The Search for a Series of Small Successes: Frontiers of Settlement in Eastern Bolivia
Few thinly populated regions of the world represent genuine frontiers of settlement. The tendency to describe almost any area of sparse population as a settlement 'frontier' is not uncommon, especially in studies of Latin America. What matters, however, is what is going on within such sparsely populated zones, or indeed within more densely populated zones which are in an active frontier stage. Frontiers of settlement may be rural or urban, planned or spontaneous. Whatever their origins and location, they are distinctive areas of new and recent settlement (or resettlement) which focus a high degree of social, economic, and political change relative to their surrounding areas. All true frontiers contain mobile units of developers, assortments of risk-takers who, as part of their other activities, and this is the crucial point, are continually creating new political linkages, and testing their effectiveness, in relation to the new environment. In such situations, nothing succeeds like frequent small success. The initial achievements are usually modest, but the skills and satisfactions derived from shared problem-solving by increasingly non-violent means form the foundation of new political association. In the intensified period of decision-making at local level that distinguishes the frontier, a remarkable number of different processes are involved in obtaining assistance, finding markets, voicing demands, forming pressure groups, seeking comfort and support outside the kinship framework, and in discovering how to prosper rather than merely to survive. These processes combine to produce the new political identity, organization and consolidation of frontier societies. The main focus of this operation may shift geographically if the processes which distinguish the frontier's most active stage become more concentrated elsewhere. Even if this type of frontier mobility is not encountered, however, a frontier's days in any particular location are numbered; its span is measured ultimately in political terms. There are no permanent frontiers of settlement. Either the frontier succeeds, and the community matures politically by 0022-216x/82/JLAS-I345 $02.00 ? 1982 Cambridge University Press 407