1

Chapter 1 Introduction: Entering the Field

“The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday

worlds in which they live...they often seem driven by forces they can

neither understand nor govern....” (C. Wright Mills 1956: 3)

Ethnic identity of the Tacana diaspora.

One of the strengths of ethnographic fieldwork has always been attention to the uniqueness

of local contexts. This focus continues to be a strength, especially post-postmodern

critiques of essentializing and universalizing discourses that erased difference within

supposedly homogeneous groups. Ethnic identity has, in fact, been demoted to one of many

identities that include those of gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, class, and

others, leaving the primacy of certain identities over others to be determined by the situation

and to analyses attentive to power and control, especially those related to capital and/or state

projects. This is not to say that ethnic identity has ceased to be of intense interest to

anthropologists; rather, anthropological understandings of the meanings of ethnic identities

have become more nuanced.

My work focused on powerful processes currently at work on one ethnic identity in Bolivia –

the Tacana. The Tacana are indigenous to the rainforests of lowland Bolivia. In the early

1700s, they were concentrated into mission settlements by Franciscan missionaries in the

2

tropical lowland region of Iturralde north of the city of La Paz. Emerging technologies in

industrialized countries created increasing demand for native rubber beginning in the 1800s.

First rubber vulcanization in 1839, then the pneumatic bicycle tire in 1888, and finally the

emergence of the automobile industry made rubber an important commodity and caused a

rubber boom from 1900-1913 (Assies 1997:11-12). Responding to these changing

international markets, Tacana from these Iturralde settlements moved northeast to work as

rubber tappers.

It is this diaspora of Tacana, now living in the Beni and Pando regions in northern Bolivia’s

Amazonia, with whom my research is concerned. I examine how the structure of

interventions into Tacana communities done in the name of indigenous people is changing

the meaning of being Tacana, to the Tacana themselves and to outsiders. I argue that there

is, in fact, a process of “retribalization” (Cohen 1969:1) taking place in the region, and that

indigenous Tacana identity is being reconfigured in response to specific transnational flows

of people, money, and ideas. Ethnographic examples help illuminate what is at stake in

assumptions of and challenges to supposedly “fixed” identities, from “above” as well as

from “below.”

It is not a simple story to sketch. Forest dwellers, indígenas, missionaries, businessmen and

women, academic researchers, NGO workers, politicians, and government officials and

employees all play a part. Do-gooders, adventurers, true-believers, functionaries, and profit-

seekers contribute. Indeed, the numerous actors involved are various and the same

individual can (and often does) occupy multiple and changing roles as contexts vary. The

processes I describe in the following chapters, artificially separated into chapters to facilitate

3

Figure 1: Map of Bolivia Showing Tacana Diaspora Down the Beni River

and Up the Madre de Dios River1

1 Source: Modified from a map obtained from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas Austin’s web site (http://www.lib.utexas.edu).

Former Tacana Missions

4

understanding, are the result of the confluence of a multiplicity of ideas and actions,

structures and agencies. I am particularly interested in how these various forces come

together and, to paraphrase C. Wright Mills, circumscribe the powers of ordinary people

(1959:3), shaping decisions and outcomes, placing limits on the room to maneuver (the

agency) of the Tacana and others, particularly with reference to ethnic identity.

Research questions and motivations.

It is worth noting the circumstances that led me to my dissertation topic, as the questions

addressed in this dissertation were not formed prior to my arrival in northern Bolivia but

emerged from my encounters in the region during my preliminary and primary fieldwork. In

the summer of 1999, I traveled to South America to explore the possibility of conducting my

doctoral research in the Amazon basin of Bolivia, a region which has been the subject of few

anthropological studies. I saw my projected research as a commodity-chain analysis of the

Brazil nut, the most important export from the region following the collapse of the rubber

market in the late 1980s. Bolivia is the leading exporter of Brazil nuts; 80% of the $48

million market for Brazil nuts is Bolivian controlled (Rienstra 2004). I planned to research

the lives of collectors, processors, and consumers of this nut, illuminating connections

between indigenous nut-gatherers and consumers of “environmentally friendly” candy bars

like Rainforest Crunch. Typical of many anthropological endeavors, however, contingency

was to play a key role in redirecting my research interests.

