Colonization and the Bodies-Territory. Leadership of Indigenous Women in the TIPNIS Conflict, Bolivia

Abstract

This article aims to show the role of indigenous women in defending the Indigenous Territory and National Park Isiboro Secure (TIPNIS) in the Bolivian Amazonia versus the highway project and the cocalero colonization promoted by the government of Evo Morales Ayma. The study of resistance in the TIPNIS will serve to illustrate the current relationship between colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy, on the one hand, and the (self) identification of female bodies with the territory, on the other. We start from a broader global and national context where the Bolivian state, under the “progressive” governments of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), is characterized by a unifying and “modernizing” nationalism based on accelerated extractivism and a developmentalist projection that contradicts the avowed plurinational and pro-indigenous principles, and asserts the dispossession of territories and resources by transnational capital.