Indigenous Territorial Autonomy and Self-Government in the Diverse Americas

An essential work on autonomy and self-governance for scholars of Indigenous politics, Indigenous rights in the Americas, constitutional law, and multicultural citizenship regimes.

Across the Americas, Indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples have demanded autonomy, self-determination, and self-governance. By exerting their collective rights, they have engaged with domestic and international standards on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, implemented full-fledged mechanisms for autonomous governance, and promoted political and constitutional reform aimed at expanding understandings of multicultural citizenship and the plurinational state. Yet these achievements come in conflict with national governments’ adoption of neoliberal economic and neo-extractive policies which advance their interests over those of Indigenous communities.

Available for the first time in English, Indigenous Territorial Autonomy and Self-Government in the Diverse Americas explores current and historical struggles for autonomy within ancestral territories, experiences of self-governance in operation, and presents an overview of achievements, challenges, and threats across three decades. Case studies across Bolivia, Chile, Nicaragua, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Ecuador, and Canada provide a detailed discussion of autonomy and self-governance in development and in practice.

Paying special attention to the role of Indigenous peoples’ organizations and activism in pursuing sociopolitical transformation, securing rights, and confronting multiple dynamics of dispossession, this book engages with current debates on Indigenous politics, relationships with national governments and economies, and the multicultural and plurinational state. This book will spark critical reflection on political experience and further exploration of the possibilities of the self-determination of peoples through territorial autonomies.

With Contributions By: Orlando Aragón Andrade, Ana Cecilia Arteaga Böhrt, Verónica Azpiroz Cleñan, Frederica Barclay, Araceli Burguete Cal y Mayor, John Cameron, Bernal D. Castillo, Magali Vienca Copa-Pabón, Elsy Curihuinca N., Dalee Sambo Dorough, Dolores Figueroa Romero, Ritsuko Funaki, Miguel González, Laura Hernández Pérez, María Fernanda Herrera Acuña, Amy M. Kennemore, Rodrigo Lillo V., Elizabeth López-Canelas, José A. Marimán, Pere Morell i Torra, Shapiom Noningo, Pablo Ortiz-T., Wilfredo Plata, Roberta Rice, and Consuelo Sánchez

Miguel González is an anthropologist and political scientist. He is the author of Pluriethnic Governments: The Confirmation of Autonomous Regions in the Atlantic Coast-Caribbean of Nicaragua and Autonomy to Debate: Policies of Indigenous Recognition and the Plurinational State in Latin America. His research is focused on development issues related to Indigeneity and Indigenous peoples in contemporary Latin America.

Ritsuko Funaki is a professor at Chuo University, Japan. She has served as an assistant to the Japan International Cooperation Agency in Argentina, held a JICA assignment in the municipality of El Torno, Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and served as a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, York University. Her research relates to Indigenous autonomy, decentralization, and political participation.

Araceli Burguete Caly Mayor is professor-researcher at CIESAS-Southeast based in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas. She is the editor of Mexico: Experiences of Indigenous Autonomy and co-editor of Indigenous Justice: Rights of Consultation, Autonomies, and Resistance. She works consistently on themes of autonomy.

José Marimán is affiliate professor at Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile. He is the author of Autodeterminaciòn: Ideas Políticas Mapuche en el Albor del Sieglo XXI and “Aukan tañi müleam mapun kimüm. Manie ñi pu kinüm” Combates por una Historia Mapuche: La Perspectiva de un Condor. He is an activist in human and political rights in association with Chileans and Mapuches on the Chilean political stage.

Pablo Ortiz-T is an Ecuadorian sociologist and political scientist. He is senior professor and researcher at the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana UPS—Quinto Campus, visiting professor at the Universidad Pontifica Bolivariana UPB in Medellín, Colombia, and at the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Spain. His work is focused on the collective rights of Indigenous peoples, processes of territorial self-management, and Indigenous self-determination.

