Abstract

The marches and strikes against road construction and gas extraction in Bolivia’s Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) nature reserve, widely publicized in the international media in the summer and early fall of 2011, brought out the contradictions of the Morales presidency for the world to see. The champion of indigenous rights and self-proclaimed “instrument of the people” was challenged by a movement of his supporters, the indigenous and labor movements, on a road construction project that pitted indigenous rights, local territorial claims, and environmental protection against modernist industrial development. A police raid to break up a protest march left tens of protesters wounded, leading to public outcry and forced Morales to suspend the project. The event illustrated a set of growing tensions during Evo Morales’s tenure.