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The Nature of Sovereignty in The Anthropocene
The Nature of Sovereignty in The Anthropocene
by Christine Folch
Leftist former Bishop Fernando Lugo came to power in Paraguay in 2008 with the pledge to “recover Paraguay’s
hydroelectric sovereignty” from Brazil by demanding greater control of the energy and finances of Itaipú Binational
Hydroelectric Dam. This article explores what is meant by “hydroelectric sovereignty” and argues for a new approach
to how to theorize sovereignty within anthropology by urging that scholars move beyond a focus on the exception, bio-
power, and bare life. The (re)turn I propose situates sovereignty historically in terms of nature, economics, cultural oth-
erness, and imperialism by engaging an older genealogy of sovereignty, the sixteenth-century Spanish school of Sala-
manca, which centered on the rights of indigenous peoples to control their natural resources and govern themselves. This
tradition gave rise to international law, setting in place a framework that continues to structure the global economy and
natural resources, including the hydroelectric potential of Itaipú Dam. By exploring how hydroelectric sovereignty is
an example of theorizing from the margins, I show how the asymmetrical dominance between Brazil and Paraguay, the
desirability of natural resources in a time of environmental scarcity, and the supremacy of economic imperative presage
twenty-first-century changes in eco-environmental sovereignties.
A man in the crowd eagerly handed me a flyer from the large Although much was said about agrarian reform and land
stack in his arms. rights, the allusive timing of the protest made clear its pur-
“Why We Are Mobilized” opened the full-page litany in pose: March 26, 2009, was the twenty-sixth anniversary of the
Portuguese, none of which had been translated into Spanish, 1973 Itaipú Treaty (Paraguay-Brazil), which initiated the con-
though we still stood on Paraguayan soil. Amid drumbeats and troversial construction of Itaipú Binational Hydroelectric Dam,
ice-cold tereré sipped on the already hot morning, hundreds the world’s largest hydroelectric dam. Transnational and multi-
of Paraguayan activists from peasant, indigenous, and worker sectoral, the protest combined several grassroots struggles for
groups marched to the border with Brazil at the very center of control over natural resources. And by prominently showcasing
the Friendship Bridge suspended high above the Paraná River. Brazilian social movements, it represented an important tri-
The yellow/green/blue and red/white/blue of the national flags umph for Paraguayan hydroelectric energy activists who had
intermingled with the red flags of Brazil’s Landless Workers mobilized around the cause of Itaipú as a source and expres-
Movement and the green of the Paraguayan Campesino Move- sion of systemic inequality for decades. Leftist energy activists
ment. Parked in the middle of the international highway was in Paraguay used the cry for “hydroelectric sovereignty” to ex-
a large pickup truck rigged with loudspeakers over which orga- press both the problems and the solutions for injustice and
nizers explained the goal of the rally: “popular integration along poverty, forming a subaltern sovereignty movement that ac-
with energy and food sovereignty, to construct the Great Home- tively redefined epistemological categories and had its sights
land.”1 set on something other than just control of the national-state
The first of three brief speakers, a member of the Landless apparatus.
Workers Movement, called for solidarity in the face of elite On that morning, more than a thousand activists from Bra-
opposition. He proclaimed, “The struggle for sovereignty over zil, Paraguay, and even Argentina took over the main economic
energy resources, over water resources, is a common struggle artery connecting Paraguay to its most important trading part-
of the Paraguayan people [povo] and of the Brazilian people.” ner, effectively shutting down all traffic and customs duties; yet
the few Paraguayan police ambling through the crowds merely
looked on, observant but placid. The one-page flyer—signed
Christine Folch is Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural by Vía Campesina, the Brazilian Social Forum, and Popular As-
Anthropology at Duke University (201 G Friedl Building, Campus
Box 90091, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA [christine.folch@duke
.edu]). This paper was submitted 13 XI 12, accepted 18 I 16, and elec- 1. “Integración popular con soberanía energética y alimentaria con-
tronically published 23 VIII 16. struyendo la patria grande.”
q 2016 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2016/5705-0002$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/688580
sembly but curiously not by the Movement of Dam-Affected newable energy in the one region in the world that gets the
Peoples—explained: majority of its electricity from non-fossil-fuel sources, fore-
shadowing conflicts and resolutions that may become all the
We are mobilized . . . more common in a post-fossil-fuel future. And so, in struggling
• Because we fight for a fair solution for the Itaipú Treaty. for energy/hydroelectric sovereignty at Itaipú, social movements
Paraguay ought to receive a fair price for energy it sells, in Brazil and Paraguay touched on issues concerning contentious
and those resources should be used to confront the grave water resources the world over.
social problems of that country; The Anthropocene has made natural resources all the more
• Because we defend the energy sovereignty of Para- fraught by calling into question just exactly whose priorities
guay, the energy sovereignty and food sovereignty of and claims have precedence. Contests over natural resources
our countries. have increased with the growing awareness that humans have
become a planet-shaping force, altering biological, climato-
The language on the flyer came directly from the long- logical, and geologic systems in manners so catastrophic that
standing Paraguayan struggle for hydroelectric sovereignty the viability of human life itself is threatened (Aravamudan
(Folch 2015). Through their treatment of sovereignty, the peas- 2013; Chakrabarty 2008). As nature-as-an-accumulation strat-
ant and energy activists forged a political-economic critique of egy expands to include DNA sequences and energy potentials,
international law on the streets and from the margins as part decision-making processes over the use and ownership of re-
of the leftward turn in Latin America. sources have entered into a new era of heightened complexity.
During his prematurely terminated presidency, Paraguay’s But for all the novelty of a future endangered by anthropogenic
socialist-leaning president Fernando Lugo (2008–2012) spear- climate change, this is not the first time that such a sharp dis-
headed a nationwide effort for greater control over the coun- juncture between an old world and a new one has called into
try’s vast hydroelectric resources. In fact, ex-Bishop Lugo came question the very way humans relate to one another and to
to power with a pledge to recuperar la soberanía hidroeléctrica the earth with ramifications that restructured the global politi-
(recover Paraguay’s hydroelectric sovereignty) at Itaipú Bina- cal economy. In the early sixteenth century, the world’s largest
tional Hydroelectric Dam and reinvest the proceeds in social empire also faced a similarly unprecedented dilemma: how to
development, a campaign promise that initially began on the comprehend the Americas and their inhabitants in light of the
left but grew so popular that it became widely accepted across already rapacious conquest and the desirability of New World
the political spectrum. resources. My contention is that categories embedded in the
The example of Itaipú and of the movement for hydro- school of Salamanca’s discussion have increased resonance to-
electric sovereignty in Paraguay raises important questions day precisely because of the unknown catastrophic potential
about nature, asymmetrical relationships between states, and from the Anthropocene.
just why the term “sovereignty” has such relevance. In addition To untangle these threads, this article bookends a discus-
to exploring these themes, however, I also wish to take up the sion of various theoretical approaches to sovereignty with
debate launched by the energy activists to suggest a significant ethnographic data from Paraguay. In the first section of the
theoretical turn in how we study and understand sovereignty paper, I give a more detailed introduction to Itaipú Dam and
within Anglophone anthropology. The move I urge situates hydroelectric politics in the Fernando Lugo era. I then discuss
sovereignty historically in terms of nature, economics, and impe- sovereignty as commonly studied within political science as
rialism and is not so much something new as it is a reengage- well as more familiar anthropological interventions on the sub-
ment with a body of literature that has received less attention ject before turning to challenges to nation-state-centric and
in the wake of recent interest in bare life and the exception. I biopolitical definitions of sovereignty raised by counterhege-
advocate a return to a conversation about sovereignty begun by monic—what I have called “subaltern”—sovereignty move-
Spanish jurists in the sixteenth-century school of Salamanca ments, such as tribal, food, seed, and hydroelectric sovereignty
that centered on the rights of indigenous peoples to control struggles. The third section of the paper then builds the case
their natural resources and to govern themselves in the context for the Spanish juristic origins of the kinds of sovereignty-
of imperialism, debates that influence the present because they related themes that we see arise in subaltern sovereignty strug-
shaped the bedrock of international law. gles by detailing the contributions of Francisco de Vitoria. The
But Itaipú matters beyond the specificities of Paraguayan key insight that comes from recognizing the influence of the
politics. Whereas the United States generates two-thirds of its school of Salamanca is that, in imperialism, nature and necro-
electricity by burning fossil fuels and the rest of the world fol- political killability are united via economics and justified by
lows suit—with regions deriving two-thirds to three-quarters cultural inferiority. The final section returns to the ethno-
to all of their electricity from hydrocarbons—South America graphic case from Paraguay and refracts subaltern sovereignty
stands apart (EIA 2012). In that region, known for fossil fuel struggles through the lens of Salamanca to show how com-
exports, two-thirds of the electricity generated comes from re- merce, natural resources, and cultural otherness are enmeshed
newable energy sources. Itaipú Dam is the largest source of re- in sovereignty.
Hydroelectric Politics in the Lugo Era the energy as well as the freedom to sell Paraguayan energy to
whatever market it chose. Both demands departed from the
Itaipú Dam is riddled with state sovereignty issues.2 Paraguay Itaipú Treaty, which would expire only in 2023. From 2007 to
and Brazil each own 50% of the binational dam, which spans 2010, I conducted fieldwork among Lugo’s social movement
the tumultuous Paraná River dividing the two countries. The supporters and cabinet-level appointees as Canese’s team nego-
joint venture was built in the 1970s and 1980s to solve a tiated Itaipú with their Brazilian counterparts and attempted
sovereignty conundrum over the exact location of the inter- to implement social development. This article focuses on the
national border. Though the dam is equally owned by both progressive hydroelectric sovereignty activists led by Canese,
countries, per the 1973 treaty the energy and the finances from who helped organize the March 26 rally and, as senior members
the dam are not evenly split. Brazil receives the vast majority of of the Paraguayan Foreign Ministry, negotiated directly with
the electricity from Itaipú Dam, including most of Paraguay’s the Brazilian chancellery. But they were not the only or even,
share; Paraguay receives additional payment for its energy sold perhaps, the most successful interlocutors with Brazil. As a
in Brazil, although this amount is disputed. On the other hand, result of the electoral coalition necessary for victory, Lugo
the Brazilian government was entirely responsible for financ- appointed Carlos Mateo Balmelli as the Paraguayan executive
ing the construction debt (including the Paraguayan half ) be- director of Itaipú Dam. Balmelli, a former presidential candi-
cause Paraguay could not secure the loans and, to this day, be- date from the more traditional Liberal Party, headed a team of
cause the majority of the energy is sold to Brazilian consumers, Paraguayan energy technocratic experts in Itaipú in a concur-
pays the majority of this debt. Itaipú generates US$4 billion rent behind-the-scenes negotiation with their Brazilian ana-
in annual energy sales (most of which goes to pay off the logues at Itaipú Dam.
$US60 billion construction debt) and produces an average of March 26, 2009, demonstrated that popular groups within
more than 90,000 GW-hours each year. Brazil also appreciated Paraguayan claims about the massive
Numbers like these can be difficult to envision because of dam. This support was important because the Paraguayan
their sheer scale, but they are necessary for understanding push for hydroelectric sovereignty faced outright opposition
how sovereignty and nature are tied up in the energy from from some sectors in Brazil and a markedly different nego-
the dam. Itaipú’s turbines churn out enough electricity to sup- tiating strategy from political rivals within Paraguay, who
ply around 20% of Brazil’s entire annual energy consumption, sought a less polarizing resolution to the crisis.
or 20 Paraguays, or enough to power one-third of the state of Political and economic elites in Brazil were public in their
California (Itaipú Binacional 2010:15). In 2009—an average dissent. On hearing of the popular agitation in Paraguay dur-
year—Paraguay consumed only 16% of its half of Itaipú elec- ing the 2007 presidential campaign, Brazilian Foreign Minister
tricity, which met 77% of its total demand. The remaining 84% Celso Amorim offered a conciliatory note, suggesting that the
of Paraguay’s half, plus all of Brazil’s half, was consumed in price paid to Paraguay might be increased a small amount as
Brazil, providing 19% of that country’s total energy consump- long as it did not onerously burden the Brazilian consumer.
tion (Itaipú Binacional 2010:15). For the Paraguayan energy But he also maintained that “there is an aspect of Itaipú that
“ceded” to Brazil, Brazil’s public utility company paid Para- is sacrosanct: the energy that does not go to Paraguay must go
guay’s government US$2.81 per MW-hour in 2009, at that time to Brazil. This is the essence of the agreement for the dam”
the highest rate since the dam first became operational in 1984. (Leo 2007).
