Indigenous movements have become key actors in promoting the political empowerment of historically marginalized groups in Latin America (Vogt Forthcoming). In Bolivia they contributed to the election of the first president of the country’s indigenous majority after more than 180 years of independence. In Ecuador the forces around the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE) propelled major social and constitutional changes. In the words of Alberto Acosta, “indigenous people changed from being objects to political subjects” in that country (personal interview, 2013-4-18). In Panama, well-organized regional indigenous movements achieved to extract significant concessions from the state in terms of local autonomy. And in Colombia, indigenous organizations took advantage of the window of opportunity that opened up in the context of the constitutional reform at the beginning of the 1990s to obtain territorial rights.
In Guatemala, due to the 36-year civil war characterized by genocidal state violence, this political mobilization of the indigenous Maya people emerged later than in other countries. Only with the internationally accompanied peace process the political opportunity structure turned favorable, and Maya organizations became a major force in the country’s political life. However, the political gains they achieved remained very limited and the profound ethnic inequalities in economic and political terms have persisted. Simultaneously, the indigenous movement has lost considerable weight over the past ten to fifteen years. What has gone wrong?
Anthropological research has well documented the long-term consequences of the brutal state violence carried out against indigenous people during the civil war. The indigenous population today remains deeply divided and atomized, and highly skeptical about the possibility of fundamental change in Guatemala’s national political system (see, e.g., Copeland 2011; Green 2013; Manz 2002). Moreover, due to experiences of racial discrimination within the revolutionary movement, the relationship between indigenous leaders and the Left (most importantly, the former guerilla organization turned political party URNG) is more complicated than in other countries of the region (Bastos 2010, 320-4).
Yet, beyond this particular historical legacy, which distinguishes Guatemala from the above-mentioned cases, there are important factors within the indigenous movement that undermine its political strength. In my recent article in Latin American Politics and Society (Vogt 2015), I analyze how a high degree of organizational sectorization, a lack of elite convergence on key substantive issues, and fundamental disagreements over the choice of political alliances weaken what Guillermo O’Donnell (1986)calls the “horizontal voice” of Guatemala’s indigenous movement. According to O’Donnell, effective horizontal voice – i.e. the strategic coordination processes through which a collective political identity and a common political agenda are negotiated within social groups – is a fundamental prerequisite for the emergence of a strong vertical voice that is capable of challenging the state and extracting political concessions. My analysis is based on dozens of elite interviews with leaders of Maya organizations, members of the ladino political elite, and outside experts, conducted during three months of field research in the country.
The first of these factors, organizational sectorization, refers to the fragmentation of Maya political claimsmaking resulting from organizations’ focus on specific thematic areas, as, for example, bilingual education, access to land, or rights of indigenous women. This sectorization impedes the development of a common, encompassing political agenda. The influx of international donors and NGOs during and after the peace process has decisively contributed to this situation by supporting (or creating) a number of elite-controlled, donor-dependent organizations that execute specific projects in clearly demarcated thematic areas in exchange for funding. Hence, although being important allies of the political struggle of Guatemala’s Maya population, the influence of international donors has also to a certain degree undermined Maya organizations’ ability to articulate an overarching political agenda for the country’s marginalized indigenous population.
Second, there is a serious lack of consensus among Maya elites with regard to key issues that have increased the social and political relevance of indigenous movements in other countries, such as Bolivia and Ecuador. Most importantly, whereas natural resource exploitation is as contested an issue in Guatemala as in the rest of Latin America and has led to the holding of numerous local popular referenda, the mostly urban-based Maya organizations were very slow in taking up this issue (Bastos 2010, 337–38). A survey published in Guatemala’s Prensa Libre (http://www.prensalibre.com/noticias/comunitario/Continua-fuerte-rechazo-mineria_0_1069693059.html) about two years ago shows that a majority of the country’s population, especially in the countryside, opposes large-scale extractivist projects. Yet, Maya elites continue to disagree over the appropriate political responses. Even though in specific cases, local resistance enjoyed the backing of national organizations, the diverse reactions to former president Alvaro Colom’s legislative proposal about the regulation of popular referenda testify to the Maya movement’s difficulty of finding a common stance on the topic. As a result, instead of horizontal consensus building, a multitude of diverging vertical voices mediate between the Maya population and the state.
Finally, horizontal voice within the Maya movement is also weakened by profound disagreements between Maya organizations over the right choice of alliances with political parties. Three different broad currents can be identified. The left wing of the Maya movement still feels most closely related to the traditional Left, although even within this faction disagreements exist over whether class or indigenous identity should constitute the main basis for mobilization. In opposition to this leftist faction, a new group of indigenous leaders, still small and of limited influence, embraces the discourse of indigenous entrepreneurship and economic development as the remedies against indigenous marginalization in Guatemala and has actively sought contact with the most important representative of the country’s elite, the Comité Coordinador de Asociaciones Agrícolas, Comerciales, Industriales y Financieras (CACIF). Somewhere in between these two poles, a third, “pragmatic” faction of indigenous leaders favors a strategy of flexibly working with, and getting involved in, different political parties and governments as long as indigenous demands can somehow be promoted. These are often leaders who already occupy posts in the state apparatus. The choice of alliances by Maya Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú in her 2007 and 2011 presidential bids, switching from an urban, middle-class party (Encuentro por Guatemala) back to the leftist URNG, aptly reflects this erratic relationship of today’s Maya movement with electoral politics in Guatemala. This general disorientation results in a dispersion of forces that represents another crucial barrier to the processes of horizontal voice.
Thus, in summary, my study illuminates how organizational sectorization, a lack of elite convergence on key policy issues, and fundamental disagreements over the choice of political alliances have contributed to the disarticulation of Maya mobilization in Guatemala. More generally, it highlights the importance of movement-internal processes of constructing a collective political identity and agenda as a prerequisite for effective social mobilization, besides external opportunity structures. These movement-internal factors partly explain why, after a few years of high political protagonism, the influence of the Maya movement in Guatemala has considerably declined.
References
Bastos, Santiago. 2010. La (ausencia de) demanda autonómica en Guatemala. In La autonomía a debate. Autogobierno indígena y Estado plurinacional en América Latina, edited by M. González, A. Burguete Cal y Mayor and P. Ortiz. Quito: FLACSO. 317-353.
Copeland, Nick. 2011. ‘Guatemala Will Never Change’: Radical Pessimism and the Politics of Personal Interest in the Western Highlands. Journal of Latin American Studies 43, 03: 485-515.
Green, Linda. 2013. Fear as a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala. New York: Columbia University Press.
Manz, Beatriz. 2002. Terror, Grief, and Recovery: Genocidal Trauma in a Mayan Village in Guatemala. In Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide, edited by A. L. Hinton. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 292-309.
O'Donnell, Guillermo. 1986. On the Fruitful Convergences of Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, and Shifting Involvements. Reflections from the Recent Argentine Experience. In Development, Democracy, and the Art of Trespassing: Essays in Honor of Albert O. Hirschman, edited by A. Foxley, M. S. McPherson, G. O'Donnell and A. O. Hirschman. Notre Dame, IN: Published for the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies by University of Notre Dame Press. 249-268.
Vogt, Manuel. 2015. The Disarticulated Movement: Barriers to Maya Mobilization in Post-Conflict Guatemala. Latin American Politics and Society 57, 1: 29-50.
———. Forthcoming. Indigenous Movements and Ethnic Inclusion in Latin America. International Studies Quarterly.
