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Genocide Today: The Guarani-Kaiowa Struggle for Land and Life

July 2023

Authors:

Cardiff University

Although genocide is commonly used today to describe the dramatic challenges indigenous peoples face worldwide, the significance of the Guarani-Kaiowa genocidal experience is not casual and cannot be merely sloganized. The indigenous genocide unfolding in the Brazilian State of Mato Grosso do Sul –“Kaiowcide”– is not just a case of hyperbolic violence or widespread murdering, but it is something qualitatively different from other serious crimes committed against marginalized communities. Kaiowcide is the reincarnation of old genocidal practices of agrarian capitalism employed to extend and unify the national territory. In other words, Kaiowcide has become a necessity of mainstream development, whilst the sanctity of regional economic growth and private rural property are excuses invoked to justify the genocidal trail. The phenomenon combines strategies and procedures based on the competition and opposition between groups of people who dispute the same land and the relatively scarce social opportunities of an agribusiness-based economy. Only the focus in recent years may have shifted from assimilation and confinement to abandonment and confrontation, yet the intent to destabilize and eliminate the original inhabitants of the land through the asphyxiation of their religion, identity, and, ultimately, geography seems to rage unabated. In that challenging context, creative adaptation and collective resistance have been the most crucial requisites for the Guarani-Kaiowa to survive through recurrent genocides, particularly Kaiowcide.

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CENTER FOR WORLD INDIGENOUS STUDIES SUMMER 2023 VOLUME 23 NUMBER 1

THE HIGHLIGHTS

Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Knowledge in the Era

of (Re) colonization, Insights from a Rural Indigenous

Santal Community

- Mrinal Debnath

Coming Together: Sharing 50 Tribes’ Vision for the

Future of Pacic Northwest Salmon

- Kieren Daley Laursen

A Critical Review of the United States Government’s

Guidance for Federal Departments and Agencies on

Indigenous Knowledge: The Department of Education

in Perspective

- Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu PhD, et al.

Responsibilities into Rights: The Settler-Colonial

Translation of Native Social Systems into Western Law

– Eric Cheytz

BILINGUAL

Fourth World Nations vs. The States’ “Nation-Destroying”

Projects From 1946 to 2020: Post-WWII Wars, Armed

Conicts, and Indigenous Military Resistance

– Hiroshi Fukurai

Genocide Today: The Guarani-Kaiowa Struggle for

Land and Life

-Antonio Augusto Rossoto Ioris

From Reconciliation to ReconciliAction

- Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein

BILINGUAL

124

1 84

110

[PEER-REVIEWED]

IN THIS ISSUE

Licensing agents:

EBSCO PUBLISHING, Inc. Ipswich, Massachusetts,

USA GALE GROUP, Inc. Farmington Hills, Michigan, U.S.A.

INFORMIT, RMIT PUBLISH, Ltd. Melbourne, Australia,

ProQuest LLC, Ann Arbor, Michigan USA

DAYKEEPER PRESS

Center for World Indigenous Studies

PMB 214, 1001 Cooper PT RD SW 140

Olympia, Washington 98502, U.S.A.

The Fourth World Journal is published

twice yearly by DayKeeper Press as

a Journal of the Center for World

Indigenous Studies.

All Rights are reserved in the United

States of America and internationally.

ISSN: 1090-5251

EDITORS

Rudolph C. Rÿser, PhD

Editor in Chief

Aline Castañeda

Managing Editor

Michel Medellín

Graphic Designer/Layout Editor

Leslie E. Korn, PhD, MPH

Contributing Editor

Levita Duhaylungsod, PhD

Associate Editor (Melanesia)

Christian Nellemann, PhD

Associate Editor (Europe)

Nitu Singh, PhD

Associate Editor (Rajasthan, India)

Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, PhD

Associate Editor (Mohawk Nation, Canada)

Anke Weisheit, MA

Associate Editor (Africa)

110

124

Kaiowa child from change.org

ON THE COVER

A Critical Review of the United States Government’s Guidance for Federal Departments

and Agencies on Indigenous Knowledge

Lukanka

Responsibilities into Rights: The Settler-Colonial Translation of

Native Social Systems into Western Law

- Eric Cheytz

De la Responsabilidad al Derecho: La Traducción Colonial de los

Sistemas Sociales Indígenas al Derecho Occidental

- Eric Cheytz

Fourth World Nations vs. The States’ “Nation-Destroying” Projects

From 1946 to 2020: Post-WWII Wars, Armed Conicts, and

Indigenous Military Resistance

- Hiroshi Fukurai

Genocide Today: The Guarani-Kaiowa Struggle for Land and Life

-Antonio Augusto Rossoto Ioris

From Reconciliation to ReconciliAction

- Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein

De la Reconciliación a la ReconciliAcción

- Nancy Dyson y Dan Rubenstein

[PEER-REVIEWED]

Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Knowledge in the Era of (Re)

colonization, Insights from a Rural Indigenous Santal Community

– Mrinal Debnath

Coming Together: Sharing 50 Tribes’ Vision for the Future of

Pacic Northwest Salmon

- Kieren Daley Laursen

A Critical Review of the United States Government’s Guidance for

Federal Departments and Agencies on Indigenous Knowledge: The

Department of Education in Perspective

– Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu PhD, et al.

Fourth World nations

worldwide claim and assert

autonomy or self-government.

These nations assert the

power to exercise political,

social, strategic, and cultural

dominance over their peoples

and ancestral territories.

Asserting and defending

such authority by these

nations presents states with

a perceived threat to their

sovereignty and territorial

integrity. The perceived

threat of Fourth World nation

autonomy has led to frequent

military attacks, political

subversion, and the persistence of cultural and

mass violence perpetrated against Fourth World

peoples initiated by states’ governments or private

militias. While states have adopted declarations

and international and domestic laws stating the

virtues of human rights policies, Fourth World

nations are not protected from these enactments.

The Rome Statue that created the International

Criminal Court does not provide for the

prosecution of states or private militias for crimes

against Fourth World nations. Reference to Fourth

World nations under terms such as “indigenous

peoples” are not identied as beneciaries of acts

LUKANKA

FWJ V23 N1 – SUMMER 2023

Lukanka is a Miskito word for “thoughts”

to prevent or punish human

rights violations. The 1947 rst

draft of the Convention on the

Prevention and Punishment of

the Crime of Genocide (http://

www.preventgenocide.org/law/

convention/drafts/) included

language directly relevant to

cultural or violent attacks on

Fourth World peoples, such as

“forcible transfer of children to

another human group,”

“prohibition of the use of the

national language in private

intercourse,” or

“prohibiting the use of the language of the group

in daily intercourse or in schools,”

These were understood as pathways to

assimilate and dominate Fourth World peoples

and thus reduce the populations coercively.

These and similar terms in the initial April

1948 Draft Convention on Genocide prepared

by the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide were

omitted in the December 9, 1948, Convention

adopted by the United Nations General

Assembly. The crime of genocide was narrowly

dened to mean “mass murder” dened by

the experience of the Jewish Holocaust. As a

RUDOLPH C. RŸSER

Editor in Chief

Fourth World Journal

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

LUKANKA / FWJ V23 N1 - SUMMER 2023

result, acts that would be considered cultural

genocide perpetrated by states were set

aside since authors of the Convention readily

recognized that few UN member states would

ratify the convention lest they be considered

potential defendants before an international

court. At the time, the 1948 negotiations were

being conducted to between members of the

Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide between

representatives of China, France, Lebanon,

Poland, the USSR, USA and Venezuela to

prepare a draft Convention on the Crime of

Genocide that would eventually serve as the

foundation for the International Criminal

Court of 2002. The United States, Canada,

Australia, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Sweden,

and Norway had embarked on the domestic

policies of sterilizing Fourth World nation

women against their will. Fourth World nation

birth rates were reduced per woman by as

much as 50% resulting in signicant population

declines. Placing Fourth World children in

non-native family homes has been practiced

by governments in many countries resulting in

lost cultural knowledge, family cohesiveness

and community continuity. Forced removal of

Fourth World children to state and religious

administered residential schools in the states

of Canada, United States, New Zealand,

Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, China, and

India would have been considered a crime

under the Draft 1947 Convention (barring

the use of native languages, connections to

traditional family and community ties, diets,

clothing, and violent punishment of children

resulting in the death of many for “not

following the rules”). State-based international

laws ignore evident crimes committed by states,

businesses, organizations, and private militates,

avoiding criminal charges against states. Despite

committing apparent cultural destruction and

mass violence crimes against Fourth World

peoples, the legal system instead focuses only

on “individual” acts committing violent crimes

against a “people in whole or in part.” The

decision to narrow culpability for horric crimes

committed by entities resulted in immunity for

institutions designed to destroy whole peoples.

Indeed, the Center for World Indigenous

Studies has documented more than 160 acts of

political or violent genocide committed against

Fourth World nations since 1945, resulting

in an estimated 12 million deaths. No State

has been held accountable for acts of cultural

destruction or mass violence resulting in deaths.

Forced relocation programs, children forced into

residential schools, massively coerced female

sterilization, and the use of public schools to

obstruct the use of native languages and cultural

learning further amplied the fundamental reality

that States globally have systematically sought

to prevent the exercise of self-government and

continued used of ancestral territories using

coercive measures and force. Meanwhile, State

development policies accelerated the extraction

of raw materials from Fourth World ancestral

territories; thus, undermining or destroying

natural environments on which peoples relied for

food, shelter, and medicines.

These facts even more, arm the fundamental

conict between nations asserting their right

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FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

LUKANKA / FWJ V23 N1 - SUMMER 2023

to govern themselves and their territories verse

the claims of states to sovereignty and territorial

integrity. Many states including, Canada, the

United States, South Africa, Kenya, Russia, and

China, engaged in systematic state-sponsored

genocide to intentionally depopulate Fourth

World nations to destroy them as peoples in

“whole or in part.” The depopulation programs

of female sterilization forced residential school

re-education programs with the resulting killing

of children, and forced relocations continued for

more than forty years after the UN adopted the

International Convention on Genocide.

The depopulation of Fourth World nations by

states’ governments accelerated the urgent eorts

to formalize self-government and protection of

ancestral territories. Describing some inuential

nations that exercise self-governance reveals

how extensive Fourth World nation political

authority globally is. The Haudenosaunee

(Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca,

and Tuscarora) have for more than a thousand

years exercised governance over their territories

under their Constitution, the Great Law of Peace.

The Mayan-speaking peoples of southern Mexico

(Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Chol, Tojolabal, Zoque, and

Mam) under the banner of the Zapatistas declared

their autonomy governing through their councils

the schools, health clinics, and cooperatives plus

a defensive military force. The more than 30

million Igbo in Nigeria proclaimed the Republic

of Biafra as their central government and, after

attacks by the central Nigerian government,

established their government in exile in 2009.

The Sámi of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia

declared their governing authority through their

parliaments, courts, and media outlets, and the

Māori proclaimed their distinct political authority

in New Zealand. Other nations, including the

Mapuche of Chile, the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq,

Iran, Armenia, and Syria, the Tibetans through

their government in exile, and the West Papuans

through their government in exile, assert their

separate and distinct political authority from the

state. After suering murderous attacks by the

Islamic State in the Levant (ISIS) in 2014, the

Yezidi in Iraq proactively established their central

government of the Nation of Ezidikhan, arming

their more than 6,770 years of autonomy in

Mesopotamia. Many more Fourth World nations

arm their power of self-governance, exercising

their political authority over their ancestral

territories.

The National Congress of American Indians

(NCAI) meeting in General Assembly on

October 24, 1974, in San Diego, California (U.S.)

unanimously adopted the “American Indian

Declaration of Sovereignty” in partial response to

the depopulation programs of the United States.

The Declaration’s purpose was to strengthen the

will of American Indian communities to govern

themselves and exercise their inherent powers.

The Declaration stated in part,

The Government of the United States

of America, in negotiating, said solemn

treaties, did recognize Aboriginal

sovereignty and, by its sacred honor, did

agree to honor, preserve, protect, and

guarantee to other states and nations and

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

to the Aboriginal Tribes and nations those

inherent sovereign rights and powers of self-

government and self-determination aorded

every sovereign nation of the world.

The Declaration was signed by NCAI President

Mel Tonasket, President (Chairman of the Colville

Confederated Tribes), Ernie L. Stevens, First

Vice President (Chairman of the Oneida Tribe of

Wisconsin and Katherine Whitehorn, Recording

Secretary (Osage).

The American Indian Declaration of

Sovereignty was initially drafted by a small

and young group of Indian writers, and tribal

law advocates meeting in the home of Colville

Tribal Member and engineer Wendall George.

I had the honor as a 28-year-old policy writer

to join Wendall George, Ken Hansen, later to

become Chairman of the Samish Tribe, Bobbi

Miller (Minnis was her married name in years

to follow, a Wenatchee and niece of historical

leader Colville Confederated Tribes leader Lucy

Covington), and Sherwin Broadhead, an attorney

and former sta member of Senator William Bora

of Idaho and Superintendent of the Colville BIA

Agency drafting the American Indian Declaration

of Sovereignty. The knowledge that the Colville

Confederated Tribes had weathered a decade of

the United States government’s tribal termination

policy intensied the working group’s focus

on self-government to prevent further U.S.

government coercion of tribal members. More

than 100 tribes had gone through the termination

of members’ tribal aliation, coerced into moving

from their reservations to urban settings. The

1953 U.S. government tribal termination policy

sought to end the existence of tribal communities

and assimilate tribal members into cities such

as Denver, Los Angeles, and Albuquerque

threatening the very existence of native peoples

in the United States. A declaration of sovereignty

was seen by members of the working group as the

only way to preserve tribal cultures from forced

elimination. This small working group, along with

NCAI Executive Director Chuck Trimble, was

called the Colville Maa by NCAI President Mel

Tonasket.

The National Congress of American Indians

Declaration did not stop the US government’s

continuing eorts to assimilate and reduce

American Indian populations. The coerced

sterilization program continued, forced and

the process of pushing tribal members o the

reservations and into the urban centers continued

into the 1980s.

Before the Declaration many other nations

elsewhere in the world made similar declarations

of sovereignty or independence in response to

political, and economic coercion and frequently

violence prompted by state and corporate eorts

to forcibly remove Fourth World peoples from

their ancestral lands.

In this issue of the Fourth World Journal, we

are pleased to share the insights and analysis of

seven authors revealing in considerable detail

the challenges and accomplishments of Fourth

World nations as they face often systematic

state government eorts to eliminate them. Yet

there are some nations driven initiatives to turn

aside culturcide and other violence in favor of

constructive measures for social, economic, and

political self-determination.

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FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

Dr. Eric Cheytz, in his article

Responsibilities Into Rights, The Settler-

Colonial Translation of Native Social

Systems into Western Law discusses

Indigenous kinship systems and their

characteristics before colonization. These systems

were based on extended kinship networks

that included humans and other elements of

nature. Political power was not institutionalized,

but rather consensus was managed among

participants. Settler colonialism has brought

these systems into conict with state formations,

but they persist in various forms. Examples of

Fourth World communities resisting capitalist and

extractive industries are mentioned, such as those

in the Amazon rainforest, Idle No More in Canada,

and the Zapatista villages in Mexico. Indigenous

kinship systems are behavior-based and governed

by responsibilities, not rights. The land is seen as

an inalienable connection to the Earth. Navajo

culture is cited as an example, where kinship is

based on intense solidarity and governed by moral

rules.

In Fourth World Nations vs. The States’

“Nation-Destroying” Projects from 1946 to

2020: Post-WWII Wars, Armed Conicts,

and Indigenous Military Resistance,

Dr. Hiroshi Fukurai examines global armed

conicts between nations and states from 1946

to 2020. The analysis is based on empirical data

from the Uppsala Conict Data Program (UCDP)

and the International Peace Research Institute in

Oslo (PRIO). Other relevant datasets, such as the

Correlates of War (WCO), Militarized Interstate

Dispute (MID), Minority at Risk (MAR), and

Konict-Simulations-Modell (COSIMO), are

also mentioned. The focus is on the UCDP/PRIO

dataset, which provides up-to-date and regionally

detailed information on armed conicts, military

confrontations, and violent battles worldwide.

The ndings reveal that most post-WWII conicts

involve the state and Fourth World nations,

particularly in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and

the Americas. These conicts often revolve around

territorial disputes, control of governments, and

bureaucratic authority. The article highlights

the destructive consequences of state and state-

assisted corporate projects on biodiversity and

the environment, posing threats to the survival of

both human and non-human life on Earth.

From Reconciliation to ReconciliAction

by Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein discuss

their experience as childcare workers at St.

Michael’s Indian Residential School in British

Columbia in 1970. The authors witnessed the

mistreatment and abuse of Indigenous children

at the school and were red for speaking out

against it. Years later, Dyson and Rubenstein felt

compelled to share their story and apologize for

not advocating for the children after leaving the

school. They discovered that many of the children

they knew had suered early deaths due to the

tragic legacy of the residential schools, including

alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide. The

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

(TRC) was established to inform Canadians about

the experiences of residential school survivors.

The TRC’s reports revealed that the abuses

witnessed by the author were widespread across

the country. Over 150 years, 132 residential

schools operated in Canada, forcibly taking

150,000 Indigenous children. Many children died

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SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

in these schools, while others were left broken

and disconnected from their culture. The author,

with encouragement from Chief Robert Joseph

and others, published a book in 2021 titled “St.

Michael’s Residential School: Lament & Legacy.”

The book includes the author’s rsthand account

and excerpts from the TRC reports. It explores the

intentions behind the establishment of residential

schools and the knowledge of ordinary Canadians

about them.

In his Peer Reviewed article Reclaiming

Indigenous Voice and Knowledge in the

Era of (Re) colonization, Insights from

a Rural Indigenous Santal Community,

Dr. Mrinal Debnath examines the eects of

colonial practices and policies on indigenous

peoples and the environment. It highlights

the need to restore indigenous ecological

consciousness and alternative ways of knowing

to rebuild communities and protect the planet.

The elimination of indigenous cultures and

knowledge is discussed, emphasizing the

damaging inuences of modernity and Western

values. The study is based on Fourth World nation

perspectives and employs a qualitative case study

methodology, including in-depth interviews and

eld observations. The data is analyzed using

NVivo software, and the ndings reveal issues

of injustice, oppression, and dehumanization

faced by indigenous communities. The paper

emphasizes the importance of ecological

education and calls for sustainable education

policies and practices to address these challenges

and promote respect for indigenous cultures

and the environment. The anonymity and

condentiality of participants are protected, and

the research ndings are shared with them for

feedback and clarication.

