Bolivian Studies Journal

Call for Papers

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

In Honor of Amaru Villanueva Rance (La Paz, 1985 - London, 2022)

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

Remembering Nelly Sfeir González (Cochabamba, 1930 - Illinois, 2020)

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

Index of the Bolivian Studies Journal Vol. I No. 1 (1990) - Vol. 14 (2007)

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

Sacred Songs and Decolonial Collective Voices from Elvira Espejo Ayca's Voice. Kirki Qhañi. Petaca de las poéticas andinas (2022)

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

This article-interview with the poet Elvira Espejo Ayca discusses the process of recovering the sacred songs of the Aymara and Quechua indigenous communities through the oral tradition from her grandmother Gregoria Mamani and her great-great-grandmother Martina Pumala. The song-poems preserve Inca meanings and aesthetics that the indigenous people used during Colonization to maintain good relations with the Spanish domain and, in turn, mask those referring to the Inca deities. Some songs have been taken up to unravel the lyrical resources of colonial times and recreate the original songs of the ancestors with the community of Kurmi Wasi School in Bolivia, a musical production that was recorded under the name of Sami Kirki in 2018, which was included in the last Espejo’s book Kirki Qhañi (2022).

The Folkloric-Festive continuum of an Emerging Elite in La Paz

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

This article presents the results of the ethnographic research conducted in the period 2015-2017 with the Fraternidad Verdaderos Intocables for the purpose of analyzing reciprocal exchanges through drinking and their impact on the collective sense of community in an urban context. It is proposed that social interactions mediated by alcohol at the space-time of the fiesta signal/impulse chains of reciprocity in present/future overlapping space-time interactions resulting in a folkloric-festive continuum that reinforces the bonds of participants as compadres. This article intends to contribute to the emerging scholarly interest in calendric folkloric festivities in Bolivia by linking that research with the study of alternatives ways to conceive citizenship through public ritual interactions. Contrary to a common assumption that ostentation and big quantities of drunkenness in folkloric events related to a new folklorist elite are “irrational,” ethnographic research found that the dynamics of alcohol distribution/consumption is very carefully structured ritually and has direct implications in social reproduction and collective identity among the participants.

Prison Literature in the Andes: Indigeneity and Nationalisms in Peru and Bolivia

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

This essay develops a comparative analysis between two prison texts produced in Peru and Bolivia. In my reading hypothesis, the novel El sexto (1961), by José María Arguedas, and the autobiographical account Bolivia: cemetery of freedom (1955), by René López Murillo, establish, starting from the prison as the setting and the indigenous figure as a character, alternatives and criticisms of the authoritarian nationalist discourses mobilized in Peru and Bolivia in the mid-twentieth century. These same anti-establishment practices, however, are not exempt from contradictions. As this essay demonstrates, whether out of admiration and respect in El Sexto, or with the absolute distance posed by the autobiographical narrator in López Murillo's story, the representation of the indigenous subject and, consequently, the assessment of his difference, are subjected to parameters that, if not fully equated with authoritarian discourses of integration and acculturation, do minimize indigenous agency on the horizon of the national community. Instead of that agency, these narratives reinforce the exceptionality of the indigenous subject in the prison setting and in the nation itself. In El Sexto, the construction of the political wisdom of the character Cámac elevates his representation to the condition of ideal model for nationality. In Bolivia, the disingenuous presence of Kenta, the indigenous character, among the political prisoners constitutes a remarkable deviation from expectations. I propose that both, idealization and caricature seem to inform the limitation that the narrators of these texts confront when trying to include or reject the representation of the indigenous within the codes shared by a presumably non-Indian audience of readers.

Bolivian National Revolution: Bolivian Women Without Revolution

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The 1952 National Revolution drew a line that divided Bolivian history in two. In this article I analyze the effects that the Revolution had on the lives of women with respect to the changes in legislation during the MNR government, from 1952 to 1964, and the sociocultural transformations that arose mainly from the political activism of women and their relationship with the processes of State transformation. Despite the fact that I start from the fact that the Revolution was a turning point for the history of the country and that fundamental changes for Bolivian society arose from it, I maintain that, in the case of women, the Revolution did not determine great conquests, neither in the legal field nor in the political field.

