La Paz: A city of joys and frictions

La Paz: A city of joys and frictions
Public space, popular festivities and social tensions

La Paz, Bolivia is the city of the fiestas. In recent years the number, size and cost of these fiestas has increased substantially, and this has produced tensions across the city around the question of how public space can be managed fairly, whilst respecting diversity and community. This talk focusses on how fiestas in public spaces, located in zones usually inhabited by traditional middle and upper classes, illustrate the social tensions produced by the social mobility of popular classes, in La Paz. It is based on observation and interviews made in nine areas of the city, during the festivities of Carnival on March 2019. The celebrations during the Carnival in certain streets of La Paz enact the tensions between the traditional middle upper class and the popular classes, deeply rooted in the colonial past in Bolivia and the postcolonial heritage that remains.

Tickets:

• Complementary entrance for Institute of the Americas staff and students.
• Non-members £6
• Members £5
• Students (with ID) £3