By Diana Iftodi Developing a taste for syncopation: contradicting takes on Potosí protests of August 2010 and their aftermath
Whenever I revealed the purpose of my coming to Bolivia and my interest in social movements I would get the same reaction more or less: “you’ve come to the right place”. The social dynamics in Bolivia are up high and in your face although they do not lack their fair share of intricacy.
Bolivia is a landlocked country in South America, recently added to the continent’s “new left” front. This turn of events was the only road to take in order to achieve some kind of stability at the turn of the century after the hatred people amassed for foreign interests in their country, neoliberalism and a clientelist government, specifically that of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. The desiderate of stability on the one hand however difficults the people’s ownership of the change on the other. Either way, Bolivia’s discontent led to nationwide protests, the ousting of Sánchez de Lozada and eventually to the rise of Evo Morales to power, an indigenous president elected in 2005 and representing not a conventional party but a front of social movements (MAS).
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