RELACIÓN CRONOLÓGICA DE NORMAS MODIFICADORAS

The struggles over territorial borders are further enhanced as the regional divide and the opposing territorial claims correspond to important cultural differences in the salar region. There is a significant indigenous presence of Aymara and Quechua peoples.222 _{While in the north of the salar,}

Aymara cultures prevail (particularly in Salinas de Garcí Mendoza, Llica, and Tahua), the inhabitants of the southern and eastern parts (particularly in Nor Lípez, Antonio Quijarro) mostly identify as Quechua, while there are linguistic pockets in the northeast and northwest where both languages are spoken (Calla Ortega 2014, 43). According to the 2012 census, 44 percent of the inhabitants of Colcha “K” spoke Quechua, 52 percent Spanish and only 2 percent Aymara as first language (INE 2014). In Llica, in comparison, 75 percent spoke Spanish, 18 percent Aymara and 4 percent Quechua, while in Salinas de Garcí Mendoza, the first language of 38 percent of the inhabitants was Aymara, of 55 percent Spanish, and only 4 percent spoke Quechua as primary tongue (ibid.). As Calla Ortega (2014, 46) points out:

“not Aymara nor Quechua; the current rural indigenous population of the southwest of Potosí and the surroundings of the Salar de Uyuni is the product of a combination of influences and linguistic, cultural and organizational dynamics connected i) to the pre-Hispanic realities of the Aymara-speaking ‘kingdoms’, of the Inca empire and the particularities of their local settlements and ii) the influences of the Spanish colony as well as the more modern history of the Bolivian republic.”223

221 _{The Civic Committee of Potosí supports the claim of Llica (interview with J. Llally, 14.5.2016). Also, opinions}

were voiced that both provinces share the salar and, as curaca Crecensio Ali from Colcha “K” underlined, the project should also benefit Daniel Campos, but just not as much as Nor Lípez (interview, 28.4.2016).

222 _{It is important to understand that “Quechua” and “Aymara” are historically names for languages (Calla Ortega}

2014, 41). While Aymara existed before the Inca invasion, Quechua was the language of the Incas who brought it to the Bolivian Altiplano. Within areas with linguistic presence of Quechua and / or Aymara, indigenous identities are not homogeneous and important cultural differences exist between individual communities, ayllus, and their markas (ibid.). Thus, it is precise to talk about Aymara and Quechua cultures in plural.

223 _{Original quote: “La población indígena rural actual del Sudoeste de Potosí y del entorno del Salar de Uyuni es producto de una} combinatoria de influencias y dinámicas lingüísticas, culturales y organizacionales vinculadas i) a las realidades prehispánicas de los señoríos aymará-hablantes, del Inkario y de las propias y específicas particularidades de sus poblamientos locales, y ii) a los influjos de la

Indigenous communities in the northern salar, predominately Aymara, are still frequently organized in ayllus, rural kin groups with communal land rights and joint forms of land use.224 _{In the southern}

and eastern salar, particularly in the province of Nor Lípez, the ayllu structure mostly disintegrated after 1952, when the political administrative organization prevailed over indigenous land organization and the peasant union movement emerged (Calla Ortega 2014, 45 et seqq.; Gysler 2011). Calla Ortega (ibid.) outlines the importance of rural syndicalism in reshaping land consciousness and land rights in the area. Since the 1990s, particularly in the FRUTCAS union obtained a growing weight in regional and national politics (which also links to the opening of a political space on the municipality level with the Law of Popular Participation). This resulted in “a partial modification of the configuration and characters of the rural ethno-cultural settlements in southwestern Potosí and in the surroundings of the great salar” (ibid., 46).225 _{Peasant unions}

increasingly acted as initiators of collective land claims, not primarily for an indigenous people but for peasant communities with indigenous roots. Since the mid-1990s, the northern salar also saw a reconstitution of ayllus that sought to re-claim traditional lands.226

Colonia española y de la historia más moderna de la Bolivia republicana.” Kingdom is not a literal translation for the term

“señorío”, as it is difficult to characterize (in Western terms) forms of Aymara governments after the fall of the Tiahuanaco empire (Mesa, Gisbert, and de Mesa 2003, 31).

