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Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
AGRO-BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION AS "SYMBOLIC CONQUEST": THE CASE OF IN SITU

POTATO CONSERVATION IN BOLIVIA
Author(s): NADINE SAAD
Source: Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revue canadienne des
études latino-américaines et caraïbes, Vol. 34, No. 68, Special Issue on Environmental
Governace / Numéro spécial sur la gouvernance environnementale (2009), pp. 89-109
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AGRO-BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION
AS "SYMBOLIC CONQUEST": THE CASE
OF IN SITU POTATO CONSERVATION IN
BOLIVIA
NADINE SAAD
Independent Researcher
Abstract. This article analyzes an in situ potato conservation program

implemented in a richly biodiverse area of Cochabamba, Bolivia, as
Foucauldian governance. It argues that the establishment of a "con
area" for the purposes of the program is facilitated by the re-signific
the place, through the use of a dominant conservation discourse to
and select it. This re-signification represents what Escobar (1996
"symbolic conquest" of the place and its people, affording the con
authority - linked to national and international conservation interests
in which to enact and extend its worldview. Meanwhile, the conservati
is slowly remoulded into an imaged "place of origin" of the potato var
conservation interest. This article suggests that in order to twin envir
conservation with social justice, it is necessary to question the discour
legitimate conservation and to seek the counter-discourses that are sile
Resumen. Este artículo analiza un programa de conservación in situ

implementado actualmente en una zona de alta biodiversidad en Coc
Bolivia, como una forma de gobernanza Foucauldiana. Argumenta q
blecimiento de un "área de conservación" es facilitado por la re-sign
del lugar, a través del uso de un discurso dominante de la conserva
describirlo y seleccionarlo. Esta resignificación representa lo que
denomina una "conquista simbólica" del lugar y de su gente, brindá
Canadian Journal of Latín American and Caribbean Studies , Vol. 34, No. 68 (2009): 89
89
90 CJLACS / RCELAC 34/68 2009
autoridad de conservación un lugar d

mundo. A través de este ejercicio,
moldeada sobre la imagen de un im
de papa de interés para la conserva
combinar la conservación del medi
cuestionar los discursos que legitim
alternativos que son silenciados.
Introduction
Environmental conservation in Latin America and the Caribbean is

increasingly becoming an issue of governance. This issue comes as
the degradation and scarcity of natural resources gain attention in
scientific and policy circles, and as a growing number and variety of
institutions (ranging from all levels of government to civil society
organizations, the private sector, universities, research institutes, and
development agencies) become involved in environmental initiatives
in the region. There has been much critique of existing governance
mechanisms and arrangements used to achieve the important goals
of conservation (be it of soils, forests, water, and/or of species and
genetic diversity) and around the myriad effects on, and opportunities
provided to, the people whose livelihoods depend on the environments
in question. The objective of many scholars and activists engaged in
this area of work is to question and challenge conservation approaches
that disadvantage local people, and that, in many cases, commit what
Zimmerer (2000) has called "conservation abuses" (358). The hope
is that conservation may be effective and compatible with social and
economic justice (Agrawal 2005; Braun 2002; Bryant 2001; Sund-
berg 2003; Escobar 1996, 1998; Gonzales 2000; Leach and Mearns
1996). While critical participatory approaches are commonly used in
conservation projects to increase the buy-in of local populations, they
are often not framed in ways that address governance issues.
Escobar (1996) analyzes the current conservation movement in
terms of the historical shifts that have occurred in the relationship
between capital and nature. While capital previously ravaged and
destroyed nature in order to generate economic value, Escobar argues
that it has recently entered an "ecological" and conservationist phase
in which the impetus is to enclose and protect nature, and hence to
Saad / Agro-biodiversity Conservation as "Symbolic Conquest" 91
conserve it, in order to assure continued economic growth. This, he

