The Political History of Fossil Fuels in Bolivia

Herbert S. Klein and José Alejandro Peres-Cajias, “Bolivian Oil and Natural Gas under State and Private Control, 1920-2010,” Bolivian Studies Journal /Revista de Estudios Bolivianos, Vol. 20 (2014), pp. 141-164

Since the 1920 discovery of oil in Bolivia, the country has experimented with varying systems of private control, monopoly state ownership and even mixed state and private ownership/rental of petroleum and gas fields. The aim of our analysis is to explain why these varying patterns of ownership occurred over time and to describe how they affected production in this industry. The analysis suggests that nationalizations have been successful insofar as they took advantage of previous private investment which, meanwhile, underscores the success of the legislation for opening up access (online) to attract private investment. This relative success of the different legal frameworks permits us to understand why the state has been changing from one scheme to another over time. Some partial explanations are offered in order to understand why these schemes could succeed with such regularity.

2010

HYDROCARBON CONFLICT IN THE PERUVIAN AMAZON: INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' DECOLONIZATION OF DEVELOPMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY In 2008 and 2009 the indigenous peoples from the Peruvian Amazon staged massive protests in opposition to President Alan Garcia's development policies, many of which were designed to facilitate the exploitation and development of natural resources on indigenous territorial spaces. Tragically, the protests ended on June 5 (2009) in the Amazonian province of Bagua, where, according to official reports, ten protesters and twenty-three police officers were killed. Many protesters were injured and others were reported missing. The Bagua event underscores the seriousness of natural resource development on indigenous territorial spaces. This dissertation argues that in order to move toward environmentally sustainable and socially equitable natural resources policies it is necessary to rethink these policies on indigenous territories. To make this case, I examine an environmental conflict over hydrocarbon development on indigenous territories between the Garcia government and the Indigenous Movement in the Peruvian Amazon (IMPA). Situating this conflict in the broader context of the Garcia government's development policy, the dissertation (1) provides a historical and institutional analysis of Peruvian hydrocarbon development on indigenous territories, (2) uses social movement theory to explain indigenous resistance to hydrocarbon and natural resource development on indigenous territorial spaces, iii and (3) introduces an alternative theory that explains the differences between indigenous and state development perspectives and challenges many of the current neoliberal/socialist framings of indigenous/state conflicts over natural resources. In the end, I argue that a decolonization of Peru's natural resource policy regime is necessary to create policies that are ecologically sustainable, socially equitable, and avoid violent confrontations. Decolonization⎯a complex and formidable challenge⎯suggests that indigenous peoples gain greater decision-making control over the natural resources located on indigenous territorial spaces. Contrary to the opinion of the Peruvian government and beyond the stipulations set in International Labor Organization Convention 169, this means that indigenous peoples should have the power to prevent unwanted oil development within indigenous territorial spaces. My projects adds to the Political Science literature by introducing an alternative theoretical framework for the analysis of these issues that will encourage scholars, governments, and political commentators to reevaluate issues related to natural resource development on indigenous territories. The writing of this dissertation has been quite a process and I have many people to thank. First and foremost, I am forever indebted to the many indigenous people that I have worked with throughout the years in the Peruvian Amazon. As special thanks to my Shipibo friends Juan, Limber, and Mateo, who not only shared with me their thoughtful insights about oil development in the Peruvian Amazon, but, more importantly, made me feel as part of their family, each and every time I can to visit them. I must also thank Bernardo and the entire community from Santa Rosa de Dinamarca for their insights and hospitality. I am heavily indebted to Robert Guimaraes for all his knowledge about the indigenous movement in the Peruvian Amazon and I am especially grateful that he allowed me to accompany him at the "Houston Road Show" where I was able to witness the collision of truth and power. My research in Peru was made possible thanks to several individuals who gave me their time, support and valuable knowledge about conflicts between indigenous peoples and the Peruvian state. To Lily la Torre, Vladimir Pinto and all the folks at Racimos de Ungurahui, I am forever grateful for the time they spent with me, not only providing interviews, but showing me who to talk to and where to go. I owe a heartfelt thank you to Cesar Ipenza for his critical insights and answering all the questions that I have asked over the years. I would also very much like to thank Carlos Soria from the v Instituto de Bien Común and Matt Finer from Save America's Forests for all their patience and assistance throughout this entire process. In reality, this dissertation is the product of my close relationship to Village Earth. Multiple trips to the Ucayali region, several "bottom-up" workshops, and our continuous work with the Shipibo on grassroots related development issues all played a major role in my research and the final product. I have expressed to a few people that, in a sense, this dissertation "chose me." Through these trips to the Ucayali region, indigenous peoples constantly and continuously shared their concerns about the prospects of oil development on their territories. In reality, I cannot express enough how grateful I am to all my friends and colleagues at Village Earth. Dave Bartecchi, our "fearless leader," has been there to read countless articles, chapters, and much of my academic work, not to mention providing me with a home at Village Earth to write and discuss my dissertation. Kristina Pearson, the coordinator and the energy for our project in the Peruvian Amazon, has provided unwavering support throughout the entire dissertation process. I cannot express how grateful (and impressed) I am for all the things that Kristina does. Ralf Kracke-Berndorff, our filmmaker, has been a great friend and always listened to my constant ramblings about indigenous politics in Peru. Jamie Way, who has been a remarkable addition to Village Earth, has read much of my work and has offered a much need critical eye to my sometimes incoherent thoughts. I am especially grateful to Hope Inman for her friendship and giving me the opportunity to talk about other things, not related to indigenous politics, oil development and the Peruvian Amazon. I certainly cannot forget Ed Shin, Mimi Shin, and Maury Albertson, the founders of Village Earth, without whom none of my work and unforgettable experiences with Village Earth would not be possible. vi In many ways graduate school is a team sport. I have been quite lucky to have shared this experience with a whole host of graduate students at Colorado State University, who have been there not only to discuss "cutting edge" issues of Political Science, but, more importantly, to offer support and friendship in what was quite a long and enduring endeavor. I owe special thanks to Andy Kear, Dallas Blaney, Nikki Detraz, Timmy Hurst, Oscar Ibañez, Tim Earstman who have been great friends throughout the entire process. Keith Linder, in some ways a younger brother to me, but in reality, an intellectual mentor, has helped me better understand issues and concept that alone I am entirely incapable of understanding. I cannot forget my hockey buddies, Phil Crowe,

