Bolivia during 2020 was the victim of simultaneous political, economic, and public health crises. The three crises interacted with one another in ways that made each individual crisis more severe. The country's social policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic was uneven. Emergency cash transfers, a legacy of the left-wing Movement toward Socialism's (MAS) nearly 14 years in power, performed well. Although the amounts transferred were quite modest, they did reach the vast majority of Bolivians. On education, however, the government failed utterly, ultimately abandoning its constitutional obligation to provide free and universal schooling to all children. Online education never got off the ground and the school year was prematurely cancelled. The Bolivian state's chronic weakness was on display in its healthcare policy response. Not only did the government inherit inadequate infrastructure, but a combination of administrative incompetence and corruption marred the procurement of much-needed ventilators and other medical equipment. The result was one of the world's highest Covid-19 mortality rates.

Bolivia's challenges with regard to policy are multiple, deep and multifaceted, and as such they require integral proposals. The book tries to cover these challenges in their different dimensions and presents options to grow more and better - creating jobs, with benefits for all, and without corruption and with civic participation. The design and implementation of all these options, simultaneously or in the short- and medium-term, is not feasible; and from here blooms options.

Evo Morales rode to power on a wave of popular mobilizations against the neoliberal policies enforced by his predecessors. Yet many of his economic policies bare striking resemblance to the status quo he was meant to displace. Based in part on dozens of interviews with leading Bolivian activists, Jeffery R. Webber examines the contradictions of Morales' first term in office.

In 2005, Bolivians elected their first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Ushering in a new "democratic cultural revolution," Morales promised to overturn neoliberalism and inaugurate a new decolonized society. Nancy Postero examines the successes and failures in the ten years since Morales's election

In this compelling and comprehensive look at the rise of Evo Morales and Bolivia's Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), Linda Farthing and Benjamin Kohl offer a thoughtful evaluation of the transformations ushered in by the western hemisphere's first contemporary indigenous president. Accessible to all readers, Evo's Bolivia not only charts Evo's rise to power but also offers a history of and context for the MAS revolution's place in the rising pink tide of the political left. Farthing and Kohl examine the many social movements whose agendas have set the political climate in Bolivia and describe the difficult conditions the administration inherited. They evaluate the results of Evo's policies by examining a variety of measures, including poverty; health care and education reform; natural resources and development; and women's, indigenous, and minority rights. Weighing the positive with the negative, the authors offer a balanced assessment of the results and shortcomings of the first six years of the Morales administration.At the heart of this book are the voices of Bolivians themselves. Farthing and Kohl interviewed women and men in government, in social movements, and on the streets throughout the country, and their diverse backgrounds and experiences offer a multidimensional view of the administration and its progress so far. Ultimately the process of change Evo promised is exactly that: an ongoing and complicated process, yet an important example of development in a globalized world.

Fray Bernardino de Sahagún-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.