Dr. Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu Ph.D. writing

with Opal Almerico, Sakura Arai, Franny

DePhillips, Michael Dickson, Ge Xiyang,

Goodhue Angelina, Sarah Johnson,

Kawai Hiromi, Zama Kunene, analyzes the

recently released White House First-of-a-Kind

Indigenous Knowledge Guidance for Federal

Agencies in A Critical Review of the United

States Government’s Guidance for Federal

Departments and Agencies on Indigenous

Knowledge: The Department of Education

in Perspective. Their analysis aims to integrate

Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge into decision-

making processes. The article emphasizes the

need for Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)

to be included in K-12 curricula and discusses

possible solutions to achieve this. It critically

reviews the government guidance and highlights

successful collaborations between federal

departments and Indigenous communities in

environmental preservation. Dr. Ezeanya-Esiobu

and her coauthors suggest that the guidance falls

short of fully recognizing Indigenous knowledge

as an equal entity and focuses more on how the

government can benet from it. It argues for a

deeper understanding and respect for Indigenous

worldviews and ways of knowing rather than

using TEK solely to solve problems Western

science creates. The article concludes that natural

solutions can be generated by embracing and

valuing Indigenous knowledge independently.

In Genocide Today, The Guarani-Kaiowa

Struggle for Land and Life researcher

Dr. Antonio Augusto Rossoto Ioris reports

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FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

on the ongoing genocide of the Guarani-Kaiowa

indigenous people in the Brazilian state of

Mato Grosso do Sul, referred to as “Kaiowcide.”

This genocide is not just a result of violence

or murder, but a systematic practice rooted in

agrarian capitalism and the expansion of the

national territory. It is driven by mainstream

development, economic growth, and private

property interests, which justify genocidal actions.

The competition for land and limited social

opportunities in an agribusiness-based economy

contribute to the genocide. The Guarani-Kaiowa

have been subjected to assimilation, connement,

abandonment, and confrontation, with the aim of

eradicating their religion, identity, and geography.

Despite recurrent genocides, the Guarani-Kaiowa

have shown resilience through creative adaptation

and collective resistance. The article highlights

the violence and intimidation faced by indigenous

peoples ghting for their ancestral lands and

emphasizes the need for awareness and action to

address this ongoing genocide.

Kieren Daley Laursen is a Salmon Recovery

Intern for the Aliated Tribes of Northwest

Indians (ATNI) in the United States. He writes

in Aliated Tribes of Northwest Indians

Come Together to Share Common Vision

for the Future of Pacic Northwest

Salmon about the cultural signicance of

salmon to Indigenous people in the Pacic

Northwest and the challenges faced by salmon

populations in the region. He highlights the

health benets and economic importance of

salmon to Tribal communities. The article also

explores the collaboration among Aliated

Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) and other

Tribal organizations to address salmon recovery.

ATNI Resolution 2022-25 calls for strategic

and coordinated action to protect and restore

salmon populations. The document, “We are

all Salmon People” outlines a shared vision and

guiding principles for salmon recovery. The

collaboration emphasizes the need for clean water,

rebuilt ecosystems, and steady ows to support

salmon populations. The article emphasizes the

importance of federal agencies and governments

working with Tribal Nations to achieve eective

salmon recovery. The collaboration aims to

demonstrate unity and advocate for the protection

of salmon and Tribal rights.

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SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

Responsibilities Into Rights

The Settler-Colonial Translation of

Native Social Systems into Western Law

By Eric Cheytz

American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program

“What I now understand is that rights discourse is not necessarily or automatically relevant to

Aboriginal cultures. A system of responsibility makes more sense to the Aboriginal being.”

Patricia Monture-Angus.1

Prior to the invasion of the Americas, Indigenous communities, except for the relatively short-lived

Aztec, Maya, and Inca city-states, lived entirely in extended, egalitarian kinship systems that included

both humans and “other-than-humans” (plants, animals, and the very earth itself).2 In The Poetics of

Imperialism, citing the anthropologist Eric Wolf, I characterize kinship societies in the following way:

Thus, while what we term “hierarchies,” or “oppositions,” such as, for example, ranks according

to gender and age, appear to exist in kin-ordered societies, these “oppositions as they are

normally played out are particulate, the conjunction of a particular elder with a particular junior

of a particular lineage at a particular time and place, and not the general opposition of elder and

junior as classes.” Further, “[t]he kin-ordered mode inhibits the institutionalization of political

power, resting essentially on the management of consensus among clusters of participants,” who

are geared to exibly concentrate or disperse their labor “when changing conditions require a

rearrangement of commitments. At the same time, the extension and retraction of kin ties create

open and shifting boundaries of such societies.”3

Such systems are still functioning, though settler colonialism’s violence has brought them into

conict with nation-state formations.4 I think, for example, of the traditional Indigenous communities

who subsist in the Amazon rain forest, though under constant threat from corporate capitalism and

1 Patricia Monture-Angus, Journeying Forward: Dreaming First Nations Independence (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing Company,

1999), 55.

2 I take “other-than-human” from Nick Estes, Are History Is the Future (London: Verso, 2019).

3 Eric Cheytz, The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from “The Tempest” to “Tarzan” (1991; Philadelphia: The University of

Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 53-54.

4 I use “settler colonialism,” following Patrick Wolfe, to distinguish it from traditional colonialism. In the latter, India would be a primary

example; the colonial regime governs the country and exploits Native labor for capitalist production, displacing Natives from their land to make

way for colonial farms, large and small. In the former regime, the goal is the “elimination” of the Native by whatever means, which includes

genocide at one extreme and assimilation at the other. See Patrick Wolfe, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native,” Journal of

Genocide Research (2006), 8(4), December, 387-409.

ERIC CHEYFITZ

the neoliberal state; of sociopolitical movements

resisting the extractive industries of capitalism

and the state like Idle No More in Canada and the

DAPL resistance, short-lived as it was, in North

Dakota; and of the Zapatista (EZLN) autonomous

villages in Chiapas, Mexico, which are based in

sustainable economies governed by an Indigenous

model of democracy-through-consensus, rule by

obeying the people (“‘mandar obedeciendo’”):

“This method of autonomous government was

not simply invented by the EZLN, but rather

comes from centuries of indigenous resistance

and from the Zapatistas’ own experience.”5 In the

U.S., to take another example, the 1934 Indian

Reorganization Act imposed constitutional

forms of representative government on federally

recognized tribes, which has had the eect in

tribal communities of creating conicts between

tribal ocials and those in the community

holding to traditional forms of governance.6

Indigenous kinship systems are based in

behavior, not blood, and the behaviors are

governed by responsibilities, not rights. The

Western property-individual nexus generates

rights foreign to Indigenous kinship, where land

is the inalienable, original relation of people to the

earth, literally “mother earth” or “Pachamama”

in Quechua and Aymara, two of the Native

languages of the Andes region of Latin America.7

At Navajo, a matrilineal and matrifocal society,

for example, one is born into one’s mother’s clan

and for one’s father’s clan. The responsibilities

that one has within one’s mother’s clan is to treat

every person in that clan as a mother, ideally,

treats a child, that is, with unstinting care without

any expectation of return. However, if everyone

in the clan fullls her responsibilities then return

is reexive. The responsibilities that one has

toward one’s father’s clan is one of reciprocity;

what is given must be returned in some form. The

anthropologist Gary Witherspoon epitomizes the

Navajo “kin universe” as follows:

The culturally related kin universe is a

moral order because it is a statement of

the proper order of that universe—that is,

the ideal state of aairs or the way things

ought to be. It refers to a condition in which

everything is in its proper place, fullling its

proper role and following the cultural rules.

The rules which govern the kin universe

are moral rules. They state unconditionally

how kinsmen behave toward each other

and how groups of kinsmen function. They

are axiomatic based on a priori moral

premises…. In Navajo culture, kinship

means intense, diuse, and enduring

solidarity, and this solidarity is realized in

actions and behavior betting the cultural

denitions of kinship solidarity.8

Witherspoon sums up the ideal functioning of

the kin universe in the sentence: “To put it simply

and concisely, true kinsmen are good mothers”

(Witherspoon 1975, 64).

5 El Kilombo Intergalactico, Beyond Resistance Everything: An

Interview with Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (Durham, NC:

PaperBoat Press, 2007), 11, 67.

6 See Eric Cheytz, “The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute: A Brief History,”

Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Volume 2,

Number 2 (2000), 248-275.

7 See Thomas Fatheuer, Buen Vivir (Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Publication

Series on Ecology, Volume 17, 2011), Trans. John Hayduska, 20-21.

8 Gary Witherspoon, Navajo Kinship and Marriage (Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 1975), 12.

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The Diné bahanè, literally the “narrative

of the people,” or more precisely, narratives,

tells in various stories the Navajo search

for kinship between communities of human

persons (resulting in the formation of clans),

and between humans and other-than-humans.

And the “boundaries” between these categories,

following Eric Wolf, previously cited, are “open

and shifting.”9 When Naayéé neizghání (Monster

Slayer) nishes the task of restoring kinship to

the world, he tells his mother Asdzáá nádleehé

(Changing Woman or, literally, woman of

indeterminate gender), the central gure in

Navajo history and philosophy: “Everywhere I go

I nd that I am treated like a kinsman.” And at

the end of a tough negotiation in which Changing

Woman agrees to cohabit with the Sun, the

father of Monster Slayer and his twin brother,

the narrative says: “So it is that she agreed; they

would go to a place in the West where they would

dwell together in the solid harmony of kinship”

(Zolbrod 1984, 275).

The Navajo term for the kinship system is

“k’e.” Witherspoon explains:

The Navajo term “k’e” means “compassion,”

“cooperation,” “friendliness,”

“unselshness,” “peacefulness,” and all

these positive virtues which constitute

intense, diuse, and enduring solidarity.

The term “k’ei” means “a special or

particular kind of k’e.” It is this term (k’ei)

which is used to signify the system of

descent relationships and categories found

in Navajo culture. “Shik’ei” (“my relatives

by descent”) distinguishes a group of

relatives with whom one relates according

to a special kind of k’e. (Witherspoon 1975,

37).

That is, one’s clans (father’s and mother’s).

Mohawk political theorist Taiaiake Alfred

suggests that the overall form of government

that stems from the range of Indigenous kinship

systems are all motivated by diering forms of

k’e:

The Native concept of governance

is based on what a great student of

indigenous societies, Russell Barsh, has

called “primacy of conscience.” There

is no central or coercive authority, and

decision-making is collective. Leaders rely

on their persuasive abilities to achieve

a consensus that respects the autonomy

of individuals, each of whom is free to

dissent from and remain unaected by

the collective decision. The clan or family

is the basic unit of social organization,

and larger forms of organization from

tribe through nation to confederacy, are

all predicated on the political autonomy

and economic independence of clan units

through family-based control of lands and

resources…. The indigenous tradition sees

government as the collective power of the

individual members of the nation; there is

9 Paul G. Zolbrod, Diné bahanè: The Navajo Creation Story

(Albuqueque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 269.

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no separation between society and state….

By contrast, in the European tradition

power is surrendered to the representatives

of the majority, whose decisions on what

they think is the collective good are then

imposed on all citizens.10

Imposed, I would add, in the form of rights.

When considering the dierence between

a system of kinship and a system of rights, the

key point is that in the former, “there is no

separation between society and state.” That is, in

systems of k’e there is no sovereign. In contrast,

the discourse of rights implies a sovereign who

both guarantees these rights but against whose

potential tyranny (the state of exception) these

rights are a bulwark. In liberal, representative

democracies, this sovereign is theoretically

“the people” but in practice is the state, which,

following Marx, Althusser denes as a “class state,

existing in the repressive State apparatus [the

police, the army etc.], [which] casts a brilliant

light on all the facts observable in the various

orders of repression whatever their domains…;

it casts light on the subtle everyday domination

beneath which can be glimpsed, in the forms of

political democracy, for example, what Lenin,

following Marx, called the dictatorship of the

bourgeoisie.11

One of the marks of settler colonialism, then,

is the translation of Indigenous kinship systems

grounded in responsibilities into systems of

rights as codied in declarations and formal

legal documents, including constitutions. In the

remainder of this paper, I will focus on three

forms of this translation: U.S. federal Indian law,

the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous

Peoples, and the Constitution of the Plurinational

State of Bolivia.

II: Subordinating Native Sovereignty

U.S. federal Indian law is grounded in the

Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, from

which Congress derives its “plenary power”

in Indian aairs, a power armed, though

not without question, in the Supreme Court’s

interpretations of the clause.12 In Worcester v.

Georgia (31 U.S. 515[1832]), the third case in the

10 Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto (Ontario: Oxford University Press Canada, 1999), 25.

11 Louis Althusser, Essays On Ideology (London: Verso, 1971), 13.

12 See U.S v. Kagama (118 U.S. 375, 1886) in which the Court on its way to afrming the Major Crimes Act (1885), which reversed the

jurisdiction of Indian on Indian crime instituted in the Non-Intercourse Acts, questions the extent of congressional power under the Commerce

clause: “But we think it would be a very strained construction of this clause…for the common-law crimes of murder, manslaughter, arson,

burglary, larceny, and the like, without any reference to their relation to any kind of commerce, [if it] was authorized by the grant of power to

regulate commerce with the Indian tribes” (at 378). Nevertheless, the Court proceeded to recognize the “plenary power” of Congress in all Indian

matters. In the case of U.S. v. Lara (124 S. Ct. 1628, 2004), Justice Thomas in a concurring opinion that upholds the dual sovereignty doctrine,

nevertheless, citing Kagama, raises questions about Congress’s plenary power: “I do, however, agree that this case raises important constitutional

questions that the Court does not begin to answer. The Court utterly fails to nd any provision of the Constitution that gives Congress enumerated

power to alter tribal sovereignty…. I cannot agree that the Indian Commerce Clause “‘provide[s] Congress with plenary power to legislate in the

eld of Indian affairs’” (at 1648). Thomas here concurs with the dicta in Kagama that nds the Commerce Clause does not contain a rationale

for criminal jurisdiction but he does not agree with the plenary power doctrine, which Kagama locates extra-constitutionally in a broad political

power over the Indians. In this, Thomas nds that “federal Indian law is at odds with itself” in both asserting plenary power and yet nding an

inherent sovereignty in the tribes that supports the dual sovereignty doctrine (at 1649). “Federal Indian policy is, to say the least, schizophrenic.

And this confusion continues to infuse federal Indian law and our cases” (at 1645-46).

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foundational Marshall Trilogy,13 Chief Justice

John Marshall, writing the opinion of the Court,

noted: “The words ‘treaty’ and ‘nation’ are words

of our own language, selected in our diplomatic

and legislative proceedings by ourselves, having

each a denite and well understood meaning. We

have applied them to Indians as we have applied

them to the other nations of the earth. They are

applied to all in the same sense” (at 519).

Marshall’s words here make clear the process

of translation by which Indian communities

were translated into Western law, by which

kinship societies, grounded in responsibilities,

were translated into the keywords of U.S. and

international law: “treaty” and “nation.” Indian

treaties, as is the case with all treaties, do outline

the responsibilities of the signatories (rights to a

certain extent imply responsibilities). However,

these responsibilities are based in a vertical

system of authority (the treaties were forced

on Native communities through an asymmetry

of material power in the course of a genocide)

not in a horizontal system of kinship, where the

intrinsic equality of the participants obviates

the need for rights. Translated through treaties

into the term “nation” (treaties by denition

are signed between foreign nations), kinship

communities were translated into the regime

of “sovereignty,” in which they were recognized

by the sovereign as sovereign only in the sense

that Glen Coulthard has elaborated in his book

Red Skin White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial

Politics of Recognition. Writing in “the Canadian

context” of federal Indian law, which parallels

with dierences that of the U.S. because of

their common origin in British colonial politics,

Coulthard notes that “colonial relations of power

are no longer reproduced primarily through

overtly coercive means, but rather through the

asymmetrical exchange of mediated forms of state

recognition and accommodation.” Next, following

Frantz Fanon’s book Black Skin, White Masks,

he continues to elaborate the argument that

animates Red Skin, White Masks:

Fanon’s analysis suggests that in contexts

where colonial rule is not reproduced

through force alone, the maintenance

of settler-state hegemony requires

the production of what he liked to

call “colonized subjects”: namely, the

production of the specic modes of colonial

thought, desire, and behavior that implicitly

or explicitly commit the colonized to the

types of practices and subject positions

that are required for their continued

domination. However, unlike the liberalized

appropriation of Hegel that continues to

inform many contemporary proponents of

identity politics, in Fanon recognition is not

posited as a source of freedom and dignity

for the colonized, but rather as the eld of

power through which colonial relations are

produced and maintained.14

13 The Marshall trilogy is the name given in U.S. federal Indian law to

the three generative cases that along with treaties and Congressional

acts form the foundation of U.S. relations with Indian tribes in the

lower forty-eight states. The three cases, which I discuss in this essay,

are Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823), Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831),

and Worcester v. Georgia (1832). The federal government has a

wholly different legal arrangement with Alaska Natives articulated in

the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. As yet, there is no

formal legal arrangement between the federal government and Native

Hawaiians.

14 Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the

Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: The University of

Minnesota Press, 2014), pp. 15, 16.

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Fanon’s analysis, as Coulthard suggests

with his use of the term “hegemony,” recalls

Antonio Gramsci’s denition of the term in his

prison writings, where he denes it as “[t]he

spontaneous consent given by the great masses of

the population to the general direction imposed

on social life by the dominant fundamental

group.”15 This “consent” must be scrutinized

within the context of ongoing forms of Native

resistance to settler colonialism. That is, it is

coerced consent, a contradiction in terms. And

Coulthard appears to recognize this when he

terms Fanonian “recognition” as a “eld of

power.”

U.S. federal Indian law is constituted by the

form of asymmetrical recognition that Coulthard

denes. Under this law, Native sovereignty

is a subordinate sovereignty in which Native

communities were dened by the Marshall Court

as “domestic dependent nations,” in Cherokee

Nation v. Georgia (30 U.S. at 17[1831]), the

second case in the Marshall Trilogy, a denition

that is constituted by a contradiction and yet

still holds today. In international law, a nation

is dened precisely by its independence and its

foreignness in relation to other nations. Indeed,

the Cherokees came to the Marshall Court

asserting their position as a foreign nation by

virtue of the treaties they had signed with the

U.S. Treaties, by denition, are only negotiated

between foreign nations. Nevertheless, they left

the Court with their status as an independent,

foreign nation denied and recongured in a

contradictory denition, for a subordinate

sovereign cannot be sovereign, though it should

be noted that Marshall seemed to be aware of

this contradiction because he commissioned

a dissenting opinion from Justices Thompson

and Story that supported the Cherokee claim.

