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In 2019, Bolivian cooperative miners, once staunch allies of MAS and Evo Morales, helped inflame the crisis that toppled the Morales government. This paper explores the roots of the confounded, often explosive relationship between cooperative miners, nationalization, and MAS. Tracing the history of cooperative mining and its relationship to ore theft since the colonial period, this article shows how cooperative mining and salaried miners’ unions emerged as twin responses to the precarity of labor and production in the twentieth century. In the 1950s and 1960s, cooperative workers emerged as a shadow on the nationalized mining economy, competing for space and political influence with salaried workers. After the closure of COMIBOL in the late 1980s, cooperatives absorbed laid-off workers as well as migrants from the countryside and expanded into claims once belonging to state and union workers. When Morales reopened Bolivia’s national mining company in 2006 and sought to increase state participation in the mineral economy, he set the stage for a direct confrontation between the interests of cooperativistas, the vast majority of mineworkers at the time, and the state itself. This underacknowledged conflict of interests between different kinds of mineworkers has haunted MAS, culminating in the crisis of 2019 that drove Morales from power and from Bolivia.

This article examines the novel’s use of the camba identity and the vestiges of narco-violence, embodied by a contract killer and the memory of a local drug baron, Roberto Suárez Gómez, to critique both the contemporary political tensions arising between the eastern departments of Bolivia and the MAS administration, as well as the lack of collective dialogue regarding the region’s involvement in the history of the Bolivian drug trade.

Bolivia’s political transition in 2006 represented more than just a transfer of power. It also marked the arrival of a new political, economic and social paradigm. The newly elected leader (Evo Morales Ayma) and his political party, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) brought with them an ambitious agenda for social change. Most of the initial efforts were aimed at responding to electoral promises and the demands from the myriad of social movements that supported Morales’ ticket. As time progressed, the ideological components of the model were refined and transformed from an anti-neoliberal rhetoric to a comprehensive agenda of state reform. Part of the ideological components were rooted in the notion of “Vivir Bien” [Living Well], which in essence is a balanced approach for development considering human wellbeing in harmony with mother nature. The political challenge, however, has been the transformation of this holistic approach into a practical one and the policy implications that this entails ‒a particularly difficult issue in a country with weak institutional settings and limited state capacity. This article argues that although there have been many gains, particularly in reorienting the notion of the welfare state and in key economic and social areas, the model is still highly dependent on a neo-patrimonial state that relies heavily on a few commodities to support a growing social agenda. Moreover, in the past years the political emphasis and efforts have favored economic reforms over social ones, which might jeopardize the whole model in the not so near future.

Diplomatic relations between Bolivia and the United States have been difficult since Evo Morales became president in 2006. Despite these poor relations and even despite the abrogation of the ATPDEA (Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act) in 2008, commerce between Bolivia and the United States has increased more than during governments allied with the United States. These conclusions show that the state of diplomatic relations are not necessarily indicative of the intensity of trade between countries.

This response summarizes and compares three scholars’ approaches (Marcelo Bohrt, Robert Albro and Pamela Calla) to the Morales administration’s efforts to decolonize the government of Bolivia. Seeking the common ground among them, I find that all three recognize the importance of symbolic and discursive changes, which have allowed some previously-excluded individuals to access positions of authority within the state apparatus. On the other hand, these changes have been uneven, exposing rifts between indigenous communities, exacerbating existing inequities, and establishing new or renewed hierarchies of subordination.

El presente trabajo describe, en formato de crónica, los principales acontecimientos sucedidos en el denominado caso de los “misiles chinos”. Es decir, la entrega, para su desmantelamiento, de los únicos misiles con los que contaba Bolivia como mecanismo de defensa antiaérea, a personal militar del gobierno de Estados Unidos. El hecho sucedió meses antes de las elecciones generales de diciembre de 2005, en las cuales Evo Morales obtuvo la presidencia, y después de un largo proceso de crisis e inestabilidad política en el país (2003-2005). Así mismo, se identifican las principales evidencias y consecuencias políticas e institucionales de la subordinación militar a una potencia extranjera, todas ellas permeadas por aspectos tales como injerencia, pérdida de soberanía e impunidad.

The current Bolivian President, Evo Morales, has managed to govern longer than all of his predecessors thanks to his three successful attempts to relax his term limits. In this article I argue that the high risk-taking personality of Morales, especially his social risk-taking, helps to explain why he has consistently tried to extend his time in office. To address this proposition I follow a twofold strategy. First, I show the results of a survey conducted among experts in presidents of the Americas. This survey measured different personality traits of the leaders that governed between 1945 and 2012, including their risk-taking. Second, I examine some of the most important decisions that Morales has made throughout his adult life. Both the survey and the analysis of Morales’ trajectory suggest that his attempts to cling to power are rooted in his risk-taking. El actual presidente boliviano, Evo Morales, ha logrado gobernar más que todos sus predecesores gracias a sus tres intentos exitosos de extender los límites de su mandato. En este artículo argumento que la personalidad de alta propensión al riesgo de Morales, especialmente su propensión a los riesgos sociales, ayuda a entender por qué ha tratado consistentemente de extender su mandato presidencial. Para examinar esta propuesta sigo una estrategia doble. Primero, muestro los resultados de una encuesta realizada a expertos en presidentes latinoamericanos. Esta encuesta midió diferentes rasgos de personalidad de los líderes que gobernaron entre 1945 y 2012, incluyendo su propensión al riesgo. Segundo, examino algunas de las decisiones más importantes que Morales ha tomado a lo largo de su vida adulta. Tanto la encuesta como el análisis de la trayectoria de Morales sugieren que sus intentos por conservar el poder están arraigados en su propensión al riesgo.

Book Review / Reseña

La llegada de Evo Morales al poder en enero de 2006 ―avalado con un inédito 54% de los votos― marcó un punto de inflexión en la historia política boliviana y abrió paso a un ambicioso proyecto de refundación del país. Esos ejes se tradujeron en la convocatoria a una Asamblea Constituyente y en la nacionalización de los hidrocarburos, en el marco de una fuerte “ruralización de la política”. A más de cinco años de aquel triunfo y luego de una reelección con el 64% en diciembre de 2009 que consolidó la hegemonía “evista”, el gobierno enfrenta una serie de retos vinculados a la materialización efectiva del cambio propuesto en los discursos refundacionales. En este artículo se analiza esta experiencia novedosa de “los indios en el poder” centrada en la tensión entre los cambios operados y las inercias del pasado en esferas como la radicalización democrática, la igualdad social, el modelo de desarrollo y el proyecto político. Temas todos ellos atravesados por un objetivo tan poderoso como por momentos impreciso: la descolonización del país.The arrival of Evo Morales to power in January of 2006 –supported with an unprecedent 54% of the votes– marked a milestone in Bolivian political history and opened the way to an ambitious project of re-foundation of the country. Those events were translated in the call for a Constituent Assembly and in the nationalization of hydrocarbons, within the framework of a strong “ruralización de la política”. More than five years of that one triumph has passed and after a re-election with 64% of the votes in December 2009 that consolidated the “evista” hegemonyhas declined. Now the government faces a series of challenges tied to the effective materialization of the change proposed in the re-foundational speeches. This article analyses the novel experience of “Indians in the power” centered in the tension between the changes implemented and the inertias of the past in spheres such as the democratic radicalization, the social equality, the model of development, and the political project. All these themes affected by a powerful, and yet somehow vague objective: the decolonization of the country.