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Native Amazonians Strategic Urbanization:

Shaping Territorial Possibilities through


Cities
By
Kendra McSweeney
Ohio State University
Brad Jokisch
Ohio University

Resumen
Este artculo se basa en fuentes etnograficas dispares con la finalidad de examinar la
entre la urbanizacion
relacion de la poblacion
de la Amazona y su lucha por los dere-
chos al territorio. En el argumento que e sta dinamica contraria a la intuicion,
merece
una mayor atencion, especialmente porque recientes polticas sobre la urbanizacion
indgena ocultan dicha posibilidad. Especficamente muestro como en la Amazona:
(1) las cadenas migratorias que conectan remotas ciudades con las tierras indgenas, a
menudo han sido forjadas por los lderes indgenas que viajan a los lugares donde reside
el poder del estado, con el fin de demandar sus derechos sobre el territorio; (2) la vida
en las ciudades puede servir para politizar a los citadinos indgenas, con consecuencias
a largo plazo en sus luchas por el territorio; (3) el movimiento de la poblacion indgena
entre las ciudades y sus territorios de origen puede mantener y difundir estos efectos
a estas dinamicas con el ob-
polticos a traves del espacio y del tiempo. Presto atencion
de los textos polticos de la desposesion
jetivo de cuestionar la posible justificacion de
las tierras indgenas enmarcando la urbanizacion indgena como generica, inevitable

y, en ultima instancia, desempoderando las posiciones indgenas sobre el territorio.
[Amazona, migracion, pueblos indgenas, territorializacion,
territorio, urbanizacion]

Abstract
This article draws from disparate ethnographic sources to point to the ways in which
the urbanization of Amazonias native populations is interconnected with their po-
litical struggle for rights to territory. This counterintuitive dynamic deserves greater

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 1333. ISSN 1935-4932, online ISSN
1935-4940. 
C 2015 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/jlca.12067

Native Amazonians Strategic Urbanization 13


attention, particularly because recent policy texts on indigenous urbanization obscure
its possibility. Specifically, this work shows that, in Amazonia: (1) the migration chains
linking remote cities to indigenous homelands have often been forged by indigenous
leaders who make geographical leaps to sites of state power to pursue demands for
territorial recognition; (2) urban living can serve to politicize indigenous urbanites
in ways that have long-term consequences for their territorial struggles; and (3) the
circulation of native peoples between cities and homelands can maintain and distribute
these political effects across space and through time. By drawing attention to these dy-
namics, this article aims to resist the ways in which indigenous land dispossession could
be justified by policy texts framing of indigenous urbanization as generic, inevitable,
and ultimately disempowering to natives territorial positions. [Amazonia, indigenous
peoples, migration, territorialization, territory, urbanization]

The past decade has witnessed growing interest in the urbanization1 of


indigenous populations worldwide (this issue; see also Cardinal 2006; Delugan
2010; Fox and Rivera-Salgado 2004; Morgan and Gulson 2010; Taylor and Bell
2004; Wilson and Peters 2005). This academic attention is matched by policy
interest in indigenous urbanization as a global phenomenon. Since 2006 alone, the
issue has been specifically addressed at the Fifth and Seventh sessions of the United
Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples and several UN-HABITAT-
sponsored workshops, roundtables, and conferences: Ruralurban migration is
perhaps one of the most pressing issues affecting indigenous peoples around the
world today (Yescas 2008:24).
As both scholars and policymakers make clear, however, this current focus is not
a result of the novelty of either indigenous mobility or residence in cities; rather, it is
due to a recent acceleration of these processes, the growing visibility of indigenous
urbanites, and the geographical reach and variety of indigenous diasporas (Clifford
2007). The Amazonian experience illustrates these phenomena well. On the one
hand, there is increasing recognition of pre-Columbian cities in Amazonia, the long
history of indigenous mobility within the basin, and the key role that indigenous
peoples have played in the growth and character of the regions cities since the
colonial period (this issue; see also Alexiades 2009; Azevedo 2003; Heckenberger et
al. 2008; Mainbourg et al. 2002). On the other hand, it is clear from recent census
data and other evidence that Amazonian indigenous people are more mobile than
ever, and that their circulation within and beyond Amazonia is growing in pace
and scope (Garca 2000; McSweeney and Jokisch 2007; Perz et al. 2008).2
Further, new patterns of urbanization are emerging, characterized by the sus-
tained presence of native Amazonian clusterseven neighborhoodsin cities
far beyond the basin, including Lima, Sao Paolo, Madrid (Spain), Los Angeles

