Aymara. Bolivia OI.

Racism is a socio-political construction with the purpose of nullifying the capacity for emancipatory action of the subalterns. In the same way, indigenous victimism annuls the capacity for resilience and emancipatory political action of the defeated…

Indigenous people (be they activists or academics) regularly assume that indigenous people are victims and/or defeated by hegemonic powers. Hence, to a large extent, their “ethnic” philanthropy.

By assuming and presenting an indigenous person as a victim, his status as a subject is irremediably annulled. And by assuming the person to be defeated, the condition of “kneeling” and “politically annulled” is reinforced. In these two presumptions of “victim” and “defeated” lies the apolitical and sterile culturalism that has prevented and hindered processes of emancipation of peoples.

Conscious indigenous people, in constant struggle to consolidate emancipatory projects, are not victims, we are subjects. We are not defeated, we were defeated, and the unfinished stories have not yet ended. These and other fruitful devices are what motivate us and enable us to persevere in our libertarian struggles.

The awareness of being subjects (not victims) and defeat as circumstantial (not defeated) protects us from “apolitical resignation,” and is our antidote to the opportunistic culturalism that turned many of our people into folkloristic mourners.

Why do we indigenous people opt for indigenism and/or victimism?

Quechuas. Bolivia OI.

Indigenism among Indians emerged in symmetry with indigenous access to Western academia. The hegemonic school largely made the few indigenous people with titles, “fashion professionals well-behaved”. And, in order to maintain their new status, the “enlightened”, “intellectual” indigenous person necessarily had to be an apolitical “actor”.

That is, not challenge the system. He should and must distract himself and his own with discourses on costumes, “languages”, folklore, rituals, and so forth. Never get into politics to support projects for the liberation of peoples.

Another factor behind the flourishing of indigenism and folkloric victimism was and is the financing and scholarships of international cooperation. Indigenous people who ascended socially and academically, were co-opted by Creole States in some cases, and in most cases were employed by NGOs and by international cooperation. And these entities, through their sources of funding and the interests they represent, promote apolitical “citizenship”. Neither Evo Morales (Bolivia) nor Thelma Cabrera (Guatemala) come from the constellations of international cooperation.

Victimism is as lethal as racism

Racism is a socio-political construction with the aim of nullifying the capacity for emancipatory action of the subalterns. In the same way, indigenous victimism annuls the capacity for resilience and emancipatory political action of the defeated. In that sense, racism is to victimism as monoculturalism is to muticulturalism. Both are lethal.

It is urgent not to be distracted by victimization. The racist and patriarchal system will never change if our horizon of action is reduced only to “political incidence”. We must become political subjects in order to promote processes of structural change at the level of states and societies, even when this commitment jeopardizes the comfort provided by apolitical culturalism.