The Multinational State and the People, an Unprecedented Construction in Bolivia
Published by Upside Down World
Written by Ximena Soruco Sologuren, Translated by: Marcelo Virkel
15 January 2010
In January 2009 Bolivians adopted a New State Political Constitution, in which converged many histories and memories that coexisted during different cycles: the crisis of political parties, representative democracy and the neoconservative economic model caused pleas for the nationalization of resources and social control that echoed the 1952 Revolution -when miners, peasants and the middle class mobilized against the anti-nation (the conservative miner State). But also the memory of the anti-colonial struggles that transcended and confronted the Bolivian nation-state emerged with an unprecedented force: Tomás Katari, Tupac Katari (1781), Zárate Willka (1899), Guarayan leader Andrés Guayocho (1887), the battle of Kuruyuki de los guaraníes (1892), the movement of the empowered leaders (1900-1930), the Indigenismo and Katarismo (1970s), the demand for land and territory by lowlands indigenous people (1990s), etcetera.
Evo Morales embodies the intersection of the national-popular scope that emerged from within the nation-state during the Chaco War (1932-1936) and condensed during the 1952 Revolution, and the anti-colonial scope, whose resistance began during the conquest’s early years and had its highest point in 1781, with incidents that were profound -because they emerged from outside of the nation-state-, but have not been so geographically widespread during the two hundred years of republican history, until now.
Is this an unprecedented intersection, in the sense that both scopes have been running in a parallel way without touching? If so, what is this intersection in reality and what are the alternatives of political construction open to us nowadays? The uprisings we mention have never been “pure” since they took place within the colonial context to which the national context latter superimposed, a fact that continued and intensified old contradictions in new ways; but certainly there was more symbolic weight in one scope or the other depending on who was leading the uprisings and forming the alliances, and if they were indigenous or mestizo. However, both scopes had to face the “colonial-national situation” that had created the clutter, that is, individuals experiencing different (ethnic, class, gender) dominance conditions within the system, and whose relationship with one another was one of a chained (self)denial (everyone on top of and against each other).