The Brazilian electricity company then resold the electricity Brazilian Energy Minister Edison Lobão was less diplo-
on the Brazilian market for anywhere between US$20 and US$80 matic. Just two weeks before the March 26 protest, long after
per MW-hour, pocketing whatever did not go to cover trans- Lugo had won the election and hydroelectric negotiations be-
mission costs. In essence, Paraguay received one-tenth to one- tween the two countries had commenced, disagreements in-
fortieth of the final market price of its electricity. tensified over Paraguayan requests for more money for ex-
Fernando Lugo—thanks to the urging of Ricardo Canese, a ported electricity from Brazilian consumers. An exasperated
close ally and a lifelong energy activist—promised to renego- Lobão expressed what many were saying off the record: Par-
tiate this unequal distribution, demanding a market rate for aguay did not contribute “um centavo sequer” (even one cent)
to construct Itaipú (Craide 2009).
2. A note on terms and definitions. I take the “state” to be both insti- In the midst of the sound bites that flew back and forth
tutions and practices of violent domination as well as the symbolic struc- between the leftists in Lugo’s government and Brazilian gov-
tures and personal experiences that interpret, justify, and mediate that ernment officials, I asked one of the high-ranking Paraguayan
domination (Abrams 1977; Mitchell 2006). By “nation,” I mean the group of
energy technocrats at Itaipú Dam about their alternative ne-
people and the historical narratives that describe the members of a nation-
gotiating strategy: “Why don’t you mention Paraguay’s hydro-
state. For the sake of simplicity, in this article I do not italicize these terms
to signify that they are also in question and, in fact, in a constant process
electric sovereignty?”
of contestation and construction. Itaipú Dam (14 GW installed capac- “Because there’s no such thing,” the engineer replied.
ity) produces more than 90,000 GW-hours per year, more electricity that Carlos Mateo Balmelli, a trained lawyer with a doctorate in
the gargantuan Three Gorges Dam (22.5 GW installed capacity) in China. political science from the University of Mainz, circumvented
the discussion on hydroelectric sovereignty entirely by fram- tempt to define sovereignty has a particular political-historical
ing his team’s proposals in terms of two well-established in- context, as he himself freely admits. In his case, he argues
ternational legal principles: pacta sunt servanda (agreements that accusations that globalization has unleashed a new threat
must be kept) and rebus sic stantibus (things thus standing). against nation-state sovereignty err because they fail to rec-
Whereas the leftists demanded a renegotiation of the treaty, ognize that there have always been challenges to nation-state
effectively upending international legal practice, the techno- sovereignty. Weaker states have always had difficulty internally
cratic team invoked international legal structures in support of controlling the space of the state and repudiating external
Paraguayan claims. Balmelli’s team was not merely placating; control.
they had their own international legal-political project that But weak institutionality, tentative borders (Chalfin 2010),
saw the binational dam as a way to implement a new political and globalization are not the only disruptions of state sov-
economic order within Paraguay. ereignty. Human rights and all sides of the war on terror—
It is beyond the scope of this article to explore the ram- in the form of drone warfare and the doctrine of preemptive
ifications of these different political projects, how it came to be strikes as well as in the form of stateless threats—undercut
that Itaipú was the locus for so many debates on sovereignty, idealized noninterference. Arendt (1990) poses the core di-
or what this all might herald for energy and water politics in lemma of human rights as the question of who has the “right
the twenty-first century. Instead, I focus on how the expansion to have rights,” especially vis-à-vis the Universal Declaration
of counterhegemonic sovereignty struggles calls for better the- of Human Rights (1948), which mandates intervention in the
orizing of sovereignty. The complaint began on the Paraguayan case of genocide, where states are to be the guarantor of hu-
left, part of the Latin American new left that has developed after man rights even as they are also the violators. In a different vein,
the fall of the Soviet bloc and in the midst of dissatisfaction with Mamdani (2008) suggests that human rights are a means by
Eurasian political-economic categories (Escobar 2010; Mignolo which a supposedly benign, humanitarian form of antipolitics
2005). Moreover, Paraguay has a long tradition of local pro- is shaping global governance in its own image, turning citizens
gressive activism; for example, the 1936 Febrerista Revolution into wards. For Benhabib (2009), international human rights
was an autochthonous socialist movement independent of both norms have the jurisgenerative potential to “empower citizens
Moscow and Beijing. Important critique from below is being in democracies by creating new vocabularies for claim making,”
done in Paraguay; the definition of sovereignty, the problems by in part because participation in transnational networks of rights
which it has been lost, and what should be done with it do not advocacy leads to new imaginative horizons (696).
simply follow in the mold of North Atlantic political-economic Geertz (2004) makes an argument similar to Krasner’s when
categories. he asks, “What is a state if it is not a sovereign?”—there defin-
ing as sovereign political communities those “culturally solid-
ary entities” that are organized and autonomous (578). He
argues against the fiction of the Weberian state by pointing
Approaches to Sovereignty
out the fragmentation and contestation in new states, turning
Understanding sovereignty has been one of the central con- to the examples of Morocco (which was defined by its center,
cerns of North Atlantic political science from the moment not by its porous and contested edges) and Indonesia (which,
sixteenth-century French theorist Jean Bodin (1992) defined like Morocco, was undergoing the “state-threatening phenom-
sovereignty as the “absolute and perpetual power of a com- enon” of religious violence).3 In this way, problems of sover-
monwealth,” without limits of time, power, or function (1). eignty are predominantly characteristic of postcolonial states.
Writing to other political scientists and policy makers on state His responders, several of them Latin Americanists, counter
sovereignty in the context of late twentieth-century weak states that even just the ability to somewhat withstand multinational
and globalization, Krasner (1999) distinguishes four ways that and globalizing forces renders nation-states legitimate. Lom-
the term has been used, though he acknowledges that there nitz (2004) argues, like Adelman (2006) elsewhere, that the
may be others. The first two look inward, while the latter two problems of sovereignty experienced in today’s postcolonial
turn outward. “Interdependence sovereignty” he describes as states arise not just because of new globalizing trends but, in
a government’s ability to control what moves across its bor- fact, from the incompleteness of colonial states, which had
ders as well as its ability to use its borders as a means of con- only limited authority and therefore no sovereignty.
trol. By “domestic sovereignty,” he means the way authority is In the conversation of state sovereignty heavily influenced
organized within a certain polity. “Westphalian sovereignty” by political science, the nation-state seems indispensable. How-
refers to a government’s autonomy from external authority
and takes its origin from the 1684 resolution to European re-
ligious wars that determined that the religion of the magnate 3. Weber (2004) is much more careful in his definitions. He writes
was the religion of the land. This is closely linked to “inter- that the modern state “is a human community that (successfully) claims
national legal sovereignty,” which is the mutual recognition the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given ter-
of states (often signaled through consular exchange, treaties, ritory” (emphasis in original). For Weber, the “claim” is as crucial as the
and membership in international organizations). Krasner’s at- “monopoly” to his definition.
ever, for anthropology writ large it is not, in part because we not just against an imperial state. Chakrabarty (2000) has
often work at smaller units of scale but also because ethnology urged readers to provincialize Europe; to do so, the Latin
takes us to other long-standing arrangements of human soci- American subaltern studies group called for a “radical critique
ality. The persistence of imperialism as a resilient political phe- of elite cultures, of liberal, bourgeois, and modern epistemol-
nomenon (Harvey 2003) is, of course, an underlying premise ogies” (Rodríguez 2001:9). In using “subaltern,” I also invoke
to this paper. Many recent explorations of sovereignty in an- Roseberry’s (1994) reading of Gramscian hegemony: “I pro-
thropology have focused on a biopolitical definition stemming pose that we use the concept not to understand consent but
from Agamben’s (1998, 2005) reworking of Schmitt (1985), to understand struggle; the ways in which the words, images,
with an emphasis on the body, the exception, and necropo- symbols, forms, organizations, institutions, and movements
litical killability. Hansen and Stepputat (2006) consider Agam- used by subordinate populations to talk about, understand,
ben’s attention to violence and Foucault’s to how power is confront, accommodate themselves to, or resist domination
diffused within a system to write, “The key move we propose is are shaped by the process of domination itself ” (360–361).
to abandon sovereignty as an ontological ground of power and Because modern international law is made in the European
order, expressed in law or in enduring ideas of legitimate rule, colonial experience, the school of Salamanca exposes contra-
in favor of a view of sovereignty as a tentative and always emer- dictions at the very core of universalized (and universalizing)
gent form of authority grounded in violence that is performed liberal international legal structures.
and designed to generate loyalty, fear, and legitimacy from the As we saw, Vía Campesina and other peasant groups are now
neighborhood to the summit of the state” (297). Moreover, they organizing around food sovereignty as a way to combat trans-
go on to suggest that complexity in sovereignty was the norm in national agribusiness (Boyer 2010). In the 1980s, PRONAL, a
the colonial world, asserting that different “registers of sover- Mexican government food program, first defined food sov-
eignty” regularly coincided there. ereignty as national, opposed to international, control of the
Set alongside ethnographic studies of political organiza- food chain. But especially with the founding of Vía Campe-
tion in communities, anthropologists have found the states sina in the 1990s, rural and peasant groups reframed their
and spaces of exception where sovereignty is demonstrated aim from food security to food sovereignty, a move that con-
through biopolitical acts (cataloging bodies, surveilling bod- nected self-provisioning, poverty alleviation, and relief from
ies, and executing bodies) that are useful in understanding hunger as expressions of self-determination and community.
power (Das and Poole 2004; Folch 2013; Mbembe 2003; Ong The 2007 Nyéléni Declaration, named for the Malian village
2006; Roitman 2004). And science and technology studies have that hosted the first International Food Sovereignty Forum
foregrounded crucial conversations within the discipline on that year, built on these discussions and defined food sov-
biocitizenship and organizational technologies of the body ereignty as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally ap-
(Ong and Collier 2005). In spite of the vibrancy of these ap- propriate food produced through ecologically sound and sus-
proaches, recent scholarship on sovereignty has pointed out tainable methods, and their right to define their own food
shortcomings in the conversation so far. Singh (2012) explores and agriculture systems” (Nyéléni 2007). Examining the suc-
the mystical sovereignty of Thakur Baba, a spiritual figure in cesses and weaknesses of food sovereignty movements, Edel-
central India, moving beyond political or economic contexts man (2014) locates part of the difficulty in a programmatic
for the exercise of sovereign power. In an insightful genea- uncertainty about the scope and enforcement of sovereignty.
logical analysis of Agambenian sovereignty, Jennings (2011) But he also raises theoretical concerns when he mistrusts the
points out that an uncritical acceptance of Agamben by an- “deeply authoritarian premise” that underlays Agamben’s use
thropologists has naturalized modern political categories. of Nazi sympathizer Schmitt for the definition of sovereign as
But the Brazilian and Paraguayan activists from the open- “he who decides upon the state of exception” (Edelman 2014:
ing of this paper who insisted on speaking of sovereignty do 968).
not seem to fit neatly into any of the categories described Cattelino’s (2008) work on Seminole Indians and gaming
above. In Paraguay, leftist social movement leaders connected also centers on what is meant by and what is done with sov-
sovereignty to the alienability of commodities and market- ereignty. She shows how Seminoles argue that gaming wealth
set energy prices as the way to finance social transformation. is simultaneously an expression of their sovereignty and the
To scholars of Latin America and other colonized commu- means by which it might be exercised when reinvested in eco-
nities, the resurgence of sovereignty as a way to frame social nomic and social development of tribal citizens, supplanting
and political issues will be familiar. Although movements like the nearly nonexistent US federal provisions. Tribal sover-
this are often called “third world sovereignty” or “decolonial” eignty can also be enforced through the opening of tribal col-
movements, I prefer to use “counterhegemonic” or “subaltern” leges, as the Oglala Lakota (of Pine Ridge) did in founding
sovereignty because, as the ethnographic examples below will Oglala Lakota College in 1971. Similarly, Idle No More’s recent
show, there are similarities to be drawn between movements challenge to Canadian oil extraction rests under a “vision . . .