Thompson wrote the opinion, which Story

joined.16

The history of US federal Indian law teaches

us that kinship regimes of responsibility

were translated into rights regimes in order

to implement the settler colonial project of

disappearing Indians, in this case socially and

culturally, under cover of law, just as Indian

land, the literal ground of Native kinship, was

translated into property in Johnson v. M’Intosh

(21 U.S. 543[1823]), the rst case in the Marshall

Trilogy, in order to steal that land under the same

cover. I argue that the translation of kinship into

rights is a way of disappearing Indians in the

sense that it is a form of assimilation, just as I

would argue that the Congressional Act of 1924

that translated all Indians into citizens of the

U.S. and thus formally if not actually bearers of

constitutional rights was an act of assimilation,

which has, signicantly, been resisted by Native

nations that recognize themselves rst of all as

the primary source of citizenship for their people,

even though the U.S refuses this recognition.17

15 David Forgacs, ed. The Antonio Gramsci Review: Selected

Writings1916-1935 (New York: New York University Press, 2000).

306-307.

16 See Jill Norgren, The Cherokee Cases: Two Landmark Federal

Decisions in the Fight For Sovereignty (1996; Norman: The University

of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 108-109.

17 See, for example, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Nationals lacrosse

team’s passport conict with the British government in 2010. Writing

about the conict in The New York Times on July 16, 2010, Thomas

Kaplan notes: “The dispute has superseded lacrosse, prompting

diplomatic tap-dancing abroad and reigniting in the United States a

centuries-old debate over the sovereignty of American Indian nations.

The Iroquois refused to accept United States passports, saying they did

not want to travel to an international competition on what they consider

to be a foreign nation’s passport.” Thomas Kaplan, “Iroquois Defeated

by Passport Dispute” at https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/

sports/17lacrosse.html.

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The translation of Native land—understood across

Indigenous cultures, as the nonfungible, literal

matrix, of the community, the basis of kinship

in “mother earth,”—into property, which is by

denition a fungible commodity, is not simply

a way of stealing that land, rendering it in eect

transferable to other parties, of which the federal

government was the primary recipient as the

Johnson case asserts. But this translation enacts

a primal violence on Native communities seeking

to tear them from the very ground of identity.

In that sense, this translation is genocidal. The

translation of kinship responsibility into rights

must be understood in this settler-colonial

context.

A key manifestation of this translation is the

history of the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968

(ICRA), discussed in what follows. As Marshall’s

words in Worcester v. Georgia cited previously

make clear, the language of “sovereignty”

implied in the terms “nation” and “treaty” was

imported into the language of federal Indian law

from international law, not to recognize the full

sovereignty of foreign nations in the Indian tribes.

However, as the Marshall Trilogy makes clear to

consign them to a sovereignty subordinate to the

United States. Recently, critical questions have

been raised about using the term “sovereignty”

in a Native discourse of liberation because of its

hierarchical meaning in European discourse. For

example, Taiaiake Alfred remarks:

But few people have questioned how a

European term and idea…came to be so

embedded and important to cultures that

had their own systems of government

since the time before the term sovereignty

was invented in Europe. Fewer still have

questioned the implications of adopting the

European notion of power and governance

and using it to structure the postcolonial

systems that are being negotiated

and implemented within indigenous

communities today.18

What this critique points to is the way the

language of sovereignty/rights has displaced

the language of kinship in Native governance

under the regime of federal Indian law, which

increasingly structured the governance of these

communities hierarchically. Here I want to quote

at length a passage from a previously published

essay of mine that incapsulates the history of this

displacement:

…beginning with [the Supreme Court

case] Talton v. Mayes [163 U.S.376, 1898]

formal issues of individual civil rights

began to emerge in conict with issues of

sovereignty within tribal communities.

While the Supreme Court’s decision in

Talton armed tribal sovereignty in

the matter of making tribal laws over an

individual tribal member’s federal appeal to

constitutional rights, the conict between

sovereignty and individual right persisted

and intensied. This conict culminated,

in the rst instance, in the Indian Civil

Rights Act of 1968 (ICRA), Title I of which

18 Taiaiake Alfred, “Sovereignty,” in Joanne Barker, ed. Sovereignty

Matters: Locations of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous

Struggles for Self-Determination (Lincoln: The University of Nebraska

Press, 2005), 39. See also, Alvaro Reyes and Mara Kaufman,

“Sovereignty, Indigeneity, Territory: Zapatista Autonomy and the New

Practices of Decolonization,” in Eric Cheytz, N.Bruce Duthu, and

Shari M. Huhndorf, eds. Sovereignty, Indigeneity, and the Law (South

Atlantic Quarterly, 110:2, Spring 2011), 505-525.

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sought to set limits on the sovereignty of

tribes over their members, thus modifying

Talton. In the second instance, however, the

conict culminated in Santa Clara Pueblo

v. Martinez [436 U.S. 49, 1978], which,

citing Talton as precedent, argued tribal

sovereignty’s precedence over civil rights,

except in the case of habeas corpus appeals

to federal courts sanctioned under 25

U.S.C. §1303 (ICRA), although in this case

Martinez makes it clear that the respondent

is not the tribe but the individual tribal

ocial holding the prisoner. Thus, today

the ten constitutional rights of Indian in

their tribes, as enumerated in 25 U.S. C. §

1302 come under the sole authority of tribal

courts; and the tribes are protected from

federal lawsuits in this area through the

principal of “sovereign immunity,” which

the Martinez decision reasserts.19

Traditional Native governance systems

of kinship-consensus now become, under

federal Indian law, systems of sovereignty

but subordinate to the federal government’s

sovereignty (“domestic dependent nations”).

Concomitantly, systems of communal kinship

responsibilities become systems of individual

rights that ironically are subordinated to a

subordinated sovereignty. The settler-colonial

agenda of erasing the Native is manifest in this

legal agenda.

III: UN Translating Responsibilities

In 2007, the UN General Assembly ratied The

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The Declaration is meant to recognize, because it

has no power to redress legally, “that indigenous

peoples have suered from historic injustices

as a result of, inter alia, their colonization and

dispossession of their lands, territories and

resources, thus preventing them from exercising,

in particular, their right to development in

accordance with their own needs and interests”

(Preamble). In eect, what the Declaration

recognizes implicitly in its very form is that

colonization has forced the translation of kinship

responsibilities to land, human, and other-than-

humans into rights. These rights, as articulated

in Article 46 (1), are subordinated to the “rights”

of the colonizer, that is, to the rights of the states

in which Indigenous communities due to colonial

violence are now located:

Nothing in this Declaration may be

interpreted as implying for any State,

people, group or person any right to

engage in any activity or to perform any

act contrary to the Charter of the United

Nations or construed as authorizing or

encouraging any action which would

dismember or impair, totally or in part,

the territorial integrity or political unity of

sovereign and independent States.20

19 Eric Cheytz, “The Colonial Double Bind: Sovereignty and Civil Rights in Indian Country,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of

Constitutional Law, Volume 5, Number 2, January 2003, 223-240.

20 EUNDRIP. (2007) Article 46 paragraph 1 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was inserted at the last stages

of Human Rights Council consideration and is widely interpreted by states’ governments as intended to clarify that the rights recognized in the

Declaration are subject to the principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter, which include respect for the sovereignty and territorial

integrity of states. It is also intended to ensure that the Declaration is not interpreted as authorizing or encouraging any actions that would threaten

the unity or integrity of states.

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The irony here is that a signicant number

of the states that formed the U.N. (including,

of course, the United States and Canada) were

created precisely by the subordination of the

autonomous Indigenous kinship systems

of responsibilities that the Declaration now

promises to protect through the extension of

a set of rights that can only be enforced by the

very states that claim prior rights over and

against Indigenous responsibilities.21 In eect the

Declaration is a contradiction in terms. In the

rst place, because in translating kinship systems

into a system of rights it enacts the assimilation

of these egalitarian Indigenous systems into

a hierarchical system of Western sovereignty,

even as Article 8 states: “Indigenous peoples...

have the right not to be subjected to forced

assimilation or destruction of their culture.”

One could argue, of course, that the Declaration

is not based in “forced” but in “consensual,”

or strategic, assimilation, with the caveat I

suggested previously about the term consensual,

remembering that there was (is) resistance to

this form of the Declaration.22 The Declaration is,

then, following Coulthard, a system of recognizing

the “other” not as an equal sovereign, even as it

declares in Article 2 that “Indigenous peoples…

are free and equal to all other peoples” but as a

subordinate. It is worth noting in this respect that

the term sovereign is not used in the Declaration

in relation to Indigenous communities. However,

nation is used but only once in Article 9.

In the second place, the Declaration is

contradictory on the level of the articles

themselves. So, for example, Article 3 states:

“Indigenous peoples have the right to self-

21 See Eric Cheytz, “Native American Literature and the UN

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” in Deborah L.

Madsen, ed. The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature

(London: Routledge, 2016), 192-202.

22 See note 21: my discussion of the “Alta Outcome Document”

in Madsen, which in effect represents Indigenous resistance to the

Declaration even as it afrms it, pp.194-195.

determination. By virtue of that right they

freely determine their political status and freely

pursue their economic, social and cultural

development.” But it is evident throughout the

Declaration that this “self-determination” is

subordinated to the sovereignty of the states

in which Indigenous peoples live. It is, then,

a limited self-determination. Thus Article 4

states: “Indigenous peoples, in exercising their

right to self-determination, have the right to

autonomy or self-government in matters relating

to their internal and local aairs, as well as

ways and means for nancing their autonomous

functions.” It would seem that declaring the

right to “self-determination” as Article 3 does

would automatically include “the right to

autonomy or self-government in matters relating

to their internal or local aairs.” For how can a

community exercise self-determination without

self-government? So why the need for Article 4

except a kind of unconscious admission that “self-

determination” in this document is one limited

to the internal aairs of the community, which

is the status quo in U.S. federal Indian law. In all

honesty, then, Article 4 should read: “Indigenous

peoples, in exercising their right to self-

determination, have only the right to autonomy

or self-government in matters relating to their

internal and local aairs, as well as ways and

means for nancing their autonomous functions.”

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Similarly, Article 26 (1) states a right that is

virtual and utopian, if it refers to precolonial

lands: “Indigenous peoples have the right

to the lands, territories and resources which

they have traditionally owned, occupied or

otherwise used or acquired” while Article 28 (1)

states the colonial status quo that contradicts

or compromises article 26(1), if Article 26 (1)

does refer not to the lands left to Indigenous

peoples after colonial dispossession but to the

“lands” occupied by Indigenous peoples prior to

colonization: “Indigenous peoples have the right

to redress, by means that can include restitution

or, when this is not possible, just, fair and

equitable compensation, for the lands, territories

and resources which they have traditionally

owned or otherwise occupied or used, and which

have been conscated, taken, occupied, used or

damaged without their free, prior and informed

consent.” It is quite clear from the history of

settler-colonial nations that “restitution” in any

signicant sense is not a possibility because of

the conversion of most Indigenous lands into

state-owned property. The ambiguity in Article

26(1), probably unintentional, blurs the boundary

between a revolutionary and a conservative right,

which is representative of the entire Declaration.

In its very form, then, the Declaration tells us

that stating a right and realizing that right are

two entirely dierent matters mediated by the

real politics of settler-colonialism, to which the

Declaration subordinates itself in its formulation.

IV: Bolivia’s Fragile Translation of

Responsibility

After an Indigenous and worker-led

revolutionary movement in Bolivia from 2000-

2003, Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian, was

elected, in 2005, president of the country,

62% of whose people identify as Indigenous.

Subsequently elected twice more (2009-2014

and 2014-2019), he was deposed by a right-wing

coup supported by the United States in November

2019. Then in October 2020 his political party,

MAS (Movement To Socialism), was returned to

power in the national election, and in November

2020, Morales returned to Bolivia from exile in

Argentina.

Under the Morales government,23 the

Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia

was enacted by national referendum in 2009,

though its drafting in the preceding three years

by a popularly elected Constituent Assembly was

complicated in terms of representation but, to

quote Miguel Centellas, “There can be no denying

that the 2009 Constitution [recognizing 35

Indigenous languages (Article 5, Paragraph 1)] is

a signicant advancement for multiculturalism

in Bolivia—and for the rights of indigenous

peoples in particular,”24 rights, I would

emphasize, grounded in Indigenous kinship

responsibilities. There is an attempt, then, in the

Bolivian Constitution to reconcile what I have

been describing as the conict or contradiction

between kinship responsibilities and rights.

Article 8, Paragraph II of the Constitution

reads: “The State is based on the values of unity,

equality, inclusion, dignity, liberty, solidarity,

23 I am using the translation of the Bolivian constitution by Luis

Francisco Valle V. No publisher is given.

24 Miguel Centellas, “Bolivia’s New Multicultural Constitution: The

2009 Constitution in Historical and Comparative Perspective,” in Todd

A. Eisenstadt, Michael S. Danielson, Moisés Jaime Bailón Corres, and

Carlos Sorroza Polo eds., Latin America’s Multicultural Movements:

The Struggle Between Communitarianism, Autonomy, and Human

Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Kindle Edition,

100.

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reciprocity, respect, interdependence, harmony,

transparency, equilibrium [balance], equality

of opportunity, social and gender equality in

participation, common welfare, responsibility,

social justice, distribution and redistribution of

the social wealth and assets for well-being.” We

recognize here the key terms representing the

values that generate kinship responsibilities such

as “solidarity, reciprocity…interdependence,

harmony…equilibrium [balance]…social and

gender equality in participation, responsibility…

distribution and redistribution of the social

wealth and assets for well-being.” In comparison,

the key Navajo term, hozho, for example,

represents the state of harmony, balance, and

well-being, all of which are contained in the idea

of “beauty.”

The Constitution, a voluminous document

at 130 pages, encountering the present while

projecting a yet-to-be-realized future, repudiates

in its Introduction “the colonial, republican,

and neo-liberal State” of the past in order to

“found Bolivia anew” on the values of kinship

elaborated above. The complication, indeed the

contradiction, in this promise is the problem of

founding a state (a vertical system of rights) on

kinship (a horizontal system of responsibilities);

the problem of founding a sovereign unitary

structure on a structure of heterogeneous

autonomous communities (plurinationalism)

without the state becoming a neocolonial

force privileging its own rights over those of

the nation’s within the nation, that is, without

those nations becoming a version of U.S. Indian

“domestic dependent nations.”

Under Morales, Bolivia has faced from its

beginning as revolutionary state conicts with

Indigenous communities arising from the

incompatibility of the responsibilities within

the rights model. This condition of conicts

has centrally come into play in the Amazon

basin over the conict between the state’s

right to development versus the community’s

responsibility to sustain the biodiversity of

the environment, with the former taking

precedence, even though Article 289 of the

Constitution reads: “Rural native indigenous

autonomy consists in self-government as an

exercise of free determination of the nations

and rural native indigenous peoples, the

population of which shares territory, culture,

history, languages, and their own juridical,

political, social and economic organization or

institutions.”

In theory, the Bolivian Constitution, in

contrast to U.S. federal Indian law and the UN

Declaration, oers us a faithful translation

of kinship responsibilities into nation-state

rights. In practice, the two forms remain in

conict. Centellas puts it this way:

Looking explicitly at the relationship

between Bolivia’s indigenous peoples

and the state, there is little evidence

of a multicultural consociational

model. Indigenous peoples are now

constitutionally granted autonomy, but

in a rather limited way: it is restricted

by preexisting territorial boundaries; it

is limited to small rural communities;

it places signicant restrictions on the

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

ERIC CHEYFITZ

use of usos y costumbres ; and it does not

grant communities veto rights on decisions

involving their resources. Like people in

many other countries, Bolivians have been

forced to wrestle with potential conicts

between practices that fall under usos y

costumbres and their commitments to

human rights. Thus, for example, one

can understand restrictions on the use

of capital or corporal punishments—a

practice sometime defended as falling

under the category of usos y costumbres.

However, it is less understandable why

far less controversial elements of usos y

costumbres—such as traditional ways of

selecting community leaders—should be

brushed aside. (106)

In sum, Centellas understands Indigenous

autonomy within the Bolivian nation-state as

follows:

Overall, the evidence suggests that despite

indigenous autonomy originating as a

grassroots demand, the application of

indigenous autonomy is still primarily

understood as structured and applied ‘from

above’ in ways that privilege the central

state. Despite legal and constitutional

assurances, indigenous autonomy is still

very fragile in Bolivia (Centellas 2013, 90).

From the models I have analyzed, it would

appear that a regime of responsibilities, an

egalitarian kinship regime, is not, nally,

compatible with regimes of rights, grounded

as such regimes necessarily are in nation-state

sovereignty. The moment we move from a kinship

to a nation-state regime, from responsibilities to

rights, is the moment we move from democracy

to something the nation-state calls democracy

but is more accurately a majoritarian form of

representative politics in which power is not

circulated horizontally and thus equally but is

distributed vertically and unequally from the

top down. We move, that is, from regimes of

sustainability to regimes of growth, production,

and consumption, based on extractive industries,

which are engineering climate collapse today.

The western European thought calls this

“progress.” Thinking from a dierent place, a

place of responsibility, one might understand it as

“regress.” Put another way; we need a regime of

not only human but environmental rights because

we have abandoned a regime of responsibility to

the living world.

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This Article may be cited as:

Cheytz E., (2023) Responsibilities into Rights: The Settler-Colonial Translation of Native Social Systems

into Western Law. Fourth World Journal. Vol. 23, N1. pp. 01-13.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eric Cheytz

Eric Cheytz is the Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane

Letters at Cornell University, where he is a faculty member of the American Indian

and Indigenous Studies Program. He is, among his other books, the author of The

Disinformation Age: The Collapse of Liberal Democracy in the United States and

the forthcoming The Colonial Construction of Indian Country: Native American

Literatures & Federal Indian Law.

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

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De la Responsabilidad al Derecho

La Traducción Colonial de los Sistemas Sociales

Indígenas al Derecho Occidental

Por Eric Cheytz

Programa de Estudios Indígenas y Amerindios

Traducción al Español por Aline Castañeda Cadena

“Lo que ahora entiendo es que el discurso de los derechos no es necesariamente o automáticamente

relevante para las culturas aborígenes. Un sistema de responsabilidad tiene más sentido para el

aborigen”.

