Paper short abstract:

A cable car connecting two cities generated social tensions and initiated a chain of events motivated by people's need to make sense of the project of plurinationalism in their everyday lives. The cable car, built by the Bolivian state, served both to reject and to promote the government's project.

Paper long abstract:

Throughout my fieldwork in the neighboring cities La Paz and El Alto, I observed people's production of the cities as racially and socioculturally different and as materializing different bodies. In this paper I analyze how a new infrastructure project, a cable car connecting the cities, generated social tensions and uncovered, reiterated and contested this production.

The slogan of the Bolivian state-owned cable car company, "Uniting our lives", is literal in the sense of diminishing the space and travel time otherwise dividing people. However, this fusing caused tensions. On social media, inhabitants of an affluent residential area in La Paz commented on a perceived increase of "disorder" in the(ir) shopping mall. People they deemed belonged to El Alto, based on behavior and physical appearance, were said to increasingly visit the shopping mall. The commentators clearly connected the escalation to the new infrastructure. Geographically separate social worlds and racialized bodies, created historically and constituting the national body, were closing in on each other.

The comments on social media became public news and were criticized at the national level by politicians advocating the plurinational state. By considering the unfolding of events I argue that they are motivated by people's need to negotiate and make sense of the political project of plurinationalism in their everyday lives. Furthermore, I demonstrate how the introduction of new infrastructure is used both to reject, and as a strategy to promote, the political changes taking place. I draw on material gathered during twelve months in 2014-2015.