Indigenous Peoples,Social Movements,and the Legacy of Hugo Chávez’s Governments

Indigenous Rights and Territory

By 1999 Venezuela’s indigenous population of 315,815 constituted only 1.71 percent of the national one (Angosto, 2012b: 223). ³ The state had recognized 32 indigenous peoples through the 1992 national census, but this had not changed the “minority” and subaltern status of the indigenous population. Indigenous organizations in Venezuela had never been as strong and prominent in the political arena as some of their peers in the Andean region. When the constituent period arrived, they were in a weak position, and discussions of indigenous rights and territoriality soon became a focus of important tensions. Indigenous peoples’ rights were opposed not only by the weakened neoliberal forces that gained some representation in the constituent assembly but also by a sector of Bolivarian supporters principally articulated around the military (Combellas, 2003). As the key to access differentiated rights, the possibility of territorial recognition was finally included. Indigenous land demarcation was in fact explicitly established as a government priority through the Twelfth Transitory Disposition (which stipulated an unrealistic period of two years [1999–2001] for the completion of the process). Decree 1392 (which created the National Commission for the Demarcation of Indigenous Habitat and Land) and the Law of Demarcation and Guarantee of Indigenous Peoples’ Habitat and Lands were sanctioned in 2001. In 2005 the Organic Law of Indigenous Peoples and Communities introduced firmer regulations for the demarcation and titling procedure.

Legal dispositions aside, territorial recognition in the terms contemplated by the 1999 constitution is still minimal. Ten years after its approval there were only 36 titled indigenous communities, with a total of 980,943 hectares (Angosto, 2010: 106–111). Since then, additional collective titles have been granted to a few communities. In April 2013, in an act publicizing 14 new titles, Vice President Jorge Arreaza stated that 74.6 percent of the land applications submitted since 2005 had been successfully processed, adding up to a total of 80 collective titles. President Nicolás Maduro took the opportunity to back the approval of the remaining 28 applications being processed and frame it in explicit political terms: “I can assure you that if they [the opposition] reached government again they would come to take the lands away from indigenous peoples.” ⁴ He reminded the audience that Henrique Capriles, the opposition leader, had campaigned against the approval of indigenous rights during the 1999 constituent-assembly period. These remarks illustrate the importance that the Bolivarian bloc currently places on maintaining its position as the legitimate representative of indigenous interests now that the opposition bloc has started to contest that previously unquestioned association as part of its electoral strategy (Angosto, 2014).

Political maneuvering aside, formal recognition of indigenous territories is still minimal. Analysts have associated this fact with state inefficiency and excessive procedural bureaucratization, but there are two concrete political factors that more strongly contribute to the stagnation of the demarcation process: (1) The government’s praxis in the realm of indigenous rights prioritizes political enfranchisement, social service provision, and production development over territorial recognition. (2) A large part of the indigenous population currently supports that praxis. The government’s position is clearly evidenced by the emphasis on the creation of indigenous communal councils and communes as a way of integrating the indigenous communities into the state structure and national socioeconomic plans. The establishment of the Ministerio del Poder Popular para los Pueblos Indígenas (Ministry of Indigenous Peoples—MINPI) in 2007 was aimed at this goal, as is demonstrated by its declared objectives and its functioning in accordance with the so-called new geometry of power (Angosto, 2010: 119–125).

National development is a central element of the current stage of the Bolivarian project, as is clearly outlined in the recent sexennial plans for economic and social development. It calls for substantial centralization in planning, though it is combined with promotion of broader participation in the political, cultural, and economic aspects of social life (Ellner, 2011). Paralleling the fact that leadership and organization have remained central for the sustainability of a politically plural movement such as the Bolivarian one (Raby, 2006: 261–262), government development plans have projected a concern with organization and national scale. The indigenous peoples’ autonomies contemplated in the constitution are a challenge to that model. The national economy continues to revolve around the extraction and commercialization of natural resources by the state sector, which generates 97 percent of foreign currency revenue (Sutherland, 2013). A considerable part of those natural resources occurs in territories with indigenous communities, as is the case with minerals in Bolívar and Amazonas, coal and oil in Zulia, and oil along the Orinoco strip. The government has sidestepped this challenge by favoring a form of weak territorialization through communal councils and communes, which are not subject to legal titles to collective property as indigenous territories would be.

