Indigeneity and political economy: Class and ethnicity of the Guarani-Kaiowa

Abstract

Ontological and identitary questions affecting indigenous peoples are discussed through an assessment of the socio-spatial trajectory of the Guarani-Kaiowa of South America, employing an analytical framework centred around land, labour and ethnicity. These enhanced politico-economic categories provide important entry points for understanding the violence and exploitation perpetrated against indigenous groups, as well as their capacity to reclaim ancestral territory lost to development. Evidence indicates that ethnicity is integral to class-based processes, given that the advance of capitalist relations both presumes and produces difference and subordination. The case study in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul demonstrates that the Guarani-Kaiowa became refugees in their own land due to ethnic differences, but at the same time their labour has underpinned the regional economy to a considerable extent through interrelated mechanisms of peasantification and proleterianisation. Trends of exploitation and alienation have intensified in recent decades due to racism and socio-spatial segregation, but the action/reaction of subordinate groups has also been reinforced through references to their ethnicity.