Latin American Perspectives, 2007

"David Harvey suggests that, compared with struggles waged by traditional political parties and labor unions, struggles to "reclaim the commons" typically result in a less focused political dynamic of social action, which is both a strength and a weakness. While these social movements draw strength from their embeddedness in daily life, not all man age to make the link between the struggle against accumulation by dispossession and the struggle for expanded reproduction that is necessary to meet the material needs of impoverished and repressed populations. Social movements in Bolivia have framed their demands differently in the struggles against the privatization of natural gas and water depending on the different roles these resources play in the region's political economy. Struggles against the privatization of natural gas pose a greater challenge to neoliberal ism because of theirm acro frame and politics."

Alternautas, 2023

This paper retraces the history of the relationships between indigenous people and the oil industry in Ecuador, in three chronological stages: 1) unregulated and uncompensated oil development (and conflict) between the 1970s and the 1990s, 2) social compensation, material needs and compromises at the local level starting in the 1990s, and 3) the decade of Correa's presidency (2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017), marked by a new extractive compromise which emphasises the need for oil extraction to provide people with health and education, and the institutionalization of an unfair local dilemma between environmental protection and socio-economic benefits, recorded through sometimes dubious processes of prior consultation. This account sheds light on some of the mechanisms through which open conflicts can turn (and have turned, in the Ecuadorian case) into compromises and acceptance; as the supply of powerful actors such as large oil companies and States meet the demands of marginal populations for necessary basic services and other socio-economic benefits which are otherwise lacking. It is a reminder that acceptance (by the local people) does not mean the situation is acceptable. Instead it may hide cases of environmental injustice -which we more often associate with open conflict -and result in indigenous communities being left out of the analysis. This account points to the urgency of finding post-extractive development alternatives, both at the local and national level. This is particularly important in a national context marked by the aggressive intensification of extractivism coupled with a fast decline of the oil reserves, the last of which are situated in biodiverse places such as the ITT fields of the Yasuní National Park (which will be questioned by popular consultation in August); in a global context of unprecedented ecological crisis.

2008

A situação política na Bolívia sempre foi conhecida pelos especialistas por sua instabilidade[1]. Embora o início das tratativas entre Bolívia e Brasil para a importação do gás boliviano tenha ocorrido num período de maior estabilidade (1990-1996), a história política da Bolívia regularmente apresentou períodos de instabilidade. O tema ganhou a opinião pública no Brasil e na região (América do Sul)