Patricia Monture-Angus.1

Antes de la invasión de las Américas, a excepción de las ciudades-estado azteca, maya e inca, de

vida relativamente corta, las comunidades indígenas vivían enteramente en sistemas de parentesco

e igualitaridad extendidos que incluían tanto a humanos como a “no humanos” (plantas, animales y

la tierra misma).2 En The Poetics of Imperialism, citando al antropólogo Eric Wolf, caracterizo a las

sociedades de parentesco de la siguiente manera:

Así, mientras que lo que llamamos “jerarquías” u “oposiciones”, como, por ejemplo, los rangos

según el género y la edad, parecen existir en las sociedades ordenadas por parentesco, estas

“oposiciones, tal como se desarrollan normalmente, son particuladas, la conjunción de un

anciano en particular con un menor en particular de un linaje particular en un momento y lugar

en particular, en lugar de la oposición general de anciano y menor como clases”. Además, “[l]

a forma de orden por parentesco inhibe la institucionalización del poder político, descansando

esencialmente en la gestión del consenso entre grupos de participantes”, quienes están

preparados para concentrar o dispersar su trabajo de manera exible “cuando las condiciones

cambiantes requieren una reorganización de los compromisos”... Al mismo tiempo, la

extensión y retracción de los lazos de parentesco crean fronteras abiertas y cambiantes en tales

sociedades”.3

1 Patricia Monture-Angus, Journeying Forward: Dreaming First Nations Independence (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing Company,

1999), 55.

2 Tomo el término “no humanos” de Nick Estes, Are History Is the Future (London: Verso, 2019).

3 Eric Cheytz, The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from “The Tempest” to “Tarzan” (1991; Philadelphia: The University of

Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 53-54.

ERIC CHEYFITZ

Dichos sistemas siguen funcionando, aunque

la violencia del colonialismo de asentamiento los

ha puesto en conicto en cuanto a la formación

de estados-nación.4 Pienso, por ejemplo, en

las comunidades indígenas tradicionales que

subsisten en la selva amazónica, aunque bajo la

amenaza constante del capitalismo corporativo

y del estado neoliberal; en los movimientos

sociopolíticos que resisten las industrias

extractivas del capitalismo y el estado como Idle

No More en Canadá y la resistencia al DAPL (The

Dakota Access Pipeline, el oleoducto de Dakota

Access), con la corta duración que tuvo, en Dakota

del Norte; y de los pueblos autónomos zapatistas

(EZLN) en Chiapas, México, que se basan en

economías sustentables regidas por un modelo

indígena de democracia por consenso, gobernar

obedeciendo al pueblo (“‘mandar obedeciendo’”):

“Este método de gobierno autónomo no fue

simplemente inventado por el EZLN, sino que

proviene de siglos de resistencia indígena y de la

propia experiencia de los zapatistas”.5 En Estados

Unidos, por mencionar otro ejemplo, la Ley de

Reorganización Indígena de 1934 impuso formas

constitucionales de gobierno representativo a

las tribus reconocidas a nivel federal, lo que ha

tenido un efecto sobre las comunidades tribales

de crear conictos entre los funcionarios tribales

y aquellos en la comunidad que mantienen las

formas tradicionales de gobierno.6

Los sistemas de parentesco indígena se basan

en el comportamiento, no en la sangre, y los

comportamientos se rigen por responsabilidades,

no a través de los derechos. El nexo occidental

propiedad-individuo genera derechos ajenos

al concepto de parentesco indígena, donde la

tierra es la relación original e inalienable de

las personas con la Tierra, literalmente “Madre

Tierra”, o la “Pachamama” en quechua y aimara,

dos de las lenguas nativas de la región andina

de América Latina.7 En la Nación Navajo, una

sociedad matrilineal y matrifocal, por ejemplo,

uno nace en el clan de su madre y para el clan de

su padre. Las responsabilidades que uno tiene

dentro del clan de su madre es tratar a cada

persona de ese clan como una madre idealmente

trataría a un niño, es decir, con un cuidado

ilimitado sin ninguna expectativa de recibir

algo a cambio. Sin embargo, si todos en el clan

cumplen con sus responsabilidades, a modo de

reejo, todos reciben algo. Las responsabilidades

que uno tiene hacia el clan de su padre son de

reciprocidad; lo que se da debe ser devuelto de

alguna forma. El antropólogo Gary Witherspoon

personica el “universo familiar” navajo de la

siguiente manera:

4 Uso “colonialismo de asentamiento” siguiendo a Patrick Wolfe, para distinguirlo del colonialismo tradicional. En este último, India sería un

ejemplo principal; el régimen colonial gobierna el país y explota el trabajo nativo para la producción capitalista, desplazando a la gente originaria

de sus tierras para dar paso a haciendas coloniales, grandes y pequeñas. En el primer régimen, el objetivo es la “eliminación” de los indígenas por

todos los medios, lo que incluye genocidio en un extremo y asimilación en el otro. Ver Patrick Wolfe, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of

the native,” Journal of Genocide Research (2006), 8(4), Diciembre, 387-409.

5 El Kilombo Intergalactico, Beyond Resistance Everything: An Interview with Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (Durham, NC: PaperBoat

Press, 2007), 11, 67.

6 See Eric Cheytz, “The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute: A Brief History,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Volume 2,

Number 2 (2000), 248-275.

7 See Thomas Fatheuer, Buen Vivir (Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Publication Series on Ecology, Volume 17, 2011), Trans. John Hayduska, 20-21.

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DE LA RESPONSABILIDAD AL DERECHO:LA TRADUCCIÓN COLONIAL DE

LOS SISTEMAS SOCIALES INDÍGENAS AL DERECHO OCCIDENTAL

El universo de parentesco culturalmente

relacionado es un orden moral porque es

una declaración del orden propio de ese

universo, es decir, el estado ideal de las

cosas o la forma en que deberían ser. Se

reere a una condición en la que todo está

en su debido lugar, cumpliendo su función

y siguiendo las reglas culturales. Las reglas

que gobiernan el universo familiar son

reglas morales. Arman incondicionalmente

cómo se comportan los parientes entre sí

y cómo funcionan los grupos de parientes.

Son axiomáticos basados en premisas

morales a priori…. En la cultura navajo,

parentesco signica solidaridad intensa,

extensa y duradera, y esta solidaridad se

materializa en acciones y comportamientos

acordes con las deniciones culturales de

solidaridad de parentesco.8

Witherspoon resume el funcionamiento ideal

del universo familiar en la frase: “Para decirlo de

manera simple y concisa, los verdaderos parientes

son buenas madres” (Witherspoon 1975, 64).

El Diné bahanè, literalmente la “narrativa del

pueblo”, o más precisamente, narrativas, cuenta

en varias historias la búsqueda de parentesco

de los navajos entre comunidades de personas

humanas (lo que resulta en la formación de

clanes), y entre humanos y no humanos. Y los

“límites” entre estas categorías, de acuerdo a

Eric Wolf, citado anteriormente, son “abiertos

y cambiantes”. Cuando Naayéé neizghání

(Asesino de Monstruos) termina la tarea de

restaurar el parentesco hacia el mundo, le dice a

su madre Asdzáá nádleehé (Mujer Cambiante o,

literalmente, mujer de género indeterminado),

la gura central en la historia y losofía navajo:

“Dondequiera que voy, descubro que me tratan

como a un pariente”.9 Y al nal de una dura

negociación en la que Mujer Cambiante acepta

cohabitar con el Sol, con el padre de Asesino de

Monstruos y su hermano gemelo, la narración

dice: “Así es que ella accedió; irían a un lugar

en Occidente donde vivirían juntos en la sólida

armonía del parentesco” (Zolbrod 1984, 275).

El término navajo para el sistema de

parentesco es “k’e”. Witherspoon explica:

El término navajo “k’e” signica

“compasión”, “cooperación”, “amistad”,

“altruismo”, “pacicación” y todas estas

virtudes positivas que constituyen una

solidaridad intensa, extensa y duradera. El

término “k’ei” signica “un tipo especial

o particular de k’e”. Es este término (k’ei)

el que se usa para signicar el sistema de

relaciones y categorías de descendencia

que se encuentran en la cultura navajo.

“Shik’ei” (“mis parientes por descendencia”)

distingue a un grupo de parientes con los

que uno se relaciona según un tipo especial

de k’e. (Witherspoon 1975, 37).

Es decir, los clanes de uno (padre y madre).

El teórico político Mohawk Taiaiake Alfred

sugiere que la forma general de gobierno que

se deriva de la gama de sistemas de parentesco

indígena está motivada por diferentes formas de

k’e:

8 Gary Witherspoon, Navajo Kinship and Marriage (Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 1975), 12.

9 Paul G. Zolbrod, Diné bahanè: The Navajo Creation Story

(Albuqueque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 269.

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ERIC CHEYFITZ

El concepto nativo de gobierno se basa en

lo que un gran estudioso de las sociedades

indígenas, Russell Barsh, ha llamado

“primacía de la conciencia”. No existe una

autoridad central o coercitiva, y la toma de

decisiones es colectiva. Los líderes confían

en sus habilidades persuasivas para lograr

un consenso que respete la autonomía de

los individuos, cada uno de los cuales es

libre de disentir y no verse afectado por la

decisión colectiva. El clan o la familia es la

unidad básica de la organización social, y las

formas más amplias de organización, desde

la tribu hasta la nación y la confederación,

se basan todas en la autonomía política y la

independencia económica de las unidades

del clan a través del control familiar de las

tierras y los recursos... La tradición indígena

ve al gobierno como el poder colectivo de

los miembros individuales de la nación; no

hay separación entre sociedad y estado….

Por el contrario, en la tradición europea,

el poder se entrega a los representantes de

la mayoría, cuyas decisiones sobre lo que

creen que es el bien colectivo se imponen a

todos los ciudadanos.10

Impuesta, añadiría, en forma de derechos.

Al considerar la diferencia entre un sistema

de parentesco y un sistema de derechos, el punto

clave es que en el primero “no hay separación

entre sociedad y estado”. Es decir, en los

sistemas de k’e no hay soberano. En contraste,

el discurso de los derechos implica un soberano

que garantiza estos derechos, pero contra cuya

tiranía potencial (el estado de excepción) dichos

derechos son un baluarte. En las democracias

liberales representativas, este soberano es

teóricamente “el pueblo”, pero en la práctica es

el Estado, el cual Althusser, siguiendo a Marx,

dene como un “estado de clase, existente en

el aparato represivo del Estado [la policía, el

ejército, etc.], [que] arroja una luz brillante sobre

todos los hechos observables en los diversos

órdenes de represión cualquiera que sean sus

dominios…; arroja luz sobre la sutil dominación

cotidiana bajo la cual se vislumbra, en las formas

de la democracia política, por ejemplo, lo que

Lenin, de acuerdo con Marx, llamó la dictadura de

la burguesía”.11

Una de las características del colonialismo

de asentamiento, entonces, es la traducción de

los sistemas de parentesco indígenas basados

en responsabilidades a sistemas de derechos

codicados en declaraciones y documentos legales

formales, incluidas las constituciones. En el resto

de este documento, me centraré en tres formas de

esta traducción: la ley federal indígena de Estados

Unidos, la Declaración de las Naciones Unidas

sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas y la

Constitución del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia.

II: Subordinación de la

Soberanía Indígena

La Ley Federal Indígena de Estados Unidos

se basa en la Cláusula de Comercio de la

Constitución de EUA, de la cual el Congreso

deriva su “poder plenario” en los asuntos

indígenas, un poder armado, aunque no sin

cuestionamientos, en las interpretaciones de

10 Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous

Manifesto (Ontario: Oxford University Press Canada, 1999), 25.

11 Louis Althusser, Essays On Ideology (London: Verso, 1971), 13.

SUMMER V23 N1 2023

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LOS SISTEMAS SOCIALES INDÍGENAS AL DERECHO OCCIDENTAL

la cláusula por parte de la Suprema Corte.12 En

Worcester v. Georgia (31 U.S. 515[1832]), el tercer

caso de la Trilogía Marshall fundamental,13 el

Presidente del Tribunal Supremo John Marshall,

al escribir la opinión de la Corte, señaló: “Las

palabras ‘tratado’ y ‘nación’ son palabras de

nuestro propio idioma, seleccionadas en nuestros

procedimientos diplomáticos y legislativos

por nosotros mismos, teniendo cada una un

signicado denido y bien entendido. Las hemos

aplicado a los indígenas como las hemos aplicado

a las demás naciones de la tierra. Se aplican a

todos en el mismo sentido” (en 519).

Estas palabras de Marshall dejan en claro

el proceso de traducción mediante el cual las

comunidades indias fueron traducidas al derecho

occidental, por medio de lo cual las sociedades

de parentesco, basadas en responsabilidades,

fueron traducidas a las palabras clave del

derecho estadounidense e internacional:

“tratado” y “nación”. Los tratados indios, como

es el caso con todos los tratados, describen las

responsabilidades de los signatarios (los derechos

hasta cierto punto implican responsabilidades).

Sin embargo, estas responsabilidades se basan

en un sistema vertical de autoridad (los tratados

fueron impuestos a las comunidades indígenas

a través de una asimetría de poder material

en el transcurso de un genocidio) y no en un

sistema horizontal de parentesco, donde la

igualdad intrínseca de los participantes obvia la

necesidad de derechos. Traducidas a través de

tratados al término “nación” (los tratados, por

denición, se rman entre naciones extranjeras),

las comunidades de parentesco se tradujeron al

régimen de “soberanía”, en el que el soberano

las reconocía como tal sólo en el sentido que

Glen Coulthard elabora en su libro Red Skin

White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of

Recognition.

12 Véase U.S v. Kagama (118 U.S. 375, 1886) en donde la Corte, en vías a armar la Ley de Crímenes Mayores (1885), la cual revirtió la

jurisdicción del indígena sobre el crimen indígena, instituida en la Ley de No Intercambio Comercial, cuestiona el alcance del poder del

Congreso bajo la cláusula de comercio: “Pero creemos que sería una interpretación muy forzada de esta cláusula… para los delitos de derecho

consuetudinario de asesinato, homicidio involuntario, incendio premeditado, robo con allanamiento de morada, hurto y similares, sin ninguna

referencia a su relación con ningún tipo de comercio, [si] fue autorizado por la concesión del poder para regular el comercio con las tribus indias”

(en 378). No obstante, la Corte procedió a reconocer la “facultad plenaria” del Congreso en todos los asuntos indígenas. En el caso de U.S. v. Lara

(124 S. Ct. 1628, 2004), el juez Thomas, en una opinión concurrente que deende la doctrina de la soberanía dual, aunque citando a Kagama,

plantea dudas sobre el poder plenario del Congreso: “Sin embargo, sí coincido en que este caso plantea importantes interrogantes constitucionales

que la Corte no comienza a responder. La Corte falla por completo en encontrar alguna disposición de la Constitución que otorgue al Congreso

poderes enumerados para alterar la soberanía tribal…. No puedo estar de acuerdo con que la Cláusula de Comercio Indígena “‘brinde al Congreso

el poder plenario para legislar en el campo de los asuntos indígenas’” (en 1648). Thomas aquí está de acuerdo con el dictamen de Kagama que

encuentra que la Cláusula de Comercio no contiene una justicación para la jurisdicción penal, pero no está de acuerdo con la doctrina del poder

plenario, que Kagama ubica extraconstitucionalmente en un amplio poder político sobre los indígenas. En esto, Thomas encuentra que “la Ley

Federal Indígena está en desacuerdo consigo misma”, tanto al armar el poder plenario como al encontrar una soberanía inherente en las tribus

que apoya la doctrina de la soberanía dual (en 1649). “La política federal indígena es, por decir lo menos, esquizofrénica. Y esta confusión

continúa impregnada en la Ley Federal Indígena y en nuestros casos” (en 1645-46).

13 La trilogía de Marshall es el nombre dado en la Ley Federal Indígena de Estados Unidos a los tres casos generativos que, junto con los tratados

y las leyes del Congreso, conforman el fundamento de las relaciones de Estados Unidos con las tribus indias en los cuarenta y ocho estados

inferiores. Los tres casos, los cuales analizo en este ensayo, son Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823), Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) y Worcester v.

Georgia (1832). El gobierno federal tiene un arreglo legal completamente diferente con los nativos de Alaska, articulado en la Ley de Liquidación

de Reclamos de los Nativos de Alaska de 1971. Hasta el momento, no existe un acuerdo legal formal entre el gobierno federal y los nativos de

Hawái.

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ERIC CHEYFITZ

Escribiendo desde el “contexto canadiense”

de la Ley Federal Indígena, que se asemeja con

ciertas diferencias a las de Estados Unidos debido

a su origen común en la política colonial británica,

Coulthard señala que “las relaciones de poder

coloniales ya no se reproducen principalmente a

través de medios abiertamente coercitivos, sino

más bien a través del intercambio asimétrico de

formas mediatizadas de reconocimiento y acuerdo

estatal”. A continuación, basándose en el libro de

Frantz Fanon Black Skin, White Masks, continúa

elaborando el argumento esencial de Red Skin,

White Masks:

El análisis de Fanon sugiere que en

contextos donde el gobierno colonial no se

reproduce a través de la fuerza únicamente,

el mantenimiento de la hegemonía del

Estado de colonos requiere la producción

de lo que a él le gustaba llamar “sujetos

colonizados”: a saber, la producción de

los modos especícos del pensamiento

colonial, deseo y comportamiento que

implícita o explícitamente comprometen

al colonizado a los tipos de prácticas y

posiciones del sujeto que se requieren para

su continua dominación. Sin embargo, a

diferencia de la apropiación liberalizada de

Hegel que continúa informando a muchos

defensores contemporáneos de las políticas

de identidad, con Fanon el reconocimiento

no se postula como una fuente de libertad

y dignidad para los colonizados, sino

como el campo de poder a través del cual

se producen y mantienen las relaciones

coloniales.14

El análisis de Fanon, como sugiere Coulthard

con su uso del término “hegemonía”, recuerda la

denición del término en los escritos carcelarios

de Antonio Gramsci, donde lo dene como

“[e]l consentimiento espontáneo dado por las

grandes masas de la población a la dirección

general impuesta a la vida social por el grupo

fundamental dominante”.15 Este “consentimiento”

debe ser escrutinado en el contexto de las formas

continuas de resistencia nativa al colonialismo

de asentamiento. Es decir, es consentimiento

forzado, una contradicción en los términos.

Y Coulthard parece reconocer esto cuando

denomina el “reconocimiento” fanoniano como

un “campo de poder”.

