by EMILY ACHTENBERG
Late on the night of February 9, Bolivia’s Plurinational Assembly passed a new law mandating a consultation process for indigenous communities in the Isiboro-Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS), to redetermine the fate of a government-proposed highway that would bisect the reserve. Billed as a “compromise” between pro- and anti-road forces, the law has escalated the TIPNIS controversy and sparked new conflicts between lowland indigenous groups and among Bolivian social sectors on opposite sides of the issue.
The new law threatens to undermine the existing law that cancelled the highway and protects the TIPNIS as an “untouchable” ecological zone, promulgated by President Evo Morales just last October at the behest of TIPNIS marchers. The consultation law was developed by the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) legislative leaders in conjunction with CONISUR, a dissident indigenous TIPNIS faction that sponsored a pro-road, government-supported counter-march in January.
The new law threatens to undermine the existing law that cancelled the highway and protects the TIPNIS as an “untouchable” ecological zone, promulgated by President Evo Morales just last October at the behest of TIPNIS marchers. The consultation law was developed by the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) legislative leaders in conjunction with CONISUR, a dissident indigenous TIPNIS faction that sponsored a pro-road, government-supported counter-march in January.