Indigenous residents of El Alto, Bolivia march in the streets in March 2005. Tensions between the mostly indigenous El Alto and its bordering city La Paz have led to frequent protests of the Bolivian government's divisive economic and social policies. Photo courtesy Benjamin Kohl.

Planners in both cities have not controlled land use and human settlement. The demand for land by impoverished migrants, desperate for a place to live, has created a pattern of urbanization that does not follow legally defined land-use norms. While informal land use is common throughout low income cities with an estimated one billion people living in slums worldwide, these marginal settlements take very different forms in the two Bolivian cities. In La Paz, migrants living on steep slopes suffer from the seasonal threat of mudslides. In El Alto, developers have created subdivisions without providing basic services and ignoring regulations that require public space for schools, churches, and parks. In some cases, plans are approved on payment of fees that go no further than the pockets of public employees. In other cases, developers sell de facto titles and new owners define their lots with adobe walls.

Since the adoption of neoliberal policies in 1985, intense migration and local factory closures have made the informal economy an increasingly important labor-sink in both cities. Between 1992 and 2001 the informal economy grew by 60 percent in La Paz, with many of the workers commuting from El Alto. But this figure is dwarfed by the 162 percent growth in informal jobs in El Alto. Overall, the informal sector accounts for about 70 percent of the total urban labor force, a common figure for low-income countries.

Considerable tension, born of discrimination and economic differences, exists between El Alto and La Paz. A common perception in La Paz is that El Alto is dangerous and its residents are delinquents. This tension is reflected in the different ideologies governing the cities. La Paz is dominated by the logic of the market, which privileges individual actors, while El Alto resonates with the historic memories of collectivism and reciprocity, particularly those practiced in rural communities under the ayllu system, which promotes the idea of a shared well-being. El Alto navigates between the tension of immediate response to crisis and long-term proposals for progressive change. It negotiates between an indigenous identity based on an idealized, hybridized history and social demands that incorporate a westernized modernity.

While the two cities are now roughly the same size, La Paz raises about five times more tax revenue per capita, even though most of the area’s industries sit in El Alto. Since the 1994 initiation of a widely adopted World Bank policy of administrative decentralization and municipal expansion, 20 percent of the national budget has gone to the country’s municipalities. For a handful of Bolivian cities, like La Paz, with an independent tax base and the ability to raise their own resources, the administrative reforms have provided an important additional source of revenue. For El Alto, the reforms have brought the majority of municipal revenues, as the city has been unable to develop significant local revenue streams, in large measure because firms pay taxes based on the location of their head offices.

The participatory discourse surrounding municipal decentralization has restructured planning in both municipalities. Demands from citizen groups have consistently outstripped the municipalities’ resources and ability to provide public services. This is unsurprising given the public per capita revenues, including funds from World Bank debt restructuring programs that target the poor, of less than US$90 for the relatively wealthy city of La Paz and US$44 for El Alto.

While public resources are limited, a culture of corruption dominates both cities, reducing the purchasing power of public funds. Spectacular cases in La Paz include one mayor authorizing the sale of national parkland on the outskirts of the city, while another transferred four checks for US$25 million each to a Bahamian bank “for safe keeping.” In La Paz and El Alto, more than 10 mayors have been removed from office, many on charges of corruption. A 2002 audit of municipal accounts in El Alto was unable to find receipts for almost 25 percent of total city spending.

As in other low-income cities, endemic corruption also reduces the citizens’ willingness to pay taxes and participate in city planning. Municipalities’ efforts to increase tax collections are often perceived as generating booty to be divided among political parties. This has led to tax revolts in both cities, such as those in February and September of 2003. Distrust in government also means that citizens have less desire to participate in planning. To attribute the problem of political capacity simply to corruption, however, negates the depth and complexity of economic and political life. The problems of corruption are complicated by the economic and labor precariousness that define daily life for most residents.

In El Alto, Juntas de Vecinos ("neighborhood organizations") offer an important alternative site of citizen representation. According to El Alto sociologist Pablo Mamani, the Juntas commonly serve as neighborhood micro-governments. As the new settlements shaped by neoliberalism in El Alto expanded and stabilized, the Juntas played two key roles: they pressed the municipal government to install basic urban services and developed clientelist relationships with political parties to gain access to those services. In 1989 there were 166 Juntas in El Alto; by 2006 there were almost 550.

The rise of these residential, rather than work-based, organizations could have facilitated an expanded leadership role for women, as the home and its management is a woman’s traditional sphere in Bolivia. While women frequently participate in the Juntas' programs and actions, the organizations' roots in mining or peasant union structures have ensured that male leadership predominates. The Juntas, however, have achieved more female representation than most popular organizations; in 2004 women held 10 of 29 leadership positions, although they were not in central roles.

The Juntas have also played a key role in the emergence of El Alto as a primary site for resistance to neoliberal policies. The convergence of two political identities, miners’ and indigenous peoples,’ was critical in building the trade union and neighborhood organizations that challenge the existing political order. More than once they pushed their leadership aside to stage overt rebellions, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people. The past five years of protest in La Paz highlight how social tensions can affect the physical organization of cities as well as how residents contest that organization.