NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
REPORT O N RACE, PART 1
Rethinking Indigenous
Politics in the Era of the
"Indio Permitido"
by Charles R. Hale
Ethnicity can be a powerful tool in the creation of human and social capital, but. if politicized,
ethnicity can destroy capital. ... Ethnic diversity is dysfunctional when it generates conflict. ...
World Bank Web site on "Social Capital and Ethnicity" ^
LIRING THE 1990S, DR. DEMETRIO COJTt
Cuxil gained a well-eamed reputation as
"Dean" of Maya studies in Guatemala.^ A
prolific scholar and public intellectual, Cojti
deeply influenced the debate on Maya cultural
and political rights. Many dominant culture
ladinos associated him with the most assertive
of Maya demands that directly challenge their
long-standing racial pnviiege. To express their
anxieties about these challenges, they often
distinguished between principles they
endorsed, like the idea of cultural equality, and
"extreme" Maya demands that they associated
with violence and conflict. When asked to
elaborate, they would often turn personal:"Ah,
Demetrio Cojtl, for examplehe is 100%
radical."^
Charles R. Hale is
associate professor of
anthropology at the
L/nivf rsify of Texas.
Austtn; author of
Resistance and
Contradiction:
Miskitu Indians and
the Nicaraguan
Slate. 1894-1987
(1994), and Mis que
un indio: Racial
Ambivalence and
the Paradox of
Neohberal
Multiculiuralism in
Guatemala (forthcoming).
In 1998, 1 talked with Cojtl about the contradictory mix of opportunity and refusal in
the policies of the Arzu administration (19962000) toward Maya, which he summarized
succinctly: "Before, they just told us 'no.' Now,
their response is 'si, pero' ['yes, but']." When
Cojti later accepted the post of Vice Minister of
Education in the newly elected Portillo government, speculation reigned. Had he "sold
out"? Was he out to test the limits of "si, pero"?
Gaining experience for a time when Mayas
would control the state? Three years into the
Portillo administration (2000-2004), 1 lunched
with some ladino schoolteachersparticipants
in the teachers' strike of 2003 against neoliberal downsizing. They scoffed when I remarked
that, a few years earlier, they had described
Cojtf as a radical: "He's part of the government
now, even worse than the others."
LIKE GuATEMAtA, NEARLY EVERY OTHER COUNTRY
in Latin America has recently been transformed
by the rise of collective indigenous voices in
national politics and by shifts in state ideology
toward "multiculturalism.'"* The latter, combined
with aggressive neoliberal policies, forms part of
an emergent mode of governance in ihe region.
Far from opening spaces for generalized empowerment of indigenous peoples, these reforms tend
to empower some while marginalizing the majority Ear from eliminating racial inequity, as the
rhetoric of multicultural ism seems to promise,
these reforms reconstitute racial hierarchies in
more entrenched forms. While indigenous
movements have made great strides over the past
two decades, it is now time to pause and take
stock of the limits and the political menace inherent in these very achievements.
in its mid- to late-20th century heyday, the
state ideology of mestizaje had the same dual
quality of today's multiculturalism: in some
respects egalitarian and in others regressive.
There were variations, but the overall pattern
remains clear, ^ Latin American states developed a
mode of governance based on a unitary package
of citizenship rights and a tendentious premise
that people could enjoy these rights only by conforming to a homogeneous mestizo cultural
ideal. This ideal appropriated important aspects
of Indian cultureand of black culture in Brazil
and the Caribbeanto give it "authenticity" and
roots, but European stock provided the guarantee that il would be modem and forward-looking. This ideology was "progressive" in that it
contested the 19ih century thesis of racial degeneration and extended the promise of equality to
SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2004
REPORT O N RACE, PART 1
all; its progressive glimmer, m tum, gave the political projectto assimilate Indians and marginalize those who
refusedits hegemonic appeal.
Although seeking assimilation, state ideologies of mestizaje also drew strength from the continued existence of the
Indian Other Sometimes temporal distance separated this
Other from the ideal mestizo citizen, as with the celebrated Aztec past in Mexico.^ Elsewhere, this distance was spatial, as with the people of the Amazonian jungle lowlands,
portrayed as inhabiting a world apart. Most often, these
two dimensions merged, creating a powerful composite
image of the racialized Other against which the mestizo
ideal was defined. This image deeply influenced mestizo
political imaginaries. Darker-skinned mestizos were lower
on the hierarchy, a disadvantage invariably attributed to
tions space for maneuver. Even aggressive economic
reforms, which favor the interests of capital and sanctify
the market, are compatible with some facets of indigenous
cultural rights. The core of neoliberalism's cultural project
is not radical individualism, but the creation of subjects
who govern themselves in accordance with the logic of
globalized capitalism.'^ The pluralism implicit in this principlesubjects can be individuals, communities or ethnic
groupscuts against the grain of mestizo nationalism, and
defuses the once-powerful distinction between the forward-looking mestizo and the backward Indian.