14 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology


(California), and New York City.3 That such archetypally rural peoples are increas-
ingly living urban and often transnational lives challenges orthodox notions of
indigeneity, mobility, and identity, and raises important questions about the mean-
ing of urban circulations for native Amazonians long-term territorial struggles.
This article focuses specifically on the last point: the interplay between in-
digenous de-territorialization(urbanization and international migration) and
so-called re-territorializationthat is, the recognition and defense of, and au-
tonomous control over, specific (ancestral) spaces.4 This interplay has been men-
tioned in multiple studies from Amazonia, but it remains unclear exactly how
the act of residing outside a homeland, and the act of defending that homeland,
are co-articulated. Our goal is to make these dynamics clear, and to show how
and why they deserve greater attention as an element of indigenous urbanization
globally. We hope to draw attention to the conceptual and practical importance of
understanding urban living in explicit relation to the struggle for and defense of
native territory.
This work is inspired by the emerging scholarship on indigenous urbanization
and transnationalism, particularly within the fields of geography and anthropol-
ogy. To date, this scholarship has demonstrated and theorized the ways in which
indigeneity can endure spatial unmooring: indigenous identity can be produced
and reproduced in cities without, necessarily, a referent homeland (Delugan 2010;
Merlan 2009; Wilson and Peters 2005). In many cases, researchers have been
motivated by the struggle for indigenous rights to the city and for recognition
of indigenous peoples rights regardless of residence (Walker and Barcham 2010;
Watson 2010). Indigeneity, then, is being conceptualized as multisited, multilocal,
and emergent. As such, it challenges the static, timeless incarceration of native
peoples within specific (rural) spaces, and makes clear that indigenous rights
do not only adhere to natives who behave spatially as we believe they should
(Delugan 2010). As Watson (2010:272) argues, urbanization does not augur the
end to Ainu life; rather, it signals the end to our idea of Ainu. This understanding
of what might be called the spatiality of indigeneity has been widely taken up
within policy circles. It is now enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, and it clearly informs policymakers approaches to addressing
the distinct needs of indigenous peoples within cities (UN-HABITAT 2010;
Yescas 2008).
This insistence on the rights of indigenous urbanites is emerging to both coun-
teract and extend the political project that strategically essentialized indigenous
connections to particular landscapes. From the early 1980s onwards, this place-
based tactic was an exceptionally effective tool for leveraging indigenous political
gains from nation states, particularly in Amazonia (Field 2009). However, the
ways in which this territorial strategy also constrained political possibilities for
the indigenous rights movement is acknowledged by both indigenous activists and

Native Amazonians Strategic Urbanization 15


observers (Field 2009; Malkki 1992; Ramos 2010). A central problem is that the ter-
ritorial strategy tended to reify the litmus test for indigenous authenticity: residence
within a (usually remote) indigenous homeland. Urban indigenous studies, then,
aspire to maintain the hard-won indigenous rights of the past thirty years while
stretchingmetaphorically and materiallythe grounds for their recognition.5
The new focus on indigenous urbanization worldwide is thus welcome and
important. At the same time, however, this scholarship seems unclear about how
we might understand processes of urbanization in terms of indigenous peoples
struggles for territorial recognition and self-determination. In other words, how
can we reconcile the fact of multisited indigeneity with the fact that territoriality
remains a core project of global indigeneity? This remains an open question within
scholarship on indigenous mobility (see Ramos 2010).6
Unfortunately, one outcome of this open-endedness is that popular tropes
about territorial requirements for indigenous rights are actually reinforced. For
example, well-meaning policy documents clearly suggest that urbanization is in-
evitably diluting indigenous ties to land and the political legitimacy that comes
only with such ties. This message is conveyed even as the same documents in-
sist on the rights of indigenous urbanites. It can only be a matter of time before
such narratives are mobilized in the service of territorial or resource usurpation.
Consider, for example, how the politically powerful Confederation of Agriculture
and Livestock of Brazil recently used evidence of TV and DVD use as proof of in-
digenous peoples urbanization and, therefore, diminished need for their lands;
not surprisingly, the lands in question are coveted by agribusiness (Santilli and do
Valle 2012). If such arguments have traction in the case of rural natives, they are
only intensified when indigenous peoples are understood to be residing in cities,
and in record numbers.
The need for hyper-vigilance around any such discursive strategy is partic-
ularly urgent now. Given the global surge in demand for raw materials and the
liberalization of finance and trade, extractive pressures on indigenous territo-
ries have never been more intense. In Amazonia, these pressures are manifest in
the acceleration of agribusiness expansion, hydrocarbon and mineral extraction,
and in the infrastructural megaprojects to support them (see Bebbington 2012;
Bebbington et al. 2008; Finer et al. 2008; Martnez et al. 2007). As a result, in-
digenous territories are under a degree of coordinated assault not seen since the
devastating decades of the 1960s and 1970s.
This article, then, seeks to establish a counter-narrative: indigenous urban-
ization and territorialization can work in harmony, not in opposition. We explore
this through two strategies. First, we establish the specific ways in which the two
processes are linked in Amazonia. The Amazonian case is illustrative not because
it is unique, but rather because the processes linking urban natives with territorial
politics seem particularly legible in this context. We therefore review a variety of

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ethnographic and other sources that engagehowever tangentiallywith this
process, and highlight commonalities across diverse societies and migration
experiences.
Our second strategy is to counterpose ethnographic insights against policy dis-
course to show how policy silences around the territorial dynamics of indigenous
urbanization are not simply regrettable omissions in otherwise comprehensive and
well-meaning policy documents. Rather, we show how, by dismissing the copro-
duction of city and territory as indigenous political space, policy accounts actually
encourage interpretations of indigenous urbanization as desertion of territory and
abandonment of the territorial project. Overall, then, this article draws attention
to the subtle but powerful ways in which policy narratives are doing this political
work by maintaining status quo (mis)understandings of indigenous urbanization
as passive, apolitical, and fundamentally oppositional to meaningful territorial
persistence.
The article is structured as follows. The next section outlines the meta-
analytical approach by which we identified and analyzed academic, policy, and
other sources. We then organize the counterposition of ethnographic insights and
policy discourses according to how they address three moments of indigenous
urbanization: initial settlement in cities; the effects of city living on indigenous
urbanites; and the circulations between rural and urban. The discussion then con-
templates the epistemological differences that orient academic vs. policy narratives.
As we will show, the fact that policy documents miss the political connections
between city and homeland does not seem to arise from methodological difference
(policy texts draw explicitly from ethnographic sources; see IOM and UNPFII
2006:11); rather, it is due to a particular modernist framing that denies the possi-
bility of such connections, with important policy implications.

