Academic literature on the topic 'Oriente (Bolivie)'

One of the major impacts of the Bolivian revolution of 1952 was felt in the rural areas of this country where the campesinos still represent two thirds of the total population. In the first part of this article the various agricultural regions of Bolivia are presented with their main characteristics : the altiplano, the yungas and the lowlands of the Oriente. The effects of the agrarian reform undertaken in January 1953 are then examined. During the first years of the reform the subdivision of properties contributed to extend a subsistence economy and there were movements of résistance from the major landowners as well as from the traditional Indian communities known as the ayllus. Colonization of the fertile Oriente, mainly in the region of Santa Cruz, was an alternative which had some interesting results. Despite its limited success the experience of agrarian reform has led the Government to undertake in 1962 a new ten-year plan whose objectives are the continuation of the agrarian reform together with expansion of agricultural productions and colonization.

Focusing on contemporary Bolivia, this article examines promises and pitfalls of political and legal initiatives that have turned Pachamama into a subject of rights. The conferral of rights on the indigenous earth being had the potential to unsettle the Western ontological distinction between active human subjects who engage in politics and passive natural resources. This essay, however, highlights some paradoxical effects of the rights of nature in Bolivia, where Evo Morales’ model of development relies on the intensification of the export-oriented extractive economy. Through the analysis of a range of texts, including paintings, legal documents, political speeches and activist interventions, I consider the equivocation between the normatively gendered Mother Earth that the state recognises as the subject of rights, and the figure of Pachamama evoked by feminist and indigenous activists. Pachamama, I suggest, has been incorporated into the Bolivian state as a being whose generative capacities have been translated into a rigid gender binary. As a gendered subject of rights, Pachamama/Mother Earth is exposed to governmental strategies that ultimately increase its subordination to state power. The concluding remarks foreground the import of feminist perspectives in yielding insights concerning political ontological conflicts.

Abstract. Glaciers of the Bolivian Andes represent an important water resource for Andean cities and mountain communities, yet relatively little work has assessed changes in their extent over recent decades. In many mountain regions, glacier recession has been accompanied by the development of proglacial lakes, which can pose a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) hazard. However, no studies have assessed the development of such lakes in Bolivia despite recent GLOF incidents here. Our mapping from satellite imagery reveals an overall areal shrinkage of 228.1 ± 22.8 km2 (43.1 %) across the Bolivian Cordillera Oriental between 1986 and 2014. Shrinkage was greatest in the Tres Cruces region (47.3 %), followed by the Cordillera Apolobamba (43.1 %) and Cordillera Real (41.9 %). A growing number of proglacial lakes have developed as glaciers have receded, in accordance with trends in most other deglaciating mountain ranges, although the number of ice-contact lakes has decreased. The reasons for this are unclear, but the pattern of lake change has varied significantly throughout the study period, suggesting that monitoring of future lake development is required as ice continues to recede. Ultimately, we use our 2014 database of proglacial lakes to assess GLOF risk across the Bolivian Andes. We identify 25 lakes that pose a potential GLOF threat to downstream communities and infrastructure. We suggest that further studies of potential GLOF impacts are urgently required.

This article takes as a central problem why both a tiny laboratory and an enormous national park were almost simultaneously established in a remote tropical Bolivian indigenous community (Isoso) in the mid-1990s. Both projects – laboratory and the park – were oriented to non-economic values: the laboratory to those of traditional medicine and culture and the park to those of unspoiled nature. However, Isoseño people were particularly attentive to the projects' economic value, exploring the ways these might act as wellsprings of money revenue. The analysis presented here suggests that the tension among divergent orders of value that characterizes the contemporary global situation can present special opportunities, and not just challenges, to indigenous and traditional peoples living in places like Isoso. The essay brings together discussions of "incommensurability" made separately in recent cultural anthropological and ecological economic literature in order to show how and why this is so.Key words: indigenous peoples, economic strategies, traditional medicine, incommensurability, Bolivia, national park

Bolivia has accomplished some of its goals since Evo Morales was elected president in 2006. It has made advances in expanding inclusion for indigenous peoples and reducing levels of poverty. They have expanded services and infrastructure for the poor and prioritized long-abandoned rural areas. Middle class has grown by more than 10% and both government and the economy have tripled in size. Yet Bolivia remains deeply embedded in extractivist economics. This piece looks at the relationship to global trade and the political paradoxes that gas drilling, soy production and mineral extraction create for the country. Export-oriented dependency have had predictable effects on labor relations, policy planning, and most significantly the lives of people on the ground.

