A Revolution in Fragments feels like a particularly timely book, given Evo Morales’ resignation as Bolivian president after the controversial election in 2019, and will likely come to be viewed as a key text in understanding the fragmentary tensions which characterised the period of Bolivian politics with which the book is most concerned (2006–15).

The title of the book is apt firstly because of its methodology and structure. Mark Goodale draws on what he refers to as ‘multiscalar longitudinal ethnography’ (p. 9) over the course of Morales’ first three terms as Bolivian president to write a book that is itself a series of fragments. The experience of Bolivia's ‘process of change’ (the slogan used by the government as an umbrella for their decolonising programme as a whole) is critically examined through interviews with actors across both the geographical and ideological spectrum of Bolivian politics, including representatives of a Trotskyite teachers’ union, government officials, miners’ union leaders and opposition politicians. The result is an ethnography that provides real insight into the nuances of Bolivian politics and will be vital for the Bolivianist academic, but also entertaining and informative for any lay reader with an interest in Bolivian or Latin American politics. While there have been several ethnographies published in recent years that deepen our understanding of the relationship between the Morales governments and particular sectors of Bolivian society, this book is distinctive in its breadth. Impressively, Goodale seems to have dealt with all of the relevant actors, without leaving the reader feeling in need of more detail (though he does tantalise us by telling us that an opposition politician invited him to visit him in jail, but never reveals whether he went!). Despite indicating towards the beginning of the book where his political sympathies lie, he is also even-handed in his portrayals.

The central themes of the book are the use of the law by the government under Evo Morales both to drive through transformational constitutional changes and to muzzle opposition to the process of change, and the reification of the past as a means to interpret political events as they were happening in real time. This brings us back to fragments. Goodale mentions that he began this research project with the assumption that he was going to describe a revolution and a counter-revolution. In fact, he found various competing revolutions, nourished by their own regional histories of subjugation by the state and other outside forces. Thus, the author argues, the humiliation of MAS (Movement towards Socialism, Evo Morales’ party) supporters in the central square in Sucre on 24 May 2008 is regarded by some of its protagonists in the light of the killing of young soldiers from the city by a peasant army nearly 100 years before. These competing revolutions seem also to draw from different readings of the same national history that are influenced by social privilege (or lack thereof). This is never more stark than when the leader of the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista (Santa Cruz Youth Union) explains (alongside much racist stereotyping) that the problem is that Collas (indigenous people from the West) were resentful of the 500 years of colonialism, but for Cambas (the term of self-identification used by people from Santa Cruz in the East who mainly identify as European descendants) colonialism was not something negative, but simply itself a process of change.

Goodale shows that opposition to the MAS government came both from right-wing political factions ideologically opposed to the process of change, and its own grassroots social movements who were often left disappointed that the government was not radical enough. He shows also that sectors originally opposed to the MAS project on economic grounds soon accommodated themselves to it, because of the unprecedented economic stability Bolivia experienced under Morales. Goodale seems to argue that if the process of change was revolutionary it was to the extent that the judicial apparatus was used systematically to create changes in the structure of the state and categories of citizenship. For example, through the Constitution and subsequent laws, the ‘native indigenous peasant’ was created as a political subject, and native indigenous peasant autonomies and justice as specific forms of governance and law. In parallel, what Goodale presents as extensive use of legal processes to stifle opposition by isolating political opposition figures appears effectively to be the other side of the coin to the MAS project to enact its political project through legal means.

The overall picture painted of the political project of the MAS government under Evo Morales is that in being full of its own tensions – most of all a socialist ideological project that has granted greater legal rights to indigenous people but by its economic reliance on extractivism often encroaches on these same rights – it reflects the fragmented nature of Bolivian politics and society. As such, it is remarkable that despite these tensions, the MAS project remained hegemonic until Morales left office. This book should be one of the first to turn to for anyone wishing to better understand the processes through which this occurred and, more generally, the nature of Bolivian politics during the era of Evo Morales.