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Accepted Paper:
Competing Visions for Indigenous Modernity in El Alto, Bolivia
Nathan Frisch
(Vanderbilt University)
My fieldwork was conducted in El Alto, Bolivia, a large city self-constructed by indigenous rural migrants. I describe how the daily lives, struggles, and aspirations of workers in the city's popular economy exist in tension with the plurinational Bolivian state's vision for indigenous modernity.
Paper Abstract:
My fieldwork was conducted in El Alto, a Bolivian city that was self-constructed by Aymara and Quechua rural migrants displaced by neoliberal structural reforms. The city is most famously known for its high-altitude location on the Andean altiplano and for its history of social movement militancy. While long labeled as one of the planet’s largest “megaslums”, El Alto is now a site of state-investment, a center of indigenous wealth, and increasingly a destination for tourists. With infrastructure projects that celebrate aspects of urban-indigenous culture such as the Mi Teleférico cable-car transport system, the Bolivian government meets populist demands for development while broadcasting a progressive, investment-friendly image globally. However, through ethnographic research with workers in El Alto’s popular economy, I argue that plurinational Bolvia's visions for indigenous modernity often leave residents’ needs unaddressed and describe how Alteños daily lives, struggles, and aspirations are formed within this contradictory context.