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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the paradoxes of state-led decolonization via ethnography of the politics of a Bolivian Quechua speaking community, offering a grounded critique of the national government's project of constitutional reform, indigeneity, radical politics, and the colonial legacies of the state.

Paper long abstract

This paper outlines the central argument of the forthcoming monograph which examine what it means to ‘decolonize the state’ - the declared goal of the Bolivian Movement for Socialism (MAS) government - via long-term fieldwork of processes of state-building at the local level of a Quechua-speaking community. The MAS attempted to re-found the Bolivian nation through constitutional and legal reforms that aim to devolve power to local communities and fundamentally transform the state and its relationship to civil society. In doing so, it sought to overturn the legacies of colonialism in a nation whose indigenous majority have long been marginalized. Yet while regarded as the most radical example of parallel worldwide movements, the MAS dramatically lost power after twenty years in office. Bringing history and ethnography into conversation with European critical theory, decolonial and indigenous thought, this work argues that Bolivian indigenous politics were formed in struggle with colonial processes of state-making. The modern state is both the outcome of colonialism and a means through which colonialism was enacted in Bolivia and the rest of the world. This explains its central role in politics and the limitations of state-led recognition for addressing colonial legacies and enacting change.