Riberalta is the Bolivian center for Brazil nut processing. I arrived there in June of 1999 for

a few months of exploratory research. Wandering through a neighborhood that looked

neither extremely impoverished nor affluent by local standards, I asked the friendlier looking

5

locals if anyone had a room for rent. In this way, I found a temporary home where I was

warmly welcomed as a boarder. Arranging a tour of a nut-shelling factory in Riberalta was

easy. However, I expected that arranging entrée into the forest to meet with nut collectors

would be more challenging. As a young female traveling alone, and with limited funds for

my summer’s travel, I was concerned with both safety and economy. As it turned out, my

new host family was helpful in this area. They immediately introduced me to a cousin who

directed a local NGO which coordinated development projects targeting indigenous peoples

in the forest.

As I visited the offices of the NGO and that of the regional indigenous organization, I saw

posters that showed geographic locations of indigenous groups in Bolivia, pictures of

indígenas labeled by group, and the title “Desarrollo con Identidad” (Development with

Identity). At the bottom of the poster, the Bolivian Vice Ministry of Indigenous Affairs and

Original Peoples, the Bolivian Ministry of Sustainable Development and Planning, and the

Danish International Development Agency were credited. I wondered about the links

between identity and development that were behind the creation of such a poster.

I was invited to ride along with a team from the cousin’s NGO consisting of both

indigenous and non-indigenous members. As we visited “indigenous” forest communities,

we encountered mixed reactions from villagers. Some appeared to welcome the NGO team

and myself, but others were quite vocal in their disapproval of my presence and of the

activities of the NGO. While these reactions were not especially surprising to me, another

reaction was – not only was development and anthropological research contested, but so

was the very label “indigenous.” I was struck by how emotionally charged this label was in

6

Figure 2: Map from Poster “Desarrollo Con Identidad” (Development With Identity) Showing Distribution of Bolivian Indigenous Groups2

2 Source: Ministerio de Asuntos Campesinos y Pueblos Indígenas Originarios (MACPIO), 2002.

7

the region. Indeed, one community we visited had fractured into two segments, those who

had decided to self-identify as Tacana and those who claimed neither they nor their

neighbors were indigenous. I was told that this was a wide-spread phenomenon in the

region and was fascinated by it. Local explanations appeared contradictory. Some told me

that lots of people were claiming to be indigenous when they were not, in fact, indigenous, in

order to get access to land and other forms of aid. In contrast, others explained that people

were finally willing to admit that they were indigenous, after so many years of hiding it due

to persecution and discrimination. The case of the Tacana was particularly contentious, and

claims that the Tacana of this region were assimilated and not indigenous any more were

common – much more so, in fact, than claims to this effect referring to the Chacobo,

Cavineña, or Esse Ejja, the three other major indigenous groups of the region. It was at this

point in my exploratory research that I changed my project focus to ethnic identity, more

precisely, to links between indigenous identity and development work.

The situation of the Tacana appealed to me for scholarly, activist, and personal reasons.

Theoretically, I was interested in social constructivist orientations which see identity as not

simply possessed, but as created in processes that are social and which involve power. In

addition, as someone committed to “action anthropology,” I hoped that my research would

do more than “do no harm,” but would actually benefit those I studied. Along these lines, I

wondered whose definition of indigenous would become hegemonic and hoped that

research illuminating the complex process in actual progress would be of use to those most

affected by it.

8

Personally, I was drawn to the case of the Tacana because of my status as a member of the

Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Like many Tacana of the Beni and Pando, many Citizen

Potawatomi could be found at the boundary between Indian and not, in hotly contested

terrain. In the 1980s, my tribe changed enrollment requirements to include those who are

descendents of enrolled members, eliminating blood-quantum requirements and dramatically

increasing the size of the tribe. To some, this action “diluted” the Citizen Potawatomi. To

others, it was a rejection of continuing colonialist attempts to impose external definitions of

us upon us. Bathurst 1998 is an examination of this change of enrollment requirements for

the Citizen Potawatomi nation and its impact on ethnic identifying. While easing enrollment

restrictions increases the size of the group, its political power, and its chances of continued

existence, it also changes what it means to be Citizen Potawatomi. In the paper, I argue that

culture should be viewed as an adaptive mechanism that allows people to adjust to change.

