Conflict, claim and contradiction in the new ‘indigenous’ state of Bolivia

Abstract

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. Anthropologists are understandably reluctant to define indigeneity in any objective way, but as indigeneity discourses proliferate, we need some conceptual tools to distinguish between competing rights claims based on indigeneity. I propose a conceptual distinction between inclusive national indigeneity for the majority which seeks to co-opt the state and a concept of indigeneity for a minority which needs protection from the state. Only by looking at the kinds of claims people make through the rhetoric of indigeneity can we make sense of such indigenous conflict in Bolivia and elsewhere.