“The TIPNIS Crisis and the Meaning of Bolivian Democracy Under Evo Morales”

Bolivia’s current TIPNIS (Territorio Indígena Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure) crisis has highlighted the diverse and often conflicting interpretations and applications of indigenous rights and environmental rights and how these have impacted the goals and structures of governance of the MAS party and the indigenous-based presidency of Evo Morales. Special attention will be given to environmental concerns as a core, but clearly contested, element of national development and the defense of Bolivian sovereignty. In the struggle over the construction of the road through the Isiboro Secure Indigenous Territory and National Park, which sought to link Bolivia and Brazil and ultimately provide land-locked Bolivia more ready access to the Pacific, social movements have been marshaled and mobilized both for and against the government’s project. What has this meant for Bolivia’s populist and social-movement-based democracy? Has this rainforest crisis been another example of an “overdose of democracy,” a condition that appears to have dogged the Morales presidencies? This paper seeks to explore these, and related issues.