Distribution of Bolivian public lands and indigenous perspectives: the change of land value in the Comunidad Guaraní 16 de Marzo Cordillera

Abstract

By analyzing indigenous perceptions regarding concepts of nature, land and development, the article describes the socio-territorial and environmental change in the only indigenous Guarani community present in the intensive agriculture area of the Bolivian lowlands. The perspectives of the comunarios, their relationship to the land and conception of nature are in constant change, conditioned by the community’s insertion into the plurality of the global world. This is fertile ground for new needs, desires, and ideas of well-being. The goal of this ethnography is to highlight the contradictions between state policies and indigenous needs in the frame of agrarian development as well as individual fulfillment for indigenous peoples. The community analyzed is completely involved in the agrarian extractivism characterizing the region and representing the main connection with the global world outside the community. In this context, geographically distant from the rest of the Asamblea del Pueblo Guaran. (APG), emerge a series of complex changes and a new conception of land for this native people. The theoretical perspective is embedded in political anthropology, adopting a materialist point of view that aims to give ample space to the economic and cultural structures within which social actors carry out their practices. In-depth bibliographic study of ethnographic, historical, and geopolitical analyses was combined with the analysis of ethnographic sources such as interviews, participant observation, and photographic material.