Environment and Sustainability in a Globalizing World, Routledge, 2019

Oil extraction is a useful optic for thinking and writing about the future of sustainable resource use. While concerns over the burdens of oil extraction tend to be of a planetary scale (e.g. discussions around fossil-fuel addiction, energy security, and climate change), in this chapter we zoom in to the case of the Ecuadorian Amazon, where indigenous peoples have raised profound questions about oil extraction practices and outcomes. Amazonian peoples’ refusal to oil extraction, in particular, has received significant global attention and is considered emblematic of indigenous peoples’ sustainability thinking. At the same time, this common narrative about indigenous political action hides the complex ways that Amazonian peoples relate to oil extraction. We focus on the case of Playas del Cuyabeno (Playas hereafter), a Kichwa community located in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon to illustrate how “sustainability” is not an abstract concept that can be applied worldwide seamlessly, but that thinking and acting sustainably emerges from locally-rooted visions of the past, present and future. In this chapter, we introduce the dominant ways in which sustainability and oil extraction are currently discussed in Ecuador, and how debates around oil extraction tend to reproduce a particular way of thinking about sustainability. Next, we lay out our conceptual framework for examining sustainability in Playas. Then, we briefly trace the experiences that shaped how Playas residents see themselves in relation to oil, first resisting and then acquiescing to oil extraction within their territory. In the subsequent section, we examine the conditions and subjectivities through which people of Playas came to position themselves not only as supporters of oil extraction, but as potential oil producers themselves, despite popular narratives that associate indigenous peoples with anti-oil politics. We interrogate concepts of sustainability by tracing the conditions that made it possible for Playas’ population to imagine an indigenous oil company as a vehicle of sustainability, noting that sustainable development planning is not the exclusive practice of elite state, non-governmental, and multilateral institutions. We highlight the intersectional dimensions of the decisions of indigenous leaders to embrace oil extraction in the name of social and environmental sustainability. There is no single relation that explains positioning vis-à-vis oil in local contexts, but multiple relations and complex histories that construct ways of seeing and acting.

2018

I would like to thank the reviewers for their incisive and thought-provoking comments. This symposium offers a valuable opportunity to reflect on the place of my book, Limits to Decolonization, within a broader set of scholarly discussionson postcolonialism, indigenous mapping, and neo-extractivismin which my critics have played important roles. In addition to the two reviews published here (by Cheryl McEwan and Joe Bryan), I will address points raised by Tom Perreault, who participated in the recent author-meets-critics session at the AAG, and whose review appears in the Summer 2019 issue of the AAG Review of Books (Perreault 2019). I will structure my response around three core questions that are raised by the reviewers. These can be summarized briefly as: territory and decolonization, transformation and endurance, and the specter of capital.

Governments in Latin American countries rich in natural gas and oil reserves find themselves in a privileged position while at the same time their societies are burdened with social injustice and inequality, the gap between the rich and the poor is deep and political institutions are weak and unstable. Bolivia is one of the countries rich in natural gas where the indigenous population has brought to power their representative Evo Morales in 2006. Morales immediately conducted the nationalisation of hydrocarbons. In that way, he unified the Bolivian indigenous population in their endeavour against the existing practices with gas which had mainly been in the hands of foreign companies Brazilian "Petrobras", Spanish "Repsol" and French "Total". The question remains open as to whether in the current political and economic circumstances Morale' government would be capable to use the nationalisation of energy resources for the wellbeing of poor Bolivian population, or the whole issue would end with the exports of national resources as it happened in Venezuela.

Journal of Latin American Geography 11(2): 101-118.

Bolivia is part of the left-turn that Latin America has seen since the end of the 1990s. The country was traditionally ruled by a conservative establishment and political instability characterized a decade of conflicts that culminated in the ascendency of the Movement Towards Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS) and, in 2006, of the first indigenous president –Evo Morales. The election of Morales and the subsequent changes to the Bolivian state have been praised by some scholars as revolutionary, while others have argued that these changes essentially consist of a continuation and re-constitution of neo-liberal regimes. This paper highlights the changes in compensation and redistribution policies that have accompanied the nationalization of hydrocarbons and the institutionalization of consultation processes for indigenous peoples affected by hydrocarbons activities. In this context, we analyse an oil exploration project that took place in the north of the La Paz Department. In particular, focus is on how the compensation and consultation frameworks debilitated opposition to the project. We conclude that the government’s priorities are intertwined with the continuation of the extractive economic model. In these circumstances questioning extractive projects is not an option.

The Journal of Environment & Development, 2012

In June of 2009, indigenous protest over the Peruvian government’s natural resource policies erupted, tragically, in a violent confrontation where 33 Peruvians lost their lives. Conflicts over natural resources are bound to increase, especially in developing countries, as governments development ambitions collide with indigenous peoples’ territorial claims. This article, within the context of Peru’s natural resource development agenda, examines the government’s hydrocarbon development policies against indigenous resistance and protest. Turning to an alternative theoretical framework, modernity/coloniality, I argue that the government’s development logic misrepresents indigenous perspectives on development, undermines indigenous territorial rights, and suppresses indigenous participation in Peru’s natural resource agenda. A more complex reading of indigenous perspectives reveals a more sustainable approach to development, one that does not reject modern development, but does challeng...

