-
CHAPTER ONE. Introduction: Social Protest in Regional Perspective
- University of Arizona Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
In June 1990, a protest of a qualitatively new sort gripped the centralAndean nation of Ecuador. For more than a week, indigenous groups in the highlands participated in marches, demonstrations, government-office takeovers, and road blockades as an expression of their frustration with the country’s political and economic system (Zamosc 1994). The protest event was called the National Indigenous Uprising. The episode concluded with negotiations between the government in power and indigenous-movement representatives over a sixteen-point agreement for national reforms. What was new about this event was that it represented the first major indigenous insurrection in the country since the colonial era. Indigenous groups in Ecuador and elsewhere in Latin America, where they have mobilized at all, have historically done so around class, partisan, religious, and revolutionary identities as opposed to ethnic ones (Yashar 1998). The 1990 indigenous uprising marked a key moment in Ecuadorean state–society relations. It placed the indigenous question firmly back on the national political agenda. The uprising also established indigenous peoples as the lead protagonists in the struggle against neoliberalism. CHAPTER ONE Introduction Social Protest in Regional Perspective A nation of four million men, conscious of their number, will never lose hope for their future. The same four million men, while they are nothing but an inorganic mass, a dispersed crowd, are incapable of deciding their historic course. —Mariátegui, “The Indian Problem” 3 Since the 1990s, indigenous movements have assumed increasing political importance in Latin American democracies. They have organized nationwide strikes and protests, blocked unpopular economic reforms, toppled corrupt leaders, and in some instances formed their own political parties and even captured presidencies in an effort to craft an alternative political and economic project for their respective nations. While a number of indigenous-movement scholars have sought to explain the recent emergence of indigenous-rights movements and parties in Latin America (Albó 2002; Bengoa 2000; Brysk 2000; Maybury-Lewis 2002; Van Cott 2005; Warren and Jackson 2002; Yashar 2005), there has been little explicit engagement with the literature on antineoliberal resistance efforts. At the same time, protest episodes such as the toppling of successive national governments in Argentina (2001, 2002), Bolivia (2003, 2005), and Ecuador (1997, 2000, 2005) have attracted a great deal of attention from contentious-politics scholars (Hershberg and Rosen 2006; Hochstetler 2006; Johnston and Almeida 2006; Silva 2009; Veltmeyer 2007). Yet, with a few exceptions, most studies on antineoliberal protest movements fail to provide an in-depth analysis of the role of indigenous peoples in contemporary protest cycles. By exploring the intersection between austerity protests and identity politics, this study seeks to make a key contribution to the emerging literature on collective action in the neoliberal era. The book addresses three central questions regarding social protest dynamics in the region. First, why have indigenous and popular-sector actors mobilized against neoliberal economic policies in some contexts but not in others? Second, are there discernible patterns in the forms of social protest being undertaken? Finally, how do protests against market reforms translate into significant political change? Based on a comparative analysis of the cases of Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, the study contends that the nature, scope, and intensity of resistance to economic reform on the part of civil society are conditioned by two basic factors: (1) the character of domestic political institutions and (2) historic patterns of popular political incorporation. Radical mobilizations against unpopular reforms are argued to be more likely to emerge in countries with inchoate party systems that do not effectively represent the popular sectors and in which social actors are able to articulate new collective identities that resonate beyond traditional affiliations based on class, union membership , or partisanship. The approach of the book is historical-institutionalist, complemented by a constructivist understanding of how new, ethnicitybased collective identities and movements are shaped by historical struggles and political opportunities or constraints. Institutional conditions shape societal responses to hardships, while historical conditions influence which identities provide common ground for struggle in a given context. New social actors who lack institutionalized 4 chapter one [34.236.152.203] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 03:22 GMT) channels of social representation have come to the forefront of antineoliberal protests in Latin America. In Ecuador and Bolivia, the decline in class-based collective action that has been precipitated by economic restructuring has been replaced by appeals to ethnicity as a mobilizing framework for action. In these two countries, indigenous peoples have not been extensively mobilized or...