224 _{Since pre-Incan times, the ayllus were forms of socio-territorial organization in the Andean territory which}

persisted through Inca occupation and colonial times into the Bolivian Republic (Poveda Ávila 2014, et seqq.). Ayllus need to be understood as forms of joint property ownership of a kin group (real or imagined) with a common deity (Mesa, Gisbert, and de Mesa 2003, 65–66). Ayllus work their land reciprocally (so called ayni) and trade amongst each other, also over large distances. Within the ayllu, individual property may exist (Poveda Ávila 2014, et seqq.) During Inca rule, ayllus were socio-politically, territorially and economically organized into markas which again formed suyus (Almeida 2005). The Collasuyu (Qullusuyu) was the southern part of the Tahuantisuyo, the Inca Empire, which existed between 1460 and approximately 1558, and comprised highland areas of current day Bolivia, Chile and Argentina (Mesa, Gisbert, and de Mesa 2003, 65 et seqq.).

225 _{Original quote: “una modificación parcial de la configuración y el carácter del poblamiento etnocultural rural en el Sudoeste de Potosí} y en el entorno del gran salar.”

226 _{Ayllu structures in Bolivia were severely weakened during the National Revolution of 1952 and the subsequent}

land reforms. The MNR government sought to redistribute land from hacienda owners to landless peasants and supported peasant (not indigenous) identities by strengthening peasant unions (Albó 1994). Ayllus were considered traditional and thus backward institutions hampering progress; the MNR assimilation agenda re-focused rural identities from the “primitive” ayllus towards modern identities as national citizens and peasant workers (Choque 2000, 20–22). To access redistributed land, membership in peasant unions was made mandatory. The peasant union movement supported the fragmentation and decay of ayllus and markas particularly in areas of an important presence of these unions (e. g. the southern salar) (Calla Ortega 2014, 46). In the 1980s and 1990s, Aymara intellectuals (supported by international NGOs) aimed at the reconstitution and government recognition of the original nations of the Collasuyu and their ayllus, a process which was formally initiated in 1993 when first communities in the La Paz department re-organized as ayllu (Choque 2000). In 1997, with the Confederation of the Ayllus and Markas del

Qullusuyu (Confederación de Ayllus and Markas de Qullusuyu – CONAMAQ), a national organization was founded to

represent departmental ayllu federations (ibid.). As result of Aymara leadership in the reconstitution process, ayllu structures in Aymara speaking areas (e. g. the northern salar) are stronger than in other Andean territories.

This process was enabled by Law Nº 1715 of 1996 which founded the National Institute of the Agrarian Reform (Instituto de Reforma Agraria – INRA). The INRA law formalized the registration of Original Communal Lands (Tierras Comunitarias de Origin – TCO).227 _{The right to collective}

landownership was further strengthened by the Constitution of 2009. The CPE replaced the TCO with the concept of the Indigenous Original Peoples’ Peasant Territory (Territorio Indígena Originario Campesino – TIOC)228 _{(Art. 269 I). All registered TCOs are now (by an extensive}

administrative process) subsequently transferred to TIOC status (Supreme Decree Nº 727, 6.12.2010). The concept of a TIOC does not only focus on the idea of landownership but seeks a collective management of culturally and historically marked territories.229 _{The CPE further allows}

for TIOCs, municipalities, and regions (when inside one department) to transform into a state recognized indigenous autonomy (Autonomía Indígena Originario Campesina – AIOC) (Art. 289 et seqq.).230 _{Regulations on the implementation of these new entities are still vague and partly}

contradictory (Fundación Tierra 2012a; Garcés 2011).

227 _{The law thereby specified “social, economic, and cultural rights of indigenous peoples (…) especially those that}

relate to their communal lands” as established by the 1994 Constitution (Art. 171). Also before the INRA law was promulgated, individual TCOs were recognized based on Supreme Decrees following protests of lowland indigenous groups (Mesa, Gisbert, and de Mesa 2003, 758–759).

228 _{The Constitute Project translates this as “rural native indigenous territory (“Constitute Project” 2009). This,}

however, does not embody the idea of the Spanish compromise of joining “campesino” (peasant) demands based on social class with those of the Andean communities, who relate to their “originary” indigenous heritage, and the organizations of lowland indigenous peoples, who were not “syndicalized” and auto-define as “indigenous” (Garcés 2011). The term goes back to the 2004 Unity Pact between indigenous organizations and peasant as well as colonist settlers’ unions, a very particular historical development. For a comprehensive summary, see Garcés (2011). The term “indigenous originary peasant people” used in the CPE, however, refers in a broader sense to groups of people with an ancestry before the Spanish colonization. Thus, I will mostly refer to indigenous peoples and nations when referring to the different claimants for collective land titles.

