Waltraud Q. Morales a Brief History of Bolivia, 2nd Edition 2010

A Brief History of BoliviA

second edition

A Brief History of BoliviA

second edition

WAltrAud Q. MorAlesUniversity of Central Florida

A Brief History of Bolivia, Second Edition

Copyright © 2010 by Lexington Associates

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact:

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Morales, Waltraud Q. A brief history of Bolivia / Waltraud Q. Morales. — 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8160-7877-6 (acid-free paper) 1. Bolivia—History. I. Title. F3321.M76 2010 984—dc22 2009053660

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Text design by Joan M. McEvoyMaps by Dale WilliamsComposition by Mary Susan Ryan-FlynnCover printed by Art Print, Taylor, Pa.Book printed and bound by Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group, York, Pa. Date printed: April 2010Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

To Carl,

my one and only,

and to Mom and Dad with love

Contents

List of Illustrations viii

List of Maps ix

List of Tables ix

List of Acronyms xi

Acknowledgments xv

Preface xvii

Introduction: People of South America’s Heartland xxvii

1 The Ancient Indian Peoples 1

2 Colonial Bolivia (1532–1780) 15

3 Independence Wars and the New Nation (1780–1839) 35

4 The Age of Caudillo Rule (1839–1879) 57

5 Republican Rule and the New Oligarchy (1879–1932) 73

6 The Chaco War and Its Aftermath (1932–1951) 101

7 The National Revolution (1951–1964) 139

8 The Military and Counterrevolution (1964–1982) 167

9 The Challenge of Democracy (1982–2002) 201

10 The Democratic Revolution of Evo Morales (2003–2009) 233

11 Conclusion: What’s Ahead for Bolivia? 271

Appendixes

1 Basic Facts about Bolivia 277

2 Chronology 283

3 Bibliography 293

4 Suggested Reading 307

Index 321

List of illustrations

Aerial view of the Andes xxxiLlamas xxxviPotato harvest xxxviiiQuechua woman xxxixA paceño xlLa Paz xliiTiwanakan pottery jar 3Gate of the Sun, Tiwanaku 5Inca stone walls 9Francisco Pizarro 17Cerro Rico, Potosí 24Altiplano agriculture 26Indian woman weaving, near Lake Titicaca 37Woman in traditional dress 39Simón Bolívar 48Antonio José de Sucre 50Burros 60Bay of Cobija 79View of Sucre 87Potosí revival 91A potosino 92Tin miners 93Germán Busch 111Bolivian classroom 115Gualberto Villarroel 126Members of the Sakaka ethnic group 128Plaza Murillo, La Paz 131Miners at site of labor unrest in 1940s 133Víctor Paz Estenssoro 144Rural farmer 146Campesinos shearing an alpaca 150Juan Lechín 157Street vendors 173César Lora 175

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Hugo Banzer Suárez 191Luis García Meza 197Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada 210Tin workers’ protest, 1986 214Jaime Paz Zamora 217Cocaine factory 220Miners taking coca leaf–chewing break 228Ch’alla ritual offering 239Pro-Evo graffiti in Trinidad 245Vote for autonomy in Tarija 248Pro-autonomy graffiti in Santa Cruz 250Woman carrying wiphala 252Evo Morales 255

List of Maps

Income Equality throughout the World, 2007–2008 xxSouth America xxviiiModern Bolivia xxxvDepartments of Bolivia xlvInca Empire 12Viceroyalty of Peru, ca. 1650 30Territorial Distribution of the “Yes” and “No” Votes in the 2006 National Referendum on Departmental Autonomy 246

List of Tables

Rural Population in Select Latin American Countries xxxiiiPopulation of Departments and Departmental Capitals, 1854 Census 61Representation of Major Parties and Groups in the Popular Assembly 188

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Class Makeup and Political Affiliation of Delegates to the Popular Assembly 189Results of the 1978 Presidential Election (Major Parties and Coalitions) 195Results of the 1979 Presidential Election (Major Parties and Coalitions) 195Results of the 1980 Presidential Election (Major Parties and Coalitions) 197Results of the 1985 Presidential Election (Major Parties) 209Results of the 1989 Presidential Election (Major Parties) 216Results of the 1997 Presidential Election (Major Parties) 225Results of the 2002 Presidential Election (Major Parties) 230Results of the 2005 Presidential Election (Major Parties) 2402005 Political Party Representation in Bolivian National Congress 244Results of 2006 Constituent Assembly Elections and Autonomy Referendum 247Results of 2009 National Constitutional Referendum 257