The only “authentic” way to identify the members of native groups is to look to the groups’

own definitions, which change, like all cultural phenomena, through time. External criteria

based on biological, primordialist, or other definitions imposed by dominant groups are

impositions and untruths. When groups like the Citizen Potawatomi or the northern

Bolivian Tacana choose different, “looser” criteria, this makes questions of identity more

complex, but not illegitimate.

Research organization and methods.

The conclusions found in this dissertation are based upon 15 months of research in Bolivia

conducted between March 11, 2001 and November 9, 2002, plus the exploratory summer

research of 1999. Multi-sited research was necessary in order to understand the interlinkages

and interpenetrating effects of the processes I document, and my methods varied with

9

context, including participant observation, formal and informal interviews, and the collection

of documents. My research was conducted in indigenous communities, government offices,

indigenous federations, and aid organizations of various types; in merchant river boats,

urban markets, karaoke bars, rice fields, and during soccer tournaments; drinking chicha and

chewing coca in the forest and having lattes, beers, or whiskey and karaoke in the city.

Bolivians (indigenous and not) became my friends and acquaintances, as did foreign and

domestic researchers and NGO workers. I shared the homes of rural Tacana as well as

urban Bolivians of Tacana descent, of foreign researchers and NGO workers. I visited

forest settlements of those self-identifying as Tacana, Esse Ejja, Chacobo, Cavineña,

campesino (peasant), camba (lowland Bolivian), and/or kolla (highland Bolivian). I talked with

representatives of the indigenous, governmental, nongovernmental, and research

organizations noted below in Riberalta, Trinidad, Cobjia, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and La

Paz. A total of seven months were spent in these cities3. I also spent a total of seven

months in Santa Rosa, a bilingual Tacana community of approximately 50 inhabitants

located up the Beni river approximately 60 km from Riberalta as the crow flys (87 km by

river). Three weeks were devoted to research in a neighboring Tacana community,

September 21, that was monolingual in Spanish, for counter-illuminative purposes.

My research weaves together the actions and ideologies of multiple actors, and accessing

each type required varied strategies. The key players in the processes addressed in this

dissertation can be sorted into three categories: indígenas (including individuals as well as

indigenous organizations), the Bolivian government, and aid organizations (internationally

funded, including multilateral banks). Local and multinational business interests receive only

3 I visited Cobija during my exploratory research of 1999 only. My time in Cochabamba was devoted entirely to library research.

10

cursory attention. This is not to say that they are not important, only that their influence is

beyond the scope of my current work. In the following pages, I explain in more detail how I

went about collecting data concerning each of the three types of actors.

Indigenous actors.

March 2001 was spent securing research permissions, making last minute purchases in

preparation for life in the jungle, and traveling by boat to the Tacana community of Santa

Rosa. I obtained permission for research in the indigenous Tacana community of Santa

Rosa from the community itself, from the Vice Ministry of the Bolivian government

concerned with indigenous affairs (VAIPO) in La Paz, from the national confederacy of

lowland indigenous groups (CIDOB) in Santa Cruz, and from the regional organization of

Amazonian indígenas (CIRABO) based in Riberalta. In March of 2001, I had the company

and assistance of Peruvian anthropologist Enrique Herrera who had spent years working

with Esse Ejje people in the region. It was with his input while he was visiting the

University of California, Berkeley, during the summer of 2000 that I identified Santa Rosa as

a prospective research site. He accompanied me on my first visit to the community in

March to introduce me since he was familiar with the people and the region.

I chose Santa Rosa believing it to be the political center of the Amazonian Organization of

Indigenous Tacana (OITA) as well as the center of Tacana organizing in the region

historically. Due to circumstances I describe in more detail in Chapter 3, this was not

precisely the case. By the time this was clear to me, however, my ties to Santa Rosa were

strong enough that I decided to stay on. I believe that the attention to variation in actions,

perspectives, identities, and strategies that is the foundation of this dissertation is all the

11

more pronounced due to the time I spent at the “margins” of Tacana organizing. This is not

to say that I avoided contact with elites, Tacana and otherwise. Indeed, the nature of my

research questions made it imperative that I attend to those who exercised power over the

people with whom I lived. I return to my contact with elites below.