La Ley Federal Indígena estadounidense

está constituida por la forma de reconocimiento

asimétrico que dene Coulthard. Según esta

ley, la soberanía indígena es una soberanía

subordinada en la que las comunidades indígenas

fueron denidas por el Tribunal de Marshall

como “naciones domésticas dependientes”,

en Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (30 U.S.

at 17[1831]), el segundo caso de la Trilogía

Marshall, una denición que está constituida

por una contradicción y, sin embargo, todavía

se mantiene hoy. En el derecho internacional,

una nación se dene precisamente por su

independencia y su extrañeza en relación con

14 Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial

Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota

Press, 2014), pp. 15, 16.

15 David Forgacs, ed. The Antonio Gramsci Review: Selected

Writings1916-1935 (New York: New York University Press, 2000).

306-307.

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otras naciones. De hecho, los Cherokees llegaron

a la Corte de Marshall armando su posición

como nación extranjera en virtud de los tratados

que habían rmado con Estados Unidos. Los

tratados, por denición, solo se negocian entre

naciones extranjeras. Sin embargo, dejaron la

Corte con su condición de nación extranjera

independiente negada y recongurada en una

denición contradictoria, ya que un soberano

subordinado no puede ser soberano, aunque

cabe señalar que Marshall parecía ser consciente

de esta contradicción porque encomendó una

opinión discrepante de los jueces Thompson y

Story la cual apoyaba el reclamo de los Cherokee.

Thompson escribió la opinión, a la cual se unió

Story.16

La historia de la Ley Federal Indígena de

Estados Unidos nos enseña que los regímenes

de parentesco de responsabilidad se tradujeron

en regímenes de derechos para implementar

el proyecto colonialista de desaparición de los

indígenas, en este caso social y culturalmente,

bajo el amparo de la ley, de la misma forma en

que la tierra indígena, literalmente el territorio

de parentesco indígena, se tradujo en propiedad

en Johnson v. M’Intosh (21 U.S. 543[1823]), el

primer caso en la Trilogía Marshall, para robar

esa tierra bajo la misma fachada. Yo sostengo

que la traducción del parentesco en derechos es

una estrategia para desaparecer a los indígenas

en el sentido de que es una forma de asimilación,

de la misma manera en que armaría que la Ley

del Congreso de 1924 que convirtió a todos los

indígenas en ciudadanos de Estados Unidos, y por

lo tanto formalmente si no de no es que de hecho,

en sujetos de derechos constitucionales, fue un

acto de asimilación que, signicativamente, ha

sido resistido por las naciones indígenas que se

reconocen ante todo como la principal fuente

de ciudadanía para su pueblo, a pesar de que

Estados Unidos rechace este reconocimiento.17 La

traducción de la tierra indígena —entendida en

todas las culturas indígenas literalmente como la

matriz no fungible de la comunidad, la base del

parentesco en la “madre tierra”— en propiedad,

que es por denición una mercancía fungible, no

es simplemente una forma de robar esa tierra,

haciéndola en efecto transferible a terceras partes,

de las cuales el gobierno federal fue el principal

beneciario, como bien arma el caso Johnson.

Esta traducción representa una violencia primaria

sobre las comunidades indígenas a las que se

busca arrancarles el fundamento mismo de su

identidad. En ese sentido, esta traducción es

genocida. La traducción de la responsabilidad del

parentesco en derechos debe entenderse en este

contexto colonialista.

16 Véase Jill Norgren, The Cherokee Cases: Two Landmark Federal Decisions in the Fight For Sovereignty (1996; Norman: The University of

Oklahoma Press, 2003), 108-109.

17 Véase, por ejemplo, el conicto de pasaportes del equipo de lacrosse Haudenosaunee (Iroqués) Nationals con el gobierno británico en 2010.

Escribiendo sobre el conicto en The New York Times el 16 de julio de 2010, Thomas Kaplan señala: “La disputa ha reemplazado al lacrosse,

lo que provocó un alboroto internacional, y en Estados Unidos, revivió un debate centenario sobre la soberanía de las naciones indígenas

americanas. Los iroqueses se negaron a aceptar pasaportes de Estados Unidos, diciendo que no querían viajar a una competencia internacional

con lo que consideran un pasaporte de una nación extranjera”. Thomas Kaplan, “Iroquois Defeated by Passport Dispute” en https://www.nytimes.

com/2010/07/17/sports/17lacrosse.html.

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Una manifestación clave de esta traducción

es la historia de la Ley de Derechos Civiles

de los Indios de 1968 (ICRA), que se analiza

a continuación. Como aclaran las palabras

de Marshall en Worcester v. Georgia citadas

anteriormente, el lenguaje de “soberanía”

implícito en los términos “nación” y “tratado” fue

importado al lenguaje de la Ley Federal Indígena

desde el derecho internacional, no para reconocer

la plena soberanía de naciones extranjeras en las

tribus indígenas, sino, como la Trilogía Marshall

evidencia, para consignarlos a una soberanía

subordinada a Estados Unidos. Recientemente,

se han planteado preguntas críticas sobre el uso

del término “soberanía” en un discurso indígena

de liberación debido a su signicado jerárquico en

el discurso europeo. Por ejemplo, Taiaiake Alfred

comenta:

Pero pocas personas han cuestionado cómo

un término e idea europea... llegó a estar

tan arraigado y a ser importante para las

culturas que tenían sus propios sistemas de

gobierno desde antes de que se inventara

el término soberanía en Europa. Menos

aún se han cuestionado las implicaciones

de adoptar la noción europea de poder

y gobierno y utilizarla para estructurar

los sistemas poscoloniales que se están

negociando e implementando dentro de las

comunidades indígenas en la actualidad.18

A lo que apunta esta crítica es a la forma en

que el lenguaje de la soberanía y los derechos

ha desplazado al lenguaje del parentesco en

el gobierno indígena bajo el régimen de la

Ley Federal Indígena, que estructuró cada

vez más jerárquicamente el gobierno de estas

comunidades. Aquí quiero citar extensamente un

pasaje de un ensayo mío publicado anteriormente

que resume la historia de este desplazamiento:

…a partir de [el caso de la Corte Suprema]

Talton v. Mayes [163 U.S.376, 1898]

comenzaron a surgir cuestiones formales

de derechos civiles individuales en conicto

con cuestiones de soberanía dentro de las

comunidades tribales. Si bien la decisión

de la Corte Suprema sobre Talton armó la

soberanía tribal en los asuntos de creación

de leyes tribales sobre la apelación federal

de los derechos constitucionales de un

miembro tribal individual, el conicto

entre la soberanía y el derecho individual

persistió y se intensicó. Este conicto

culminó, en primera instancia, con la Ley

de Derechos Civiles de los Indios de 1968

(ICRA), cuyo Título I pretendía poner

límites a la soberanía de las tribus sobre sus

miembros, modicando así lo estipulado en

Talton. En segunda instancia, sin embargo,

el conicto culminó en Santa Clara

Pueblo v. Martinez [436 U.S. 49, 1978],

que, citando a Talton como precedente,

argumentó la precedencia de la soberanía

tribal sobre los derechos civiles, excepto en

el caso de apelaciones habeas corpus ante

tribunales federales sancionados bajo 25

U.S.C. §1303 (ICRA), aunque en este caso

18 Taiaiake Alfred, “Sovereignty,” en Joanne Barker, ed. Sovereignty

Matters: Locations of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous

Struggles for Self-Determination (Lincoln: The University of Nebraska

Press, 2005), 39. Véase también, Alvaro Reyes and Mara Kaufman,

“Sovereignty, Indigeneity, Territory: Zapatista Autonomy and the New

Practices of Decolonization,” en Eric Cheytz, N.Bruce Duthu, y

Shari M. Huhndorf, eds. Sovereignty, Indigeneity, and the Law (South

Atlantic Quarterly, 110:2, Spring 2011), 505-525.

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19 Eric Cheytz, “The Colonial Double Bind: Sovereignty and Civil Rights in Indian Country,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of

Constitutional Law, Volume 5, Number 2, January 2003, 223-240.

20 UNDRIP. (2007) El artículo 46, párrafo 1 de la Declaración de las Naciones Unidas sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas se añadió

en las etapas tardías a consideración del Consejo de Derechos Humanos y es ampliamente interpretado por los gobiernos de los estados como

destinado a aclarar que los derechos reconocidos en la Declaración están sujetos a los principios y propósito de la Carta de las Naciones Unidas,

lo cual incluye el respeto a la soberanía y la integridad territorial de los estados. También está destinado a asegurar que la Declaración no sea

interpretada como un fomento a acciones que puedan amenazar la unidad o integridad de los estados.

Martínez aclara que el demandado no es la

tribu sino el funcionario tribal individual

que tiene al prisionero. Por lo tanto, hoy los

diez derechos constitucionales de los indios

en sus tribus, como se enumeran en 25 U.S.

C. § 1302, están bajo la autoridad exclusiva

de los tribunales tribales; y las tribus están

protegidas de juicios federales en esta

área a través del principio de “inmunidad

soberana”, que la decisión de Martínez

rearma.19

Los sistemas de gobierno tradicionales

indígenas de consenso y parentesco ahora se

convierten, bajo la Ley Federal Indígena, en

sistemas de soberanía pero subordinados a

la soberanía del gobierno federal (“naciones

domésticas dependientes”). De manera conjunta,

los sistemas de responsabilidades de parentesco

comunal se convierten en sistemas de derechos

individuales que, irónicamente, se subordinan

a una soberanía subordinada. El proyecto

colonialista de borrar a los nativos se maniesta

en esta agenda legal.

III: La Traducción de

Responsabilidades de la ONU

En 2007, la Asamblea General de la ONU

raticó la Declaración sobre los Derechos de los

Pueblos Indígenas. la Declaración tiene por objeto

reconocer, porque no tiene poder de reparación

legal, “que los pueblos indígenas han sufrido

injusticias históricas como resultado, entre otras

cosas, de la colonización y el despojo de sus

tierras, territorios y recursos, impidiéndoles así

ejercer, en particular, su derecho al desarrollo de

acuerdo con sus propias necesidades e intereses”

(Preámbulo). En efecto, lo que la Declaración

reconoce implícitamente en su propia forma es

que la colonización ha forzado la traducción de las

responsabilidades del parentesco hacia la tierra,

los humanos y otros no humanos en derechos.

Estos derechos, como se articula en el Artículo

46 (1), están subordinados a los “derechos” del

colonizador, es decir, a los derechos de los estados

en los que ahora se encuentran las comunidades

indígenas debido a la violencia colonial:

Nada de lo contenido en la presente

Declaración se interpretará en el sentido

de que conere a un Estado, pueblo, grupo

o persona derecho alguno a participar en

una actividad o realizar un acto contrarios

a la Carta de las Naciones Unidas, ni se

entenderá en el sentido de que autoriza

o alienta acción alguna encaminada

a quebrantar o menoscabar, total o

parcialmente, la integridad territorial o

la unidad política de Estados soberanos e

independientes.20

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La ironía aquí es que un número signicativo

de los estados que formaron la ONU (incluidos,

por supuesto, Estados Unidos y Canadá) fueron

creados precisamente por la subordinación

de los sistemas indígenas autónomos de

responsabilidades de parentesco, que la

Declaración ahora promete proteger a través

de la extensión de un conjunto de derechos que

solo pueden ser exigidos por los mismos estados

que reclaman derechos previos por encima y

en contra de las responsabilidades indígenas.21

En efecto, la Declaración es una contradicción

en los términos. En primer lugar, porque al

traducir los sistemas de parentesco a un sistema

de derechos se promulga la asimilación de estos

sistemas indígenas igualitarios a un sistema

jerárquico de soberanía occidental, incluso

como establece el artículo 8: “los pueblos

indígenas... tienen derecho a no ser sometidos

a la asimilación forzada o a la destrucción de su

cultura”. Se podría argumentar, por supuesto,

que la Declaración no se basa en la asimilación

“forzada” sino “consensual”, o estratégica, con

la salvedad que sugerí anteriormente sobre el

término consensual, recordando que hubo (hay)

resistencia a esta forma de la Declaración.22 La

Declaración es, entonces, siguiendo a Coulthard,

un sistema de reconocimiento del “otro” no

como un soberano igual, ni como declara incluso

el Artículo 2, que “los pueblos indígenas… son

libres e iguales a todos los demás pueblos”, sino

como un subordinado. Vale la pena señalar a este

respecto que el término soberano no se utiliza en

la Declaración en relación con las comunidades

indígenas. Sin embargo, la palabra nación se usa

solo una vez en el artículo 9.

En segundo lugar, la Declaración es

contradictoria a nivel de los propios artículos. Así,

por ejemplo, el artículo 3 establece: “los pueblos

indígenas tienen derecho a la libre determinación.

En virtud de ese derecho determinan libremente

su condición política y persiguen libremente su

desarrollo económico, social y cultural”. Pero

es evidente a lo largo de la Declaración que

esta “autodeterminación” está subordinada

a la soberanía de los estados en los que viven

los pueblos indígenas. Se trata, pues, de una

autodeterminación limitada. Así, el artículo 4

establece: “los pueblos indígenas, en ejercicio

de su derecho a la libre determinación, tienen

derecho a la autonomía o al autogobierno en lo

relativo a sus asuntos internos y locales, así como

a los medios y formas para el nanciamiento de

sus funciones autónomas”. Parecería que declarar

el derecho a la “autodeterminación” como lo

hace el artículo 3 incluiría automáticamente “el

derecho a la autonomía o al autogobierno en

temas relacionados con sus asuntos internos o

locales”. Porque, ¿cómo puede una comunidad

ejercer la autodeterminación sin autogobierno?

Entonces, ¿por qué la necesidad del Artículo 4,

excepto una especie de admisión inconsciente de

que la “autodeterminación” en este documento se

limita a los asuntos internos de la comunidad, que

es el statu quo en la La Ley Federal Indígena de

21 Véase Eric Cheytz, “Native American Literature and the UN

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” en Deborah L.

Madsen, ed. The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature

(London: Routledge, 2016), 192-202.

22 Ver nota 21: mi discusión del “Documento Final de Alta” en

Madsen, que en efecto representa la Resistencia indígena a la

Declaración incluso si la arma, pp.194-195.

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Estados Unidos? Entonces, con toda honestidad,

el artículo 4 debería decir: “Los pueblos

indígenas, en el ejercicio de su derecho a la libre

determinación, tienen únicamente el derecho

a la autonomía o al autogobierno en los temas

relacionados con sus asuntos internos y locales,

así como las formas y medios para nanciar sus

funciones autónomas.”

En segundo lugar, la Declaración es

contradictoria a nivel de los propios artículos. Así,

por ejemplo, el artículo 3 establece: “los pueblos

indígenas tienen derecho a la libre determinación.

En virtud de ese derecho determinan libremente

su condición política y persiguen libremente su

desarrollo económico, social y cultural”. Pero

es evidente a lo largo de la Declaración que

esta “autodeterminación” está subordinada

a la soberanía de los estados en los que viven

los pueblos indígenas. Se trata, pues, de una

autodeterminación limitada. Así, el artículo 4

establece: “los pueblos indígenas, en ejercicio

de su derecho a la libre determinación, tienen

derecho a la autonomía o al autogobierno en lo

relativo a sus asuntos internos y locales, así como

a los medios y formas para el nanciamiento de

sus funciones autónomas”. Parecería que declarar

el derecho a la “autodeterminación” como lo

hace el artículo 3 incluiría automáticamente “el

derecho a la autonomía o al autogobierno en

temas relacionados con sus asuntos internos o

locales”. Porque, ¿cómo puede una comunidad

ejercer la autodeterminación sin autogobierno?

Entonces, ¿por qué la necesidad del Artículo 4,

excepto una especie de admisión inconsciente de

que la “autodeterminación” en este documento

se limita a los asuntos internos de la comunidad,

que es el statu quo en la La Ley Federal

Indígena de Estados Unidos? Entonces, con

toda honestidad, el artículo 4 debería decir:

“Los pueblos indígenas, en el ejercicio de

su derecho a la libre determinación, tienen

únicamente el derecho a la autonomía o al

autogobierno en los temas relacionados con

sus asuntos internos y locales, así como las

formas y medios para nanciar sus funciones

autónomas.”

De manera similar, el artículo 26 (1)

establece un derecho que es virtual y utópico

en lo referente a tierras precoloniales: “Los

pueblos indígenas tienen derecho a las tierras,

territorios y recursos que tradicionalmente

han poseído, ocupado o utilizado o adquirido”,

mientras el artículo 28 (1) establece el statu

quo colonial que contradice o compromete el

artículo 26 (1), si el artículo 26 (1) no se reere

a las tierras dejadas a los pueblos indígenas

después del despojo colonial, sino a las

“tierras” ocupadas por los pueblos indígenas

antes a la colonización: “los pueblos indígenas

tienen derecho a la reparación, por medios

que pueden incluir la restitución o, cuando

ello no sea posible, una indemnización justa

y equitativa por las tierras, los territorios

y los recursos que tradicionalmente hayan

poseído u ocupado o utilizado y que hayan sido

conscados, tomados, ocupados, utilizados

o dañados sin su consentimiento libre,

previo e informado.” Está bastante claro en

la historia de las naciones colonizadas por

asentamiento, que la “restitución” en cualquier

sentido signicativo no es una posibilidad

debido a la conversión de la mayoría de

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las tierras indígenas en propiedad estatal. La

ambigüedad en el Artículo 26 (1), probablemente

involuntaria, desdibuja el límite entre un derecho

revolucionario y uno conservador, que es

representativo de toda la Declaración. Entonces,

en su forma misma, la Declaración nos dice que

armar un derecho y realizar ese derecho son dos

asuntos completamente diferentes, mediados por

la política real del colonialismo de asentamiento,

a la cual la Declaración se subordina en su

formulación.

IV: La Frágil traducción de

Responsabilidades en Bolivia

Después de un movimiento revolucionario

liderado por indígenas y trabajadores en Bolivia

entre 2000 y 2003, Evo Morales, un indígena

Aimara, fue elegido en 2005 presidente de

este país, en el cual el 62% de su población

se identica como indígena. Posteriormente

reelegido dos veces (2009-2014 y 2014-2019),

fue depuesto por un golpe de Estado de derecha

apoyado por Estados Unidos en noviembre de

2019. Luego, en octubre de 2020, su partido

político, MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo), fue

devuelto al poder en las elecciones nacionales, y

en noviembre de 2020, Morales regresó a Bolivia

de su exilio en Argentina.

