Santa Cruz Autonomy Movement Analysis

The Santa Cruz separatist movement presents an interesting contrast to the typical claims for autonomy. When referencing autonomy movements in Bolivia, scholars like Dinerstein (2015) focus entirely on indigenous claims to self-determination according to cultural traditions. As such, the field of autonomy is steeped in rhetoric of dignity, hope, and freedoms. Authors like Hurtado Hervas (2004) frames departmental autonomy as an instrument to deepen democratic practices and increase economic growth. Hurtado Hervas claims that because the state is overstretched, departmental autonomy enables better “political articulation” of Bolivian diversity within the plurinational state.
As the Santa Cruz autonomy movement did not spring from indigenous groups, (but rather elite members of society in the departments’ capital and urban center) it attempts to broaden their base and legitimize their demands through a progressive discourse based on
human rights. Peña Claros (2008), Fabricant (2009, 2011) Gustafson (2009) and Lopez Pila (2014) have all explored how the cruceño movement steeps their rhetoric in a fear of highlander colonization, the state’s oppression of democracy, and racist attitudes to lowlander culture. By redrawing their imagined community to include indigenous groups, the movement’s claims for autonomy can more easily resonate given that “indigeneity as a privileged marker of territorial rights in intercultural Bolivia.” Thus, it is perhaps unsurprising that the cruceño autonomy movement has embedded themselves in a progressive discourse, mimicking claims of ethnic and cultural difference.
Although the autonomy movement has specific demands (direct regional elections, decentralization, control over natural resource wealth, retention of two-thirds of regional tax revenue, and control over all policies outside of defense, monetary policy, tariffs, and international affairs) not all supporters of the movement agree upon what autonomy would mean for the department.
As Peña Claro notes, understanding autonomy as Laclau’s “empty signifier” demonstrates how its intentionally vague meaning allows for multiple meanings to multiple individuals. In so doing the movement has broadened its base and demands to encompass larger issues of the Media Luna and thus, expanded to include the non-economic elite. Moreover, the cruceño movement seeks to legitimize their platform through a human rights discourse—stressing democracy and freedom as principles of the autonomy movement. As such, the case of the cruceño autonomy movement offers a complexity to the scholarly understanding of Bolivian autonomy movements that is often
overlooked.