Social Movements in Bolivia 2000-2005

Brown Bag Discussion

Friday February 23 rd

12-1 (noon)
@ the Latin American and Iberian Institute

(801 Yale NE)

Free Refreshments

This talk considers the socio-political conditions that gave rise to a series of social movements in Bolivia, beginning with the Water war (2000) continuing with the Coca war (2000 onward), and the tax War (February 2003) and finally the massive mobilizations of the gas War (October 2003 and May-June 2005) which toppled two presidents in succession, and led to the Presidency of Evo Morales, the leader of the Coca growers. It analyses the various interpretations of these events, the tactics used in the mobilizations, and the influences that structured the social demands in play. Finally, it considers the positioning of these movements today in the light of the ongoing Constituent Assembly, which began in August 2006.

DENISE ARNOLD is an Anglo-Bolivian anthropologist, with expertise in educational and political questions in Bolivia. She holds postgraduate degrees in Architecture and Environmental Studies, and a doctorate in Anthropology from University College London (1988). She has been Leverhulme Research Fellow and ERSC Senior Research Fellow in England, and is currently teaching at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and Universidad PIEB in La Paz, Bolivia, and in the doctoral programme in the Universidad de Tarapaca, Chile. She is visiting Full Professor in Birkbeck College London, and Director of the Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara in Bolivia. Among her recent publications are ³The Nature of Indigenous Literatures in the Andes: Aymara, Quechua and Others², Vol. III of Latin American Literatures: a Comparative History of Cultural Formations (2004, Oxford University Press); The Metamorphosis of Heads: Textual Struggles, Education and Land in the Andes (Pittsburgh University Press, 2006); and Mujeres en los movimientos sociales en Bolivia, 2000-2003 (La Paz: CIDEM-ILCA, 2005). Her current books in press are Los Andes desde el textil (with Yapita and Espejo) and Heads of State: Icons, Power and Politics in the Andes Ancient and Modern (Left Coast Press, with the archaeologist Christine Hastorf).

ELVIRA ESPEJO is a painter, weaver, storyteller, graphic artist and poet, and a well-known indigenous leader in Bolivia. Born in ayllu Qaqachaka (prov. Abaroa, Oruro), she graduated from the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Paz and has experience in the use of multimedia. She was a teacher in the course, 'Visual languajes in the Andes', for the program Duke in the Andes (2005). Her first book of tales Jichha nä parlt'ä: Now I shall tell you a story, was a finalist in the Concurso de Literaturas Indígenas of the Casa de las Américas in Cuba (1994) and published in Bolivia by Casa and UNICEF. Among her other publications are the book Sawutuq parla: Weaving talk (2005), and a volume of Aymara poetry: Phaqar kirki: Songs to the Flowers (2006). She also has a book in press El Andes desde el textil. She has exhibited her work in Bolivia and internationally. She also participated with the design of braid decorations in the fashion show by Elizabeth Johnston, in La Paz (Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folkore), Sucre and Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in 2003. Elvira Espejo is a member of ILCA (Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara).

Valentine's Party...
to celebrate friendship and love

Saturday February 17th @ 9:00 p.m.
@ Ivis' Place (The Abbey- The old Church)
1625 Gold Ave SE There will be plenty of food...
Graduates, Undergraduates, and International Students Welcome!!!
Bring your own drinks

John Ross “Zapatistas! Making Another World Possible: Chronicles of Resistance” Book Tour

Another world is possible; a world based in human rights, autonomy, community participation, consensus building, and true empowerment.

Join John Ross, writer and activist, in this dialogue and in support of the indigenous resistance movements. We encourage activist and community members to share their experiences.

Wednesday February 14^th, 2007
At 6:00 p.m.
Libreria La Semilla
929 4^th St. SW
Dessert, music and poetry

Thursday February 15^th, 2007
At 7:00 p.m.
Room: 2401
UNM School of Law: 1117 Stanford SE

Talk Title: Upsurge from the Bottom

Abstract: Will discuss the stealing of the Mexican election, the Oaxaca intifada, and the state of the Zapatista rebellion - Mexico rose up in 1810 against the Spanish, rose up again in 1910 in the first great revolution of the landless - What’s on the agenda for 2010?

