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Lesley Gill
2000
Acknowledgments
This book is the product of the support, advice, friendship, and hospitality that I have received from a great many people in Bolivia and the United States. I could never have written it without their interest and forbearance, and the personal and intellectual debts that I have accumulated are substantial. It is therefore with great pleasure that I thank them for their support.
In Bolivia I am grateful to Pablo and Felicidad Huañapaco, Marcela Lema, and Clara López for their generous hospitality. My stays in El Alto and La Paz would have been much less comfortable and enjoyable without them. A number of people also helped me with my research as it took different twists and turns. Leonidas Rojas and many of his former workmates from the mining area Catavi-Siglo XX helped me to understand the social consequences of the neoliberal assault on Bolivia's state-owned mining sector. Berta Chuquimia taught me a lot about the public school teachers' struggles to avoid the same fate as the miners', and Luis To explained much about the shady world of real estate development and land speculation to me. Juan Ramón Quintana's fascinating insights into the workings of the armed forces were central to the formulation of my analysis, and Gueri Chuquimia and the late Roberto Santos assisted me in comprehending how the complex social relationships among ordinary men and women shape the ties between poor Bolivians and the army. I owe special thanks to Cecilia Araujo and Claudia Hanagrath, who combed newspaper archives and arranged some key interviews.
I would also like to thank the numerous people who elucidated the complex world of nongovernmental organizations for me. These men and women really are too numerous to name individually, but to all of them I am deeply grateful. I am particularly indebted to Juan Carlos Balderas, who was always generous with his time and knowledge. Guillermina Soria guided me on numerous trips around El Alto and shared her knowledge of the city with me. Genoveva Villarreal, Ineque Dibbits, Felix Muruchi, and Emilse Escobar were always willing to help. My biggest debt, however, is to Xavier Albó, who has always been a major source of ideas, analysis, and inspiration.
In one way or another Xavier has provided important insights, contacts, and suggestions for all the research projects that I have undertaken in Bolivia since the early 1980s, and this one was no exception. His intimate knowledge of nongovernmental organizations was a major resource for me, and his jokes and endless good humor were always reinvigorating.
In the United States a number of people read the entire manuscript or portions of it. Gerry Sider commented on the completed project, and he waded through crude versions of articles and papers that form the basis of certain parts of the whole. I learned a lot from him, and the book is much stronger as a result. Leigh Binford, Marc Edelman, and Adam Flint read different chapters and offered helpful advice. The members of the Columbia University Cultural Pluralism Seminar listened to portions of my argument over the last several years. I am particularly grateful to Linda Green, Carolle Charles, Tony Lauria, Johanna Lessinger, Susan Lowes, Nicole Polier, and Janet Siskind for sustaining a supportive scholarly community that, despite its outdated name, manages to stay focused on what really matters.
I conducted the research for this book during 1994 and 1995; it included one-month visits in 1996 and 1997. It was supported by generous grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Aspen Institute, and American University. A research leave from American University in 1994-1995 gave me the time to carry out most of the fieldwork on which I based the book. And finally, I would like to thank John Michel of Columbia University Press for his enthusiasm for this project.
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