Methods and Materials

This study forms part of a larger research program exploring the demographic
dynamics of indigenous societies across lowland Latin America (see Jokisch and
McSweeney 2011; McSweeney 2005; McSweeney and Jokisch 2007). Methods and
analysis used for this paper build on those earlier studies. Our pre-existing bibli-
ographic database on indigenous mobility served as a starting point in this search
for academic literature. We then updated that resource through on-line searches
(Google Scholar, the Social Science Citation Index, and the Brazilian database Sci-
ELO). Most studies are written by anthropologists or geographers; the majority is
focused on specific indigenous groups, although some focus on broader patterns.
For simplicity, we refer to these studies as Ethnographic sources. We have focused
particularly on studies that engaged with migrations to cities since the 1980s, which
is when research suggests urbanization among native Amazoniansparticularly

Native Amazonians Strategic Urbanization 17


to cities beyond the basinbegan to increase (McSweeney and Jokisch 2007).
We were drawn to studies highlighting out-of-place migrationsas when
individuals from remote rainforest-dwelling societies move directly to, say, New
York City. This preference was not because of an a priori assumption that some
distinct process is at work in such moves, but rather because of what these outliers
might reveal about urbanization processes more generally. Also, we were drawn to
the same urban contexts that appear to be most on the policy radar: those megac-
ities where indigenous populations form an extreme minority. In most cases, the
topic of urbanization was addressed in studies that may or may not have urban-
ization as their primary focus. For example, Rubensteins (2009) examination of
Shuar migrants response to the shrunken heads in a New York Museum does not
address urbanization per se, but it sheds light on the motives and preoccupations
of Shuar residing in the metropolitan area.
Our survey of policy documents relating to indigenous urbanization also began
with texts compiled during earlier phases of our project. We added to our original
bibliography by querying standard search engines with relevant keywords in En-
glish, Spanish, and Portuguese. What emerged were references to the same set of
closely related reports associated with meetings leading up to and emanating from
two international meetings. The first was the 2006 meeting of the Expert Workshop
on Indigenous Peoples and Migration: Challenges and Opportunities, which was
jointly organized by the UNs Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples and the
International Organization for Migration (SPFIIP and IOM 2006; UNHCR 2006;
Yescas 2008). The second was the Expert Group Meeting on Urban Indigenous
Peoples and Migration, held in March 2007 in Santiago, Chile at CELADE, the
Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre (see Del Popolo 2007; Del
Popolo et al. 2007; Rodrguez 2007; UN-HABITAT 2009, 2010). The latter, due in
part to the host country and institution, included more specifically Latin American
content than the former. Both sets of documents subsequently informed parts of
the UNs State of the Worlds Indigenous Peoples (UN 2009).
This article also refers to salient sections of reports prepared by individual Latin
American governments and other groups, following their analysis of indigenous
population dynamics, often using data from the 2000-round of national censuses
(e.g., Duarte et al. 2003; IBGE 2005; Solano 2001; UNICEF 2003). These, along
with the UN and NGO reports, are referred to henceforth as Policy documents
because their purpose is to influence policies at multiple levels of government,
usually with the goal of providing administrative and other resources to indigenous
populations within cities (see UN-HABITAT 2010:2).
Worth noting is that all policy documents focus on ruralurban migration (not
ruralrural). Further, most make clear that they represent an initial stock-taking
phase, characterized by information-gathering and tentative policy formation. As
a result, the majority pull from a wide array of sources: indigenous testimonies,

18 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology


academic sources, government reports (including census data), NGO studies, and
more. Given the recognized weakness of censal data for tracking indigenous res-
idence in cities, policy texts rely heavily on qualitative, ethnographic, and first-
hand sources. In what follows, then, both Ethnographic sources and Policy
documents are based largely on qualitative evidence of indigenous urbanization.

Motives for Migration to Cities

Studies from Amazonia point to the ways in which native peoples urbanization in
the late 20th century has commonly been driven by the desire to seek economic
opportunities and to pursue higher education (McSweeney and Jokisch 2007). The
same forces are also motivating Amazonian indigenous peoples international mi-
gration, where they join global diasporas sending remittances back home. However,
there is clearly more that is catalyzing indigenous migration to cities. As a variety of
ethnographic sources suggest, the move to cities has also been instigated by the ex-
plicit desire to represent indigenous political positions within seats of state power.
For example, Indigenous leaders [in Acre] began to migrate to urban centers to
demand the demarcation of their lands, a process that also led to the founding of
numerous indigenous movements in the 1970s and 1980s (Virtanen 2010:158).7
In many cases, leaders took up residence in regional or national capitals to
more effectively lobby for their rightsas occurred among Kichwa, Shuar, Ura-
rina, Machineri, and many other peoples (Dean 2003; Perreault 2003a; Rubenstein
2001; Virtanen 2010). Embedded in this way, the leaders are well positioned to
access the diverse political networks and resources concentrated in cities: govern-
ment and NGO offices, media outlets, libraries, and archives, for example. From
cities, alliances are maintained with national and international organizations, pro-
posals are written and accounts are kept. Multiple studies show that these urban
headquarters and the indigenous leaders who staff them have been vital in lever-
aging urban-concentrated resources to effect collective political gains for home
territories (Leitao Martins 2009; Virtanen 2009, 2010).
Beyond their formal role as representatives, city-based indigenous leaders can
also act as urban pioneers for family members and other co-ethnics who might
otherwise not have made the risky leap to remote state capitals. Thus, migration
chains are established whereby indigenous youth (seeking education or work)
stay temporarily in leaders homes (or federation offices) upon first arrival in the
city. These politicized spaces are thus the portals through which co-ethnics are
introduced to the city.
The pioneering effect of indigenous political leaders mobility also applies in-
ternationally. Beginning in the 1980s, a common strategy of indigenous leaders
was to take their message to audiences overseas, often with financial support from

