Bolivia: Normative Equality between State and Customary Law. Utopia or the Future of Hybrid Normative Systems?

Abstract

Bolivia is a country with great diversity associated mainly with the geographical areas, and the natural and ecological resources of its territory. In the 112 existing provinces of the Bolivian plurinational state (Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia), 2.5 million indigenous peasants still keep to their traditional methods of administration and internal decision-making spread throughout some 190 rural Andean municipalities and in 33 other municipalities in the lower eastern lands. A total of 3.1 million people, that is, 38 per cent of the total Bolivian population, live in rural areas. Bolivia’s highland (Andean high plateau) occupies only 28 per cent of the national land area, but harbours 46 per cent of the country’s rural population. Thus, the poverty rates are much higher in this area (69.8 per cent), as there is less land to share and a lower quality of life.¹