The sovereign street : making revolution in urban Bolivia

In the early twenty-first century Bolivian social movements made streets, plazas, and highways into the decisively important spaces for acting politically, rivaling and at times exceeding voting booths and halls of government. The Sovereign Street documents this important period, showing how indigenous-led mass movements reconfigured the politics and racial order of Bolivia from 1999 to 2011. Drawing on interviews with protest participants, on-the-ground observation, and documentary research, activist and scholar Carwil Bjork-James provides an up-close history of the indigenous-led protests that changed Bolivia. At the heart of the study is a new approach to the interaction between protest actions and the parts of the urban landscape they claim. These “space-claiming protests” both communicate a message and exercise practical control over the city. Bjork-James interrogates both protest tactics—as experiences and as tools—and meaning-laden spaces, where meaning is part of the racial and political geography of the city. Taking the streets of Cochabamba, Sucre, and La Paz as its vantage point, The Sovereign Street offers a rare look at political revolution as it happens. It documents a critical period in Latin American history, when protests made headlines worldwide, where a generation of pro-globalization policies were called into question, and where the indigenous majority stepped into government power for the first time in five centuries. "The Sovereign Street analyzes how indigenous-led mass movements and protests in urban space reconfigured the politics and racial order of Bolivia from 1999 to 2011. Through protest actions that took over the streets, Bolivians realigned the political system, placing social movements, community organizations, and politically and racially excluded groups at the center of civic and political life. Drawing on a year of ethnographic fieldwork and oral history interviews in Cochabamba, Sucre, and La Paz, the book argues that mass protests succeed by demonstrating their own political legitimacy, control over space, and ability to affect daily life. By focusing on issues studied by ethnographers-social life as experienced through the human body, the meanings attached to place, and social movement practices-it explains how race and power are lived and changed through street protest. It also charts the emerging tensions between President Evo Morales' government and left grassroots movements, and demonstrates how the same processes of protest and disruption that brought him to power have become the key methods for challenging his leadership"-- Provided by publisher In the early twenty-first century Bolivian social movements made streets, plazas, and highways into the decisively important spaces for acting politically, rivaling and at times exceeding voting booths and halls of government. __The Sovereign Street__ documents this important period, showing how indigenous-led mass movements reconfigured the politics and racial order of Bolivia from 1999 to 2011. Taking the streets of Cochabamba, Sucre, and La Paz as its vantage point, __The Sovereign Street__offers a rare look at political revolution as it happens. It documents a critical period in Latin American history, when protests made headlines worldwide, where a generation of pro-globalization policies were called into question, and where the indigenous majority stepped into government power for the first time in five centuries. Cover 1 Title page 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of Illustrations 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction 18 1. Urban Space Claiming and Revolutionary Events 54 2. “This, This Is How We Have to All Fight Together”: The Water War as Precedent and Prototype 81 3. The Power of Interruption: From Blockades to Civic Strikes 101 4. The Sovereign Street: How Protests Become “the Voice of the People” 129 5. “We’re No Longer Just Tenants”: Indigenous Bodies Defiantly out of Place 162 6. Who Owns the City?: Race and Space During the Catastrophic Stalemate 182 7. A House Divided: Mobilization and Countermobilization Within the Plurinational State 204 Conclusion: A New Way of Doing Politics 228 Appendix 244 Notes 248 References 276 Index 292 About the Author 302