Remapping Bolivia
Resources, Territory, and Indigeneity in a Plurinational State
Edited by Nicole Fabricant and Bret Gustafson
The 2005 election of Evo Morales to the presidency of Bolivia marked a critical moment of transformation—a coca farmer and peasant union leader became the first indigenous president in the history of the Americas. Gathering work from a new generation of anthropologists and scholars in related disciplines who have been doing fieldwork in the “post-Evo” era, Remapping Bolivia reflects shifting paradigms in Latin Americanist and indigenous-related research.
2011. 280 pp., 17 figures, 3 maps, notes, references, index, 6 x 9
Contributors: Nicole Fabricant, Fernando Garcés, Bret Gustafson, Charles R. Hale, Joshua Kirshner, Pablo Mamani Ramirez, Carlos Revilla, Ximena Soruco Sologuren
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“Gustafson and Fabricant’s outstanding collection provides the rich critical and conceptual analysis that the Bolivian case deserves. A foundational text not simply in charting the changing contours of spatial politics in the Andean region but for the very idea of a plurinational democratic polity. A tour de force.”
—Michael Watts, University of California, Berkeley
“Interspersed with the voices of movement leaders, multidisciplinary researchers analyze transformations from the gas fields of the eastern lowlands occupied by the Guaraní and the ‘soyscapes’ dominated by agribusiness interests in Santa Cruz, to the pluricultural immigrant cities of El Alto. They assess both the progress and pitfalls of a government dedicated to bringing social justice and equality to a country dominated for centuries by foreign extractive investors.… The collection as a whole invites the reader to pursue the paradoxes in this ongoing process.”
—June Nash, The Graduate Center, CUNY
“Remapping Bolivia establishes a well-balanced articulation of the Andean region with the Amazonian and Chaco lowlands. In this sense, and among other important ways of interpreting the topics studied in this book, ‘remapping Bolivia’ means rethinking lo andino from the lowlands. This is a novel and useful approach to Bolivian studies, and the book presents original ideas with up-to-date information.”
—Javier Sanjines, University of Michigan
“Remapping Bolivia is a timely volume that addresses important issues in a Latin American country where social movements have been pioneering new conceptualizations of democracy, autonomy, and indigenous rights over the last decade.”
—Lesley Gill, Vanderbilt University
“The cross-disciplinary collection asks to what extent the present regime has succeeded in refounding [Bolivia] and explores some of the struggles over resources that continue…. The volume works well and the editors should be given credit for making the writings of Bolivian scholars available to English-speaking audiences.”
—Maggie Bolton, University of Aberdeen, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2014
- Introduction: New Cartographies of Knowledge and Struggle
Bret Gustafson and Nicole Fabricant - Cartographies of Indigenous Power: Identity and Territoriality in Bolivia
Pablo Mamani Ramirez - The Domestication of Indigenous Autonomies in Bolivia: From the Pact of Unity to the New Constitution
Fernando Garcés - El Porvenir, the Future That Is No Longer Possible: Conquest and Autonomy in the Bolivian Oriente
Ximena Soruco Sologuren - Migrants and Citizens: Hygiene Panic and Urban Space in Santa Cruz
Joshua Kirshner - Understanding the Mobilizations of Octubre 2003: Dynamic Pressures and Shifting Leadership Practices in El Alto
Carlos Revillavi - Ocupar, Resistir, Producir: Reterritorializing Soyscapes in Santa Cruz
Nicole Fabricant - Power Necessarily Comes from Below: Guaraní Autonomies and Their Others
Bret Gustafson - Epilogue
Charles R. Hale