argues, is the crux of "sustainable development." He further argues
that, most recently, capital has entered a "post-modern" phase in
response to the development of advanced biological technologies
and to the appreciation of local knowledge that can help scientists
create economic value from a wide array of biological materials. In
this phase, the incursion of capital into the life worlds of local people
is deeper than ever. Rather than focus on specific parts of nature, or
resources, the "post-modern phase of ecological capital" sees nature
as a "reservoir of capital" whereby every part of nature, down to its
tiniest particles and to the cultural and social knowledge and practice
associated with it, is potentially valuable and thus worth conserving
(Katz 1998; McAfee 1999; Escobar 1996). In this light, conservation
can be understood as being about much more than protecting nature. It
is also about how certain guises and uses of nature can be prioritized
and secured:
To all appearances, the preserved landscape is secure; but in

the world of action, mediated by particular axes of knowl-
edge, power and wealth, its conversion to resource in some
global accounting ledger has fundamentally altered its status
and temporality. The preserve becomes, in current lingo, "a
biodiversity bank." . . . All of which begs the question of who
has the rights to determine the "appropriate" use of preserved
land; of how the altered temporalities of nature bias future
social access to the landscape. (Katz 1998, 49)
What is key here is the process through which capital incorporates

new places into its domain, thereby creating the conditions for their
transformation into "resources" and "reservoirs of value." In line
with the argumentation of post-structuralist scholars such as Foucault
(1979), Said (1978), Braun (2002), Gregory (2001), and many oth-
ers, Escobar (1996) sees this incursion as being as much discursive,
or cultural - having to do with the meanings assigned to nature and
to people - as they are material. He thus describes it as a "symbolic
conquest."
This article discusses an agricultural biodiversity conservation
program currently implemented in the Bolivian Andes as a form of
environmental governance. The

conservation initiative that aims to conserve Andean root and tuber
diversity in the social, cultural, and biophysical contexts in which it
was domesticated and has been maintained by farmers for millen-
nia. This approach to conservation is premised on the idea that these
contexts are important to the continued evolution and conservation of
crop landraces,1 and that the involvement and participation of local
people are crucial to the success of conservation efforts. I propose that
in spite of its importance for biological conservation, and because of
its involvement of local people and their agricultural systems, it is
important to understand and analyze in situ conservation as a mode
of environmental governance in which power is all but absent. I argue
that in situ conservation, as it is practiced in the case that I analyze
here, represents a "symbolic conquest" (Escobar 1996) of the people,
place, and plants that it engages.
A central element of the in situ conservation program is the
selection and targeting for conservation of a group of communities
conforming a county called Candelaria, within the municipality of
Colomi, located 60 km northeast of the city of Cochabamba. I will
show how Candelaria, the place where the in situ conservation pro-
gram is located, is absorbed into the rationality of the "post-modern
form of ecological capital," through the discourse that is created about
it. This conquest is then materialized through a set of practices that
takes the values and descriptions used in the discourse as a starting
point and moves forward to remake Candelaria into, and to conserve it
as, a place of origin of the agricultural diversity in question (Gregory
2001; Braun 2002; Saad 2008).
This article was inspired by an unexpected incident that occurred
when I first visited the place that eventually became the field site for
my Ph.D. dissertation research on agrobiodiversity conservation in
the Bolivian Andes. During this visit I was introduced to various farm-
ers with whom my host institution, La Fundación para la Promoción
e Investigación de Productos Andinos (the Foundation for the Promo-
tion and Research of Andean Products; PROINPA), a private founda-
tion responsible for the conservation of Bolivia's Andean diversity,
had been working for several years. After patiently listening to my
host's introduction that explained my interest in local potato varie-
ties, in the associated knowledge and practices, and in the possible
reasons why the landraces were being eroded, a farmer responded:

