Decolonizing the state: Indigenous politics and limits of Bolivian plurinationalism

This book is an ethnographic exploration of the Bolivian Movement for Socialism's project of progressive state-building. Based on fieldwork in a Quechua community, it examines the paradoxes of state-led decolonization, offering a vital contribution to debates on indigeneity, radical politics, and the colonial legacy of the state. This book examines what it means to ‘decolonize the state’ - the declared goal of the Bolivian Movement for Socialism (MAS) government. The MAS attempted to re-found the Bolivian nation through constitutional and legal reforms that aim to devolve power to local communities and fundamentally transform the state and its relationship to civil society. In doing so, it sought to overturn the legacies of colonialism in a nation whose indigenous majority have long been marginalized. Yet while regarded as the most radical example of parallel worldwide movements, the MAS dramatically lost power after twenty years in office. The outcome of long-term fieldwork among a Quechua-speaking community, Decolonizing the state examines the paradoxical outcomes of this progressive state-building project at the level of local indigenous politics. Bringing history and ethnography into conversation with European critical theory, decolonial and indigenous thought, it argues that Bolivian indigenous politics were formed in struggle with colonial processes of state-making. The modern state is both the outcome of colonialism and a means through which colonialism was enacted in Bolivia and the rest of the world. This explains its central role in politics and the limitations of state-led recognition for addressing colonial legacies and enacting change. At a time of uncertainty for the Latin American and global Left, Decolonizing the state makes a vital contribution to debates on state theory, radical politics, indigeneity and the practice of decolonization. Decolonizing the state is an ethnographic exploration of the Bolivian Movement for Socialism (MAS) government's project of progressive state-building at the local level. While the MAS aimed to re-found the nation via legal and constitutional reforms aimed at empowering its majority indigenous population and dismantling colonial legacies, after twenty years in office it dramatically lost power. Based on long-term fieldwork in a Quechua-speaking community, this book examines first-hand the complex, often contradictory outcomes of state-led decolonization. It brings history and ethnography into dialogue with European critical theory, decolonial and indigenous thought to show how colonial state-making shaped Bolivia’s political order - and continues to constrain transformative change. At a time of growing uncertainty for the Latin American and global Left, Decolonizing the state offers a vital contribution to debates on state power, indigeneity, radical politics, and the practice of decolonization.