List of acronyms

ADN Nationalist Democratic Action (Acción Democrática Nacionalista)

APCOB Aid for Indigenous Peasants of Eastern Bolivia (Apoyo para el Campesino-Indígena del Oriente Boliviano)

APDHB Bolivian Permanent Assembly of Human Rights (Asamblea Permanente de Derechos Humanos de Bolivia); also Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia

APG Assembly of Guaraní People (Asamblea del Pueblo Guaraní)

ATPDEA Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Enforcement ActBAMIN Mining Bank of Bolivia (Banco Minero de Bolivia)CEPB Bolivian Confederation of Private Entrepreneurs

(Confederación de Empresarios Privados de Bolivia)CIA (U.S.) Central Intelligence AgencyCIDOB Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Bolivia

(Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas del Oriente Boliviano)

CNTCB National Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia (Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia)

COB Bolivian Labor Central (Central Obrera Boliviana)COMIBOL Bolivian Mining Corporation (Corporación Minera de

Bolivia)CONADE National Committee for the Defense of Democracy

(Comité Nacional de Defensa de la Democracia)CONALDE National Democratic Council (Consejo Nacional

Democrático)CONAMAQ National Council of Ayllus and Markas de Qullasuyu

(Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas de Qullasuyu)CONDEPA Conscience of the Fatherland (Conciencia de Patria)CPE Political Constitution of the State (Constitución Política

del Estado)CPSC Pro–Santa Cruz Civic Committee (Comité Cívico Pro–

Santa Cruz)CSTB Confederation of Bolivian Workers (Confederacíon

Sindical de Trabajadores de Bolivia)

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CSUTCB Sole Unionist Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia, or General Trade Union Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia (Confederación Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia); also Confederation of Peasant Unions of Bolivia

DEA (U.S.) Drug Enforcement AdministrationFEJUVE Federation of Neighborhood Councils of El Alto

(Federación de Juntas Vecinales El Alto)FPN Popular Nationalist Front (Frente Popular Nacionalista)FRB Bolivian Revolutionary Front (Frente de la Revolución

Boliviana)FSB Bolivian Socialist Falange (Falange Socialista

Boliviana)FSTMB Bolivian Mine Workers’ Federation, or Trade Union

Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers (Federacíon Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia)

HDI United Nations Human Development IndexICSID International Center for the Settlement of Investment

DisputesIDH Direct Tax on Hydrocarbons (Impuesto Directo a los

Hidrocarburos)IMF International Monetary FundIU United Left (Izquierda Unida)LEC Legion of Veterans (Legión de Ex-Combatientes)MAS Movement toward Socialism (Movimiento al

Socialismo)MAS-MSM Movement toward Socialism–Movement without Fear

Front (Frente Movimiento al Socialismo–Movimiento sin Miedo)

MIP Pachakuti Indigenist Movement (Movimiento Indígena Pachakuti)

MIR Leftist Revolutionary Movement, or Movement of the Revolutionary Left (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria)

MIR-NM MIR–New Majority (MIR–Nueva Mayoría)MNR Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento

Nacionalista Revolucionario)MNRA Authentic MNR (MNR Auténtico)MNRH Historic MNR (MNR Histórico)MNRI MNR-Left (MNR Izquierda)

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MPC Popular Christian Movement (Movimiento Popular Cristiano)

MRTKL Tupac Katari Revolutionary Liberation Movement (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Katari de Liberación)

NCP New Political Constitution (Nueva Constitución Política)

NFR New Republican Force (Nueva Fuerza Republicana)NPE New Economic Policy (Nueva Política Económica)OAS Organization of American StatesPCB Bolivian Communist Party (Partido Comunista de

