Veronika Groke interrogates the concept of the comunidad indígena (indigenous community) in the context of the history and social life of a Guaraní community in eastern Bolivia. While this institution is today firmly embedded in Bolivian politics and society, different people and interest groups have varying understandings of its meaning and purpose. By showing the comunidad to be a multifaceted complex of diverging and sometimes competing ideas, desires, and agendas, Groke provides new insight into contemporary political tensions related to culture, identity, and development

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A positive moral valence is broadly given to the concept of community, particularly in its common association with the recognition and rights of indigenous peoples. Contested Community counters this uncritical tendency through a well-drawn examination of a group of formerly captive Guaraní who live in Cañón de Segura, located in the Chaco region of southeastern Bolivia. Groke's study is informed by archival, legal, and other historical documents that accompany rich, ethnographically grounded accounts of how community (comunidad) is as much a "locus of conflict and negotiation" (p. 17) as a relational source of identity and belonging. Although Groke's primary focus is the role of politics—particularly during the first term of former president Evo Morales—she also illuminates the ways that food, drink, festival, work, and other deeply embodied elements of existence connect multiple historical trajectories to the creation and use of space, genealogical memory, and the incorporation of as well as resistance to concepts and practices drawn from the legacies of colonialism and slavery, Christianity, nationalism, and political resistance. Although the work focuses primarily on the Guaraní, it nonetheless provides tools to interrogate the meaning and uses of community in many other contexts. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.