This book is a marvellously detailed, subtle and complex ethnography of local politics in a small town in the Cochabamba valley of Bolivia. The writing is often dense, but also very revealing of the day-to-day, personal aspect of local politics. For this reviewer, the subtitle Indigenous Signs and Stigma implies an unnecessarily narrow focus of the book, when in fact it is more generally about ‘Local Bolivian Politics’, with resonances in both indigenous and non-indigenous spaces. Further, to its credit, it deals not just with the indigenous aspects of those political spaces, but also covers much broader ground.

This complexity comes in part from the ambiguous relationship that Cochabamba peasants have historically had to ‘indigenous’ identity, and this is one of the first books written in the context of Evo Morales’ rise to power that has managed to fully take this on board. Indeed, such a recognition exposes some of the complications of Morales’ project, in particular the irony of the fact that he rose to power through precisely the kind of urban mestizo populist politics dominant in Cochabamba that are the subject of this book, yet fails to account for that heritage in his contemporary self-presentation, at least on the international stage. In my view, the kinds of intimate, long-term ethnographic engagements with local politics that form the basis of Roosters at Midnight are necessary to reveal the real underpinnings of Morales’ success and the models that he and his supporters are drawing on for national politics. As such, the book is a very useful and important corrective to easy interpretations of the contemporary Bolivian political scene.

What we learn is that local politics are very much based upon patron–client relations, complicated by the idea of the llunk'u, the accusation that someone is a flatterer, a ‘bad’ client, or somehow involved in shady political activity. Through this concept, chapter 2 treats the reader to a difficult but effective discussion of the push and pull of the expectation of political patronage and its rejection. This is combined with an examination of cholo identity related to this darker side of politics. It is a chapter that discusses male political identity – that is, cholo as opposed to chola – and the following chapter continues this male focus. The individual characters who were Albro's informants begin to coalesce fully, and we discover more about themes of compadrazgo, friendship and ayni. It is so refreshing to have an utterly contemporary treatment of these very familiar themes in Andean anthropology. Although the book gives the background of the changes undergone by these political institutions in the 1980s and 1990s, the analysis is brought right up to date.

My noting of the male focus of the previous chapters is not intended as a criticism; it is clear that it is a function of who Albro's informants were and how local politics are configured in Quillacollo. It is to the author's credit that he does not attempt to produce some kind of artificial ‘balance’, but recognises the gendered nature of his particular investigation of politics, incorporating it into the analysis and drawing much benefit from that examination. Indeed, in chapter 4 the analysis shifts to a more female identity, that of the chola, and Albro argues that the identity of chola marks both a productive role and capacity for work, and a position of mediator between politics and households. This is another dense and subtle chapter, packing in a great deal of discussion: of the importance of the chola in local folklore, the ambivalence of political gifting, and the chola as mother and matriarch but also as erotic object (as cholita). Albro argues that the chola is such an important political figure in part because she symbolises the (male) politicians’ closeness to localised, regional life – ‘the interior spaces of regional popular culture’ (p. 119). We understand politics to be about negotiations and brokerage between different realms of work: political work and productive and reproductive labour.

In the final two substantive chapters, Albro first investigates another gendered relationship crucial to local politics: the father–son relation. This becomes a really subtle unpicking of the tendency for politicians to claim ‘humble’ backgrounds: a kind of patrimony of rootedness in the local area. It is followed by a discussion specifically of genealogy, of how politics is articulated through the trope of family relations (a theme of the book as a whole). We see this through the example of the ch'alla (ritual libation) of newly finished obras (public works), as a means of analysing politicians’ self-presentation and the evaluation of them by others. One of the most important points of the book, I think, is buried in this chapter, when, at the beginning of the final section, the story of ‘Lucho’ is brought to bear on the thesis of ‘internal colonialism’ and the easy distinctions between coloniser/violent oppressor and indigenous victim. Albro's contribution is to muddy these waters of indigenous identity and politics through detailed ethnographic work. This is possibly the best contribution an ethnographer can make, and something that the whole book manages to achieve.

One of the joys of this book is that it will ring so true to anyone who has studied urban politics in Bolivia. Albro discusses the detail of what actually happens, and resists the temptation to fit his work to fashionable overarching themes or approaches. I firmly believe that understanding Morales’ regime requires an understanding of local populist politics as much as, if not more than, an understanding of the indigenous rights movements of the last few decades. There are not many researchers prepared to settle in for long-term and detailed work at the local level, and it is for that reason that this book is such a treat. The writing can be dense and challenging at times, but this perhaps indicates that there is yet more value to be extracted from re-readings. On another level, as a contemporary treatment of some classic themes of Andean anthropology it works very well, and should be an invaluable resource for teaching. It will be of significant interest to anyone with an interest in Bolivian politics, contemporary local political life in Latin America more widely, and – yes – indigenous life and identity in the contemporary world.