Land, livelihoods and politics in the Bolivian lowlands: a view from the grassroots

School of Geography, University of Leeds

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Student

Karen Luyckx

Supervisors

Prof Ruth Pearson, Centre for Development Studies
Dr David Preston
Dr Marcus Power

Dates

1 October 2000 – 31 September 2003

Grants

University of Leeds and School of Geography studentship

Summary

Since the 1980s, throughout the world and particularly in Latin America, social movements based around ethnic identity and indigenous ideology have become important new social and political actors. The demands of these social movements mainly revolve around land/territorial rights, political participation and self-determination.

As a result, there has been a growing interest of the international community combined with an increasing recognition of indigenous rights. Researchers have been looking at the reasons for the rise of such movements and analysed the demands and their effects on political participation and land rights. However, less attention has been given to opinions and concerns of ‘normal’ indigenous people – as opposed to the demands put forward by indigenous leaders – and people’s daily economic activities as the context in which political struggle takes place (Bebbington, 2000).

Therefore, my research aims to:

• compare aspirations and views of development of different groups within selected rural communities according to age, gender, ethnicity and other factors, and compare these to the demands of indigenous peoples’ organisations - expressed by their leaders - and views of outside actors such as the Bolivian government, NGOs and international organisations.
• relate different views of development to indigenous peoples’ changing livelihoods

More concretely, my research aims to answer the following questions:

• How have livelihoods in the communities of Salvatierra and Puerto San Borja – in the Guarayos and Mojos areas of the Bolivian lowlands – been changing over time, especially in terms of natural resource use and participation in the market economy and what have been the main factors inducing such changes?
• What are the aspirations of different groups within those rural communities according to age and gender?
• What are the development strategies proposed by indigenous' people's leaders and organisations at different levels and how do these strategies relate to views of development of outside organisations, such as NGOs and international donor organisations? In other words, when formulating demands or designing strategies for development, in how far are indigenous leaders responding to international donor organisations' concerns as opposed to views of development and demands coming from indigenous people on the ground?
• Moreover, in how far are strategies of development as proposed by indigenous and other organisations realistically based on indigenous peoples' changing livelihoods?

During the fieldwork (December 2001 – October 2002), I used a mixture of mainly qualitative methods such as focus group interviews with participatory techniques, semi-structured interviews with key-informants at the local, regional and national level, a household livelihood survey and most importantly, participant observation. Out of the ten months fieldwork I spent eight months living in the two research communities, sharing daily experiences with the Guarayu and Mojeño indigenous peoples. Furthermore, I put a strong emphasis on making my research as ethical as possible by not only trying not to cause harm, but to actually return something to the community. In the case of Salvatierra, I set up a weaving cooperative with the women and in the case of Puerto San Borja, on demand of the community, I provided support to the community during the land measuring process in the context of Bolivia’s land reform.

I am currently analysing the data I collected and have started writing. The main preliminary conclusions of my research are the following: Land and natural resource based activities are the continuing basis of people’s livelihoods in Salvatierra and Puerto San Borja. Although there are small differences, aspirations of different groups according to age and gender are mainly related to improving community infrastructure while maintaining natural resource based livelihoods. People, even the younger generations, have very little aspiration for migration to urban centers or elsewhere. Rather, they have many ideas and views on how their living standards can be improved within their communities. Therefore, in the context of the livelihoods, concerns and views of indigenous people at the grassroots, the demands of Bolivia’s lowland indigenous movement around territorial and political claims are justified. Nevertheless, in practice Bolivia’s lowland indigenous movement has been seriously divided and weakened due to the cooptation of leaders by political parties, the sudden influx of large amounts of money coming from international development cooperation and the sales of recently acquired natural resources, and the prevalence of personal interests of certain indigenous leaders.