"How many times are you going to ask me these same questions? Do
you never learn? Don't you know that it was you [the foundation and
other, especially foreign, scientists] who made the varieties disappear
in the first place?"2
This was followed by a string of complaints about the introduction
by scientific institutions of "improved" potato varieties and agro-
chemicals to the area some 60 years earlier, during the revolutionary
government's modernizing push, which was strongly backed by for-
eign funds. The farmer also complained, more generally, about gov-
ernment agricultural policies, the persistently low price of potatoes
in the markets, the difficulty of accessing credit, and the development
and dissemination of genetically modified crops, among other factors
that he claimed make it increasingly difficult to live and farm in this
area, let alone to continue to cultivate and maintain the diversity that
we outsiders are so interested in. My host ended the conversation with
the farmer in Quechua and, except for his dismissal of the farmer's
comments, no more was spoken between us of the incident.
In retrospect, it is evident that the farmer's questions and com-
ments were rhetorical, and that they were not only directed at my
host. However, the farmer's complaints, and my host's inability and
unwillingness to engage with them, tell an important story about
conservation as governance. All of the factors that the farmer brought
up, in their distinct ways, complicate and politicize the subject of
agro-biological diversity in Bolivia generally, and in the specific place
where the in situ program is implemented. They suggest that there
may be different ways of interpreting and addressing the problem of
genetic erosion than those forwarded and performed by dominant
discourses such as that enacted by PROINPA. What is important,
and what I will show in this article, is that the considerations brought
up by the farmer, evidently important to many local people, do not
figure in the in situ conservation discourse circulated and performed
by PROINPA in this area. This invites the question of what it is that
licenses these silences and omissions. Far from being a reflection of
PROINPA's incompetence or unconscious, it speaks of the power
of conservation discourses to highlight particular parts of problems,
to frame the challenges only in technical and managerial terms, and
hence also to depoliticize conservation. Meanwhile such interventions
enable the continuation of colonial

political and scientific elites.
In Situ Conservation as Governance
Three aspects of in situ conservation (ones that it has in common

with biodiversity and conservation more generally) implicate it as a
form of governance and provide windows through which it can be
analyzed as such. The first is that conservation is often territorialized.
It is performed within territories, defined along biophysical and/or
jurisdictional boundaries. While biodiversity conservation programs
establish biosphere reserves, extractive reserves, conservation areas,
and community resource management zones among other forms of
conservation territories (Zimmerer 2000, 358), in situ conservation
activities are usually concentrated in genetic reserves, or "micro-
centres of diversity" that are identified and established specifically for
this purpose. Conservation thus strategically draws its jurisdictions
and designates its subjects.
A second aspect of in situ conservation is that, unlike previous
conservation efforts around the world that excluded human socie-
ties, many conservation efforts being implemented today include
and engage local people. In situ conservation is, by definition, part
of this new turn in the conservation movement because it explicitly
seeks to encompass the social and cultural, as well as the biophysical.
However, once conservation territories are established, their manage-
ment and use by the people who live and work in these places become
subjects of the scrutiny and recommendations of conservation experts
and authorities. How can local people's relationships with, and treat-
ment of, nature be made to coincide with what conservationists and
environmental practitioners conceive to be the common good; what
are considered to be "sustainable" practices? This is where govern-
ance comes in.
Recent analysis and theorizations of the workings of power in
environment and development interventions have drawn on Michel
Foucault's work on government (1986, 1991). Foucault saw govern-
ment as the encouragement of society to behave in certain ways (Allen
2003). He argued that this was done by persuading populations that
certain behaviours were conducive to their own well-being and to
that of society in general. Key to this persuasion was the generation