that may or may not be in the global South. In fact, many of [that] revolves around Indigenous Ways of Knowing rooted
them are notably located in the first world. Their appeal may in Indigenous Sovereignty to protect water, air, land and all
be against a nation-state or a transnational corporation and creation for future generations” (Idle No More 2013). In fact,
the repeated public evocation of tribal sovereignty in North political strategy (57). For Coronil, the land that is then in-
America parallels a long indigenous intellectual tradition of flected is oil in Venezuela. In Paraguay, it is hydroelectric
engagement on sovereignty (Deloria 1988 [1969]). potential. Today, the growing interest in infrastructure, in STS,
In these examples, the question is not so much about and in the impacts of the Anthropocene has cemented the
where and when law can be retracted so that certain bodies theoretical, not just empirical, importance of materiality to
are legally killable. Instead, sovereignty is something that has lived human experience and the structure of human socie-
been taken away or is threatened (and thus needs to be re- ties. And so, while there is notable theoretical richness in an-
gained or protected). This kind of sovereignty seems to have thropological writing on sovereignty issues as biopolitical ex-
a lot to do with law, legality, and contracts. It is somehow ception and necropolitics, the literature does not draw the
about communities and community control of a vital resource same depth to an analysis of subaltern sovereignty movements
(often a natural resource—land, water, seed). It is demon- or their contentions over natural resources and the fundamen-
strated through the ability to dispose of the resource (to use it tal role played by violence in originating an unequal political-
or sell it) without intervention from outside the community. legal hierarchy.
And, as a result of the control of the resource, the community
is able to secure its future.
As anthropologists, we are trained to problematize all the The School of Salamanca: Bringing Colonialism
nouns and verbs in the preceding paragraph—what is meant
and Natural Resources Back In
by “community,” “intervention,” and “control”? But here I
interrogate what is meant by “sovereignty” in situations like The inland city of Salamanca boasts the oldest university in
the Paraguayan case by showing how the concept of sovereignty Spain. There in the sixteenth century, scholars debated the im-
has been enmeshed with questions of imperialism, natural re- plications of new economic developments as maritime trade
sources, and cultural otherness for the past 5 centuries. I turn increased across the Atlantic and the theological repercussions
to a debate on sovereignty that has its roots in the Spanish of employing enslaved Africans. In recent years, the economic
juristic discussions of Francisco de Vitoria regarding the sov- writings of Dominican and Jesuit thinkers of Salamanca who
ereignty of the native peoples of the Americas, which has been had contact with Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch merchants
enshrined in international law governing intellectual property have caught the attention of economic historians. Hayek’s
rights, energy disputes, and preemptive strikes even today. student Grice-Hutchinson (1952) argues that, as the Thomistic
Again, as anthropologists, we do not need to be convinced of scholars made sense of the financial changes following the
the value of ethnographic specificity; however, the present en- introduction of New World bullion into the Spanish economy,
tailments of Spanish juristic thinking are not solely or even they developed a form of promarket analysis that anticipated
predominantly experienced in areas of indigeneity but, rather, the Austrian school of economics (see also Huerta de Soto
throughout international law worldwide. That is to say, this is 2009:83). In a related fashion, the school of Salamanca initi-
not just about third world sovereignty; instead, this is about ated important directions in international law, whose ramifi-
principles that structure sovereignty in the first world. cations shaped the North Atlantic world and thus European
And what of the prominent place of hydroelectricity, soil empires for centuries, exemplifying how a rapidly changing
fertility, or seed in subaltern sovereignty movements? At Itaipú world leads to new paths of political economy. Legal histo-
Dam, water is not merely water; it is a social relation. Latin rians credit Dominican friar Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546,
Americanist anthropologists have long called for greater at- sometimes written as “Victoria”) as one of the key originators
tention to the material—particularly natural resources and of the concepts and problems that got bundled together un-
agricultural commodities—than is sometimes given in stud- der the doctrine of sovereignty, forming the core of interna-
ies of political economy focused on the capital-labor dyad. tional law (Cohen 1960; Kennedy 1986; Ramón Hernández
Writing of Venezuelan petroleum, Coronil (1996, 1997) brings 1991; Scott 1934; Wagner 2011).
Marx and Lefebvre to bear on the question of nature and Vitoria and two of his most important modern interpret-
natural resources in thinking about modern political eco- ers, Robert Williams and Antony Anghie, systematically con-
nomics. Lefebvre (1991) argues that space is socially produced nect economics to self-governance to just war. The sovereignty
via spatial practices of economic production and social re- doctrine—a component of international legal sovereignty in
production. For Coronil and Lefebvre, the addition of land to Krasner’s typology—undergirds treaties and all other engage-
transform Marx’s binary of capital-labor (from Capital, vol. 1) ments between states, including trade, governance, and war.
into his “trinity formula” of capital-labor-land (from Capital, The cardinal precept of international law (including economic
vol. 3) offers more robust analysis and brings the state more agreements with multinational corporations) assumes that all
fully into a political-economic analysis of natural resources. national states are equal and equally sovereign within bounded
Because land is a social relation, Coronil (1997) uses Lefebvre’s territories. Although idealized as an even playing field of inde-
argument that it includes “landlords, country, aristocracy” to pendent actors who possess the same capacity to enter and to
then leverage an attention to the physical composition of na- withdraw, the reality of the international legal order is anything
ture into a full-fledged study of the nation-state, politics, and but balanced. Williams and Anghie argue that the supposed
neutrality of the sovereignty doctrine in actuality masks an and true ownership” and “according to divine law, a heretic
ongoing asymmetry between colonizers and colonized. That is, does not forfeit ownership of his property because of his
it is not just unfortunate happenstance that not all states are heresy” (Vitoria 1975 [1532]:31). Thus, prior to the arrival
equal; rather, the inequality is a product of the system of in- of the Spanish, the indigenous were indeed both rightful rul-
ternational law. I assert that this debate makes sense of the ers and true owners even if they were heretics. And so, the
movement for hydroelectric sovereignty in Paraguay and clar- Spanish conquest was not justifiable on the basis of the her-
ifies similarities between that movement and other counter- esy of the Indians or on a claim that they had lacked sover-
hegemonic sovereignty movements. eignty in the first place.
In 1539, Francisco de Vitoria presented two important trea- Vitoria argued for a different justification for conquest. He
tises on Spanish-Indian relations—De Indis (On the Indians held that “a heretic, from the date in which he commits a
newly discovered) and De iure belli (On just war)—where he crime, incurs the penalty of confiscation of his property” (Vi-
enumerated the rights of the Spanish and of the Indians, her- toria 1975 [1532]:31). If a natural offense against the Span-
etics in mortal sin because they did not practice Christianity. iards, not a spiritual offense against God, were committed by
Forty years had passed since the initial contact in the Carib- the Indians, the Spanish could then become rulers over the
bean, followed by a population decimation so gruesome and Indians and the owners of their possessions. De Indis pro-
swift that even one of its participants wrote, “Who born in the ceeds with a refutation of “illegal” bases for claiming title over
centuries to come will believe it? I myself, who write and be- land previously held by the Indians. Included in the list are
held, know the most of it and now it seems to me that it discovery and papal conferment, argued such because the In-
was not possible” (Las Casas 2007:219). The pope, as Christ’s dians were indeed true owners and because the pope’s au-
earthly representative, was shepherd of all humans and had thority was over spiritual matters, not secular ones.
conceded unto Spain the obligation to missionize the peoples After having established that the Indians were rightful own-
living in the newly discovered continents. But the rampant ers and countered arguments for claiming title that were un-
destruction of human lives wrought by Spanish conquistadors just, Vitoria turned to arguments for why the Spanish might
in the first decades proved problematic. Not only was there legitimately claim title. He listed eight possible reasons, the
labor shortage and thus lost revenue, which led to the trans- first of which is “natural partnership and communication”
atlantic slave trade, but the religious justification for the en- (Vitoria 1975 [1532]:87). This final section of Vitoria’s treatise
deavor was undercut. The question was then how to rein in outlines the specific rights of the Spanish that, should they
the slaughter while acknowledging the Crown’s dominion and be violated by the Indians, would be justification for war and
respecting the Church; Vitoria’s innovation was to find justi- therefore dominion over the people and their possessions. He
fication not in a spiritual mandate but in natural law. began by saying, “The Spaniards have a right to travel to the
De Indis and De iure belli resolved the tension by invoking lands of the Indian barbarians and to sojourn there so long as
the law of nations. Revealing the mercantile concerns that they do no harm, and they can not be prevented by the In-
eventually linked Salamanca to Austrian economics, Vitoria dian barbarians,” and he continued, “It is licit for the Span-
was concerned with legal title, but as importantly, he was con- iards to carry on trade [negociar] in the lands of the Indian
cerned with legal war. Although De Indis is the text dis- barbarians, as long as they do no harm to their own country,
cussed in detail here, including its treatment of justifiable importing the goods which they lack, etc., and extracting [ex-
war, the fact that the two treatises were drafted together and traer] gold and silver and other objects that abound; and their
refer to one another points to the centrality of law-making rulers can not prevent their subjects from carrying on com-
violence (Benjamin 1986). Vitoria (1975 [1532]) opened by merce with the Spaniards” (Vitoria 1975 [1532]:87, emphasis
exploring the rights of the Indians, asking, “Whether the In- mine). The use of extraer in the text presages the imbalanced
dian barbarians were, before the arrival of the Spaniards, true modern global economic system where the complement of
owners in public and in private law; and whether there were importation is exportation in the global North but extraction
among them any true chiefs and princes” (31). That is to say, in the global South.
the core components of what became known as the sover- Vitoria’s resolution affirmed that, in spite of their cultural
eignty doctrine were questions of ownership and governance. inferiority, the Indians were sovereign. However, while the
We will discuss this in further detail below, but here I want to Indians had the right to rule themselves and own their pos-
emphasize that for Vitoria this issue was not a singular but a sessions regardless of their cultural inferiority, outsiders had
plural. International legal sovereignty is about both rule and the right to travel in the territory of the Indians and carry
possession, about both government and property. out trade. Should the Indians prevent travel and commerce,
Given the Indians’ morally inferior position as heretics who it would be just to wage war and take over their land and
did not believe in Christ, could they still be considered the government. If twentieth-century Western political theory is
original owners of their possessions, and were their leaders so concerned with how liberal democratic governments fash-
legitimate rulers of their domains? In response, the Dominican ioned an apparatus to legally kill millions of their own citi-
priest turned to natural law, and the answer he gave was yes. zens, it is similarly noteworthy that international legal sov-
He argued that “mortal sin does not impede civil ownership ereignty should be so tightly allied with how to legally kill
millions of those who were not citizens in the sixteenth cen- economy. Antony Anghie and Robert Williams show the sys-
tury. Economics and the desirability of the natural resources tematic ways that the conceptualization of sovereignty oc-
of the Indians were at the very center of just war theory and curred in the crucible of colonialism, foregrounding desirable
the origins of the sovereignty doctrine. natural resources, economic imperative, and the other as cul-
By turning to natural law, Vitoria followed in the footsteps turally inferior.
of another Dominican, Thomas Aquinas. The underlying Williams’s scholarship is primarily concerned with un-
premise to Thomistic natural law was that it was universally derstanding the place of Native Americans in Western legal
rational and applicable to all human communities, regard- thought, but his work engages much more widely. Regarding
less of religion. De Indis, in fact, interweaves a discussion of Vitoria, the University of Arizona law professor writes, “In ap-
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics with exhortations from the plying Thomistic natural-law discourse to the question of the
Old and New Testaments. Vitoria argued for the rationality legal rights of the Indians, Victoria inaugurated the first critical
of the Indians and therefore the recognition of their rights steps toward a totalizing jurisprudence of international order—
under natural law, which they themselves forfeited by violat- a Law of Nations intended to regulate all aspects of the rela-
ing that law. If natural law is universally reasonable, as Vitoria tionship between independent states” (Williams 1990:96). Spe-
maintained, then any who challenge the Western legal struc- cific European values were claimed to be universally held values.
