Fray Bernardino de SahagĂșn-INAH Award in Mexico for Best Research
Work in Anthropology Gabriela Zamorano Villarreal examines the
political dimension of indigenous media production and distribution
as a means by which indigenous organizations articulate new claims
on national politics in Bolivia, a country experiencing one of the
most notable cases of social mobilization and indigenous-based
constitutional transformation in contemporary Latin America. Based
on fieldwork in Bolivia from 2005 to 2007, Zamorano Villarreal
details how grassroots indigenous media production has been
instrumental to indigenous political demands for a Constituent
Assembly and for implementing the new constitution within Evo
Morales's controversial administration. On a day-to-day
basis, Zamorano Villarreal witnessed the myriad processes by
which Bolivia's indigenous peoples craft images of political
struggle and enfranchisement to produce films about their role in
Bolivian society. Indigenous Media and Political Imaginaries in
Contemporary Bolivia contributes a wholly new and original
perspective on indigenous media worlds in Bolivia: the
collaborative and decolonizing authorship of indigenous media
against the neoliberal multicultural state, and its key role in
reimagining national politics. Zamorano Villarreal unravels
the negotiations among indigenous media makers about how to fairly
depict a gender, territorial, or justice conflict in their films to
promote grassroots understanding of indigenous peoples in Bolivia's
multicultural society.