of expert knowledge about society, and the circulation of discourses,
the creation of institutions, and the implementation of practices that
affirmed and entrenched particular knowledge. Modern governance
invariably depends on the generation of expert knowledge about so-
ciety and nature (Scott 1998).
This takes us to a third aspect of in situ conservation and nature
conservation more broadly: that it always comes accompanied, legiti-
mated, and facilitated by discourse - a knowledge generated about
the challenge at hand, and an associated set of practices to solve it.
In order to elucidate the workings of power in governance, Foucault
(1980) highlighted the multiplicity and partiality of knowledge. Ac-
cording to Foucault, all knowledge is contingent on the identities
and positions of those who create it. The predominance of certain
knowledge, more than an indication of their "truth," is a reflection
of the power relation between its proponents and the proponents of
alternative knowledge. Foucault described power as a creative force
in the sense that knowledge and discourse create the realities that
they describe. They do so by enabling and informing the design of
practices and institutions that inscribe power onto bodies and spaces.
Like this, conservation reworks the territories and societies that it se-
lects according to its understandings and prerogatives. These bodies
and spaces in turn reinforce and confirm the knowledge and discourse
that creates them.
This understanding of power/knowledge and of discourse has
important implications for environmental governance as what counts
as nature (and as natural) - both as what is perceived by conservation
specialists to be lost in processes of environmental degradation, and
what becomes the model for restoration and conservation - are not
given realities, but partial and contingent truths (Castree 2001 ; Braun
2002, 25-28; Katz 1998). They are always social constructions (albeit
relating to concrete, material referents, as Escobar [1998] explains)
that are impregnated with, and also advocate for, the worldviews (the
understandings of the world) of those who create them. The conser-
vation territories that in situ conservation creates are thus inherently
"nature-society hybrids" (Zimmerer 2000), not only because they
deliberately encompass plants and landscapes that are managed by
human societies, but also, importantly, because they are as much
products of nature as they are of

relations.
Like all knowledge and discour
ated" (Haraway 1991) approach
resources. It is in this context t
and philosophical underpinnings
it forms part.
The Cultural Narrative of In Situ Conservation
In situ conservation emerged from a set of circumstances, processes,

and institutions, whose imprint it bears profoundly. The need to con-
serve landraces became a global concern in the 1970s and 1980s, the
years following the spread of the Green Revolution, which brought
hybrid seeds to many parts of the world. There was a fear that the
large-scale replacement of local materials with hybrid varieties in
centres of crop diversity would erode the genetic diversity that was
the raw material for future improved varieties. Ex situ gene banks
were established as part of the international crop-breeding establish-
ment in order to ensure the continued availability and access to these
valuable sources of genetic material. The in situ approach emerged
as ex situ conservation was found to be inappropriate for crops (such
as the potato) that are vegetatively propagated, and whose seed does
not breed "true." As the seeds of vegetative planting materials cannot
be stored for long periods, these crops need to be grown out continu-
ously, imposing elevated costs for their maintenance, associated with
the availability/use of land, irrigation, chemical inputs, and labour.
Field gene banks were conceived to overcome this problem but often
did not encompass the range of conditions thought to be ideal for
the full range of crops and varieties to be conserved in them. There
was also serious concern about ex situ conservation's inability to
allow crops to evolve and adapt to changing biophysical and social
conditions. Finally, a growing recognition of the importance of local
people's knowledge to crop management and conservation pressed
the case for in situ conservation.
Although in situ conservation initially appeared to be a radical
shift in the way agro-biodiversity conservation was approached, it
represents important continuities with ex situ conservation and with
the worldviews that spurred the Green Revolution. Underlying the

Green Revolution was the predominantly Western idea that seed is a
commodity, and that agriculture in general is a commercial activity. It
was hoped that seed packages (improved seed and their accompany-
ing agro-chemicals) would increase the efficiency and productivity
of agriculture in the Global South as it had done in the United States.
This would spur development and be the solution to poverty and
hunger in the Global South. Key to this was the availability of the
genetic diversity and the existence of scientific know-how with which
to continue creating "improved" varieties that could in turn generate
this economic revenue. Seed was thus linked to development through
scientific improvement and commercialization. In line with this think-
ing, in situ conservation initiatives often attempt to commercialize
landraces in order to generate economic incentives for their conser-
vation by local people (Hagman and Müller 2001). The focus on the
potential of genetic materials to generate economic value likens these
materials to the "reservoirs of value" that Escobar (1996, 57) explains
are characteristic of the current conservation boom.
A second continuity with the Green Revolution, and particularly
with its ideological underpinnings in modernization theory, is the
tendency of in situ conservation discourse to divide the world con-
ceptually into modern and pre-modern - or "traditional" - societies.
The proponents of in situ conservation take for granted the idea that
a "traditional" society is one that is at an earlier stage of development
than industrialized and modern societies. While initially the "tradi-
tional" was seen as backwards and in need of "development," more
recently and in part as a spin-off from the environmental movement,
"traditional" societies and their agricultures have been idealized as
ecologically benign. They are societies that are understood as having
been less tainted by modernity, and thus are perhaps more "natural"
(Latour 1993). Drawing on Gupta and Ferguson (1997), Braun (2002,
261) discusses this discursive practice, and that of naming communi-
ties indigenous, as the conflating of local communities with nature.
Although now seen in a positive, rather than in a negative (and back-
wards), light, the focus on "traditional" societies still assumes a binary
logic whereby some societies are caught in the past while others are in
actual time. In situ conservation's focus on "traditional societies" and
"traditional agricultural practices" is couched in this binary thinking.
These and other instances o