However, the spread of indigenous communal councils has not been simply a top-down process: they have been well received in many indigenous communities. Communal councils have been the avenue through which the government has funded a variety of infrastructure, housing, and productive development projects. By the end of 2007 the MINPI, in less than a year of operation, had facilitated the establishment of 1,159 indigenous communal councils (Angosto, 2010: 123). Four years later, many indigenous communities continue to apply for funds through communal council projects, and the MINPI continued to make explicit that it aimed to consolidate indigenous communities as “collective and productive areas.” Yet it also underscored that the “exploitation of the strategic and mineral resources [needs] to be under the direction of the socialist state so that it can be distributed with equity among communities.” ⁵ The aim of making those goals compatible explains why the government has so far favored this form of weak territorialization.

The government’s priorities in this area are well illustrated by other sources of evidence. When collective land titles have been granted, it has been exclusively to communities, not to “peoples.” When an application in the name of a “people” has been positively evaluated by regional and national demarcation committees, it has ultimately been blocked by the executive (Mansutti, 2006: 28). As a result, communities and not peoples are becoming the only plausible subjects of collective indigenous rights. This in turn implies that, in strict legal terms, differentiated rights can be effectively enjoyed only by indigenous populations inhabiting titled communities. While this translates into limited territorial rights, the fact remains that the indigenous population currently enjoys, like much of the previously disenfranchised population, a larger number and reach of other (undifferentiated) rights. Access to social services and options for productive development with state support have increased, and this constitutes an avenue for enfranchisement through the materialization of socioeconomic rights. This issue, generally overlooked by the opposition, is also disregarded by advocates of indigenous rights who frame their criticism to government policy in terms of territory demarcation and free determination. It is also crucial to the discussion of the legacy of Chávez’s governments in the realm of state–indigenous peoples relations, for a large part of the indigenous population has shown sustained support for socioeconomic and political enfranchisement as a priority over notions of free determination such as territorial and political autonomy.

Socioeconomic Rights and Enfranchisement

In the last national census round (2011), the questionnaire for indigenous communities included questions addressing levels of access to social services in education, health, transport, and communication. Some of these questions were new in census history and concretely focused on access to government missions, which were launched in 2003 (Ellner, 2006: 78; Maingon, 2006). Others referred more generally to health, education, and transport services, ⁶ and this will facilitate comparisons of access to social services in indigenous communities over the past 20 years (comparable questions about such access were posed in the 2001 and 1991–1992 census rounds). There is scattered evidence that missions and other government programs have brought education, health, communication, and transport services to some communities for the first time. To give but one example from my fieldwork experience in the Gran Sabana (Bolívar), education programs such as the Ribas Mission have reached even relatively remote communities, and communication and telecommunication services have substantially improved since the launching of the Simón Bolívar satellite in 2008. (One of its land support stations is on the Luepa military base in Gran Sabana.)

However, the indigenous-community questionnaire is employed only with settlements that the National Institute of Statistics identifies as indigenous communities according to criteria based on objectivized notions of traditional-ness (Angosto, 2012b). ⁷ Therefore it does not provide information about the indigenous population of urban areas, which in 2001 amounted to 66 percent of the total indigenous population (Allais, 2004). For this urban indigenous population, as for the rest of the popular classes, access to social services depends on general government programs. Though there are no disaggregated data for this population, it can be assumed to have benefited from the overall improvements in human development and social services provision in the country. Venezuela’s improvement on the Human Development Index (which takes into account income, life expectancy, and education indicators) has been extraordinary even within the general positive regional trend of the past decade: between 2000 and 2011, the index rose from 0.673 to 0.761 (UNDP Human Development Index Report, 2015). In addition, poverty levels dropped dramatically as a result of social investment during Chávez’s governments. By 2011 income poverty had come down from 42.8 percent to 16.6 percent and extreme income poverty from 20.1 percent to 8.5 percent.

