Struggles of Voice: The Politics of Indigenous Representation in the Andes

by José Antonio Lucero

Over the last two decades, indigenous populations in Latin America have achieved a remarkable level of visibility and political effectiveness, particularly in Ecuador and Bolivia. In Struggles of Voice, José Antonio Lucero examines these two outstanding examples in order to understand their different patterns of indigenous mobilization and to reformulate the theoretical model by which we link political representation to social change.

Building on extensive fieldwork, Lucero considers Ecuador's united indigenous movement and compares it to the more fragmented situation in Bolivia.  He analyzes the mechanisms at work in political and social structures to explain the different outcomes in each case. Lucero assesses the intricacies of the many indigenous organizations and the influence of various NGOs to uncover how the conflicts within social movements, the shifting nature of indigenous identities, and the politics of transnationalism all contribute to the success or failure of political mobilization.

Blending philosophical inquiry with empirical analysis, Struggles of Voice is an informed and incisive comparative history of indigenous movements in these two Andean countries. It helps to redefine our understanding of the complex intersections of social movements and political representation.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Nick]

Lucero's goals for this volume hold a promise (however slight) of scholarly imagination, in that he proposes to use a "pragmatic constructivist approach" to explore the seeming contradictions between the accompanying of coherent indigenous movements with weak political influence in Ecuador, and the opposite in Bolivia. However, the use of "pragmatic" portends the actualities of academic synthesis, as a conventional "culturalist" (comfortable mentioning New Social Movements in the literature review) within social movement scholarship and broader comparative politics. Because of this, I was disappointed in the end by the book.

Lucero references Foucault briefly and Gramsci even more briefly, but his "constructivist" notions of indigeneity refer primarily to the fluidity of identity in relation to the standard "political opportunity structures" of "Social Movement Theory" (McAdam et al). That is, indigeneity is authenticated simply in relation to more or less effective interactions with political organizations (transnational NGOs, churches, and states). Thus, the indigenous/evangelical organization FEINE for example becomes as important as CONAIE. Lucero briefly references Sawyer's excellent ethnography of identity and power whereby indigenous movements confront (or are co-opted by) Arco and the neoliberal Ecuadoran state. However, he does so in the context of a rather pedestrian argument that "who can speak for indigenous communities ... is always contested." Though Lucero quite correctly critiques the practice of neoliberal multiculturalism, and is consistently critical of exploitation by petroleum corporations, this kind of relativistic approach to identity both devalues the historical substance of struggles (the long-time indigenous organization is not the same as the recent organization created by Arco) and renders identity as just one more of the categories (rationalism, structuralism, culturalism) in a depoliticized bureaucracy of comparative politics. Indigeneity becomes an "imagined community" subject to whatever political whims exist in the moment.

In the end, Lucero's book is worth reading for those who are concerned with Ecuador and Bolivia, indigenous movements, and relations between social movements and culture. However, one should not look to the book for new, disruptive or destabilizing insights about culture, identity, power and social movements.

[Pete]

Great discussion of the nature of political representation, with the title drawing on Hirschman’s discussion of exit, voice and loyalty. While the scale is fairly coarse (a comparison between Bolivian and Ecuadorian movements), the theorization is great - lots of conventional political theory mixed in with Bakhtin, Foucault, etc. Lucero’s analysis assumes that indigenous actors are primarily concerned with modifying their relationship to the state, and I would say that this is not necessarily the case - especially in areas where the state is pretty much absent, although ongoing negotiations with the state are obviously important. Probably the best aspect of this book is his careful tracing of the way that indigenous collectivities have been imagined historically, up to the present time, when the nation is the privileged term and imagined body in Ecuadorian indigenous politics. Would give 5 stars if not for the lame swipe at 'post-modernists' in the introduction (no citations, of course)...