Widespread protests against the privatization of water in 2000 brought Cochabamba, Bolivia, into the international limelight and propelled a process of further mobilizations that utterly reconfigured the country’s political landscape. Popular struggles shook the country, expelled powerful multinational corporations, brought down two presidents, and led to the election of Evo Morales, the first indigenous president in the country’s history. More recently, calls for “regional autonomy” by the resource-rich eastern lowlands have threatened to rend the country in two. Although a new constitution was popularly ratified in a January 2009 referendum, voting results show that both the opposition parties and Evo Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Towards Socialism, MAS) have consolidated support in separate regions. The nation is at an important crossroads, and the city of Cochabamba is at the very center of that crossroads, geographically, racially, and politically. Located in the valleys between the high desert plateau—with its heavily indigenous population, political power, and MAS support—and the eastern lowlands, which were colonized throughout the last century by European settlers, Cochabamba represents the possibilities and challenges of Bolivian integration. These three papers, all based on recent research in Cochabamba, examine the context of popular political culture in a city that epitomizes the political change taking place in Bolivia and Latin America today.