ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS, DEMOCRACY AND IDENTITY IN BOLIVIA AND PERU: TWO DIVERGENT ANDEAN EXPERIENCES

This research investigates the conditions behind the emergence of organized environmental movements in Bolivia and their less prominence in Peru. It seeks to understand why environmental movements in Bolivia, unlike in Peru, emerge with political opportunities, organizational strength through broad-based coalitions and collective consciousness. The analysis relied on case studies in Bolivia and Peru to assess the political process model theory while providing some alterations to its original theoretical framework by demonstrating the role of transnational networks in supporting environmental movements’ legitimacy. Through a literature review and a qualitative approach, the research examined the internal workings of the political process model theory through a comparative historical analysis on environmental movements under neoliberal times starting from the 1980s onwards and its implications to democracy.


INTRODUCTION
Violence against environmentalists in Latin America has reached new record levels (Council on Foreign Relations, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic promoted economic slowdowns that reduced greenhouse gas emissions, promoting momentarily environmental recoveries worldwide. However, high-profile killings and other alarming violence trends against environmentalists increased in Latin America in 2020 (Council on Foreign Relations, 2020). As the global demand for raw materials increases, the environment becomes a new frontier, not only of commodities but also human rights (UN CEPAL, 2015). Additionally, neoliberal reforms of the last decades have promoted neo-extractive national economies, oriented towards commodity exports, that pose new socio-political challenges around natural resources, land ownership, and indigenous territories (Rice, 2012).
The analysis of internal and external factors as an explanation for the emergence of environmental movements opens a line of inquiry within Latin American social movement politics. The bulk of the current literature on social movements concerns the anti-dictatorship mobilizations of the mid-twentieth century. Therefore, less is known systematically about social actors such as environmental movements, especially under periods of market-reforms in the postdictatorship era and ethnic-based social movements such as the indigenous one we analyze in this article. In times of neoliberal ideology influence in Bolivia and Peru, it is fundamental to investigate the socio-political impacts of those reforms in the new democracies. The environment, increasingly seen as a commodity by neo-extractive development projects, becomes a prominent area of study to comprehend the state of democracy in Bolivia and Peru and in any location in which natural resources have become a new frontier in the name of development.

NEOLIBERALISM AND DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA
From the 1970s onwards, the Oil Crisis (1973), the devaluation of national currencies and the return of high inflation rates around the world caused a worldwide decline in economic growth. In this context, questions based on neoliberal theses grow up about the sustainability of the Welfare State originated with the post-World War II social pact, which had been made viable in the capitalist countries of the Global North, especially after the execution of the Marshall Plan.
In Latin America there are particular discussions related to the implementation of neoliberalism and national governments' nature. In several countries, even social democratic or left-wing governments implemented measures that consolidated neoliberalism through privatization, increased inequality, regressive taxation, and the reduction of public policies and social rights. Thus, the consolidation of markets and the State's retreat -the neoliberal cornerstone -led to the predominance of speculative capital over productive forms (Anderson, 1996).
In Latin America during the 1990s, where neoliberalism was not implemented through an authoritarian model -except the Chilean case with Pinochet in the 1970-80shyperinflation became the main narrative to persuade people into accepting neoliberal [4] Esta obra está licenciada sob uma Licença Creative Commons Atribuição 4.0 Internacional. Carvalho, L. M. Mural Internacional, Rio de Janeiro, Vol.12, e60116, 2021. DOI: 10.12957/rmi.2021.60116 | e-ISSN: 2177 reforms' side effects. Despite neoliberalism not having delivered what it promised -especially the resumption of growth after the 1970s capitalist crisis -its consolidation can be primarily attributed to the Soviet Union's collapse rather than to neoliberalism's virtues or empirical outcomes.
Underlying the neoliberal experiment there is the understanding of the need to reduce the State's areas of activity. Simultaneously, neoliberal reforms aim at allocating the country's wealth as a priority to financial capital. From this perspective, natural resources are transformed into commodities with international quotas. Notwithstanding the increasing dependence on global demands, the environment's commodification spurs socio-political conflicts that are sustained, in some instances, by the emergence of social movements that resist the advancement of marketoriented policies that are imposed internally, frequently following global interests.
