The State and Political Centrality in Fausto Reinaga and René Zavaleta Mercado: Two Classic Interpretations of Political Thinking to Understand the Plurinational State of Bolivia

Abstract

René Zavaleta and Fausto Reinaga, two essential authors who should be studied, reflected on and discussed to understand the difficulties of why the project of the plurinational state has not been established as a consolidated state. This article seeks to recover the debate about the idea of political centrality postulated by Reinaga and Zavaleta to explain the ideological dimension of the dispute between the indigenous movement and the state of Bolivia. The thesis of the native population of “Two Bolivias” that Reinaga uses in his work to describe the colonial trait that persists in Bolivia even after the European colonization of the Andean region continues to be valid to explain the Bolivian case. Moreover, the apparent condition regarding the absence of state material in a complex country like Bolivia, theorized by Zavalete, must be also added to the previous approach.