Introduction: The “Cultural Democratic Revolution” of Evo Morales

At the heart of the MAS revolution lies the idea of decolonization, often defined as efforts to overcome the legacies of colonial forms of domination to enable the formation of a new society based on social justice. I trace the many lines of thinking that have converged in the Bolivian notion of decolonization, including Bolivian indigenous theorists like Fausto Reynaga, as well as subaltern and postcolonial studies theorists. Using human rights theories, I also conceptualize decolonization as a form of transitional justice, an effort to move beyond racialized systems of servitude and structural inequalities to a new more equitable system. I focus on the disputes decolonization produces—about what it means to be indigenous, about who counts as indigenous, and about what a decolonized society would look like. Drawing on Ranciere, I offer a theoretical model of politics and the political, arguing that indigenous politics can offer a challenge to liberalism, as it strives for a radical notion of sovereignty.