Bolivia)PDC Christian Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata

Cristiano)PIR Party of the Revolutionary Left (Partido de la Izquierda

Revolucionaria)PODEMOS Democratic and Social Power (Poder Democrático y

Social)POR Revolutionary Workers’ Party (Partido Obrero

Revolucionario)PPB-APB Progress Plan for Bolivia–Autonomy for Bolivia (Plan

Progreso para Bolivia–Autonomía para Bolivia)PPP Purchasing Power ParityPRA Authentic Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario

Auténtico)PRI Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido

Revolucionario Institucional)PRIN Revolutionary Party of the Nationalist Left (Partido

Revolucionario de la Izquierda Nacionalista)PS Socialist Party (Partido Socialista)PS-1 Socialist Party–One (Partido Socialista Uno)PSD Social Democratic Party (Partido Social Demócrata)PSOB Socialist Workers’ Party of Bolivia (Partido Socialista

Obrero de Bolivia)PURS Party of the Republican Socialist Union (Partido de la

Unión Republicana Socialista)RADEPA Reason of the Fatherland (Razón de Patria)UCS Civic Solidarity Union (Unión Cívica de la Solidaridad)UDP Democratic Popular Unity (Unidad Democrática y

Popular)

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UJC Union of Cruceño Youth (Unión Juvenil Cruceñista)UMOPAR Mobile Rural Patrol Units, or “Leopardos” (Unidad

Móvil de Patrullaje para el Area Rural)UN National Unity Front (Frente de Unidad Nacional)UNASUR Union of South American Nations (Unión de Naciones

Suramericanas)UN-CP National Unity Front–Popular Consensus (Frente de

Unidad Nacional–Consenso Popular)USAID U.S. Agency for International DevelopmentYPFB Bolivian State Petroleum Enterprise (Yacimientos

Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos)

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Friends and scholars of Bolivia and private and governmental orga-nizations have been invaluable in the preparation of both the first

and second editions of this work. They have provided insight and the wonderful illustrations that enhance this book, gratefully acknowledged after the captions. In addition, I would like to personally thank the fol-lowing individuals for their diverse contributions: the late Charles W. Arnade, Annabelle Conroy, Guillermo Delgado P., José B. Fernández, Martin Glassner, Robert H. Jackson, Kathy S. Leonard, Peter McFarren, Víctor Montoya, Marlene Nilsson, Nicholas A. Robins, Fred Savariau, Jim Shultz, Allyn MacLean Stearman, and Elayne Zorn. The Columbus Library of the Organization of American States, the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection of the General Libraries of the University of Texas at Austin—available online at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/—and the United Nations Photo Library provided much appreciated materials and assistance.

I also owe a debt of thanks to the University of Central Florida and its Department of Political Science for the sabbatical leave that provided me the rare opportunity to undertake and complete the first edition of this book and for the help of graduate students Teresa Lamar and Nicole Reale. Finally, I must extend my special thanks to the editors, without whom this challenging project would never have been started much less brought to fruition, and to Facts On File for its interest and support.

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Preface

In Bolivia today, above all in the West, the population defends Morales, protects him, identifies with him, and loves him. . . . They know that he is president by the decision of everyone . . .

Aguilar Gutiérrez (2008, 6)

An election can be historic and revolutionary. The December 2005 election of Evo Morales Ayma as Bolivia’s first indigenous presi-

dent was both. Unfortunately, from the outset Morales’s victory by an unprecedented electoral majority threatened to polarize the country—and it soon did. For most of Morales’s presidency, the country remained on high alert, beset by political and social turmoil. As the charismatic spokesman for Bolivia’s majority Indian population and other previously marginalized groups, Morales was a confirmed socialist and indigenous populist. As such, he was also a challenger and antiestablishment figure who had been criticized and even repudiated by the country’s propertied elite as well as by several U.S. ambassadors and administrations. In the 1990s, during the height of the U.S.-funded Andean drug war, Morales achieved notoriety and first regional and then national influence as the popular and controversial leader of a peasant-based coca leaf growers’ association. Within the decade his name became a powerful political rallying cry. And in 2002, grassroots support and aggressive political organizing almost succeeded in routing establishment candidates and sweeping the newcomer “Evo” into the Palacio Quemado, Bolivia’s offi-cial presidential residence.