This type of socioeconomic enfranchisement is added to a political enfranchisement that includes (but is not limited to) legally guaranteed minimum representation in legislative bodies. Indigenous activists have been involved in social programs, political mobilizations, and electoral campaigns in support of the government. In this context it is not surprising that indigenous electoral support for Chávez and Bolivarian candidates has been, in general terms, outstanding. In constituencies with a large percentage of indigenous population in states such as Delta Amacuro or Bolívar there has been overwhelming sustained support for Bolivarian candidates, in some cases amounting to more than 70 percent of the vote (see Angosto, 2011: 39–41 for commentary on electoral data in regional elections).

Participants or Clients?

There is a curious convergence of criticisms from the right and the left in identifying indigenous supporters of the government as passive, manipulated, or co-opted actors who, rather than consciously participating in a political process in which they identify positive transformations, have been tamed or “bought for a bag of food” (as one hears from some radical right-wingers and advocates of indigenous territorial rights alike). Writers who otherwise recognize positive changes in state–indigenous peoples relations criticize “neo-paternalist” practices when referring to government social programs (e.g., Mosonyi, 2009: 169). This positioning negates and conceptualizes away the fact that indigenous actors are consciously involved in the implementation of those programs and that, in addition to assistential programs, a variety of them fund productive and infrastructural projects. ⁸

Field research has often shown the limitations of certain remarks about clientelistic relations in government programs with broad popular support. For instance, Schiller (2011) has noted that popular support for government-promoted community and public media is sometimes characterized as a bridge for the establishment of clientelistic relations. Her study of community media producers nevertheless shows that the interactions that develop between producers and government representatives are complex, with adjustments taking place at both poles. Along similar lines, in her analysis of indigenous media and government policies, Lehman (2014) argues that indigenous communities in Venezuela use these media as a platform to renegotiate their position vis-à-vis other actors in society, including state agents. Commenting on popular participation dynamics among barrio women in Caracas, Fernandes (2013) identifies vertical attitudes in state officials but remarks that they are only part of an ongoing political process in which women are gaining negotiating power. These studies certainly contest simplistic depictions of top-down flows in government programs. In the case I discuss here, it would be similarly misleading to portray the indigenous population that has supported and been involved in Chávez’s programs as a client subordinated to government programs. Though different dynamics in the relations between government and nongovernment actors arise and some clientelistic networks may develop, indigenous participation in those programs expresses incorporation into political life and the agency of actors shaping their own enfranchisement, as participants themselves often remark in public meetings and the media.

I will illustrate this point by describing a kind of indigenous collective action in the country that can be characterized as a state-supporting and state-sponsored social movement. This movement shows both the possibilities of synergistic cooperation between social movements and state agents when there are shared goals (cf. Spanakos, 2011) and the diversity of goals in the indigenous population. The political participation of indigenous actors today can be classified as (1) linked to political parties and electoral politics, (2) revolving around the MINPI, or (3) stemming from indigenous communities and organizations that explicitly detach themselves from the previous two forms of participation. These analytical categories are not mutually exclusive, and in fact many actors move across the first two in particular. The state-supporting and state-sponsored indigenous movement is shaped by these dynamics. The explanation of this point will require some conceptual clarification, but let us first gain some historical perspective on indigenous collective action in the country.

Indigenous Collective Action in Perspective

The inclusion of the principles of pluriculturalism and the distinctive recognition of indigenous peoples in the 1999 constitution resulted from a combination of factors to which indigenous organizations contributed in accordance with their quite limited strength. Increasing discontent and protest levels during the 1990s and the eventual collapse of the party system had brought to an end the illusion of a “near-perfect” Venezuelan democracy (Ellner and Tinker Salas, 2007). During that process, Bolivarianism emerged as a movement that assembled various previously unincorporated sectors, among them indigenous organizations, and employed notions of indigeneity in the shaping of its narratives of new nationality and revolution (Angosto, 2008). These factors, in conjunction with the influence of the so-called new Latin American constitutionalism, were determinant in the inclusion of indigenous rights in the 1999 constitution (Angosto, 2010; Van Cott, 2002). The indigenous actors that participated in this process had had a long history of struggles for social justice and recognition in the country, but their impact in this period was dependent on their being part of the emergent Bolivarian movement.

