The Andean Catch-22: ethnicity, class and resource governance in Bolivia and Ecuador

ABSTRACTThis study deals with the tensions and contradictions between resource governance, welfare policies, and the constitutionally recognized rights of nature and the indigenous peoples in Bolivia and Ecuador. We have identified a certain reductionism in current debates on these issues and propose a more systematic analytical focus on class and the class-ethnicity duality, as expressed in historical and contemporary indigenous struggles, and also confirmed via our ethnographic material. Drawing on the double bind as expressed in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 wherein the protagonists face situations in which they do not have any choice to achieve a net gain, this article centres on how national governments have to choose between the protections of rights – in this case ethnic and environmental rights – and welfare provision financed by extractive revenues. From the perspective of ecologically concerned indigenous actors, the Catch-22 is articulated in the choice or compromise between universal welfarism on t...