ABSTRACT
On September 28, 2011, the British newspaper The Guardian published in its US online edition an unexpected piece of news regarding politics in South America. The day before, tens of thousands of Bolivians had taken to the streets to decry the perceived betrayal by Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, of his prime constituencies: native groups and environmentalists. The people were responding to the violent police action of a few days earlier that broke up a march by indigenous protestors against a proposed highway that would run through a protected Amazon reserve (“Bolivians March” 2011). In 2010, recalled The Guardian, Morales decided to pursue a 190–200 mile (300–310 km), $420-million jungle highway funded by Brazil through the Isiboro-Secure Indigenous Territory National Park (TIPNIS), in the eastern lowlands state of Beni. About 1,000 people began a march on La Paz, Bolivia's capital, in mid-August from Beni's capital, Trinidad, to protest against a decision that they viewed as an open invitation to loggers and coca-planting settlers, and overall a threat to human and nonhuman park inhabitants. A government crisis followed this incident of violent repression. Bolivia's defense minister resigned immediately in protest, and the interior minister followed, accepting responsibility for police actions. Morales himself suspended the highway project, and promised to let voters in the affected region decide the future of the highway in a referendum.