Within the community of Santa Rosa, my main method of research was participant

observation. I distributed my time among the different family groups and between the men

and women as equally as possible, often “helping” them do whatever task was at hand.

Attempts at conducting formal interviews and using questionnaires were relatively

unsuccessful, usually resulting in silence, the local equivalent of “Who knows?”, or

information that would later turn out to be false. Towards the end of my field stay, I was

more successful at using questionnaires with certain community members, perhaps as I had

finally gained both the rapport necessary to ask more direct questions and had achieved the

knowledge necessary to ask in a culturally relevant way. I collected genealogies, census data,

and life history materials. I mapped the community. I took notes on the artifacts and

activities I observed. I video recorded daily activities, community meetings, and church,

accumulating approximately twenty-five hours of footage. I tape recorded community

meetings, church, music, and Tacana-language sessions. I took over 1000 digital and over 60

film photographs. I also photographed copies of official documents available in the

community.

Besides having to “learn how to ask” (Briggs 1986), I had to work out a living situation that

was conducive to collecting adequate data. When I first arrived in the community of Santa

Rosa, I stayed with a family. It quickly became apparent that this family was the most

12

marginalized family in the community at that time. These divisions within the community

were so strong that my first host family eventually departed to join another community.

During my initial stay, however, living with them seemed to create tensions that impeded my

progress with other families. After 12 days, I arranged to stay in the empty hut of the

community’s schoolteacher. The more central location of the hut and a need for privacy in

order to get my work done seemed acceptable excuses for the move. Everyone understood

this rationale and, in fact, had been asking me if I wouldn’t prefer it from the beginning of

my stay. By August, the community had built me my own two-room hut next to the school.

I arranged from the beginning to eat with a different family each month, repaying them in

foodstuff for the privilege. Between my new central location and my revolving pension, I

was able to secure more equal access to the homes of the community.

I learned some Tacana language with the help of three informants and a dictionary compiled

by linguists from the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Ottaviano and Ottaviano 1989). As

everyone in the bilingual community of Santa Rosa spoke Spanish fluently and use of the

Tacana language in the community was limited, learning the language was more useful for

rapport building than for communication purposes. Ten adults and one little girl spoke

Tacana. There were others who understood Tacana, and many who only know a few words

such as names of animals.

A comment should be made on how the community was compensated for their

collaboration with my research, including building me my hut. At the beginning of my stay,

referring to the precedent of another anthropologist working with an Esse Ejja community

nearby, I offered to provide a collaboración (community donation) within “reasonable” means,

13

to be chosen by the community collectively. They chose a solar-powered, shortwave radio,

an item that they have had in the past. In this way, I myself became a participant in the

indígena-targeted aid of which I write.

Not only did I learn about Santa Rosans within their community and as they ventured into

the surrounding forest, but I accompanied them on trips to other communities and to the

city of Riberalta. Indeed, one of my primary objectives was to observe their interactions

with government agencies, indigenous organizations, and NGOs in the city of Riberalta as

well as when representatives visited the community. Because of this, I spent many days

traveling to and from Riberalta with Santa Rosans in order to participate in these meetings.

Travel was so frequent and exhausting that my most enjoyable fieldwork time was an

uninterrupted period of six weeks where nothing happened to prompt a trip to Riberalta.

These trips to Riberalta allowed me to observe Santa Rosans receiving health care; relaxing

with relatives; getting the run-around from government officials while trying to resolve a

conflict regarding rights to a community school; attending workshops sponsored by the

indigenous organizations CIRABO and CIDOB, municipal government, and international

aid agencies; and selling plantains and other forest products to venders at the port. I also

accompanied them on trips to other communities for soccer tournaments, celebrations, and

to vote in the national elections. Once in Riberalta, I would often stay longer than Santa

Rosans in order to take advantage of the opportunity to research the agencies based there.