The victory denied in 2002 was realized a short three years later largely because the majority of voters were desperate for more than just a fresh face and wanted a radical departure from business as usual. For the first time in decades, the election promised a real voice to the coun-try’s humble and largely indigenous citizens, many underserved by state and society and living in impoverished rural and urban communities across the land. Bolivia’s majority Indian population felt especially vin-dicated by the electoral outcome; finally, one of their own had attained the heights of the presidency. Moreover, for indigenous peoples the

political victory had deep symbolic as well as religious and cosmologi-cal significance. In Andean mythology it signaled the return to great-ness and self-rule of the ancient pre-Incan peoples. And in historical and anticolonial terms it represented the triumphant culmination of the more than 500-year struggle against white European oppression and domination. Evo Morales’s rise to power was the indigenous peo-ples’ rise to power. It promised them not only greater socioeconomic opportunity but also authentic recognition and respect for their Indian identity and culture, in effect a more inclusive definition and exercise of Bolivian citizenship.

Also, for the first time since the 1952 National Revolution that emancipated the indigenous population, abolishing involuntary ser-vitude and extending voting and land ownership rights, a democratic election marked a radical and transformative moment in the country’s history. The electoral mandate provided the incoming president and his party and coalition of progressive social and labor movements the political capital and direct control of the governing machinery neces-sary to deliver on President Morales’s promise to “refound” Bolivia and implement fundamental reforms. At the heart of the Morales revolution was the newly elected Constituent Assembly convened in 2006 with a record number of indigenous and nontraditional delegates, and the new constitution that they passed in December 2007. A majority of Bolivian voters finally approved the controversial constitution in a national ref-erendum held in January 2009.

On the other hand, powerful political and rich regional and business groups, especially in Bolivia’s southeastern lowlands, popularly known as the Media Luna (or Half Moon) departments, quickly rallied against the new administration and conspired to paralyze the constitutional reform process and stymie any big changes to the social contract. They felt their political influence, socioeconomic status, and narrow interests threatened by the changes to the established rules and viewed the new state constitution and its partisan mode of passage as illegitimate. After a year of wrangling and localized bloodletting, four southeastern depart-ments rejected the charter outright by a wide margin. Particularly since the 1970s, Bolivian presidents have been solicitous of these conservative and regional interests and often were drawn from among their ranks. Now, with the tables turned, this “new oligarchy,” as they were labeled, further feared that Morales’s socialist and ethnic-based orientation would exacerbate already elevated domestic and hemispheric tensions.

Indeed, the 2005 election culminated three years of chronic and debili-tating governing instability, during which three unpopular presidents

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BOLIVIA

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were swept from office amid rising civil unrest and perceived political cor-ruption. The pre-electoral governing crisis had greatly impeded peaceful and effective citizen engagement and had tarnished Bolivia’s democratic reputation abroad. Initially, Morales’s election did much to reverse this downward trend. It revived democratic participation and accountability, and the new president was quick to repudiate the old politics, especially its endemic elitism and entrenched corruption.

Consequently, various polls of Bolivian public opinion reflected growing confidence in government. For example, the reporting agency Transparency International indicated that perceptions of corruption in Bolivia steadily declined from highs of 122 (out of 145 countries) in 2004 to 117 (out of 158 countries) in 2005. The agency’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2008 ranked Bolivia 102 out of 180 countries, somewhat better than Argentina’s ranking of 109 for that year. Overall, Bolivia’s composite score of perceptions of public-sector corruption, which ranges from 10 (highly clean) to 0 (highly corrupt), improved to 3.0, indicating rising confidence and respect for government among the population. (Transparency International 2008). Also, since 2006 Bolivia’s ranking on Freedom House’s “freedom index” of political rights and civil liberties has been positive and steadily improving. (Freedom House 2007).

Nevertheless, despite favorable perceptions of freedom and transpar-ency in governance, this record is at risk. President Morales’s populist and radical reform agenda has been blamed, often unfairly and one- sidedly, for the country’s civil unrest and the recent revival and escalation of the regional autonomy movement into outright secessionist rebel-lion. During much of 2008, street protests and violent clashes between pro- and antigovernment supporters in lowland departments jeopardized the country’s democratic consolidation and administrative centralization and territorial unity. Unfortunately continued social unrest and political instability in 2009 and beyond may further compromise the country’s precarious socioeconomic development—an eventuality that Bolivia’s already highly impoverished population can ill afford.