Bolivia has become a plurinational state, and as such it seeks to dismantle the deeply ingrained internal colonialism that runs through the state and the society. Thus it recognizes self-determination by indigenous people, autonomous territories, plural economy and justice, communal democracy, and suma qamaña (living well) and identifies the indigenous as the main actors in the transformation process, sidelining both the working and the middle classes. Some of the contradictions at its core include views of development that range from extractivism to environmentalism and living well. The government claims to be oriented toward communitarian socialism, but developmentalism will entail the destruction of indigenous modes of survival that are considered culturally rich but backward from a Western perspective. The central indigenous actor of current government discourse has been pushed aside. The Bolivian process presents a way of building a more equal state and a society that offers greater opportunities provided that these structural contradictions are resolved. Bolivia se funda como Estado Plurinacional, y como tal pretende desmontar el colonia-lismo interno que atraviesa el Estado y la sociedad. De esta manera reconoce la autodeterminación de los pueblos indígenas, las autonomías, la economía y justicia plural, la democracia comunitaria, y el suma qamaña (vivir bien). Por tanto plantea que el actor central de las transformaciones son los indígenas, y con esto constatamos que ni el sujeto obrero ni la clase media son actores centrales. Algunas de las contradicciones que se encuentran en su seno incluyen visiones de desarrollo que oscila entre el extractivismo y la conservación de la Madre Tierra y el vivir bien. El gobierno dice orientarse hacia el socialismo comunitario, pero el desarrollismo implicará la destrucción de los modos de sobrevivencia de la población nativa, indígena, consideradas ricas en cultura pero “arcaicas” desde la perspectiva occidental-industrialista. El actor central indígena que le da carne al discurso del gobierno ha sido arremetido. El proceso boliviano presenta la posibilidad de construir un Estado y una sociedad con mayores oportunidades e igualdad de condiciones, siempre y cuando resuelva estas contradicciones estructurales.

El cultivo de la papa (Solanum tuberosum L.) es uno de los más importantes en la región Andina boliviana, tanto por su valor como cultivo de seguridad alimentaria y por su condición de centro de domesticación de una diversidad de papas nativas. Los diferentes procesos sociales, económicos y políticos de los últimos años vienen promoviendo un nuevo panorama de la tendencia de la producción de la papa en Bolivia. La imagen tradicional de país con agricultura eminentemente Andina e Interandina, con la ampliación de la frontera agrícola hacia zonas no tradicionales como los Valles Mesotérmicos, el oriente y chaco boliviano se encuentra configurando una nueva cultura del cultivo y consumo de la papa en Bolivia. El objetivo del presente trabajo fue describir el estado actual de la producción de papa en la región Andina boliviana a partir de la información existente. Se revisaron documentos, informes locales y publicaciones internacionales. Desde 1950, la introducción de tecnología para el mejoramiento de la producción de la papa en los Andes de Bolivia, comenzó apuntando a mejorar la calidad de la semilla de papa a partir de la evaluación y selección de variedades de papas nativas. Después de más de 60 años, en la actualidad, Bolivia, mantiene un sistema de producción y abastecimiento de semilla de papa de calidad certificada. Este sistema desde 1987 a la fecha ha promovido la producción de un número reducido de variedades de papas, entre ellas, la Desirée (Solanum tubersosum subsp. tuberosum) y Waych’a (Solanum tubersosum subsp. andigena). Este esquema junto a los patrones de consumo actual se encuentra modificando la realidad de la producción de la papa en Bolivia, cuyos efectos podrían causar impactos negativos en la conservación de la diversidad de las papas nativas y en la cultura de la papa en la región Andina.

With the ratification of its new constitution in 2009, Bolivia was transformed into a “plurinational state” associated with ecologically oriented values, yet resource extraction has expanded ever since. Fieldwork conducted in communities in highland Bolivia shows how resource extraction sustains and is sustained by “revolutionary narratives” in which the state—led by President Evo Morales—is configured as the protagonist of the plurinational era. Examination of the challenges presented by Bolivia’s indigenous communities and mining cooperatives to this revolutionary narrative during the 2014 adoption of new mining legislation suggests that shifting critical focus away from revolutionary change toward what David Scott calls the “politics of the present” might be a more fruitful way to think about the relationship between resource extraction and Bolivia’s plurinationalism. Al ratificar su nueva constitución en 2009, Bolivia se transformó en un “estado plurinacional” asociado con valores ecológicos; sin embargo, la extracción de recursos se ha expandido desde entonces. Investigaciones llevado a cabo en comunidades de las tierras altas de Bolivia muestran cómo la extracción de recursos sostiene y se sustenta en las “narrativas revolucionarias” en las que el estado, encabezado por el presidente Evo Morales, se configura como el protagonista de la era plurinacional. Examinar como las comunidades indígenas y las cooperativas mineras de Bolivia cuestionaron esta narrativa revolucionaria durante la adopción de la nueva legislación minera en 2014 sugiere que virar el enfoque crítico desde el cambio revolucionario hacia lo que David Scott llama la “política del presente” podría ser una forma más fructífera pensar en la relación entre la extracción de recursos y el plurinacionalismo boliviano.

This article analyzes the impact that neoliberal policies have on women and sets out the epistemological fracture that communitarian feminism produces in Western feminism. We discuss the circumstances in which, for the first time in the history of Bolivian public policies for women, a Plan de las Mujeres emerges from within women’s social organizations. This article also offers the conceptual frame that guides such a Plan, which relies on five categories or fields of direct action that help us in defending ourselves from a market that has put our very lives on sale. These categories are our bodies, our space, our time, our memory, and the movements that we are able to articulate.Este trabajo analiza el impacto de las políticas neoliberales en la vida de las mujeres y expone el rompimiento epistemológico que el feminismo comunitario produce en el feminismo occidental. Se discuten las circunstancias en las que, por primera vez en la historia de las políticas públicas para las mujeres en Bolivia, surge un Plan desde la base y las experiencias de las organizaciones sociales de mujeres. El trabajo presenta el marco conceptual que orienta este Plan de las Mujeres y que descansa en cinco categorías o campos de acción directa que nos ayudan a defendernos de un mercado que puso en venta nuestras propias vidas. Estas categorías son: nuestros cuerpos, nuestro espacio, nuestro tiempo, nuestra memoria y los movimientos que articulamos.