The Friendly Liquidation of the Past: The Politics of Diversity in Latin America / Edition 1

by Donna Lee Van Cott

Overview

Based on interviews with more than 100 participants, Van Cott demonstrates how social issues were placed on the constitutional reform agenda and transformed into the nation’s highest law. She follows each reform for five years to assess early results of what she calls an emerging model of multicultural constitutionalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822957294
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	03/09/2000
Series:	Pitt Latin American Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Donna Lee Van Cott is assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She was previously director of the Project on Indigenous Peoples at the Inter-American Dialogue, where she edited a volume of essays, Indigenous Peoples and Democracy in Latin America. The dissertation upon which this book is based won Georgetown University's Harold N. Glassman award for the best dissertation in the social sciences.

Table of Contents

	List of Figures and Tables	vii
	List of Abbreviations	ix
	Foreword	xiii
	Acknowledgments	xvii
1	Democratization and Constitutional Transformation	1
Part I
2	From Chaos to Catharsis: The Struggle for Constitutional Change	39
3	"The Friendly Liquidation of the Past": Colombia's National Constituent Assembly	63
4	Implementing the 1991 Colombian Constitution: The Rise of Rights and the Victory of Violence	90
Part II
5	The Struggle for Stability: The Bolivian Constitutional Conjuncture	125
6	Imposing Democracy: The Sanchez de Lozada Reforms	149
7	Implementing the 1994 Bolivian Constitutional Reforms	181
Part III
8	The Impact of the Reforms and Prospects for Constitutional Transformation	223
9	Multicultural Constitutionalism: A Comparative Analysis	257
	Notes	281
	Bibliography	305
	Index	335

What People are Saying About This

Deborah Yahsar

Deborah J. Yashar, Princeton University

Donna Lee Van Cott has written a thought-provoking book on constitutional reforms and ethnic politics in the 1990s. Drawing on original fieldwork in Colombia and Bolivia, she compares constitutional reforms in each country that articulated a commitment to more local, participatory, and multicultural institutions. Her work pays particular attention to how ethnic movements in each case differentially set the stage for and responded to these reforms. This informative empirical discussion of key developments in Colombia and Bolivia is framed by an important set of theoretical questions about the terms, stages, and depth of the democracy in the region.

Editorial Reviews

"A sophisticated analysis of the push to recognize indigenous rights in Bolivia and Colombia . . . Placing her analysis in a broad comparative framework, Van Cott makes clear that these issues resonate profoundly wherever the traditional model of a culturally homogenous nation-state is under challenge." 
—Foreign Affairs

From the Publisher