ture of international law are fundamentally unreasonable. There Thus, a particular asymmetrical relationship and the princi-
is a tension between the rationality of the Indians and their ples to justify it were universalized as the pattern to govern all
cultural otherness. In De Indis, commerce presumes universal interstate, intercommunal dynamics. The principles were pur-
rationality, which was why preventing trade was a violence- ported to be equitable and the various participants equals, but
justifying violation. The universality of reason plays a critical because the Indians failed to meet rational, universal standards,
role in Vitoria’s thinking; this is why he does not consider the they were forever relegated to subaltern status and not permit-
doctrine of discovery legal justification for conquest. He does not ted to exercise sovereignty. “For half a millennium,” Williams
need to. Rational use, not first discovery, confers rights of (1990) writes, “Western legal thought has sought to erase the
ownership and control. difference presented by the American Indian in order to sus-
Vitoria’s thinking made its way to the rest of non-Iberian tain the privileges of power it accords to Western norms and
Europe after his death. His theological reflections published value structures” (326). For Williams, Vitoria was the first to
posthumously in Lyon in 1558 deeply impacted Grotius, who erase the difference of Native Americans by simultaneously as-
cites him more than a hundred times in On the Law of Spoils serting and then removing their legal rights.
and in his most enduring work, On the Law of War and Peace. Anghie, a law professor at the University of Utah, has a
Grotius had a tremendous influence on Hobbes and Locke broader scope on the use of law in colonialism and post-
and, thus, on the development of classical liberalism in the decolonization in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. He argues
North Atlantic world. The school of Salamanca appears in that international law was created to resolve problems arising
Boswell’s 1791 biography of Samuel Johnson, who quips, “I from an unprecedented situation of Spanish-Indian contact
love the University of Salamanca; for when the Spaniards (Anghie 1999, 2005). He thus grounds all subsequent inter-
were in doubt as to the lawfulness of their conquering Amer- national law in a colonial encounter, showing how law re-
ica, the University of Salamanca gave it as their opinion that garding governance and property has been systematically used
it was unlawful” (Boswell and Birrell 1901:117). Even Schmitt to disenfranchise and dispossess, linking imperial projects to
sees Vitoria as seminal in modern European thought, devot- the emergence of the sovereignty doctrine. Beginning with
ing an entire chapter of The Nomos of the Earth (2006) to his Vitoria, Anghie (2005) sees a close association between sov-
thinking, unlike any other theorist treated there. He writes, ereignty, property, commerce, and acceptable government:
“The first question in international law was whether the lands
Vitoria’s arguments are based on the concept of property,
of non-Christian, non-European peoples and princes were
which is intimately connected in his thought with issues
‘free’ and without authority, whether non-European peoples
of legal personality and sovereignty. Thus the crucial conse-
were at such a low stage of civilization that they could be the
quence of being recognized as a legal person, as possessing
objects of organization by peoples at a higher stage” (Schmitt
reason, is the acquisition of the right to own property. . . .
2006:137–138). Schmitt holds that modern European inter-
Taken together, these statements go very far toward assert-
national law is based on the American land grab, which re-
ing that non-European sovereignty is subject to a foreigner’s
sulted in a new spatial order where the New World was the
‘right to trade’. Crucially, then, one of the major functions
exception and Europe the place of law.
of government was to ensure that international commerce
But while Schmitt treats Vitoria as a medieval theologian,
would be furthered. (251)
legal historians read him as a modern jurist. Through Vitoria,
a discourse on sovereignty and otherness developed that sec- Williams (1990) also notes the importance of economic im-
ularized and rationalized the conquest in terms of commerce perative in Vitoria: “Victoria had elevated the profit motive to
and natural resources. This move gave impetus to the political an extremely privileged status in his totalizing discourse of a
legal system that underpinned the emerging capitalist world universally obligatory natural Law of Nations” (102). The uni-
versal reasonableness of the profit motive in Vitoria and the “failed states.” Current attempts to radically redefine rights, sta-
school of Salamanca may be one touch point for the Austrian tus, and sovereignty demonstrate the imbalances internalized
school of economics. and normalized within law. And so we should not be surprised
There is much to find useful here in the close linking of to see challenges not merely to the accepted interpretation of
economics to sovereignty, but I want to emphasize the extrac- international legal principles or to specific treaties but also
tive nature of the wealth-building activities. As international to the underlying precepts of the entire system. We also might
law is constructed out of an extractive land grab, Anghie and expect that, when such challenges are made by subaltern sov-
Williams demonstrate how land is a social relation. Trade, in ereignty movements, their opponents might counter that there
Vitoria, was about gold and silver and undefined “other objects.” is something unreasonable and irrational about them.
Today, extractive activities extend to hydrocarbons, soil fer-
tility, biodiversity, local knowledges, water, and even territo-
rialized legal differentials. The pressures of the Anthropocene
Recovering Hydroelectric Sovereignty in Paraguay
may provide new impetus to international law by returning
to the question of rational usages of natural resources. Recall “In Panama, there were good negotiators,” said Ricardo Ca-
that for Vitoria discovery was an invalid claim to title and nese to the standing-room-only crowd in an auditorium brim-
that previous rightful ownership could be eclipsed by more ming with more than 300 campesinos and students, women
rational—economic—uses. Scholars of the developing world carrying young children, urban laborers, and urban profession-
have highlighted the importance of extraction in organizing als who had waited for hours for Canese to take the stage.
both economics and politics, arguing against an emphasis only Three previous speakers had already presented updates on the
on the postindustrial as characteristic of advanced capitalism state of Paraguayan-Brazilian negotiations over hydroelectric-
(Ferguson 2006). I am concerned that the privileging of Agam- ity; nevertheless, the audience attended closely to the engi-
ben within anthropology plays into this same blind spot, con- neer’s words.
ceptualizing sovereignty as being primarily about the individual “But it was the people who got the sovereignty,” Canese
[ized] human body while subaltern sovereignty movements continued. “In Bolivia, there were good negotiators, but it was
insist on a sovereignty that is about land and community. the people who got the sovereignty. . . . Look at the example of
Following Vitoria, asymmetrical judgments regarding cul- Chile in development, the role of copper as an ongoing re-
tural otherness have been assumed into neutral definitions of source for development. Hydroelectric sovereignty has got to
appropriate uses of resources and territory. This is why in the be the cause of all Paraguayans.”
present, among supposedly equal, postdecolonization nation- Pleased with the turnout from the January 7 presentation,
states, international law and treaties are the sites of such Canese and the rest of the progressive negotiating team em-
contention. By elevating to the level of value-free law the right barked on a nationwide circuit of public events, including the
of Europe-sourced political structures to organize and to take, March 26 protest, designed to bring attention to hydroelec-
by conquest or purchase, the territory of indigenous commu- tric sovereignty. A struggle for energy-articulated sovereignty
nities, law itself becomes a tool of domination. This is most swept across Paraguay in the first decade of the twenty-first
baldly seen in the repeated rescripting of law when it suits the century, toppling the dominance of a political party that had
powerful—the ongoing one-sided violation and rewriting of controlled the government for 6 decades and bestowing new
treaties. Williams is, then, skeptical of treaties and the doctrine momentum to popular movements. Here I return to ethnog-
of sovereignty on which they rest. Because “the history of the raphy to detail hydroelectric sovereignty as it came to be defined
American Indian in Western legal thought reveals that a will by Lugo’s close collaborators and how Brazilian negotiators
to empire proceeds most effectively under a rule of law,” he countered these claims. I draw attention to three elements from
argues that “indigenous peoples now seek to redefine radically the previous discussion of Vitoria: (1) the moral quality of a
the conception of their rights and status in international and do- government as cultural inferiority and irrationality, (2) chal-
mestic legal forums” (Williams 1990:325, 328, emphasis mine). lenges to the international legal system, and (3) the role played
And Anghie (2005) writes, “Now the non-European world pre- by violence.
sents itself not as the tribal leader whose legal personality has to Although accusations of corrupt Paraguayan officials and
be determined, or the mandate peoples seeking self-government, capitulation to Brazilian interests had dogged Itaipú Dam
but a sovereign entity intent on reversing the effects of impe- from the 1970s (Creydt 1973), in Fernando Lugo’s presidential
rialism by changing the rules of international law in order to campaign these critiques became mainstream, accepted across
achieve development” (235, emphasis mine). the political spectrum. But while the charge of fiscal malfea-
Since Anghie and Williams see international law as an at- sance and patrimonial clientelism was an old complaint, hydro-
tempt to universalize European concepts and to naturalize the electric sovereignty made new claims about the Paraguayan
effects of colonialism, international conflicts over natural re- nation, the Paraguayan state, and the Paraguayan national ter-
sources offer important challenges. This may explain why, in ritory. The phrase was more than just rhetorical strategy, al-
rhetoric and policy, they are often linked to international com- though one of Lugo’s closest associates did describe it to me
merce and definitions of worthy government as opposed to as “good ‘marketing.’ ”
The Itaipú hydroelectric dam was built during the Colo- Mobilized” flyer from the March 26 international protest,
rado Party dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954–1989) in an indication of how sovereignty movements build alliances
Paraguay and the Brazilian military government (1967–1985). and of the new vocabularies and imaginative horizons Ben-
Although Stroessner fell in a coup in 1989, his party continued habib foresaw. For progressive sectors in Lugo’s government,
in power, controlling the symbolic and financial resources of sovereignty would be demonstrated by the ability to alienate
the state. Fernando Lugo’s presidency arose out of a nation- commodities at market-determined prices, potentially bring-
wide grassroots protest against then president Nicanor Duarte ing in almost US$1 billion in additional annual revenue to a
(2003–2008), whose machinations to gain reelection were so country with a 2009 gross domestic product of US$16 billion.
egregious that even part of his own Colorado Party mutinied. Canese called for the renegotiation of the Itaipú Treaty as part
A nonpartisan charismatic spokesman, Bishop Lugo emerged of attaining hydroelectric sovereignty.
in 2006 as the moral leader who promised a new Paraguay and Though treaties imply greater consensus than other forms
a new politics. With growing momentum, a small team of left- of international agreements, energy activists and the Para-
ist activists who had been persecuted by the dictatorship in their guayan public challenged the content and the validity of the
youth gathered around the bishop with a vision to transform Itaipú documents. A nineteenth-century border dispute over
Lugo’s moral authority into a political one. They formed the whether Guairá Falls lay entirely within the Brazilian national
leftist social movement Tekojoja, successfully uniting popular territory or within both countries ended in the 1960s with
groups and political parties across the spectrum.4 recognition of Paraguayan co-ownership of the hydroelectric
Ricardo Canese, a critic of Itaipú Dam dating to his days as potential of the Paraná River and an agreement to flood the
an engineering student, was a founding member of Tekojoja waterfalls in order to build a jointly owned dam. The ex-
and part of Lugo’s inner circle. Under Canese’s influence, Te- pression of Paraguayan ownership was simultaneously cur-
kojoja not only criticized the financial mismanagement by tailed by binational agreements around the energy distribution
Paraguayan officials in the dam but actually challenged “Bra- of the dam (Acta de Foz do Iguaçu, 1966, Brazil-Paraguay;
zilian imperialism” by demanding a recovery of Paraguay’s hy- Tratado de Itaipú, 1973, Brazil-Paraguay). In the instant that
droelectric sovereignty and a renegotiation of the Itaipú Treaty Paraguayan sovereignty was recognized, the energy commit-
itself. Doing so would bring in riches that the government ments and price caps were put in place.
would invest in education, health, and jobs, ushering in the By specifying what had been lost and what must be re-
social development promised but never delivered by other gov- gained, hydroelectric sovereignty simultaneously enunciated
ernments (Tekojoja Public Platform, April 2008). Like other problem and solution even as, through it, Canese and others
governments in Latin America’s leftward turn, social equity in Lugo’s administration invoked the Paraguayan national
would be attained not through revolution but through energy history (and their own heroic place in it). They asserted that
rent. Paraguay’s sovereignty had been lost because unpatriotic Par-
It was a shock to the political discourse in Paraguay. Political aguayan politicians had signed away Paraguay’s rights in the
elites distanced themselves from any language that might up- Itaipú Treaty. Like many stories told in Paraguay, this one
set the powerful neighbor, but the gamble paid off. Brazilian hearkened to the War of the Triple Alliance (1865–1870).
