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).