Governance now takes place instead through the distinctionto echo a World Bank dictumbetween good ethnicity, which builds social capital, and "dysfunctional" ethnicity, which incites conflict.
Explanations for the shift toward a "multicultural" public sphere in Latin America take two principal tacks. The
first highlights the creative and audacious political agency
of indigenous peoples. The second, exemplified by the
work of political scientist Deborah Yashar, emphasizes
structural or institutional dimensions. She explains the
upsurge of indigenous politics as an unintended consequence of two broader developments: the wave of democratization, which opened new spaces of participation, and
neoliberal reform, which eliminated corporatist conA mother
and her
straints on indigenous autonomy and accentuated ecotoddler In
nomic woes.^ Although both explanatory tacks are valid.
5anta
they miss the way neoliberalism also entails a cultural projEulalia,
Guatemala. ect, which contributes both to the rising prominence of
indigenous voices and to the frustrating limits on their
transformative
aspirations. The essence of this cultural
proximity to "to indio" ("Indianness"). The more "indio"
project,
the
desired
outcome of the government's "si pero,"
you looked, the more this proximity explained your failis
captured
in
the
figure
of what Rosamel Millam^n and I
ings. Or, in colloquial terms; "fe salid el indio" (you let ihe
have
called
the
"indio
permitido"
("authorized Indian").^
Indian in you come out).
While tbis mestizo project remains strong, its power as
an ideology of governance is slipping. For good reason, it
has been tbe first object of indigenous resistance across the
region. Policies of assimilation threaten elhnocide. Unitary
citizenship precludes culturally specific collective rights.
And the racism embedded in mestizo societies delivers a
double blow, denigrating the unassimilated while inciting
the assimilated to wage an endless struggle against the
"Indian within,"
Yet the decline of the mestizo ideology of governance
results from other forces as well. Neoliberal democratization contradicts key precepts of the mestizo ideal.
Downsizing the state devolves limited agency to civil society, the font of indigenous organization. The return to
democracyeven the "guardian" or "low intensity" variants predominant in the regionprovides these organiza-
The phrase "indio permitido" names a sociopolitical category not the characteristics of anyone in particular. We
borrow the phrase from Bolivian sociologist Silvia Rivera
Cusicanqui, who uttered it spontaneously, in exasperation,
during a workshop on cultural rights and democratization
in Latin America. We need a way, Rivera noted, to talk
about how governments are using cultural rights to divide
and domesticate indigenous movements. Our use of the
word "indio" is meant to suggest that the aggregate effect
of these measuresquite apart from the sensibilities of
individual reformershas been to perpetuate the subordination the term traditionally connotes. Multicultural
reforms present novel spaces for conquering rights, and
demand new skills that often give indigenous struggles a
sophisticated allure. The menace resides in the accompanying, unspoken parameters: reforms have pre-deter17
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
REPORT ON RACE, PARTI
mined limits; benefits to a few indigenous actors are predicated on the exclusion of the rest; certain rights are to be
enjoyed on the implicit condition that others will not be
raised. Actual indigenous activist-intellectuals who occupy
the space of the indio permitido rarely submit fully to
these constraints. Still, it would be a mistake to equate the
increasing indigenous presence m the corridors of power
with indigenous empowerment.
tions have responded to the indigenous clamor for land
with a resounding "si, pero," Throughout Central America,
for example, the World Bank is funding land demarcation
projects, mtended to assure black and indigenous communities rights to lands of traditional occupation.