Foreward
Introduction
Miguel González, Araceli Burguete Cal y Mayor,J osé Marimán, Pablo Ortiz-T. and Ritsuko Funaki

Part I. Post-multicultural Constrictum

1. The Right to Self-determination and Indigenous Peoples: The Continuing Quest for Equality
Dalee Sambo Dorough

2. The Implementation Gap for Indgienous People’s Rights to Lands and Territories in Latin America (1991-2019)
Ritsuko Funaki

3. Framework Law on Autonomy and Decentralization for Native Indigenous Peasant Autonomies (AIOCs): Autonomous Regulation or Industrial Restriction?
María Fernanda Herrera Acuña

4. Indigenous Autonomy in Bolivia: From Great Expectations to Faded Dreams

John Cameron and Wilfredo Plata

5. The Tragedy of Alal: Regression of Rights in the Nicaraguan Autonomous Regime
Miguel González

6. Mapuche Autonomy in Pwelmapu: Confrontation and/or Political Construction?

Verónica Azpiroz Cleñan

7. A Future Crossroads in Rebellious and Pandemic Times: National Pluralism and Indigenous Self-government in Chile
José A. Marimán

Part II. Possibilities: Recovering What Has Been Lost and Rebuilding

8. Restoring the Assembly in Oxchuc, Chiapas: Elections Through Indigenous Normative Systems (2015-2019)
Araceli Burguete Cal y Mayor

9. Building Autonomies in Mexico City
Consuelo Sánchez

10. Neggsed (Autonomy): Progress and Challenges in the Self-government of the Gunadule People of Panama

Bernal D. Castillo

11. Autonomy, Intersectionality and Gender Justice: From the “Double Gaze” of the Women Elders to the Violence We Do Not Know How to Name

Dolores Figueroa Romero and Laura Hernández Pérez

12. The Thaki (Path) of Indigenous Autonomies in Bolivia: A View from the Territory of the Jatun Aylly Yura of the Qhara Qhara Nation

Magali Vienca Copa-Pabón, Amy M. Kennemore, and Elizabeth López-Canelas

13. Indigenous Jurisdiction as an Exercise of the Right to Self-determination and its Reception in the Chilean Criminal Justice System

Elsy Curihuinca N. and Rodrigo Lillo V.

14. Indigenous Autonomy in Ecuador: Fundamentals, Loss and Challegnes
Pablo Ortiz-T

Part III. Autonomies as Emancipation: Own Paths

15. Gender Orders and Technologies in the Context of Totora Marka’s Autonomous Project (Bolivia)
Ana Cecilia Arteaga Böhrt

16. Autonomy as an Assertive Practice and as a Defensive Strategy: Indigenous Shifts in Political Meanings in Response to Extreme Violence in Mexico

Mariana Mora

17. Building Guaraní Charagua Iyambae Autonomy: New Autonomies and Hegemonies in the Plurinational State of Bolivia
Pere Morell i Torra

18. The Path to Autonomy for the Wampís Nation
Shapiom Noningo and Frederica Barclay

19. “¡Guardia, Guardia!”: Autonomies and Territorial Defence in the Context of Colombia’s Post Peace-Accord
Viviane Weitzner

20. Indigenous Self-Government Landscapes in Michoacán: Activism, Experiences, Paradoxes, and Challenges
Orlando Aragón Andrade

21. Indigenous Governance Innovation in Canada and Latin America: Emerging Practices and Practical Challegnes
Roberta Rice

List of Contributors
Index

A significant contribution to contemporary discussions on Indigenous peoples and the state, for its critical and comprehensive view, and especially for the diversity of experiences that it documents that put at the center the strength of peoples to exercise their right to self-government in contexts of great diversity and dispossession.

—Maria Teresa Sierra, Revista Sobre Acesso à Justiça e Direitos Nas Américas

This book will probably close an era of experiences, analysis and discussions on autonomies and self-governments in Latin America. But it will open another. The texts show the tensions and contradictions of these forms of social existence with the nation-state, the political form of capitalism, which for centuries was the main arena for capitalist expansion but proved to be an obstacle for neoliberal globalization, which has been dismantling it. It is time to conceive and test other political horizons, as is beginning to be outlined here. They are both paths of emancipation and openings to a new world, of radical breath. It is not irrelevant that they are traced above all by women.

—Gustavo Esteva, founder, Universidad de la Tierra