Recorded January 30, 2006
Below is the original description of the event.
Increasingly, scholars, policymakers and observers of Bolivian politics have focused their attention on new forms of political mobilization by the country’s indigenous majority. This mobilization has produced some of the most sensational news of recent years including the 2000 Water War against the Bechtel Corporation, the 2003 Gas War against the Sánchez de Losada administration and the 2005 election of Evo Morales as president. Less sensationally, the emergence of indigenous Bolivians as powerful political actors has begun to generate a backlash in the form of escalating demands for regional autonomy in Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s most economically developed and politically conservative department.