of in situ conservation "situat
view - that of the world's dom
organizations associated with th
tion, and the current conservat
local people as "reservoirs of va
in situ conservation discourse a
it forms part of currently dom
the only discourse that exists.
tion are muffled and silenced. T
particular form of knowledge an
of Candelaria can thus be under
between different ways of app
societies. It is a "symbolic conq
The "Symbolic Conquest

The "symbolic conquest" of C
through its selection as a conse
of its landraces and local know
economic value. Both work to
doing so absorb the place, its p
into the cultural narrative of in
environment and development.
"In situ" explicitly refers to
origin to, and have maintained, t
are places where genetic diver
of a pilot site is therefore key
conducted by PROINPA. The
"innocent"3 one, however. The
nature, a universal nature, from
to protect a very specific natur
worldviews of in situ conservatio
no need to establish a genetic
parks - Carrasco and Tunari
proximity to the county, and th
2008). However these parks do
the foundation seeks to protect.
to have both the biophysical and the social characteristics necessary

for the maintenance of genetic diversity, and thus resembles what a
"place of origin" is imagined to have been like.
Map 1
Protected Areas of Bolivia
Base map source: Servicio Nacional de Areas Protegidas (SENA), 2007.
PROINPA describes the biophysi

istics of Candelaria as appropriate
nance of diversity. The county's cl
favourable in Bolivia for the culti
and particularly of potatoes.4 Bein
the inter-Andean valley of Cocha
land tropics of the Chapare regio
range in altitude from 2300 to 460
provides the niche microclimates
roots and tubers are adapted,5 thi
key to the maintenance of diversit
apparent concentration of Andean ro
is thus attributed, in large part, to
their management by farmers.
Complementing the biophysical
social attributes. As with the biophy
attributes will do for a genetic re
because it has a "traditional" soc
and described in detail, sums up th
of the place, as interpreted by the
people's detailed technical knowle
conditions in this mountainous area
ent crops and varieties and their p
their ancestors' agricultural practi
A traditional society is importan
because, as discussed above, it rep
ably lost fewer of its original attr
societies have. As such, it is ass
symbolically can be added to Cand
describe a place where crop geneti
through this portrayal that Cande
of nature that is important for in
nature; nor is it nature as would
nature that speaks to the worldvie
situ conservation. The description
sets the stage for the establishmen
The values and meanings that the
genetic materials and its local know
into the discursive world of in situ conservation. The foundation's
valuation of Candelaria echoes Escobar's (1996) explanation of con-
servation as a "post-modern form of ecological capital," in which
nature and local people are seen as "reservoirs of capital." In the
context of the designation of Candelaria as a micro-centre of diversity
and its selection as a pilot site for in situ conservation activities, the
foundation writes:
A microcentre constitutes a genetic well where genes of po-

tential economic value exist that have not yet been identified
for their quality, productivity, agronomic characteristics, re-
sistance to plagues and diseases, or environmental adaptation.
(Cadima, Almanza, García, Terrazas, Gonzales, and Gandaril-
las 2003, 53; author's translation)
"Conservation efforts," it writes elsewhere, "are worthwhile to the

