Revisiting Bolivian “Progressivism”: The Anticommunalism of the Plurinational State

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20933637
• Date: 01 September 2020
• Author: Huáscar Salazar Lohman
• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20933637

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 234, Vol. 47 No. 5, September 2020, 148–162

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20933637

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

148

Revisiting Bolivian “Progressivism”

The Anticommunalism of the Plurinational State

by

Huáscar Salazar Lohman

Translated by

Mariana Ortega-Breña

As the Bolivian government adopts increasingly conservative and authoritarian fea-

tures, a policy meant to boost capitalist extractivism is becoming increasingly evident.

This should be understood not as the end of a “progressive” government but as the con-

solidation of a new structure of state power sustained by an anticommunal stance that has

involved a redefinition of the government’s alliance with the ruling classes and the sys-

tematic dismantling of the social forces that are now struggling to reappropriate political

prerogatives in arenas of political organization unrelated to the state.

A medida que el gobierno boliviano adopta características cada vez más conservadoras

y autoritarias, se ha hecho cada vez más evidente una política destinada a impulsar el

extractivismo capitalista. Esto no debe entenderse como el fin de un gobierno "progre-

sista", sino como la consolidación de una nueva estructura de poder estatal sostenida en

una postura anticomunitaria que implica una redefinición de la alianza entre el gobierno

y las clases dominantes, así como el desmantelamiento sistemático de las fuerzas sociales

que ahora luchan por la reapropiación de prerrogativas políticas desde ámbitos no estatales

de organización política.

Keywords: Bolivia, Plurinational state, Community, Progressivism

There won’t be a happy ending.

—Luis Tapia, 2011

In 2006 Bolivia underwent a process of state restructuring colloquially

known as the “change process” and led by the coca growers’ union leader and

later Bolivian president Evo Morales Ayma—an expressive symbol and repre-

sentative of a political project presented as popular, national, indigenous, revo-

lutionary, and antagonistic to the preceding neoliberal order. There is

widespread agreement among researchers and intellectuals that this political

scenario was the consequence of a rebellion and social mobilization that,

Huáscar Salazar Lohman is a Bolivian economist studying community-based struggles in Bolivia.

He is currently doing postdoctoral studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico with

the financial support of the DGAPA/UNAM postdoctoral fellowship program. Mariana Ortega-

Breña is a freelance translator based in Mexico City.

933637LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20933637Latin American PerspectivesSalazar / Revisiting Bolivian “Progressivism”

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