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1. Letter of the Law: Comparing Indigenous Autonomy in Plurinational Colombia and Bolivia

   Michael , Sean

   May 30, 2023; May 10, 2023

   In the aftermath of the neoliberal economic policies of the 1980s, much of Latin America was in the midst of a crisis. Faced with increasing popular discontent about rampant economic and racial inequality, governments across the region encountered unprecedented challenges to their legitimacy. Excluded for centuries from processes of political contestation, many Indigenous and Afro-Latin communities found themselves subject to cycles of impoverishment, isolation, and predation. Appearing in tandem with these systems of exclusion was mestizaje, the independence-era racial doctrine that allowed for the simultaneous praise of theoretical diversity for the sake of national unity and the quotidian discrimination against nonwhites on account of their perceived barbarism. Using the language of mestizaje to cloak political discourse in multiculturalism, policymakers in the 20th century promoted the whitening of their national image. After facing mass popular uprisings against the racial status quo, countries from Bolivia to Ecuador to Colombia made concerted efforts to excise mestizaje thought from their legal systems in the 1990s and 2000s. In its place, they instituted plurinationalism, a constitutional principle that recognizes the distinct cultural and economic traditions of ethnic minorities and devolves power to certain communities to protect those heritages. Part of those reforms is the right to administer the land on which the communities reside, which often possesses abundant natural resources. In the years since plurinational constitutions were drafted, though, questions about the implementation of autonomy for minority communities remain. In this thesis, I investigate the factors that enable rural Indigenous communities to defend themselves from incursions into their territory by the state, extractive corporations, and guerillas. I utilize a case study approach, selecting two Indigenous communities each from Colombia and Bolivia, two of the countries with the most robust foundations for plurinational execution. My methodology uses deforestation levels as a proxy for the success of these defensive maneuvers, setting a baseline for the robustness of the country’s plurinational reforms. I then call on research from anthropology, political science, and economics to understand the complex processes of politicization, power, and identity that surround the conflict in each case study. I find that both the Colombian and Bolivian examples provide important insights into the strengths of plurinational legal systems, but are vulnerable to political and economic threats. The resulting unpredictability allows only the Indigenous communities with high political unity and connections to national-level advocacy organizations to actively overcome the administrative hurdles put between them and autonomous recognition. In order to make plurinational autonomy more accessible to more Indigenous communities, plurinational constitutions require supportive legal scaffolding, robust state protections against corporate and illicit interests, and powerful Indigenous political organizations. This thesis will contribute to existing literature by extending analysis beyond a single community, drawing comparisons between the Colombian and Bolivian cases to understand how future plurinational reforms can be implemented to protect autonomous Indigenous enclaves from outside threats.

2. La reconstitución del Jach'a Suyu y la Nación Pakajaqi : entre el poder local y la colonialidad del derecho indígena

   Chuquimia Escobar, René Guery

   La Paz : PIEB, Programa de Investigación Estratégica en Bolivia, 2010.

3. Beyond intellectual property : toward traditional resource rights for indigenous peoples and local communities

   Posey, Darrell Addison, 1947-

   Ottawa : International Development Research Centre, ©1996.

   The concept of traditional resource rights (TRR) reflects the necessity of rethinking the limited and limiting concept of intellectual property rights (IPR). The TRR concept can accommodate a wide range of relevant international agreements as a basis for a sui-generis system of protection for indigenous peoples and their intellectual, natural, and technological resources. This book introduces the TRR concept in a manner organised around a series of questions that might emerge in a community when a visitor arrives to collect information or cultural or biogenetic materials. Each chapter begins with a summary of the main issues it addresses and ends with options and suggested actions. Issues discussed include who benefits from traditional resources, the rights of communities to approve or resist commercialisation, types of potential legal action, the applicability of traditional IPR, development of community systems for protecting TRR, the use of binding or non-binding international agreements, and TRR funding. Examples are included of creative strategies and unique solutions that indigenous communities have developed for protecting and benefiting from TRR.

   Online EBSCO Academic Comprehensive Collection

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