Abstract
Race has shaped the development of the Bolivian state and its institutions albeit with important transformations in the social and political meaning of race. This paper discusses the racialization of the central state bureaucracy in Bolivia along these two dimensions: the distribution of bureaucratic resources and the assumptions and meanings that underpin bureaucratic hierarchy and spaces. It first discusses the relationship between the modern state and the concept of race, and conceptualizes the ethnoracial bureaucracy as a material and symbolic structure. Next, it examines the composition of the public administration sector overall and across the bureaucratic hierarchy in 2001, before the MAS-IPSP’s rise to power. Last, it surveys the narratives of race and nation that Creole and white-mestizo state elites historically mobilized in demarcating the boundaries of state power around whiteness. In contemporary Bolivia, the production of alternative official narratives of race and nation seeks to blur the boundary between indigeneity and statecraft (re)produced since the early republican period, and to legitimize the changing ethnoracial composition of the bureaucracy. The durability of the project is not guaranteed as the sediment of history and competing political projects weighs heavy on this process of transformation and negotiation.
Highlights
Almost forty years ago, political scientist Cynthia H
I discuss the racialization of the central state bureaucracy in Bolivia along these two dimensions
I argue that in twenty-first century Bolivia the production of alternative official narratives of race and nation seeks to blur the boundary between indigeneity and statecraftproduced since the early republican period, while providing a coherent narrative to legitimize the changing ethnoracial composition of the bureaucracy
Summary
Almost forty years ago, political scientist Cynthia H. Race has shaped the development of the Bolivian state and its institutions since the colonial period albeit with important transformations in the social and political meaning of race. It has historically shaped membership in the state, and who could hold and exert state power. Later, white-mestizo state elites understood and represented themselves as the embodiment of modernity and natural holders of state authority They simultaneously rationalized control of the central bureaucracy through discourses that variously casted indigeneity as backward, unfit, and/or dangerous. I discuss the narratives of race and nation that Creole and white-mestizo state elites historically mobilized in demarcating the boundaries of state power around whiteness. I discuss the changing narratives of race and nation through which the Morales administration and decolonization proponents have mobilized since 2006 to contest the racialization of the bureaucracy
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