Indigenous Policy in Twentieth-Century Latin America

Over the past two decades scholars have taken increased interest in indigenous peoples’ relationship to the nation-state in Latin America. A number of historians have discussed Indians’ participation in nineteenth-century liberal projects, shedding light on the ways in which indigenous actors negotiated with and resisted various facets of burgeoning states in the shaping of liberal discourse (Irrurozqui, 2005; Mallon, 1995; McNamara, 2007; Quijada, 2006; Thomson and LaFrance, 1999). In more recent years, inquiries into the modern world of Indian-state relations in the Americas have begun to spill into the twentieth century, uncovering nation-building enterprises that coincided with the growth of welfare states and populist movements. By the 1930s, indigenismo had become a mainstay of political thought in the region as consolidation of the state coincided with policies to “redeem” the Indian from economic poverty and political adolescence. Indigenismo would become a defining feature of Latin American intellectuals’ and political elites’ ruminations on the “Indian question” as they sought to define the rightful place of the indigenous populations in the modern nation-state.

Though earlier scholarship on indigenismo revealed its racist, paternalistic roots (Knight, 1990), later works have considered the geographic contingencies that have shaped indigenista discourse (de la Cadena, 2000) and the way in which in particular contexts some indigenous people stood to benefit from indigenista programs (Dawson, 2004). While indigenismo may well have been spearheaded by nonindigenous elites, the books under review reveal the role of indigenous actors in shaping Indian policy. All three texts convey the nebulous and changing characteristics of indigenous policy—indigenista and otherwise—over the course of the twentieth century. The first two are monographs that treat indigenous struggles in Paraguay and Bolivia, respectively. The third is a collection of the Mexican anthropologist Maurilio Muñoz Basilio’s field notes while he worked for that country’s Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) in the late 1950s.

René D. Harder Horst’s insightful study considers the indigenous peoples’ movement in Paraguay under the Stroessner dictatorship during the latter half of the twentieth century. Paraguay, Horst reminds us, had a unique relationship to its indigenous population as the only Latin American state with an official bilingual policy (until 2009, when the Bolivian constitution declared Spanish and 36 indigenous languages the official national languages). Despite the fact that the Guaraní language is used throughout the country by the nonindigenous and indigenous alike, Guaranís have been subjected to unequal treatment under the law, and their ancestral lands have been continually usurped since independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century. The bulk of the monograph treats the indigenous policies of the regime of Alfredo Stroessner (1954–1989), the continent’s longest-reigning dictator. Horst argues that Stroessner’s policies toward the indigenous population morphed in the course of his reign, moving from a program of integration to one “designed to make natives disappear by whatever means possible” (30). Stroessner adopted contemporaneous trends in Latin American indigenista thought that were ambiguous in concept and direction, and this provided him leverage.

Each chapter in the book covers approximately a decade of indigenous-state relations. Horst maintains that the Departamento de Asuntos Indígenas (Department of Indigenous Affairs— DAI), created in 1958 and associated with the hemisphere-wide Inter-American Indigenist Institute, assumed the paternalistic posture toward indigenous groups that was typical of similar bureaus in other parts of the Americas. The DAI’s mission to integrate indigenous people into national society by changing their way of life erroneously conflated diverse aboriginal groups, assuming that all of the indigenous peoples of Paraguay were marginalized from the capitalist system and participated in (semi)nomadic agricultural practices (58). By the late 1960s, Horst argues, some indigenous peoples had cautiously integrated themselves into mainstream society via the market economy and religious organizations. Certain native groups, such as the Ache, fell victim to vicious resettlement plans that drew criticism from Catholic and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as well as anthropologists, domestic and foreign. As a result the DAI, now under new direction, was forced to change its tune to something more along the lines of “integration lite”: indigenous people would be integrated but supposedly not obligated to change their culture (88). Stroessner eventually dissolved the DAI to rid the regime of its negative association with integration policy and replaced it with the Instituto Nacional del Indígena (National Indigenous Institute—INDI) in 1975. Despite the international critique of his policy, Horst argues, with the creation of the INDI Stroessner abandoned the integrationist approach, opting instead to exclude indigenous Paraguayans from the benefits of development programs. The INDI’s bylaws indicated the regime’s supposed tolerance of native communal landholding practices, tribal government, and indigenous religious rituals, but the institution did little to prevent peasant invasions or rancher usurpation of indigenous lands (101).

A compelling theme throughout the monograph is the relationship that develops between indigenous peoples and the state. Indigenous people consistently vied for access to services and recognition of their territorial and cultural autonomy, and despite their resistance to the integrationist paradigm they became more integrated politically (134). At the same time, indigenous Paraguayans, through their collaborative activism with NGOs, religious organizations, and anthropologists from the early 1970s onward, shaped the terms of integration. By 1976, increased dialogue with the state and collaboration with nonindigenous allies eventually led to the creation of an indigenous council—the Asociación de Parcialidades Indígenas (Association of Indigenous Supporters—API). The API, Horst suggests, demonstrated an increasing tendency among indigenous Paraguayans toward pan-indigenous affiliation beyond their local community. Mounting indigenous critiques of Stroessner’s economic policy revealed uneven development that jeopardized self-sufficiency and land tenure practices among rural people more broadly (164).

