This article presents and discusses the deep contradictions and paradoxes that indigenous social movements face in their struggles to reverse the republican colonial order in Bolivia and to share the exercise of political power with the two hundred year old elite groups. Here the complexity is toask oneself about what type of society is being built in Bolivia. Are we moving toward a pluralist society of an Indian-popular type, toward a liberal multicultural mestizo-style society, or toward a monocultural society?