As this article analyzes, the emergence of environmental movements in Latin America, especially in Bolivia, demonstrates the challenges posed by neoliberal capitalism to representative democracies. Representative democracies have not been able to cope with the emerging social demands, especially those coming from indigenous peoples and rural areas. This is most striking in the Peruvian case in which the political system makes social participation and popular deliberation even more unfeasible, given the prominence of formal and informal mechanisms that aim to favor the elite's demands rather than responding to social and popular ones. In contrast, the Bolivian model, reformed at the beginning of the 21th century, recognizes through constitutional frameworks three democratic forms: the representative, the participatory, and the communitarian, a demo-diverse democratic model that favors several bottom-up movements (Santos & Mendes, 2020).

THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THEIR IDENTITIES
Following Snow and colleagues (2004), we define social movements as sustained and organized collective actions to effect change in institutions by citizens or members of institutions who are excluded from routine decision-making. This definition includes the efforts of many advocacy organizations but not those of interest groups made up of trade associations or professional organizations (Amenta et al. 2010).
Some scholars argue that a country's experiences with historical class cleavages and leftwing parties influence the emergence of other types of collective identities for popular mobilization. Countries with weak mobilization along class lines are more likely to develop other master frameworks to build national social movements (Rice, 2012). Rice (2012) claims that countries like Bolivia have not faced significant historical challenges from other collective-based identities due to their modest experiences with left-wing parties, unlike Peru, which has strong traditions with left-wing groups. Thus, in the absence of traditional solid class-oriented identities in Bolivia, popular movements such as environmental ones by pass the tutelage of the political left and develop their political proposals. In this perspective, environmental movements politicize indigenous-based ethnic identities to build national movements in Bolivia. In this process, the concept of indigeneidad (indigeneity), based on Andean indigenous people's cosmologies such as Bien Vivir (living well) and Pachamama (Mother Earth), work as a master framework to mobilize Carvalho, L. M. Mural Internacional, Rio de Janeiro, Vol.12, e60116, 2021. DOI: 10.12957/rmi.2021.60116 | e-ISSN: 2177 populations around indigenous philosophies and to challenge environmental market-exploitative practices (Rice, 2012). Rice's (2012) explanations describe how environmental movements can mobilize indigenous cultures in places where the demographics play in their favor, such as in Bolivia. However, there are limitations to the interpretation when establishing a direct causal relationship between traditional left-wing parties or other organized-labor institutions (e.g. unions) with the emergence of other types of identities. The causal relationship between class identities and the emergence of other types is not clear-cut. Left-wing parties have attempted to merge class identities with indigenous life cosmologies in their political programs. The most emblematic case being Bolivia's Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), a political party that mobilizes indigeneidad while strengthening campesino (peasant) identities (Kaijser, 2016). Further, one of Bolivia's most extensive national coalitions against climate change (Bolivian Platform Against Climate Change) was formed by grassroots organizations from union-based traditions and movements reflecting pre-Columbian values forms of social organizing (Hicks & Fabricant, 2006). This demonstrates how indigeneidad as an ethnocultural concept has coexisted with class identities in Bolivia, not entirely alienated by them, making this research crucial to understand the emergence of environmental movements in some national contexts but not in others.
This research uses the political process model theory in social movements to answer why environmental movements in Bolivia have been more successful at forming national, organized, and cohesive environmental movements compared to Peruvian ones. The following section explains three conditions for the emergence of social movements (political opportunities, organizational strength, and collective consciousness). Further, considering Bolivian environmentalists' use of transnational networks to leverage political power domestically, we also investigate the impacts of these networks in supporting the environmental movements' emergence in the country while comparing them to Peru's experiences.

SHIFTS IN THE STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES IN BOLIVIA AND PERU
The weakening of corporatist citizenship regimes combined with mobilizations against the privatization of natural resources in Latin America has opened new channels of political opportunities to environmental movements (Canessa, 2014, Postero, 2010. Up to the 1980s, countries in Latin America primarily managed interest intermediation through corporatist organizations such as hierarchical national unions, left-wing federations, and workers and peasants organizations (Yashar, 2005) that had under their tutelage the demands of environmentbased groups. In Bolivia, different from Peru, the fall of corporatist regimes and widespread antineoliberal sentiment combined with organizational strength, collective consciousness, and transnational networks offered the political opportunities for the emergence of environmental movements.
