Contesting Citizenship In Latin America: The Ri... May 2026

Imagine a village where, for decades, the people were recognized by the government strictly as Under this "corporatist" regime, they received land and social services not because they were indigenous, but because they were part of a state-sanctioned agricultural union. In this world, their ethnic identity was private; their political life was tied to their work.

According to Deborah Yashar , this village—and real movements in countries like and Bolivia —succeeded because of three specific things: Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Ri...

One day, the government changed the rules. It adopted , aiming to treat everyone as individual, equal citizens. While this sounded like "democracy," it actually stripped away the collective protections the villagers relied on for their local autonomy. Suddenly, their lands were at risk, and the "peasant" unions that once protected them were dismantled. Imagine a village where, for decades, the people

: The shift to neoliberalism unintentionally challenged their local autonomy, giving them a reason to fight back. It adopted , aiming to treat everyone as

In contrast, villages in places like might have had the same grievances, but they lacked the strong social networks or the political space to turn their frustration into a national movement. The "Postliberal Challenge"