The emergence of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, the crisis and regional integration

Abstract

Bolivia, during 2008, became a propitious scenario for a coup d'état. A South American nation that was undertaking profound transformations of the status quo, in favor of the inclusion of historically neglected social sectors, saw its democratic institutions put in check by opposition movements. With the study of the founding process of the Movement to Socialism (MAS), the distribution of the actors' capacities in the Bolivian political system and the parameters of the conflict as a starting point, this paper analyses the role that the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) played in the institutional crisis. To do so, it takes as a basis the analysis of primary sources, i.e. documents issued by official bodies of the Bolivian state, as well as declarations and reports from the regional integration bloc. To this end, contributions from the thinking of Bolivian sociologist René Zavaleta Mercado were used, with the aim of theoretically interpreting the specificities of recent Bolivian history. This work verifies a relationship between the construction of Unasur as a space for dialogue and political agreement, and that it was able to resolve the crisis.