FANON IN THE ANDES

Jose Antonio Lucero

doi:10.5204/ijcis.v1i1.19

Abstract

In the rise of contemporary indigenous movements in Latin America, indigenous leaders have acknowledged their debt to the Bolivian indigenous intellectual Fausto Reinaga (1906-1994), a major theorist of the anti-colonial and anti-Occidental ideology known as indianisimo. His work, especially his 1969 classic La revolución india had a profound impact on the development of indigenous movements, intellectuals, and leaders including Bolivian President Evo Morales. Yet, curiously, his work remains sorely understudied. This essay examines the continuing relevance of Reinaga by exploring his ‘Atlantic’ encounter with the thought of the Martinican-Algerian theorist Frantz Fanon. Reinaga’s encounter with Fanon, however, is not an unproblematic one and there are instructive commonalities and tensions in their work. This article addresses Fanon’s influence on Reinaga’s views on colonialism, compares Fanon’s and Reinaga’s deployments of the concept of race, and contrasts their views on postcolonial nation-building. Though in some ways Fanon is more attentive to the complexities and tensions of anticolonial struggles than Reinaga, I argue that the work of Reinaga can be read in a Fanonian spirit, as a dialectical analysis in which the focus on the particular is necessary for universal projects of emancipation.

Highlights

In the rise of contemporary indigenous movements in Latin America, indigenous leaders have acknowledged their debt to the Bolivian indigenous intellectual Fausto Reinaga (1906-1994), a major theorist of the anti-colonial and anti-Occidental ideology known as indianisimo
This praise of Reinaga, who died in 1994, represents something of a comeback for this understudied intellectual. Reinaga was both a prolific and marginal author. He wrote over 30 books on topics that included Bolivian politics, indigenous philosophy, and world politics
In the 1990s, strong objections were made by a number of critics arguing that Reinaga-style indianismo was too single-minded in its racialism, marginal in its politics, and contradictory in its discourse

Summary

The World and the Westvii

It is not an overstatement to claim that Reinaga, quite literally, picks up where Fanon left off as the introductory chapter of La revolución india quotes the concluding chapter of The Wretched of the Earth in. In a Calibanesque passage from a later work (Podredumbre Criminal del Pensamiento Europeo), Reinaga shows that he has mastered the art of the anti-colonial curse, he explains that knowledge from the Metropole comes to the Periphery ‘as a reflection, a shadow, an echo, or flatulence’ (Reinaga 1982, 92-93, cited in Stephenson 2005) In ridding these imperial distortions and pollutants, could the colonized escape alienation and work toward what Fanon called a new humanism. The last sentence of Fanon’s classic work reads (in Philcox’s English language translation): ‘For Europe, for ourselves, and for humanity, comrades, we must make a new start, develop a new way of thinking, and endeavor to create a new man’ (239) Those words undoubtedly called out to Reinaga, who was writing after Che Guevara’s effort to create a ‘New Man’ had ended tragically in Bolivia, due in no small part to Che’s neglect of the Indian realities he encountered there (Wickham-Crowley 1992, 150-151).

Encountering Negritude and Indianidad

Concluding Thoughts