Browsing by Autor "Franco Gamboa Rocabado"

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Después de Evo Morales qué: prospectivas para la democracia en Bolivia
(University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos, 2018) Franco Gamboa Rocabado
El populismo indianista en Bolivia
(2021) Franco Gamboa Rocabado
This article has the purpose to stimulate a discussion about what happened with the discursive interpellations that upraised the indigenous roots in Bolivia, and what kind of political actions were developed by Evo Morales and his party, Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), which finally led into many contradictions until the downfall of Evo in November 2019. It is relevant to analyze how the Indianist populism in Bolivia had strong popular support and, all of a sudden resigned the power. The hypothesis proposes that Evo Morales offered to become a sort of foundational balance of the political system, setting in motion a government style that undertook a constant electoral campaign to establish a power elite that instrumentalized social mobilizations and the Indianist discourse, which denounced the incompatibility between democracy and internal colonialism. However, Morales did not represent any kind of balance but a permanent polarization that enabled a logic of comrades versus enemies.
La Asamblea Constituyente en Bolivia: Una evaluación de su dinámica
(2009) Franco Gamboa Rocabado
Este ensayo analiza el desarrollo de los debates especificos para reformar el texto de la Constitucion, especificamente, el conjunto de pugnas en torno al reglamento de debates; asimismo, presenta un mapeo sobre las esferas de influencia, el posicionamiento de los principales actores y el surgimiento de diversas disputas y vacilaciones que caracterizaron al escenario constituyente. La gran mayoria de los asambleistas bolivianos parece haber entendido a la redaccion del texto constitucional como un campo de definiciones politicas y pugnas historicas con el proposito de hegemonizar espacios de poder y personalizar ciertos cambios ante sus votantes; sin embargo, fueron muy pocos quienes trataron de ordenar su actividad creyendo en una Constitucion como conjunto normativo para identificar las directrices nacionales de un pais que lograra combinar un control parlamentario efectivo con un gobierno eficiente y el respeto de derechos, ciudadanias y libertades. La experiencia politica de la Asamblea Constituyente en Bolivia muestra de que manera se puede fracasar, al mismo tiempo que se intenta el fortalecimiento de una democracia participativa
La Nación evanescente en Bolivia
(UMR ESPACE et UMR LISST, 2016) Pamela Alcocer Padilla; Franco Gamboa Rocabado; Hugo Celso Felipe Mansilla
Este artículo analiza los conflictos y dilemas por los que atraviesa la sociedad boliviana, haciendo énfasis en el debate que existe entre los principios universalistas (derivados del racionalismo de la tradición occidental moderna) y los valores particularistas (los que provienen de la propia herencia cultural pre-moderna). El país ha estado casi siempre dividido, por lo menos en dos partes: aquella Bolivia de orígenes y valores indígenas, versus el perfil de una Bolivia que aspira a ser parte del contexto mundial de la modernidad occidentalizada.
Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective
(Duke University Press, 2006) Franco Gamboa Rocabado
Proclaiming Revolution is an important contribution — the first book of its kind to approach the implications and consequences of the 1952 revolution in comparison with other Latin American revolutions of similar magnitude. The book addresses — from the distance of a half century and in the heat of recent global market influences — Bolivia’s crisis of modernity and the problems it has faced in the consolidation of democracy.The book uses important historiographic sources in order to understand the revolutionary process from the angle of the actors involved. Among the volume’s notable contributions are essays by Sinclair Thompson, Brooke Larson, and Laura Gotkowitz, who research indigenous and peasant participation in the political panorama of the 1950s. The abolition of traditional indigenous labor obligations and the establishment of universal suffrage did not just represent elements of modernization and democractization; these transformations also converted Bolivia’s indigenous population into an ethnic force of considerable potential. This bloc has consolidated its political identity and put forth new demands as part of the democratization of the 1990s.Indigenous presence in Bolivian politics is directly connected to the 1952 revolution. As a result, Proclaiming Revolution reflects on the revolutionary protagonists outside of the epic account constructed by nationalist leaders. The book instead contextualizes the political transformations of the time within a historical vision of neocolonialism that survives to this day in Bolivia.The volume stimulates, in a authoritative manner, reflection on how the Bolivian Revolution attempted to construct a national project of modernization. The reach of revolutionary