Corporatist citizenship regimes begin to fall during the 1980s economic crisis and the subsequent neoliberal reforms that promised to curtail the decade's social, political, and economic crisis (Yashar, 2005). Governments in Bolivia and Peru adopted a series of structural adjustment Carvalho, L. M. Mural Internacional, Rio de Janeiro, Vol.12, e60116, 2021. DOI: 10.12957/rmi.2021.60116 | e-ISSN: 2177 policies that came at the cost of cutting social services and goods, massive privatizations, economic liberalization, export-oriented industries, and free trade incentives. Politically, the reforms overshadowed union-based organizations and other structured hierarchical federations. In this scenario, corporatist organizations lost their political power, and environmental movements that had been previously sheltered by those organizations lost their formal links to the state, emerging as autonomous new social actors (Yashar, 2005).
In Bolivia, in the 1990s, market reforms came through President Gonzalo de Lozada's Plan de Todos (Plan for All) strategy (Kaijser, 2014). The stabilization initiative privatized Bolivia's hydrocarbon, telecommunications, and other strategic national sectors. Further, the plan decentralized administration, popular participation, judicial, education, and pension systems (Kohl, 2003). The peak of reforms came in the late 1990s when the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) offered more loans to Bolivia under privatizing the country's waters (Yashar, 2005). President Lozada accepted the reforms and granted a 30-year water concession to a multinational consortium in La Paz, El Alto, and Cochabamba (Kaijser, 2014).
Water privatization spurred national demonstrations against the government, leading to a national state of siege with violent clashes between environmental activists and national police forces (Kaijser, 2014). The Water Wars mobilized people from remote rural communities to urban sectors for several reasons: rural communities' concerns on water access for domestic use, the prevention of irrigation practices by local rural communities, rising water costs, and the undermining of indigenous communities' autonomy and sovereignty over land and natural resources (Kaijser, 2014).
The Guerreros del Agua (water warriors) of the 1990s led a successful national mobilization campaign that forced the government to end the private water concession (Global Water Partnership, 2017). Environmentalists' successful mobilization over water as a human right illustrated the power of Bolivian social movements and their abilities to build broad-based movements based on the local control of natural resources (Hicks and Fabricant, 2006). The mobilizations opened new political opportunities and national conversations on issues such as indigenous citizenship, national sovereignty, resource politics, climate justice, and the rewriting of legal frameworks, especially the Constitution (Canessa, 2012;Postero, 2010). Further, the Water Wars initiated particular new organizing forms based on indigenous cosmologies that cut across identitarian, race, class, and regional distinctions (Albro, 2006;Olivera & Lewis, 2004).
In Peru, the fall of corporatist regimes and the widespread anti-neoliberal sentiment also offered political opportunities for environmental movements. However, political opportunities without organizational strength, collective consciousness, and the pursuit of political goals through transnational networks undermined the country's ability to foster these movements. Thus, environmentalists could not develop a national-reaching program and increase political leverage as their counterparts in Bolivia (Arce, 2015; Guevara, 2014). Three explanations account for Peru's less cohesive and organized environmental movements. First, the structural adjustment policies built a hard-to-change authoritarian and ideological consensus among Peru's political and Carvalho, L. M. Mural Internacional, Rio de Janeiro, Vol.12, e60116, 2021. DOI: 10.12957/rmi.2021.60116 | e-ISSN: 2177-7314 economic elites. Second, market reforms were sheltered through legal frameworks such as the 1993 Constitution built to generate governability, not necessarily respond to citizens' demands. Third, left-wing organizations went through a severe internal crisis that facilitated the neoliberal discourse hegemony (Guevara, 2014). Therefore, left-wing organizations did not reorganize political life or propose new viable ways for social organizations. This is different than in Bolivia, where left-wing organizations formed alliances with environmental and indigenous movements to build national coalitions against market reforms and environmental exploitation (Kaijser, 2014).

ORGANIZATIONAL STRENGTH IN BOLIVIA AND PERU
Contrary to beliefs in the literature that Bolivia has not had significant experiences with left-wing organizations (Rice, 2012), Bolivian environmental movements emerge as key national players due to their abilities to build networks that merge traditional left-wing identities with indigenous ones (Hicks and Fabricant, 2016). On that, Hicks and Fabricant (2016) claim that indigenous conceptions such as Bien Vivir and Pachamama work as a unifying vision for climate activists because it avoids the productivism of classical socialism and liberal environmentalists' market-driven approaches.
