racism in bolivia:
The Indians have had two approaches towards the Bolivian state and white or mestizo society. On the one hand, they have pursued integration. They have linked up with populist parties, principally the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (known in Spanish under the acronym MNR). But if you go back even to the colonial period, you can find many instances in which the Indians pursued negotiation and integration with white and mestizo society. Aymaras on the other hand have cultivated their own sense of identity and self determination.
(...) At certain times, we might speak of a white minority in Bolivia, although no one is really white here. As in the U.S. with the black codes, the municipal government of La Paz had certain established forms of discrimination in the beginning of the twentieth century. On buses and trams, you had to sit in the back. There was explicit and implicit discrimination. The possibility that Indians would ever attain important government positions was practically nil.
(...) No. I think actually what has happened is that the Indians´ discourse, which has tended on the radical side, i.e. that all whites have oppressed us, etc., has produced a reaction amongst the middle class which reside in the south of La Paz. As a result, the middle class has become more racist. There's a lot of fear, now that there's an indigenous president. The middle class has been excluded from the positions it occupied before, and has lost a bit of its social position.
(...) I think Morales didn't use to cultivate an ethnic discourse, he was someone who defended coca, who had a more worker oriented, anti-imperialist rhetoric. But then he incorporated Quispe's radicalism, i.e., "I am an Indian, that is why they mistreat me," etc.
(...) In Bolivia, armed movements have never achieved any kind of importance. The 1952 Revolution was much less bloody than the Cuban and Mexican Revolutions and it was also shorter. It was three days of struggle in the streets and boom!, the oligarchy fell. There's no culture of long term violence here in Bolivia. On the other hand we do have a tradition of participatory democracy which comes out of the ayllu [a pre-Inca form of political organization based on extended family groups] and labor movement, which de-emphasizes delegation of power towards leaders.