This talk explores the politics, policies, and a grassroots coalition of Bolivia’s new socialist government. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Bolivia’s social movements, my focus is how Arce and Choquehuanca drew on the ideas of these movements to promise a new kind of political party, a “MAS 2.0.” I will also consider the extraordinary short-term challenges and high long-term expectations resting upon this political movement.
Carwil Bjork-James conducts immersive and historical research on disruptive protest, grassroots autonomy, state violence, and indigenous collective rights in Bolivia. He is an assistant professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University and the author of The Sovereign Street: Making Revolution in Urban Bolivia (University of Arizona Press, 2020).