When indigenous mobilization in countries such as Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala, Colombia, and Mexico started to draw widespread attention in the 1990s, comparable mobilizing activism was relatively scarce in Venezuela. Indigenous organizations with a regional base had existed in some regions since the 1970s, but, though they gave rise to optimistic predictions about their potential at a national level (Clarac, 2002: 27–28), they were fragile and mostly short-lived. Those that survived over time were weak and operated through institutional channels rather than contentiously. They were also under continuing pressure of co-optation by political parties that lacked an agenda of differentiated indigenous rights (see Figueroa, 2005: 34–49, for his account as president of the Indigenous Federation of Bolívar State).

Overall, indigenous mobilization between the 1970s and the 1990s could be characterized as episodic and reactive, erupting under threats such as land invasion, rather than as a sustained challenge against power holders. ⁹ Examples of this reactive character are the processes sparked by invasions of Yekuana territory in Alto Venturary in 1969 (Clarac, 2002: 32–33) and by the occupation of Piaroa lands in the 1980s by the developer Hermann Zing. The latter, waving the “Conquest of the South” banner associated with the Corporation for the Development of the South (created in 1969, during the first government of Rafael Caldera), sparked a conflict with Piaroa communities that escalated to national dimensions. A National Assembly subcommittee was appointed to investigate a conflict that gained substantive media coverage—often accusing the Piaroa and their supporters of independentism, subversion influenced by Castro, Brezhnev, and Kadaffi, or narco-trafficking (Mansutti, 1986). The conflict did stimulate supracommunity political organization among the Piaroa, but that organization never developed into a force with the capacity for sustained mobilization.

Indigenous organizations during that period had nonindigenous allies in sectors of academia, ¹⁰ the progressive church, and left-wing political activism but lacked mobilizing capacity despite these connections. Progressive forces had remained fragmented until the Bolivarian movement channeled and dynamized them. Though in those days scholars spoke of “indigenous movements” when analyzing the situation of indigenous peoples in Venezuela, the term was used as synonymous with “indigenous organizations” (e.g., by Silva and Mansutti, 1996: 350). Some recent work on indigenous activism in Venezuela has similarly been built upon the “social movement” concept in ways that require clarification. The emergence of new educational institutions for indigenous peoples has facilitated the production of indigenous professionals and technicians, broadening participation and strengthening the democratic arena (Mato, 2010). Precisely because these are positive changes, it is important to understand how they have come to be, and this is where questions about the use of the term “social movement” arise. Some analyses end up considering any type of collective action, including lobbying, as social movement action, and this results in explanatory ambiguities. Third-level and technical education for indigenous peoples in Venezuela depends on a legislative framework that supports it and has been mainly advanced through institutional channels involving the work of experts, lobbying, and occasional issue-related campaigns. ¹¹ This does not, of course, exclude the active participation of indigenous activists, but many of them actually work within state structures such as national and regional legislatures and ministries such as that of indigenous peoples.

From another angle, the so-called political-opportunities-structure approach has employed the “social movement” concept in ways that raise important questions. Used to explain the transition from “indigenous movements” to electoral politics, this approach “emphasizes the constraints on and incentives for collective action that the state and political systems present to social movement mobilization” (Van Cott, 2005: 40). Van Cott identifies variables that stimulate indigenous social movements (or some of them) to enter the electoral arena in Latin American countries, such as fragmentation of ruling elites, broadened access to institutional politics for new actors, the degree of repression by the state, and the influence of international actors and structures (such as supranational organizations). With these theoretical referents, comparative works have tried to explain the appearance of “indigenous parties” in Venezuela (Martí i Puig, 2006; Van Cott, 2002; 2003), presenting the Consejo Nacional Indio de Venezuela (National Indian Council of Venezuela—CONIVE) as one such party. This is inaccurate and misleading in two crucial ways: first, because CONIVE, despite its participation in elections, remains an organization of civil society ¹² and, secondly, because most members of CONIVE and certainly its leadership are in fact members of the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela—PSUV) (Angosto, 2011; 2012a). Overlooking these facts, studies of indigenous collective action have been unable to understand the relationships that have arisen in recent years between indigenous organizations (including CONIVE), Bolivarian political parties, and state bodies. The electoral participation of indigenous candidates supported by the PSUV and the so-called Gran Polo Patriótico (the electoral bloc that supported Chávez and now supports Maduro) has connections with a state-sponsored indigenous movement that developed in synergy with the Bolivarian movement.

