Theme: Democracy

Evo Morales

It was 4:45 a.m. in La Paz. Five men gathered at dawn at a lonely bus stop in a residential zone. They were wearing thick jackets to ward off the intense cold of the morning. They seemed nervous. Indeed, they were, because they were going to the presidential house. Four journalists (myself included) and one photographer, all from the Bolivian newspaper Página Siete, were preparing to interview President Evo Morales …

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Bolivian Women

When Evo Morales was first elected to office, he was asked if he would make a ministry for gender. He responded that he would not and that instead he would make women themselves ministers. Various women’s organizations criticized his decision at the time yet his play on words proved to be true: in 2011, half of the twenty ministers in his cabinet are women, an unprecedented development for Bolivia….

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Bolivian Resource Politics

Across the hill country between the Andes and the Chaco of southeastern Bolivia, the past two decades have seen the rapid expansion of natural gas exploration, pipelines, and well sites. Here in the ancestral territory of the indigenous Guarani, gas giants like Brazil’s Petrobras, France’s Total, and Spain’s Repsol are leading Bolivia’s natural gas boom. …

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Beyond Caudillos

Driving through La Paz, Bolivia’s capital city, one sees signs of the remarkable political transformation since the 2005 election of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president. Eighteen months after the December 2009 reelection—which Morales won by a broad margin (64.2%)—and more than a year after the April 2010 municipal and regional elections, campaign murals still line the thoroughfares …

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Regional Identities

English + EspañolEveryone thinks of Bolivia as an Andean country, even though two thirds of it lies in the lowlands. This area, also known as the Bolivian Orient, is inhabited by more than thirty indigenous nations of diverse languages, though the majority of its population is mestizo—a mix of indigenous and Spanish-descent. The Bolivian Orient belongs to the ancient colonial territory of the Santa Cruz Provincial …

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