The Constitution Of Political Actors

This book analyzes the processes through which Andean communities have constituted themselves as political actors in the last decade: how they have appropriated and created spaces for mobilization while gaining unexpected political agency in the context of globalization. It explains and compares the complex constitution of particular political identities in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes through an ethnographic analysis of three interrelated political developments: the conflictive encounters between rural communities and multinational mining corporations; the formation of campesino and indigenous national organizations; and, the constitution of symbolic political discourses in mass protests. In developing its argument, this study shows how Andean rural communities and organizations appropriate and create local and regional spaces of power, contesting dominant constructions of Andean places and regions. It traces the emergence of a new form of nationalism from bellow, which aims to control, recast, and use the State in its struggles against global capital dominance.