The rise of ‘pink tide’ governments in Nicaragua and Venezuela in the 2000s resulted in legislative and policy changes that promised to increase autonomy and enhance indigenous and afro-descendant rights. In parallel, international civil society organisations have been implementing projects that aim to promote social mobilisation around indigeneity and race. After generations of a homogenising nationalist and mestizaje politics, particular populations are encouraged by development actors to mobilise around a racial or indigenous identity. Yet inevitably these initiatives play out in dynamic social and political processes, in which ideas about what it is to be indigenous or afrodescendiente and what it should entail, differ greatly between social groups. Further, the reconstruction of identity gets inevitably entangled in local politics. This paper builds on ethnographic evidence gathered in the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and in the Matagalpa region of Nicaragua. It shows how identities are locally constructed and contested, and how particular ideologies of indigeneity or race are incorporated or neglected by powerful actors, shaping the autonomy and livelihoods of those who may identify as indigenous or afrodescendientes.

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