Bolivian Studies Journal
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj
<p> The <em>Bolivian Studies Journal </em>is a peer-reviewed publication that responds to the growing interest in understanding the past and present of historical and cultural processes in Bolivia. Toward this end, it promotes research that is innovative, interdisciplinary, and interested in critically discussing the challenges that Bolivia is facing (and posing) in the new millennium. The journal is also an effort to contribute to the vibrant and committed international community of Bolivianists and welcomes initiatives to re-conceptualize the theoretical and epistemological frameworks that have traditionally oriented interpretations of Bolivian history and culture. We publish once a year and accept research papers, articles, documents, reviews, interviews, and discussion materials written in Spanish, English, or indigenous languages. </p>University of Pittsburgh, University Library Systemen-USBolivian Studies Journal1074-2247<p>Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:</p><ol><li>The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.</li><li>Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.</li><li>The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a <a title="CC-BY" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a> or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:<ol type="a"><li>Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;</li></ol>with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.</li><li>The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.</li><li>Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.</li><li>Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.</li><li>The Author represents and warrants that:<ol type="a"><li>the Work is the Author’s original work;</li><li>the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;</li><li>the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;</li><li>the Work has not previously been published;</li><li>the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and</li><li>the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.</li></ol></li><li>The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.</li></ol><p><span style="font-size: 75%;">Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link. </span></p>Announcements
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/292
.Martha E. Mantilla
Copyright (c) 2022 Martha E. Mantilla
2022-12-022022-12-0210.5195/bsj.2022.292Linda Farthing and Thomas Becker. Coup: A Story of Violence and Resistance in Bolivia
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/285
n/aBret Gustafson
Copyright (c) 2022 Bret Gustafson
2022-12-022022-12-0225325810.5195/bsj.2022.285Quya Reyna. Los hijos de Goni
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/288
<span>n/a</span>María Ximena Postigo Guzmán
Copyright (c) 2022 María Ximena Postigo G.
2022-12-022022-12-0225926410.5195/bsj.2022.288Preliminary Pages
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/281
.Martha E. Mantilla
Copyright (c) 2022 Martha E. Mantilla
2022-12-022022-12-02ix10.5195/bsj.2022.281Call for Papers
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/289
.Martha E. Mantilla
Copyright (c) 2022 Martha E. Mantilla
2022-12-022022-12-0210.5195/bsj.2022.289In Honor of Amaru Villanueva Rance (La Paz, 1985 - London, 2022)
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/287
.Linda Farthing
Copyright (c) 2022 Linda Farthing
2022-12-022022-12-021610.5195/bsj.2022.287Remembering Nelly Sfeir González (Cochabamba, 1930 - Illinois, 2020)
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/259
.Martha E. MantillaAntonio Sotomayor
Copyright (c) 2022 Martha E. Mantilla, Sotomayor Antonio
2022-12-022022-12-0271810.5195/bsj.2022.259Index of the Bolivian Studies Journal Vol. I No. 1 (1990) - Vol. 14 (2007)
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/284
.Martha E. Mantilla
Copyright (c) 2022 Martha E. Mantilla
2022-12-022022-12-0222725210.5195/bsj.2022.284Sacred Songs and Decolonial Collective Voices from Elvira Espejo Ayca's Voice. Kirki Qhañi. Petaca de las poéticas andinas (2022)
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/279
<p class="AbstractParagraphsGold">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 <em>Kurmi Wasi</em> School in Bolivia, a musical production that was recorded under the name of <em>Sami Kirki</em> in 2018, which was included in the last Espejo’s book <em>Kirki Qhañi</em> (2022).</p>Adriana Sánchez Gutiérrez
Copyright (c) 2022 Adriana Sánchez Gutiérrez
2022-12-022022-12-02193310.5195/bsj.2022.279The Folkloric-Festive continuum of an Emerging Elite in La Paz
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/238
<div><p class="AbstractParagraphsBlue">This article presents the results of the ethnographic research conducted in the period 2015-2017 with the <em>Fraternidad Verdaderos Intocables</em> 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 <em>fiesta</em> signal/impulse chains of reciprocity in present/future overlapping space-time interactions resulting in a folkloric-festive <em>continuum</em> that reinforces the bonds of participants as <em>compadres.</em> 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.</p></div><p class="KeywordsTitleGold"> </p>Danny Daniel Mollericona Alfaro
Copyright (c) 2022 Danny Daniel Mollericona Alfaro
2022-12-022022-12-02346510.5195/bsj.2022.238Prison Literature in the Andes: Indigeneity and Nationalisms in Peru and Bolivia
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/248
<div><p class="AbstractParagraphsGold">This essay develops a comparative analysis between two prison texts produced in Peru and Bolivia. In my reading hypothesis, the novel <em>El sexto</em> (1961), by José María Arguedas, and the autobiographical account <em>Bolivia: cemetery of freedom</em> (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 <em>El Sexto</em>, 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 <em>El Sexto</em>, the construction of the political wisdom of the character Cámac elevates his representation to the condition of ideal model for nationality. In <em>Bolivia</em>, 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.</p></div><div><p class="AbstractParagraphsGold"> </p></div>Marcus Vinicius Salinas
Copyright (c) 2022 Marcus Vinicius Salinas
2022-12-022022-12-02668810.5195/bsj.2022.248Bolivian National Revolution: Bolivian Women Without Revolution
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/208
<div><p class="AbstractParagraphsGold">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.</p></div>Estelí Puente Beccar
Copyright (c) 2022 estelí puente beccar
2022-12-022022-12-028910910.5195/bsj.2022.208"I See Here Nothing but Miseries": Social Disease and "Humanitarian" Capitalism in En las tierras del Potosí
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/214
<p class="AbstractParagraphsGold">This essay proposes reading <em>En las tierras del Potosí</em> (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.</p><p class="KeywordGold"> </p>Ana Lucía Tello
Copyright (c) 2022 Ana Lucia Tello
2022-12-022022-12-0211013410.5195/bsj.2022.214Urban Mobility and "Geometries of Power": The Urban Streetcar in La Paz at the Beginning of the 20th Century
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/277
<div><p class="AbstractParagraphsGold">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. </p></div>Javier Velasco
Copyright (c) 2022 Javier Velasco
2022-12-022022-12-0213515810.5195/bsj.2022.277The Affects of Memory. Family, Memory and Nation in the Contemporary Bolivian novel
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/242
<p class="AbstractParagraphsGold">This article proposes an analysis of the novel <em>Los afectos</em> (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 <em>Los afectos</em> 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.</p><p class="KeywordsTitleGold"> </p><p class="KeywordGold"> </p>Jaime Omar Salinas Zabalaga
Copyright (c) 2022 Jaime Omar Salinas Zabalaga
2022-12-022022-12-0215918410.5195/bsj.2022.242Narco-trafficking and Camba Identity in Homero Carvalho Oliva’s La conspiración de los viejos
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/213
<div><p class="AbstractParagraphsGold">This article examines the novel’s use of the <em>camba</em> 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.</p></div>Dorian Lee Jackson
Copyright (c) 2022 Dorian Lee Jackson
2022-12-022022-12-0218520610.5195/bsj.2022.213The Testament of Manuela Mier: Miner and Azoguera from Oruro, 1805
https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/article/view/239
<p class="AbstractParagraphsGold">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.</p><p class="KeywordsTitleGold"> </p><p class="KeywordGold"> </p>María Concepción Gavira Márquez
Copyright (c) 2022 Maria Concepcion Gavira Marquez
2022-12-022022-12-0220722610.5195/bsj.2022.239