El Alto, a City in Motion: Relational Geographies and Popular Economies in the Building of a Unique Urbanity

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/bsj.2025.386

Keywords:

mobilities, relational geographies, El Alto, women traders, popular economy

Abstract

This article analyzes the everyday practices of mobility, care, and popular commerce carried out by women merchants, which shape and sustain urban life in the city of El Alto. By examining mobilities, multi-residentiality, and interconnections, it is argued that the city of El Alto, more than a static settlement, is a node articulating multiple scales of centrality driven by flows and networks that connect the city to border markets, informal commercial circuits, and migratory networks that expand its influence beyond national boundaries. As relational geographies suggest (Massey 2008; Harvey 2006), urban space is not a mere physical container but a situated construction shaped by everyday practices, historical trajectories, and social relations. This article offers an interpretation of El Alto through geographies woven by women like our interlocutors Marta, Asunta, Nancy, and Tatiana, whose lives illustrate that city-making also entails caring, circulating, assembling, and reinventing. Using an ethnographic approach, the article explores how these practices shape an urban geography in El Alto based on interconnection and mobility, challenging the boundaries between the public and the private and proposing a reading of the city through the experiences and strategies of its inhabitants, particularly the women who sustain and transform it.

Author Biography

Chryslen Mayra Barbosa Gonçalves, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP/Brasil)

Posdoctoranda en la Universidade Federal de São Paulo (beca FAPESP, proceso n.º 2024/10516-9). Magíster y doctora en Antropología Social por la Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP, Brasil).

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Published

2025-12-11

Issue

Bolivian Studies Journal Vol. 31, 2025

Section

Articles

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Copyright (c) 2025 Tania Estefany Jiménez Cala, Chryslen Mayra Barbosa Gonçalves

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