ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between commerce, ethnicity and political agency in a city that is both on the margins and increasingly at the centre of Bolivian political life. The street traders role in the parallel structure outlined above creates a relationship with the State that is not solely one of antagonism or resistance to State measures. The federation is led by an executive committee, which is headed by an executive secretary who, in 2003, was Don Braulio Rocha Tapia. The conflict was essentially a dispute between rival associations of fish sellers and organisations of fishermen, both of which spanned the rural and urban spheres. The informal economy of El Alto is informal in the sense that it is more or less unregulated by government for taxation purposes. There is a sense in which the rural-urban migrants are seen as already assimilated into Hispanic society, by virtue simply of having moved to the city.