Neoliberal multiculturalism is more inclined to draw
conflicting parties into dialogue and negotiation than to
preemptively slam the door. Civil society organizations
have gained a seat at the table, and if well-connected and
well-behaved, they are invited to an endless flow of workA REASONABLE STARTING POINT FOR EXPLORING THIS NEW
form of governance is the distinction between cultural shops, spaces of political participation, and training sesrights and political-economic empowerment. Throughout sions on conflict resolution. In Guatemala, the great wave
Latin America, first round concessions of newly christened of such government initiatives came just after the signing
"multicultural" states cluster in the area of cultural rights, of the Peace Accords in December 1996, The country was
the further removed from the core concerns of neoliberal soon awash in international aid, with Maya civil society as
capitalism the better. In Guatemala, government endorse- the privileged recipient. This example helps explain why
ment of the Academy of Maya Languages signaled the the pattern is so widespread: indigenous rights are, in
beginning of the multicultural era. Soon thereafter, the bureaucratic jargon, a "donor driven" priority Web sites of
Minister of Culture and Spons has become known as the the World Bank and Inter-Amencan Development Bank
"Indian" cabinet post, filled by a Maya in the last two are awash with glowing articles about indigenous and
administrations. The Ministry of Education also showcas- Afro-descendent empowerment. At issue, then, is not the
es the multicultural ethic with its programs in bilingual struggle between individual and collective rights, nor the
education and intercuhuralidad (intercuUural dialogue). dichotomy between the cultural and the material, but
The preposterous idea that an Indian would become rather the built-in limits to these spaces of indigenous
empowerment.
Minister of Finance is another matter altogether.
At times, the contrast between cultural and politicaleconomic opportunity turns blatant and brutal. Newly
inaugurated Guatemalan President Oscar Berger held a
ceremony upon naming Rigoberta Menchii "Goodwill
Ambassador," and turning over the Casa Crema (a building formerly assigned to the Ministry of Defense) to the
Academy of Maya Languages, He announced that the Casa
Crema would also house a new television show, "... to
carry programs on Maya culture, interculturalidad, and
sprituality," Simultaneously, Berger stood by as the Armed
Forces began the violent eviction of landless indigenous
campesinos that had occupied over 100 farms in the prior
three years, ^^
It would be wrong, however, to let this stark dichotomy
between "cultural" and "political-economic" rights stand.
The crude Marxist distinction between superstructure and
base does injustice to the holistic political visions of
indigenous movements. Cultural resistance forges political unity and builds the trenches from which effective
political challenge can later occur. Moreover, even if the
dichotomy had residual validity on its own terms, it would
not withstand close scrutiny. The most important current
indigenous demandrights to territory and resources
cannot be construed as a "cultural" right. Yet instead of the
belligerent "no" that one might expect, neoliberal mstitu18
Once the cultural project of neoliberalism is specified,
these limits become more evident. As a first principle.
indigenous rights cannot violate the integrity of the productive regime, especially those sectors most closely linked
to the globalized economy If an indigenous community
gains land rights and pulls these lands out of production,
this poses no such threat, especially given the likelihood of
the community's return to the fold through a newly negotiated relationship with the market. All the contrary if, for
example, indigenous movements were to challenge the
free trade zones that shelter maquila-type production,
declare a moratorium on international tourism or create
their own banks to serve as the "first stop" for remittances
from indigenous peoples working abroad. These latter
demands would be sure to evoke the wrath of the neoliberal state. More generally, this pnnciple dictates a sharp
distinction between policies focused on "poverty reduction," which are ubiquitous and heavily supported, and
those intended to reduce socloeconomic inequality, conspicuous for their absence. This first principle has an
increasingly globalized character, driven less by the interests of national economic elites than by the constraints and
opportunities of a global economic system.
A second principle, also limiting the scope for possible
change, has to do with the accumulation of political
SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2004
REPORT O N RACE, PART 1
power Neoiiberal multiculturalism permits indigenous
organization, as long as it does not amass enough power to
call basic state prerogatives into question. These prerogatives are not about the state as the primary locus of social
and economic policies, which now generally derive from
the global arena. Nor do they revolve around the state's
role as legitimate representative of the people, a dubious
proposition for many Rather, at issue is the inviolability of
more reasonable proposition of nudging "radical"
demands back inside the line dividing the authorized
from the prohibited.
THE CRITIQUE THAT ACCOMPANIES THIS ACCOUNT DOES NOT
focus primarily on the limited character of the spaces
opened by neoliberal multiculturalism, but rather on the
prospect that these limits would define what is politically
possible. As long as neoliberal principles are critically scrutinized as
opportunities to be exploited, the
spaces they open could be productively occupied, fighting the good
fight to circumvent their preinscribed limits. 1 have engaged in
precisely such an effort, with results
that were mixed but positive enough
Campeslnos
to keep on trying. ^^ Although someawali news
times viable and necessary, this stratefrom
gy is risky, especially when the full
auttiorilies
ideological repercussions of neoliberafter taking
over a swalh of
ai multiculturalism are taken into
farmland in the
account.
province of
Quetzatlenanjo,
Guatemala.
