Abstract
This chapter draws attention to processes that have, in recent decades, contributed to the almost complete urbanisation of previously isolated, rural indigenous peoples. Indigenous urbanisation trends are illustrated through the case study of Bolivia. Here, indigenous peoples inhabit diverse territories of concentrated and extended urbanisation where they are often affected by patterns of social exclusion and ethno-racial discrimination. Urban indigenous peoples are, however, by no means passive victims of exclusion and discrimination but, in Bolivia at least, they are active agents of political change who contest for specific rights within the urban environments in which they live. To analyse complex indigenous urbanisation processes and associated everyday urban indigenous politics, this chapter deploys a pluralist perspective and combines planetary urbanisation theory—which allows for an understanding of patterns of socio-capitalist restructuring of indigenous territories and associated anti-capitalist urban indigenous resistance—with postcolonial approaches—which allow understanding ongoing tendencies of ethno-spatial segregation and associated decolonial indigenous responses. The chapter concludes by drawing attention to lessons from this case study for future theoretically informed and empirically grounded research on indigenous urbanisation in Bolivia and elsewhere.
Keywords
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
In 2012, 4.2 million out of Bolivia’s approximately 11.4 million inhabitants self-identify as belonging to an indigenous nation or people (INE 2012).
- 3.
The causes of these for these continuities are, amongst others: (1) historical path dependencies of resource dependency (Bebbington and Humphreys Bebbington 2011); (2) the employment of a neo-structuralist approach which favours global competitiveness and export-oriented growth, and thereby reproduces elements of the neoliberal model (Kennemore and Weeks 2011); and (3) the relative institutional weakness of Bolivia’s government and the need to use extractive activities to maintain political legitimacy (Kohl and Farthing 2012).
- 4.
This does not mean, however, that national and local governments in Bolivia are monolithic. As I have shown elsewhere, there are certainly some government authorities—such as those working for La Paz’s intercultural unit—which seek to implement indigenous rights in an urban context. Yet such efforts are constrained as they lack relevant human and financial resources. For a more detailed discussion on gaps between constitutional rhetoric and urban policy and planning practice, see Horn (2017).
- 5.
In addition, urban indigenous peoples also engage in a variety of alternative forms of informal urban governance and economic urban restructuring (for a detailed discussion see Horn 2015).
References
Achtenberg E (2017) The growing resistance to megadams in Bolivia. NACLA Reporting on the Americas
Albo X (1987) From MNRistas to Kataristas to Katari. In: Stern S (ed) Resistance, rebellion, and consciousness in the Andean peasant world, eighteenth to twentieth centuries. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, pp 379–419
Andolina R, Laurie N, Radcliffe S (2009) Indigenous development in the Andes: culture, power, and transnationalism. Durham University Press, Durham, NC
Andreucci D, Radhuber IM (2015) Limits to “counter-neoliberal” reform: mining expansion and the marginalisation of post-extractivist forces in Evo Morales’s Bolivia. Geoforum 84:280–291
Arbona JM, Kohl B (2004) City profile: La Paz–El Alto. Cities 21(3):255–265
Bebbington A, Humphreys Bebbington D (2011) An Andean avatar: post-neoliberal and neoliberal strategies for securing the unobtainable. New Polit Econ 16(1):131–145
Buckley M, Strauss K (2016) With, against and beyond Lefebvre: planetary urbanization and epistemic plurality. Environ Plann D 34(4):617–636
Brenner N (2013) Theses on urbanisation. Public Culture 25(1):85–114
Brenner N (2017) Debating planetary urbanization: for an engaged pluralism. Working Paper, Urban Theory Lab, Harvard GSD
Brenner N, Schmid C (2014) The “urban age” in question. Int J Urban Reg Res 38(3):731–755
Brenner N, Schmid C (2015) Towards a new epistemology of the urban? City 19(2–3):151–182
Butler C (2012) Henri Lefebvre. Spatial politics, everyday life and the right to the city. London: Routledge
Cambio (2016) Bolivia se doto de 13.000KM de Carreteras en Ultima Decada. Newspaper article. Available: http://www.cambio.bo/?q=node/1946. Accessed: 26 July 2017
Canclini NG (2005) Hybrid cultures: strategies for entering and leaving modernity. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Cardoso AC, Silva H, Melo AC, Araújo (this volume) Urban tropical forest: where nature and human settlements are assets to overcome dependency, but how can urbanisation theories identify these potentials?
