Universität zu Köln

Hidalgo Villacis, Eduardo Ivan (2023). Essays on the Economics of Indigenous Peoples and Violence in Latin America. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

This thesis studies the economics of indigenous people and violence in Latin America. Latin America is the land of 55 Million Indigenous people representing 12% of the total population and who belong to more than 500 different ethnic groups. The largest population of Indigenous people in Latin America are in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru, which is why Mexico and Peru are the countries I use as a sample for this thesis. The Indigenous people are among the most vulnerable social group in the region. For example, Servan-Mori, et al (2014) show that regions in Mexico with a higher Indigenous population have a higher illiteracy rate, poorer health, and lower access to public goods. The latter is the main research question of Chapter 2 in the thesis, which studies the underprovision of public good to the Indigenous population from the demand side perspective. Chapter 2 is joint work with Aldo Elizalde and Nayeli Salgado and argues that the lack of demand for public goods from the Indigenous population can partially explain the underprovision of public goods. We test this hypothesis by using the post-Mexican revolution period (1920s-1950s) when the state used the road development programme as a nation-building tool in Mexico. Using newly digitized data of road infrastructure combined with indigenous population data at the municipality level in a diff-in-diff setting, we show that the pre-colonial political centralization of the Indigenous population is associated with a lower demand for road infrastructure. Furthermore, we show that the mechanisms driving our results are stronger capacity for collective action and stronger Indigenous identity preferences from Indigenous people with high levels of pre-colonial political centralization. Finally, we show that poor road infrastructure today is linked to lower economic performance. According to the United Nations, the Indigenous communities face a great deal of discrimination, which has culminated in genocides over the 20th century. However, Violence is an important issue that not only affects the Indigenous population, but most of society faces its consequences. In Chapter 3, together with Erik Hornung and Pablo Selaya, we study one of the most prevalent types of violence faced by Mexican society, namely drug-related violence. In this chapter, we study the supply chain structure of Mexican drug trafficking organizations and how a positive economic shock could terminate in an escalation of drug-related violence. We argue that open borders via trade agreements could have unintended consequences that could terminate in violence. By facilitating the unchecked exchange of legal goods, we suggest that trade liberalization agreements unintentionally increase the profit for drug-trafficking organizations, culminating in violent competition for these profits. We test this hypothesis by using the introduction of NAFTA as a natural experiment by comparing changes in drug-related homicides after NAFTA's opening in 1994 across municipalities with and without drug-trafficking routes. Routes are optimal paths connecting municipalities with a recent history of drug trafficking with U.S. ports of entry. On these routes, homicides increase by 27% relative to the pre-NAFTA mean. In the last chapter of the thesis, I study how exposure to violent events affects ethnic identity. To do so, I use the Shining Path conflict in Peru as a natural experiment. This conflict expanded between 1982 and 1992, and it was one of the most brutal civil conflicts in Latin America during the 20th century. More than 70.000 people were killed in this conflict, and many suffered torture, rape, and displacement. To study the consequences of the Shining Path violence on ethnic identity, I combine individual-level data on Indigenous identity and conflict event-level data from 1958 until 1992 in a unique database to analyze the effect of Shining Path violent activity on Indigenous identity. The results show that individuals that were exposed to violence between 0 and 9 years old identify less as indigenous and have a lower probability of speaking an indigenous language than similar cohorts that were not exposed to violence. Furthermore, I find that own-Indigenous group violence is the mechanism explaining the negative association between violence and Indigenous identification.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Hidalgo Villacis, Eduardo Ivan eduardoivanvillacis@gmail.com UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-730633
Date:	2023
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Management, Economy and Social Sciences
Divisions:	Weitere Institute, Arbeits- und Forschungsgruppen > Center for Macroeconomic Research (CMR)
Subjects:	Economics
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language Indigenous Institutions, Public Goods, Trade, Violence, Ethnic identity English
Date of oral exam:	29 September 2023
Referee:	Name Academic Title Hornung, Erik Prof. Dr. Prantl, Susanne Prof. Dr.
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/73063