President Lula da Silva promised to discuss the issue, should In the nineteenth century, Paraguay fought and lost the war
Fernando Lugo win the election. As soon as Lugo stepped into against the combined forces of Argentina, Brazil, and Uru-
office in August 2008, he appointed Canese to a cabinet-level guay. As a consequence, nine out of ten Paraguayan males
position as head of a special Commission on Binational Hy- lost their lives (including teenagers and children), and more
droelectric Entities (CEBH), the negotiating team responsi- than one-third of the national territory was transferred to Bra-
ble for meeting with the Brazilian Foreign Ministry. The CEBH zil and Argentina. Memory of the war—invasion by neighbors
negotiating team was staffed primarily by Tekojoja activists, to raid a rich, independent Paraguay—is central to how the
who had considerable experience in community organizing nation and the nation’s resources are imagined in Paraguay
but less in international diplomacy. (Whigham 2002). Recovering hydroelectric sovereignty reca-
Hydroelectric sovereignty came to be defined even as it pitulated the loss in the war (ABC Color 2009).
became accepted as a goal (Folch 2015). In a book titled Re- The Brazilian mainstream press, business leaders in São
covering Paraguay’s Hydroelectric Sovereignty, Canese (2007) Paulo, and diplomatic corps flatly refused to renegotiate the
explicitly outlined the core goals as (1) libre disponbilidad, the treaty, which the Brazilian foreign minister repeatedly called
ability to “freely access” all of Paraguay’s electricity, includ- “sacrosanct” (ABC Color 2007a). Critics in Brazil character-
ing selling to parties other than Brazil, and (2) precio justo, ized Paraguay as “full of contraband” and “corrupt,” meaning
receiving a “fair price” based on the market (101). Language that the untrustworthy Paraguayan government should not be
from Canese’s manifesto and from Tekojoja’s political plat- in charge of resources that directly impacted the Brazilian
form made its way into the Vía Campesina “Why We Are consumer (O Globo 2008). Others described the situation as
one where Paraguay was trying to get something for nothing,
4. The “j” in Guaraní is pronounced like “jam” in English; the last syl- as did the Brazilian energy minister when he said Paraguay did
lable is accented. not contribute “one cent” to finance Itaipú.
One Brazilian government official, an expert in Paraguay- Carlos Mateo Balmelli. The fiery rhetoric of hydroelectric
Brazil relations, said to me, “Why is the treaty ‘so unfair’? sovereignty worked better on the streets than in the conference
Everything was for free. The Paraguayan economy grew 10 per- room. By mid-2009, hydroelectric sovereignty was so popu-
cent a year while Itaipú was built. We are not to blame that lar within Paraguay that other sectors added it to their own
the money that came here was not spent on Paraguay but went agendas—notably the Liberal Party and campesino groups
to the pockets of the ‘barons of Itaipú’ or to the regimes.” In pushing for agrarian reform—as a way to accrue legitimacy.
other words, the status quo of Itaipú was framed as a result of This success was a double-edged sword for Lugo and his allies
and, indeed, a protection against Paraguayan moral failings. because they did not reap the benefits of brand loyalty.
In the rhetoric of the Brazilian government, risk constitutes vir- Sovereignty resonantly mapped onto desirable natural re-
tue and therefore provision of all of the collateral for the con- sources and a national history of imperial predation. Although
struction debt granted the moral high ground. Unstated in all the Itaipú Treaty was “neutral” international law, for the Canese-
of the outcries against Paraguayan freeloading, however, was headed Paraguayan negotiating team and for the Paraguayan
the controversy over the massive construction debt, which had public in general the treaty was unfair in its origin and in its
quadrupled due to questionable arrangements between Itaipú content. Robert Williams here might say that, although the
and the Brazilian utility company, harming the financial sol- work of modernity has been to erase difference by claiming to
vency of the dam and benefiting Eletrobrás (C. Folch, unpub- represent all, the sovereignty advocated by progressive groups
lished data). Discourses of corruption serve as politically ex- has fundamentally different contours than those contained
pedient accusations while not being applied consistently. within international law. Yet the Paraguayan negotiating po-
Lugo, Canese, and the leftist Paraguayan negotiators re- sition was beset by tensions—how to use moral appeals to
peatedly threatened to recur to arbitration by The Hague, international legal systems to overturn a treaty when Para-
although they never did (ABC Color 2007b). At times, Para- guayan government officials spoke of the illegitimacy of that
guayan attempts to regain hydroelectric sovereignty moved be- legal system.
yond just challenging the interpretation of the Itaipú Treaty to The resistance to renegotiating the water and energy rela-
questioning its basic legality and legitimacy. During the January tionship between Paraguay and Brazil in Itaipú suggests that
2009 public presentation in Asunción, one of the CEBH nego- Paraguayan sovereignty existed to the extent that it facili-
tiators argued that because the 1973 Itaipú Treaty was signed by tated the Itaipú Treaty and the energy distribution detailed
two “bloody dictatorships,” its validity was dubious. “The therein. Therefore, corruption within the Paraguayan govern-
Congress of Vienna gives Paraguay the right to annul the ment was tolerated by the Brazilian government so long as it
treaty,” said Canese’s ally, Domingo Laíno, an elder statesman did not hinder energy extraction. But when a Paraguayan gov-
of the left. “Paraguay can do this unilaterally, or it can be done ernment arose that imperiled Brazil’s supply by demanding
bilaterally.” Vigorous applause met this pronouncement. The greater control and higher prices, the quality of the Para-
Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969), of which guayan state became an issue. Per pacta sunt servanda a de-
both Brazil and Paraguay are parties, codified contemporary mocracy must comply with treaties signed by nondemocratic
international law and recognized the rights of states when military regimes. The quality of Paraguay’s government was
forming treaties, but the process of annulling treaties was more superseded by international economic imperatives, revealing
complicated than what Laíno implied. a value hierarchy where a government infamous for its fla-
This explanation was one I heard repeatedly in conversa- grant disregard for rule of law and human rights, like the
tions with Lugo’s progressive base—the very fact that the violent regime of Alfredo Stroessner, is still an adequate rep-
treaty was passed by a military regime that ruled through resentative when natural resources are at stake. But a demo-
state terror meant that the treaty did not represent the wishes cratic movement toward fiscal transparency and social devel-
of the Paraguayan people, and it should therefore be nulli- opment through the market may be a problematic, legally
fied. Yet it is not standard legal principle to claim that the questionable government.
retroactive delegitimacy of rulers negates the validity of treat-
ies. Instead, pacta sunt servanda (promises must be kept) is the
Conclusion
common practice. Brazilian government officials expressed un-
abashed confidence even in private that The Hague and any The struggle for hydroelectric sovereignty encountered a num-
other international legal body would side with the Brazilian ber of constraints that point to shortcomings in subaltern so-
government in the event the matter were brought before the cial movements and to changes we may see around nature/
court. energy in the future. One challenge Lugo’s close allies faced
But instead of international arbitration, Presidents Lugo and was that, while operating in the idiom of international law,
Lula signed an agreement resolving the diplomatic tensions and their Brazilian counterparts were more accustomed to the
raising the price paid for Paraguay’s electricity in July 2009. In- terrain. Because government negotiators insisted on revok-
terestingly, the terms of the 2009 agreement were initially de- ing pacta sunt servanda, the popular Paraguayan claims were
veloped by Paraguay’s other negotiating team, the energy sec- taken less seriously. Moreover, the technocratic team headed
tor technocrats led by Itaipú’s Paraguayan Executive Director by Itaipú Executive Director Balmelli deliberately appealed to
international law for a new interpretation of the treaty that be religious heresy, perhaps it will be revised as corruption or
would simultaneously affirm the international legal order and weak institutionality. Moreover, we may soon see that envi-
increase Paraguayan control of finances and energy without ronmental misuse, pollution, or underutilization are increas-
ever mentioning hydroelectric sovereignty. Another obstacle ingly moralized and thereby justifications for removal of sov-
for Lugo and Canese lay in the dual audience for hydroelec- ereignty. Photogenic natural disasters, many of which are water
tric sovereignty: conflicts arose because, at times, the aim to legit- based (parched river beds and receding glaciers), reterri-
imate the leftist regime before a national constituency com- torialize water as a regional or global resource and not merely
peted against the negotiating agenda with Brazil. national, justifying intervention. This is where it is crucial that
Ultimately, the greatest barrier to hydroelectric sovereignty Vitoria found legitimation for legal title not in discovery but
and social development dreams proved to be the political con- in rational, economic use. As resources grow strained in the
text within Paraguay. In June 2012, President Fernando Lugo Anthropocene, international law already has a technique by
was abruptly impeached in a trial regionally decried as a barely which to dispossess, backed by legalized violence and using
legal “coup,” validating Brazilian concerns about the quality moral aptitude as justification. In the Itaipú case, the ques-
of Paraguay’s government. Lugo’s Liberal Party vice-president tions of fitness revolve around corruption and risk. But I
(from a different faction than Balmelli) ascended to the pres- suspect that anthropogenic climate change will elevate sus-
idency even as neighboring countries retaliated by withdraw- tainability (environmental and otherwise) to such a univer-
ing their ambassadors. Gains made in Itaipú equity were jeop- salized status that it can trump preexisting legal title.
ardized, with the Brazilian government hesitant to yield any In spite of the setbacks in Paraguay and in other subaltern
more control in an unstable political situation. sovereignty movements, these struggles will only increase, es-
The campaign for hydroelectric sovereignty evinced the pecially as they learn from one another. We have already seen
kinds of sovereignty issues formulated by Vitoria. Of particular how campesino-based food sovereignty activism took on en-
import is the way that Vitoria brought cultural inferiority into ergy sovereignty. And there are already greater pressures on
the early debate. By describing the problem as one of sover- national control of desirable natural resources in the face of
eignty, Tekojoja, the CEBH negotiators, and the Paraguayan increased industrialization, energy scarcity, and anthropogenic
public highlighted the inequity of the international legal sys- climate change. The Itaipú example and the broader context
tem and of asymmetrical dominance by Brazil. The narrative given by the Spanish juristic tradition show a value hierarchy
of Brazilian imperialists, Paraguayan turncoats, and the suf- that culminates in commerce, in economic imperative. It is
fering of the Paraguayan people fit in a Paraguayan imagi- in the kiln of the resources of marginalized people, especially
nary infused with the history of the War of the Triple Alliance. natural resources, that the nature of sovereignty is being worked
On the other hand, the framing of the problem by Brazilian out again.
negotiators as one of Paraguayan freeloading and highly evi-
dent institutional weakness understood the issue as a problem Acknowledgments
of moral fragility. In other words, the problem was either one
of sovereignty in the face of imperialism or of prudent man- I thank Mark Aldenderfer and three anonymous reviewers at
agement in the face of corrupt irresponsibility. Current Anthropology as well as Alessandro Angelini, Marc
For many Paraguayans in the Lugo era, the greatest dem- Edelman, Julie Skurski, and Katherine Verdery for their com-
onstration of sovereignty would be expressed through the mar- ments on earlier versions of this argument. The shortcom-
ket (through the ability to determine how, when, and where ings that remain are my own. This article is based on fieldwork
alienation occurs) and through the ability to not have to comply conducted in Paraguay (2007–2010), supported by the Wenner-
with treaties. Understanding sovereignty as something about Gren Foundation and the Fulbright Institute of International
communities and natural resources from the beginning of the Education. Writing was supported by the Mellon/American
conquest helps move sovereignty beyond just the experiences Council of Learned Societies and the New York Public Library’s
and categories of human bodies, although both biopolitical and Wertheim Study.
subaltern sovereignty are at work in Paraguay; both are part of
how rule is enacted. And, in fact, the way they operate simul-
taneously and in tandem helps reveal the complexity of the
state, how it can be both symbolic and material, both insti-
tutions and practices of power and the ideological mask that Comments
justifies that domination.