Bajo el gobierno de Morales, la Constitución

del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia23 fue

promulgada por referéndum nacional en 2009,

aunque su redacción durante los tres años

anteriores por una Asamblea Constituyente

elegida popularmente fue complicada en

términos de representatividad, pero, para citar

a Miguel Centellas, “No se puede negar que la

Constitución de 2009 [que reconoce 35 lenguas

indígenas (Artículo 5, Párrafo 1)] es un avance

signicativo para el multiculturalismo en Bolivia,

y para los derechos de los pueblos indígenas

en particular”,24 derechos, enfatizaría, basados

en responsabilidades indígenas de parentesco.

Hay un intento, entonces, en la Constitución

boliviana de conciliar lo que vengo describiendo

como el conicto o la contradicción entre las

responsabilidades de parentesco y los derechos.

El artículo 8, fracción II de la Constitución,

dice: “El Estado se fundamenta en los valores

de unidad, igualdad, inclusión, dignidad,

libertad, solidaridad, reciprocidad, respeto,

interdependencia, armonía, transparencia,

equilibrio, igualdad de oportunidades, igualdad

social y de género en la participación, el bien

común, la responsabilidad, la justicia social, la

distribución y redistribución de la riqueza social

y los bienes para el bienestar”. Reconocemos aquí

los términos clave que representan los valores

que generan las responsabilidades de parentesco,

tales como “solidaridad, reciprocidad…

interdependencia, armonía… equilibrio

[balance]… igualdad social y de género en la

participación, responsabilidad… distribución y

redistribución de la riqueza y bienes sociales para

el bienestar”. En comparación, el término clave

23 Estoy utilizando la traducción de Luis Francisco Valle V., de la

constitución boliviana. No se proporciona editor.

24 Miguel Centellas, “Bolivia’s New Multicultural Constitution: The

2009 Constitution in Historical and Comparative Perspective,” en Todd

A. Eisenstadt, Michael S. Danielson, Moisés Jaime Bailón Corres, y

Carlos Sorroza Polo eds., Latin America’s Multicultural Movements:

The Struggle Between Communitarianism, Autonomy, and Human

Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Kindle Edition,

100.

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Navajo, hozho, por ejemplo, representa el estado

de armonía, equilibrio y bienestar, todo lo cual

está contenido en la idea de “belleza”.

La Constitución, un voluminoso documento

de 130 páginas que se encuentra con el presente

y proyecta un futuro aún por realizar, repudia en

su Introducción “el Estado colonial, republicano

y neoliberal” del pasado para “fundar Bolivia

de nuevo” sobre los valores del parentesco

anteriormente mencionados. La complicación,

la contradicción realidad, de esta promesa, es

el problema de fundar un estado (un sistema

vertical de derechos) en el parentesco (un sistema

horizontal de responsabilidades); el problema de

fundar una estructura unitaria soberana sobre

una estructura de comunidades autónomas

heterogéneas (plurinacionalismo) sin que el

Estado se convierta en una fuerza neocolonial

que privilegie sus propios derechos sobre los de

la nación dentro de la nación, es decir, sin que

esas naciones se conviertan en otra versión de las

“naciones domésticas dependientes” de Estados

Unidos.

Bajo el liderazgo de Morales, como estado

revolucionario, Bolivia se ha enfrentado desde

sus inicios a conictos con las comunidades

indígenas, derivados de la incompatibilidad

de la responsabilidad dentro del modelo de

derechos. Esta condición de conicto ha cobrado

gran importancia en la cuenca amazónica

por el conicto entre el derecho del Estado

al desarrollo versus la responsabilidad de la

comunidad de sostener la biodiversidad del

ambiente, prevaleciendo el primero, a pesar

de que el artículo 289 de la Constitución

dice: “la autonomía indígena rural consiste

en el autogobierno como ejercicio de libre

determinación de las naciones y pueblos

indígenas campesinos, cuya población comparte

territorio, cultura, historia, lenguas, y su propia

organización o instituciones jurídicas, políticas,

sociales y económicas.”

En teoría, la Constitución boliviana, en

contraste con la Ley Federal Indígena de Estados

Unidos y la Declaración de la ONU, nos ofrece

una traducción el de las responsabilidades del

sistema de parentesco al derecho del Estado-

nación. En la práctica, las dos formas permanecen

en conicto. Centellas lo expresa así:

Mirando explícitamente la relación

entre los pueblos indígenas de Bolivia

y el Estado, hay poca evidencia de un

modelo consociativista multicultural.

A los pueblos indígenas ahora se les

otorga constitucionalmente autonomía,

pero de una manera bastante limitada:

está restringida por límites territoriales

preexistentes; se limita a pequeñas

comunidades rurales; establece

restricciones signicativas en la aplicación

de usos y costumbres; y no otorga a las

comunidades derechos de veto sobre

decisiones que involucren sus recursos. Al

igual que la gente en muchos otros países,

los bolivianos se han visto obligados a lidiar

con posibles conictos entre las prácticas

que caen bajo los usos y costumbres y sus

compromisos con los derechos humanos.

Así, por ejemplo, se pueden entender las

restricciones al uso de la pena capital

o corporal, una práctica defendida a

veces como perteneciente a la categoría

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

ERIC CHEYFITZ

de usos y costumbres. Sin embargo, es

menos comprensible por qué elementos

mucho menos controvertidos de los usos y

costumbres, como las formas tradicionales

de seleccionar a los líderes comunitarios,

deban dejarse de lado. (106)

En suma, Centellas entiende la autonomía

indígena dentro del Estado-nación boliviano de la

siguiente manera:

En general, la evidencia sugiere que a pesar

de que la autonomía indígena se originó

como una demanda de base, la aplicación

de dicha autonomía indígena todavía se

entiende principalmente como estructurada

y aplicada “desde arriba” en formas que

privilegian al Estado central. A pesar de

las garantías legales y constitucionales, la

autonomía indígena aún es muy frágil en

Bolivia (Centellas 2013, 90).

Por los modelos que he analizado, parecería

que un régimen de responsabilidades, un régimen

de parentesco e igualitaridad, no es, nalmente,

compatible con regímenes de derechos, basados

necesariamente en la soberanía del Estado-

nación, tal como estos lo están. El momento en

que pasamos de un régimen de parentesco a un

régimen de Estado-nación, de la responsabilidad

al derecho, es el momento en que pasamos de la

democracia a algo que el Estado-nación llama

democracia, pero que es más exactamente una

forma mayoritaria de política representativa en

la que el poder no circula horizontalmente ni, por

lo tanto, equitativamente, sino que se distribuye

verticalmente y de manera desigual de arriba

hacia abajo. Pasamos, entonces, de regímenes

de sustentabilidad a regímenes de crecimiento,

producción y consumo, basados en industrias

extractivas, que hoy en día están maquinando

el colapso climático. El pensamiento europeo

occidental llama a esto “progreso”. Pensando

desde un lugar diferente, desde un lugar de

responsabilidad, uno podría entenderlo como

“retroceso”. Dicho de otra manera; necesitamos

un régimen de derechos no solo humanos sino

también ambientales, porque hemos abandonado

un régimen de responsabilidad hacia todos los

seres vivientes.

SUMMER V23 N1 2023

FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

DE LA RESPONSABILIDAD AL DERECHO:LA TRADUCCIÓN COLONIAL DE

LOS SISTEMAS SOCIALES INDÍGENAS AL DERECHO OCCIDENTAL

Este artículo debe citarse como:

Cheytz E., (2023) De la Responsabilidad al Derecho: La Traducción Colonial de los Sistemas Sociales

Indígenas al Derecho Occidental. Fourth World Journal. Vol. 23, N1. pp. 17-31.

SOBRE EL AUTOR

Eric Cheytz

Eric Cheytz es el Profesor Ernest I. White de Estudios Estadounidenses y

Letras Humanitarias en la Universidad de Cornell, donde es miembro del cuerpo

docente del Programa de Estudios Indígenas e Indios Americanos. Es autor de The

Disinformation Age: The Collapse of Liberal Democracy in the United States y The

Colonial Construction of Indian Country: Native American Literatures & Federal

Indian Law, de próxima publicación.

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

By Hiroshi Fukurai

ABSTRACT

Fourth World Nations vs. The States’

“Nation-Destroying” Projects From

1946 to 2020

Post-WWII Wars, Armed Conicts, and

Indigenous Military Resistance

The objective of this paper is to provide empirical analyses of the global armed conicts

between the nation and the state in the post-WWII era from 1946 to 2020. The empirical

data comes from the Uppsala Conict Data Program (UCDP) and the International Peace

Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO). Other comparable data on global armed conicts also

exists, including the Correlates of War (WCO) information; the Militarized Interstate Dispute

(MID) dataset, which is an outgrowth of WCO; the Minority at Risk (MAR) datasets from the

Center for International Development and Conict Management (CIDCM) at the University

of Maryland; and the Konict-Simulations-Modell (COSIMO) datasets from the Study Group

for the Causes of War (AKUF), among others. The present analysis relies on the UCDP/PRIO

dataset because it provides the most updated and regionally-detailed empirical information on

armed conicts, military confrontations, and violent battles that have taken place throughout

the world. Specically, the UCDP contains information on all contested battles situated in the

“government and/or territory over the use of armed force between the military forces of two

parties,” and the violent confrontations that have “resulted in at least 25 battle-related deaths

each year.”1

Empirical examination reveals that most post-WWII military conicts around the world have

been fought between the state, on one side, and Fourth World peoples and nations (89.9%), on

the other. Most of these conicts in Asia and the Middle East (or West Asia) have also involved

territorial and land disputes, while most of the intra-state armed struggles in Africa and the

Americas have been fought over geo-political control of the government and its bureaucratic

authority.

1 Uppsala Conict Data Program (UCDP). “Denitions, Sources and Methods for Uppsala Conict Data Program Battle-Death Estimates,”

Department of Peace and Conict Research, Uppsala University (2006), available at chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclendmkaj/

https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/old/brd/ucdp-brd-conf-41-2006.pdf.

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

HIROSHI FUKURAI

Today’s widespread military aggression and

the continued violence in various regions across

the globe reect historical tensions between

two distinct geopolitical entities: the nation and

the state.2 The nation refers to a community of

peoples who share a common culture, language,

set of ideological beliefs and/or histories,

and who exercise full or limited sovereignty,

possessing an inherent right over an ancestral

territory or culturally valued space. The state, in

contrast, emerged as a consequence of European

imperial ventures extended across the world.

The state is a “legally” constructed, “articial” or

“imaginary” geopolitical entity, characterized by

a self-serving centralized authority, containing

borders forcefully imposed upon the territory

of the nation. Since both the nation and the

state have inhabited a common territorial space

within boundaries, various forms of violent

conicts have emerged throughout the last several

hundred years.3 Since Fourth World nations have

not been willing to freely surrender their land,

identity, history and memory, these conicts have

resulted in tremendous levels of human suering,

characterized by social misery as well as violent

death, stemming from attempts by the state to

occupy, exploit, and destroy the nation peoples

and their ancestral homelands.4

Since the end of World War II, the

promotion of the state, with the concomitant

rise of globalization and neoliberal policies, has

accelerated the destruction of Fourth World

territories as well as the disgurement and radical

alteration of the nation’s bioregional spheres. The

state’s armed violence and ecological destruction

has been unleashed to propel the forced eviction

and displacement of already-marginalized Fourth

World peoples, to eradicate biological diversity,

and to decimate many self-sustaining cultures

rooted in Fourth World knowledge and self-

governing principles. The predatory actions of

the state in promoting dispossession, ecologically

unsustainable projects, and corporate extractive

development of the nation’s ancestral homeland

have also led to the greatly increased level of

climate change, rising sea levels, and other

The paper concludes by summarizing the past conicts between the state and the nation,

considering the devastating consequences of the state and state-assisted corporate projects

that have facilitated the continuous destruction of biodiversity and the evisceration of the

environment, thereby ultimately threatening the future survivability of both human and non-

human life on our planet.

Keywords: Fourth World, Post-WWII Global Armed Conicts, the Nation, the State, Uppsala

Conict Data Program (UCDP)

2 Manuel, 1977; Seton, 1999; Ryser, 2013; Fukurai & Krooth, 2021.

3 For fuller discussion of the clear delineation of the Nation and the

State, see Fukurai & Krooth (2021).

4 In this paper, “nation people” and “indigenous people” are used

interchangeably, referring to traditional inhabitants of their ancestral

homelands.

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FOURTH WORLD NATIONS VS. THE STATES’ “NATION-DESTROYING” PROJECTS FROM 1946 TO 2020:

POST-WWII WARS, ARMED CONFLICTS, AND INDIGENOUS MILITARY RESISTANCE

ecological catastrophes around the world. In

areas where there has been signicant resistance,

including armed opposition, by Fourth World

peoples, the state has dispatched state troopers,

private paramilitary forces, and anti-terrorist

intelligence campaigns to quash such resistance.5

During the Cold War era, state-sponsored

intelligence operations alone were responsible for

the deaths of six million Fourth World resisters.

During the same period, the collective resistance

of Fourth World peoples and nations against

encroachment by the state has come to constitute

an integral part of their emancipatory anti-

colonial struggles, including sustained opposition

to the state-sponsored corporate extraction,

as well as Fourth World resilience, aspiration,

and dedication in attempts to build a vibrant

alternative, sustainable world all across the globe.

Post-WWII Global Conicts

Between the Nation and the State

This paper provides an empirical analysis of

the UCDP dataset on the global armed conicts,

violent combat, and military campaigns that took

place from 1946 to 2020, including a total of

2,506 such events. Table 1 shows the taxonomy

of armed struggles and military conicts around

the globe from 1946 to 2020 (n=2506). Figure 1

also shows the map of the global armed conicts

from 1946 to 2020 and suggests several notable

ndings, indicating that nearly all areas, regions,

and communities around the globe were involved

in violent armed conicts. Figure 2 shows the

maps of global armed conicts for three distinct

periods: (1) 1946-1960; (2) 1961-1990; and (3)

1991-2020. The overwhelming majority of armed 5 Blum, 2014.

conicts immediately following the Second World

War were centered in Asia and northern Africa.

Until the end of the Cold War in 1991, the conict

moved to Latin America and spread throughout

the African continent and the rest of Asia. After

the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, new

armed conicts appeared in the multiplicity of

former Soviet Union republics including Russia

and newly-emerged states in the Central and

West Asian regions.

Table1 shows that nearly three quarters of

global armed conicts have been intra-state, or

within-state, battles (74.4%), in which one of

the conicting parties is the state, and the other

is the group or groups of domestic, anti-state

rebels, (i.e., from 65.4% in Africa, to 87.2% in the

Americas). Another one-sixth of global armed

struggles (15.5%) represents the same intra-state

conicts but with an additional dimension, in

which one side is supported by a third-party, i.e.,

foreign state(s) (from 8.4% in Asia to 24.3% in

Africa). Thus, nearly all (89.9%) of the global

conicts in the post-WWII period have involved

internal, “within-state” armed combat and

military conicts between two parties: the state

vs. the anti-state rebel group(s).

A second notable element concerns location:

the largest number of all of these conicts took

place in Asia (40.2%), followed by Africa (31.6%),

the Middle East (14.2%), and the Americas

(7.8%). Europe experienced little in terms of

military conicts in the post-WWII era (5.6%,

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

HIROSHI FUKURAI

6 Europe’s extra-systemic conicts took place in Cyprus (n=5).

Europe’s inter-state conicts (n=2) took place between the UK and

Albania over the Corfu Channel incidents in 1946, and the Soviet

invasion of Hungary in 1956.

n=142). Prior to 1945, most major armed conicts

in the world were concentrated in and around

Europe, the most prominent among them being

the two world wars, with WWI lasting from 1914

to 1918, and WWII from the late 1930s to the

mid-1940s. In the post-WWII era, signicant

armed conicts have extended beyond Europe,

and in some cases, with the assistance of the U.S.

and the Soviet Union, the battlegrounds moved

into Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Americas,

and the Pacic.

A third element relates to the complex factors

involved in these conicts. While only a handful

of post-WWII armed conicts took place in

Europe, three-quarters of those involved intra-

state conicts between the states and anti-state

domestic rebels (n=106, 74.6%); with one-fth of

intra-state conicts involving rebel organizations

that had been assisted by foreign, “third-party”

state(s) (n=29, 20.4%). For instance, intra-

state conicts (n=22) in the United Kingdom

(UK) featured no foreign or external assistance,

but involved rebel groups that were “internally

hatched” , two of whom were based in Northern

Ireland: the Provisional Irish Republican Army

(PIRA) (n=21) and Real Irish Republican Army

(RIRA) (n=1). Both groups demanded the

territorial severance of Northern Ireland from the

UK in order to attain greater regional autonomy,

sovereignty, and political independence.

Similarly, the state government of Spain fought

the Basque separatist rebels in Northern

Spain (n=9), who demanded sovereignty and

independence from the Kingdom of Spanish.

The government of Russia (the major political

inheritor of the former Soviet Union, n=44) also

fought such domestic rebels as Chechen Republic

of Ichkeria, the Forces of the Caucasus Emirate,

and the Islamic State, among other internal

“rebel” groups. All of Europe’s internal armed

conicts assisted by foreign state forces (n=29)

involved the struggles of newly created states

born out of the dissolution of the former Soviet

Union, such as Azerbaijan (13), Ukraine (9), and

Georgia (1), as well as the former Yugoslavia (6),

including Bosnia-Herzegovina (3), Croatia (2),

and Serbia (1).6

Lastly, armed conicts between and among

sovereign states occurred twice in Europe when

the U.K. “trespassed” in Albania’s Corfu channel

in 1946 and the Soviet Union invaded Hungary

in 1956. The other ve extra-systemic conicts

among the state and non-state groups occurred in

Cyprus, where the UK and Greece were involved

in attempts to gain control over Cyprus in the

late 1950s. In other words, excluding seven

instances of direct and extra-territorial conicts

among states in Europe (n=7), all armed conicts

in Europe have involved intra-state conicts,

in which the state governments fought against

domestically “hatched” separatist groups and/or

groups seeking exercise their sovereignty.

SUMMER V23 N1 2023

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FOURTH WORLD NATIONS VS. THE STATES’ “NATION-DESTROYING” PROJECTS FROM 1946 TO 2020:

POST-WWII WARS, ARMED CONFLICTS, AND INDIGENOUS MILITARY RESISTANCE

Table 1

Types of Regional Conicts: 1946-2020

Figure 1. Military Conicts from 1946 to 2020

1. Intra-State, Domestic Conict (side A is a government; side B is one or more rebel groups: there is

no involvement of foreign governments with troops).

2. Intra-State, International Conict (side A is a government; side B is one or more rebel groups; there

is involvement of foreign governments with troops, i.e., there is at least one side A or side B).

