Abstract

In the context of a protracted economic crisis caused by declining production in traditional gas fields, the search for new fossil fuel reserves has been a strategic priority for Bolivia’s Movement Towards Socialism government – and it will remain so following the left’s recent electoral defeat. This paper draws on ethnographic research in the Tariquía National Reserve of Flora and Fauna (2019-2025) to explore the relationship between infrastructure, space and affect as a key battleground in ongoing conflicts over (post)extractivist futures in Bolivia. I begin by scrutinising presentations by the Ministry of Hydrocarbons to reflect on how spatial representations of infrastructural containment and diffusion undergird neoextractivist citizenship. I then turn to struggles over infrastructure unfolding within the Tariquía Reserve, which is the site of three new gas fields. I consider both the accidental affects produced by hydrocarbon infrastructures, and how the state uses public infrastructure to (attempt to) manage affects around extractive futures. Finally, I highlight how anti-extractivist movements, led by rural women, have sought to intervene in the relationship between infrastructure and affect – both through embodied practices of territorial defence that make visible infrastructural violence, and by forging relations with residents of traditional gas fields, which enable affects to circulate across extractive sites and project cycles.