Intercultural Utopias: Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Pluralism in Colombia

Joanne Rappaport’s Intercultural Utopias admirably captures the vitality, constant self-examination, and persistent experimentation that have enabled Colombia’s indigenous communities — despite internal differences and the fact that they constitute less than 2 percent of Colombia’s total population — to build a national and nationally influential movement. Through a reconstruction of the day-to-day workings of Nasa organizations in the Cauca and the actors who have influenced the evolution of the movement over time, the author enables the reader to understand why indigenous “utopian” projects (much like the Zapatista project in Mexico) resonate with nonindigenous individuals searching for alternatives to the violence and exclusion that have historically bedeviled their nation.Rappaport states at the outset that she was motivated by a desire to do an anthropology whose agenda attended both to issues “currently in vogue in the North American academy” and to concepts with which indigenous intellectuals are grappling. The author describes her study as an “ethnographic experience” rooted in conversations and exchanges transcribed over a seven-year period of participation in collaborative research efforts with Cauca’s indigenous community members, political leaders, intellectuals, and activists. Intercultural Utopias constitutes an important addition to an emergent trend in the Latin American field of collaborative studies, in which North American scholars partner with local activists to produce nuanced accounts of mobilization. For Rappaport, this “interactive” approach also implies a personal commitment to breaching the gap that separates academic work and advocacy; her objective is to reproduce, in the academy and the field, the ideals of inclusion, debate, and mutual exchange that characterize indigenous thinking, organization, and practice.Unlike multiculturalism, which is perceived by indigenous intellectuals as fostering “tolerance but not equality,” interculturalism is posited as a strategy for indigenous intellectuals to absorb a variety of tools from the dominant society and refine them for use in their own project of “ethnic pluralism in the political realm” (p. 5). The outcome of this process of engaged translation and reconceptualization, from an indigenous point of view, of crucial political terms such as “state, justice, and authority” is the articulation of political alternatives — or “utopias.” How these utopias are imagined, contested, and reconfigured on the ground, particularly with regard to the Bilingual Education Project (PEB), in workshops, encounters, conferences, and seminars, is the central focus of this study.Space limitations impede a thoroughgoing examination of this study’s many insights, but particularly illuminating is Rappaport’s painstaking reconstruction and examination of the very different historical trajectories lived by indigenous groups located in northern Cauca versus those situated in Tierradentro and the impact these different experiences have had on local political strategies and reactions to the presence or influence of Catholic clergy, armed groups, and state representatives. Rappaport rightly points out that many scholars have long avoided acknowledging that “indigenous organizations are the product of a deep and sustained dialogue between native activists and their non-indigenous allies” (p. 58). Fear of making indigenous organizations targets of repression has historically prompted the suppression or elision, in ethnographic accounts, of such interactions. The author’s decision to eschew representing the indigenous as “homogeneous” in composition or outlook, one of this study’s outstanding features, reflects a growing awareness of the importance of portraying indigenous heterogeneity in greater detail, evident in recent theses such as those by Colombians Virginie Laurent and Mauricio Caviedes, and North American Brett Troyan.There is danger inherent in revealing the inner workings of movements perceived as subversive by powerful sectors in Colombian society, including the state, but Rappaport does a sensitive and brilliant job of identifying and carefully highlighting the factors crucial in shaping the Cauca’s indigenous experience, in ways that provide both a field guide for engaged advocacy and an ethnographically rich basis for future comparative analyses. Indeed, this study should inspire research into the ways in which the indigenous movement (whether openly acknowledged or not) has historically influenced the discourse, strategy, and practice of nonindigenous social movements in Colombia and what the possibilities might be for reproducing the success of indigenous mobilization among such groups.This book’s relevance extends far beyond the individual Colombian case it analyzes. It should be essential reading for anthropologists, historians, political scientists, and sociologists interested in the elaboration and practice of pluralistic political projects, democratic practice, and social movements more generally. Although the author takes a refreshingly multilayered approach to the study of indigenous organizations and renders complex concepts in accessibly lucid prose, this study is perhaps best suited for advanced undergraduate and graduate seminars, where its far-reaching academic and nonacademic implications may be given the extended and probing discussion they deserve.