Indigenous Movements and Politics in Bolivia: An Emergent Way of Governance in the XXI Century

It is in the beginning of the XXI Century that many countries in South America have experienced, for its first time, left wing governments. It has been expressed in different ways, according to the specific configuration of each country. This is a new phenomenon, due the fact that during the past centuries, the stereotype of people in politics in the region was the heterosexual, white, middle-age upper-class man, who usually performed in power of coloniality (Quijano, 2007). People who are not included in this stereotype, as woman, black, indigenous, homosexual, young and poor; were excluded from politics and from public sphere.

As Spivak mentioned, the subaltern cannot speak (2008), and this muteness is also extended to the political representation. It is possible to argue that politics and public policies in South America, for centuries, were made by white men for white men. It started to change in the last decade, in some countries shyly and in others more vigorously. One taboo in the region that remains until nowadays is the presence of indigenous people in power. The indigenous people are present and settled across the continent, but they still do not have power or political representation in the majority of South American nations.

  This paper shall analyze the political changes in the only country in South America that has an indigenous as president, and one of the few that has been trying to adopt indigenous principles in politics: Bolivia. What does the adoption of indigenous cosmologies and principles in Bolivian politics mean? How does it operate? Does it mean better quality of life for its indigenous peoples? Is it a case of decolonization (Mignolo, 2009) in politics? These are some of the questions that this research intends to raise, using Bolivia as a case study.