"I See Here Nothing but Miseries": Social Disease and "Humanitarian" Capitalism in En las tierras del Potosí

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

This essay proposes reading En las tierras del Potosí (1911), by Jaime Mendoza, as a diagnosis of the "national disease". In this novel, the author explores the multiple obstacles that the Bolivian nation faces on its way to modernity. On the one hand, by portraying worker’s health issues in the Llallagua tin mines, the novel denounces the exploitation by the mining company. However, the impact of the company's actions is much deeper: it produces the moral decomposition of the entire social body. In this way, the "barbarism" of the workers is produced by capitalism, and therefore cannot be reduced to racial or geographical factors. Yet, the solution that the novel proposes is not the eradication of capitalism, but the implantation of a capitalism driven by a “humanitarian motive”. On the other hand, the undisciplined bodies of women are pointed out as another cause of the failure of the modernizing project. Failure to adequately fulfill the maternal role puts the nation's "healthy future" at risk. Thus, there are two great obstacles that the modernizing project faces: a capitalism that produces poverty, disease and death, on the one hand, and indigenous women, on the other. While the first obstacle escapes the field of action of medical knowledge, the second can be overcome through disciplinary practices such as hygiene. Confidence in overcoming the second obstacle, however, is more than anything a compensatory maneuver, because as long as the first obstacle persists, any attempt to turn the Indian into a modern, clean and disciplined subject is doomed to failure.

Urban Mobility and "Geometries of Power": The Urban Streetcar in La Paz at the Beginning of the 20th Century

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

The historical development of the electric trolley in La Paz is connected to the process of modernization and urban expansion carried out by the liberal criollo-mestizo elites in the early 20th century. The archival documentation shows the trolley as part of the development of the city's modern transportation system, but also as a technology connected to the social development of groups in conflict for the material and symbolic control of urban space. Drawing on Doreen Massey's analysis of "power-geometries," the article argues that the trolley was functional in the constitution of social subjectivities shaping people’s understanding and experience of public space, and it was part of a mobility and access policy in the idea that mobility and control of mobility reflect and reinforce power relations.

The Affects of Memory. Family, Memory and Nation in the Contemporary Bolivian novel

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

This article proposes an analysis of the novel Los afectos (2015) by Rodrigo Hasbún that sheds light on new forms of giving meaning to reality in the contemporary Bolivian novel. Based on a hypothesis that identifies the narrative strategies that the novel uses to fictionalize the family memory and national history, I argue that Los afectos explores new forms of connections between aesthetics and politics. Although Hasbún's novel draws attention for its polyphonic structure and plurality of modes of enunciation from which the different narrators position themselves, this innovative proposal is limited by narrative mechanisms that impose forms of control over fictionalized memory, closing any possibility to imagine new relationships between history, memory and narration. The novel, however, leaves open the possibility that, thinking from an affective point of view, more democratic ways of building shared memories may emerge.

Narco-trafficking and Camba Identity in Homero Carvalho Oliva’s La conspiración de los viejos

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

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.

The Testament of Manuela Mier: Miner and Azoguera from Oruro, 1805

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

This work aims to highlight women’s role in Andean colonial mining based on the transcription and commentary of Manuela Mier's will. Using the case of Manuela as example, our intention is to identify a group of women who worked as “azogueras” (quicksilver workers), “trapicheras”, and mine owners during the colonial period, activities which were usually ascribed to men. Notarial protocols represent an important source of documents to analyse the role of women in all areas, including colonial mining, as it will be addressed in this article.

Announcements

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

Linda Farthing and Thomas Becker. Coup: A Story of Violence and Resistance in Bolivia

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

n/a

Quya Reyna. Los hijos de Goni

2022-12-02T10:50:58-05:00

n/a

Preliminary Pages

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