Expansión extractivista, resistencia comunitaria y’despojo político’ en Bolivia

Abstract

Extractivism has intensified in Bolivia since 2006, and expanded into indigenous territories and protected areas, causing negative impacts for the life spaces and forms of political organization of the affected populations. The enclosures caused by extractivist expansion entail multiple dispossessions, usually associated with violence, in communitarian territories. This article contributes to debates about dispossession in political ecology, by deepening the comprehension of processes of social dispossession in extractivist contexts, for which we propose the term “political dispossession.” It lays out the various historical cycles of enclosure and dispossession that Bolivia experienced since the colonial period, and describes the main infrastructural and extractive projects promoted in the country during the extended extractivist wave since 2006, detailing their impacts on protected areas, indigenous territories and peasant communities. Multiple dispossessions separate productive and reproductive areas and interrupt the intrinsic relations of communities with their environment. We argue that political dispossession is a central aspect of this fragmentation of social relations, functioning via the expropriation of the political voice and the spaces of decision-making and participation of the communities.