Jessica R. Cattelino
The Itaipú sovereignty crisis suggests that secularized ar- Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles,
guments of moral and cultural turpitude will be wielded in 341 Haines Hall, Box 951553, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
situations beyond Paraguay and Brazil. To wit, the war on ( [email protected]). 5 IV 16
terror denotes cultural inferiority as lack of civilization and
facilitates access to the hydrocarbon resources of the Mid- Three themes caught my attention in Christine Folch’s paper:
dle East. While in the present moral deficiency might not genealogies for theorizing sovereignty, the role of indigeneity,
and the qualities of water. Folch urges anthropological the- scholars long and increasingly had been addressing indige-
orists of sovereignty to take better account of international nous sovereignty as claim, category, practice, status, and his-
ordering, especially in the wake of disciplinary conversations tory. Soon, anthropological attention turned to sovereignty,
about sovereignty that focused on state authority and biopol- and in 2004 the conference of the Society for Cultural An-
itics and featured keywords such as decision, exception, bare thropology even took sovereignty as its theme. Conference
life, and body. Sovereignty struggles between sovereigns— goers met in a Portland hotel decorated with historical images
in this case, between Paraguay and Brazil over the economics of the Lewis and Clark expedition, complete with an image of
of hydroelectric power—often take place on different terrain. American Indians on our room key cards. Notably, however,
The stuff of such (violence-backed) sovereignty claims, Folch vanishingly few papers addressed indigenous sovereignty. It
says, are cultural difference, control over natural resources, was a post-9/11 moment, when the problematics of sover-
and economic power. Suggesting an alternative genealogy of eignty helped anthropologists gain traction on emerging forms
sovereignty through the writings of Vitoria and others in the of power: Agamben, more than Foucault, could account for
Spanish school of Salamanca, Folch informs/reminds readers Guantánamo Bay. Soon, the word “sovereignty” appeared ev-
that the modern (inter)national order was born not with the erywhere, in anthropology grant applications and dissertation
Treaty of Westphalia, the doctrine of discovery, or the con- titles. A reader’s report on my book manuscript referred to
solidation of liberal democracy but rather/also with traditions sovereignty as the “flavor of the month.” Much had changed in
forged in the colonization of the Americas. Vitoria queried the a few short years.
legitimacy of colonial rule, endorsing European takeover in Still, dominant anthropological approaches to sovereignty
limited circumstances, such as indigenous peoples’ insuffi- worked better for describing and theorizing settler state sov-
cient and/or irrational use of resources. We hear echoes of this ereignty than indigenous sovereignty. What would it take to
in Locke’s theory of property and government and in the an- recenter indigeneity in theories of sovereignty? Although in-
thropologically well-documented blame game by states and digeneity does not seem to be a focus of these negotiations be-
NGOs of indigenous peoples for allegedly causing ecological tween Paraguay and Brazil, what should we make of Guaraní
degradation by improper resource use. linguistic and discursive presence or, more importantly, of
In the genealogical spirit, I would like to suggest another, the question of indigeneity that haunts Folch’s use of Vitoria?
less temporally and disciplinarily distant reference point. Dur- Indigenous sovereign formations are critically important for
ing the 1980s and 1990s, a substantial anthropological litera- rethinking the relationships among sovereignty, economy, and
ture on nationalism grappled with the postcolonial condition nature. This is the case not only when indigenous groups are
and, more broadly, the analytical and political dilemmas that the focus of analysis but in everything from international dis-
pervaded when groups sought freedom through the nation- putes over natural resources to the buen vivir movement in
state. Like Folch, scholars such as Partha Chatterjee, Lila Abu- Latin America to analyses of American power in today’s global
Lughod, and Akhil Gupta called for ethnographic attention to order. For example, my analysis of Florida Seminole gaming
the international order of things and to the ways that claims entailed taking (inter)dependency seriously as a site of sover-
to, or on behalf of, nation were not simply about consolidating eignty, and this, at least for me, had implications for sover-
internal rule but were also, always, about asserting political eignty’s theorization beyond Indian country.
legitimacy in relation to others. Scholars showed how a “logic Water calls attention to undertheorized aspects of sover-
of seriality” (it is Benedict Anderson’s phrase) facilitated eignty. The Paraná River divides Paraguay and Brazil, even
nations’ claims to equality and recognition against the back- as it is fed by tributaries and carries soil particles from each.
drop of imperialism and dependency. Whereas anthropolog- Waterways can divide, but freshwater also connects and poses
ical studies of sovereignty generally have highlighted its vio- notorious challenges to borders as it flows across them; builds,
lence, earlier research on nation and nationalism more closely erodes, and recontours land; and connects far-flung commu-
aligned with the circumstances Folch analyzes. What would it nities. Water’s temporality—for example, across seasons or
look like to revisit such proximate studies for the purpose of water years—is an awkward fit for bureaucratic timekeeping.
analyzing sovereignty in its present-day forms? What kinds Water troubles private property, implicates people in the well-
of politics might come into view, including about nature and being of others, and creates interdependencies: it is no coin-
economy? cidence that nation-states build authority by harnessing water.
Indigeneity matters in all of this, not only because it was a Increasingly frequent calls for watershed governance compel
key problem for Vitoria but also because of the importance of attention to underanalyzed aspects of sovereignty. Folch takes
indigenous sovereignty in today’s world. The question of sov- water to be a social relation. I would love to hear more: In what
ereignty in anthropology has interested me since a time just sense? With what implications for theorizing sovereignty?
before Agamben’s work began to circulate widely in the field. What would come of analyzing the Itaipú hydroelectric dam
In the late 1990s, when I sought funding for doctoral research alongside an account of, say, the Guarani Aquifer, an enor-
on Seminole sovereignty and high-stakes casino gaming, grant mous underground freshwater reservoir that many parties—
reviewers expressed skepticism that sovereignty was an an- indigenous peoples, corporations, regional interests, and even
thropological concept. Meanwhile, American Indian Studies the George Bush family—eye as critical to global water sus-
tainability? I am less certain than Folch that rethinking sov- efforts to wrestle with sovereignty (e.g., Bonilla 2013, 2015;
ereignty in light of Vitoria offers insights into the Anthropo- Cattelino 2008; Ong 1999; Simpson 2014; Stoler 2006). More-
cene per se, but without doubt this stimulating paper pushes over, Agamben (2005) and Schmitt (2006) also spend a fair
toward future anthropological work on sovereignty in the in- amount of time exploring the coding of territory through law
ternational ordering of environment and cultural difference. and, in Schmitt’s work, the conditions of possibility of im-
perial resource extraction. By no means is their exclusive fo-
cus the subjectification of bodies. I surmise that Folch would
agree with me on this point and that the backgrounding of
this literature is a feature of her decision to foreground other
Jeffrey S. Kahn
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, 328 questions. Nonetheless, it is worth acknowledging the wider
Young Hall, One Shields Avenue, Davis, California 95616, USA terrain of scholarship within which Folch’s contribution is
( [email protected]). 21 IV 16 situated.
More important, however, is the question of what role Vi-
Anthropologists have been studying sovereignty’s political fic- toria plays in Folch’s argument. At times, the Spanish jurist
tions (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1966 [1940]), its expressive figures less as a theoretical interlocutor and more as a histori-
performances (Geertz 1980), and its mimetic potentialities cal ethnographic case study: his relevance is intertwined with
for some time (Merry 2000). It was not until the first decade the parallels Folch discerns between sixteenth-century debates
of the new millennium, however, that sovereignty and its over sovereign title, present-day battles over Brazil’s share of
more brutal dimensions took center stage (Cattelino 2008: Itaipú energy sales, and resource conflicts yet to come. For
212, n. 22). This disciplinary shift was facilitated in part by Folch, Vitoria’s writings also hold within them the logical ker-
the work of Giorgio Agamben, whose interweaving of Carl nels of sovereignty’s juridical structure. As a player in those early
Schmitt, Michel Foucault, and Hannah Arendt offered up a debates over Spanish conquest and as one of the progenitors
provocative theoretical framework that seemed ready-made of modern international law, Vitoria, Folch contends, helped
for an academy confronted with the conundrums raised by establish the rules for permissible moves within the game of
resurgent executive power in a time of perceived crisis. Over sovereign contestation, rules that are still relevant to subaltern
the years, however, a “bare life” fatigue has set in, giving rise sovereignty movements operating in the present.
to pointed critique (Comaroff 2007; Jennings 2011); more cau- Despite the appeal of this argument, I remain skeptical that
tious assessments of the presence, or nonpresence, of necro- we should be looking to Vitoria as the primary guide for a re-
political violence (Ticktin 2011); and ethnographically grounded orientation of anthropology’s approach to sovereignty. Sala-
alternative formulations (Cattelino 2008). manca may be a key moment in an intellectual genealogy
Christine Folch’s thought-provoking piece joins these crit- (or historical process) that spanned centuries, gave rise to cur-
ical voices with a complex analytical and ethnographic in- rent legal doctrine, and inspired existing political imagina-
terweaving of its own. For Folch, the widespread uptake of ries. I fear, however, that the overemphasis on this early era
Agamben’s preoccupation with bodies and the exception has obscures the transformations of the intervening years. To give
blinded us to important questions regarding land, resources, one example, Folch never addresses the twin Roman law con-
and community. She finds the elements of a corrective re- cepts of imperium and dominium so central to elaborations of
framing in the writings of Francisco de Vitoria, a sixteenth- nation-state sovereignty and so deeply bound to juridical no-
century Dominican jurist and Thomist theologian known for tions of property and resource management (on land and at
his assertion of Indian rights in the Americas (Koskenniemi sea) during the sixteenth century and after (Armitage 2000;
2011:6–8). Folch contends that Vitoria’s focus on the relation Keene 2002; Steinberg 2001). Moreover, assertions regarding
of sovereignty to resources and property, as opposed to merely the types of sovereign infringements Folch imagines as poten-
governance, can orient the discipline anew, curing us of our tialities foreshadowed by Vitoria beg for a fuller description
myopic fixation on bodies and bare life while illuminating of the constraints imposed by the contemporary international
phenomena like the infrastructure-centered “hydroelectric legal landscape beyond brief references to pacta sunt servanda,
sovereignty” movements she describes. Boldly and creatively, rebus sic stantibus, and the law of drone warfare (cf. Keal 2003).
Folch adds a historical dimension to her argument, positing a If we are to look to Vitoria more for theoretical inspiration
dark symmetry between the epic destruction contemplated by than historical causation, however, I still wonder if he merits
Vitoria in the wake of Spanish imperialism and the looming the primacy given to him here. What of Grotius (2005 [1625])
catastrophe of anthropogenic climate change that has become and Vattel (2008 [1758]) on eminent title—the grounding of
synonymous with the current moment. all private property interests in a superseding state interest
Folch’s call for a refocusing on questions of land, property, in land? What of Locke’s (1980 [1690]) own justification for
and empire in debates over sovereignty is welcome, although imperial territorial grabs and his concomitant theory of sov-
her effort to distinguish herself from the existing literature is ereign prerogative? Are these authors merely derivative, or
perhaps a bit overdrawn. Questions of territory and imperi- might their particular formulations allow for a more robust
alism have been central to a host of recent anthropological theorization of Itaipú than Vitoria alone? While I fully sup-
port the intended shift away from sovereignty qua “North of international law, turning to the sixteenth-century Span-
Atlantic universal” (Trouillot 2003:36) and the light shone ish jurists of the Salamanca school, Francisco de Vitoria in
on the imperial roots of international law, the privileging of particular, who expressed a view of the peoples who were
Vitoria as intellectual inspiration or historical figure opens encountered and conquered by imperial power that empha-
the door to just these sorts of questions regarding the insights sized their possession of reason and ability to govern them-
of others who have pondered the relation between sover- selves and control their natural resources. Folch’s paper thus
eignty, resources, and land. Surely, as Agamben has taught us, pushes the boundaries of the ecological sovereignty move-
substituting Aristotle and Pompeius Festus with Vitoria can- ment at both ends of the historical spectrum, arguing for in-
not be the answer. That being said, Folch’s emphasis on the spiration from a deep historical source and pressing its future
property logics of sovereignty and its many entailments is consequences forward to the as-yet-to-unfold, shaping the con-
deeply important, and I look forward to the further develop- tests of the Anthropocene to come.
ment of an already intriguing thesis. Each of these two ambitious goals is fraught with difficulty.