Bolivia has remained the lowest ranking country in South America (117 of 177 countries) on the 2007/2008 United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). The index ranks nations according to life expectancy, adult literacy, and popular living standards using a stan-dardized income measure of purchasing power parity (PPP). Among Latin American countries, only Haiti and Guatemala ranked lower on the index. From 1990 to 2005, some 23 percent of Bolivia’s population subsisted on less than $1 and 42 percent on only $2 a day. In addition

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to widespread poverty, overall income distribution in Bolivia was the most unequal in the region and the seventh most unequal worldwide. The ratio between the incomes of the richest 10 percent of the popula-tion and the poorest 10 percent was the most unfavorable in Bolivia of all the countries for which statistics were available. Bolivia’s low level of human development compared to some of the poorest countries in Africa.

Sustained and aggressive state action is needed to address Bolivia’s development shortfall. Historically, central government policy on taxes and public benefits favored a narrow 5 to 10 percent of the pop-ulation—mostly white and mixed race, or mestizo—that monopolized the country’s wealth and power. The Indian population was generally exploited or neglected. Despite the radical restructuring of the 1952 revolution, over time control of economic and political resources became reconcentrated along class and racial lines into the hands of fewer and fewer Bolivians. A new ruling class, or the “new oligarchy,” emerged. Since the election, the Morales administration has attempted a radical redistribution not only among social classes but also among regions in order to allocate social benefits and revenues more fairly among all citizens.

Regional rebalancing is especially problematic and critical because the concentration of economic growth and natural resources has shifted from the arid western highlands to the temperate and semitropical southeastern provinces. Many of the ancient towns and cities of the Altiplano, the traditional home of much of the Indian population, have become abandoned to de-development and decay. More equitable income and resource distributions are needed for a number of criti-cal reasons. First, redistribution is essential to reduce poverty and to achieve economic and social justice for all Bolivians. Second, as with most developing countries, Bolivia’s skewed income distribution, espe-cially because of differences in race, class, or region, will continue to undermine long-term political and social stability and prevent sustain-able economic growth and prosperity.

Fortunately, Bolivia’s economy since the 2005 election has aver-aged a steady 4–5 percent growth rate despite the instability caused by confrontations between supporters and opponents of the government’s redistributive policies. International debt relief measures, which halved the country’s onerous foreign debt burden from a high $4.5 billion to $4.8 billion from 2000 to 2005 to $2.1 billion in 2006, have been critically important. However, the economic outlook is precarious. The economy held its own through 2008 primarily because the coun-

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PREFACE

try’s main exports of minerals, natural gas, and agricultural products remained in high demand. Particularly instrumental was Morales’s radical energy policy that implemented the new Hydrocarbon Law of 2005 and renationalized the hydrocarbon sector in 2006. This legis-lation forced foreign energy companies to renegotiate contracts and increase royalties paid the state treasury, more than doubling Bolivia’s fiscal revenues.

Moreover, the new energy policy has been immensely popular as an expression of economic nationalism. It showcased Morales’s aggres-sive stand against the country’s so-called resource curse. The term has been popular in developing countries (and among some developmental economists) and primarily blames the problem of chronic economic underdevelopment on the unsustainable and irresponsible exploitation of a country’s natural resources. In Bolivia, the resource curse is faulted for the distorted exploitation and monopolization of national resources since colonial times. These policies have “beggared” the country and only enriched foreigners and a coterie of corrupt leaders and their friends at the expense of the majority of the people. The Morales admin-istration has promised that the country’s remaining riches in petroleum, natural gas, and lithium (essential to the alternative energy sector and hybrid cars) will not be squandered and misappropriated again. Morales is determined that perhaps Bolivia’s last resource boom should benefit the country’s overall economy and advance development.

Nevertheless, as long as the country’s constitutional and governing crisis persists, future social and economic progress remains at risk. In 2009, the prolonged climate of uncertainty mixed with fears of continued political instability—especially in Bolivia’s petroleum- and agriculture-rich southeastern departments—discouraged new foreign direct investment. At the same time, a widening global recession and the already drastic decline in global prices for Bolivia’s exports, espe-cially for hydrocarbons, threatened to stall the country’s economic growth through the end of the decade. If the Bolivian economy once again becomes mired in a debilitating cycle of chronic budget shortfalls and deficit spending, Morales’s ambitious socioeconomic development and reform agenda could stall and doom the mandate for change.

