Clausuras de bares y cantinas: Seguridad civil, labor policial y Estado en Bolivia urbana

Abstract

Based on an ethnography of a protest against (illegal) bars and brothels in the city center of El Alto the chapter focuses on the relationship between practices of civil in/security, police work and state formation in urban Bolivia. The analysis of the local police-citizen relations illustrates how people's experiences with civil in/security are entangled with understandings and practices of statehood and citizenship. The article illustrates how marginalized populations' claims on substantial citizenship can take the form of illegal actions. Yet, the ethnography also indicates how state institutions depend upon the citizens'(illegal) order making activities to ensure people's safety and public order and hence how community groups may enact 'stateness' themselves. It is thus argued that activities that appear as defiance of state authority and sovereignty might also work as state enhancing and state transforming activities.