Explaining the Politics of Recognition of Ethnic Diversity and Indigenous Peoples' Rights in Oaxaca, Mexico

A 'politics of recognition'– a process of political reform intended to recognise formally cultural diversity and indigenous peoples' rights – has developed in Mexico, both at the federal and at the state levels, since the early 1990s. The case of the state of Oaxaca stands out in this respect – the local constitution and nearly a dozen secondary laws were reformed during the 1990s, resulting in the conformation of the most comprehensive multicultural framework in Mexico. In this article, I attempt to explain the emergence and the particular development of Oaxaca's unique politics of recognition. Following an explanatory framework proposed by Donna Lee Van Cott, I conclude that the recognition agenda emerged in Oaxaca as legitimacy and governability was put under strain. In addition, I conclude that the (by Mexican standards) rapid and broad fashion in which it developed can be explained on the bases of the severity of the threats to governability and of the capacity of indigenous actors to influence the decision‐making process and form alliances with key political actors – i.e. the state governors.     

The Indigenous in the Plural in Bolivian Oppositional Politics

This article examines how currents of Bolivia's indigenous movement are gravitating to the city and to the centre of national political life, capitalising on popular sentiment against the political status quo, economic privatisation and violations of national sovereignty. The Movement Toward Socialism led by Evo Morales does not promote a separatist ethno-national project; instead, it uses regional, national and international coalition building to equate indigenous with non-indigenous issues through resonant political analogies that frame Bolivia's national crisis of political legitimacy in terms of indigenous rights, while making common cause with diverse urban popular sectors who, if not indigenous, recognise their indigenous cultural heritage as a crucial background to their own struggles against disenfranchisement.     

Articulating Body,Territory, and the Defence of Life: The Politics of Strategic Equivalencing between Women in Anti-Mining Movements and the Feminist Movement in Peru

In Latin America, rural and indigenous women have mobilised in defence of their territories and built strategic alliances with urban and mestiza feminist movements. This paper focuses on how these processes have played out in Peru, tracing the development of the discourse on ‘body as territory’, which articulates sexual and reproductive rights with territorial autonomy. It discusses the ‘cosmopolitics’ of translating the distinct concerns and worldviews of the women involved, arguing that this discourse has enabled partial recognition and strategic equivalencing but that it has failed to fundamentally transform the underlying asymmetric relations of power and privilege.     

Re‐articulating Identity: The Shifting Landscape of Indigenous Politics and Power on the Ecuadorian Coast

The Levantamiento Indígena of 1990 was a defining moment in the advancement of indigenous politics in Ecuador. Following the uprising of 1990, scholars have paid close attention to the politics of identity and indigenous representation in Ecuador with the main focus being placed on the highland and Amazonian regions of the country. Based on fieldwork conducted in Ecuador's Manabí province, this article provides preliminary insight into the growth of an indigenous discourse on the Ecuadorian coast. I focus on the process of re‐indigenisation in the coastal community of Macaboa. This research is significant because while a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to indigenous movements in Ecuador's highland and Amazonian regions, indigenous politics on the coast have gone largely unnoticed. The case outlined in this article is emblematic of the shifting nature of identity and the way in which ethnic discourses are increasingly being adopted by marginalised groups in their attempts to negotiate with the state.     

The Struggle for Recognition of the Indigenous Voice: Amerindians in Guyanese Politics

Abstract

In Guyana’s racialised geography, Amerindians live in scattered villages in the vast hinterland that covers 90% of the country. Amerindian iconography is appropriated in state-making, even while Amerindians themselves are consigned to a patron–client relationship with the dominant ‘coastlander’ society. In the late 1950s, Amerindians made up only 4% of the national population but voted as a bloc in the national elections of 1957, 1961 and 1964, rallying around Stephen Campbell, the first Amerindian member of the legislature. Their unified position allowed their political leaders to negotiate a commitment to the settlement of Amerindian land claims as a condition of Independence in 1966. After losing its parliamentary majority in 2011, the coastlander-based party in power has been working to disrupt cohesion among Amerindian community leaders. The government uses a variety of funds to reward community leaders who will sign pre-prepared resolutions at the statutory National Toshaos Council meetings, and denies funds to leaders and communities that protest at government neglect and mismanagement of the traditional areas claimed by the indigenous peoples.     

Rethinking the Politics of the Shift Left in Latin America: Towards a Relational Approach

The shift left in Latin American politics has revealed critical weaknesses within the dominant structural, state‐ and society‐based explanations concerning the politics of development in the region. This article argues that while elements of each remain relevant, there is a strong case for adopting a ‘relational’ frame of analysis that can capture the specific ways in which the Left came to power, and the unfolding implications for democracy and development. This relational approach focuses on how the new social and political economy basis of the new ruling coalitions and alternative geopolitical alliances shape politics and the prospects for development in the region.     

