Confounding Cultural Citizenship and Constitutional Reform in Bolivia

Abstract

The Bolivian constitution ratified in January 2009 has been hailed as a watershed in the effort to empower the indigenous majority. However, in addition to an entrenched political opposition in the lowland half of the country, some observers have pointed to the constitution’s “Aymara-centric” character, suggesting that it has left some people unrecognized and unrepresented. Examination of associational life in the urban provincial capital of Quillacollo, where what it means to be indigenous is quite different from that which the constitution valorizes and confirms, helps of clarify the challenges of multicultural or plurinational legal reforms based upon cultural citizenship. A central challenge is that of transcending a conception of legal rights and claims inhering in citizenship as mutually exclusively either individual or collective.