The Agency of the Road Yucumo Rurrenabaque between Development, Conservation and Indigenous Autonomy: A Case Study from Bolivian Amazonia

Abstract

Very often roads that are continuously built through Amazonia are thought to mechanically and irreversibly induce colonisation, deforestation and environmental and cultural degradation. This paper provides a detailed case study questioning this taken-for-granted idea. It concerns the Pilón Lajas (Bolivia) and shows that the road gets irreversible only through the interplay between development framing and conservation framing as both define road and spaces, and through the interactions these framings induce between actors that refer to them. Road agency only performs by reciprocal relations that actors develop to stabilise their own practices around roads. Indigenous people, quartered between dilution in interculturality and domination bay conservation, are trying to reconcile autonomy and development by skipping between these frameworks.