Thus, my location in the field was constantly in flux, and my presence in Santa Rosa

intermittent, a situation that required little explanation to this mobile population.

14

Besides the Tacana of Santa Rosa and September 21 and the nearby communities I visited

with Santa Rosans or en route to or from Santa Rosa, I met Chacobo, Cavineña, Esse Ejja,

and Tacana at the office of CIRABO in Riberalta and at activities approved by it. I met

indígenas at the office of CIDOB in Santa Cruz, as well as at workshops and congresses,

including the following. In April of 2002, I attended a conference sponsored by the

education arm of CIDOB, held in Riberalta for the presidents of indigenous school juntas

(boards). In June of 2002, I attended the council in Riberalta where CIRABO officers were

selected for a 5 year term. In October of 2002, I was present for part of the national

assembly of indigenous organizations held in Trinidad where the election of new CIDOB

officers took place, along with evaluation of past activities and planning for the coming

years. In October of 2002, I also participated in a bloqueo (blockade) held in the community

of Sanctuario, home of the current head of the Amazonian Tacana. The blockade was called

by CIRABO and attended by representatives of at least 9 indigenous communities in the

region.

In addition to attending events of the indigenous organizations, I also interviewed

representatives of CIDOB, CIRABO, and of the regional indigenous organization based in

Trinidad (CPIB). My interaction with CIRABO was even more extensive. I visited the

office regularly when I was in Riberalta and attended meetings held between CIRABO and

the Netherlands development organization SNV, between CIRABO and the technical arm

of CIDOB concerned with the creation of indigenous territories made possible of the INRA

land-reform law of 1996 (CPTI-CIDOB), and within CIRABO regarding affairs of Santa

Rosa and September 21.

15

International and government actors.

Indígenas, whether leaders of organizations or “just plain folk,” are clearly not the only

players in the processes of identity reconfiguration which I document. The Bolivian

government and international aid-givers occupy key roles. In the 1990s, political and legal

reforms in Bolivia resulted in the recognition of indigenous people as a certain kind of

Bolivian citizen with unique rights and needs (Postero 2001), including rights to collectively

owned indigenous territories (TCOs). These changes are the result, in part, of transnational

flows of people, money, and ideas linked to human rights work. Indeed, activities of the

Bolivian government and international agencies interpenetrate and can be hard to separate.

This is particularly so in the case of the institutions I examine.

One example of partnerships of this sort in Bolivia has recently garnered heavy media

attention in the US. Bechtel, a multinational construction corporation based in San

Francisco, California, was awarded a contract to run the water system of Cochabamba.

Apparently a response to pressure by the World Bank to privatize state enterprises

(Chatterjee 2003), this contract ignited widespread protests at the privatization of access to

this collective resource. The contract was eventually cancelled, but only after one protestor

was killed and hundreds injured in the encounters between civilians and police that resulted.

In this example, Bolivian government, the World Bank, and a multinational corporation are

clearly linked. As demonstrated in Chapter 6, there are also deep connections between

international agencies (including the World Bank) and the creation and implementation of

Bolivian laws and policies concerning indígenas.

16

As in my research with indígenas, I employed a variety of methods to learn about the

activities of government and international aid agencies. Given the bureaucratic nature of

these agencies, official documents available from their offices or found by searching the

internet were invaluable. I also collected data from formal interviews, informal

conversations, and attendance at meetings and seminars. I concentrated on organizations

that worked with indígenas, or that had impact on their lives. Which organizations and

agencies these might be was not obvious. My list underwent constant refinement as my

research progressed.

In La Paz and elsewhere, I conducted formal interviews with representatives of the two

multilateral banks, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank; with

representatives of development organizations from five countries, Dutch (SNV), Danish

(DANIDA), German (GTZ), British (DIFID), and the United States (U.S. Peace Corps.);

and with an “indigenous expert” working for the Dutch Embassy. In Santa Cruz, I

interviewed the founder of an organization (APCOB) that has been involved with lowland

indigenous organizing since 1980. In Riberalta and Santa Rosa, I interviewed representatives

of the Adventist Relief and Development Agency International (ADRA), the Center for

Juridical Studies and Social Investigations (CEJIS), the Center for the Investigation and

Promotion of the Peasant (CIPCA), the office of Human Rights (Derechos Humanos), the

Ministry of the Affairs of Peasants and Indigenous and Aboriginal Peoples (MACPIO), the

Forest Management Program of the Bolivian Amazon (PROMAB), Population Services

International (PSI), the public education system, and the military office which arbitrates

disputes involving river merchants and community members.

