Natural resources, indigenous movements and the state in Bolivia

David Adler is a political economist from Los Angeles, California. He is the General Coordinator of the Progressive International, founded in May 2020 to unite, organise, and mobilise progressive forces around the world.

Olivia Arigho-Stiles is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. Her CHASE-funded research project covers environmental histories and Indigenous-campesino politics in highland Bolivia, 1920-1990.

Bret Gustafson is Associate Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. His most recent book, ‘Bolivia in the Age of Gas’ (2020), addresses questions relating to south eastern Bolivia, US imperialism, natural resources, and state transformation.

In October 2020, following a year of repression, political instability and corruption scandals under an unelected ultra-right government, Luis Arce of the left wing Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party won a landslide election victory in Bolivia. Just a year earlier, ex-President Evo Morales from the same party had been forced from office amid protests and a police-military coup.

The three activists and scholars will reflect on the situation in Bolivia since the coup in 2019, and will explore the longer term factors which led to the rise, fall and resurgence of the MAS in 2020. In particular, the webinar will focus on the role of natural resources in recent Bolivian history, and contemplate the connections between resource politics and ethnic struggle in twentieth and twenty-first century Bolivia and Latin America.

This webinar is part of an open webinar series, hosted by the Centre for Research in Economic Sociology and Innovation and Centre for Ideology and Discourse Analysis (cIDA).