The CEJIS project
What the CEJIS team, the centrales and the CGTI in short called ‘projecto
gobernanza’ (governance project), was an Oxfam America financed project that
would run for one year. CEJIS was to carry out the project jointly with the CGTI- MV, CICC, CICOL and CIP-SJ. Through a ‘sistematización participativa’ (participative systematisation), which sought to ‘include the interpretations of the people, the voice in which they speak about their experiences and future visions’, the project staff aimed to record Chiquitano experiences of the struggle for territory and the territorial management process, establish the status quo of and collect future visions regarding Chiquitano governance. The general objective of the project was to elaborate a proposal for future governance structures which would allow for the consolidation of governance and a normative framework for the TCO Monte Verde (see CEJIS and OXFAM, 2006: 4-5).30
CEJIS and Oxfam also stressed the ‘political intentionality’ of the project: strengthening governance and governability would mean that Chiquitano could exercise their collective rights over the territory which, according to the project partners, would guarantee ‘the full exercise of autonomous development’.31 And as Elba Flores, the CEJIS project coordinator from the Santa Cruz office, stressed: it was also supposed to be ‘empowering the comunarios of the TCO so that they, with us, define territorial politics’.32 Further, CEJIS and Oxfam reasoned that the process in Monte Verde would serve as a case study, an example for other indigenous groups and their NGO allies in similar situations.33
The CEJIS research team was composed of three permanent staff and various other individuals, who were responsible for certain aspects of the project. Firstly, permanently occupied with the project, was Margoth Céspedes, the head of the
30 This, CEJIS and OXFAM reasoned, would ‘contribute to securing the means of life and well-being
of the indigenous communities of Monte Verde, through the strengthening of their capacity for governance and governability, for their autonomous and sustainable development. …Reconstructing the process of the construction of governance for the territorial management of the TCO Monte Verde in a critical way [is] directed at contributing to the exercise of collective rights over the territory and their auto-determination’ (CEJIS and OXFAM, 2006: 4).
31
From the project summary ‘Sistematización Participativa: Proceso en Construcción de Gobernanza
y Gobernabilidad en la TCO Monte Verde’ (November 2006).
32 Field note: Santa Cruz, 24 November 2006.
33 From the project summary ‘Sistematización Participativa: Proceso en Construcción de Gobernanza
CEJIS Concepción office, a bright and ambitious sociologist in her mid-twenties.34 A second member of the ‘governance’ research team was Lorenzo Pasabare, a Chiquitano veteran of the CICC and former CIDOB leader in his late thirties. Permanently employed by CEJIS, his main area of work was ‘land and territory’ (tierra y territorio). He worked closely with the CICC, the CIP-SJ and the CGTI- MV, gave legal advice, and shared information about the progress of land legislation and other intelligence he obtained from the staff of the CEJIS Santa Cruz office. He frequently travelled into the territory to help central and comunarios to ‘expel’ third- party intruders and he informed comunarios about the progress in the territorial claim and incipient collective action, such as, for example, the Territorial Encounter. A third member was David Rivero, a Chiquitano in his early forties and CIP-SJ veteran, who was employed by CEJIS, primarily for the governance project. He was experienced in ‘participatory methodologies’ and popular education techniques. The team received support from several other individuals during the workshop phase of the project. These mainly took up roles as workshop facilitators and transcribers.35
During the planning stages of the project, which involved holding meetings in the CEJIS Santa Cruz office in early and late November 2006, the project drew on additional know-how. Firstly, present was Elba Flores, a sociologist in her early forties and the ‘governance project’ coordinator. Overseeing the project and liaising with Oxfam America were only some of her tasks: she was also busy with other projects, such as working on the legal side of the territorial claim. Secondly, there were two consultants. CEJIS had hired them to help the rest of the team refine the project objectives and clarify the conceptual framework (‘governance and governability’) and suggested improvements to the methodological framework the research team defined.36 They were also responsible to check research output and propose suggestions regularly and for checking the final document. This document
34 Margot was originally from the rural Chaco region of Bolivia. She had previous experience working
for CEJIS in the Beni department. Her role was that of the head of office and the coordination of various projects. Her wage was paid partly by the German DED, for who she was working mostly in issues of conflict resolution
35
Additional researchers who supported the three permanent staff in carrying out the research workshops were Chiquitanos Pedro Solís Pinto (OTB Santa Rita, former CICC leader), Jesús Macoñó (former CIP-SJ leader) and William Roca (former CIP-SJ leader). Present in some of the workshops where also Elba Flores, Margarita (CGTI-MV Coordinator), Mercedes Nosta (consultant anthropologist) and two further CEJIS workers form Santa Cruz. See Appendix 1 for information on which individuals were present in the respective research workshops.
36 The consultants were anthropologist Mercedes Nostas Ardaya and sociologist José Vicente
was to be presented to Chiquitano leaders and communal representatives so that they could provide feedback to complement the data, adding another ‘collaborative’ and ‘reflexive element’ to the document and to ‘validate’ it.37 Then, the document would be diffused among the leaders, comunidades and supporting NGOs.38
Present in the planning stages were also four Chiquitano members of the CGTI-MV and the central. This was in line with the project’s premise that this project was supposed to be carried out in collaboration with the centrales and CGTI- MV whose members should help define, ‘validate’ the framework and project methodology and feed-back results to their Organisations and feed their reactions back to the research team.
While all team members present at the meeting contributed to question design, Chiquitano team members and the input of the four CGTI-MV and central members was especially crucial when it came to wording the questions so that Chiquitano leaders, technicians and comunarios could easily understand them. A difference was, for example, that questions addresses to the former two groups could include some political jargon and concepts, as they would generally be familiar with such terminology. Further, research team members involved in carrying out the field research, held regular reflexive meetings to assess the wording of the questions, the research progress and the execution of the methods (i.e. assessing the way they the researchers carried them out and if need be, adjusting execution or a researchers’ individual behaviour).
37
From Project Summary ‘Sistematización Participativa: Proceso en Construcción de Gobernanza y
Gobernabilidad en la TCO Monte Verde’ (November 2006).
38 Another plan that emerged at a later stage was to take elements form interviews and workshops and
turn them into radio clips, as experiences in comunidades showed that such documents were seldom read, and the emphasis on written documents marginalised those who could not read.