The Ecuadorian Oil Era: Nature, Rent, and the State, 2021

By focusing on half-century of recent Latin American economic history, this book presents a multidisciplinary approach to the relentless quest of development in the Global South and aims at revitalizing the academic debate if natural resources abundance is a blessing or a curse. The pioneering diachronic comparative approach of two Ecuadorian oil booms, 1) 1972-1980, and 2) 2003-2014, shows processes of continuity and change in the capacity of the peripheral state to intervene in the national development process and its consequences on social formation framed by the contemporary forms of global capitalism and the irruption of environmental thinking into development policymaking. The Ecuadorian state’s struggle with multinational corporations for the appropriation of a larger portion of oil rent became a landmark of the 1970s; henceforth, oil rent has been central to modernization. Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, social environmental awareness is deeply entrenched in the Ecuadorian sociopolitical arena and increasingly contributes to expose the flaws of the prevalent natural resources-based development model. Together with environmental thinking, social environmental awareness strives for further influencing development policymaking and advocates for the reconstruction of the concept of development itself. The study of either Ecuadorian oil booms through the viewpoint of nature, rent, and the state allows a historical-structural approach to the process of development. Such methodological strategy converges upon the heritage of Latin American development studies, which takes into account a scenario framed by 1) external constraints (the insertion of the country into the broader international division of labor) and 2) domestic circumstances (different development policymaking strategies and common debatable outcomes regarding economic diversification and temporary improvements in socioeconomic indicators).

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies | Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe

This exploration piece challenges the dominant reading of oil-related social conflicts through an environmental prism. Through a methodological intervention that classifies conflicts as 'brown' (concerning primarily the distribution and investment of economic rents) or 'green' (demanding ecological remediation, improved extraction practices, or cessation of oil extraction altogether), it analyses a database of oil related conflicts in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon. The region is particularly suitable for such a study not only because oil extraction has a long history there but also because the resulting conflagration has been well-documented. Building on the finding that twenty-two of the thirty-six cases that could be classified along this dichotomous divide are "brown", the article problematizes the extant scholarly literatures' conceptualization and discusses the potential analytical benefits of recognizing that some movements might be motivated primarily by concerns that are not necessarily environmental. A more thorough recognition of the motives underpinning contentious action concerning extractive industries is also a prerequisite for understanding the policy influence of social mobilization.

Human Geography: a new radical journal, 2019

This book review symposium critically evaluates Penelope Anthias' recent text Limits to Decoloniza-tion: Indigeneity, Territory, and Hydrocarbon Politics in the Bolivian Chaco (Cornell University Press 2018). Through deep ethnographic attention, Anthias' text evaluates Indigenous struggles for territory in the context of "post-neoliberal" Bolivia under the Evo Morales administration, showing the variegated and nuanced politics of autonomy in an era of hydrocarbon extraction and increasingly contradictory state-Indigenous relations. The text examines the "limits" of rights and state-led territorial titling processes to radically challenge the racialized extrac-tive geographies that shape the Bolivian Chaco region. In so doing, Anthias' ethnography provides a rich analysis of how Guaraní Indigenous peoples are reshaping their relations with non-Indigenous landowners and the hydrocarbon industry to advance new forms of territorial autonomy and self-determination with significant ramifications on Indigenous studies in Latin America. This book review symposium draws from a session at the 2019 American Association of Geographers Conference, featuring two leading geographers who share their critical readings of Limits to Decolonization with a conclusion by Anthias that responds to the written reviews.

Recent hydrocarbon nationalizations in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador have renewed debates about the dangers of radicals, populists, or leftists. But, while some of these presidents have acted aggressively towards multinational owners, as a group their policies have not differed greatly from non-leftists facing similar circumstances. To test our hypothesis, we provide a detailed three-variable coding of every Mexican and South American president (for all countries with oil resources), as well as a coding of their policies towards the hydrocarbons industry. The historical review shows that political leaders from all sides of the ideological spectrum have advocated, pursued, or sustained nationalizations, and thus there is no clear relation between these political labels and nationalization policies. An examination of two alternative hypotheses – timing and starting point – finds that while nationalizations and privatizations do come in bunches, the hydrocarbon policy and economic circumstances that presidents inherit are more likely to determine the policy that they pursue.