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.

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.

Grimson bolivianos en Buenos aires

mas foto de fiestas, esta en el barrio



Grimson analizes the identity construction among Bolivian migrants to Buenos Aires as constituted within intra and intercultural frames of communication. This migratory process is not only seen as problematic by the Argentinean society, both by the state and by a public sphere, but is also falsely connect migration with unemployment. Communication for Grimson is not just the instance of the interpellation of migrants as others made by dominant discourses nor is an analysis of the interpretations of the immigrants readings of the dominant cultures but rather works over multiple dimensions of the communicative process. To do this he reconstructs the self construction of identities among the Bolivian immigrants, living in the charrua neighborhood (inhabited by a majority of immigrant and second generation of Bolivians) in the symbolic interaction that put into play multiple systems of meaning both in the everyday production of meaning that include the interpretation and appropriation of technological mean of communication (the radio). In this sense he carefully follows the interpretations of the actors of the social relations in which identity is recreated. He therefore analyzes the intercultural encounters in the spaces of everyday life: from the public transportation to the factory and interaction with the police. Even though he does not engage in a racial critique, he recognizes the force of the stigma carried in the body. He claims that “the inequality proclaimed by vast sector of the receiving society associate a symbolic difference with a sociobiological one.” (50 my translation). Its extreme construction associates a body fisionomy to poverty, lack of “education”, criminality and amorality. The body is thus a marker of difference read by the “porteños” who react in different ways as they recognize them as others, mostly in either direct verbalizations of stereotypes (among working class and “provincial” porteños) or by bodily signs of demarcations of difference, such as looking down, or showing fear of a projected criminality, among the “educated” middle class. In this sense for Grimson communication is also about proxemics and body communication. To this situations Grimson show how people react by either letting the stigma be manifested, by pushing the stigma to a limit through reinforcing it with exaggeration and by inverting the stigma and “giving it back” to the producer. This is what he call counterstigmatization strategies He uses the notion of hibridity to give account of the way identity is recreated in Buenos Aires in the intersections of nationality, religiosity, indigeneity, profession, and generational lines that converge in it. In his book he unpacks four dimensions of the communicative process: a) the every day situations of intercultural communication in the city especially in their interactions with different social groups defined by them as: educated and provincials porteños, Koreans, Paraguayan, Peruvian and chilenian; b) the analysis of the festivities in the charrua neighborhood as a site of community building and of negotiation of tensions with the “receiving” society ; c) the appropriation of technological media for a self construction of identity and a self generated space for bolivianness; and d) the use of the television as educational political and position taking tool in diverse reception practices. A great quote by one of the “informants” : mira la sociedad argentina quiere aparentar ser mas mala de lo que es, quiere aparentar ser mas linda de los que es, quiere aparentar ser mas inteligente de lo que es. Pero si vos tratás con ellos te das cuenta que no son tan malos como parecen, no son tan lindos como parecen ni son tan inteligentes como parecen.” (49) He finally points to the fact that even though that form hegemonic position there is a tendency to attribute a social homogeneity the field of the popular is trasversed by forms of fragmentation of the practice that restricts a unified mobilization and the articulation of common interest.