Timerendering: reflections on chronopolitical praxis in Bolivia

Abstract

This article uses reflections on chronopolitical praxis during the period 2006-19 in Bolivia in order to make a more general contribution to the anthropology of time and temporalities. The article proposes the theoretical concept of 'timerendering' in order to examine the ways in which time emerged as a pervasive register that mediated and also deepened political, social, and ethnic conflict in Bolivia. After illustrating the mechanisms through which timerendering in Bolivia gave way to forms of allochronic denial that are described as 'hypertemporal exclusion', the article explains how and why the MAS government's timerendering strategies unravelled, which left it susceptible to the right-wing coup of October/November 2019. The article concludes by narrating the endtimes of the Morales government in Bolivia, before considering what this moment and its afterlives have to say more generally about the anthropology of time as a disciplinary orientation.For the Indian of pre-America, the conception of time wasn't a geological time and even less was it historical time. Indian time is cosmic time.Fausto Reinaga, El pensamiento amáutico (1978) Introduction: 'We have arrived to stay'In mid-January 2009, Evo Morales, the first self-identifying Indigenous President of Bolivia, was in the full flush of revolutionary fervour. Having been inaugurated three years before during an unprecedented ceremony at the pre-Columbian ruins of Tiwanaku, where he was attended by yatiris, or Aymara shamans, who burned llama foetuses in his honor, Morales and his Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party had weathered years of social conflict, political transformation, and ideological warfare. In 2007, during the drafting of the new constitution in the historic city of Sucre, and again in 2008, at the height of violence over regional demands for 'autonomy' , the country seemed to be on the brink of civil war as various movements opposed to the MAS government increasingly framed their resistance in racialized terms that evoked longer histories of anti-Indian marginalization and political exclusion.