3. Inter-State Conict (both sides are states in the Gleditsch and Ward membership system).

4. Extra-Systemic Conict (between a state and a non-state group outside its own territory, where the

government side is ghting to retain control of a territory outside the state system).

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

HIROSHI FUKURAI

Root Causes of Armed Conicts

Between the Nation and the State

Table 2 examines the root causes of post-

WWII armed conicts by regions. These causes

are subdivided according to the kinds of control

being contested: (1) control of the territory; (2)

control of the government; and (3) control of

both territory and government. The majority

of regional conicts in the world were fought

over territory (55.5%), most generally in Europe

(88.7%), Asia (68.6%), and the Middle East

(59.4%). In contrast, nearly all conicts in the

Americas involved armed struggles for control

over the government (97.8%). Most intra-state

conicts involved territorial disputes in Europe

(85.8%), Asia (70.4%), and the Middle East

(70.7%). In comparison, most or all intra-state

conicts in Africa and the Americas involved

control over the government and bureaucratic

authority of the state (57.9% and 100.0%,

respectively).

When there were foreign, “out of state”

troops participating in the intra-state conict,

most involved control over the government in

all regions, including Asia (85.9%), the Middle

East (84.1%), Africa (75.1%), and the Americas

(100.0%). Only 3 out of 190 armed conicts in the

Americas involved territorial disputes between

two sovereign states: El Salvador and Honduras

in 1957 after the discovery of large oil deposits

in the border region; Honduras and Nicaragua

in the so-called “Football War” of 19697; and

Ecuador and Peru in the Cenepa War over the

“Cordillera del Condor” in 1995.8 Among 19

intra-state conicts in the Americas, the U.S.

government played the prominent role as a third,

“out-of-state” party to facilitate the governmental

regime change. For example, the Anti-Cuban

organization, the Cuban Revolutionary Council,

7 Football war

8 Football war

Figure 2.Three Military Conict Time Periods

SUMMER V23 N1 2023

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FOURTH WORLD NATIONS VS. THE STATES’ “NATION-DESTROYING” PROJECTS FROM 1946 TO 2020:

POST-WWII WARS, ARMED CONFLICTS, AND INDIGENOUS MILITARY RESISTANCE

was established by the U.S., with CIA assistance,

to help 1,400 Cuban exiles try to overthrow

the Cuban government in the so-called “Bay of

Pigs” invasion of Cuba in 1961 (n=1). The U.S.

and its allied forces also took the role of a third

“out-of-state” party in Afghanistan in attempts

to eradicate al-Qaida and other insurgent rebels

from 2001 to 2019 (n=18).

The sovereign states of Europe fought other

independent states outside Europe (see Europe

& Others in Table 2). The conicts among

sovereign states accounted for less than 1% of

all military conicts in the post-WWII period,

perhaps important lessons learned from two

catastrophic world wars fought mainly in Europe

in previous decades (n=12; Asia (4), the Middle

East (4) and other regions (4)). In Asia, the

French government fought the newly established

Thai government in 1946; the Netherlands fought

the Indonesian government over the territorial

dispute in West New Guinea in 1962; the Soviet

Union fought China over territorial disputes in

1969; and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan

at the end of 1979. In Africa, the UK government

fought the Egyptian government twice over the

control of the Suez Canal in 1951 and 1952; the

UK and Israeli governments fought against Egypt

in 1956; and the Turkish government invaded

Cyprus in 1974.

Table 2

Main Causes and Types of Regional Conicts by Regions: 1946-2020

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

HIROSHI FUKURAI

Intra-State Conicts in Asia and

the Middle East (West Asia)

A large number of post-war intra, “within-

state” armed conicts took place in Asia and the

Middle East. As the region of the Middle East has

often been referred to as West Asia, the largest

number of intra-state military battles in the world

can be said to have taken place in Asia.9 In Asia,

three-quarters of domestic conicts occurred

in four states in South and Southeastern Asia,

including Burma (later Myanmar, 34.8% of

all Asian conicts), India (22.2%), Philippines

(13.9%) and Indonesia (4.3%), followed by

Pakistan (4.5%), Thailand (3.5%), and Sri Lanka

(3.3%). In the Middle East, most intra-state

conicts occurred in Israel (21.8%), followed

by Iraq (17.9%), Iran (16.5%), Turkey (12.3%),

Yemen (North and South Yemen, 9.2%), and Syria

(8.1%). Two major territories in which conicts

occurred between the state and domestic rebels

included the region of Kurdistan (n=87, 24.4%)

and Palestine (n=66, 18.5%), followed by the

Islamic State10 (n=25, 7%) and Southern Lebanon

(n=11, 3.1%).

9 UCDP includes Egypt as part of the Middle Eastern states, and

regional conicts in Egypt (n=16) only accounted for 0.6% of the

global conicts between 1946 and 2020, thereby not affecting the

overall percentage of armed conicts in the Middle East.

10 It refers to territorial space, largely, in West Asia that had been

claimed by the Islamic State (IS) prior to 2020.

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FOURTH WORLD NATIONS VS. THE STATES’ “NATION-DESTROYING” PROJECTS FROM 1946 TO 2020:

POST-WWII WARS, ARMED CONFLICTS, AND INDIGENOUS MILITARY RESISTANCE

11 Ethiopia had the fourth most numerous armed conicts in the world

(n=123, n=4.9%). The main root cause of the conicts was over

territorial control (85.4%).

Table 3 shows the intra-state armed conicts

in Asia and the Middle East, including non-state

military organizations, the conicts’ duration,

the roots of conicts, and the specic territory

within which the armed battle occurred. The

world’s most numerous conicts occurred in the

state of Myanmar (previously Burma) (n=281),

representing 11.2% of total global conicts in

the post-WWII era. Myanmar’s armed battles

began when the Burmese government declared its

independence from British India in 1948. All were

domestically-waged conicts between the state

government and rebel groups of multiple Fourth

World nations, including Karen (21.7% of intra-

state conicts), Shan (16.4%), Kachin (15.3%),

Arakan (12.8%), Mon (6.0%), Lahu (3.6%) as

well as other Fourth World nations and ancient

communities that have long lived in Myanmar

and its neighboring regions. Four-fths of these

conicts were fought over territories of Fourth

World ancestral homelands (81.9%).

The world’s second most numerous intra-

state conicts occurred in India (n=179). India,

along with Pakistan, declared independence from

Britain in 1947. The state of India fought multiple

Fourth World and armed separatist organizations,

including the United Liberation Front of Asom

(ULFA, n=18) in the Northeast Indian state

of Assam, which is a large Islamic territory;

the Naga National Council for their struggles

for independence (NNC, n=12); and People’s

Liberation Army (PLA) and the United National

Liberation Front (UNLF) for the independence of

Manipur (n=13). Anti-state government groups

also included multiple currents of militant

Communist Party of India factions (CPI), such

as CPI-Maoist, CPI-Marxist-Leninist (CPI-

ML), Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCC,

MCCI0), Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP) and

their collaborative alliance with other insurgent

groups, such as the United National Liberation

Front (UNLF), People’s War Group (PWG), which

is an underground communist party, and People’s

Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK),

among others. The state government of India

also fought against multiple Kashmir “Islamic”

insurgents (n=31), which suggests that one in

every six intra-state conicts in India involved

Kashmir’s “rebel” groups and independent

nationalist organizations (17.3%).

Israel, in West Asia, had declared

independence in 1948 and had the fth most

numerous armed conicts, which were also

fought against multiple rebel groups (n=76), and

were all waged over territorial claims (100.0%).11

The rebel groups included the al-Aqsa Martyrs

Brigades (AMB), Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, the

Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and

other Palestinian “insurgent” groups. In contrast,

the Philippines’ armed intra-state conicts

focused less often on territorial disputes and more

often on governmental and bureaucratic control

(52.2%). The anti-government rebel groups,

predominantly Islamic oppositions, emerged on

the Island of Mindanao, the second largest island

of the Philippines.

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

HIROSHI FUKURAI

Prior to the U.S. decision to withdraw military

troops in August 2021, Afghanistan saw 49 intra-

state conicts, 35 of which (71.4%) involved third-

party, “foreign” assistance, including the Soviet

Union’s support of the incumbent communist

regime of the Afghanistan government, which

fought against the Mujahideen forces. These

forces had been trained, supported, and armed

by the U.S., Pakistan, the U.K., and others in the

1980s; India, Iran, Russia, Tajikistan and others

that supported the Northern Alliance of multiple

Fourth World peoples and nations to ght the

Taliban. The Taliban took over the state system

from 1996 to 2001; and the U.S., the U.K., other

European states and “international” allied forces

that supported the new Afghan government to

ght against the Taliban in the post-9/11 (2001)

period. Similarly, 29 of 35 military conicts

(82.8%) in Afghanistan involved government

control, while the other six involved territorial

issues, including the Islamic State territory

after Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) declared its

territorial control over the larger Afghanistan

regions in February 2015.12

The majority of military conicts in the

post-WWII period took place in Asia and its

neighboring regions, including the Middle

East or West Asia. Nearly all involved intra-

state conicts between the state government,

on one side, and rebel groups representing

various regional factions, primarily the armed

groups of Fourth World peoples and nations,

on the other. The U.S. and its allied forces

from Europe and other regions were also seen

to provide third-party armed assistance to the

incumbent state government in its ght against

Fourth World peoples and nationalist-minded

insurgent groups. However, in some instances,

the U.S. and its allied states provided material

and logistical support to Fourth World groups

and rebel organizations ghting against the state

government, especially in the recent case of

Afghanistan.

12 “US Created ISIS, Uses it as Tool: Ex-Afghan President,”

ALWAGHT, May 6, 2017, http://alwaght.net/en/News/96488/AboutUs

Table 3

Intra-State Armed Conicts in Asia and the Middle East: 1946-2020

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POST-WWII WARS, ARMED CONFLICTS, AND INDIGENOUS MILITARY RESISTANCE

Armed Conicts Beyond

State Boundaries

Table 4 shows the “extra-systemic” territorial

conicts between the state and the non-state

group outside their state territories (n=117). The

analysis shows that all extra-systemic conicts

dealt with questions of territorial claims to the

ancestral homeland of Fourth World peoples and

nations around the globe. The analysis also helps

to expose the nature of colonial projects, centered

mainly in Euro-American, North Atlantic regions,

which were, for the most part, military excursions

and expeditions conducted by Western states,

including the U.S., the U.K., and their European

allies, and imposed upon Fourth World peoples,

nations, and their resistance movements outside

the North Atlantic regions and territories.

Table 4 shows the breakdown of conicts by

their locations; the opposing parties of Fourth

World rebels, other nation groups, and political

alliances that contested the continuation of the

European colonial dominations of the regions

and territories; and the duration and intensity of

conicts in the designated regions.

The rst column shows the extra-territorial

states (Side A countries in the rst column) who

fought the opposition organizations (Side B

parties in the fth column) by locations, regions,

and the duration of conicts (from the second to

fourth column). Since 1946, a total of six states,

all from North Atlantic regions, served as extra-

territorial military forces against other state

entities, including France (n=9), the Netherlands

(1), Portugal (3), Spain (1), the U.K. (6) and the

U.S. (1). Among nine countries in which France

acted as an extra-territorial “hostile” foreign

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

HIROSHI FUKURAI

power, six were in Africa, and three were in

Asia. The French troops fought multiple Fourth

World groups, including (1) Front de Liberation

Nationale (FLN) and Mouvement National

Algerien (MNA) in Algeria from 1954 to 1962; (2)

Union des Populations Camerounaises (UPC)

in Cameroon; (3) Mouvement Democratique

de la Renovation Malgache (MDRM) in

Madagascar; (4) National Liberation Army (NLA)

in Mauritania and the periphery of Morocco; (5)

Istiqlal in Morocco; (6) the National Liberation

Army in Tunisia; as well as three Fourth World

forces in Asia, including: (1) Khmer Issarak in

Cambodia (or Kampuchea); (2) Kao Issara in

Laos; and (3) Viet Minh in Vietnam (specically,

North Vietnam).

Although France lost all of these battles

and claims over former colonial territories, the

atrocities that French troops inicted upon

Fourth World peoples and communities in

these regions and locations drew widespread

attention, particularly in the cases of Algeria

and Madagascar in Africa and Laos and North

Vietnam. For instance, two indices of conict

intensity, for instance, showed that France’s

11 years of armed conicts in Vietnam led to

more than 1,000 battle-related deaths every

year from 1946 to 1954. Similarly, France’s nine

years of conict in Algeria led to man cumulative

casualties, except for the rst year of conict in

1954. While the armed conict in Madagascar

only lasted one year, many battle-related deaths

were recorded concerning France’s conicts with

the MDRM.

Portugal fought long battles with Fourth

World armed groups in the 1960s and 1970s. The

signicant cumulative impact of these armed

conicts and battle-related deaths was observed

in its former African colonies: Angola, Guinea-

Bissau, and Mozambique. The U.K. engaged in

military conicts over four regions in Europe,

Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Cyprus,

the only European state that experienced the

extra-territorial takeover of its sovereignty, had

endured ve years of armed struggle with the U.K.

troops, with EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion

Agoniston or the National Organization of Cypriot

Fighters) ghting the British troops from 1955

to 1959. The U.S. had fought the Puerto Rican

Nationalist Party in 1950 when PNPR (Partido

Nacionalista de Puerto Rico or the Puerto Rican

Nationalist Party) engaged in several coordinated

armed protests calling for the independence of

Puerto Rico. These armed uprisings included

eorts to assassinate U.S. President Harry S.

Truman and were violently suppressed by U.S.

military forces. Puerto Rico and its diasporic

populations have struggled for independence and

sovereignty ever since the U.S. invaded and took

over the island in 1898.

Nearly all post-WWII state conicts between

the state and the non-state group outside its

territory have been initiated by the U.S. or

European states against “Fourth World rebels”

who have aspired to attain sovereignty and

independence in Asia, Africa, and the Middle

East. No sovereign states outside the North

Atlantic states initiated military conicts against

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POST-WWII WARS, ARMED CONFLICTS, AND INDIGENOUS MILITARY RESISTANCE

European states or the U.S.. At the same time, a

few instances of intra-state conicts within the

North Atlantic states were initiated by “internally-

hatched” Fourth World groups and organizations

who also aspired to attain their sovereignty

and independence from what they perceived as

oppressive state domination over Fourth World

peoples and their ancestral lands and territories.

Table 4

Extra-Systemic Territorial Conicts: Between the State &

the Non-State Group Outside Its Own Territory

1 The intensity level in the conict per calendar year was coded as: (0) Minor: between 25 and 999 battle-related deaths; and (1) War: at least

1,000 battle-related deaths in a given year.

2 The cumulative intensity level in the conict was coded as: (0) as long as the battle-related death has not, over time, resulted in more than 1,000

deaths; and (1) once a conict reaches the threshold of 1000 deaths.

3 They were translated as: The National Liberation Front and the Algerian National Movement, respectively.

4 It was translated into the Democratic Movement for Malagasy Rejuvenation

5 Conicts began on January 12, 1947 and ended on December 31, 2047.

6 Conicts between the French force and local oppositions in Mauritania and Morocco began on January 12, 1957 and ended on June 30, 1958.

7 These organizations are translated into: The National Front for the Liberation of Angola; the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola;

and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, respectively.

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

HIROSHI FUKURAI

8 It was translated as: the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde.

9 It was translated as: The Liberation Front of Mozanbique.

10 It was translated as: the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters.

11 Conicts joined by Spain in Mauritania and Morocco began on November 23, 1957 and ended on June 30, 1958.

12 It was translated as: the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.

13 Conicts began on October 30, 1950 and ended on November 1, 1950.

Conclusions

Through this empirical examination of global

military conicts from 1946 to 2020, we can

see that nearly all such conicts (89.9%) have

occurred between the state and the nation. The

state has battled multitudes of Fourth World

insurgents, nationalist rebels, and domestic

“terrorists” operating within state-delimited

territorial boundaries globally. In some instances,

those rebel groups ghting the state troops were

trained, armed, and nanced by a “third party”

state, most of which were from the North Atlantic

countries and their allies. For example, in the case

of military conicts in Afghanistan in the post-

9/11 (2001) period, nearly all external military

support for armed training, military materiel,

intelligence logistics, and nances came from the

U.S., the U.K., other Western European states,

and their allies.

Among the rationale and motivations for

the state’s involvement in intra-state conicts,

there is often the self-portrayal of “victimhood”,

with the professed need for the state to defend

itself against domestic “terrorists” and internal

“insurgents,” thus justifying the use of armed

violence against Fourth World peoples and

communities within the state-delimited borders.13

In the founding era of the U.S., for example,

early Euro-American settlers, including the

13 Chomsky (2015).

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POST-WWII WARS, ARMED CONFLICTS, AND INDIGENOUS MILITARY RESISTANCE

so-called “Founding Fathers,” rationalized

the extermination of Fourth World peoples by

characterizing them as “enemies” who posed

internal “threats.” The U.S. Declaration of

Independence portrayed Fourth World peoples

as “merciless Indian savages, whose known rule

of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction

of all ages, sexes and conditions.”14 The state’s

argument for the necessity of “self-defense”

would later be extended to “African savages,”

“uncivilized” Mexicans, as well as the “primitives”

of Fourth World populations in Hawaii, Puerto

Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, Samoa,

Polynesia, the Mariana Islands and other Pacic

islands, where Fourth World peoples and nations

were to be militarily occupied and incorporated

into the U.S. jurisdiction.15

Nowhere in these scenarios is the state

depicted as a recent invention, one whose

authority and legitimacy derived from military

power, settler colonialism, and state projects

supported by the hegemonic propaganda system,

indoctrination, and necessary persuasion and

illusion. Despite this, it is recognized that the

occupation and destruction of Fourth World

homelands by the state has led to the emerging

anthropogenic changes and environmental

disasters now evident around the world. Future

research is needed to explore possible paths

toward more reconciliatory future relations

between the nation and the state. Given the fact

that nearly 80% of the remaining biodiversity

around the globe is found in the ancestral

homelands of Fourth World peoples and

communities, the states’ continuous “state-

making” and “nation-destroying” projects must

be successfully contested if humanity is to survive

into the coming years and decades.

14 U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776).

15 Fukurai & Krooth (2021)

REFERENCES

Blum, William (2001) Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (London: Zed Books).

Chomsky, Noam (2015). “Oppression is Not a Law of Nature: An Interview with Noam Chomsky,” Commonweal

Magazine, April 9, available at https://chomsky.info/20150409/.

