Traveling through Bolivia was an
eye-opening experience for me, as it allowed me to see how much variance exists
within a single area of the same nation. While La Paz is a modern and urban global
city, it is easy to forget that most Bolivians live in very different
circumstances. Uyuni is a very rural outpost that survives thanks to its status
as a tourist attraction. Potosi, meanwhile, is a midsize city and regional hub,
but yet is a city that is thoroughly rooted in its wealthy colonial past. The
collapse of the mountain of Potosi serves as a fitting symbol for the decline
of the city’s industry and its persistence as a tourist destination alone.
Sucre, on the other hand, serves as a kind of “second city” to La Paz, and
possesses all the trapping and grandeur of a capital city, befitting its status
as the historic and constitutional seat of Bolivia’s government. Clearly,
Bolivians inhabit a wide range of cities and towns, reflecting the diversity of
its people.
However, this points to a different
question of Bolivian identity. Between each of these cities exists a vast and
almost-untouched rural plain, dotted by the occasional home or small community.
As in almost all countries, the majority of the population lives in urban
areas. In most of Latin America, the political and economic elites living in
urban centers have been able to enforce control over vast rural areas. Most of
these nations, therefore, center their national identity on the identity of
their major city (Santiago in Chile or Buenos Aires in Argentina, for example).
On the other hand, however, Bolivian elites in the cities have historically
held little sway over the campo, and
widespread migration to cities has occurred far more recently in Bolivia than
in most other nations. Recent political leaders, most notably Evo Morales, have
emphasized the country’s rural roots and have encouraged the celebration of
rural identity, with presidential inaugurations taking place in rural
indigenous places of worship and the creation of various programs that focus on
rural citizens rather than urban residents. This leads to an interesting
quandary: do Bolivia’s rural residents identify more with their compatriots in
the cities, or with the campesinos in
other countries? Certainly their ways of life are more similar, as well as a
stronger connection with their indigenous heritage. Cohering individuals from
disparate backgrounds and locations into a single country is a cornerstone of nation-building,
and, from what I’ve seen, it is not certain that Bolivia has yet accomplished
this.
You raise some very interesting questions, particularly about identity in a country that roots much of its culture in rural countryside, even though most of its population (more than 70% today!) is urban. But how different is this from other cases? The US fetishizes "real America" (almost always imagined as small town Americana), despite the reality that it's a an increasingly urban country. Does this suggest a universal tension between global cosmopolitanism and traditional culture? Do American politicians also emphasize (or play to) America's rural "heartland" roots in the same way?
ReplyDeleteI was also struck by the "ruralness" of Uyuni ... even though it has more people than Oxford, which seems "urban" by comparison. Why is that? Is it because Oxford is unique? How do the little towns of Mississippi compare to urban spaces like New York or Chicago? Do they also seem remotely rural?
As you make these observations. Try to go from the specific to the universal. See if these observations help you better understand where you come from, and then in turn help you even better understand the new place you're observing.
But this is a very good start!
I double checked the population figures. The municipality (equivalent of county) of Uyuni is the size of Oxford, but the actual canton (town) of Uyuni is about half Oxford's size. But it's still about three times the size of Water Valley. So why does Uyuni feel so "rural"?
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