The role of various religious entities in indigenous affairs is one of the book’s most salient contributions. In some cases indigenous Paraguayans assumed a variety of Protestant identities, which Horst suggests allowed them to differentiate themselves from Catholic mainstream society without sacrificing their ethnic and community affiliations (106). Following the Conference of Latin American Bishops in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968, in which participants called for a “preferential option for the poor,” Catholic clergy and activists became vital interlocutors for indigenous communities. Numerous bishops and organizations demanded recognition of indigenous lands and rights.

There are, however, some aspects of the book that merit further elaboration and explanation. First, while Horst argues that indigenous Paraguayans shaped the terms of integration, his primary-source base is a bit thin. The sources from which he draws do not clearly demonstrate how indigenous actors articulated their demands, and his explanation of development—including the ways in which indigenous peoples were excluded from the benefits of such programs under the INDI—is vague. Second, he briefly alludes to Paraguay’s history of racial and cultural mixing but seems to take for granted that there are clear historiographic and historic boundaries between the indigenous population and “peasants.” A more thorough investigation of Indian-peasant relations and the porous boundaries between these two groups would buttress his claims about the effects of Stroessner’s policies on the countryside.

Laura Gotkowitz’s fine book traces the history of indigenous-state relations in Bolivia from the late nineteenth century to the Revolution of 1952. She argues that, in contrast to prevailing accounts of the Revolution as a primarily urban and industrial-class phenomenon, indigenous struggles for land and full citizenship also provided a rural impetus for the movement. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, indigenous actors elaborated an interpretation of Bolivian law that had an impact on political discourse. Gotkowitz demonstrates that strong alliances among indigenous leaders forged in the 1910s–1920s and later among Indian activists, urban intellectuals, and trade unions placed indigenous rights at the forefront of political debate in the 1940s.

Gotkowitz’s narrative sketches the trajectory of political discourse and action affecting Bolivia’s Indians as numerous limitations prevented them from exercising full citizenship. The process of land disentailment initiated by nineteenth-century liberal reformers, Gotkowitz argues, gave rise to a new cadre of indigenous leaders who used both legal and extralegal means to fight for usufruct rights and complete citizenship (7). She shows how by the twentieth century indigenous caciques apoderados, chosen by their communities to act as legal representatives, adapted colonial interpretations of communal landholding and community identity to include liberal conceptions of private property. Indigenista projects, however, were multifaceted. The Patronato de Indígenas (Council of Indigenous People), established by the Bolivian government in 1921, initially fought for communal land claims while simultaneously pushing for a “civilizing” project of education. Such tendencies reflected indigenistas’ ambiguous stance toward national indigenous law: Should Indians receive special treatment or assume equal juridical status with non-Indians (65)? Gotkowitz reveals how indigenous Bolivians engaged in legal battles and rural protests to shape policies designed to “incorporate” the Indian.

The caciques apoderados are but one example of the supralocal relationships developed in the first decades of the twentieth century that carried over into the notorious rural rebellion of Ayopaya in 1947. Gotkowitz adroitly demonstrates how rural-urban connections and interregional networks created a feedback loop in which political mobilization in the countryside accompanied legal struggles in the city. After the Chaco War with Paraguay (1932–1935), connections between the trade union confederation and rural communities led to the promulgation of pro-Indian initiatives (160). By the 1940s, indigenous leaders had forged alliances with unions and urban intellectuals, thereby cementing the importance of indigenous rights in the public sphere. All the while, indigenous leaders utilized indigenista discourse to their benefit, capitalizing on the contradictions of a modern “civilizing” project that considered them proto-citizens (87).

President Gualberto Villarroel (1943–1946) and his Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Revolutionary Nationalist Movement—MNR) convened the first National Indigenous Congress in 1945. It was distinct from contemporaneous Latin American congresses, Gotkowitz tells us, because it was spearheaded by transregional indigenous networks and not (nonindigenous) indigenistas (197). Her discussion of the congress proceedings reveals dissonant notions of both the needs of indigenous peoples and their place in the Bolivian nation. Villarroel and the MNR representatives cultivated indigenous support at the congress but struggled with the perennial question of how to treat indigenous people juridically. Ultimately, the president’s government was unable to curb indigenous interpretations of the moderate concessions made for rural workers and community land-holding. Indigenous people understood their legal struggles for land and fair wages as socially just; the activities that culminated in the 1947 rural rebellion “led the Ayopaya rebels to claim, incorrectly, that their subversive action was the law” (247). It is not entirely clear, however, how the rise of indigenous mobilization up to 1947 contributed to the revolutionary fervor of 1952. Nonetheless, the connections Gotkowitz elucidates between and among indigenous actors, provincial elites, urban intellectuals, and working-class movements encourage further investigation of how and why both indigenous and nonindigenous, nonstate actors would invoke indigenista discourse or have a stake in indigenous policy.

