Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the emergence of two important warfare memories during the social struggles in Bolivia between 2000 and 2005: the Chaco War, fought against Paraguay in the 1930s, and the eighteenth-century indigenous rebellion of Tupac Katari against the Spanish colonial rule.

Paper long abstract:

Much of the literature about collective memories, particularly about war events, focus on their stabilizing nature, how they help to maintain status quo. Indeed, memories of warfare have been used by official nationalisms to tell a story of glory, heroes and national communion. In the Bolivian case, the anti-colonial rebellion of Tupac Katari was interpreted by the official historiography as a precursor of the Independence Wars, and the Chaco War is commonly understood as an event that symbolically founded the contemporary Bolivian nation.

However, both events were clearly cited by the social struggles that have shaken Bolivia from 2000 to 2005, which fought against the governments' neoliberal policies, such as the water and gas privatizations. On one hand, Katari was a reference to peasant activists: in 2000, they blocked all the roads connecting La Paz to the rest of the country, claiming they were "sieging" the city the same way Tupac Katari did. On the other, the Chaco War was cited to defend the gas nationalization (since it is located in the Chaco region) and when Aymara peasants used war mausers to resist the army actions to break their road blockades.

The Bolivian example shows us that collective memories are more dynamic, and can have an important role in social change situations, than most of the literature would predict, and that warfare events are tricky references to official nationalisms, particularly in societies in which so much of the past (racism, xenophilic political elites) is still valid.