Native Amazonians Strategic Urbanization 19


the international conservation community (Field 2009; Maybury-Lewis 2003; Mc-
Sweeney and Jokisch 2007; Rubenstein 2009). As Conklin (1997:721) puts it, By
the early 1990s, the presence of rain forest Indian representatives at major envi-
ronmental conferences had become almost de rigueur . . . to the point where one
almost might speak of the growth of an Amazonian international indigenous jet
set. Leveraging the rhetorical power of their perceived out-of-placeness, they
were effective ambassadors for the emergent pan-American indigenous move-
ment, particularly as it centered on territorial claims (Garfield 2001; Rabben 2004).
Rogers (1996:89), for example, describes how Quichua of the Ecuadorian Ama-
zon were so impressed by the success other leaders had with this strategy that
they considered sending the mayor on a tour of the US in order to try to raise
money. Similarly, Leitao Martins describes Macuxi leaders who visited Italy and
the Vatican, and argues, The Macuxi represent a successful case of cultural revi-
talization and physical survival made possible by the type of national and interna-
tional political mobilization that . . . have become the main weapon of indigenous
resistance in the last decades (2009:250). Brysk (2000), Lucero (2006), and Per-
reault (2003a) describe similar examples of international lobbying by indigenous
Amazonians.
In many cases, these tours were made possible only through special
government-issued travel visas that for most indigenous people would have been
unattainable. Indigenous leaders, however, have been granted multiyear travel visas
in their capacity as cultural ambassadors. In some cases, leaders continued to use
their visas long after their terms in office expired, and joined immigrant commu-
nities in New York, San Francisco, or Madrid (Fine-Dare and Rubenstein 2009;
McSweeney and Jokisch 2007).
Overall, then, understanding the political motivations and strategies behind
initial urban settlement by native Amazonians helps to explain otherwise enigmatic
urbanization patterns. For example, the Amazonian diaspora is simply too far-
flung to be understood otherwise, including, as it does, representatives of societies
whose members have experienced urbanization primarily in remote megacities or
in international capitals; they may have never been to the regional cities far closer
to their homelands (Leitao Martins 2009).
In policy documents, we found no instances in which indigenous political
agendas were recognized as shaping ruralurban moves. This policy silence appears
to be an outcome of the fact that policy texts confine discussion of motives to the
pushpull trope of ruralurban migration. Standard rural shortcomings (poor
services, few jobs, land constraints, population pressure, violence associated with
civil wars, and/or resource conflicts8 ) push people out, and urban opportunities
and amenities (jobs, education, and health care) pull people in. This pushpull
model is ubiquitous in policy documents (see Del Popolo 2007; IOM and UNPFII
2006; Rodrguez 2007; UN 2009; UN-HABITAT 2010; Yescas 2008). Viewed in

20 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology


this way, the drivers of indigenous urbanization appear little different from those
driving any ruralurban migration. Rodrguez (2007:34) puts it bluntly, thus:

indigenous migration to the city is a variant of the ruralurban flows of unskilled


workers, landless peasants and small agricultural landowners seeking better oppor-
tunities in the city.

Two aspects of this assertion merit further consideration. First is the inevitabil-
ity of this conclusion because, by deploying the pushpull model in the first place,
policy analysts conceptualize indigenous migration from the outset as a variation
on a universal pattern of human mobility. Yescas, for example, asks how can
we analyse indigenous migration according to existing categories of migration?
(Yescas 2008:8). Similarly, the discussion framers at the 2006 Expert Workshop on
Indigenous Peoples and Migration (SPFII and IOM 2006:7) asked,

Are the traditional push and pull factors for migration as relevant to indigenous
populations as they are to non-indigenous groups or are indigenous peoples, given
the value they often place on their land and community, less likely to move?

Clearly, the answer must be yes, because discussion of the indigenous experience
is from the outset framed exclusively in reference to the nonindigenous migrants
that have already experienced rural to urban migration; it must thus necessarily
be no more than a variant of timeless ruralurban flows. This tautology and
other limitations of the pushpull model have long been recognized by migration
scholars (for a cogent review, see de Haas 2007). Critiques center on the models
failure to situate migration within the specific cultural, economic and historical
contexts in which it occurs. Thus, when policy documents use the pushpull
framing, indigenous urbanization is set up to be fundamentally equivalent to any
ruralurban migration, despite the value they place on their land and community.
Furthermore, the pushpull model also asserts the basic inadequacy of their
land for meeting indigenous peoples needs. After all, pull factors accentuate
what homelands lack; push factors draw attention to the rural conditions that
repel residents. Thus, indigenous peoples move to cities because of the diminish-
ing opportunities for economic survival and development in their places of origin
(Yescas 2008:45; see also UNPFII and IOM 2006:89). In other words, policy narra-
tives suggest that by moving to cities, indigenous peoples are signaling the lack of a
future in their home territories. This denies the possibility that indigenous persons
may deliberately leave their homelands with the intention of better defending the
lands and resources that do sustain their peoples, toward ensuring that function in
the longer term.

