Unarmed Militancy: Tactical Victories, Subjectivity, and Legitimacy in Bolivian Street Protest

Abstract

ABSTRACTMoments of intense physical confrontation between protesters and security forces have become iconic parts of political protest. These asymmetrical tactical encounters have been pivotal to successful Latin American revolts against neoliberalism and regime‐displacing protest movements. Based on ethnographic engagement and oral history interviews with Bolivian activists in Cochabamba and La Paz, this article characterizes an overlooked tactical stance: unarmed militancy, which I define as the use of forceful, combative tactics that are nonetheless qualitatively less damaging than those of their (usually state) adversaries. Unarmed militants complicate the binary of violence and nonviolence often used to strategize and analyze protest. Unarmed militants claim some of the moral purity of nonviolence and of those victimized by state repression. Yet, they also physically fight back to hold physical space and interrupt daily life. Neither provocateurs nor extremists, unarmed militants collaborate in achieving the tactical and strategic goals of mass mobilizations. This article examines the material processes of on‐the‐street collaboration, the subjectivity of demonstrators, the narratives surrounding protest, and the moral understandings of just and unjust uses of force as elements that can make unarmed militancy effective. [political legitimacy, tactics, protest, repression, revolution]