Legacies of Extraction: Natural Resources and Governance in Bolivia

• In Event: Beyond the Resource Curse: The Politics of Extraction in MENA and Latin America

Abstract

How do conceptions of development and progress intersect with legacies of natural resource extraction? How are these understandings shaped by commitments to indigenous autonomy, the exigencies of governance, and redistributive goals? In recent decades tensions have surfaced throughout Latin America as political elites have made commitments to plurinationalism—the recognition of the governance rights of more than one nationality within a political community—in the context of economies reliant on resource extraction. Political leaders in almost every Latin American state—irrespective of extractive legacies or the size of the indigenous population—have struggled to reconcile proclaimed commitments to indigenous autonomy with the language and structures of neoliberal, resource-reliant states. This paper seeks to better understand this process through an exploration of the Bolivian case, where tensions between commitments to indigenous autonomy and a legacy of development rooted in resource extraction surfaced almost immediately after Evo Morales became president in 2006. Through attention to the ways in which Bolivian officials and institutions articulated and pursued development projects and priorities during the Morales administration, this paper explores the legacies of an extractive state on the one hand, and ideals of plurinational government and commitments to redistribution on the other. The paper argues that even as the Morales administration sought to remake the relationship between the state, natural resources, and indigenous autonomy, deeply entrenched concepts of what development means and what progress looks like continued to serve as foundations for policy aims and programs. In many ways, the Morales administration reproduced the same governance practices from which it had vowed to depart. In spite of the rhetoric of plurinationalism, the Morales government has continued to follow many of the contours of the development paradigm espoused by its colonial, liberal, and neoliberal predecessors. The argument has potentially broad implications, offering insights into global struggles to navigate local understandings of territoriality, relationships with natural resources, and state-level development goals.

Author

• Erica S. Simmons, University of Wisconsin, Madison