Native Amazonians Strategic Urbanization 21


Living in the City

No matter what initially draws indigenous migrants to cities, multiple ethno-


graphic sources suggest ways in which the experience of urban living can politicize
and radicalize indigenous migrants. One of the key ways that city life does so is
through informal educational opportunities. Beyond formal education alone, ur-
ban education includes developing a much deeper understanding of settler culture
through everyday interactions that allow for appropriation of the knowledge and
power of White peoples (Virtanen 2010:157). This knowledge is understood to
be inherently political, because it enhances negotiation with the dominant society.
Indeed, access to both formal and informal types of education is seen as a critical
requirement for those aspiring to positions of political leadership. In Virtanens
analysis, for example, Communities . . . argue that only educated Indians know
how to obtain benefits, negotiate with authorities, and enhance respect for the
community and family (Virtanen 2010:160).
Cities also serve as important spaces of political foment. It is in cities that
indigenous leaders meet each other, compare experiences, and strategize around
shared goals, including territorial ambitions and plans (seeLucero 2006; Virtanen
2009). This effect appears to be significant whether the city is a regional center such
as Rio Branco, Brazil (Virtanen 2010), or an international city such as Los Angeles,
California (Delugan 2010). In cities of the developed north, however, political
and social freedoms, cultural networks, and financial resources may intensify the
formation of the indigenous cosmopolitanism that influences the shape and
representation of indigenous identities and priorities at home (Delugan 2010).
Finally, city living appears to be helpful in clarifying for indigenous migrants the
nature of their social and political marginalization (Wearne 1996). This is because
living within urban settler societies renders the relative marginalization of indige-
nous people particularly stark (see Leitao Martins 2009). As Picchi (2000:180)
notes,

A sense of Bakairi ethnicity is emerging most vigorously among the Bakairi who
have spent long periods of time outside the reserve in schools or working. They are
fluent Portuguese speakers, educated in a formal European sense, knowledgeable
about Western culture, well-travelled . . . and committed to furthering the cause of
the Bakairi.

Knowledge of settler society can create new desires, and the long-term influence
of urban sensibilities on cultural change in Amazonia deserves more attention
(Peluso and Alexiades 2005). But it is clear, too, that urban educations reverberate
in the political dynamics of indigenous societies in the city and at home.
In contrast, policy documents portray urban life for indigenous migrants
almost exclusively in terms of the balance between the urban challenges and

22 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology


opportunities of the Expert Workshops title. Thus, the social and health-related
perils of the city are recognized, including acute structural racism and the risk
of increased exposure to HIV/AIDS, illicit drugs, prostitution, and heightened
levels of diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity (see UN-HABITAT 2009; Yescas
2008). Conversely, it is recognized that indigenous peoples living in cities tend to be
healthier, wealthier, and better educated than their rural counterparts (Del Popolo
2007; UN-HABITAT 2010; Yescas 2008). There is nothing in policy documents,
however, to suggest that indigenous peoples experience of cities is at its core any
different from that of any urbanizing population. As the UN-HABITAT report
states, Indigenous peoples who enter into the migration circuit . . . face important
challenges that, while not different from those faced by immigrants in general, do
have specific peculiarities (2010:79; emphasis added).
That cities can be spaces of political crystallization, and in ways that have
important implications for the management and defense of indigenous lands, does
not appear to be recognized within policy discourses on indigenous urbanization.
The single exception that we foundfrom the Expert Round Table meeting
seems to prove the rule:

In increasing national and international awareness of indigenous peoples through


migration, indigenous migrants may also encourage increased governmental con-
sultation with indigenous communities on national laws and projects which may
impact their lands. In essence, voluntary indigenous migrants may offer opportu-
nities to their home communities that may not have otherwise occurred. (SPFII
and IOM 2006:9)

This passage suggests that the mobility of indigenous people can shape negoti-
ations with nation states in ways that can have territorial effects. This idea was not
explored in more detail, nor did we find it expressed in any other policy document
relating to indigenous urbanization. On the contrary, policy documents repeatedly
expressed urban living in terms of what might be called a slippery slope: once
indigenous peoples move to cities, forces come into play that lead inexorably and
inevitably to their ultimate deracination from rural spaces.
The rhetorical moves by which this is accomplished are subtle but consistent.
Certainly, policy texts routinely and carefully reiterated that urban Indians are no
less authentic than those living in the countryside. On this topic, the texts lean
heavily on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN 2007;
see UN-HABITAT 2010:710; Yescas 2008:14,1819). While Del Popolo (2007:11)
asserts that the guarantee and exercise of such collective [indigenous] rights
transcends the rural/urban divide, the UN report is more prescriptive:

it is important that indigenous peoples rights be considered in a holistic way,


without dividing urban and rural members of indigenous communities. Indigenous

Native Amazonians Strategic Urbanization 23


peoples migrating to urban centres do not leave their identities behind but maintain
strong attachments to their traditional lands and cultures. (UN 2010:232)

