Conflict, Claim and Contradiction in the New Indigenous State of Bolivia

Recent conflict between indigenous people and a self-styled indigenous state in Bolivia has brought to the fore some of the paradoxes and contradictions within the concept of indigeneity itself. The contemporary politics of state sponsored indigeneity in Bolivia has as much capacity to create new inequalities as it does to address old ones and there is a conceptual deficit in understanding contemporary indigenous rights claims, in particular, as they relate to the state. I reject Peter Geschiere?s (2009) suggestion that one should distinguish between ?autochthony? and ?indigeneity? but am inspired by these arguments to suggest that one needs to make a critical distinction between the kinds of claims different indigenous people make against the state. Of interest here are the consequences of indigeneity being transformed from being a language of resistance to a language of governance. I propose a conceptual distinction between inclusive national indigeneity for the majority which seeks to co-opt the state through accessing the language of governance and a minority concept of indigeneity which needs protection from the state and continues to use indigeneity as a language of resistance. Only by looking at the kinds of claims people make through the rhetoric of indigeneity can we make sense of the current indigenous conflict in Bolivia and elsewhere

Negotiating Competitiveness Agendas in Costa Rica and Nicaragua

Yearly published competitiveness indexes make possible immediate comparisons of investment and productivity climates around the globe. Against the backdrop of an increasing linkage between competition, “good governance” and poverty alleviation within development rhetoric and practices, this article places the agenda of competitiveness in the context of political struggle. Based on extensive interviews, I situate the “global” discourse of competitiveness in the diverse conditions of two Central American countries, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, in order to explore articulations and legitimacy claims of business associations and labor organizations respectively in processes of labor market flexibilization and economic change. Focusing on labor–capital and state–market relations, the study contributes to the understanding of how principles of competition are promoted, negotiated and contested within transnational divisions of labor

Tracing the Socioeconomic, the Cultural and the Political in Latin American Postcolonial Theory

It is far from obvious which theories are the most promising ones for the task of critically addressing interdependent inequalities in Latin America as well as global forms of inequality that affect Latin American countries. In this working paper, I look at Latin American postcolonial theories in this respect. Following Nancy Fraser’s analytic distinction of socioeconomic, cultural and political aspects of injustice, and affirmative as well as transformative remedies against them, I undertake a two-sided operation. In a first step, I use Fraser’s framework to shed light on the accounts of inequality that we can gain from the work of Aníbal Quijano, María Lugones and Walter Mignolo. In a second step, I tease out in which ways these accounts transcend and thus challenge the framework used on them

Desigualdades de clase, género y etnicidad/raza: realidades históricas, aproximaciones analíticas

En este texto se presentan y analizan algunas de las conceptualizaciones, interpretaciones y explicaciones que pensadores y pensadoras latinoamericanos/ as han elaborado en torno a los procesos productores y reproductores de desigualdades múltiples en la región. Estas ideas tienen una doble inserción: por un lado, están enraizadas en tradiciones académicas y en discusiones teórico conceptuales; por el otro, tienen un fuerte anclaje en el propio movimiento de los actores y en la inserción sociopolítica de las y los propios/as analistas. Para llevar adelante la propuesta, el texto toma un momento histórico y una región: América Latina a mediados del siglo XX. La preocupación de analistas y de gobernantes estaba centrada en la cuestión del “desarrollo”, ligado a la expansión del capitalismo periférico. En este marco, el texto presenta una cuestión específica: la manera en que fue analizada e interpretada la interrelación entre lo que era considerada como la dimensión central de las desigualdades sociales – las clases sociales – y las otras dimensiones y clivajes sociales, fundamentalmente el género, la “raza” y la etnicidad, temas que en los debates de comienzos del siglo XXI se engloban en las discusiones sobre “interseccionalidad”. El texto centra su atención en algunos/as autores/as: Florestán Fernandes, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Isabel Larguía y John Dumoulin, y Heleieth Saffioti.This paper presents some the conceptual approaches, explanations and interpretations proposed by some Latin American researchers around the processes that produce and reproduce multiple inequalities. These ideas have a double are grounded, on the one hand, in academic traditions and conceptual and theoretical discussions; on the other, in their link to socio–political demands and commitments of the analysts. To deal with the issues proposed, the paper takes one historical moment and one region: Latin America in the mid XXth century. In that period, the main concern of analysts and of governing elites was “development” as expressed in the peripheral capitalism of the region. Within that framework, the text deals with one specific issue, namely the ways in which analysts interpreted the relationship between what at the time was considered the central dimension of social inequalities –social classes–and the other dimensions of social cleavages, mainly gender, “race” and ethnicity, themes that come back at the beginning of the XXIst. century under the rubric “intersectionality”. The main authors discussed in the text are Florestán Fernandes, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Isabel Larguía and John Dumoulin, and Heleieth Saffioti.Fil: Jelin, Elizabeth. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Oficina de Coordinacion Administrativa Parque Centenario. Centro de Investigaciones Sociales; Argentina. Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social; Argentin

The Role and Impact of Remittances on Small Business Development during Cuba’s Current Economic Reforms

This paper explores the extent to which Cuban remittance recipients are responding to the Cuban government’s current economic reforms which seek to incentivize entrepreneurial activities as an economic growth strategy and state liberalization policy. In so doing we hope to make some preliminary observations and recommendations about the potential role and impact of remittances in Cuba’s socio-economic development. It is based on an original survey conducted in Cuba in 2012

Political citizenship, equality, and inequalities in the formation of the Spanish American republics

The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon political equality and inequalities during the nineteenth century, a period that witnessed the formation and transformation of new polities in the former Spanish colonial territories in America. There are different ways of addressing this question; in this essay, I have chosen the category of citizenship as a conceptual tool that will allow me to provide a specific focus to an otherwise broad and imprecise topic. This category is central to our contemporary political debates, but it was also part of the political concerns, languages, and practices of the nineteenth century, although with different connotations from our own