The Electoral Arena

Political parties and the pluri-party blocs that polarize the electoral arena channel and absolutely dominate the competition for indigenous representation (Angosto, 2011; 2012b). Among the rights granted indigenous peoples by the 1999 constitution were political ones, including guaranteed minimum representation in legislative bodies at the national, regional, and local levels. The law stipulates that candidates may be proposed by indigenous “communities and organizations,” and therefore the latter appear as contenders in the electoral arena, but it is in fact the conventional political parties that, by making their electoral machinery available, can guarantee election for those candidates. Indigenous representatives are elected by all voters (and not only by indigenous ones) in the constituencies to which differentiated indigenous representation is guaranteed. From early on, an electoral “indigenous front” was constituted around the Bolivarian electoral platform, initially articulated around the Movimiento Quinta República (Fifth Republic Movement–—MVR) and from 2007 on around the PSUV and the Polo Patriótico. Chávez had gained active support from the large majority of indigenous organizations and crucially from CONIVE, and indigenous activists started to be included in party and government structures. More recently, and largely spurred by the dynamics of electoral polarization, another electoral “indigenous front” has started to emerge around the so-called Mesa de la Unidad, the electoral coalition created to compete against Hugo Chávez in the presidential elections of 2012, and its constitutive parties (Angosto, 2011). Particularly since the regional elections of 2008, the latter have been competing for the indigenous representation seats in legislatures, supporting indigenous candidates with their electoral machineries and, at the level of presidential candidacy, emulating the Bolivarian discourse of indigenous rights (Angosto, 2014). This electoral contestation translates into indigenous representatives’ directly participating in legislatures in articulation with the Bolivarian or the opposition bloc. The Bolivarian one has so far dominated the competition for indigenous representation, and its electoral “indigenous fronts” have operated in close cooperation with the MINPI since it was created in 2007.

A State-Supporting and State-Sponsored Indigenous Movement

With the creation of the MINPI there was a turning point in state–indigenous peoples relations. Indigenous organizations had played a more important role in the mediation between government and indigenous peoples while there was no executive state body with that specific function (Angosto, 2010). With the MINPI, the government now had its own agency for coordinating and implementing policy for indigenous peoples, and, significantly, it was created with a regionalized presence precisely where indigenous organizations had previously articulated indigenous representation.

The structure of the MINPI, which has eight vice ministries, has incorporated a large number of activists who identify with the government’s “twenty-first-century socialism” project and its approach to the integration of indigenous population into the nation. Many of these recruits have entered politics since 1999 and, besides being shaped by the polarized political scenario, have experienced the effects of the enfranchisement described above. The new avenues for participation in state structures have had more results than the civil society organizations. The sense of enfranchisement that indigenous activists participating in state structures often express is well illustrated by a recent declaration of MINPI’s Vice Minister for the Communal Territory of Valleys, Savannahs, and Tepuyes, Raúl Rodríguez: “We believe in the participatory and protagonistic democracy that our comandante Hugo Chávez promoted. He always advocated for the rights of indigenous communities and for their incorporation into government activity.” ¹³ The MINPI currently channels that incorporation, but its functioning also activates a form of collective action that can be identified as social movement activity. It has organized, sponsored, and provided resources for political activities in which indigenous activists and organizations collaborate with and are often led by MINPI officials or members of the PSUV such as indigenous members of the National Assembly. These activities range from political workshops to rallies and often mobilize hundreds and even thousands of people to demonstrate against imperialism and capitalism and in favor of socialism. The yearly events organized around the International Day of Indigenous Peoples (August 9) under the banner of anti-imperialism are a good example.

