Report on Citizenship Law: Bolivia By Supreme Decree 620123 of 12 September 1962 the agreement of dual nationality with Spain was approved and by Law 20824 of 19 December 1962 the agreement was ratified, which established the reciprocity of the agreement for the acquisition of nationality. The same constitution indicated that those who accepted the plural nationality regime would not lose their Bolivian nationality. In 1968, legislators adopted a constitution that did not expressly say anything about nationality and citizenship, assuming that civil laws would be the ones to regulate acquisition and loss. In 1831, the first Civil Code of the Republic was drafted -which lasted until 1973- and which, at the time, was praised by the elites for its modern character despite having received strong criticism from other sectors, who considered it a mere copy of foreign legislations and for being deliberately incomplete and tendentious nature. In 1994 and 1995 modifications were introduced in the 1967 constitution, though it did not change any of the articles on nationality. The reform of the political constitution of April 13th, 200425, maintained the same ways of acquiring nationality by blood or naturalisation, and still mentions plural nationality. What is interesting is that it established that Bolivian nationality is no longer lost by obtaining a foreign one; and it added that those who had acquired Bolivian nationality would not be forced to renounce to their nationality of origin. Suspension and/or loss of citizenship Citizenship, throughout Bolivian history, could be suspended or lost. The first constitutions established both possibilities, outlining different causes for each. The suspension of citizenship could take place for: 1º dementia; 2º being declared a fraudulent debtor; 3º being criminally prosecuted for a crime deserving corporal or infamous punishment, 4º being a notorious drunk, gambler or beggar; being a citizen was a matter of honour, not anyone could be considered such, hence it is not surprising that the causes for its suspension were tied to honour. Later we see that this changed, as the Constitution of 1861 only established as grounds for the suspension of citizenship having been accused or persecuted for being a debtor to the State, a regime that was maintained until 1938. From 1826 to 1880 the causes for loosing citizenship were: 1. Public treason 2. Naturalisation in a foreign country. 3. Having suffered corporal of infamous punishment by judicial conviction 4. Accepting jobs, titles or emoluments of another Government, without the consent of the Senate. From 1939 until today, citizenship can only be suspended; it can no longer be lost. From this brief historical account some conclusions can be inferred regarding the course of citizenship in Bolivia. First is the evidence of a huge gap between a “modern” institutional scaffolding, the fundamental bases of which were imported and adapted in a whimsical way by authorities, and completely unrelated to the reality of the State. Secondly, the idea of citizenship embodied in legal rules, which was strongly embedded with discrimination and social differentiation. For example, in the distance between Bolivians and citizens established by the constitutions of the nineteenth century, from which we can infer that 23 Decreto Supremo 6201 Ley 208 25 Constitución Política del Estado de 2004 24 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/2 - © 2020 Author 7