'We were forgotten': explaining ethnic voting in Bolivia's highlands and lowlands

With the election of Evo Morales and his party Movement to Socialism (MAS) in 2005, Bolivia has become the only country in Latin America to have an indigenous party in power. However, it is misleading to take the MAS government as representing all of Bolivia's ethnic diversity. Its indigenous p...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of ethnic and migration studies 2019-08, Vol.45 (11), p.2006-2025
Main Authors: Hirseland, Aline-Sophia, Strijbis, Oliver
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bolivia
Consciousness
Ethnic groups
Ethnic voting
Ethnicity
Indigenous peoples
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Native peoples
party voter linkages
Political parties
Political power
Power
Racial differences
Socialism
Symbolism
Voter behavior
Voters
Voting
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:With the election of Evo Morales and his party Movement to Socialism (MAS) in 2005, Bolivia has become the only country in Latin America to have an indigenous party in power. However, it is misleading to take the MAS government as representing all of Bolivia's ethnic diversity. Its indigenous population can be classified into peoples from the Andean highlands and from the Amazonian lowlands. Research has treated the indigenous population as uniform or focused on the Andean peoples and on parties rather than voters. This paper aims to differentiate this picture by showing that variances between highland and lowland indigenous peoples started with the appearance of Homeland's Consciousness (CONDEPA) and have increased since MAS came to power. While the highland indigenous peoples have preferred left political parties, parties with pro-indigenous agendas or which used indigenous symbolism, the lowland peoples have tended to support centre-right parties. The paper attempts to explain these differences in the voting behaviour of Bolivia's indigenous peoples. Ethnic voting is analysed in the time span from 1985 until 2014 within a mixed-methods design.
ISSN:1369-183X
1469-9451
DOI:10.1080/1369183X.2018.1492371