extent that genetic resources are utilized, either in genetic improve-
ment, in agro-industry, the identification of molecules, or other uses"
(Garcia, Cadima, Terrazas, and Gandarillas 2003, 12; author's trans-
lation). Evidently the value that the foundation assigns to the genetic
materials in Candelaria corresponds closely to their utility and to
their perceived potential to create, with the help of advanced science,
economic value for development.
The foundation's interest in all crop genetic material and in the
local knowledge associated with it is also couched in this apprecia-
tion of nature and society as "reservoirs of value." Being responsible
for the nation's Andean roots and tubers gene bank, the foundation
collects, documents, and preserves germplasm that it finds during col-
lection missions and conservation activities in the field. Its criteria for
selecting materials to be collected include: any materials that are not
under a national level conservation system; those that are under "some
degree of threat, are underutilized, or in danger of erosion" (Garcia et
al. 2003, 9); and any that are "potentially interesting" (Garcia et al.
2003, 9). Given that the only national conservation system is the gene
bank, and that all materials are conceivably under some threat because
in situ conservation operates on the assumption of an urgent threat of
genetic erosion, this leaves no imaginable materials that might not be
eligible for collection (Saad 2008, 126). As with other parts of nature
deemed "reservoirs of capital," a

worth collecting and conserving.
As discussed, local knowledge
interest in the conservation eff
foundation explains that "ethn
from farmers can help to calcul
varieties and like this "make a st
(Cadima et al. 2003, 53). In the f
is important "[for] making the be
Andean tubers" (Cadima et al. 200
thinking characteristic of the po
where local knowledge is valued b
tential contribution to the gener
Along with the description of
acteristics discussed above, thi
diversity and local knowledge m
compatible with, the cultural nar
through this exercise of descri
begins to have a new meaning as
microcentre.
The foundation furthered this
successfully lobbying local munic
declaring Colomi, the municipali
"Agro-ecological and Biodiversity
pal de Colomi 2002, 85; PROIN
municipality wrote several lines o
of agrobiodiversity into its four
(PROINPA 2002, 32; my transla
the national government to strengt
tion. In response, the Ministry of
Colomi as a site for the impleme
sity Conservation Strategy. Thro
Colomi and Candelaria becomes
agrobiodiversity conservation. Th
knowledge, is not only a reflection
see in Candelaria, however. It is
is not a coincidence that the desc
aligned with the cultural narrati
meaning is the result of the power relation between PROINPA's dis-
course and others that have been silenced.
The reach and consequence of Escobar's "symbolic conquest"
do not remain in the world of words and meanings. Discourse is not
only language; it is also how meanings and understandings are put
into practice. The discourse that is created about Candelaria not only
permits and enables its selection as the site for the foundation's in
situ conservation program, it also makes it suitable and available for
the implementation of a series of activities aimed at the conservation
of its biodiversity and local knowledge. As conservation experts and
as scientists who have studied Candelaria, PROINPA and its staff are
accepted as authorities, not only on Andean crop diversity in gen-
eral, but also on the diversity found in Candelaria. This credibility
licenses the foundation, not only to describe Candelaria as it does, but
also, importantly, to recommend what the municipal lines of action
regarding biodiversity conservation should be and what the National
Biodiversity Conservation Strategy should consist of.
One of the principal conservation activities implemented in Can-
delaria is the establishment and support of the Asociación de Produc-
tores de Tubérculos Andinos de Candelaria (Association of Andean
Tuber Producers of Candelaria; APROTAC), a group of farmers who
commercialize a select group of "native" varieties of Andean roots and
tubers. The idea is that the increased incomes derived from the sales
of these varieties will encourage more farmers to commercialize, and
hence to cultivate and conserve, these varieties. Another of the con-
servation activities implemented by the foundation in Candelaria is
the "re-introduction" from the national gene bank of varieties thought
to be native, or at least adaptable to this area. The idea here is that, as
a place of origin and as a "traditional" society, Candelaria once had
all of these materials, and its people, as "stewards of biodiversity,"
once maintained and conserved them. It should come as no surprise
that, like its description and valuation, the activities the foundation
implements, having been informed by its discourse, reflect the same
set of values and understandings characteristic of the worldviews
of in situ conservation and its proponents. What is important about
these activities is that, in treating Candelaria as a genetic reserve, the
foundation slowly works to make it one. As such, the activities can
be likened to Foucault's "technologies of power" (1979), that serve
to extend and maintain the ration

