Paper short abstract:

This paper outlines and discusses the ambiguities of inclusion and contestation linked with the introduction of multi-cultural development in Bolivia and Guatemala. I

Paper long abstract:

This paper outlines and discusses the contrasting histories of inclusion and contestation linked with the introduction of multi-cultural development in Latin America. In particular, the paper aims to make comparative study of Bolivia and Guatemala, two countries where the histories of multi-cultural developmentalism and indigenous protest have had dramatically different consequences. In the course of the 1990s an increasing emphasis was given by international development and donor organisations to an acceptance of multi-culturalism in national development planning. As a result of this process both Bolivia and Guatemala ratified new laws and constitutions that recognised cultural rights and opened new spaces for political participation for indigenous peoples within governmental structures. However, although these rights and spaces have been enthusiatically accepted by indigenous peoples, at the start of the new millenium many indigenous movements in the region have become wary of the limits and ambiguities of multi-cultural politics and re-entered the streets and highways in militant protest. In drawing out and discussing the ambiguities of multi-culturalism in Bolivia and Guatemala, the paper aims to test out and question Charles Hale's recent thesis of the "permitted indian" (indio permitido) as a means to refer to the way in which governments and the international system use cultural rights to divide and domesticate indigenous movements in these countries. Whereas Hale develops this as a thesis of neo-liberal governance and control, I question here whether recent events reveal the partial failure of this project. I argue that as much as the idea of the permitted indian helps to create a critique of the shortcomings and ambiguities of these reforms, it is also points to the causes and innovative form of recent mass protests and political shifts against recent economic and political decisions by the governments in both these countries.