This article considers ‘kirchnerism‘ and ‘evism’ to be popular identity movements which have attempted to provide answers to the open social dislocations since the crisis of December 2001 in Argentina, and the cycle of protests from 2000-2005 in Bolivia. The emergence of both of these identity constructions has involved at least three simultaneous processes. Firstly, the gradual incorporation of public decision-making on subjects and demands which were formerly ignored; secondly, political divisions within communities; and, finally, establishing a nation within the new institutional framework currently in force. As these processes developed, some points of approach and distancing between the case studies were noted.