With the indio permitido comes,
inevitably, the construction of its
undeserving, dysfunctional. Other
the stale as the last stop guarantor of political order The two very different ways to be Indian. The indio permitido
Central American countries offer an especially dramatic has passed the test of modernity, substituted "protest" with
case in point. If the current massive flow of international "proposal," and learned to be both authentic and fully conaid, loans and development funding were cut off, these versant with the dominant milieu. Its Other is unruly vintiny dependent states would collapse. Without the state, dictive and conflict prone. These latter traits trouble elites
however, neoliberal economic development would lack who have pledged allegiance to cultural equality, seeding
the coercive means and minimal legitimacy to proceed. fears about what empowerment of these Other Indians
Cultural rights, up to and including many forms of local would portend. Governance proactively creates and
autonomy, do not threaten to contravene this principle, rewards the indio permilido, while condemning its Other
especially as neoliberal elites gain the wisdom to respond to the racialized spaces of poverty and social exclusion.
to their indigenous critics not by suppressing dissent, but Those who occupy the category of the indio permitido
must prove they have risen above the racialized traits of
by offering tbem a job.
Although these two principles have a repressive side, it their brethren by endorsing and reinforcing the divide.
is striking how infrequently it appears. Land rights, again,
One potentially deceptive image that flows from this
are illustrative. Indigenous demands for territorial sover- analysis depicts a small indigenous elite benefiting as repeignty could present a radical challenge to neoliberal resentatives of a majority from whom they are structurally
regimes, if they were extensive enough to support an alter- alienated. To portray the divide strictly in class terms missnative system of productive relations or sufficiently es the point, and could reinforce the assertion that "real"
potent pohtically to undermine state authority Yet such a Indians are poor, rural and backward, while middle class
challenge blurs fairly easily into less expansive positions Indians are "inauthentic."^^ Rather, the dichotomy is culwith which the state can readily negotiate. Crucially this tural-political: moderate versus radical, proper versus
negotiation is no longer about the all-or-nothing ideal of unruly Indians on the "radical" side of this divide are said
mono-cultural citizenship, which any expression of col- to act in self-marginalizing ways; their resentment feeds
lective rights would contradict. Instead, it is about the "reverse racism"; and in the post-9/11 climate, criticism of
19
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
REPORT O N RACE, PART 1
these negative traits gives way to the ultitnate term of
opprobrium, the indigenous "terrorist."^^ Even those who
occupy the category of the indio permitido are contaminated by proximity to the radicals, and must constantly
prove they belong in the sanctioned space.
The point is not to lionize radicals or to place them
beyond critique, but to challenge the dichotomy altogether, and thereby redefine the terms of indigenous struggle.
A crucial facet of resistance, then, is rearticulation, which
creates bridges between authorized and condemned ways
of being Indian. Political initiatives that link indigenous
peoples who occupy varyitig spaces in relation to the centers of political-economic power are especially promising.
The same goes for efforts to connect diverse experiences of
neoliberal racial formation, especially among indigenous
and Afro-descendant peoples. Blacks are more apt to be
skeptical of the "good ethnics" trope, cutting through to its
underlying racist premises. Indigenous people are better
positioned to work the newly opened spaces of cultural
rights, putting assumptions about Indians as inherently
pre-modem to good use. By placing both experiences
under the same analytic lens, we see more clearly how
neoliberal multiculturalism constructs bounded, discontinuous cultural groups, each with distinct rights, that are
discouraged from mutual interaction,^"^
As globalized economic change continues, strategies of
rearticulation can only become more difficult to achieve.
Growing numbers of indigenous peoples are leaving rural
communities for urban areas, where education, jobs and
some hope of upward mobility can be found. Many continue northward to the United States. With few exceptions, the locus of economic dynamism has shifted from
agriculture to activities such as maquila production, remittance-driven financial services, tourism and commerce.
Rural Indian households are most likely to remain stuck m
a cycle of critical poverty. Despite these rapidly changing
demographic and economic conditions, indigenous leadersincreasingly urban and urbanestill draw heavily on
the Utopian discourse of indigenous autonomy exercised
in quintessentially rural, culturally bounded spaces. This
discourse can reinforce the ideology of the indio permitido, creating authorized spokespeople, increasingly out of
touch with those whose interests they evoke,
Rearticulation, in contrast, would build bndges among
indigenous peoples in diverse structural locations: from
rural dwellers, to workers in the new economies, to those
who struggle from within the neotiberal establishment. To
be effective, rearticulation will also need to draw on reconfigured political imaginaries, and on Utopian discourses of
a different hue.
