Situating ethno-territorial claims: dynamics of land exclusion in the Guarayos Forest Reserve, Bolivia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Indigenous people have effectively employed ethno-territorial belonging as a rationale to claim land. However, as sympathetic scholar-activists, we run the risk of assuming that such rationale necessarily empowers the dispossessed. I show that this is not always the case by examining past and contemporary land disputes in the Guarayos Forest Reserve in northeast Bolivia. I thus argue for the need to situate ethno-territorial claims in specific conjunctures and in full recognition of the exclusion's double edge as observed by Hall, Hirsch and Li (2011). Doing so, in turn, calls for greater attention to class differentiation within competing ethnic groups.