The election of Evo Morales in 2005 was followed by a set of constitutional changes facilitating the inclusion of indigenous and aboriginal groups in the Bolivian state. With the aim of taking a bottom-up approach to the drafting of the new constitution, the new government created a constituent assembly, including representatives from Bolivia’s various social movements at the time and from various geographical departments. After 14 months of drafting, the new constitution was put to a national referendum and came into force in January 2009. In the preamble to the constitution, Morales identifies the main problem of contemporary Bolivian society as the concentration of wealth in the hands of the ‘new’ inhabitants, referring to those who settled in Bolivia after the Spanish conquest, and the exclusion of Bolivia’s ‘originary’ peoples from economic and political power (Morales, 2009, pp. 1–2). According to Morales (p. 2), the new constitution aims to ‘end racism, discrimination and exclusion’ by building a ‘plurinational, democratic and intercultural state’, which will secure the equal status of all Bolivians (pp. 2–3).
One of the reforms aiming to guarantee legal protection of indigenous peoples is the recognition of communal land ownership and the self-governance of indigenous groups (Constitution: Art. 2). The recognition of ‘ancestral’ lands for Bolivia’s indigenous groups means that a certain territory is guaranteed to a
specific ethnic group without the need for any financial acquisition. The land reforms of the MAS government clearly define who qualifies for the distribution of land titles and who does not. Accordingly, the constitution defines 36 ethnic groups whose ancestral lands and traditions are recognised and protected by the Plurinational State (Constitution: Art. 30). Afrobolivians are one of these recognised ethnic groups. However, how exactly they fit into the government’s notion of the poor indigenous majority oppressed by a small white or mestizo elite is not clear in the constitution. It is apparent that Afrobolivians belong to neither of the groups whose dichotomous opposition is fundamental to the political reforms promoted by the Morales government. They certainly do not belong to Bolivia’s white or mestizo elites who have historically monopolised Bolivia’s economic and political power. At the same time, however, they are not an indigenous group with ancestral rights based on pre-Columbian presence.
Despite their constitutional recognition, Afrobolivians do not fit into the ethnic discourse the constitution is based on, and therefore do not qualify for the same rights as indigenous peoples. While Afrobolivians are constitutionally guaranteed the same legal status as indigenous groups (Constitution: Art. 32), they were not initially included in the constituent assembly which allegedly included representatives of all of Bolivia’s different ethnic groups (Medina, 2013). During pre-assembly dialogues, Afrobolivians were accused of being too few to be a priority in the constituent assembly. In response, more than 500 Afrobolivians played Saya music in front of the building where negotiations took place, until they were included in political dialogues on an equal footing with other groups (Medina, 2013). As in King Julio Pinedo’s words, cited in the epigraph, Afrobolivians are indeed virtually forgotten in political dialogues in Bolivia. Through protests and Saya music, however, Afrobolivians make themselves visible on the national level.
The history of Afrobolivians goes back to the 16th century, when West African inhabitants were enslaved and brought to the Spanish empire in order to work in the tin and silver mines in the Bolivian department of Potosí (Maconde, 2006). The slave trade in what then was part of the Viceroyalty of Peru is not well documented or studied and the total number of Africans brought to Potosí is uncertain. As letters reveal, in 1608 the governor of Potosí asked the Spanish Crown to send 1,500 to 2,000 slaves annually to work in the mines. Most slaves were brought from what is now Senegal (2006).
However, slaves brought to Bolivia did not predominantly come from one specific region or ethnic group, but from a large variety of different cultural, linguistic and religious groups. Afrobolivian historian Juan Angola Maconde identifies traces of Kikongo, Mani Kongo, Luba, Ndongo, Lingala and other languages in documented speech in the 17th century. Because of this linguistic diversity among slaves, Spanish soon became the unifying language among them and original African languages almost entirely disappeared. Aside from language, Maconde states that there were no identifiable cultural or religious
characteristics shared by all or most Africans brought to Bolivia as slaves. Their forced transport across continents and the denial of their humanity linked to their status as slaves by colonialists was consequently the main unifying element in early Afrobolivian history.
Slavery was officially abolished in 1831 by Bolivian president Manuel Isidoro Belzú (Klein, 2011). After their emancipation, a large number of Afrobolivians migrated from the highlands to a region called the Yungas, located between the Andean highlands and the Amazon region at an altitude between 1,000m and 1,500m. According to Bolivian historians Arturo Cuenca and Max Ortiz, this migration was the result of the cold and hostile environment in the Potosí region which lies at an altitude of 4,000m to 5,000m (Ortíz, 1978; Cuenca, 1977). Before the agrarian reforms following Bolivia’s national revolution of 1952, most Afrobolivian and indigenous people served mestizo landowners under pongueaje, the Bolivian serfdom system. With the abolition of pongueaje in 1952, many Afrobolivians gained access to land titles and became coffee and coca-leaf farmers in the Yungas (Morales, 2010, p. 12).
Nowadays, most Afrobolivians’ livelihoods depend on agricultural production, making the state’s distribution of land titles economically relevant and attractive. The Yungas are part of the department of La Paz, administratively divided into Nor and Sud Yungas. With an average annual income of US$1,500 per household, the Yungas is one of Bolivia’s poorest regions overall (Jiménez Zamora, 2007, p. 67). According to a recent survey (INE, 2012), 22,777 Bolivian citizens self-identify as Afrobolivian. Approximately 60 per cent of these self-identified Afrobolivians reside in the Yungas region, while most of the other 40 per cent live in Cochabamba, Santa Cruz and La Paz, Bolivia’s three largest cities (2012). The Yungas have a total population of approximately 100,000 inhabitants. Of the region’s inhabitants, 68 per cent of Yunguean inhabitants live by agriculture, and 81 per cent of this sector’s total revenue comes from growing coca leaves (UMSA, 2012, p. 42). Previous demands to recognise land in the Yungas as Afrobolivian territory were rejected by the government in 1994 and 2006 (Choque, 2014). This was a central issue of CONAFRO’s foundational meetings in 2011. CONAFRO’s introduction to its strategic plan (2011, p. 20) states that the recognition of ancestral rights is its key target. It further specifies that these ancestral rights refer to the recognition of ancestral Afrobolivian territory in the Yungas. While the report praises the recognition of Afrobolivian existence by the MAS government, it criticises the lack of land distribution to Afrobolivians in the Yungas. Achieving the legal recognition of ‘ancestral Afrobolivian’ territory is highlighted as CONAFRO’s main agenda up to 2020 (p. 32).