First, although Vitoria can be seen as an influential precursor
of Grotius in the foundations of international law, one should
be cautious in drawing inspiration from these early origins—
going back to a school of thought that was active before in-
Ronald Niezen
Department of Anthropology, McGill University, 855 Sherbrooke ternational law as such can be said to have existed—with ref-
Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T7, Canada (ronald.niezen erence to the contemporary phenomena that seem to reflect
@mcgill.ca). 27 V 16 this school’s progressive tendencies. In the contemporary eco-
logical sovereignty movement(s), are we really witnessing a
In their critical engagements with major extractive industries, reengagement with a sixteenth-century precursor of interna-
including hydroelectric megaprojects, anthropologists have tional law, or is this more of a fortuitous, disconnected sym-
tended to focus on the overlooked human impact of these metry of thought? And if it is the latter, are there still lessons
projects: the consequences of displacement, environmental to be drawn from this intellectual history with reference to
destruction, loss of subsistence, the ruination of ways of life. the challenges of coming to terms with the phenomena some-
The subject has been framed in simple, stark terms as strug- times referred to as the Anthropocene? There are two risks in-
gles between industry and “victims of progress.” In Christine herent in engaging with sixteenth-century scholarship in this
Folch’s paper, we have a very different approach to hydro- way: one is to misinterpret the work of Vitoria and others by
electricity and its anthropological subject matters, one that imposing present concerns on their work, and the other is
uses another kind of critical approach to address a curious to overlook the complexities of the statist system of interna-
phenomenon that she refers to as “hydroelectric sovereignty.” tional law by turning for inspiration to sources that may have
From this term alone, we get a sense that something unusual inspired but that predate international law as such.
is afoot. In addressing these questions, lessons can be drawn from
Her paper can be classified among those pieces of schol- the international movement of indigenous peoples. In this con-
arship that both study and reflect sweeping transformations text, too, Vitoria’s name has come up as a source of early op-
in important aspects of collective life. The “eco-environmental” position to the ideas of “aborigines” as “natural slaves” and
sovereignty movement behind Paraguay’s hydroelectric popu- the related doctrine of discovery. But the place of indigenous
lism, with its claims to a greater share of benefits from the joint peoples in international law actually began with an assimila-
Brazil-Paraguay Itaipú hydroelectric project, would have been tive intent, in the initiatives of the International Labour Or-
hard to conceive a few short decades ago—not so much as a ganization in the 1950s. And even in its contemporary form,
grievance but more in terms of the particular form of sover- the United Nations remains solidly, persistently state centric,
eigntist activism behind that grievance. The connections be- despite the apparently growing influence of NGOs in a wide
tween this and other popular environmental sovereignty move- range of policies and processes of international law. The de-
ments like Via Campesina are among those developments that velopment of indigenous peoples as a global movement, ori-
stand out as new, marking an obvious rupture with the post– ented in part toward environmental justice and claims of self-
World War II regime of global governance and activism, point- determination, is closely connected to changing structures and
ing to a departure even from the kind of rhizomically net- roles of global organizations, the growing influence of NGOs,
worked social justice movements that have become central and the networking possibilities inherent in new media. And
features of justice-oriented activism. By situating sovereignty let us not overlook the rise of a human rights–inspired con-
issues with the crises of the Anthropocene, Folch is pointing to ception of humanity accompanying all of this, one that tran-
something emergent and as yet ill defined, inviting speculation scends the human rights movement as such and that, indeed,
on things-to-come in an area that she refers to as “twenty-first- might tangentially draw inspiration from precursors such as
century changes in eco-environmental sovereignties.” Vitoria. But to what extent does the Salamanca school really
In addressing the question of the origins of this new form have increased resonance in the context of “the unknown ca-
of sovereignty, she takes us deep into the intellectual history tastrophic potential from the Anthropocene”?
Moving in the other direction, the futurism of Folch’s study (Ford 2013). Thus, from the perspective of American Indian
of eco-environmental sovereignties offers another set of chal- tribes and First Nations, the history of European contact with
lenges. Addressing these challenges is more of an anthropo- indigenous peoples is strewn with broken treaties, massacres,
logical than an intellectual-historical project, one that involves imprisonment of indigenous peoples, sending off Indian chil-
expanding on something only touched on here: the ways that dren to boarding schools, and banning of Native languages,
eco-sovereignty movements are connecting around common among other transgressions. The goal of these efforts was to
concerns (including their all-important understanding of sov- eradicate the indigenous peoples or, at the very least, erase their
ereignty itself ), the expertise that they draw from, the ways culture from the earth. Even today, this recognition is seared
that their ideas are traveling and being reshaped in their new in current consciousness and public discourse. In Paraguay, the
destinations, the visions of humanity and of justice that they War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870) resulted in the deci-
draw from and create, transcending local concerns and even mation of 60%–70% of the entire population of Paraguay, leav-
continents—these are the kinds of emergent phenomena that ing only 28,000 adult men. After this genocide, Brazil occupied
anthropology is uniquely equipped to explore with its long- Paraguay for years afterward (Whigham 2002). Then, in 1973,
term method and its inclusion of organizations and social the Paraguayan government enters into the Itaipú Treaty with
movements in its subject matter. Whether this anthropology Brazil, one of the same nations that almost eradicated the pop-
of the emergent will confirm the vision presented here, of an ulace of Paraguay barely 100 years before.
increasing frequency of struggles around sovereignty in the A second parallel may be seen in the ongoing negotiations
context of the crises of the Anthropocene, remains to be seen. and sovereignty issues related to the American Indian tribes
We know too little to rely securely on any kind of oracularity, and the federal trust relationship. Over time and through
even the kind built on the fairly certain assumption of An- numerous Supreme Court cases, the US government has been
thropocenic environmental crisis. All we can be sure of is the charged with a legal obligation to protect tribal treaty rights,
significance of unfolding phenomena of the kind that Folch’s lands, and natural resources. In reality, many tribes and Amer-
paper points us toward. ican Indian scholars question the US government and respec-
tive federal agencies in their commitment to this trust re-
sponsibility. Examining the specifics of federal administration
of public lands, for example, points to the complexity and
contradictions of balancing public demands with federal com-
M. Lois Stanford
Department of Anthropology, New Mexico State University, MSC pliance to the Indian trust doctrine (Tsosie 2003). As well,
3BV, Las Cruces, New Mexico 88003, USA ([email protected]). American Indian nations recognize their treaties with the US
31 V 16 government as a bilateral agreement between two sovereign
governments, that is, the US government and the American
In her study of Paraguayan political movements, Folch ana- Indian nation. From this perspective, the US federal govern-
lyzes the emergence of “hydroelectric sovereignty” as a politi- ment’s failure to adhere to its trust responsibility and treaty
cal discourse, pointing to historical discussions of the school of obligation undermines its legitimacy to exercise sovereignty
Salamanca during the sixteenth century. She draws on the work over American Indian nations. Comparably, when the Para-
of Francisco de Vitoria to examine how Spain could both rec- guay government entered into unfavorable treaty negotiations
ognize the rights of indigenous peoples over their lands at the with Brazil, agreeing to the inequitable allocation of hydro-
same time that Spain validated its right to engage in “justifiable electric power and the requirement to sell electricity at below-
war” and exert sovereignty over indigenous peoples. This doc- market prices, the government broke its trust responsibility
trine formed much of the basis of European efforts to rational- with its own people and society. As Folch summarizes in her
ize their domination over Latin America. Yet in her discussion conclusion, “the treaty did not represent the wishes of the
of subaltern sovereignty movements, she cites a different liter- Paraguayan people.” Perhaps from the perspective of inter-
ature, one that reflects the development of indigenous sover- national law, this trust betrayal does not negate the “validity”
eignty in American Indian history. Here, some of the issues ad- of this treaty, as Folch notes, but there are many other indig-
dressed may also provide insights into Paraguayan reflections enous cultures where this betrayal does.
on hydroelectric sovereignty and emergent binational linkages Third, from the perspective of American Indian nations,
between Paraguayan and Brazilian subaltern political move- culture and livelihood are inseparably linked. Thus, maintain-
ments. ing the culture requires continuation of practices that depend
First is the issue of colonial powers’ historical disregard for on the environment, that is, the hunting, fishing, and gather-
indigenous sovereignty, leading to their efforts to carry out ing that underlie cultural sustenance. Throughout the history
genocide and assimilation. In the United States and Canada, of the United States, the loss of environmental resources—land,
indigenous scholars may acknowledge the concept of “sov- water, and forests, among other resources—laid the ground-
ereignty” as a European construction, but they also contend work for genocide and assimilation. As Folch notes, water is a
that at time of contact “Indigenous Nations were politically in- “social relation,” so it provides an arena within which power
dependent and governing themselves under their own laws” and political influences are played out. At the same time, water
is water; it is environmental sustenance and cultural preserva- ereignty has been characterized as, for example, “a word which
tion. In the US West, American Indian nations have fought has an emotive quality lacking meaningful specific content”
most passionately to regain sovereignty over water rights and and “the most glittering and controversial notion in the his-
distribution. Initially, some of these efforts targeted the nega- tory, doctrine and practice of international law.”5
tive consequences of dam constructions (Church et al. 2014), Folch argues for a new approach to theorizing sovereignty
but recently some American Indian nations now claim owner- within anthropology. She leans on critical readings of Vitoria
ship of the dams themselves, using water itself as the mecha- and the sixteenth-century Spanish school that arguably was
nism to reassert their sovereignty (Krivonen 2013). important for the formative linking of the colonial encounter
Fourth, this reaffirmation of sovereignty is different, clearly in Latin America and the emerging international law. Folch
distinguished from the sovereignty discussions of the Sala- proposes that this conversation can provide an alternative to
manca school, because it comprises a collective sovereignty. the Agamben-inspired focus on “exception, biopower, and
As Folch notes, the developing world’s subaltern movements bare life” that during the past 10–15 years has informed much
now organized around food, land, and water are grounded in of the engagement with sovereignty in anthropology and other
the conceptualization of collective rights and responsibilities disciplines that previously have studied sovereignty explicitly.
that cannot be appropriated by individuals or corporations. Agamben played an important role in the 2000s by con-
This notion of collective sovereignty questions the legitimacy ceptualizing and provoking thinking on sovereignty outside
of any treaty or trade agreements that would alienate people the disciplines of political science, international relations, and
from their sustenance. As well, collective sovereignty is in- law, which had tended to monopolize such discussions in
extricably linked to practices of collective responsibility. In the previous decades. While in anthropology it became clear that
case of the food sovereignty movement, as exemplified in the his ahistorical and schematic interpretation of sovereignty
Declaration of Nyéléni (Nyéléni 2007), food sovereignty places and bare life begged the engagement of ethnographic and
the producers at the center of food systems since it is these historicizing approaches, the political events and trends that
same producers who save and reproduce the seeds, grow the marked the early 2000s resonated very well with Agamben’s ap-
food, and maintain the diversity and sustainability of the ag- proach: the issue of undocumented migrants living in shadow
roecological system. Their collective sovereignty and respon- worlds in the metropoles, the wars on terror and crime, the
sibility ties them not just to their society today but also to indefinite incarceration of “foreign fighters” in Guantanamo,
generations of producers and breeders before and after them. and the proliferation of vigilante groups, private security com-
As Folch notes in her conclusions, the Itaipu sovereignty panies, self-help security, and other substate groups that chal-
crisis suggests that these movements hold implications be- lenge or coexist with state security forces.