229 _{INRA (Law Nº 1715, 18.10.1996) defines TCO as an agrarian property (productive land) (Art. 41 I) and the}

geographic spaces where an indigenous people has traditionally lived and where it has developed communal forms of social, economic, and cultural organization. These lands are “inalienable, undividable, irreversible, collective,

composed of communities or communal associations, unseizable and imprescriptible” (Art. 41 V), guaranteeing indigenous peoples the right to the sustainable use of non-renewable resources on these lands (Art. 3 III). A TIOC, in comparison, is not only a collective land title. The political concept of territory embodies the idea of self-

determination and consequently, a TIOC includes more advanced rights to natural resources and consultation. TIOCs are also exempt from agrarian property tax (CPE, Art. 394 III). Moreover, TIOC have the right to apply their own norms, can be administered by their own representatives and can define their development in terms of own cultural criteria and principles of harmonic coexistence with nature (ibid.). In this context, it is necessary to mention that already when INRA was discussed, indigenous groups sought to establish forms of self-government linked to the political concept of territory, but governments prior to the MAS had negated this idea, fearing that this could support a disintegration of the republic (Colque and Chumacero R. 2011).

230 _{The Constitution lists four different types of autonomies; departmental, provincial, municipal, and as an AIOC,}

(CPE, Art. 269 III). Thus, the CPE “offers the possibility that indigenous peoples establish certain territorialized modes of governance that are distinct from the wider templates of department, provincial and municipal

administration” (Garcés 2011, 47). There is no formal hierarchy between these autonomies, which means that the territorial organization based on the colonial and republican state structure coexists with indigenous territories (ibid.).

Based on the outlined regulations, communities and ayllus in the salar region sought collective titles since the mid-1990. In February of 1999, the regional peasant union of Nor Lípez (affiliated with FRUTCAS) applied for a TCO which included 52 communities (about 10,000 inhabitants), parts of the adjoining province Daniel Campos, and a large section of the Salar de Uyuni (Gysler 2011).231

Authorities from Daniel Campos opposed this in front of INRA (ibid.). The territorial claim had also been refused by previous administrations, because of the dimension and because it was not supported by an indigenous people but by a peasant union (ibid.). The union, in turn, argued that the original Quechua inhabitants had to adopt syndical structures to access food support from the government after a severe drought in 1983 (Gysler 2011, 105). In 2010, under the MAS government, the TIOC “Central Única Provincial de Comunidades Originarias de Nor Lípez” was titled on an area of more than two million hectares (Calla Ortega 2014, 48) and thereby became the largest collective claim titled to this date in Bolivia (Fundación Tierra 2012b). Additionally, different ayllus in the area have applied for a total of seven TIOC. By 2014, three titles had been granted, two were in the process of titling, and two were not decided upon (Poveda Ávila 2014, 131–132).232 _The

northern salar provinces link the successful titling of union over ayllu claims to the better political connectedness of southern salar. Also, the MAS ally FRUTCAS successfully pushed for the claim. In subsequent chapters I will discuss the extent to which these collective land titling processes and the lithium and potassium project are related.

231 _{The claim was made by the Unique Provincial Central of Peasant Workers of Nor Lípez (Central Única Provincial}

de Trabajadores Campesinos de Nor Lípez – CUPTCNL), which later changed its judicial personality and title to Unique Provincial Central of Original Communities of Nor Lípez (Central Única Provincial de Comunidades Originarias de Nor Lípez). This name change aimed at underscoring its nature as an association of original communities instead of a peasant union to heighten the chances to obtain TIOC status.

232 _{The following TIOC have received this title: in the municipality of Colcha “K”, the above mentioned TIOC}

“Central Única Provincial de Comunidades Originarias de Nor Lípez” (2,000,292 ha); in the municipality of Uyuni the TIOC “Ayllu Aransaya y Urinsaya del Canton Tolapampa” (492,192 ha); and in Salinas de Garcí Mendoza, the TIOC “Marka Salinas de Garcí Mendoza y sus Ayllus” (242,030 ha). Two ayllus in Llica have claims in process and not yet considered are two claims, one in Uyuni and one in Tahua. This latter claim does not stand much chance, as the two ayllus Aransaya and Maransaya demand nearly the complete Salar de Uyuni as a TIOC. The second largest TIOC in the region was titled in the province of Sur Lípez (1.55 million ha), which does not directly border the Salar de Uyuni (Fundación Tierra 2012b).