among parts of society, that wer
tionalities beforehand. This is ho
Counter-discourses of Conservat
On the surface, without a deeper

affect local people's resource use
discourse such as that offered b
initial visit to Candelaria, the act
Candelaria, and the incentives to
questionable about them. In fact t
ures given the description of Can
as a mode of governance, howeve
management of Candelaria as a "
questions regarding the portray
conservation and for the implem
described above.
The farmer I encountered on my first visit to Candelaria alluded
to the increasing difficulties faced by farmers in maintaining their
livelihoods and, also, their genetic diversity in the inter- Andean val-
leys of Bolivia. In Candelaria, a former hacienda that was disbanded
and distributed to peasant farmers during the land reform in the
1950s, these difficulties relate to the shrinking and eroding land base
on which each generation tries to make a living, a problem found in
many parts of Bolivia (Urioste 2003). Land holdings shrink as family
plots are successively divided among the children of each genera-
tion. They are eroded because farmers were led, by the modernizing
push of the 1950s that brought the Green Revolution to Bolivia,
into a spiral of increasing intensification and use of agro-chemicals,
which have exhausted and depleted valley soils (Healy 2001 , Paulson
2005). Intensification has been exacerbated by the persistently low
market prices of Andean roots and tubers and the increasing cost of
farm inputs. Soils are further eroded as land scarcity promotes suc-
cessive plantings and reduced fallows. The push to commercialize
"native" varieties raises the spectre that higher-lying areas of these
valleys, which are less eroded, in part because of the persistence of
fallow periods in which they recover their fertility, may be dragged
into intensified cultivation. The consequences of this may be nega-
Saad / Agro-biodiversity Conservation as "Symbolic Conquest" 1 05
tive both for the conservation of biodiversity and for local farmers'
livelihoods. In spite of this, land scarcity and erosion do not form part
of the dominant discourse.
Until now only a small percentage of the farmers in Candelaria
have been participating in APROTAC, and many are sceptical of
commercializing "native" potato varieties as a way of alleviating their
economic hardships (Saad 2008). Much of the population of Cande-
laria, particularly the men and young women, migrate seasonally to
major cities and to the Chapare tropics for seasonal work to comple-
ment their dwindling farming incomes. Those who can afford it are
buying land in the lower-lying areas outside Candelaria where they
can produce more commercial potatoes and take advantage of lower
production costs and higher prices of early production. For many,
staying home and cultivating "native" potatoes, as their ancestors
supposedly did, is tantamount to economic suicide. For others, it is an
unattainable ideal. For farmers such as the one I spoke with on my first
visit to Candelaria, following the foundation's recipe for conservation
is not necessarily a guarantee for a brighter future. Above all, it brings
no assurance of the resolution, or reversal, of what they see as their
fundamental problem: the existence and implementation of foreign
and scientific discourses that do not value them, their livelihoods, or
their natural environments in the same ways that they do.
The farmer that I encountered in Candelaria that day was recit-
ing a counter-discourse: a set of ideas and ways of understanding
and addressing the issues of genetic erosion that do not fit in, and
in fact challenge, the dominant discourse. Following the line of his
argument might suggest a very different approach to landraces and
their conservation than that implemented in Candelaria, and this
would perhaps represent a different set of power relations than those
inherent in many conservation and development initiatives today. It
might mean that local people will be permitted to place, at the centre
of conservation strategies, their own meanings and values of nature
and of landraces, even as these may be connected to broader issues
such as livelihoods, cultural and territorial struggles, and agricul-
tural, social and trade policies (Escobar 1996, 1998; Gonzales 2000;
Apffel-Marglin 1997). In analyzing environmental conservation as a
form of governance, it is imperative that scholars and practitioners,
seeking to twin biological conservation with social justice, question
the discourses that legitimate co