Contesting Mestizaje: Black Politics and Oral Traditions in Venezuela

Afro-descendant oral traditions are powerful modes of political expression that disrupt anti-black logics within Latin America's mestizaje. Scholarship on Afro-Latin American anti-racist mobilisation centres on large-scale, collective action. Instead, in this article, I examine songs and décimas, central forms of Afro-descendant cultural subjectivity. Drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in La Guaira state, Venezuela, I show how oral traditions are place-based forms of resistance against anti-black racism. This research calls on scholars to attend to oral traditions and their geographies as a tool of anti-racist political mobilisation.     

Extractive Relations: Natural Resource Use,Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Protection in Peru

Through ethnography of Ashaninka communities' involvement in timber extraction in Peruvian Amazonia and an engagement with recent discussions around Buen Vivir the article interrogates the common association between indigenous notions of ‘living well’ and environmental protection. A key insight is that Ashaninka individuals emphasise everyday well-being and equality over the preservation of their surroundings. Older critiques of extractivism are used to show the recent advent of environmentalist discourses and highlight issues connected with emphasising ontological difference. The article concludes that Buen Vivir would be better framed as a desire, and right, to self-determination rather than being associated with specific behaviours.     

‘The Root Is Maya,the Practice Is Pluralist’: Xel‐jú and Indigenous Political Mobilisation in Quetzaltenango,Guatemala

Since the 1990s Latin America has witnessed the emergence of ethnic, often social movement‐based, political parties. Within this context Rigoberto Quemé Chay became the first indigenous mayor of Quetzaltenango, the second‐largest city of Guatemala, a place that until then had been marked by indigenous political exclusion and racism. This article seeks to explain why Quemé was victorious in 1995 and also why he subsequently lost the election in 2004 through an analysis of the ideational struggle within the (indigenous) political organisation, Xel‐jú, which backed Quemé's candidacy twice. I use the movements of ‘departure’, ‘manoeuvre’ and ‘arrival’ in the process of the constitution of hegemonic visions of power to analyse Xel‐jú's rise to political power.     

Facebook: An Emerging Arena for Politics of Self-Determination in northern Cyprus?

ABSTRACT

The present article aims to expand scholarship on the political role of social media by focusing on the case of Facebook and the self-determination claims of Turkish Cypriots vis-à-vis Turkey. Drawing upon a virtual ethnography of relevant Facebook sites and groups, this article scrutinises whether social media offer an innovative public platform for the politics of self-determination or on-line claims are in reality formed and negotiated in the same manner as the offline ones. The article concludes that Turkish Cypriots’ Facebook activism may very well be for strengthening their community, shielding their distinct characteristics from mainland Turkey and raising their self-esteem, rather than indicating demands for complete autonomy in the traditional political sense of the word and/or statehood.     

Indigenous Peasant ‘Otherness’: Rural Identities and Political Processes in Bolivia

Since Morales's election, rural movements have become the new protagonists of Bolivian politics. Previous analyses have emphasised their active role in shaping national politics, often focusing on those organisations as a compact block. However, their relationship is marked by both cooperation and fragmentation. This article provides a narrative of Bolivian socio‐political history over the last 60 years, establishing four main phases of identitarian articulations/disarticulations. It demonstrates the high degree of interdependence and fluidity of ethnic and class identities, as well as their interconnections with the broader socio‐political context and the national legal and institutional changes.     

The Attachment of Demonstrators to Institutional Politics: Comparing LGBTIQ Pride Marches in Argentina and Chile

Focusing on LGBTIQ demonstrations in Argentina and Chile, we study protesters' attachment to institutional politics, defined as their emotional and attitudinal connection with the political system. We show that Argentine LGBTIQ demonstrators are on average more attached to institutional politics than Chilean ones. This can be explained neither by differences between Argentines and Chileans in general, nor by demonstrators' individual characteristics. Instead, expanding the political process model, we argue that achieving a substantial part of the LGBTIQ agenda in Argentina, and limited success in Chile, contributed to build a stronger attachment to the political system among Argentine LGBTIQ demonstrators than their Chilean counterparts.     

Indigeneity in the Air: The Case of Chinchero Airport in Cusco,Peru

This article problematises ‘indigeneity’ by looking at the various disruptions, conflicts and fractures that the recent sale of the land for the construction of the new Cusco international airport in Chinchero, Peru, has triggered locally. In addition to examining the erosion of the peasant community model that emerged from the 1969 agrarian reform, it explores the formation of new social groupings in a context of tourism and neoliberal development. The discussion highlights the role of tourism-related, large-scale infrastructure in the production of new identity politics that challenges fixed and preconceived ideas about ‘the indigenous’ in the Andes.     

