Abstract
This paper focuses on the writings by Bolivian anthropologist/linguist Xavier Albó in relation to the widely publicized TIPNIS (Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure) road conflict in Bolivia’s Amazon basin. The first part of this paper provides a brief historical review of the emergence of TIPNIS beginning with 1990’s territorial rights march through its most recent related protest march in 2011 and its related ongoing controversies and conflicts. This background section provides the context for a discussion of selected Albó writings as contributions to the debates surrounding TIPNIS. His writing examines the multiple problematic impacts of TIPNIS as a controversial infrastructural project for its various environmental, indigenous rights, developmental, and coca-cocaine related issues and dimensions. The paper argues that a continuing concern throughout Albó’s writing on TIPNIS is the importance of the struggle for indigenous political unity as a necessary foundation for the effective operations of Bolivia’s innovative plurinational state.
Highlights
This paper will discuss a selection of anthropologist/linguist Xavier Albó’s publications reflecting his views and analysis of the highly polemical Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) road conflict in northern Bolivia, which has become the centerpiece of an ongoing national debate over its extractive development model for the eastern lowlands
The Ley INRA became recognized by Bolivian land reform experts as “Bolivia’s second agrarian reform” ‒the first coming as a result of the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) led revolution of 1952. (Colque, Tinta and Sanjinés 2016)
Xavier does offer an important corrective measure to help remedy this unfavorable set of circumstances and distorted practices for the future‒the passage of new implementing legislation for the Plurinational Constitution, spelling out in specific detail how prior and informed consultation should be practiced in such situations. To add to these arguments, he demonstrates how local consultations and reports can be done more responsibly and professionally and with greater integrity by comparing the MAS governments report on the communities of TIPNIS side by side with a report completed during the same period with far fewer resources by a network of prominent civil society and human rights organizations and leaders led by Caritas Boliviana, an independent Bolivian NGO of the Catholic Church (Albó, CIPCANotas 2013d)
Summary
This paper will discuss a selection of anthropologist/linguist Xavier Albó’s publications reflecting his views and analysis of the highly polemical Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) road conflict in northern Bolivia, which has become the centerpiece of an ongoing national debate over its extractive development model for the eastern lowlands This conflict has at its controversial core an officially recognized protected area and legally titled indigenous territory targeted to be crossed by a planned new road opening it to debated outcomes within Bolivian society. I will focus on the controversy surrounding the MAS government’s announced road plan thru TIPNIS in 2011-2012 and the backlash it generated from multiple organizations and media forms throughout Bolivia These critical responses produced an opposition movement in the public spotlight most prominently displayed in the more successful VIII Indigenous March and via numerous struggles, debates, critiques and governmental maneuvers both legal and illegal to undermine this opposition. After this review of the evolving historical context surrounding TIPNIS, this paper turns to a selection of Xavier’s writings as our guide to understanding the ongoing polemical TIPNIS road conflict in Bolivia
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