Decolonizing the Frame: Indigenous Video in the Andes

Abstract

During the presidential elections of June 2002 in Bolivia, the Aymara Indian Evo Morales, leader of the coca growers in the subtropical region of the Bolivian Chapare, gained 20% of the national vote. His success heightened existing anxiety among the ruling Bolivian elite as well as in the US embassy over the protests by indigenous movements in the Andean region. These movements have shaped the recent redefinition of countries like Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia as 'pluri-cultural' nations. They also articulate positions opposed to neoliberal global politics that have turned multiculturalism into a commodity. In March and April of 2000, for instance, several highland indigenous communities joined the protests against the privatization of water in Bolivia and blockaded the principal highways. In September 2000 the scenario repeated itself, each time with violent clashes between the indigenous organizations and the Bolivian State. Evo Morales's electoral gains in 2002 show that the social and economic problems coming to the forefront in these uprisings are still unresolved. Indigenous video production forms part of these movements, sometimes more and sometimes less closely tied to political indigenous movement organizations.1 The protests in Latin America are an expression of a renewed struggle by indigenous organizations against a long colonial history and its current expression in terms of neoliberal globalization. The movements are organized locally and have their own particular histories, reaching back to the moment of conquest. But they are also connected through old and new technologies. Video technology plays an important part in documenting these events but also in maintaining the links between diverse indigenous communities. Indigenous videos also suggest that the current movements are not only about territorial claims, environmental pollution and democratic representation. Video becomes a crucial technology for the reinvention of indigenous cultures, directed against the effects of the long-standing discrimination of indigenous people, languages, medicinal practices, as well as their social and economic relations. The effect of this colonization takes the form of overt discrimination but has also produced a 'colonization of the soul' (Rivera Cusicanqui 1991; 1993): the negative self-image of the colonized that Frantz Fanon had described in Black skin white masks. For indigenous movements, Latin America is not post-colonial, despite most of the countries in the continent gaining independence early in the 191'1 century. The legacies and transformations of colonialism have exacerbated the colonization of the mind through the increased pressure to assimilate by ways of migration, the promises of development, and the spread of literacy programs. Videomakers are then also involved in what might be called a 'knowledge revolution', an effort at decolonizing the mind, the way indigenous peoples think and know, and how they have been represented by the West. Audiovisual technology, however, is itself a product of western capitalism that has been deeply involved in producing the presumed 'superiority' or 'decadence', as some might rather put it, of western culture. How can it then contribute to a decolonization of the mind? Some academics are optimistic about the potentialities of internet and video,2 a position that resonates with that of indigenous videomakers themselves. In opposition to these analyses are those who have argued that the technologies of capitalism themselves reproduce the dominant order. With respect to cinema, for instance, Stanley Aronowitz (1979) asserted in the late seventies that cinema not only mirrors but also reproduces the capitalist experience and mode of production. A few years ago the anthropologist James Weiner (1997) suggested that video, as part of the western society of the spectacle could only reproduce the alienation of the West instead of preserving indigenous cultures. …

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