Afterword: Historical Matters and New Eruptions Available to Purchase

The afterword charts three recent eruptions along the fault lines explored in this book. The first section examines the role of resource regionalism in the explosive end of Evo Morales’s regime in 2019, the second section traces a conversation about communitarian mining that began in 2014 and continues today, and the third reflects on the proliferation of cooperative mining, illegal mining, and jukeo (ore theft) in the early 2020s. Overall, the afterword shows how material histories of nature and nation, as traced in preceding chapters, can help explain these contemporary eruptions. The sedimentary remains of past nationalisms do not always stay buried. Instead, they emerge through historical cracks to impinge on the present in unpredictable and often violent ways.