Characteristic features of social movements are present in the activities revolving around the MINPI. They reveal the existence of networks involving individual and collective indigenous actors from political parties, the MINPI bureaucracy, communal councils, and civil organizations. In some events, such as those for the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, there have also been activists from countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil. The cohesion and discursive tactics of this state-sponsored movement are based on an appeal to indigenous identities, but its members also resort to notions of socialism and anti-imperialism in building their self-identification (Angosto, 2008; 2010). This movement contends not against the Venezuelan state, which is currently identified as an ally, but against imperialism, capitalism, and the supranational institutions that members associate with them. The repertoire of activities of this type of collective action is partly outside conventional channels for political participation, but it is oiled by a state agency such as the MINPI and includes the direct participation of members of political parties such as the PSUV.

The functioning of this state-led movement is best understood against the background of the government’s general approach to state–social-movement relations. From 1999 on, Chávez’s governments and Bolivarian actors in general emphasized the importance of community organization and participatory democracy, but the process has gone through several theoretical and practical articulations. Initially, the concept of “civil society” (as separate from “political society”) was used as a referent for these articulations. When around 2005 the government orientation shifted toward a socialist-leaning model, there were noticeable changes in government praxis. The concept of “civil society” vanished from governmental guidelines. While the national development plan for 2001–2007 appealed to the important role of “organized civil society” and mentioned “civil society” eight times, in the plan for 2007–2013 the concept of “civil society” disappeared from sight. By then the praxis of “popular power” and “communal power” was emerging as the source of new legitimacies for reorganizing and amalgamating “political society”–“civil society” relations. With this political shift came the so-called five engines of the revolution, which included communal power and the promotion of communal councils and communes as spheres for the construction of that power. The practical articulations of citizen participation goals, communal power, and state structures are epitomized by rearrangements of administrative branches. In 2009 the Ministry of Communes and Social Protection was launched, and in 2013, after a name change in consonance with overarching government dynamics in relation to some popular organizations, it became the Ministry for Communes and Social Movements.

State and Society

“Civil society,” opposed to the state as “political society,” is considered the sphere in which social movements emerge, recruit, and operate. Yet the very definition of “civil society” is inextricably linked to ideological preconceptions that affect the demarcation of its boundaries and opinions about its role and potential. One widespread notion of civil society presents it as constituted by secondary associations that mediate between primary ones (family and friendship) and the state, but even within this apparently basic definition there is substantial divergence. Some contend that this realm of association cannot (or ought not to) encompass “the market” and economic agents such as corporations, while others hold that corporations and markets are essential to the constitution of a civil society (Edelman, 2005: 30–31). Both of these apparently opposed views are nevertheless pervaded by the assumption that civil society is “an arena of (at least potential) freedom outside the state, a space for autonomy, voluntary association and plurality or even conflict”—a distinction that, not coincidentally, gained new impetus after the collapse of the Berlin Wall (Wood, 1990: 63). This assumption is grounded in a distinction between “civil society” and “state” that identifies the latter with coercion and the former with freedom and/or voluntary action.

Other approaches to the understanding of civil society present its mediation capacities as a means for authoritarian ends. This positioning, made fashionable by certain interpretations of Foucault’s work, also projects the idea that the distinction between political and civil society is artificial and impossible—that the state’s power shapes the population in myriad ways, among them through civil society organizations. Against this background, it is not surprising that social movements (associated with “civil society”) and states (identified with “political society”) are normally considered antagonistic. Katherine Bowie (2005: 46) put it pithily in remarking that “so heavily has the contemporary scholarly literature favored mobilization from below, one might wonder if a state-sponsored social movement is not a definitional contradiction in terms.” The results of her own study of Thailand’s village scout movements, which she characterized as state-led and part of an anticommunist state strategy, negated this apparent oxymoron.

