Guss The reconquest of La PAz

This article follows the transformations of the use of space for popular festivities in the city of La Paz. To do this he has to follow the thread of the construction of a european bolivian elite at the opening of the 20th C and the massive arrival of rural population especially form the 1950s onward. He starts by a recapitulation of previous relations between indians and colonizers and the way the racialized distinctions was, in the spanish colonial context, a fluid delimitation of positions that could easily change when the social position, when the context changed, and especially the geographically location of a person shifted form country to city (he quotes Weismantle´s notion of "geography of race"). [esto me recuerda que un texto obvio que no inclui hasta ahora es "the country and the city" the ep thompson, una de las primeras cosas que lei para esto... lo tendría que revisitar]. However the space for this fluidity the dual organization of the city between the centre of La Paz and Chijini (displaced latter to el Alto). This division does not imply an autonomy but rather a segregation in terms of race, made possible by the possibilities of daily commuting of indigenous to the city centre that depends on its labour. Elites moved form the central colonial plaza to the lowlands where mot state services developed, while indigenous people were only able to settle in the highlands with less amenities and little possibilities of social mobility. The influx of indigenous rural population generates what Lipsitz calls "dangerous crossroads" (interesting to check) in which "colonizers" and "colonized" converge daily and both create frictions and enable the emergence of new forms socialization and more interestingly new forms of public space. So initially the use of public space of the city was apropriated by euro bolivian men, who dominanted the carnival parades divided in fratries dressed in european costumes and comunicating that the mass indigenous festivities were unwelcome. At a point there were a timid formation of new types of fraternities, more numerous, more diverse and composed of Ch'utas, or indigenous born in the city. They parodied the whites through the elaborated costumes and white masks. In parallel the cellebration of the gran poder resulted from the church rejection of a image of the holly trinity that quickly became adopted by the new immigrants who gave refuge, built a chapel in the Chijini and embraced its festivity as their own, with its own fraternities, fire works, the andean dance "suri suki", and soon the diabladas brough by the miners. With the revolution of the 1950 the new arrival of liberated indigenous (now "peasants" by revolutionary reform) increased the population again especially in El Alto, for whom joining a dance fraternity implied an important form of generating links in the city. The organization of the celebration was also a site of direct political struggle for the conformation of a Junta de Vecinos, to its replacement of an Asociacion de Conjuntos Folkloricos with the assumption to power of populist conservative Hugo BAnzer, who participated in the parade and turned this as a central manifestation of nationality. In this moment a new more elaborated type f group emerged: the morenadas related to populist bourgeoisie and their display of wealth, and were a last challenge to the oligarchy excluding indigenous form the national narrative, and ended up reapropiating the space of the city centre by the indians. In this process both the church complained about the celebration and the government "did all it could to prevent the festival form arriving at the city's centre... every year there was a confortation over the exact details of the route. The final importance of the fiesta was manifested with the interruption of the uprising of the 2003 (conflicts over the gas) that were interrupted for one day to give place to the celebration, and in 2005 when the alto put the city under siege, the fiesta was also a moment of reconciliation. 6 months latter Evo was elected invoking the prophecy of tupac katari (y robada por el peronismo!!) "volver'e y ser'e millones".


de golpe me muero por mascar coca, abrazarlo a evo y saltar en la calle al son del caporal. en fin.