This insistence that the indigenous individual is the bearer of indigeneity,


regardless of residence, seems to signal welcome resistance to the place-based
litmus tests of indigenous legitimacy and cultural authenticity. A closer read of
the policy texts, however, reveals that this assertion is articulated alongside a very
different message about the implications of urbanization for indigenous political
dynamics.
For example, Rodrguez suggests that urban living, while perhaps not signaling
the loss of indigenous identity, will eventually erode ties to rural homelands, as
indigenous peoples urban adaptations will probably help to do away with the idea
of a strong attachment to the land, a characteristic traditionally associated with
indigenous groups (2007:35). If so, this poses serious problems for indigenous
politics, according to del Popolo, because, apparently, the struggle for rights and
collective self-determination necessarily requires a referent indigenous territory:

Despite the proportion of indigenous population living in urban areas, it should be


borne in mind that indigenous demands are based on territorial rights as a necessary
requirement for developing their identity as autonomous peoples. (2007:17)

Further, the Expert Panel effectively, if not intentionally, suggests that migration
by any members of an indigenous community has political ramifications for the
whole:

it should be noted that indigenous migration affects the collective rights of in-
digenous communities, and accordingly has consequences for entire communities.
(UNPFII and IOM: 2006:15)

Taken together, these passages suggest the following logic: the more indige-
nous persons urbanize, the more both their own ties and their collectives ties to
home weaken, and with them the political power that those tiesnot indigenous
identity itselfbring. Indeed, this view is reinforced by policy references to the
very serious plight of displaced indigenous persons. As the UNHCR document
states, displacement (often toward cities) leads to a deterioration of the political
autonomy project of their territories, during which their organizational capac-
ity which is a powerful tool to keep the community together and defend their
rights . . . disappear[s] (UNHCR 2006:2).
The point here is not to deny the trauma of displacement and the violence of
land dispossession but to show how such processes are discursively presented in
such a way as to simultaneously assert the legitimacy of urban indigenous peoples
as such and deny the possibility that such peoples (individually and/or collectively)
can effectively exercise territorial rights. The message to indigenous peoples seems

24 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology


to be: when you stay at home, your political-territorial gains and aspirations are
legitimate. Move away (voluntarily or not), and although your indigenous identity
will continue to be recognized (you will be treated as a special kind of citizen),
you signal forfeiture of your rights to the territories you left and to the political
leverage associated with your links to them.
Overall, then, policy texts tacitly acknowledge that migration to cities has politi-
cal implications for indigenous peoples, but only in terms of their disempowerment,
particularly through relinquishing the claims acquired through specific forms of
rural residence. This viewpoint is certainly not unusual (see Watson 2010). What is
unusual is that this pernicious narrative is articulated by the very policy narratives
that endorse and assert indigenous peoples claims to the city.

RuralUrban Circulations

Latin American demographers now track the magnitude of and patterns within
indigenous peoples rural-to-urban flows, although there remains much to learn
(Perz et al. 2008), including the patterns of cyclical or return migration. Indigenous
organizations themselves are keen to better quantify and understand both, as well
as what the circulation of people, ideas, and resources means for indigenous futures
(see Azevedo 2003; Jokisch and McSweeney 2011; Teixeira 2005; UNICEF 2007).
Ethnographic and other qualitative studies are also shedding light on these
processes, particularly in terms of the dynamic and complex material and cultural
exchanges that link even remote rural indigenous populations with their urban
counterparts (Eloy and Lasmar 2011; Garca 2000; Urrea Giraldo 1994).9 Remit-
tances from urban kin support cultural events at home, or finance communal
construction projects. At the same time, medicines, food, and other products sent
from rural communities make urban living more bearable for family and friends.
People of course circulate too, with individuals residing in cities cyclically or spo-
radically. Central to our interests, however, are the ways in which the power to
represent the collective is divided and circulated between the rural and the urban,
with long-term ramifications for territorial possibilities.
Some ethnographic texts, for example, refer to the vital role that ruralurban
dynamics play in the formation and turnover of indigenous leaders. In particular,
there is evidence that within many Amazonian societies, urban spaces have been
central to the emergence of political elites (Dean 2003; McSweeney and Jokisch
2007; Perreault 2003a; Rubenstein 2009). City-dwelling indigenous leaders (and
their families), for example, are well placed to secure not only development projects
for their home communities, but also the salaries that come with them. These pos-
itive feedbacks may accelerate both political and economic differentiation between
rural and urban, as urban leaders activities may become increasingly oriented