Rural communities' experiences with ecological changes, indigenous displacements, and successful social movement action against market reforms (e.g., 1990s Water and Gas Wars) pushed environmental movements to build coalitions with traditional left-wing federations through climate justice and indigenous cultural organizing frameworks (Hicks and Fabricant, 2016). An illustrative example of a coalition that combines corporatist organizations with environmental ones is the Pacto de Unidad (Unity Pact). This is a national coalition of grassroots organizations such as the Confederación de Trabajadores Rurales de Bolivia -CSUTCB; Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Originarias Indígenas Campesinas de Bolivia -Bartolina Sisa; Confederación Sindicalista de Comunidades Interculturales de Bolivia -CSCIB; Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia -CIDOB; and the Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas Del Qullasuyu -CONAMAQ.
The Pacto de Unidad coalition illustrates the political use of indigeneidad concepts and the environment as a social discourse to oppose neoliberal globalization while advocating for new democratic relationships with the nation-state and the natural environment (Hicks and Fabricant, 2016). The Pacto de Unidad coalition is credited for having helped elect former president Evo Morales by the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in the 2000s. The MAS political party itself is one more example of the organizational strength and network coalition between traditional left-wing organizations with environmental and indigenous movements (Kaijser, 2016). With the election of Evo Morales in 2006, the executive and legislative powers shifted from liberal and conservative political parties to environmental movement activities, indigenous actors, and union leaders (Ranta, 2016;Alto et al., 2007, Perreault, 2006. Contrastively, environmental movements in Peru struggle to cohesively build organizational networks with national reaches, such as the ones in Bolivia. Peru's environmental The role of representation involves incorporating marginal demands that exceed the demands of a particular group (Laclau, 2006). Thus, one of the representatives' most important tasks is to transmit social identification elements to different social actors. The communication of shared elements shortens the distance between the interest of the group and the ones from the national community. In this process, homogenization processes lead to social and political "coincidences and identifications" that political parties and other collective actors can articulate around a charismatic leader, a shared demand, or a sectorial organization (Laclau, 2006).
With this in mind, the fragmentation of Peruvian civil society mirrors the lack of cohesive national platforms to appeal to larger audiences (Guevara, 2014). The internal crisis of traditional left-wing organizations, the solid conservative neoliberal consensus, the institutionalization of market-reforms, and the caudillismo-style leaderships that envision one's benefit are obstacles in the way of environmental movements' emergence (Guevara, 2014). Consequently, these obstacles make it harder for environmental movements to develop an alternative master framework such as the Bolivian indigeneidad that could form broad-based coalitions between leftwing organizations and environmental and indigenous movements (Rice, 2012).
One emblematic episode in Peru's history exemplifies the challenges posed by the fragmentation of Peruvian society. In the 2011 presidential elections, the left-wing candidate, Ollanta Humala, from Gana Perú (Peru Wins), ran his campaign on an anti-neoliberal political platform. The candidate advocated for a progressive agenda while framing the other running candidates (Alejandro Toledo and Keiko Fujimori) as continuations of the right-wing political establishment that had governed Peru since then (Guevara, 2014). Despite the progressive agenda, there were no concrete formal alliances with environmental movements (Guevara, 2014). Humala's assumptions that he was the social movements' most viable option proved to jeopardize any attempts to sign a formal compromise with environmental movements such as the Associación Interétnica de la Selva Peruana -AIDESEP, the Confederación Nacional de Comunidades Afectadas por la Minería -CONACAMI, and the Confederación General de Trabajadores del Perú -CGTP (Guevara, 2014).
Different than in Bolivia under the MAS administration, the election of a progressive candidate such as Humala showed that the organized social sectors, especially those affected by the mining industries and the Amazonian indigenous movements, did not achieve the articulation of a coalition to amplify their political goals (Guevara, 2014). A few months after Humala's inauguration, it became clear the government's direction, a lack of formal compromises and commitment to environmental movements, and the continuation of natural resources exploitation, reflected in the rise of socio-environmental conflicts (Rice, 2012;Guevara, 2014).
Mural Internacional, Rio de Janeiro, Vol.12, e60116, 2021. DOI: 10.12957/rmi.2021.60116 | e-ISSN: 2177 COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS Medina (2006) argues that Bolivia's environmental movements are among the most effective in promoting a rights-based perspective to the meanings and expectations of Vivir Bien (Living Well) and the "non-human entitlements" of Pachamama, the indigenous Andean goddess representing Mother Earth. These two indigenous concepts are now constitutionalized in the Bolivian constitution (Statements of Chapter 1, Article 8) as the chief principles, values, and goals of the Plurinational State of Bolivia (Santos, 2010;Zimmerer, 2013). The use of indigeneidad by environmental movements revitalized the left by providing more content and legitimacy into a decaying socialist discourse and manipulating nationalist symbols to promote the left into more appealing frames to broader segments of society (Van Cott & Lee, 2007).
