“A desalambrar, a desalambrar:” memory, life politics, and the struggles for indigenous autonomy in plurinational Bolivia

Keywords: Indigenous Autonomy, Bolivian Amazon, Territory
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In the last days of October 2010, the communities of the five ethnic groups that inhabit the Multiethnic Indigenous Territory (TIM) in Beni, Bolivia, voted in favor of initiating the autonomy process in their territory. Since then, the 26 communities of the Moxeño Ignaciano, Moxeño Trinitario, Tsimane, Movima, and Yurakaré peoples have organized to reconstruct their history, re-map their territory, and reclaim what both logging concessions and ranching elites had taken away from them. Twelve years later, this ongoing process calls for re-imagining, redrawing, and fabulating life and its politics in-and-with the territory as a daily collective task. This work explores the disputes of the indigenous communities of the TIM to produce autonomous and self-determining spaces, grammars, temporalities, and governability in the midst of the institutionalization of plurinationality.