Native Amazonians Strategic Urbanization 25


toward maintaining their positions rather than toward serving the needs of their
constituents (see Hughes 2001; Virtanen 2009:346).10
Other evidence, however, points to processes that work against the sedimen-
tation of particular individuals in urban seats of power. For example, in many
indigenous Amazonian societies, successful leaders derive the authority to negoti-
ate with nonindigenous peoples from the perceived legitimacy of their performance
of indigeneity (Perreault 2003b; Valdivia 2005). The effectiveness of this perfor-
mance can fade with time and distance from home (Virtanen 2009). This weakens
the leaders political capital, which is best renewed through re-immersion in the
homeland. This dynamic, then, can enhance circulation of leaders between urban
and rural spheres.
Another process encouraging turnover in leadership positions occurs when
indigenous youth who have been radicalized by their urban experiences return to
their home communities to assume roles as firebrand leaders. Several studies have
explored the ways in which these young leadersfamiliar with Western culture,
fluent in Spanish or Portuguese, and typically maleare disrupting conventional
models of power, prestige, and respect in their home communities (see Dean 2003;
Oakdale 2004; Virtanen 2009). Thus urbanrural dynamics intensify perennial
inter-generational struggles, often leading to serious social tensions.
It is also worth noting the vital role that indigenous Amazonian demographics
play in ruralurban circulations. For example, some ethnographic sources explic-
itly engage with the emigration of young people to cities in terms of the rapid
population growth that characterizes rural Amazonian populations (see Gomes
2000; McSweeney 2005; McSweeney and Arps 2005). These sources suggest that the
recent explosive growth of many indigenous societies has actually made possible
the export of leaders and youth that has resulted in their professionalization,
politicization, andin many casesreturn to homelands.
For their part, many policy texts explicitly recognize the simultaneity of rural
and urban living, and the circulations and networks that create more of a con-
tinuum than a clear split between urban and rural. For example, texts frequently
cite evidence of the economic and cultural links that are sustained between rural
and urban communities, such as remittances in cash or in kind from cities (e.g.,
Duarte et al. 2003; UN 2010; UN-HABITAT 2010; Yescas 2008). But while policy
texts depict these connections as vital and intense, they are also characterized as
being similar to any ruralurban migrants ties to home. For example, there is no
specific recognition of the need for those flows to connect cities to territories, or
specific ancestral and spiritual spaces that are important in specific ways to specific
indigenous peoples (UN-HABITAT 2010:8485).
Similarly, the demographic growth of indigenous societies goes unacknowl-
edged in the policy texts that we consulted. Rather than understanding the
urbanization of indigenous peoples in terms of the spatial and occupational

26 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology


diversification of their growing populations, policy texts appear to suggest that
home territories are gradually being emptied by the rural-to-urban flows. Cer-
tainly, rural areas across Latin America are experiencing (voluntary) rural aban-
donment (Aide and Grau 2004; Jokisch 2002), but assuming similar dynamics in
indigenous homelands would represent a serious mischaracterization of the de-
mographic processes underlying the indigenous urbanization experience. Indeed,
for many Amazonian societies, such an interpretation would not only be incorrect,
but dangerous. On its own, it suggests that native lands are more empty and avail-
able than ever before. When combined with the assumptions that the political will
and legitimacy to defend those territories is also diluted through urbanization, this
interpretation becomes an open invitation to outsiders coveting indigenous lands
and resources.

Discussion

This review has sought to draw attention to the ways in which the urbanization
of indigenous Amazonians is interwoven with their ongoing struggles to defend
rural territories. This is an important point to make because it is counter-intuitive,
and because it demands that indigenous urbanization be assessed not in isolation
from but in relation to the ongoing struggle over rights to territory. While many
ethnographic sources touch on this issue, this article is an attempt to corral these
disparate insights, which can be summarized as follows:

1. An important catalyst of indigenous migration to cities in the late twentieth


century has been the need to place indigenous representatives in key nodes
of state power, in order to better negotiate for collective territorial and other
rights. This political catalyst explains the often far-flung indigenous Amazo-
nian diaspora in cities beyond the region. There is much to suggest that this
urbaneven cosmopolitanmobility has been critical to indigenous political
resurgence over the past three decades or so.
2. The experience of living in a city can profoundly politicize indigenous urbanites,
especially through greater familiarity with settler culture. That radicalization,
combined with urban opportunities for education and professionalization, has
arguably reinforced and strengthened the indigenous movement by shaping the
political consciousness of a new generation of multisited native youth.
3. Over time, Amazonian peoples territorial struggles will be shaped by dynamic
and complex negotiations of power that are influenced by the social circulations
between rural and urban, such as the tension between the forces that tend to
concentrate the power to represent indigenous concerns in cities, and the forces
that tend to legitimize that representational power only through rural residence
among co-ethnics.

Native Amazonians Strategic Urbanization 27


In these three ways, then, the de-territorialization of native Amazonians
through their rural-to-urban migrations cannot be fully understood in isolation
from re-territorializationor the political project of asserting indigenous rights
over particular ancestral spaces.
An important caveat here is that we make no particular claims about the
effectiveness of urbanization as political strategy, nor its inevitability for groups
seeking land rights. There are surely cases, for example, where ruralurban political
dynamics have undermined the effectiveness of a groups territorial struggles; no
doubt there are other cases in which urbanization has been absent from effective
autonomous land defense and governance. Nor is it our intention here to downplay
the complexities and social toll of long-distance ruralurban political negotiations,
especially within the context of a hostile nation statea point elaborated by
Clifford (2007). Any normative claims about how de- and re-territorialization
should be connected are therefore withheld; suffice to say here that the connection
exists, and operates in ways that deserve broader attention for how they help us to
better understand both urbanization and the options for life at home.
We have sought to make these links visible because of policy silence on this
topic. As our review of policy discourse on indigenous urbanization shows, the
possibilities for reading power into indigenous urbanization are routinely fore-
closed by the way in which policymakers frame the issue. Thus, the catalysts for
indigenous migration are understood only in terms of the generic pushpull mod-
els that draw any person from failing rural spaces to urban spaces of opportunity.
Similarly, the experience of urban living is understood as fundamentally generic
in the ways that it changes desires and identities that inexorably erode the cultural
and political importance of homelands as anything other than nostalgic spaces
of former residence. Indeed, texts suggest that collective rights are lost once in-
digenous individuals take up residence outside the ancestral spaces in which that
collective identity was forged (see Hooker 2005). Finally, while policy texts recog-
nize circulation, no policy text recognizes sending regions as anything but; they
are not understood as contested territories within the nation state.
As suggested throughout this review, the reason for policymakers silence on
the political character of indigenous migration is rooted in epistemological dif-
ferences. That is, ethnographic understandings of indigenous migration begin by
placing it within its political and historic context. In contrast, policy understand-
ings begin with an assumption of universality in human experience, in which
indigenous mobility represents a variation on the mobility transition experi-
enced by all human societies. Through this lens, then, there is no possibility for
understanding the mobility of indigenous peoples within the historically produced
and politically freighted context of their relationship to colonial powers or the na-
tion state. Their urbanization is instead understood to be intriguingly late (relative
to much of the rest of the world), and perhaps peculiar in some ways, but it is

