Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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
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
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
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.
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
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:
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
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
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:
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
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
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
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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