Indigeneidad in Bolivia expands the definitions of democracy to economic equality and social justice and works as effective frameworks to counterweight the concentration of economic and political power. Indigeneidad promotes the cultural influence of subordinate groups in Latin America, reshaping and challenging the political balance of power required to reduce inequality and improve democratic deliberation. In Bolivia, indigeneidad as a master framework paints a vivid discourse on the historical oppression and exclusion of indigenous peoples. In other words, the indigenous framework establishes a direct critique of Latin American democracies' fundamental problems, such as the disconnection between the state and civil society and the inequalities in access to wealth, resources, and political power (Van Cott & Lee, 2007).
After the fall of corporatist regimes in Peru in the early 1980s, no other alternative frameworks have emerged to organize society beyond the current weak class-based cleavages (Yashar, 2005). Environmental movements face challenges in building frameworks around indigenous philosophies since indigeneidad does not echo in the fragmented Peruvian society. First, Peru does not have a nationally visible indigenous movement (Rice, 2012). Second, the country's decade-long war repression of indigenous groups by guerrilla movements such as the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) has undermined indigenous peoples' political activity and cultural identity (Rice, 2012;Brysk, 2000). Third, natural obstacles also challenge creating cohesive environmental movements since the geographic and cultural distance from the capital, Lima, makes it difficult to connect with indigenous groups (Rice, 2012;Albó, 2006). Fourth, Peru's political elites have made a strategic and historical expropriation of indigenous cultural narratives and symbols. Lastly, the demise of the corporatist citizenship regime through neoliberal reforms has undermined Peru's historical organizing pattern along class-based cleavages, thus leaving a vacuum in organizing frameworks (Rice, 2012).

TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
Bolivian environmental movement's emergence also relates to environmentalists' use of political opportunities emanating from transnational networks and international organizations. These international multilateral organisms are often overlooked within social movements theory, but they provide insightful perspectives on non-state actors' actions abroad to support their political agendas domestically. International organizations and transnational networks matter in Carvalho, L. M. Mural Internacional, Rio de Janeiro, Vol.12, e60116, 2021. DOI: 10.12957/rmi.2021.60116 | e-ISSN: 2177 this discussion because they can legitimize practices and beliefs. On top of that, they can support alternative non-state constituencies by enhancing their autonomy, accountability, transparency, and political leverage within their respective nation-states (Tallberg & Zürn, 2019).
Although Bolivian environmental movements have emphasized local aspects and practices of indigeneidad, social movements have relied on global indigenous discourses while lobbying and advocating for the environment, self-determination, and indigenous rights in transnational organizations and global indigenous networks (Brysk, 2000;Tsing, 2015;Yashar, 2005). From a regional perspective, the emergence of Bolivian environmental movements relates to the electoral success of left and mid-left figures and parties around Latin America, starting with Hugo Chávez (Venezuela) in 1998, Lula da Silva in 2002 (Brazil), and other head of states in Uruguay, Ecuador, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, and Argentina. The regional "turn to the left" has supported the coordination of environmental activists and allies in forming transnational movements (Ranta, 2014). This helped environmental activists mature their organizational networks while acting informally as interest groups and protestors and, formally, as constituent assemblies' participants and officeholders in governments' administrations (Van Cott & Lee, 2007).
The alliance between local Bolivian environmental movements, international organizations, and transnational networks has spurred a dynamic process of mutual legitimation. When state-environmental movement relations are deficient, environmentalists have mobilized their causes into interconnected webs of locally-based mobilizations, marches, grassroots activities, and globally organized debates, advocacy, and policymaking in international forums and global arenas (Lucero, 2013;Ranta-Owusu, 2010). This dynamic becomes evident in Lucero's (2013) discussion on how Oxfam International supported the creation of an "international indigeneidad regime", therefore promoting indigenous social forms as viable organizing alternatives to union-based institutions in international forums. One of Bolivia's most prominent environmental and indigenous confederation, the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu (CONAMQ) have received significant support from development agencies and NGOs such as Oxfam America, the Danish Development Assistance (DANIDA); the Inter-American Foundation, and the Fondo Indígena (Ranta, 2014;Yashar, 2005).
