Product Description

Bolivia leapt onto the front pages of the news in October 2003, when the 'Gas Wars' protests caused the ousting of Bolivia's President, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. In the Gas Wars the indigenous inhabitants, trade unions, and other civil society groups came together to protest the sale of Bolivian natural gas to the United States through a pipeline leading to Chile. In the unrest protestors were killed, and calls for the President to resign grew ever louder. Bolivia has a long history of social protest. In Cochabamba in 2000, the Water Wars saw nearly 10,000 people take to the streets against the privatisation of water. The Bolivian peoples' strong stance against foreign interests and the sale of their natural resources has been triggered by US pressure; first in the 'war on drugs' - the fumigation of 'illegal' coca crops - and pressure waged on a wider front of IMF structural adjustments, and the neo-liberal regime. In Patterns of Protest, UK-based Andean expert John Crabtree explains the antecedents of a poor country's struggle against its most powerful neighbours, and the predatory interests of global capitalism. In a strongly indigenous nation, explains the influence of Quechua and Aymara identity and organising in Bolivian politics, and analyses the unique way that Boliva has united disparate populations - the urban working class and the rural indigenous people - to demand that Bolivian natural resources benefit Bolivians first.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #567156 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 162 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent summary of social movements in Bolivia
This short book (113 substantive pages, less than A5 size) provides a concise but very dense and detailed account of recent social movements and popular protest in Bolivia across a number of regions and groups. Full of detail and insight, the book is superb both as a summary and a distinct contribution to thinking about social movements; it is also one of very few works about a very important series of mobilisations. It does not seek to cram events into a preconceived framework or to reduce them to numbers or causes, instead taking the appropriate, useful approach of looking at the self-perceptions of social movement participants themselves, their forms of organisation, and the immanent context in which these occur. The result is a clear, accessible and informative account which says a lot in not much space, conveying a sense of its subject-matter as a living social field.

As well as an introduction and conclusion, the book contains six substantive chapters, dealing with different geographical areas, social groups and flashpoint issues: the Cochabamba "water war", in which protesters forced a reversal of the privatisation of water; conflicts between campesinos and the state over coca production; rural organisation in the Santa Cruz area; pension reform and social movements of elderly people; land issues and Aymara indigenous movements; and the "gas war" in El Alto. Each provides a description not only of the issue which led to protest or conflict, but also the social and demographic configuration of the social groups involved (why people moved to Chapare to farm coca, extremes of wealth and poverty in Santa Cruz), their sociopolitical forms and organisations (sindicatos or unions, social movements, neighbourhood councils, indigenous institutions such as the ayllu), and the tactics of social mobilisation they use (road blockades or bloqueos, long marches of the elderly, land occupations, etc). The result is a very clear picture of social protest and its entire context, giving a sense of who is protesting about what, how and why. The conclusion is a little too enthusiastic to try to reconcile protest with state-led democracy, but also draws interesting conclusions on the varying intensity, mutual reinforcement and targets of mobilisations.

Another interesting feature is the insertion of short passages in the voices of Bolivian social actors themselves, usually leaders or participants in social movements under discussion. These are inserted at various points in the text, and, although too short to give really independent perspectives of participants, also serve to provide a sense of agents' own perceptions, and to back up many of the claims Crabtree is making about issues and motivations.