Los primeros pasos de Charagua Iyambae, la primera autonomía indígena del Estado plurinacional de Bolivia

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse how, and to what extent, the new regime of indigenous political and territorial autonomy incorporated into the Bolivian Constitution of 2009 makes it possible for indigenous peoples to exercise their right to self-determination. Based on long-term fieldwork, a specific experience of autonomy will be analysed: the Charagua Iyambae Guaraní Autonomy, the first indigenous autonomy in exercise after the culmination, at the beginning of 2017, of a complex legal process of building an autonomy initiated in 2009. The text is structured in three parts: the first describes the main territorial, ethnic and socio-economic dynamics that make up Charagua Iyambae; the second analyses the process of constituent gestation of the new indigenous autonomous system, taking into consideration the distance between this and the Guaraní demand for self-determination; finally, it presents an assessment of the first years of the new Guaraní autonomous government, seeking to understand both the institutional and democratic transformations underway, as well as the constraints and tensions that affect the practice of self-government and hinder the exercise of indigenous self-determination.

Keywords

• self-determination
• democracy
• guarani people
• plurinational state
• indigenous autonomy