UC San Diego

This dissertation focuses on the role of representations of the past in social differentiation in Bolivia. I examine how connotations of specific representations of the past form important catalysts for organization and mobilization by political parties and social movements throughout the country. Assertions of a direct lineage to various precolonial, colonial, and post-independent peoples have played a vital role in contemporary ideas of difference between the highlands and lowlands of the country. These conceptions of ancestry are used both by political parties and social movements to construct oppositional lines of descent, and perceived differences inherited from ancestors legitimize contemporary ideas about regional variation in Bolivia. This research outlines how these divides are the discursive means through which material claims are debated. Felt historical differences are directly connected to debates over revenue from oil and gas reserves, agrarian reform, and the influence of locally and regionally elected officials in national decisions. As a result, at stake is the distribution of wealth as well as the systems of land ownership and political representation in the country. This research contributes to the anthropology of memory in three ways. First, by framing memory as a representation of the past, I demonstrate how these representations connect individuals temporally to a common ancestral heritage as well as spatially to a place. In this capacity, I argue that memory is a bridge connecting people to each other and to particular shared spaces. Second, in exploring the current role of descent in social distinctions, I show how an individual's perceived ancestry associates ancestral identification with a shared lineage, outlining a key overlap between autobiographical and collective memory. Finally, I demonstrate how power is exercised in the ability to control the connotation of important representations of the past through investigating how these representations are catalysts for organization and mobilization by political parties and social movements. In this capacity, I show that representations of the past reflect, but are also used to construct, meaningful social distinctions and differentiation in the present