Crabtree J, Chaplin A (2013) Bolivia: processes of change. Zed Books, London
del Popolo F, Oyarce AM, Ribotta B (2007) Indígenas urbanos en América Latina: algunos resultados censales y su relación con los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio. CEPAL notas de población 86. United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Santiago
Dunkerley J (2007) Bolivia: revolution and the power of history in the present. Institute for the Study of the Americas, London
Gandarillas Gonzales MA (2016) La Orientacion Extractivista de la Inversion Publica en Bolivia: Cambios institucionales y normativos bajo el imperative exportador. CLAES, Montevideo
Grugel J, Riggirozzi P (2012) Post-neoliberalism in Latin America: rebuilding and reclaiming the state after crisis. Dev Change 43(1):1–21
Gudynas E (2011) Buen Vivir: today’s tomorrow. Development 54(4):441–447
Guss DM (2006) The Gran Poder and the reconquest of La Paz. J Lat Am Anthropol 11(2):294–328
Hardoy JE (1973) Pre-Colombian cities. Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Toronto
Horn P (2015) Indigeneity, constitutional changes and urban policies: conflicting realities in La Paz, Bolivia and Quito, Ecuador. Ph.D. Thesis. Manchester: The University of Manchester
Horn P (2017) Indigenous peoples, the city and inclusive urban development policies in Latin America: lessons from Bolivia and Ecuador. Development Policy Review
INE (2012) Resultados: Censo de Poblacion y Vivienda 2012. Instituto Nacional de Estadística, La Paz
Jimenez G (2015) Geografia del extravismo en Bolivia: Territorios. CEDIB, Cochabamba
Kennemore A, Weeks G (2011) Twenty-first century socialism? The elusive search for a post-neoliberal development model in Bolivia and Ecuador. Bull Lat Am Res 30(3):267–281
Klein HS (2011) A concise history of Bolivia, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, New York
Kohl B, Farthing L (2006) Impasse in Bolivia. Zed Books, London
Kohl B, Farthing L (2012) Material constraints to popular imaginaries: the extractive economy and resource nationalism in Bolivia. Polit Geogr 31(4):225–235
La Paz (2010) La Paz 10 Años en cifras 2000–2009. Compendia Estadístico de Bicentario. Gobierno Municipal, La Paz
Lazar, S. (2008) El Alto, Rebel City. Self and Citizenship in Andean Bolivia. Duke University Press. Durham, NC
Lefebvre H (1968) Le droit a la ville. Editions Anthropos, Paris
Lefebvre H (1991) The production of space. Blackwell, Oxford
Lefebvre H (2003) The urban revolution. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Marcuse P (2009) From critical theory to the right to the city. City 13(2–3):185–197
McNeish JA (2013) Extraction, protest and indigeneity in Bolivia: the TIPNIS effect. Lat Am Caribb Ethnic Stud 8(2):221–242
Mignolo W (2000) Local histories/global designs: coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Monte-Mor R (2005) What is the urban in the contemporary world. Cadernos de Saude Publica 21(3):942–948
Perreault T (2006) From the Guerra del Agua to the Guerra del Gas: resource governance, neoliberalism and popular protest in Bolivia. Antipode 38(1):150–172
Platt T (1982) Estado boliviano y ayllu andino: tierra y tributo en el Norte de Potosi. Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Lima
Postero NG (2007) Now we are citizens: indigenous politics in postmulticultural Bolivia. Stanford University Press, Stanford
Pradilla E (1987) Capital, Estado y Vivienda en America Latina. Frontera, Mexico
Quijano A (2000) Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. Int Sociol 15(2):215–232
Quijano A (2006) El “movimiento indígena” y las cuestiones pendientes en América Latina. Argumentos 19(50):51–77
Revilla C (2011) Understandings the mobilizations of Octubre 2003: dynamic pressures and shifting leadership practices in El Alto. In: Fabricant N, Gustafson B (eds) Remapping Bolivia: resources, territory, and indigeneity in a plurinational state. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, pp 121–145
Reyes-García V, Paneque-Gálvez Bottazzi P, Luz AC, Gueze M, Macía MJ, Martínez M (2014) Indigenous land reconfiguration and fragmented institutions: a historical political ecology of Tsimane’ lands. J Rural Stud 34(4):282–291
Rivera Cusicanqui S (2010) The notion of “rights” and the paradoxes of postcolonial modernity: indigenous peoples and women in Bolivia. Qui Parle Crit Humanit Soc Sci 18(2):29–54
Stoian D (2000) Variations and dynamics of extractive economies: the rural-urban nexus of non-timber forest use in the Bolivian Amazon. Ph.D. Dissertation. Albert Ludwigs Universitaet, Freiburg
Torrico Foronda E (2011) El Nuevo Rostro Urbano de Bolivia’. In: Urquieta P (ed) Ciudades en transformacion. Disputas por el espacio, apropriacion de la ciudad y practicas de ciudadania. Oxfam, La Paz, pp 61–72
UN-Habitat (2010) Urban indigenous peoples and migration: a review of policies, programmes and practices. United Nations Human Settlements Programme, Nairobi
van Meeteren M, Bassens D, Derudder B (2016) Doing global urban studies: on the need for engaged pluralism, frame switching and methodological cross-fertilization. Dialogues Hum Geogr 6(3):296–301
Wilson J, Bayón M (2015) Concrete jungle: the planetary urbanization of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Hum Geogr 8(3):1–23
Wilson J, Bayón M (2016) Black hole capitalism. City 20(3):350–367
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Horn, P. (2018). Emerging Urban Indigenous Spaces in Bolivia: A Combined Planetary and Postcolonial Perspective. In: Horn, P., Alfaro d'Alencon, P., Duarte Cardoso, A. (eds) Emerging Urban Spaces. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57816-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57816-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-57815-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-57816-3
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)