A house is not always a home.
Stephenson, Marcia. “The Architectural Relationship between Gender, Race, and the Bolivian State”. The Latin American subaltern studies reader edited by Ileana Rodríguez. Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2001.
This article tackles the relationship between narratives of nationhood in Bolivia, race, gender and space. It argues that the idea of Bolivia as a modern nation-state requires to put in place the ideology of mestizo identity (the progressive whitening of the population), the "othering" of indigenous populations, and a gendered and racialized conception of space to domesticate the heterogeneous social body.
Taking as a start point the planning and development of rural houses, Stephenson analyzes the ideological implications of their spatial distribution: hegemonic discourses of modernity and citizenship carry gendered distinctions between the inside/domestic and the outside/public, as well as the demand for the acculturation of indigenous communities, who are expected to become mestizo citizens to become part of the nation (it is to note that in Bolivia this rhethoric has been challenged ever since the arrival of Evo Morales to institutional power, this article was written just before that). In this way, "the physical layout of hegemonic houses structures processes of ethnic and racial acculturation at the same time that it organizes dominant constructions of gender" (370).
The production of the ideology of the domestic and the familiar, and the boundaries between inside/outside is closely linked to the idea of the nation as a safe, familiar order. Unruly indigenous female bodies are seen as a source of pollution and disorder, and thus a threat to the project of a modern nation. However, this idea that the inside is a protected, safe space is readily challenged by the voices of indigenous women who become domestic workers and experience sexual harassment, exploitative work relationships and racism in this space.
This article tackles the relationship between narratives of nationhood in Bolivia, race, gender and space. It argues that the idea of Bolivia as a modern nation-state requires to put in place the ideology of mestizo identity (the progressive whitening of the population), the "othering" of indigenous populations, and a gendered and racialized conception of space to domesticate the heterogeneous social body.
Taking as a start point the planning and development of rural houses, Stephenson analyzes the ideological implications of their spatial distribution: hegemonic discourses of modernity and citizenship carry gendered distinctions between the inside/domestic and the outside/public, as well as the demand for the acculturation of indigenous communities, who are expected to become mestizo citizens to become part of the nation (it is to note that in Bolivia this rhethoric has been challenged ever since the arrival of Evo Morales to institutional power, this article was written just before that). In this way, "the physical layout of hegemonic houses structures processes of ethnic and racial acculturation at the same time that it organizes dominant constructions of gender" (370).
The production of the ideology of the domestic and the familiar, and the boundaries between inside/outside is closely linked to the idea of the nation as a safe, familiar order. Unruly indigenous female bodies are seen as a source of pollution and disorder, and thus a threat to the project of a modern nation. However, this idea that the inside is a protected, safe space is readily challenged by the voices of indigenous women who become domestic workers and experience sexual harassment, exploitative work relationships and racism in this space.
Do you think race works in similar ways in Chile? If not, how do the Mapuche (or other indigenous groups) figure in dictatorship and post-dictatorship culture and politics?
ReplyDeleteI would not say that race works in exactly the same ways in Chile than in Bolivia, as there are significant differences: in Bolivia indigenous populations have a much more visible presence and at least from my experience, there are differences in the way that “national culture” is imagined in both countries, being Chile a country that insists on imagining itself as a “white” Latin American country with an indigenous minority, whereas things are more complex in Bolivia.
ReplyDeleteIn Chile, post-dictatorship culture and politics have been characterized by the institutionalization of indigenous demands in a government's agency (CONADI, created in 1993). Just like in the case of SERNAM regarding women's movements in the 80's, CONADI claims to take as a starting point the indigenous demands under the dictatorship to create an institutional channel of negotiation and formulation of public policies towards indigenous issues. This has derived in a relationship of clientelism and the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable ways of doing politics. Hand in hand with this, the post-dictatorship has accentuated the criminalization of indigenous political practice and activism that are not aligned with the institutional politics, through internal security laws that have resulted in the incarceration and torture of indigenous leaders, and the permanent harassment to communities. Conservative sectors have a permanent campaign to discredit and stigmatize indigenous movements (especially through the right-wing newspaper El Mercurio), accusing the democratic governments of not having a “firm hand” regarding particularly Mapuche insurgency in the south of Chile, where economic elites (some of them also from the Democracia Cristiana) see their interests threatened by these movements.
I would say then that there is a common aspect on the general formulation of mestizo ideology in narratives of nationhood, but the way that concrete politics have taken place in both countries is diverse. The Chilean democratic governments have had this ambivalent relationship of trying to promote a multiculturalist policy that asserts certain rights for indigenous communities, while at the same time has a policy of permanent repression and surveillance of them. Also, democratic governments have not really been successful in challenging the racist and colonialist narratives that construct indigenous demands as illegitimate and subversive. However, I would say that it is necessary to look closer at the competing versions of modernity and what they imply in terms of race. There is definitely a sector that wants to insist on equating modernization to “whitening” and to signify “lo indígena” with a past that needs to be overcome, but there are also different discourses that reclaim either the inclusion or the autonomy of indigenous communities in the national project.
In the meantime, racist stereotypes are not only tolerated and reproduced in local jokes, national TV programs, newspapers, etc. and seem to have a central part within the discourses and practices that affirm Chilean's identity and sense of nationhood. Chilean's proclaimed whiteness as the 'British of South America', relies on excluding practices of delimiting the 'other' and on the reproduction of complex hierarchies of racialised bodies. This production and reproduction of the notion of 'Indian' as pre-modern and inferior, is a process that engages gender, class and race and that has also been affected lately by processes of migration from mainly Peru, but also Bolivia and Ecuador which has brought up additional anxieties of race within the project of Chile as a modernized country.
I'd say, from my own experience but this is mere anecdote, that it seems as though there is more recognition of ethnic claims these days than before. Perhaps that is indeed partly because of the creation of CONADI, but I suspect that the discourse of the Left has changed, too. I'm not sure that (say) the UP had much to say about ethnicity.
ReplyDeleteI have not done any research on racial discourses during the UP yet. However, I keep insisting in this point because I suspect that the category of "los rotos", constructed by the economic elites to discredit the popular government, invoked the racialized notion of a low-class, ignorant, inferior subject who is not allowed to speak, who is felt to be transgressing a natural social/economic order. Invoking these notions that belong to relations of "patron/peon" is a call to order, to occupy one's place, to shut up. I have seen examples of this on videos of the UP when right-wing upper class politicians would mock labour leaders when talking to them, insinuating they had no idea about what they where doing, making fun of the way they spoke, marking their educational and class-backgrounds as legitimating grounds to speak.
ReplyDeleteAbout the other point, I guess it depends who you mean when you say the Left, because the "renovated" sectors within the Concertación would probably have a different, way more moderated discourse than the one that the extra-parlamentary Left holds today. From my experience and what I have learned about the official transition discourse on racial relations, they put the focus on individual rights and conceptualize the problem as much more often only as a "discrimination" problem. In fact, they say this concept is equally applicable to other kinds of discrimination, reducing racial issues to a sort of interpersonal misunderstanding of conflict that you can work out through some intervention (like group dynamic). The Communist Party in the meantime, would rather speak of colonization, state terrorism, and autonomy of communities as a "people", a problem that needs more of a change in structural economic, cultural relations.
ReplyDelete