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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
We began to look at municipalization and when we began looking into this we discovered something strange which is that more than 40% of Bolivia's population did not have a close public institution of representation. They didn't have mayors. They had corregidores who came by every now and then and who were considered by the people to be like chiefs of police, and not as representatives. They did not give them any sense of being a part of the Bolivian state or that they had a public say in matters of health, or public services, or development, or anything.
Interview with Federico Martínez, member of the technical team that crafted Bolivia's decentralization law, January 1997The state gives up its power, takes the money away from the bureaucrats in the capital, and gives it to the ignorant Indian so that he can do with it as he pleases. If this is not revolution, what is?
Luis Ramiro Beltrán in Molina Monasterios 1997: 235Introduction
When Bolivia returned to democratic rule in 1982, its executive inherited a highly centralized government following decades of shifting dictatorships punctuated by an occasional, failing civilian regime. This political structure had been built to control political and economic resources from the top down. Financially, 97 percent of Bolivia's budget allocation for regional development remained locked in the three regional capitals of La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz (Urioste Fernández de Córdova 2002: 144).
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