Topic: Rising Nationalism and Political Extremism
Country: Bolivia
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Bolivia position papers GLIMUN 2018 committees
Bolivia has gone through many events that have sparked a rise in nationalism in the country. One event that caused the rise of nationalism is how Bolivia lost its access to the Pacific Ocean to Chile after the war of the Pacific in the late 1800’s. The Bolivian government and the citizens of Bolivia have long been fighting for their coastline back stating that “people can’t live without the sea.” and that “Being a landlocked nation is making our problems worse.” Another event that caused Bolivian Nationalism to rise is the Indigenous Nationalism movement which really ramped up with the election of president Evo Morales in December of 2005. Evo Morales is the first Indigenous president of Bolivia. He has made movements that favor the indigenous people of Bolivia. He has proposed a change in the calendar to follow the calendar from the Tiwanaku Civilization. In this calendar, there is 13 months and each month is 28 days. The calendar starts at the year 1492 and adds 5000 years to it. In Morales’s proposed calendar, the year would be 5526. Some experts say that Tiwanaku is used as a sort of symbolic seat of power in Bolivia and that “the visuals it creates are meant to tie social and political events there to a sense of ancient society.” Another way that this movement is causing a rise in nationalism is that the new constitution that was empowered in 2009 adopted the Wiphala. The wiphala is a multi colored flag representing the indigenous peoples of the Andes. Bolivia is the only country in the world that has two national flags that have equal status in the country. These events and the reasoning here obviously shows that Bolivia’s government doesn’t see the rise of nationalism as a huge concern.
