The Power and Ethics of Vernacular Modernism

The Misicuni Dam Project in Cochabamba, Bolivia, 1944-2017

Bibliographic Data

ID2817552
AuthorsSarah Hine, Sarah T Hine (0000-0002-6010-1482, corresponding author), Sarah Hines (0000-0002-7826-4685)
Year2018
Volume98
Issue2
Pages223-256
Publication date2018-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182168-4376680
OpenAlexW2804823014
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited23

This article traces the Misicuni dam project, which promised to solve water scarcity in the Central Valley of Cochabamba, Bolivia. First proposed in the 1940s, the project captured the popular imagination in the 1960s and 1970s, broke ground in the 1990s, and opened in 2017. The decisive impulse for the Misicuni dam project came from a broad democratic alliance of Cochabambinos that pressured the Bolivian state, international development banks, and contractors. This alternative history of vernacular modernism, or cross-class efforts to promote, participate in, and democratize modernist development, moves beyond the existing literature that assumes that outside political, economic, and technical elites impose modernist development projects like dams on communities from above. I argue that Cochabambinos' continued enchantment with the Misicuni dam project owed to the belief that the project's realization would fulfill the 1952 Bolivian Revolution's promise of a water-rich modernity without conflicts and competition over water

Alliance · Art · Democracy · Modernism (music) · Modernity · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Vernacular · History · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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