20
Rearticulation may also require shifting strategy from a
focus on keeping the state out, to exerting control over the
terms under which the state, and the neoliberal establishment more generally, stay in. Indeed, this shift already has
begun. The short and unfortunate experience of the
Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador
(CONAIE) with "co-govemment" in Ecuador demonstrated how unprepared it was to take advantage of the fantastic success of ousting one government and being elected to
help run its successor. The Bolivian indigenous uprising of
October 2003 has given rise to a similar predicament. This
dramatic political achievement revealed the profound vulnerability of the indio permitido and the explosive potential of rearticulation as resistance. Ahead lies the task of
imagining the kind of reconstituted state and alternative
productive regime that would stay true to that momentarily unified, but now highly fragmentary, indigenous majority
The decade-old Zapatista uprising in Chiapas raises the
same basic question, from the opposite point of departure.
To survive a decade of state-orchestrated hostility while
staying the course of defiant political innovation is an
impressive feat. As the experiment enters its second
decade, however, the prospects for rearticulation grow
increasingly remote. Radical refusal of any engagement
with the neoliberal state gains transformative traction to
the extent that it simultaneously articulates, symbolically
and in daily political practice, with those who struggle
from other sociopolitical locations. As the potential for
forging such articulation diminishes, this space of refusal
starts to look like the indio permitidos Otherunruly and
conflict prone, but otherwise readily isolated and dismissed.
PERHAPS, THEN, DR. COJTI'S STRATEGY REQUIRES A SECOND
look and a more subtle reading. During the same visit to
Guatemala in which I spoke with my teacher friends
about their strike, 1 asked Cojti about the inner workings
of the Ministry of Education, He divided the overwhelmingly ladino bureaucracy into three groups: hard-core
racists and race progressives, both minorities; and an
ambivalent majority that implemented the new "multicultural" mandate without conviction, as the path of least
resistance. With ironic humor and charactenstic cogency,
he offered his own explanation for having taken the job:
to carry out a critical ethnography of the "ladino" state!
There is no point in trying to neatly classify this experience as either cooptation or everyday resistance; both
are blunt conceptual tools, too focused on the practices
themselves rather than on the consequences that follow.
SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2004
REPORT ON RACE, PART 1
These consequences will remain unclear, in turn, until
ihe process of Maya rearticulation begins. Given the
genocidal brutality of Guatemala's ruling elite, amply
demonstrated in recent histor)', this process is sure to
turn ugly. It would be fatalistic to abandon hopes for
rearticulation in anticipation of this ugliness, but irresponsible to advocate Maya ascendancy without imaginmg some means to assuage the fears and lessen the polarization. To occupy the space of the indio permitido may
well be the most reasonable means at hand. If so, it will
be especially crucial to name that space, to highlight the
menace it entails, and to subject its occupants to stringent demands for accountability to an indigenous constituency with an alternative political vision. Otherwise,
It will be safe to assume that those who occupy this
space have acquiesced, if only by default, to the regressive neoliberal project that the indio permitido is meant
to serve.
Land Rights and Garifuna
Identity
The undeveloped beachfronl
of Tela, Honduras, an increasingly popular tourist destination.
byEvaT. Thorne
HE HISTORY OF THE GARlFUNA PEOPLE HAS
long been tied to land. The Garifuna
originate from the 17th century when,
on the windward Caribbean island of St.
Vincent, the island's indigenous ArawakCaribs integrated runaway and shipwrecked
African slaves into their communities,
European colonists first referred to their progeny as "Black Caribs" and later "Garifuna," as
they are still known. When the English pushed
out the French settlers of St. Vincent and
sought possession of the island, they encoun-
tered fierce resistance from the Garifuna. The
conflict erupted into a yearlong war in 1772,
ending in a treaty considered by most accounts
to be the first signed between the British and
an indigenous Caribbean population.
A second war broke out over the failure of
the British to honor the terms of the treaty, but
this time the overpowered Garifuna surrendered on British terms. The entire population
was imprisoned for a year in a camp on a nearby island, where more than half perished. The
survivors were then loaded onto the H.M.S.
Eva I Thome is
Meyer and Waller
Jafje assistant
professor of politico
at Brandeis
l/niversity in
Waltham,
Massachusetts.
21