Problematic for future investment and foreign aid, especially from the United States, may be the antimarket and socialist orientation of Evo Morales and his closest domestic advisers and associates, such as Hugo Chávez, in the region. A central economic component of the new gov-ernment’s mandate for change is the repudiation of the economic policy popularly known in Latin America as neoliberalism. Widely viewed


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PREFACE

as both a failure and a disaster, Morales and the Movement toward Socialism (or governing MAS party) have scrapped three decades of market liberalization and privatization policies and reinstituted a state-directed and public sector–controlled economic development strategy. Particularly, the privatization of major state-owned enterprises in the 1990s, such as the state mines, resulted in the massive unemployment and displacement of thousands of workers. These austerity measures intensified poverty and desperation, especially among the indigenous population of the highlands where most extractive industries were located. By 2000, the majority of Bolivians were not only disillusioned by privatization and globalization but in open rebellion against the many negative consequences. In large measure, the victory of Morales and MAS signaled the public’s resounding approval of the party’s more populist, anticapitalist, and antiglobalization agenda.

Ironically, at the same time that democratization made Morales’s election and change agenda possible, it also contributed to rising political instability. After the return to democracy in 1982, civil society blossomed as new social movements began to organize, educate, and mobilize Bolivia’s mass of marginalized citizens. Greater democratic openness permitted disaffected voters to voice their dissent and release pent-up frustration and rage over harsh economic conditions and unpopular policies. The list of grievances was long. Among these were the International Monetary Fund’s painful stabilization and austerity programs, the costly privatization of water services, the U.S.-sponsored drug war and forcible coca-leaf eradication measures, the government’s unpopular hydrocarbon policy and foot-dragging on land reform, and the persistent societal racism and economic inequality. By 1999, the relatively peaceful but almost daily blockades and street demonstra-tions had escalated into violent confrontations with the governments in power. Not surprisingly, after five years of barely controlled chaos the country was especially receptive to President Morales and his inaugural promise to “refound” Bolivia. Morales’s revolutionary pro-gram was both new and restorative. He invoked the legacy of the 1952 Bolivian National Revolution in order to extend and deepen its historic achievements.

Most important, the historic election and 2009 reelection of Evo Morales as Bolivia’s first Indian president have underscored the coun-try’s oldest social and cultural problem: endemic racism. Although largely unacknowledged, racism and ethnic discrimination persist in Bolivian society today despite significant progress since the 1952 revolution. Since independence, the Bolivian State has advanced a

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hegemonic nationalist agenda of racial assimilation. In the pursuit of nation-building, the state interpreted and recognized a single Bolivian identity and defined citizenship based on an idealized ethnic and cultural homogeneity. This process rendered the majority indigenous population, some 60 percent of the country’s inhabitants, culturally and socially invisible. Until most recently, their unique ethno-cultural heri-tage and diversity were unrecognized and even disparaged. Important constitutional reforms in 1995 redefined the nation and its peoples as multicultural and multiethnic. However, in everyday affairs, this multi-ethnic inclusiveness remained only partially recognized and accepted.

Consequently, the election and reelection of an “Indian” president have had tremendous impact on race relations in the country and the region. Morales promised more ethnic equality, self-governance, and cultural autonomy for Bolivia’s more than 50 officially recognized ethnic groups. In the last three years, his administration has aggressively pro-moted racial equality. It is enshrined and implemented in the new 2009 constitution in a number of ways in terms of official recognition and acceptance and special rights and self-governing provisions for indig-enous communities as Original Peoples. For the first time, a majority of Bolivia’s peoples has a government that not only is attempting to govern in the interests of previously underrepresented and marginalized groups but also has fully incorporated them into its ranks.

The election of President Morales has also increased Bolivia’s tradi-tionally limited global and regional influence. “Evo,” in his hallmark Andean sweater, has become a celebrity of sorts in the world’s capitals and in the halls of the United Nations and Organization of American States. In Washington, however, his easy association with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez has made his “left” populism suspect. Whether Morales’s outspoken style and membership in Latin America’s “pink tide” of left-reform leaders will help or hinder his administrations and advance the interests of Bolivia’s people remains an open question.