The Power of Mass Mobilisation: Argentina's Struggle for the Legalisation of Abortion

The mass pro-abortion mobilisation which took place in 2018 has been arguably the most successful attempt in Argentina's history at altering the existing legal framework regulating access to voluntary termination of pregnancy. Never before has any legislative project legalising abortion reached the upper chamber of the Congress. Could this result be attributed to the support it received from a mass social movement? What are the limitations of mass mobilisations when a structural change to a long-lasting narrative is required? In order to address these questions, the issue of abortion will be examined through the perspective of power-making and counterpower-making strategies.     

The Fiji Election of 2014: Rights,Representation and Legitimacy in Fiji Politics

Abstract

Fiji’s 2014 election was its first in eight years, first under the 2013 constitution, and first using a common roll of electors with proportional representation. In the new parliament of 50 seats, the coup leader of 2006, Frank Bainimarama, emerged triumphant. His FijiFirst Party won 32 seats, with the Social Democratic Liberal Party, a successor party to earlier indigenous Fijian parties, winning 15 and the National Federation Party three. The election of the new parliament marked the end of Fiji’s longest period under a military government since independence. How should the significance of these elections be judged in the context of Fiji’s history? Do they represent the breakthrough to democratic stability that so many Fiji citizens have wanted for so long? Or are they just another phase of Fiji’s turbulent politics, a democratic pause before another lurch into authoritarian government?     

Big dreams and small steps: comparative perspectives on the social movement struggle for democracy in Serbia and North Macedonia

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a comparative analysis of social movements’ characteristics and capacities to struggle against illiberal tendencies and incite political change in Serbia and North Macedonia. First, we discuss the illiberal elements of political regimes in the countries in question, Serbia and North Macedonia. Then, we provide a comprehensive overview of progressive social movements in the two countries, formed and organized as a response to different authoritarian and non-democratic tendencies. Finally, we point to some differences in their organizing, coalition-forging and issue-defining principles, which, we believe, may help to explain the relative success of social movements in North Macedonia in producing relevant political outcomes, compared to the weak political impact of social movements in Serbia. Empirical data were collected during the summer of 2018 through in-depth interviews with members of social movements in North Macedonia and Serbia.     

New Ways of Making and Living Politics: The Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados de Solano and the 'Movement of Movements'

This article develops a critique of liberal and social democratic conceptualisations of the political that seek to analyse contemporary social movements in Latin America, arguing that they often silence, misinterpret and/or de-legitimise new ways of living and making politics in the region. It develops an alternative conceptualisation, based upon the insights of post-structuralism and heterodox Marxism, which offers the analytic means to engage more fully with territorialised movements that politicise place, subjectivity and everyday social relations. It illustrates the potential use of such a framework with reference to the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados de Solano of Greater Buenos Aires.     

The Persistent Influence of December 2001: Collective Action in 21st-Century Argentina

The protests of December 2001 in Argentina were the most visible manifestation of a larger cycle of contention, which continues to have a substantial influence on the forms, tactics and goals of social movements throughout the country. This paper provides a critical overview of these lasting effects. In particular, we focus on three areas where the consequences of the crisis for collective action have been particularly strong: performative politics, coalition-building, and institutional support for grassroots networks. We conclude by reflecting on the implications for participatory democracy and the consolidation of a highly engaged civil society.     

Poner la cuerpa: The Body as a Site of Reproductive Rights Activism in Peru

The issue of the body is central to feminist theory and activism. This article draws on social movement and performance theory to analyse the role of the body as a site of activism in performances and as a site that is subject to patriarchal and racial oppression. Through embodied activism, feminists reclaim their bodies as a contested site of oppression to reframe the terms of the debate on abortion and demonstrate the possibility for embodied and creative politics to create new, more inclusive forms of activist practices.     

Peace and security concerns in the Niger Delta: a persisting struggle for autonomy and self-determination

This article argues that neither the amnesty granted the militants nor the election of Goodluck Jonathan as President of Nigeria will be sufficient to resolve the conflict in the Niger Delta as the crisis in the Niger Delta is an offshoot of some of the contradictions in the Nigerian federal structure, particularly the regional and power imbalance in the Constitution of 1960. Therefore, no matter how conceived, the Niger Delta crisis remains more fundamentally constitutional and political than socio-economic or environmental. Accordingly, what the paper attempts to address is the deliberate attempt by the Nigerian state to diminish the constitutional and political aspects of the crisis, while it creates the impression that the root of the problem of the Niger Delta is neglect and inequitable distribution of national resources by the federal government. The paper brings to the fore the constitutional and the political aspects which have underpinned the Niger Delta crisis since the 1950s and 1960s and concludes that any resolution of the crisis short of those imperatives will not endure.