For other theorists the impact on civil society of the state’s capacity “to organize, recuperate, even produce social forces” (Hardt, 1995: 31) leads to the normalization of state subjects and the establishment of hegemony through consent rather than through direct coercion. Parts of this approach are close to alternative notions of civil society such as those articulated in Gramsci’s work. Gramsci saw class power as widely pervading sociocultural practices rather than concentrated on a single visible point. Though the recognition of a “civil” and a “political” society is identifiable in some of his writings, his understanding of “civil society” did not include the clear-cut dichotomy discussed above. ¹⁴ He believed that “civil society” could reabsorb the power that in capitalist societies is coercively located, in response to class interests, in the state, making this power part of a democratizing, emancipatory civil society hegemony (Cox, 1999; Hardt, 1995: 30–31).

A substantial part of the indigenous collective action in contemporary Venezuela demonstrates that a state-sponsored movement, in this case one that partakes in a process of socialist-leaning state reconstruction within a democratic electoral framework, is possible. There are, however, forms of collective action that advocate other priorities in the shaping of indigenous rights.

Other Forms of Collective Action

With the 1999 political shift, indigenous organizations such as CONIVE and the main regional federations came to be strongly identified with the Bolivarian movement. The small indigenous organizations that did not gravitate toward the emerging movement remained in their natural lethargy, which they only abandoned to participate in elections as screens for the political parties competing for the indigenous representation seats. Another type of indigenous activism that has neither directly participated in the state-supporting movement nor entered the electoral arena is the movement spurred by Yukpa who for decades have been struggling to recover some of their ancestral lands in conflict with local oligarchies in the Perijá Mountains of Zulia. This movement prioritizes goals of territorial recognition, a halt to the extractivist development model, and autonomy from state structures. It has gained an important presence in the national arena, supported by a sector of the Bolivarian movement that shares its goals and strategy. This sector might have some overlaps with what Ellner (2013) call the “traditionally unincorporated sectors” in Venezuela, one of the three groups in which he classifies the broad base of Bolivarianism. The Yukpa movement has already paid the dramatic price of several lives, among them that of Sabino Romero, leader of the movement and a symbol of indigenous struggles for land in the country. It has been very critical of state agents and the state-sponsored movement that revolves around the MINPI. The connections between the MINPI and Yukpa who do participate in the state-supporting and state-sponsored movement are interpreted as an obstacle to the communities’ territorial claims by members of the Yukpa movement. The latter has recently achieved some recognition of its claims in direct negotiations with high-ranking state representatives but maintains its distance from the MINPI. The minister of foreign affairs, Elías Jaua, personally received a Yukpa committee and committed himself to accelerating the payment for expropriations that had stalled the granting of titles for some Yukpa communities. ¹⁵

Final Reflections: Social Movements and Chávez’s Legacy

Social movement studies are generally concerned with understanding collective action that takes place outside institutionalized channels of political participation. Yet the concept of “social movement” is often used without definition, and in practice it names very different empirical realities. This realization is far from new (see Diani, 1992). The term is widely used today both within and outside academia, often to name very different and even incomparable phenomena. In casual use, it refers to “mobilization of people” and occasionally “mass demonstration.” It is sometimes used to designate civil-society-based campaigning activity independently of mass mobilization (Shaw, 1994: 653). Activists and, increasingly, members of political parties refer to “social movements” as forces that support and legitimize certain political claims without specifying what those forces are.

Some unquestioned assumptions are nevertheless widely shared, tacitly or explicitly, in discussions about social movements. One is that they recruit from civil society as a social sphere analytically distinguishable from the political society represented by states. Another is that they conduct their political activity outside institutionalized state structures and often against them. An important part of the indigenous collective action in contemporary Venezuela calls for a critical discussion of these views. A clear-cut theoretical separation between state and civil society becomes misleading. In another context, writers such as the late Francisco Fernández Buey (2007) developed the concept of a “movement of movements” to refer to amalgamations of actors coming from both sides of that supposed divide. In Venezuela not only is there an indigenous movement that recruits members from both sides but also it is openly state-supporting and state-sponsored and represents a practical subversion of that allegedly necessary division—a subversion with democratizing potential. It has facilitated the socioeconomic enfranchisement of a large proportion of the indigenous population by articulating access to government social programs and funds, but it has also empowered actors who now see themselves as active participants in the national political arena.

