Shipibos displaced in Lima: insurgent Citizens as authorized Indians in Peru

Abstract

ABSTRACTAfter years of settlement on a landfill in Lima’s shanty-town Cantagallo, more than 300 families of the Shipibo-Konibo Amazonian indigenous group faced displacement by a public–private project to transform the area into a riverside park. Instead of resisting, Shipibos utilized spaces that neoliberal multiculturalism opens up for them, adopting entrepreneurial ways that conform to the status of the ‘indio permitido,’ or authorized Indian, and taking advantage of rewards offered to such Indians by the Peruvian state. Yet, the tactics of Shipibos demonstrate that the authorized Indian is often mutually constituted by its insurrectionary Other. Shipibos exercise both ways of being as they become fluent in the dominant sphere and problematize the types of citizenship they can attain. This article investigates the ways in which the Peruvian government promotes indigenous exclusivity by rewarding the authorized Indian and placing limits on the attainment of full citizenship status by all Indians. It also explores the possibility that the use of state tactics that try to fit the neoliberal multiculturalist mold – like practices of ‘prior consultation’ – could open spaces for indigenous groups, authorized or not, to attain citizenship.