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3 - “A Reflection of Our Motley Reality”: Bolivian Indians' Slow Path to Political Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2010

Donna Lee Van Cott
Affiliation:
Tulane University, Louisiana
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Summary

We are entering here – in the Congress – in order to sit ourselves down and see ourselves face to face with our oppressors; this is going to be a struggle of the mind, of the indigenous mind against the q'ara [white] mind, and there we are going to fight.

Felipe Quispe, at closing ceremony of presidential campaign

On the surface, Bolivia would appear to be a most-likely case of ethnic party formation and success. The indigenous proportion of the population constitutes more than 65 percent of the total and significant indigenous populations are found in a majority of electoral districts. Indigenous social movements have a long history of militant protest activity and exclusion from political representation. The highland indigenous population is organized into dense networks of campesino (indigenous peasant) unions that date back to the 1950s and earlier. Ethnic identities are strong and experienced a revival in the 1980s, when lowland indigenous groups formed contemporary social movement organizations for the first time. Because illiterates have had the vote since 1952, one would expect to see the emergence of successful ethnic parties after the transition to democracy in 1978–82. Indeed, ethnic parties were formed much earlier in Bolivia than in any other country in South America. Two distinct waves of party formation and competition occurred. The first began with the transition to democracy in 1978 and ended in the late 1980s. The second began in 1995 and ended in 2002. Multiple parties were formed in both waves.

Type
Chapter
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From Movements to Parties in Latin America
The Evolution of Ethnic Politics
, pp. 49 - 98
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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