28 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology


ultimately predictable, inevitable, and irreversible (UN 2009:231).11 Thus, while
policy documents recognize idiosyncrasies of indigenous peoples ruralurban
drift (UN-HABITAT 2010:1), these are not taken seriously as a challenge to the
predictable trajectory of human migration.12
As this article has sought to demonstrate, this seemingly apolitical stance on
indigenous urbanization nevertheless does serious political work. While policy-
makers are committed to assisting urban indigenous communities, this does not
negate the possibility that their texts also contribute to ongoing, multifaceted ef-
forts by powerful state and corporate interests to delegitimize indigenous claims
to resource-rich territories by endorsing the logic that equates urbanization with
de facto abandonment of territory.
We already mentioned efforts in Brazil to use evidence of Amazonian peoples
urbanization to question their established claims to territory. In this way, ur-
banization joins the pantheon of indigenous behaviors deemed inauthentic, which
include the use of Western clothing and technology (see Conklin 1997; Valdivia
2005). This article is intended to provide an antidote to this latest tactic of indige-
nous groups delegitimation and dispossession. Instead, the significant assertion
here is that, like the use of t-shirts and DVDs, urban living can form part of in-
digenous peoples arsenal of strategic adaptations by which they negotiate and
defend their multiple and distinctive places in the world.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Daniela Peluso for organizing the 2010 AAA session that inspired
this work, and to Jeremy Campbell for excellent feedback. Initial writing and
presentation was undertaken during a faculty professional leave to McSweeney
from Ohio State University; many thanks to the Mershon Center for International
Security Studies for providing space and support. The article was much improved
by the thoughtful comments from JLACA reviewers. We dedicate this work to
Steve Rubenstein, our friend and mentor, and a tireless advocate for Shuar and
indigenous Amazonians everywhere. Rest in peace Nanki.

Notes

1 The term urbanization refers here to the process of rural-to-urban migration and to the state

of living in an urban area.


2 It is worth noting that the Brazilian Population Studies Association (ABEP) recognized the

emergent contemporary importance of indigenous urbanization as early as the early 1980s (Pagliaro
2002).
3 For specific examples and a review of this evidence, see McSweeney and Jokisch (2007), Fine-Dare

and Rubenstein (2009), and Rubenstein (2009).

Native Amazonians Strategic Urbanization 29


4 For more on this distinction, see Perreault (2003a, 2003b).
5 We draw here from Wilson and Peters (2005) use of stretched out social relations in the context

of indigenous migrants.
6 Ramos (2010:257) states: How successful or doomed (indigenous migrants) efforts are in the

long run to maintain their identity and ties to their homeland is an empirical question that only
intensive and long-term research may be able to answer.
7 Scholars note that for some Amazonian groups, this urbanization is an extension of an age-old

strategy of settlement relocation in the face of external threats (e.g., Alexiades 2009; Picchi 1998; Urrea
Giraldo 1994).
8 For example, dispossession and rural violence are understood to be major catalysts driving dis-

placed indigenous populations into urban environments, particularly in Colombia (e.g., UN-HABITAT
201:183; UNPFII and IOM 2007; Yescas 2008:30).
9 An important body of work has focused on indigenous mobilities in Amazonia and their impor-

tance to ecological management and change (e.g., Alexiades 2009). These ethnoecological dynamics,
however, are beyond the scope of our analysis.
10 This outcome can be theorized as a typical example of Latin American states response to the

challenge represented by the indigenous movement, whereby indigenous leadership is neutralized or


coopted through grants, employment within state bureaucracies, special status, and other forms of
neoliberal multiculturalism (see Hale 2005).
11 In these respects, the policy documents echo Taylor and Bells (2004) call to conceptualize an

Indigenous Mobility Transition, which could, presumably, recognize the specificities and idiosyn-
crasies of the indigenous urbanization experience without leaving the ideological security of modernist
theories of social change.
12 It is a separate research endeavor, however, to get at the origins of this epistemological stance,

and how it might be interpreted in terms of the international communitys resistance to the challenge
that mobile indigenous peoples, especially as a coherent international collective, represent to liberal
conceptions of citizenship, boundaries, and nation. For more on this, see Merlan (2009) and Morgan
and Gulson (2010).

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