Friday February 16^th, 2007
At noon (12-1)
Latin American and Iberian Institute
801 Yale NE

Title: Building Civil Society in Mexico

Abstract: This talk will cover some of this ground but more succinctly and with a different skew: "building civil society in Mexico - a look at the history, current status, and prospects for Mexico’s vibrant civil society"

Friday February 16^th, 2007
At 4:30 p.m.
Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice
202 Harvard SE

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Born in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan to proud members of the U.S. Communist Party, John Ross grew up in a lively cultural ambiance informed by jazz, abstract expressionist painting, radical politics, and Beat poetry – Ross was a younger member of the Beat Generation, reading his poetry in Greenwich Village bars with the great bass player Charles Mingus.

At 19, Ross set out on the road, following the Beat trail that Burroughs and Kerouac and Ginsberg had blazed to Mexico City. Soon he had separated from this U.S.-based literary movement taking up residence in an indigenous community in the Meseta Purepcha of the state of Michoacan.

Six years later when John Ross returned to the United States, he was incarcerated by the FBI at Terminal Island federal penitentiary in San Pedro California for refusal to report for induction in the U.S. Army and became the first resister to be jailed for refusing service in Vietnam. In 2005, Ross returned to San Pedro to receive the American Civil Liberties Union's annual "Uppie" (for Upton Sinclair) award for his penultimate cult classic "Murdered by Capitalism – A Memoir of 150 Years of Life & Death on the U.S. Left."

In the 1970s, John Ross took up freelance journalism reporting on environmental politics and social movements in California, Spain, and North Africa. In 1984, he won a grant to investigate guerrilla formations in the Andes, filing some of the first reports on Peru's Shining Path for Pacific News Service.

Following the terrible September 1985 8.2 earthquake in Mexico City, Ross returned to the city he first knew as a young Beat and took up residence in the old quarter or "Centro Historico", the ancient Aztec island of Tenochtitlan, where he lives still. Now the dean of foreign correspondents in Mexico, Ross continues to report for Noticias Aliadas (Peru), the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and the Texas Observer, and is a regular contributor to U.S. monthlies like the Progressive, the Nation, and Counterpunch (on line), in addition to the Mexican Left daily La Jornada. His investigations into electoral fraud and human rights abuses in Mexico, environmental carnage, and the struggles of Indians and farmers have won various awards down the years.

Since its earliest hour 12 years ago, Ross has accompanied the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, breaking the story of the impending uprising in a small northern California weekly weeks before it occurred, and writing three volumes chronicling this unique indigenous movement - "Rebellion From the Roots" (American Book Award winner 1995), "The Annexation of Mexico" (1998), and "The War Against Oblivion" (200.) His fourth volume ZAPATISTAS! Making Another World Possible – Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006" is to be published by Nation Books this October.

John Ross has written eight books of fiction and non-fiction. "Murdered By Capitalism" (Nation Books 2004) is partially a personal history of 40 years on the barricades of the Americas north and south, and partially the strange story of the U.S. Left during the past century and a half. "(Murdered by Capitalism) is a rip-snorting and honorable account of an outlaw tradition in American politics which too seldom gets past the bouncers at the gates of our national narrative" wrote reclusive novelist Thomas Pynchon of the work.

Ross has continued to pursue both his political and poetic concerns over the decades. With nine chapbooks of poetry in and out of print, the latest of which is "Bomba!" hot off the press from Calaca de Pelon, Ross continues to be an active performance and spoken word artist, appearing recently with the Godfather of the Beats Lawrence Ferlinghetti at both Bellas Artes in Mexico City and Lawrence's famed City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco.

John Ross's continuing participation in the on-going resistance to Washington's imperialist crusades has been congruent with his stance against the bloodletting in Vietnam. On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Ross was part of the Human Shield brigade in Baghdad and later journeyed to Palestine where he was beaten savagely by Israeli settlers while picking olives in the Nablus valley.

Now an elder on the brink of his seventh decade, Ross does not consider retiring as an active combatant in the worldwide struggle for peace and social justice. "Movement is what keeps me alive" he tells friends and comrades, "like the pensioners in Mexico tell me 'parar es morir' ('to stop is to die.') I'm going to keep marching until I drop. I believe another world is possible."

Sponsored by:

SOLAS
Nuestra Voz
LAII
NALSA
MASLA
ILSA
CRP/GSA
Liberaría la Semilla
Anthropology Graduate Student Union
Political Sciences Graduate Student Association
Alburquerque Center for Peace and Justice
Amnesty International UNM