La dictadura minada

Contested Bodies, Contested States: Performance, Emotions, and New Forms of Regional Governance in Santa Cruz, Bolivia

“…This helps explain why these elite women chose a hunger strike as the mechanism through which to express their opposition to the Morales government. Bodily performances and hunger strikes are an essential part of the Bolivian “repertoire” of collective protest (Lavaud :72; Tilly ). Scholars of contentious politics have described the ways that protestors use and modify established forms of protest.…”

“…If these early hunger strikes by elite women began the tradition, it was the highland women activists from the mining sector who established this form of protest as the “recourse of last instance” (Lavaud :78–79) during the repeated strikes of the 1960s and 1970s. Bolivia's tin miners, the backbone of organized labor, were regularly arrested, tortured, and exiled during the Barrientos dictatorship of the 1960s.…”

“…Labor activist Domitila Barrios de Chungara described the strike in her 1985 autobiography. Lavaud () conducted new interviews in the 1990s. We have also interviewed several of the participants in person.…”