Albo

Albo explores the sense in which Bolivia indigenousness is reemerging in the site of the Alto, the satellite city to La Paz and the fastest growing city in the southern Americas. He considers this city simultaneously as a hinge, inbetween the rural Aymara world and the urban European oriented La Paz. It is not something different form la Paz, as both together form a unity in which LA Paz has central infrastructure in El Alto, it needs its population, that is a constantly present-silent other. The Alto cannot be considered as separated form the rural communities as it is full of Aymara rural immigrants that at different stages have migrated because of the crisis in the rural areas, but also attracted by a better life in the city. In this, Albo points that there are multiple families doing a dual use of space having homes both in the communities and the city or living in oner and going back to the other for festivals, meetings, family reasons. The Alto is also a voragine: it is a space in the limit of two world that distrust the other and in such field a creative force take place. One that reinstalls the indigenous presence as a force in Bolivian nationhood. The "new" Ayamras form the Alto are presenting new forms than before, many young people were mostly born in the city, do not speak the language and yet they are proud of and self identify as Aymaras. HE does see this youth, who were very actively engaged in the upraises of 2003 and 2005 as part of a new political force of the city, as a type of coming of age of a city. The other forces Albo analyzes are the Juntas vecinales, that keep some continuity with forms of organization in the rural areas even while reproducing some clientelistic relations with the state in some instances. Finally the political organization refers to the general response of the totality of the alto population and their demands to the representatives to take a position and mobilize during the as conflict. It is the maturity of a consciousness based on the colonial experience, a cultural tradition, and an awareness of the use of natural resources what he sees as a trigger of the Alto organization and full mobilization during these conflicts. This creative force is what ended in the election of Evo Morale s and is now conducting bolivia.