The plurinational state and Bolivia’s formación abigarrada

This paper examines how the concept of plurinationality relates to the notion of Bolivia as a formación abigarrada (motley, disjointed social formation), and how that social form corresponds with the political form of the state. René Zavaleta Mercado, one of Bolivia’s most influential intellectual figures, is best known for his conceptualisation of the country as a formación abigarrada, which underscores the coexistence of multiple modes of production and historical temporalities in the same geographic space. Zavaleta used this concept to examine Bolivian society as a set of historical structural articulations that develop over time in relation to different state forms. I argue that whereas the disjointedness of Bolivia’s social formation was always seen as a negative condition for Zavaleta, plurinationality has been enunciated as a positive possibility, a horizon beyond the socio-political formation of the liberal nation state. Thus, while we cannot properly theorise plurinationality without the analytic of lo abigarrado, as a condition of possibility plurinationality seeks to institutionalise in political form that which for Zavaleta was a negative social condition to be overcome.