Between 1970 and 2005, Bolivia lived through military coups, democracy and dictatorship. It suffered discontinuity, erratic political change, peasant and indigenous upheavals. It is in this context that we find the continuity of non-governmental organizations like CIPCA (Centre for Research and Promotion of the Peasantry), which contributed, among other actors, to the dawning, in 2006, of a new political era in which people who had been excluded since colonial times reached positions of formal State power.
This book presents the history of one particular NGO as part of the history of the social movements and the NGOs in Bolivia (and Latin America). Between 1970 and 1985, CIPCA carried out its rural development activities in an informal setting of a group of friends and against a background of military dictatorships, with the main objective of restoring the validity of democratic institutions. Once democracy was restored in 1982, and CIPCA had become a formal institution, it had to adjust its objectives. Between 1985 and 2006 activities were carried out in an atmosphere of political democracy, in which economic exclusion of the peasantry and the indigenous population was nonetheless still present.
This book’s systematization of 35 years of (CIPCA) history offers the reader a reference that might serve to deepen reflections on rural development themes that are still matters of debate today.