Indigenous Peoples, Technological Globalisation and Social Mobilization

Scholars have suggested that indigenous social mobilization in Latin America has largely been a result of shifting citizenship regimes, from corporatist to neo-liberal, in which a lack of state capacity has resulted in a loss of indigenous peoples’ rights to social support and their subsequent reactions. Variation in levels of indigenous mobilization among countries has then been attributed to a country’s unique historical factors such as a lack of resources, a country’s undemocratic context, or an absence of political entrepreneurship to make an ethnic identity politically salient. Yet, the contemporary context matters. This paper argues that the changing international context, and specifically technological change, is more important in explaining variation in levels of indigenous mobilization. The spread of new information and communications technologies (ICT), computer-mediated communications (CMC), and small media proliferation across the globe—has increased the capacity of indigenous peoples to mobilize in Latin America. In other words, in cases where there was sufficient technological globalisation at the time of citizenship regime shift, and indigenous peoples were able to utilize these technologies, the pre-existing inter-community networks and the burgeoning international networks were more effective in increasing indigenous capacity for mobilization. This paper will demonstrate with the cases of Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru that where the extent of technology development in rural areas was sufficient, (some) indigenous movements were able to take control of this technology to increase the capacity of their movements to pose a strong challenge to the state; conversely, where the extent of rural technology diffusion was stunted, indigenous activists were unable to successfully utilize new forms of technology and indigenous mobilization was less successful. (Authors own Abstract)