Peri-urban communities and precarious temporality in Cochabamba, Bolivia: Class, indigeneity, and social exclusion

Abstract

One of the key challenges facing urban areas in the twenty-first century is how to promote inclusive developmental policies and address increasing social inequality. Using the community of Mercado Campesino de Arocagua in north-western Bolivia as a case study, this article shows how peri-urban spaces destabilise traditional ethnic and class divisions, exemplifying the growing complexities of the politics of social and racial exclusion in Latin America. The article argues that the endurance of relations of coloniality enables the exclusion of rural Indigenous groups from the political, social, and economic boundaries of the city. These boundaries, however, are increasingly permeable and unstable. In this context, the multi-scalar governance structures that have helped many Indigenous people in Bolivia to move to and prosper within urban spaces prevent the community of Mercado Campesino from legal recognition.