Enacting democracy in a de facto state: coca, cocaine and campesino unions in the Chapare, Bolivia

Abstract

In Bolivia's Chapare coca growing region, the campesino union is the cornerstone of social and political organisation that governs by a principle of 'leading by obeying'. Yet, under the Morales' government, union leaders disengaged from their bases. As a more top-down approach emerged, union-led action against excess coca cultivation and cocaine production impacted negatively on some peasant households. An ethnographic analysis of popular disaffection challenges normative ideas of ‘authoritarian’ rule. It also contributes to debates on how state-level interventions intersect with the goals of the social movements that put them in power.