Call For Papers

El Alto or Los Altos: Local Perspectives for Critical Analysis

2024-11-14

Guest Editors: Vania Calle, Alexis Argüello Sandoval, Samuel Hilari, Fher Masi.

Deadline to receive proposals: January 31, 2025

Contact email: archivocomunitarioea@gmail.com

The historical development of El Alto or Los Altos encompasses significant stages preceding its establishment as an independent municipal entity in 1985 when it gained city status. In this context, we identify five historical events that have shaped its territorial structure to this day:

1. During the indigenous rebellion of 1781, the area now occupied by Los Altos served a strategic function as one of the main camps to house indigenous and mestizo people. It is important to note that the Andean territory was organized socio-spatially by ayllus, collective organizations with family ties, which still exist in several communities in Bolivia today. According to researcher Juan Arbona, four ayllus were established in Los Altos based on the names of the estates and narratives from colonial registers: Cupilupaca, Checalupaca, Chinchalla, and Pucarani (Arbona, 2011).
2. Later, with the consolidation of Bolivian legislation, the ayllus were fragmented in 1874 through the Law on Indigenous Property Rights, changing the role of communal property to individual ownership. This event severed the organizational collectivity that managed the territory, promoting the emergence of haciendas.
3. In 1985, Supreme Decree 21060 was enacted, leading to the closure of mines across Bolivia. This event triggered the mass relocation of miners to nearby urban nodes in search of employment opportunities, with El Alto being no exception. This is perhaps a key aspect to understanding the organizational and syndicalist character that El Alto later adopted.
4. Subsequently, between 1976 and 1992, El Alto experienced explosive demographic growth, becoming one of the fastest-growing cities in South America, expanding its urban area towards the city of La Paz. This process gave rise to an external intellectual production, where several NGOs conducted studies on health, education, and language, often with an exploratory connotation.
5. Until then, El Alto experienced its territorial processes with a strong dependency on La Paz, both in educational and labor matters, as well as in spatial aesthetics linked to its architecture. This began to change first in 2003, with the Gas War, and then in 2005, when Bolivia experienced a significant political shift with the election of the country's first indigenous president. This scenario brought about a debate of concepts framed within the Andean-Amazonian world, correlating with its social organizational consolidation. In El Alto, this led to the spread of new architectural proposals alluding to buildings with facades inspired by Bolivian films and dances, among others.

Considering these aspects, El Alto or Los Altos has shaped its identity through a historical struggle linked to processes such as multi-locality, within a social fabric where cultural expressions have found spaces for critical contextual reading from the perspective of the arts, literature, and architecture. These have transformed the classical sense with which they were conceived and understood, advancing towards new socio-spatial manifestations resulting from emerging perspectives from El Alto.

To understand the complexity of the profound processes that El Alto or Los Altos has and will have in the future, this volume seeks to gather unpublished academic and non-academic works from different disciplines that address the current situation from perspectives that not only limit themselves to a situational analysis of recent events but extend to the review of long-term historical structures. All this is under the premise of making visible the outstanding production of authors who present their writings from El Alto.

The editors invite proposals containing critical interdisciplinary perspectives. These may include analyses focused on:

• History and territorial transformation of Los Altos or El Alto.
• Assessment of the strategic role of Los Altos in the uprising led by Túpac Katari and Bartolina Sisa.
• Impacts of laws on the socio-spatial aspects of El Alto.
• Fragmentation of the ayllus and the transition from communal to individual ownership, and its socio-economic implications.
• Research on migration flows to and from El Alto.
• Study of urban expansion processes and the interconnection with social organizations in the transformation of El Alto.
• El Alto as a center of contemporary Aymara political thought.
• History of feminist movements and sexual diversity in El Alto.
• Local aesthetic production and the construction of an El Alto identity.
• El Alto and its literary production pre-2000 and post-2000.
• Architectural and socio-economic innovations.
• Environment and urban planning.

Future Perspectives for El Alto:

• Analysis of trends and future challenges for El Alto.
• El Alto and Bolivia, beyond the bicentennial of the republic.

Non-Academic Explorations:

• Chronicle or other literary text format on events or spaces in El Alto.
• Transcription of oral testimonies.
• Free essay on political thought.
• Manifestos.
• Visual essays, photo-narratives, etc. 

Submission Information and Important Dates:

We invite critics and writers from various disciplines to submit proposals of no more than 300 words, including the title of the work, a summary explaining its objectives, and details of the main points of discussion. Proposals may be written in Spanish, English, Portuguese, or native languages. Authors should also submit a brief biographical note of no more than 250 words. Please send your complete proposal to archivocomunitarioea@gmail.com

• Submission Deadline: February 15, 2025
• Review Deadline and Notification to Authors: March 15, 2025
• Full Article Submission Deadline: May 30, 2025
• Scheduled Publication Date: Fall 2025

Accepted papers will be part of a special edition (Issue 31) of the Bolivian Studies Journal (https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/bsj/about), to be published in print and online.

Acceptance of papers for publication in the journal will be subject to peer review. Scientific articles must be written in IMRAD format (Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and References with no less than 15 sources).

Additional submission guidelines available at: https://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/bsj/about/submissions#authorGuidelines