ABSTRACT
Bolivia is a country in South America, classified as amongst the most ‘underdeveloped’ in the world. In fact, the South American continent is classified as ‘underdeveloped’, although some of its states are more ‘backward’ (according to Western criteria) than others. The poorest and most backward are generally those in which the majority of the population are native Indians. I believe that there must be some explanation for this situation, and I propose the following postulate: the native populations do not feel themselves to be members of the present states, and there exists an antagonistic relation between them. On the one hand, the state mechanisms act as ethnogenocidic oppressors and, on the other hand, the native populations have developed self-defence mechanisms based upon withdrawing back into their own communities. In this ‘retirement’ the native population retains its culture as an armour for its identity (e.g. language, traditions and customs) while maintaining a relationship of nonidentification with the present state. This explains the level of underdevelopment; in the case of Bolivia, for instance, where the native population is 80 per cent of the total, the majority does not identify itself with the present state and the myth of a Bolivian ‘nation’.