Fukurai, Hiroshi & Richard Krooth (2021) Original Nation Approaches to Inter-National Law: The Quest for the

Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Nature in the Age of Anthropocene (NY: Palgrave Macmillan).

Kapuscinski, Ryszard (1992) The Soccer War (NY: Vintage).

Manuel, George (1977) The Fourth World: An Indian Reality (MN: University of Minnesota Press)

Ryser, Rudolph (2013) Indigenous Nations and Modern States: The Political Emergence of Nations Challenging State

Power (NY: Routledge).

Seton, Kathy (1999) “Fourth World Nations in the Era of Globalization: An Introduction to Contemporary Theorizing

Posed by Indigenous Nations,” a research paper published by the Center for World Indigenous Studies (CWIS).

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

HIROSHI FUKURAI

Uppsala Conict Data Program (UCDP) (2021) “Denitions, Sources and Methods for Uppsala Conict Data Pro-

gram Battle-Death Estimates,” Department of Peace and Conict Research, Uppsala University (2006), available

at chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclendmkaj/https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/old/brd/ucdp-brd-

conf-41-2006.pdf.

“US Created ISIS, Uses it as Tool: Ex-Afghan President,” ALWAGHT, May 6, 2017, available at http://alwaght.net/en/

News/96488/AboutUs

U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776) National Archive, available at https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/dec-

laration-transcript.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hiroshi Fukurai

Professor of Sociology & Legal Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz &

Former President of the Asian Law & Society Association (ALSA). He is specialized

in lay adjudication, indigenous approaches to international law, and Asian law and

politics. His recent articles include “The Prevention of the Sixth Mass Extinction:

Socio-Legal Responses to Mitigate the Anthropogenic Crises in Asia and Beyond”

(2022); “President’s Farewell Message: The Anthropocene, Earth Jurisprudence and the Rights of Nature”

(2020) ; “The Decoupling of the Nation and the State: Constitutionalizing Transnational Nationhood,

Cross Border Connectivity, Diaspora and ‘Nation’ Identity-Aliations in Asia and Beyond” (2020), all

of which appeared in the Asian Journal of Law and Society (Cambridge Univ. Press). His books include:

Original Nation Approaches to Inter-National Law: The Quest for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and

Nature in the Age of Anthropocene (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021); East Asia’s Renewed Respect for the Rule

of Law in the 21st Century (Brill, 2015); Japan and Civil Jury Trials: The Convergence of Forces (Edward

Elgar, 2015); Nuclear Tsunami: The Japanese Government and America’s Role in the Fukushima Disaster

(Lexington Book, 2015); Race in the Jury Box: Armative Action in Jury Selection (SUNY Press, 2003);

Anatomy of the McMartin Child Molestation Case (Univ. Press of America, 2001); Race and the Jury:

Racial Disenfranchisement and the Search for Justice (Plenum Press, 1993, Gustavus Meyers Human

Rights Award); and Common Destiny: Japan and the U.S. in the Global Age (MacFarland, 1990).

This Article may be cited as:

Fukurai H., (2023) Fourth World Nations vs. The States’ “Nation-Destroying” Projects From 1946 to 2020:

Post-WWII Wars, Armed Conicts, and Indigenous Military Resistance. Fourth World Journal.

Vol. 23, N1. pp. 33-48.

SUMMER V23 N1 2023

FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

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By Antonio Augusto Rossoto Ioris

Human Geography, Cardiff University

ABSTRACT

Although genocide is commonly used today to describe the dramatic challenges indigenous

peoples face worldwide, the signicance of the Guarani-Kaiowa genocidal experience is not

casual and cannot be merely sloganized. The indigenous genocide unfolding in the Brazilian

State of Mato Grosso do Sul –“Kaiowcide”– is not just a case of hyperbolic violence or

widespread murdering, but it is something qualitatively dierent from other serious crimes

committed against marginalised communities. Kaiowcide is the reincarnation of old genocidal

practices of agrarian capitalism employed to extend and unify the national territory. In other

words, Kaiowcide has become a necessity of mainstream development, whilst the sanctity

of regional economic growth and private rural property are excuses invoked to justify the

genocidal trail. The phenomenon combines strategies and procedures based on the competition

and opposition between groups of people who dispute the same land and the relatively scarce

social opportunities of an agribusiness-based economy. Only the focus in recent years may have

shifted from assimilation and connement to abandonment and confrontation, yet the intent

to destabilize and eliminate the original inhabitants of the land through the asphyxiation of

their religion, identity, and, ultimately, geography seems to rage unabated. In that challenging

context, creative adaptation and collective resistance have been the most crucial requisites for

the Guarani-Kaiowa to survive through recurrent genocides, particularly Kaiowcide.

Keywords: Indigenous peoples, land grabbing, agribusiness, frontier development, Brazil

“Another victim in the Guarani-Kaiowá’s struggle for land Kuretê Lopes, a 69-year-old Guarani-

Kaiowá indigenous woman, has become the latest victim of land-related violence which blights the

Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Kuretê Lopes died when she was shot in the chest by a private

security guard during an eviction from farmlands that the Guarani-Kaiowá claim as ancestral. The

death of Kuretê Lopes ts into a pattern of violence and intimidation against indigenous peoples

ghting for the constitutional right to their ancestral lands in Mato Grosso do Sul, a state which has

become an epicentre of human rights abuses against indigenous peoples.”

- Amnesty International, 12 Jan 2007

Genocide Today

The Guarani-Kaiowa Struggle for Land and Life

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GENOCIDE TODAY: THE GUARANI-KAIOWA STRUGGLE FOR LAND AND LIFE

Guarani-Kaiowa’s Everyday Genocide

The Guarani were among the main indigenous

groups aected by enslavement, exploitation,

and displacement during the long history of

colonization and nation-building in South

America. They occupied large parts of the Plata

basin and were assaulted and enslaved from

the early decades of Portuguese and Spanish

colonial conquest. One of the sub-groups of

the large Guarani population subjected to this

invasion were the ancestors of the Guarani-

Kaiowa, who especially in the last century

were severely impacted by the invasion of their

land and their connement in small, utterly

inadequate reservations.1 Because of the prime

agricultural value of their ancestral land, the

strategic importance of the region for national

development and the hostile attitudes of farmers,

the practice of violence was the main channel of

communication between the increasing number

of settlers and the indigenous population.2 In

addition to more regular aggressions in the form

of assassinations and massacres, a new genocidal

order has taken root since the 1980s – described

here as Kaiowcide – when the Guarani-Kaiowa

demonstrated their opposition to land grabbing,

large-scale agribusiness and attempted to survive

as a cohesive ethnic group.3 If brutal pressures

were not sucient to reduce their determination

to recover the lost areas and restore key elements

of traditional community life, genocide was the

‘proper’ answer.

The Guarani-Kaiowa are the second largest

indigenous groups in Brazil today (with around

55,000 individuals, the largest outside the

Amazon) and maintain close connections with

a population of the same ethnic group on the

other side of the Paraguayan border, as well

as with other indigenous peoples in the State

of Mato Grosso do Sul (located on the border

with Paraguay and Bolivia), particularly the

Guarani-Ñandeva, who also belong to the

Guarani nation and speak almost the same

dialect.4 Numerous other confrontations have

taken place in the region and all over the region,

attracting negative media attention and bad

publicity for the farmers. However, this does not

seem to concern them particularly. The situation

became easier to manage with the election of a

neo-fascist president in 2018, who intensied

the anti-indigenous and anti-life tendencies in

national and local politics. The authors of violent,

criminal attacks are typically abusive landowners

who share discriminatory attitudes against ‘the

sub-human Indians’ and operate in alliance

with politicians (most of whom are landowners

themselves) and through their private militias,

known as pistoleiros. Because of the proliferation

of farms and aggressive regional development

policies, the Guarani-Kaiowa have lost around

99% of their ancestral land and been conned to

the fringes of the hegemonic agribusiness-centred

economy. The struggle for land has signicantly

redened their existence, and their world has

been dramatically undermined and compressed.

The monumental struggle to mobilize

the communities and to survive genocide

and colonialism is vividly described in the

1 Ioris, 2020.

2 Ioris et al., 2022.

3 Ioris, 2021.

3 Pereira, 2016.

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ANTONIO A. R. IORIS

5 Ioris et al., 2019.

6 Mura, 2019.

7 CIMI, 2020.

documentary “Guavira Season” (2021), which

is the result of a partnership between the

Guarani-Kaiowa representative organization

(Aty Guassu), the NGO RAIS, the Missionary

Council for Indigenous Peoples (CIMI), Cardi

University and other international organizations.

It is based on lengthy interviews with indigenous

leaders and visits to numerous communities. The

documentary Guavira Season, can be watched

(with subtitles in English) at www.youtube.com/

watch?v=vkBH6XHjHZU

The Guarani-Kaiowa have undoubtedly paid

a heavy price for who they are and where they

deserve to live, amounting to a challenging

geography that is complicated by the fact

that their existence and intense socio-spatial

interactions are deeply interconnected with the

economic transformation of the region and the

expansion of agribusiness production units.5

Most observers believe that the situation is

nothing other than genocide. And that those

responsible for the genocidal fate of the Guarani-

Kaiowa, including farmers, political leaders, and

members of agribusiness support organizations,

bear criminal responsibility.6 Between 2000 and

2019, the Guarani-Kaiowa was the indigenous

group most severely assaulted in the country,

with an annual average of 45 new cases and the

assassination of 14 political leaders.7 In the years

2015 and 2016 alone, 33 attacks were perpetrated

by paramilitary groups against Guarani-Kaiowa

communities. Moreover, the ongoing genocide

in Mato Grosso do Sul, particularly during the

extreme right-wing government of Bolsonaro

(between 2019 and 2022, which promoted

a series of anti-indigenous people’s policies

and considered it a top political and symbolic

priority), has meant much more than just the loss

of land and assassination of community members,

but is rather a brutal mechanism of spiritual,

social, economic, and environmental destruction.

A genocide is essentially predicated upon, and

starts with, the subtraction of key socio-spatial

relationships that dene ethnic groups, as has

happened in processes of intense spatial and

social unravelling in the Gaza Strip, Chechnya,

Kashmir, and Somalia. As destructive as the

grabbing of land, the killing of leaders, and the

immiseration of Guarani-Kaiowa families is the

denial of their humanity, and the imposition

of institutional rules centered on the market

value of land and the short-term protability of

agribusiness commodities. Although journalists

and activists commonly use genocide in relation

to the dramatic challenges faced by indigenous

peoples in Brazil, the signicance of the Guarani-

Kaiowa genocidal experience is not casual or

merely sloganized. The indigenous genocide

unfolding in Mato Grosso do Sul is not just

a case of hyperbolic violence or widespread

murder but something qualitatively dierent

from other serious crimes. The phenomenon

combines strategies and procedures based on

direct opposition between groups of people who

have been turned into irreconcilable enemies

by the pattern of regional development and the

balance of political power. The situation in Mato

Grosso do Sul is even more painful because the

Guarani-Kaiowa are fully aware of being at the

center of an unstoppable genocide that is only the

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GENOCIDE TODAY: THE GUARANI-KAIOWA STRUGGLE FOR LAND AND LIFE

most recent stage in a long genocidal cycle. In this

brutal context, resistance has been crucial for the

Guarani-Kaiowa to have any chance of surviving,

and resist they do.

Several authors working in this eld have

demonstrated the continuity between colonial and

contemporary processes of genocide. The lived,

often tragic, trajectory of the Guarani-Kaiowa

was central for the sustenance of the exploitative,

property rentals, and wasteful politico-economy

of Brazilian resource extraction and agrarian

capitalism.8 Yet, it is still to be demonstrated

that, whereas the subjugation of the Guarani-

Kaiowa represented an important chapter of the

colonization of South American countries, the

present-day genocide continues to be crucial for

the maintenance of the regional economy and for

the consolidation of export-oriented agribusiness

in Mato Grosso do Sul. The Guarani-Kaiowa are

both survivors and victims of a genocidal cycle

that continues because very little has changed in

economic or moral terms over the centuries. The

Guarani-Kaiowa have endured various genocides

over several generations, and their current

existence remains a perennial struggle to contain

and reverse these processes. These actions call

for more careful consideration of the causes

and ramications of a genocidal tragedy that is

constantly being denounced by the victims and

their closest allies (to no avail).

There was a real chance of compromise in

2007 when the federal government signed an

agreement ordering the return of a minimal

amount of land to the Guarani-Kaiowa. However,

the land was evidently never returned. In 1988

a similar solution had been agreed, and ignored.

No laws or agreements aiming to redress even

a small part of the damage caused by land

grabbing have been acceptable to those ‘masters

of the universe’ in charge of (indigenous) life

and death. Once again, national politics forced

marginalized groups living below the threshold

of whiteness, status, and property into a socio-

spatial position outside the hegemonic economy,

politics, and the oppressive rule of law. Just as

Germany today is less than what it could have

become if not for Nazism, and the United States

is dwarfed by its own indigenous Holocaust,

Brazil is haunted by the failure to rectify, at least

partially, this signicant socio-spatial liability.

Life through genocide is the perpetuation of

centuries of socio-ecological devastation and

Western intellectual, economic, and religious

arrogance. Genocidal crimes were not only

committed against the Guarani-Kaiowa during

colonization; these happened yesterday, are being

committed today, and most likely will happen

again tomorrow and next year. This large-scale

waste of human lives seems unstoppable and

is even accelerating. The long genocidal trends

became even more evident during the anti-life

management of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020

and 2021 by the genocidal government of Jair

Bolsonaro. With the election of President Lula

in 2022 and the creation of the Ministry of the

Indigenous Peoples in January 2023, there is

some renewed hope that some indigenous land

may be now demarcated; however, the reaction of

landowners and agribusiness farmers intensied,

with the recurrent and illegal arrest of Guarani-

Kaiowa people in the rst half of 2023. The

8 Ioris, 2023.

SUMMER V23 N1 2023 FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

ANTONIO A. R. IORIS

main bottleneck is, as always, the moroseness

and the class commitment of judges and most

public authorities (typically in favor of the

landowners, regardless of the most basic legal and

constitutional rights of indigenous peoples).

It is perhaps odd to interrogate the extent

of today’s genocide, considering that for the

indigenous peoples in the Americas – also

described as native, ancestral, or Fourth World –

the world, by and large, ended after the arrival of

the European invaders several centuries ago. They

know, better than anyone else, the meaning and

the consequences of genocide. The indigenous

genocide was just part of the massive eort to

deal with mounting scarcities in Europe. While

abundance was promised at the new frontiers,

new rounds of scarcity emerged in both areas due

to the internal dynamics of capitalism, notably

the exploitation of society and the rest of nature.9

As a crucial chapter of that long geography

of conquest and annihilation, the genocidal

pressure on the Guarani-Kaiowa reproduces, and

‘modernises’ forms of prejudice and oppression

employed during colonization and the early

history of Brazil, when indigenous peoples were

treated as exotic relics of an ignoble past that had

to be overcome. The process of land grabbing and

commodication, which began in the early years

of the last century and was augmented from the

1960s onwards with the expansion of export-

based agribusiness, and led to the removal of

most remaining vegetation, the aggravation of

land disputes and, eventually, Kaiowcide.

The relationship of the Guarani-Kaiowa

with genocide is more complex than the passive

victimization of human rights discourses. A key

message from Guarani-Kaiowa theology is that

9 IIoris, 2018.

10 Morais, 2017.

genocide is not unprecedented. However, that

does not make it any less awful and despicable.

The eschatological perspective of the Guarani-

Kaiowa adds some very special features to their

life through genocide since colonization. For

instance, Guarani people have a particularly

troubled relationship with death and are always

intensely concerned about losing relatives and the

possibility of dying alone. It is unacceptable for

them to show pictures of dead bodies, and they

carefully avoid images of deceased people because

these may attract bad spirits, which will try to

take them to the next world. According to Guarani

religious beliefs, death is not the end of the story

but brings additional troubles to all involved.

The Kaiowa feel particularly demoralized when,

as happens quite often in attacks organized by

hostile farmers, a relative is murdered. The body

simply disappears.10 Another lesson from their

tragic experience is that those at risk of suering

total destruction should mobilize the accumulated

knowledge of the world, combined with past

memories and spiritual support, and persevere

in the pursuit of justice and shared goals. The

Guarani-Kaiowa seem to have been doing all

that for many years. They rapidly understood

the methods and direction of colonization and

land grabbing and the values and attitudes of

those coming to their territory in ever greater

numbers. They had to develop adaptive responses

to somehow mitigate the losses and coexist with

these aggressive enemies. Guarani-Kaiowa spatial

controversies demonstrate that very few groups, if

any, are more attuned to contemporary trends or

have a more active socio-spatial protagonism.

SUMMER V23 N1 2023

FOURTH WORLD JOURNAL

GENOCIDE TODAY: THE GUARANI-KAIOWA STRUGGLE FOR LAND AND LIFE

This text – informed by years of engaged

geographical research on and with the Guarani-

Kaiowa and in favor of their tragic struggle for

land and survival – briey reects on one of

the most emblematic indigenous genocides in

the contemporary world. It is based on more

than seven years of engagement with Guarani-

Kaiowa communities and tries to reinterpret

their socio-spatial condition from the perspective

of Kaiowcide. Rather than a naïve attempt to

‘give voice to indigenous people’, which usually

produces a simulacrum of their opinions and

perspectives, the intention was to work with

real individuals and try to capture some of the

complexity of their lived space.

Kaiowcide: Consolidating the Power of

Agribusiness

The long struggle of the Guarani-Kaiowa

for the recognition of their most basic rights

has important parallels with the class-based

struggle of landless peasants and marginalized

urban groups in Brazil. Each indigenous group

is unique and dening features of the Guarani-

Kaiowa include their ability to preserve their

language (a semi-dialect of Guarani) and

maintain a relatively large and unied social

identity amidst a series of interrelated genocides.

It has been reported in several documentaries,

movies, and UN reports, and images of protest,

police repression, dead bodies, miserable living

conditions, and dirty children have circulated the

world. Still, the Guarani-Kaiowa remain Brazil’s

the most threatened indigenous population,

denied recognition of their original lands and

subjected to systematic abuses and exploitation.

The indigenous groups and extended families

that are now described as Guarani-Kaiowa

11 In January 2023, we organized the Guarani-Kaiowa Week at the

Federal University of the Great Dourados; several communities

and families were visited by a group of academics, students, and

activists, including Guarani visitors from Bolivia and Paraguay.

More information can be found in the NACLA report: Costa, W.

Genocide Today: The Guarani-Kaiowa Struggle for Land and Life

Abstract