yond the borders of Paraguay. In particular, the potential sub- In these years, it also became evident that the way Fou-
altern alliances between Brazilian and Paraguayan groups cault had been used in anthropology in the 1990s tended to
suggest the emergence of common perceptions, mistrust, and downplay the role of physical violence, the violent underside
rejection of the government trust. For indigenous sovereignty of the modern state that became so visible after 9/11. How-
among American Indian and First Nations, these emergent ever, while Agamben reintroduced the violence that disap-
alliances reflect a long history of mistrust and broken trea- peared from focus with Foucault’s linking of modernity and
ties, as they do among indigenous populations in the Brazil- governmentality, he still situated violence at the margins and
ian Amazon. As well, these underlying questions could form not at the center of the polity, which, as Benton (2007) has
the foundation a collective sovereignty that questions the le- emphasized, ignores the centrality of violence in many his-
gitimacy of the Paraguayan government to exercise authority torical forms of rule.
over its own people. The delinking of sovereignty from the naturalized asso-
ciation with state and territory helped anthropologists and
others to conceptualize and explore de facto sovereignty as an
effect of often violent claims to sovereignty performed in the
name of a multiplicity of moral and political communities be-
Finn Stepputat yond the state. Folch’s well-coined “subaltern sovereignty
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), Østbanegade 117, movements” that advocate popular control over food, seeds,
2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark ([email protected]). 11 IV 16 hydroelectrical resources, indigenous territories, and so on
bring us back to the nation-state and the self-determination of
As Christine Folch shows so well in her article, the notion of the “peoples” of the UN charter. They explicitly make use of
sovereignty has a long history, as a doctrine of international “sovereignty” and its association with the legal arrangements
law as well as an object of scholarly debate. Scholarly inter- of states and international relations as well as the legitimacy
est in the notion and practice of sovereignty has waxed and that rests with the ubiquitous idea of popular sovereignty.
waned for almost 500 years, but it is unlikely that scholars
will ever manage to establish a consensus about how to un- 5. References to Lauterpacht and Steinberger are in Schriver (2000,
derstand and define sovereignty in precise terms. Thus, sov- 69–70).
As Barker (2005) point out, you may ask why these sub- cludes similar building blocks. I use European thinking on in-
altern sovereignty movements use a notion that “carries the digeneity as well as decolonial arguments on indigenous sov-
horrible stench of colonialism,” and with Edelman (2014) you ereignties to illuminate the Anthropocene. In doing so, I seek
may furthermore ask who or what is the sovereign here. Sov- to recenter perspectives and debates that have been among
ereignty is not a completely free-floating signifier but attaches, the most marginalized. To be clear, these voices have been
explicitly or implicitly, to some kind of moral or political com- marginalized not because of their weaknesses but because of
munity and hence to definitions of membership. Subaltern their strength. The power of indigenous critiques to uproot
sovereignty entails questions of which forms of life—related to Western foundations is the very reason they have been silenced.
forms of production, exchange, and consumption—are deemed Indigenous sovereignties call into question the basic premises
worthy of support and protection and which will be excluded or of private property and the inevitability of value structures that
abandoned through the policies and laws that aim at enforcing undergird the global capitalist system. But my paper was not
food sovereignty, for example. Ultimately, violence and bodies about indigenous sovereignty per se. Instead, I have argued
are part of the question of subaltern sovereignty as well. that to make sense of hydroelectric sovereignty and other new
Ethnographically, Folch should be congratulated for enter- political economic modalities, particularly in the midst of a grow-
ing the field of international diplomacy, politics, and law, which ing awareness of ecological crisis, the disjuncture stemming
could easily receive more attention from anthropologists. Schol- from the “discovery” of a new world offers a way to synthesize
ars from international relations and political science are in- political economy and political ecology. To explore this syn-
creasingly trying to include ethnographic and practice-oriented thesis, in the next few paragraphs I will discuss four interrelated
approaches, and like theories of sovereignty, the practice of in- themes proffered by the responders: water as a social relation,
ternational relations could provide a point of bridging and ex- the place for Vitoria, postcolonial state debate questions, and
change between these disciplines and anthropology. lessons from indigenous critiques of political economy.
In addition, Folch should be congratulated for bringing 1. Cattelino and Stanford both remark that my assertion that
attention to the older tradition of scholarly thinking on sov- “water is a social relation” beckons more clarification of this
ereignty. Yet the article serves to underline that one of the Marxian take on natural resources. The labor theory of value
main challenges currently is to address the question of how reminds us that though a commodity may look like a complete
the plurality of claims to sovereignty at different scales and in whole on its own, it carries with it the human effort in culti-
different domains is organized, of how the always relational, vating it, extracting it, and manufacturing it. The fetish quality
incomplete, and partial forms of sovereignty exist together in of commodities conceals the social dynamics underneath pro-
shifting constellations and with what effects. A less charged duction, making it seem that a shoe is just a shoe and not
concept than sovereignty would be welcomed, though. the labor time, the factory, and the leather-making tools. Com-
modities cannot, by definition, exist outside of human contexts.
Yet when Stanford writes that “culture and livelihood are in-
separably linked” from the perspective of Native American
nations, she suggests that critiques of the fetishization of nature
run deeper than nineteenth-century political-economic litera-
Reply ture and, in fact, points to ways that analyses of capitalism that
nevertheless arise from a Western context are limited. En-
If misrecognition of the lifeways and lives of the indigenous lightenment thought understands humans as separate from
peoples of the Americas was a central feature of the European nature. We can imagine anthropocentric questions like, What
conquest, then what my generous responders demonstrate and is the proper relationship of the government to nature? And
call for is a series of recognitions. The five essays encourage and, we can speak of nature as a site of untapped resources, waiting
in fact, recognize connections between conversations on nat- to be incorporated into a distinctly human economy. The alien-
ural resource sovereignty and other scholarly debates and urge ation implied in these conceptualizations mirrors the commod-
me to do the same. Several of the writers even take up the ge- ity fetish. Asserting that water is a social relation is an attempt
nealogy motif, querying the ones I have used and suggesting to get past this alienation because water has fetish properties,
others. Although there was some overlap between interlocutors, obfuscating the human-human and human-nonhuman rela-
the remarkable diversity of their comments make a stronger tionships behind it.
case than I could in my paper alone that the Paraguayan strug- The aphorisms are many: we are told that humans are 75%
gle for hydroelectric sovereignty speaks to wider concerns. water, that we can live only a few days without it, that agri-
Over the past 2 decades, a trend has emerged in the hu- culture accounts for 70% of water consumption. Because of
manities and interpretive social sciences to turn to indigenous the material role of water in our very bodies, there is no water
cosmovisions for more than just an interesting contrast to separate from its life implications, and its meaning is linked
Western knowledge structures but rather to retheorize ontol- to other relationships. As an inorganic thing, water links all
ogies and epistemologies and disciplines. My article approaches living things. It contains within it the history of life, of human
its task of critique from a different direction, although it in- relationships and activities, because all water is recycled. What
we are drinking in our tea was once consumed (and eliminated) on postcoloniality in hydroelectric and other subaltern sover-
by a single-cell organism, a nonavian dinosaur, an early mam- eignty movements. Cattelino notices resonances with subaltern
mal. In the ways that water is what it means, it emanates on- studies and wonders what ecodimensions to anticolonial
tological power: it can signal disaster, war, abundance. In the nationalisms scholars may have missed; Stepputat argues that
case of hydroelectric sovereignty, water maps onto the history since sovereignty attaches to a moral or political community,
of violence and survival of the Paraguayan nation in light of it entails definitions of membership. Thus, subaltern sover-
threats from its neighbors. Recognizing that water has been eignties highlight how natural resources sit amid social rela-
alienated as a natural resource implies that there is a funda- tions and how hydroelectric sovereignty, specifically, makes
mentally political valence to water that bears more exploration, claims about the proper contours of the Paraguayan nation. Eth-
particularly by anthropologists attuned to science and tech- nography may address how and even why sovereignty adheres
nology studies. to certain moral communities and not others. Moreover, be-
2. As I had hoped, the prominent placement of Vitoria in cause water and other renewable resources do not coincide with
my argument elicited a range of response. My starting point national boundaries, they imply a new negotiation of legitimate
in engaging Vitoria was to search for what helped account for claims making. And so, water cycles are a means by which one
the prominence of things other than human bodies in sover- national community may petition a different national state. But
eignty conflicts. That is, I wanted to find a way to bring the that Westphalian ideals prove insufficient to questions of power
material in not as an adjunct to control over human life but as under environmental strains does not negate the value of tracing
coequal and perhaps even prior to it in some cases. Vitoria state power expressed through sovereignty claims. Rather, the
specifically connects natural resource extraction, international complexity of the system calls for more study because although
law, rational (economic) use, and just war, and because of the sovereignty claims are difficult to parse, we see them increas-
pragmatic impact of his argumentation, he speaks to the di- ingly mobilized to steer political change.
lemma of ecological disruption. Catellino, Kahn, and Stepputat take up the critique implied
Kahn and Niezen, although supportive of the move, raise in the choice for beginning with the Spanish juristic tradition
crucial questions about how I treat Vitoria. Is he best used as rather than Agamben or Foucault. They remind us that Agam-
an historical-ethnographic case or a theorist? Am I overselling ben’s exploration of bare life, though itself perhaps ahistorical,
the past and underselling the complexities of nearly 5 centuries rose to prominence because of how presciently it accounted
of transformation? What about Grotius, Locke, and Vattel? for the historically rooted crises of the post-9/11 era. That is,
And why only the recent past, why not the Roman legal con- historical context makes different sovereignties possible and
cepts of imperium versus dominium? Indeed, these questions relevant. The growing counterhegemonic struggles over tribal,
illustrate why we would do well to not just leave legal analysis food, and seed sovereignties insist on reconnections to state and
to legal historians; there is much more work to be done in territory. And the fact that subaltern sovereignty movements
uncovering linkages between current social forms and the po- can practice new populisms and do invoke other political proj-
litical structures of the past. Crisis pushes policy makers to turn ects, as Niezen points out, reveals intentionalities in the con-
to political philosophies past, and even if they do not con- nections between social justice movements beyond just rhi-
sciously invoke Vitoria, the space created by his inclusion of zomatic networks.
cultural inferiority as a criterion for just war gives a foothold 4. Examining hydroelectricity and Vitoria through analyt-
for modern, secularized accusations of moral inferiority as ical lenses attentive to subaltern perspectives allows for the
justification for property seizure. Kahn, precisely in offering a chance to essay what recentered indigeneity brings to schol-
more robust genealogy on the “property logics of sovereignty,” arship. Anghie and Williams, legal scholars on whose thinking
makes the compelling case for greater attention to the history of on Vitoria and international law I have leaned, are members
political thought as part of anthropological engagement with of communities struggling against European colonial legacies
resource extraction and as part of the larger environmental/ (Williams is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Indian Tribe,
ecological turn in the discipline. Anthropocenic crisis has rat- and Anghie is originally from Sri Lanka). By denaturalizing
tled the foundations of legal thought. I wonder also how legal liberal democracy, indigenous approaches to sovereignty in-
history, when explicitly and critically linked to conceptualiza- stead interrogate the tacit acceptability of colonialism and the
tions of nature as a source of resources, speaks to the new killability of bare life. Stanford identifies striking parallels be-
materialism literature. Although neither Kahn nor Niezen explic- tween the Paraguayan hydroelectric and American Indian con-
itly states the connection, bringing in conversations with Western texts, showing how theory from indigenous margins speaks
and non-Western political thought would help Anglophone to nonindigenous concerns. She notes the devastation of the
anthropology expand the at-times apolitical limitations of the War of the Triple Alliance and points out the contradiction
ontological turn. Here there is opportunity to recenter violence of signing a questionable energy treaty with “one of the same
and economics, and there is a place for ethnographic attention nations that almost eradicated the populace of Paraguay barely
to the politics of uncertainty. 100 years before.” She thereby emphasizes a reading of history
3. Hierarchies—national, regional, and global—run through that does not take for granted the rightness of Euro-descended
resource extraction, implicating the literatures on the state and political practices by instead highlighting state violence as re-
lationship breaking. This is one reason why betrayed public ———. 2005. Imperialism, sovereignty and the making of international law.
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