The third text examined here is quite different in scope and form from the two discussed above. Maurilio Muñoz Basilio’s firsthand accounts of indigenismo in action expose the difficulties of rural social programs directed at indigenous communities. Muñoz was an employee of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional Indigenista (National Indigenist Institute—INI) and worked at its coordinating center in the Papaloapan from 1957 to 1959. Anthropologists working at the center were contracted to facilitate the displacement of over 20,000 indigenous people (mostly Mazatecs and Chinantecs, but also Mixes, Mixtecs, and Nahuas) from the Papaloapan River basin for the building of Mexico’s largest hydroelectric dam. Muñoz was hired during the last phase of the displacement process, in which he served as a resident anthropologist in various relocation communities. He recorded his daily observations and encounters in each of the relocation zones, depicting the politics of displacement and the quotidian problems of the resettled populations. The historian José Martín González Solano organized and cataloged what was left of the Papaloapan coordinating center’s archive after more than 50 years of less than ideal storage conditions and institutional neglect. Though the field diaries are incomplete, González recovered the majority of Muñoz’s writings that concern three relocation communities. These collected works have been published as one volume of a three-part series of anthropologists’ accounts entitled Pioneros del indigenismo en México issued by the successor to the INI, the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (CDI). González’s brief preface to Muñoz’s transcribed field notes provides a succint analysis of Muñoz’s work in the Papaloapan and its relevance to both the institutional history of the INI and the practice of anthropology in Mexico.

An exemplary Mexican anthropologist of the late 1950s, Muñoz personifies the mission of indigenismo and its potential to engender upward mobility among the indigenous population. Born to Otomí parents in the state of Hidalgo, he earned a degree in anthropology under the tutelage of Mexico’s renowned anthropologists of the time (Alfonso Caso, Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, and Julio de la Fuente, to name a few). His experience in the Papaloapan was no doubt formative for his later indigenista endeavors in other coordinating centers throughout the republic as well as at the Mezquital Valley heritage site, impacting his sense of the responsibilities and promise of applied anthropology. Muñoz’s notes demonstrate both the vocation of the anthropologist and the limits of applied social science as a means to remedy social ills, alleviate poverty, and transform local political relations. What is most revealing about his writings is that they recount the actions of an anthropologist on the ground as opposed to simply recapitulating indigenista doctrine. Muñoz’s account provides the basis for comparison of the rhetoric and the reality of indigenismo in action. His recollections are nearly devoid of the language of “integration” or “assimilation.” Moreover, his journal entries reveal indigenous people impoverished by their dispossession, a condition exacerbated by the lack of financial support from the Papaloapan Commission, the body created to build the dam and manage relocation costs. According to Muñoz, the relocated populations under his purview requested access to credit, modern farming techniques, vaccines, and education. Their reluctance to evacuate their lands was not inherently an antimodern position; rather, it reflected fear of economic instability. Unfortunately for many of them, poor lands and past-due indemnities confirmed this concern.

As with any primary source, Muñoz’s field notes should be understood in their historical context. His devotion to his charge is striking, and González is keen to suggest that anthropologists such as Muñoz, working in conditions markedly different from the comforts of Mexico City, were missionaries of a sort who believed in the promise of modernity to improve life for Mexico’s indigenous people. The righteous anthropologist unabashedly scoffs at engineers, agronomists, and other bureaucrats, who, he claims, care little or nothing about the relocated indigenous population. Muñoz’s critiques and frustrations, directed primarily at various levels of the Papaloapan Comission hierarchy, do not undermine his fervent belief in the emancipatory potential of applied anthropology. The perspective of this anthropologist in action is invaluable for anyone seeking to understand the politics of displacement in indigenous communities and the history of anthropology in Mexico and in Latin America in general.

Read together, these three books make the case for a deeper reading of indigenous-state relations in Latin American countries to reveal how indigenous actors have used legal frameworks and other state apparatuses to make demands and have connected their struggles to those of others—indigenous or otherwise—in national, regional, and transnational contexts. All three texts encourage a more nuanced reading of “integration” and its variegated meanings. Both monographs make connections to the decisions taken at the First Inter-American Conference on Indian Life in Pátzcuaro, Mexico, in 1940 and highlight other Latin American meditations on the Indian question. This attention to the pan-American collaboration and ideation regarding indigenous policy is a testament to the international importance of indigenismo, but the authors also demonstrate the role of local contingencies in shaping national policy. The pan-American exchange of ideas, particularly with regard to the indigenous question, has a long history in the development of the social sciences, and Horst’s discussion of anthropologists as both government advisers and activist advocates is a welcome addition to the literature in that regard. Muñoz’s field notes also speak to the value of studying the intersection of indigenismo and anthropology. Throughout the twentieth century, indigenous policy in Latin America transforms for a variety of reasons, but integration into the national mainstream population remains a cornerstone of such policy in many countries— even when political discourse proclaims a multicultural or pluralistic national ethos. Future scholarship on indigenismo should continue to explicate the role of social scientists and the growth of social science institutions in conjunction with Indian policy. Ideally, such scholarship will examine how, why, and to what extent policy makers abandon the integrationist approach, if in fact they do at all.