needs are not enough to bridge that gap. So far the issue of food security has been used by the current government mainly for political point-scoring, but there are real steps that it could take to achieve a more resilient, fairer, and healthier food system, write Gareth A. Jones (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre), Aiko Ikemura Amaral (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre), and Mara Nogueira (Birkbeck, University of London) as part of a series of blogs linked to their British Academy-funded project Engineering Food: infrastructure exclusion and “last mile” delivery in Brazilian favelas

The paths of indigeneity politicization: a study on indigenous identity in Bolivian politics after 1985

O presente trabalho busca analisar o processo de politização das identidades indígenas, entendido como uma luta por reconhecimento, ressaltando a dinâmica das fronteiras étnicas na interação entre indígenas e o Estado, na Bolívia pós-1985. Entende-se que ao fundamentarem sua luta em um largo histórico de dominação e traduzirem-na em uma demanda por direitos e por reconhecimento social e político, os povos indígenas ressignificam sua posição marginal na sociedade e conformam a base para sua organização. Defende-se que, uma vez que as identidades resultam de constantes processos internos e externos de definição, a possibilidade de conformação de uma identidade efetivamente autônoma só se concretiza se os sujeitos podem definir quais os parâmetros legítimos a partir dos quais se dá o reconhecimento, que adquire um caráter eminentemente político. A este respeito, entende-se que a luta avançada pelos povos indígenas representa um desafio para as formas tradicionais de definição de cidadania, questionando o paradigma liberal até então hegemônico, especialmente no que tange a natureza coletiva do sujeito indígena e sua relação com o território e com a política em geral. Assim, a indigeneidade se coloca como uma peça chave para a compreensão das mudanças ocorridas nas últimas décadas na Bolívia, assim como para a compreensão de um processo mais amplo de descolonização das categorias e instituições do Estado-nação. Desta forma, o trabalho segue de forma a discutir como a luta por reconhecimento por direitos se construiu a partir das críticas ao colonialismo interno do Estado boliviano, posteriormente avançando sobre como ampliação das fronteiras da identidade indígena serviu como elemento aglutinador de um processo crescentemente contencioso das relações entre a sociedade as instituições do Estado em sua acepção liberal. Posteriormente, discutir-se-á sobre como as lutas e demandas indígenas foram reconhecidas na Constituição de 2009 em um esforço conjunto de representantes de diversos movimentos sociais no país para superar a abordagem multiculturalista através da plurinacionalidade e da interculturalidade. Por fim, destacar-se-á as presentes contradições deste processo, no qual o empoderamento político indígena se depara com a centralidade cada vez maior da democracia representativa e dos apelos de uma identidade nacional indigeneizada, em detrimento dos avanços legais da Constituição plurinacional e das lutas por interculturalidade e pela consolidação da autonomia dos sujeitos coletivos na BolíviaThe following work will discuss the process of politicization of indigenous identities, understood as a struggle for recognition, highlighting the dynamics of the ethnic boundaries in the interaction between the indigenous and the state in Bolivia after 1985. We sustain that as indigenous peoples root their struggle in a long background of domination which is translated into a demand for rights and for social and political recognition, they ressignify their marginality within the society and establish the foundations for their organization. We suggest that, inasmuch as identities result from constant processes of internal and external forms of definition, the possibility of constructing actually autonomous identities is only possible if the subjects are able to define by which standards should they be granted recognition, which, in turn, becomes eminently political. Following that, we observe that the indigenous struggles posits a challenge to traditional forms of defining citizenship, as they question the hegemony of the liberal paradigm so far, specially in matters of the collective nature of indigenous subject and its particular relation to the territory and politics. Therefore, indigeneity is presented as a key factor for understanding the political changes in Bolivia over the last decades, but also for analyzing the process of decolonization of nationstate categories and institutions. We herein discuss how the struggle for recognition in the legal and social dimensions was key for constructing a broader critique of the internal colonialism in the Bolivian State, followed by a discussion on how the expansion of the boundaries of the indigenous identities transformed it into a converging element of a increasingly contentious process in the relation between the society and the states institutions in their most liberal facet. Later on, we will explore how these struggles and demands were recognized in the 2009 Constitution, as a result of the mutual effort of representatives of various social movements to overcome the multicultural approach to indigenous rights with plurinationality and interculturality. Finally, we assess the present contradictions of such process, in which the political empowerment of the indigenous faces the rising centrality of representative democracy and the appeals of a indigenized national identity, as opposed to the consolidation of constitutional plurinationality and of the intercultural plea for the consolidation of the autonomy of indigenous collective subjects in Bolivi

Review of The Popular Economy in Urban Latin America: Informality, Materiality, and Gender in Commerce

The Popular Economy in Urban Latin America: Informality, Materiality, and Gender in Commerce, edited by Eveline Dürr and Julianne Müller, Lexington Books, 2019

Identity, work, and mobility amongst Bolivian market vendors in El Alto and São Paulo

This thesis follows the narratives of Bolivian market women to explore how their real and aspired processes of social and spatial mobility articulate different identities in the intersections of gender, race, and class. The thesis draws on a multi-sited ethnographic research, carried out over a nine-month period between October 2015 and August 2016, at the markets of Kantuta and Coimbra, in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, and La 16, in the city of El Alto, Bolivia. Both in Brazil and in Bolivia, market women are racialised as being ‘indian’ or at least ‘more indian’ than others around them – labels which reproduce the coloniality which underlie these categories. In contexts of precarious and flexible labour conditions, market women are aware that being othered as indigenous might compromise their claims to mobility. Resisting these categorisations, they use various strategies adapted to the particular forms of intersecting exclusion in each context. For instance, putting on a pollera – a type of multi-layered skirt – and becoming a cholita has been a strategy for indigenous women to consolidate their processes of social and spatial mobility both historically and presently. This has been chiefly achieved through commerce, to the extent that the chola identity has been conflated with that of market vendors, as a racially ambiguous, socially mobile woman. Market women in São Paulo do not wear a pollera, but they too rely on ambiguous use of categories to highlight their processes of mobility. As their expectations of social mobility rely on uncertain economic gains, market women in this study reinforce their claim for an urban, dynamic and economically ascending identity by contraposing it to stereotypes that also cast indigenous women as rural, traditional, backwards and poor. I conclude that, while this might individually uphold the success of their socially upwards trajectory, it contributes to reinforce the stereotypes these very women are subjected to daily. These results show how even successful cases of social mobility, in contexts of high inequality, can contradictorily reinforce other processes of stratification along racial, gender and class lines

Introduction: Indigenous urbanisation in Latin America

Guest Editors: Aiko Ikemura Amaral, Philipp Horne, and DEsiree Poet