An overarching characterization of the relation between social movements and the new left Latin American governments is a complex task but one that has attracted the efforts of analysts interested in progressive social change (e.g., Petras, 2008; Prevost, Oliva, and Vanden, 2012). Halfway through the past decade, Petras (2008: 16–17) contended that left-of-center governments had become consolidated in parallel to both a weakening of left social movements and a reemergence of right-wing class power. Citing examples such as the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador —CONAIE) in Ecuador and the cocaleros in Bolivia, he pointed to the debilitating effects on social movements of prolonged alliances with left-of-center governments. The consolidation of Rafael Correa’s government in Ecuador and Evo Morales’s in Bolivia had not yet taken place, nor had the new constituent processes been completed in those countries, but current analyses continue to highlight difficulties in the relations between those governments and social movements. Becker (2013) suggests that the indigenous movement in Ecuador has been not only weakened but neutralized by Correa’s style of governance. He also considers social movements essential for the construction of a more just society, since structural problems continue to oppress marginalized communities. Martínez Novo (2013: 112, 126–128) has in turn pointed out that a part of the Ecuadorian indigenous movement is involved in a new phase of opposition against Correa’s government, describing significant foci of growing contention and suggesting that the government has limited the autonomy of the movement in favor of centralization and developmentalist projects. Other analysts have depicted Morales’s government as a resuscitator of neoliberalism adrift from the claims of left social movements (Webber, 2013). These analyses project the idea that left movements have lost grassroots support in the new scenario of ambiguously progressive governments, but they do not convincingly explain where those grassroots energies have gone. Sustained electoral support by indigenous voters and the participation of indigenous movement members in supporting presidents such as Correa or Morales is not clearly addressed. It seems as if conceptualizing part of that support as “social movement” support has become a sort of intellectually paralyzing contradiction in terms.

Analysts often take for granted that the relation between social movements and states can only be contentious. Some activists reinforce that stance when they say that the only way to achieve substantial social change is by maintaining distance from power (understood as state power). Reality is, however, more nuanced, as the Venezuelan case demonstrates. In Venezuela, the strengthened participation of indigenous actors in the political arena was the result not so much of bottom-up impulses as of adjustments between indigenous activists and Bolivarian actors in the construction of a broad popular movement—the Bolivarian bloc. Part of the legacy of Chávez’s governments is the creation of synergies between party politics, state bodies, and a variety of popular actors. The emergence of the state-sponsored indigenous movement is an example of this phenomenon in the realm of state–indigenous peoples relations and tells us about overall transformations in the country. The fact that a combative sector of indigenous collective action has maintained a contentious position with regard to government inefficiencies and some state bodies does not negate the existence of a state-supporting and state-sponsored area of mobilization. Instead it points to the range of interests and political priorities within the indigenous population.

Thinking of state power as a potential ally or as an irredeemable enemy of emancipation expresses, to some extent, a structural divide between indigenous actors. Among the ranks of the indigenous, there are those whose main goals are framed in terms of ideas of modernization and development and those who are more inclined to emphasize autonomy claims and reluctant to associate development exclusively with economic growth. The former are more accepting of party politics and more inclined to seek reorientation of power from within state institutions, and they often work there. The latter are reluctant to enter into the competition for state control and demand recognition vis-à-vis state power.

Party structures and state bodies present the risks of excessive bureaucratization, corruption, and centralization of decisions, in Venezuela and elsewhere, and it is legitimate and necessary to denounce these deviations in the pursuit of social justice and broadened democracies. However, the political dynamics in recent years in this country have demonstrated that parties and state bodies can be more adaptable to popular forces and claims when there is a governmental praxis that orients them in that direction, and the structures have proved successful in improving access to socioeconomic and political rights for many people in Venezuela, among them many indigenous people.