17

In June of 2001, I attended a facilitated workshop for indigenous representatives sponsored

by the municipal government of Riberalta and a number of local NGOs to identify and solve

local problems. The information collected at this and related workshops was to be used to

allocate municipal funds. As mentioned above, I also interacted with members of these

organizations and others socially, gaining knowledge through the informal interaction long

recognized as valuable to anthropological study.

Theoretical frames.

I went to the field with a theoretical “toolkit.” As an eclectic anthropologist trained to let

research questions dictate my theoretical frames, I am not invested in a particular school of

thought. To me, theories and accompanying models are more useful as “discovery

procedures” (Wolf 2001: 62), than as exclusionary explanatory systems. For almost a decade,

however, I have been predisposed to a particular set of questions. I am drawn to analyses of

processes of control, particularly those that involve apparent paradoxes – such as control

disguised as freedom..

Laura Nader has developed a research agenda around what she calls “controlling processes”

(Nader 1994, Nader 1996, Nader 1997, Nader 2002), a frame I find particularly illuminating

for the contexts in which I work. The rubric of “controlling processes” cuts a wide swath

through anthropological theories, integrating political economy, theories of power, and

classic anthropological understandings of how social controls operate. Nader explains

controlling processes as follows.

The term “controlling processes” refers to the transformative nature of central ideas

such as coercive harmony that emanate from institutions operating as dynamic

18

components of power. Although the study of controlling processes looks at how

central dogmas are made and how they work in multiple sites (often arrayed

vertically), it also focuses our attention on micro-processes; that is, it is the study of

how individuals and groups are influenced and persuaded to participate in their own

domination or, alternatively, to resist it, sometimes disrupting domination or putting

the system in reverse (Nader 1994, 1996a). Because power moves, it is unstable, and

sometimes people achieve power rather than being deprived of it. Cumulative

tinkering can be a two-way process (Scott 1990) or double-edged. (Nader 1997:217)

To understand controlling processes is to understand the multiple ways ideas come to exert

control over people’s actions, to understand how, in other words, culture is produced.

Specifically relevant to the situation of the Tacana is attention to (1) political-economic

processes that unevenly draw people into a "global system" of production, exchange, and

consumption of commodities as well as images, ideas, and ideals (of progress, of

indigenousness, of the environment, for example) (Mintz 1985, Nash 1979, Wolf 1999, Wolf

1982), (2) Foucault's “subjectivities” and Gramscian theories of hegemony that address how

power-full circumstances produce certain ways of thinking, speaking, acting, and identifying

(cultural control), (3) social control centered in peer groups as well as enforcement

apparatuses of the state or other controlling institutions, (4) individual choices and their

intended and unintended repercussions. As pointed out in the above quotation, resistance to

these controls (e.g. Scott 1990) must be part of the analysis.

My frame is control, rather than power, but power is, of course, part of the implementation

and operation of control. As a concept, however, power is slippery. Eric Wolf created a

19

schema with four “modalities” of power: individual potential (Nietzchean), ego imposing

will on alter (Weberian), control over contexts (tactical or organizational power), and

structural power (addressed by Marx and Foucault) which is “…power manifest in

relationship that not only operates within setting and domains but also organizes and

orchestrates the settings themselves, and that specifies the direction and distribution of

energy flows” (Wolf 1999: 5). In practice, various types of control overlap and affect one

another. Cultural control, for example, refers to the power of ideas and internalized ways of

being that shape the way people think, speak, and act in the world. Related to notions of

cultural control is Gramsci’s “hegemony” and Foucault’s “subjectivity,” both of which deal

with internalized ways of being that are formed by powerful processes and which may or

may not be contested. However, these theorists employ markedly different models of

power. While Gramsci’s hegemony is tied to institutions and elites, to centers and interests,

for Foucault, power is diffuse. In Foucault’s model, power is “a force that permeated all

realms of social life, with no real center and no one employing power tactics” (Nader 1997).

