Sustainability and Social Justice
Document Type
Article
Abstract
In 2008, the Department of Tarija became the epicenter of national political struggles over political autonomy for lowland regions at odds with the Morales administration. In September, following a series of regional referenda on autonomy and a national recall election, citizen committees in Tarija mobilized urban-based sectors and organized a general strike against the central government. It is unhelpful to understand the strike as simply an act of political sabotage orchestrated by racist regional elites. The factors driving protest and interest in autonomy are varied and deeply related to patterns of hydrocarbons extraction in the department that have allowed for the mobilization of grievances and the cultivation of resource regionalism at departmental and intradepartmental scales. Alongside class and ethnicity, identities of place and region can be equally important in processes of mobilization, and the resonance of these spatialized identities is particularly important in resource-extraction peripheries. © 2010 Latin American Perspectives.
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Publication Title
Latin American Perspectives
Publication Date
7-1-2010
Volume
37
Issue
4
First Page
140
Last Page
160
ISSN
0094-582X
DOI
10.1177/0094582X10372503
Keywords
Bolivia, extractive industry, gas, regionalism, social protest, Tarija
Repository Citation
Humphreys Bebbington, Denise and Bebbington, Anthony, "Anatomy of a Regional Conflict: Tarija and Resource Grievances in Moraless Bolivia" (2010). Sustainability and Social Justice. 32.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_idce/32