La Paz (Bolívia), 1942
By Álvaro García Linera
Felipe Quispe Huanca, leader of the Single Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB), head of the political party Pachakutik Indigenous Movement (MIP), and the most important intellectual of the emerging Aymara indigenous nationalism, was born on August 22, 1942, in the ayllu Ajllata, Umasuyu Province in the La Paz department. He lived in the countryside during his childhood and youth, fulfilling the various obligations and rights of any peasant family. He married in 1966 and had seven children.
His political journey began at the age of 23 when he served as the secretary-general (the highest authority) of the Jisk’a Axariya community. In 1971, at the time of the military coup led by Colonel Hugo Banzer, in response to the call from the Confederation of Peasants urging resistance to the coup, Quispe participated with thousands of indigenous people who arrived in the city of La Paz dressed in red ponchos and white trousers, known as the Tupac Katari Army.
In the 1970s, he connected with various indigenous intellectuals and activists, and in 1978, during the gradual withdrawal of military governments, he participated in founding the political organization Tupac Katari Indian Movement (MITKA), the first indigenous political organization to participate in general elections in the following years (1978-1980), advocating for an indigenous government.
In 1984, he was elected secretary of the La Paz Departmental Federation of Peasants, and in 1986, along with other indigenous and labor activists, he founded the Red Offensive of the Tupakatarista Ayllus, a political-syndical organization dedicated to spreading the need for an indigenous government achieved through armed revolt in Aymara and Quechua communities.
Three years later, as a result of this grassroots work, Felipe Quispe helped organize the Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army (EGTK), a political-military organization deeply rooted in indigenous communities in the provinces of La Paz, Cochabamba, Potosí, and Oruro. The EGTK aimed to prepare an armed uprising of communities to establish the self-determination of indigenous nations. After three years of activity, in 1992, EGTK leaders, including Felipe Quispe, were arrested. Accused of armed uprising against the state, Quispe spent five years in prison, where he studied history. In June 1997, he was released on parole.
In 1998, Felipe Quispe was elected secretary-general of the Single Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB), the highest organization of peasant communities in the highlands and valleys.
In 2000, under Quispe’s leadership, the CSUTCB called for and led the most significant indigenous uprisings in recent decades (in April and October), giving his leadership national significance. In September of the same year, he founded the political-electoral organization Pachakuti Indigenous Movement, and in 2002, he was elected to the national parliament. A key actor in the October 2003 uprising that ousted the Sánchez de Lozada government, in December 2004, he resigned from his parliamentary mandate, believing it was impossible to promote change from within Parliament, and remained a union leader.
Felipe Quispe is one of the few founders of the Indianist movement of the 1970s who still participates in the political and union life of the country. A militant of the radical wing of the movement, he believes that the emancipation of the indigenous majority should be achieved through armed revolt in the communities, thus prioritizing community organization and viewing the electoral act as a complementary element. He referred to this as “struggle with two fists”: one public, or electoral, and the other under the poncho, meaning the revolt and roadblocks.
At a time when indigenous presence was seen as merely folkloric or subordinated to the free-market projects of political elites, Quispe, with his theory of “two Bolivias”—one mestizo and rich, the other indigenous and poor—introduced a discourse of equality and indigenous self-governance that radically changed the parameters of political debate in the country by denouncing the colonial structures that prevailed in institutions.
Another of his contributions was to participate in the consolidation of a type of Aymara indigenous nationalism, in fact, the first indigenous nationalism on the continent, advocating for the right to self-governance of indigenous nations, particularly the Aymara nation. This discourse, initially articulated by the intellectual elite, is gaining mass support through mobilizations, alongside the fact that the Aymara people are the only group that currently has an increasingly militant cultural intelligentzia advocating for these demands.
Possessing a strong and severe temperament, Quispe has struggled to build lasting alliances around him, which is leading to a weakening of his position as a political leader, making it likely that he could be replaced by new Aymara leaders. He ran for the presidency in December 2005 but received only 1.6% of the votes, leading him to announce the dissolution of Pachakuti.
He was appointed Minister of Water and Environment in January 2012. In August, he resigned at the request of President Evo Morales.