Gramsci is more helpful for understanding the process part of controlling processes because

he provides a model of imposition as well as attention to the spaces where resistance does

and does not occur. Ong called the specific ways in which individuals contest imposition of

controls “cultural struggle” (Ong 1991). The most effective cultural control goes

unchallenged, although some scholars argue that contestation is always present, if not

obvious.

I arrived in Bolivia sensitized to the workings of controlling processes through the study of

numerous field applications utilizing the notion of control as the dynamics of power (Nader

1984, Nader 1996). As my research project evolved, I tried to understand the changes to the

20

meanings of Tacana identity I was observing. The controlling processes frame pointed me

to the collection of certain types of data in my search for explanations of these changes. I

was interested in indigenous identity and identifying. In recent years, anthropologists have

devoted considerable attention to questions of what it means to be indigenous, analyzing this

both symbolically and materially with case-studies from around the world. Such studies are

typically presented in a framework of oppression: by the “state,” by non-indigenous elites, by

multinational banks and corporations. In Bolivia, much of the research along these lines has

had ties to development work, often with the explicit goal of providing data to governmental

and development agencies and/or of critiquing present projects or approaches. June Nash’s

important book about indigenous miners in the Bolivian highlands, was a scathing critique of

the exploitation of these workers as Bolivia was “modernized” (1979). Recently scholars

have turned their research attention to how governmental and development agencies might

themselves be implicated in changing meanings of indigenousness (e.g. Postero 2001). This

is precisely where my project finds its insertion point into current conversations. The

question of identifying involves more than indigenous peoples themselves. Other actors –

the state, the NGOs, the multinationals – all are playing their parts in the power game or the

“cultural struggle.”

A roadmap.

In order to illuminate the way transnational processes and local choices intersect in the case

of the Tacana, the question of identity is approached from diverse directions in the chapters

of this dissertation. Scholarship is cumulative, and Chapter 2, “Visions of Change in the

Study of Latin American Indígenas,” places my research in its academic context, examining

the key questions, assumptions, and debates that have driven studies of Latin American

21

indigenous peoples in the last century. In Chapter 3, “Key Moments in the History of the

Tacana,” I move from academic to historical context. This chapter draws from oral,

historical, and ethnographic accounts to highlight key moments of change in the history of

Bolivia’s Tacana.

The fourth and fifth chapters introduce the Tacana of Santa Rosa. In Chapter 4,

“Introducing Daily Life in Santa Rosa: A Mobile Community,” I describe the daily activities

of Santa Rosans, allowing the reader insight into what life was like for these Tacana during

the time of my research. Chapter 5, “Being A Good Person: Give and Take in Santa Rosa,”

moves from what they do to who they are, by exploring the moral order of Santa Rosa

where egalitarian ethics, reciprocal obligations, and material conditions combine to sustain

particular ideas of what makes a good person. This chapter is important in painting a picture

of the most salient identity to Santa Rosans in their day-to-day, that of “good person.”

These ideas help explain conflicting attitudes towards interventions into the community by

outsiders who, in the eyes of Santa Rosans, act like bad people and bad neighbors.

In Chapter 6, “Indigenous Organizing in the International Arena: 1980s–2000s,” explores

the changing relations between regional indigenous confederacies, aid organizations, and

governmental agencies in the last three decades, a critical time for indigenous mobilization in

Bolivia. Chapter 7, “The Changing Meanings of Indigenous Tacana” explores the impact of

the accomplishments described in Chapter 6 on Tacana identity. In this chapter, the

changing definitions of Tacana-ness that I documented are explained, and a framework for

understanding their diversity and deployment in terms of symbolic capital is provided.

22

Finally, Chapter 8, “Fixing Identities” ties the data and conclusions explored in previous

chapters to contemporary theories of power. This conclusion drives home the point that

identity is not simple or static, but is created in social processes. To understand identities,

one must grapple with power, and one must look for its manifestations in multiple sites.

This dissertation is an attempt to do just that.