Dialogues on pluri-nationality and the territorial organisation of the State in Bolivia

Abstract

This paper stops at one aspect that has generated more controversy during the Bolivian constitutional process, the pluri-nationality and the territorial organization of the state. The paper shows the impossibility of speaking, on this issue, of a total harmony between the dogmatic and the organic part of the Constitution. On the contrary, the crossing of different cleavages (ethno-cultural, political, social class, etc.) present during the constitutional process, which influenced the final content of the text, have caused the existence of many tensions between the definition of the state as plurinational and the constitutional principles set out in the dogmatic part of the Constitution and the organic part of the text (territorial organization of the state). The result is a model of pluri-nationality and territorial organization impossible to understand from an ethnocultural vision only. Just from a vision that includes interrelationship all contradictions which exist in the reality of the country can be understood the achievements and limits of constitutional recognition of plurinationality in Bolivia.