In the scenario in which Buen vivir and the post-extractivist project would be articulated in order to present specific policy proposals, there would be two huge challenges:
national and international structures (law and economy) embedded in extractivism; and ontological and epistemological perspectives of policymakers embedded in the coloniality of knowledge and being.
Regarding the first point, the Law is at the same time the saviour and hangman of indigenous peoples’ aspirations. Indigenous peoples have appropriated the Law in order
177 to maintain their legal system but the Law (which is a Western, modern and capitalist Law), establishes legal devices directed towards perpetuating the dispossession mechanisms under the requirements of the ‘nation’. Perhaps the most important of these legal devices is the ‘exception’ that can be articulated in two ways: exception to exploit natural resources within fragile ecological areas and indigenous peoples’ territories, namely, exception in a context of legal regulation; and the exception to impose the rule of Law by direct violence under the context of protests: the state of exception entails a context of lack of Law.
But there are other devices. When the Law is embedded in the capitalist logic it becomes very flexible for companies and very inflexible for citizens. Flexible environmental laws allow resource exploitation without proper social and environmental conditions and the transfer of externalities to local peoples. Flexible laws also allow companies to hire private security to injure ‘anti-mining’ protesters. Palacios (2009) asserts that the security company FORZA S.A has signed more than 100 contracts at national level with mining, telecommunication and financial corporations, and this company is associated with death blackmail, defamatory campaigns and monitoring in what has been called “Operación Diablo” in 2006 against the activist Marco Arana and members of Grufides (an NGO for environmental defence). Other important cases of kidnapping of comuneros by private forces have been denounced in the case of the opposition to the Majaz project (Palacios, 2009).
These laws and regulations respond to a ‘nation’, assumed to be a unity which requires structural and institutional force (the state) and a locus (the territory) to ensure its unity and stability. The problem is, however, that the nation represented in laws and the constitution is indeed a ‘dominant nation’ that has historically attempted to exclude or include the indigenous nations. The state and its legal devices have had exactly this role.
This legal and political structure is deeply embedded in the political economy of extraction; this is reason why any attempt to undertake reforms within the state is very problematic. A state official argues that “whereas the state does not change its conception of what we sell to foreign markets, we always are going to be businesses”. This interviewee adds that it does not mean that we must stop being pro-businesses immediately because “we have to sell something to survive but at least there should be clear environmental rules” (State official interview, 3 24-10-2012). Another state official who is very influential in the environmental sector argues that the state pro-business approach “is like this and always has been like this, all the productive sectors, including agriculture overcomes the Ministry of the Environment” (State official 5, 10-05-2013). This is reaffirmed by a high functionary at the Ministry of Energy and Mines “if you do not use the mining and energy accumulation mechanisms, then, what is your development proposal? Are you going to live from milking cows?
That is ok but this is not enough…” (State official interview 6, 22-05-2013)
In these views there is an underlying argument about the inevitability of extractivism, which has as a consequence the maintenance of very flexible regulations to allow its development. I could observe in some state offices how this argument is deeply related to international economic structures and the global governance in which the rankings of pro-businesses countries, economic growth and bond credit, among others elaborated by the World Bank and other international financial institutions strongly guide the policy-makers in charge of developmental policies. This global structure also allows
178 transnational corporations such as the American Doe Run or the Canadian Bear Creek Mining to sue the Peruvian state in International Arbitrations with millionaires’ legal claims under ‘guarantee investors clauses’ established in the Free Trade Agreements celebrated with the United States and Canada. According to these clauses, the state cancellation of licenses because of very poor social and environmental conditions will give the right to companies to sue the Peruvian state. The case of Doe Run is significant because the company had broken its environmental obligations for several years (De Echave and Gómez, 2013).
