Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprising and State Power in Bolivia by Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar (review)

Abstract

Raquel Gutierrez Aguilar, Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprising and State Power in Bolivia. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. 336 pp.Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprising and State Power in Bolivia is Raquel Gutierrez Aguilar's account of the social uprisings that shook Bolivia at the dawn of the 21st century and concluded with the reorganization of state power and the emergence of new forms of national belonging and indigeneity. Within Andean cosmovision, the Pachakuti is an ending of times-a liminal space where the world as we know it is destroyed to bring forth a new creation from the proverbial ashes, resulting in an inversion of the order of authority and power (51). The intense social upheavals that tore through Bolivia from 2000 to 2005 are analyzed by the author as rising and falling rhythms in the beat of a collective process, where this modern-day Pachakuti brings together conflicting actors and agendas in a country defined by a history of exploitative colonization. Gutierrez Aguilar is a brilliant and radical intellectual who, in the words of Sinclair Thomson, has acquired quasi-legendary status within Latin America's activist universe (ix). In this translation of Gutierrez Aguilar's work, we gain a first-hand account of these foremost indigenous uprisings, a recitation of revolutionary ideals and visions particular to the region, and a keen description of the issues that drove union and communal organizing within this small Andean nation. In fact, the author seeks to answer why the 21st century state transformations wrought by the Morales administration have failed to produce the renovation in the world order hoped for by those who fought for indigenous emancipation.The book follows a clear chronology with a series of uprisings that form the peaks in the rhythmic waves of the emancipatory process. These are the Water War that ousted the transnational Bechtel from Bolivia in 2001 (Chapter 1); the roadblocks of the La Paz capital by Aymara indigenous groups in 2003 (Chapter 2); disputes over the growth and commercialization of the coca leaf between US foreign drug policy enforcers and unionized coca growers (Chapter 3); and the period of democratic transition culminating in the election of Evo Morales in late 2005 (Chapters 4, 5, and 6). Gutierrez Aguilar's analytical method is novel and ambitious. Through a series of first-hand accounts, primary source letters, and personal communications with movement leaders, the reader catches neverbefore-seen glimpses of how organic grassroots efforts were articulated and-more importantly-how they paved the way for new laws that would protect citizen rights and social patrimony no longer covered by the state (20). In her description of this methodology, the author critiques the ethnographic method noting that it fails to comprehend the multiple possibilities for what these human collectives effectively share as an integrated historical experience (31). These statements took me aback given that Gutierrez Aguilar's thorough descriptions of happenings on the ground during Bolivia's social uprisings are nothing but brilliant ethnography. It is this ethnographic material, I would add, that supports the author's argument that traditional Andean notions of community building translate into resistance organizing-a particularly significant contribution to the literature on Latin America's political shift to the New Left (see, e.g., Gustafson 2013, Martinez Novo 2013, Postero 2005). Community organizing in the Andes is based on explicit indigenous precepts of reciprocity and redistribution that have influenced Bolivia's labor movement and populist politics (Larson et al. 2008). The brilliance of Gutierrez Aguilar's work lies in her narrative explanations of the everyday events in social organizing, which trace the pattern of communal obligation to situations where chaos and unpredictability are uninterrupted.This particular type of narrative methodology is useful in unpacking the Coalition for the Defense of Water and Life, referred to as the Coordinadora, a loosely-held alliance of grassroots institutions that won the Water War of 2001 and inspired anti-neoliberal activists beyond Bolivia's borders (Terhorst et al. …