Since the Bolivian revolution in 1952, migrants have poured into the city of Cochabamba, seeking opportunity and relief from rural poverty. They have settled in barrios on the city’s outskirts only to find that the rights most Bolivian citizens enjoy - basic rights of property and safety, especially protection from crime - are not available to them. In this ethnography, Daniel M. Goldstein considers the significance of and similarities between two kinds of spectacles - street festivals and the vigilante lynching of criminals - as they are performed in the Cochabamba barrio of Villa Pagador. By examining folkloric festivals and vigilante violence within the same analytical framework, Goldstein shows how marginalized urban migrants, shut out of and neglected by the state, use performance to assert their national belonging and to express their grievances against the inadequacies of the state’s official legal order. During the period of Goldstein’s fieldwork in Villa Pagador in the mid-1990s, residents attempted to lynch several thieves. Since that time, there have been hundreds of lynchings in the poor barrios surrounding Cochabomba. Goldstein presents the lynchings of thieves as a form of horrific performance, with elements of critique and political action that echo those of the festivals. He explores the consequences and implications of extra-legal violence for human rights and rule of law in the contemporary Andes. In rich detail, he provides an in-depth look at the development of Villa Pagador and of the larger metropolitan area of Cochabamba, illuminating a contemporary Andean city from both micro-ethnographic and macro-historical perspectives. Focusing on indigenous peoples’ experiences of urban life and their attempts to manage their sociopolitical status within the broader context of neoliberal capitalism and political decentralization, The Spectacular City highlights the deep connections between performance, law, violence, and the state.