counter-discourses that are silenc
and activists implementing alter
are articulating such counter-disc
Conclusion
This article addresses the conservation of agricultural biodiversity

as a form of governance. It argues that the selection and designation
of certain areas as conservation sites, or territories, represent what
Escobar (1996) calls a "symbolic conquest" of nature and society.
This conquest is not about the imposition of brute force. And it is not
simply about a physical place, or about the actual material existence
of the people and the plants that are part of Candelaria. Interestingly,
in the case of Candelaria, the territorialization of conservation is not
achieved through the fencing-off of an area, as has been the case in
numerous other nature reserves. There is, in fact, no physical bound-
ary that separates Candelaria from the areas around it. What sets
Candelaria apart, making it the jurisdiction and subject of PROINPA's
conservation program, is the discourse that is created about the place
its people, and its Andean root and tuber diversity. The "symbolic con-
quest" of Candelaria is achieved through a discursive re-signification
of this place. Once Candelaria's meaning is aligned with crop genetic
diversity and "traditional" agricultural knowledge and practices, this
place becomes the target of conservation activities that will slowly
rework it to resemble the imagined places of origin of the genetic
diversity of conservation interest.
Notes
1 In situ conservation is particularly important for crops such as the potato

(and other roots and tubers) which are very difficult, risky, and costly to
maintain in gene banks due to their vegetative modes of reproduction. A
full explanation of in situ conservation is beyond the scope of the present
article. For a detailed account see Saad (2008), Gonzales (2000), and
Maxted, Ford-Lloyd, and Hawkes (1997).
2 Field notes, Candelaria, Bolivia, October 2005.
3 I use the term "innocent" here as Flax (1992) used it in her article "The
End of Innocence," to express the assumed objectivity and neutrality of
knowledge.
4 According to Gamboa ( 1 993 , 57), Candelaria has among the highest potato
yields in the department of Cochabamba.
5 The idea that these varieties are specifically adapted to microclimates has
been convincingly refuted, particularly in the work of Zimmerer (1996);
however, it still informs scientific discourses of in situ conservation.
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Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

AGRO-BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION AS "SYMBOLIC CONQUEST": THE CASE OF IN SITU

Abstract. This article analyzes an in situ potato conservation program

Resumen. Este artículo analiza un programa de conservación in situ

autoridad de conservación un lugar d

Environmental conservation in Latin America and the Caribbean is

conserve it, in order to assure continued economic growth. This, he

To all appearances, the preserved landscape is secure; but in

What is key here is the process through which capital incorporates

environmental governance. The

reasons why the landraces were being eroded, a farmer responded:

enable the continuation of colonial

In Situ Conservation as Governance

Three aspects of in situ conservation (ones that it has in common

that of society in general. Key to this persuasion was the generation

products of nature as they are of

The Cultural Narrative of In Situ Conservation

In situ conservation emerged from a set of circumstances, processes,

the worldviews that spurred the Green Revolution. Underlying the

These and other instances o

The "Symbolic Conquest

to have both the biophysical and the social characteristics necessary

Base map source: Servicio Nacional de Areas Protegidas (SENA), 2007.

PROINPA describes the biophysi

A microcentre constitutes a genetic well where genes of po-

"Conservation efforts," it writes elsewhere, "are worthwhile to the

deemed "reservoirs of capital," a

to extend and maintain the ration

On the surface, without a deeper

the discourses that legitimate co

This article addresses the conservation of agricultural biodiversity

1 In situ conservation is particularly important for crops such as the potato

Agrawal, Arun. 2005. Environmentality: Technologies of government and the

the political ecology of social movements. Journ

writings, 1972-1977 , edited by C. Gordon, 78-1

Robert Hurley. New York: Random House.

tal^ ; edited by G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and R

Gamboa, David. 1993. Sistemas de producción y m

scapes and nature-society hybrids. Annals of the Assoc

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