Conference Overview
Decolonizing the Nation, (Re) imagining the City:
Indigenous Peoples Mapping New Terrain
Thursday, May 8 and Friday, May 9, 2008
Northwestern University
McCormick Tribune Auditorium
See Abstracts for Ungergraduate Panel Component
In the aftermath of neoliberal structural adjustment in Bolivia, economic and social disenfranchisement stimulated mobilizations in the popular sector. In Cochabamba, the proposed privatization of the city’s water supply sparked riots of rural farmers, disillusioned migrants, and informal workers. Similarly, in El Alto, the proposed privatization of energy and gas resulted in another mass uprising. This outpouring of populist sentiment led to the overthrow of the neoliberal regime of President Gonzalo Sanchez and the election of Evo Morales in 2005. Indigenous trade unions and grassroots social movements have spearheaded this process and set the national agenda for transformation. These grassroots organizers have pressured the new administration to nationalize the country’s oil and gas industries, institute a program to redistribute underutilized land, rewrite the constitution, and reverse the marginalization of its indigenous demographic majority.
This transition has, by no means, been a smooth process. Almost two years into Evo Morales’ tenure as president of Bolivia, he and his party, the Movement toward Socialism (MAS), face difficult challenges. In pursuing its ‘democratic and cultural revolution,’ as MAS calls its national program, the party is grappling with its own missteps and with tensions among indigenists, leftists, and nationalist wings of the movement (Gustafson 2008). Complicating these issues, the right wing in the Santa Cruz region seeks to frustrate the MAS agenda through spectacular mobilization efforts, hunger strikes in the main plazas, and town meetings that stand against the legislative and executive bodies of governance. They have made use of old dictatorial methods of kidnapping, torture, and extralegal forms of violence in order to hold onto land and power. The right is regrouping with a two-pronged strategy in hopes of promoting a regionalist vision of departmental autonomy and rebuilding a national party apparatus.
This one-day conference will bring together a group of Bolivianist scholars (Doctoral Candidates, Assistant Professors, and Senior Faculty) from several different disciplines (Anthropology, Sociology, Spanish/Portuguese, and History) and both Bolivian and American universities. All of the participants have new research to present on the current situation as it is manifested not only in national politics, but also at local and regional levels, and in the domains of popular protest, art, culture, and philosophy. The conference will provide historical contextualization for new (ethnic, racial, and material) conflicts of the 21st century, which range from resource wars to distinct conceptualizations of region and identity. Through a profoundly interdisciplinary approach, we hope to use anthropological, sociological, and literary tools to understand material and cultural struggles and political-economic shift. At the same time, we will point toward some of the challenges of nation-state building in Bolivia by exploring both historical and contemporary representations of marginalized, eccentric, and “wild” voices as presented literally or metaphorically in textual, performance, and visual art. Lastly, we will make use of documentary film in order to understand contemporary struggles. Many of the documentarians worked collaboratively with indigenous communities, turning cameras over to land activists and rank-and-file members in order to capture their everyday lives and struggles to reclaim natural resources from transnational corporations. Such screenings will provoke informal conversations Thursday evening regarding how academic productions can be produced, edited, and even published as collaborative efforts with our interlocutors.