However, as discussed in Chapter 2, the strength of globalisation is expressed not only as the governance of global rule-makers or the imposition of imperial rules and designs through global and local elites. The normalisation of the international system entails the functional connection between the hegemony of a global political economy and the denial of any value of non-Western political ontologies. Behind the state technocracy and its international connections, behind this governance of policymaking without politics, there is very crude politics of indigenous’ denial. For instance, one indigenous state official in Lima explains the power of race and racial rankings within the state in the fact that it is always easier for elite white people to occupy high technocratic positions than for non-white people with similar or better qualifications (Indigenous interview 32, 27-12-13). In addition, I could observe how in some state offices, the Indian is conceived as an obstacle for the ‘fast and sustained economic growth’ needed for the ‘development of the country’; and how it is normal for some state officials to talk about the ‘natives’ or the ‘Indians’ as ignorant people who need to be civilised.
Thus, the underlying developmental paradigm in Peru can be summarised in the statement: ‘fast and sustained economic growth’ which means indeed “to do the major possible extractivism in the shortest time” (De Echave Interview, 02-05-2013). This paradigm is not only sustained in national and international structures but also in the dialectical construction of the other as the non-modern, the primitive, the old and rural that portrays the past and that must be overcome. This is coloniality in all of its dimensions: the legal and economic aspect or the regulative aspect that expresses national and international extractive structures; and the epistemological and ontological aspect that expresses the universal principles of Western modernity.
This politics of the most technocratic state offices is a paradoxical short-time politics or a short-term vision (Gil Inoach interview 1, 17-10-12), with a long history of coloniality. As an important activist and scholar argues: “this is a political economy seen from the narrow horizon of the today and the necessity of money to maintain the power… There is no reason to push processes that will be undertaken in terrible social and environmental conditions; it is possible to exploit oil in 30 years with better conditions” (Activist interview 3, 26-03-2013).
Thus, whereas indigenous politics could be represented – paraphrasing a classical Silvia Rivera analysis (2010) - as a long term politics which entails the pre-eminence of a long memory (anticolonial struggles, pre-Hispanic order) over a short memory (peasant revolts and agrarian reform in the sixties); many state officials and technocrats (and some activists as well), in contrast, associate indigenous politics with the agrarian reforms of the sixties and claims for statism and land redistribution which today would mean under-development. Thus, this short memory (the fear of state intervention in the market) and short-term politics (the undertaking of a strong extractivism to obtain fast
179 economic growth) seems irreconcilable with the long memory (a history of coloniality) and long-term politics (with strategies such as integral territory).
In this context of contrasting views of time and space sustained in different ontologies and epistemologies, is there a hope that the state implements the Buen vivir? Is the strategy of some indigenous leaders and activists to access state positions still useful?
An important scholar and activist asserts that the result of this is not promising: “In some municipalities there have been important achievements but in other areas it has been a disaster. For example, in the Ministries – with the exception of the influence of decisions to some officials – I do not see major achievements because if there is a more serious or constant resistance, everybody is fired” (Activist interview 3, 26-03-2013).
Other activists who have occupied important roles in the state have a most optimistic view: “One cannot enter to fight, you cannot enter just ‘against to’ but with an alternative proposal… This is a strategic position; you are not going to fight with the Ministry of Economy that finances your office…”. It is also true that there is certain plurality within the state that allows some progressive moments because “the state has not a monolithic thinking” (State official 7, 24-05-2013). The problem is that this last interviewee who highlighted the plurality within the state was fired a few months later because of the contradictions between the Vice Ministry of Intercultural Affairs and the most powerful Ministry of Energy and Mines.
As discussed in Chapter 2, an important segment of indigenous movements is beyond the two usual strategies of radical autonomy and counter-hegemony. The political aim of most indigenous peoples is not solely to be part of the state or to be isolated from it in search of their self-determination. They seek a productive interaction with state politics from outside and inside in order to foster their foundational rights. The state is a locus for negotiation such as argued by Gil Inoach (Indigenous interview 1, 17-10-12).
Furthermore, this constant struggle inside and outside the state is particularly important because, as we saw, the state is embedded in a national and international logic of coloniality. Thus, the engagement of indigenous peoples in processes which only entail the occupation of the state would reproduce the logic of coloniality (as in the current cases of Bolivia and Ecuador) if there is not a broader horizon beyond the state.
8.4. Local struggles/global utopias: Inverting the political