No other coalition illustrates better the attempts of Bolivian environmental movements to strategically use transnational resources to pursue their demands locally and globally than the Platform Against Climate Change (Hicks and Fabricant, 2016;Lucero, 2013). This alliance of environmental activists, indigenous leaders, and left-wing intellectuals gives the Platform a significant opportunity to join national policymaking processes while influencing the international arena (Hicks and Fabricant, 2016). The Platform has exerted pressure on the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party, pushing the government on national and local issues and forcing them to take climate justice beyond its borders. During the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009, the activism of environmental movements through the Platform was made clear on the international stage, projecting Bolivia as a critical player on environmental and Carvalho, L. M. Mural Internacional, Rio de Janeiro, Vol.12, e60116, 2021. DOI: 10.12957/rmi.2021.60116 | e-ISSN: 2177 indigenous issues globally. In Morale's speech in the conference "Culture of Life or the Culture of Death," the indigeneidad language and the presence of environment-based perspectives were noticeable through Bien Vivir and Pachamama rights (Hicks & Fabricant, 2016 (Hicks & Fabricant, 2016). The Conference reunited 30,000 people from 135 different countries in Cochabamba, including NGOs, social organizations, and labor organizers. The conferences' resolutions included calls for developed nations to legally commit to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, to create climate change funds that support developing nations in adapting to climate issues (Climate Debt), and to create a Climate Justice Tribunal for the trial of climate crimes (Hicks & Fabricant, 2016). Further, the Conference deliberately reinforced the concepts of Pachamama and Bien Vivir to a global audience while criticizing the United Nations' libertarian market-based approaches to environmental governance, citizenship, democracy, and social justice (Hicks and Fabricant, 2016;Okereke, 2006).
In comparison, environmental movements in Peru have not been able to mobilize transnational networks and international organizations in significant ways that strengthen their political leverage domestically (Guevara, 2014). Simply put, the use of international channels to advance political demands presupposes a significant degree of solid domestic institutions (Paredes, 2016). Peru's lack of environmental movements' cohesive national networks, collective awareness due to a fragmented society, left-wing institutions' demise, and the solid neoliberal consensus challenge the creation of traditional institutions that could benefit from transnational networks (Paredes, 2016;Guevara, 2014).

CONCLUSION
This article explored the different outcomes of environmental movements in Bolivia and Peru. It identified the necessary conditions for the emergence of environmental movements in these two countries. The political process model in social movements theory assessed that environmental movements' emergence relates to three necessary conditions: a) political opportunities, b) organizational strength, and c) collective consciousness. Further, the research explored the impacts of transnational networks in legitimizing and supporting non-state actors, such as environmental movements, within their respective nation-state's political context. This research has shown that political opportunities need to be followed by structured organizational institutions and collective awareness to promote social change. It has also demonstrated the role that external factors, such as transnational networks, play in domestic politics, blurring the domestic-international dichotomy in the literature. Life in the polis is a dynamic phenomenon that frequently requires assessing elements not visible through domestic affairs.
Bolivian environmental movements, one of Latin America's leading ones, have used the political opportunities presented by the fall of corporatist citizenship regimes and widespread anti- Carvalho, L. M. Mural Internacional, Rio de Janeiro, Vol.12, e60116, 2021. DOI: 10.12957/rmi.2021.60116 | e-ISSN: 2177 neoliberal sentiment to re-politicize environmental issues. Environmentalists in Bolivia build broad-based coalitions that span across different governance levels, from the most local communities to extra-state international forums. In the process, they frame their political demands regarding indigenous perspectives and relationships with the environment. Thus, indigeneidad offers a master framework that links indigenous, left-wing, and environmental movements in inter-organizational networks. These coalitions have successfully derailed market reforms, as seen through the 2000s Gas and Water Wars.
Recently, some environmental activists have criticized the MAS administrations, especially Evo Morales, because they supported mega infrastructure development projects and continuous incentives for extractive industries. Despite that, Bolivian environmentalists are still organized in several multi-layers of governance, exerting pressure on the government through informal channels such as protests and, formally, through state channels. The Bolivian environmental movements exemplify the possibility of social transformation through formal state channels via democratic deliberation.
Oppositely, Peruvian environmental movements struggle to construct viable organizing alternatives to revitalize Peru's fragmented political scenario. Environmental mobilizations are often ad hoc, local, and focused on single issues without broader political platforms. The fall of corporatist regimes led to left-wing organizations' profound crisis and the criminalization of indigenous and environmental activities. Notwithstanding, Peru's neoliberal consensus is constitutionalized under legal frameworks constructed to generate governability, not citizens' responsiveness. As a result, environmental movements are not organized in broad-based coalitions on the national level, closing opportunities to act locally and globally.