In the coming years, Bolivia has real potential to become a prosper-ous and developed country. Despite a tortured history of exploitation, corruption, and instability, Bolivia possesses an abundance of human and natural resources. However, as long as most Bolivians lack oppor-tunities for advancement because resources are inequitably distributed, poverty and underdevelopment will persist. This is the meaning of Bolivia as “a beggar on a golden throne.” The people are poor not because the country is poor but because governments and policies have failed them.


As with most struggling and developing countries, the road of reform is a difficult and uncertain one. The Morales government must sig-nificantly improve accountability, revenues, agricultural and industrial output, employment, and income equality. An important step has been Morales’s ability to increase Bolivia’s share of the resource pie. Although this economic success has generated more revenue to implement his reforms and redirect development, it has also contributed to the ethnic and regional battle over resources.

Because social disorder has dogged Morales’s efforts to radically refound Bolivia, some fear that representative institutions cannot survive without disintegrating into a kind of “soft-authoritarianism.” Regional opponents have accused President Morales and the ruling MAS of precisely that. However, since the 2005 and 2009 elections the political landscape in Bolivia has been characterized by an ethnically diverse legislature, a radical constitutional reform movement, greater local and regional autonomy, and a vibrant civil society. This diffusion and decentralization of power have worked not only in the interest of the indigenous majority but of all Bolivians. Neither current nor future Bolivian governments will be able to ignore the democratizing forces now at work.

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PREFACE

Introduction: People of south

America’s heartland

The people will never again be marginalized.

President Evo Morales (BBC News, December 16, 2007)

The dawn of the 21st century and a new millennium coincided with the passing of an era in Bolivian history, and this turning point

confronted Bolivia’s leaders and citizens with the legacy of their past and the promise of their future. Present-day young political leaders, many from Bolivia’s Indian majority such as President Evo Morales, represent a postrevolutionary generation born in the second half of the 20th cen-tury. Although they played no role in the 1952 National Revolution that fundamentally altered Bolivian society, they have inherited its powerful historical significance and are giving it new life.

Once known as the land of 200 coups, Bolivia has maintained gov-ernmental stability and democratic continuity for nearly three decades now. New political, social, and economic actors have emerged and are prepared to lead the country into a more democratic and prosperous era. In order for them to succeed, they must resolve Bolivia’s traditional problems of instability, poverty, and geography. Nevertheless, this his-torical juncture represents a unique opportunity to overcome these long- standing national constraints and better the lives of Bolivia’s people, espe-cially the indigenous majority.

Prisoner of GeographyBolivia is a nation in the geographical center of South America, with no direct access to the ocean. The people of Bolivia proudly present their country as the vital heart of the continent while rejecting its landlocked status. In their eyes, Bolivia has been a prisoner of geography and a victim of historical adversity. For more than 100 years, Bolivians have waged a relentless campaign to reverse their encirclement and redress the defeats of their history. Recent governments, however, have maneuvered

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to transform geographical constraints into strategic geopolitical advan-tages. In their view, Bolivia can escape geographical confinement by becoming the land bridge between the two great oceans, thereby inte-grating east and west and opening up the interior of the continent to economic development.

The Andean republic’s estimated 9.7 million (July 2009) people are territorially constrained by five neighboring South American nations. On the Atlantic side is Brazil to the north and southeast and Paraguay and


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Argentina to the south. Chile and Peru lie westward from Bolivia and block direct access to the Pacific Ocean. With the exception of Paraguay, Bolivia’s continental neighbors are larger, richer, and more powerful. All of these neighbors, including the relatively weaker and poorer Paraguay, have gained territory at Bolivia’s expense and impeded Bolivian attempts to break from its landlocked condition.

