ABSTRACT
In Bolivia as elsewhere in Latin America the third millennium opened with substantively new economic and political conditions and developments for new times, characterized by the emergence of the new left. In Ecuador the indigenous movement erupted in the form of a major uprising that overthrew the neoliberal government and brought it close to state power. At issue in political dynamics of class struggle and social change in revolutionary epoch that people can trace back to February 2000 is the shape of Bolivia's social structure. The political dynamics of class struggle in Bolivia and elsewhere in the region relate to three alternative roads towards social change, two of them paved with state power, the third with micro-projects engineered in Bolivia's civil society. The United States Ambassador to Bolivia was placed in a difficult position by the government's Santa Cruz referendum proposal of call for a dialogue with the prefects regarding regional autonomy within the confines of the unitary state.