politics, analyzed by Juan Antonio Morales, Herbert S. Klein, and Manuel E. Contreras, indicates how Bolivia entered into the modern era by means of political violence that nevertheless envisioned educational reform, economic development in the hands of the state, and social mobility tied to an accelerated program of industrialization.The books allows us to compare Bolivia’s 1952 revolution with political events 50 years later. Viewed from this perspective, one must conclude that (taking the modern world as a model) Bolivia has collapsed. This collapse has taken place on three fronts. In the realm of economics, contemporary debate emphasizes that Bolivia has not overcome poverty because, in spite of the revolution, it continues to be based on a contradictory social order — very far from the optimistic vision of the nationalist revolutionaries of the 1950s. Second, the arrival of neoliberal structural adjustment in the 1980s could not be adapted to the new conditions of globalizing economic markets, even though it did destroy the model of the state and the nation that emerged from the 1952 revolution. Today, the concept of the nation has been replaced by the idea of the cultural historical heritage, in which particular ethnic identities are exalted, insisting on the specificity of Aymaras, Quechua, Guarani, Chimán, Cayubaba, and so on. Third, the concept of industrialization that prevailed in Bolivia as a result of the influence of revolutionary nationalism has floundered in the face of the global economy and the power of transnationals.Pessimism concerning Bolivia’s hopes to becoming a modern industrialized society has thus returned. The events we are currently witnessing result from the transformation of the concept of nation and the erosion of the concept of a homogeneous society following the triumph of mestizaje. This is the end result of revolutionary nationalism and, in a way, has brought about the collapse of the political party that proclaimed it, the Movimimento Nationalista Revolucionario (MNR).Proclaiming Revolution also helps us to understand the alarming events of October 10 – 17, 2003, which resulted in the resignation of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, president and head of the MNR. His downfall put an end to a half century of myths of modernity and the reign of revolutionary nationalism.The unresolved problems of development and the new politics of the global market show how the old code words of modernity, national identity, and industrial transformation that defined Bolivia’s 1952 revolution have grown stale. The radical political processes of the 1950s forced a national integration that ended up producing new patterns of elite domination without altering the underlying conditions of inequality. These structures of inequality, problems of political representation, and the push of certain contemporary reform policies are brilliantly analyzed by Merilee Grindle, Pilar Domingo, and Eduardo Gamarra.The 1952 revolution cultivated the idea that it would be possible to achieve a modern society through integration. However, Proclaiming Revolution makes us think of a plane of “dismodernization” — that is to say, a crisis of integration in Bolivia. Dismodernization refers to a state marked by globalization and dominated by multiple identities that are difficult to integrate. It avoids national articulation in order to make room for the demands of a more complicated world, completely distinct from the ideals rooted in the 1952 revolution.Today’s efforts are a struggle to achieve a rearticulation that cannot be reduced either to a closed ethnocentrism or to an economic modernism that is overly exclusive, such as that touted by contemporary neoliberalism.Proclaiming Revolution permits us to see the possibility of creating a society that is more humane, reconstructing diverse sociocultural identities in order to reinvent the Bolivian nation “sin mayúsculas”—the plurimulti “nation” and not “Nation.”
¿Qué diablos finalmente es la democracia en América Latina?: Política y populismo en tiempos de globalización
(2010) Franco Gamboa Rocabado
La posibilidad de definir la democracia en el siglo XXI demanda responder múltiples preguntas en torno a su consolidación que hoy día está en entredicho en toda América Latina; simultáneamente, una definición sobre los alcances de la democracia, exige tener datos empíricos que faciliten la explicación sistemática en una realidad profundamente heterogénea y contradictoria. En consecuencia, si bien las definiciones parecen estar claras cuando se trata de terminar con una dictadura, las pretensiones cotidianas plantean siempre la contraposición entre una definición mínima de la democracia, frente a un concepto normativo e ideal sobre lo que diferentes contextossocio-culturales imaginan como un sistema democrático saludable. Hoy día, es importante ir más allá de las aspiraciones sobre la consolidación democrática para pensar con mayor detenimiento en torno a las demandas de mayor participación de la sociedad civil, la continuidad del populismo y el surgimiento decisivo de varios mecanismos de democracia directa.