Nancy Postero 
The Indigenous State [EPUB ebook] 
Race, Politics, and Performance in Plurinational Bolivia

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In 2005, Bolivians elected their first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Ushering in a new “democratic cultural revolution, ” Morales promised to overturn neoliberalism and inaugurate a new decolonized society. In this perceptive new book, Nancy Postero examines the successes and failures that have followed in the ten years since Morales’s election. While the Morales government has made many changes that have benefited Bolivia’s majority indigenous population, it has also consolidated power and reinforced extractivist development models. In the process, indigeneity has been transformed from a site of emancipatory politics to a site of liberal nation-state building. By carefully tracing the political origins and practices of decolonization among activists, government administrators, and ordinary citizens, Postero makes an important contribution to our understanding of the meaning and impact of Bolivia’s indigenous state.

Table of Content

List of Figures

Acknowledgments


Introduction: The “Cultural Democratic Revolution” of Evo Morales


Part One. Refounding the State

1. The Emergence of Indigenous Nationalism in Bolivia: Social Movements and the MAS State

2. The Constituent Assembly: Challenges to Liberalism

3. Wedding the Nation: Spectacle and Political Performance


Part Two. Development and Decolonization

4. Living Well? The Battle for National Development

5. Race and Racism in the New Bolivia

6. From Indigeneity to Economic Liberation

7. Charagua’s Struggle for Indigenous Autonomy


Conclusion: Between Politics and Policing


Notes

Credits for Previously Published Materials

References

Index

About the author

Nancy Postero is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Now We Are Citizens: Indigenous Politics in Post-Multicultural Bolivia.