Almost three times the size of the U.S. state of Montana and larger than Texas and California combined, contemporary Bolivia extends 682,000 square miles and is the sixth-largest country in South America. Despite its size, Bolivia remains sparsely and unevenly populated with only one-fifth the population of comparably sized Colombia (45.6 mil-lion estimate July 2009). This chronic low population density contrib-uted to the nation’s territorial dismemberment in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The country’s founding fathers named Bolivia in honor of Simón Bolívar, the renowned and ambitious South American independence fighter, in an astute attempt to ensure the new nation’s precarious political survival dur-ing the dangerous and chaotic postindependence wars of conquest and consolidation. From the beginning, there was great anxiety that Bolivia’s more aggressive and powerful neighbors would swallow up the fledgling republic. Indeed, since independence in 1825, territorial aggression by close neighbors has reduced Bolivia to half its original size.

Bolivia became landlocked with the loss of its coastal Atacama prov-ince in the 1879 War of the Pacific against Peru and Chile. Far from Bolivia’s highland cities and population centers, this desert province was sparsely settled and very difficult to defend. Historically, the Pacific ports connected directly with railway lines that traversed the high Andean passes and served the major mining centers of colonial and republican Bolivia. Although expensive and cumbersome, this maritime access was vital to the country’s economy, which relied on the export of silver, tin, and other precious ores. Today, as one of only two Latin American countries without direct access to the sea (Paraguay is the other), Bolivia can reach world markets only through the Pacific and Atlantic seaports of neighboring countries.

Bolivia’s landlocked status has impeded economic development and negatively influenced the country’s history and the national psyche. Dependent on the goodwill of its neighbors for maritime rights, the Bolivian economy has failed to achieve its full potential and to support the nation’s extremely poor indigenous population. Recent theories of economic growth emphasize the critical importance of a country’s geog-raphy. From this perspective, not all of Bolivia’s developmental failures

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INTRODUCTION: PEOPLE OF SOUTH AMERICA’S HEARTLAND

can be laid at the door of political instability and bad government. Rather, Bolivians have suffered also the tyranny of geography.

Bolivia’s distant inland location magnifies the transportation costs of exports and imports. Shipping goods over land is many times more costly than maritime shipping. Yet bulky, low-value-added goods, such as tin and other mineral exports, depend on maritime shipping. Recent development studies have concluded that the average landlocked coun-try pays 50 percent more in transportation costs than a coastal nation.


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geography and poverty

It seems clear that there is a connection—in Latin America at least—between geography and poverty, and Bolivia has epitomized

the global gap between rich and poor nations. In 1995, Bolivia’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita ranked among the lowest quarter of all countries; however, there have been improvements in the stan-dard of living of Bolivia’s people in the last decade. The United Nations Development Programme reported the average GDP per capita of $1,380 in 1989 rose to $2,617 by 1995 and to $3,989 in purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars in 2006. The estimate for 2008 according to the CIA World Factbook was $4,700 (PPP US$).

Economic instability and endemic poverty mean that income can fluctuate widely; thus, GDP per capita for 1998 fell again to $1,036 and was estimated to be up at $3,000 for 1999. Income also remains very unequally distributed. The richest 20 percent of the population average 10 times the GDP per capita compared to the poorest 20 percent, and their income share averages 63 percent compared to only 2 percent for the poorest 20 percent in 1994–2007 (World Development Indicators, World Bank). The use of averages itself disguises an even greater income disparity, and an estimated 63 percent of Bolivians live below the pov-erty line, according to recent data.

Many Bolivians are forced to migrate in order to find work and sur-vive. There have been significant population movements to more tropi-cal regions within Bolivia since 1985, and about 20 percent of Bolivians live in neighboring countries. Bolivia’s human development index (HDI), which measures quality of life through such indicators as education, life expectancy, housing, sanitation, and health care, remains low compared to the Latin American–Caribbean averages and the averages for indus-trialized nations. More than 40 percent of Bolivia’s population lacks access to proper sanitation, and 15–30 percent lacks drinkable water.

Without cheap access to maritime routes and a well-developed physical infrastructure (roads, railways, and ports), many Bolivian goods never reach potential regional and global markets.

The landlocked geography of Bolivia has also had cultural and intel-lectual consequences. As a result, the country’s population has developed an inward-looking orientation. Until well into the 20th century, the country remained largely isolated from global intellectual currents, tech-nological innovations, and major population migrations. There were consequences for the national psyche as well. The defeat in the War of the Pacific and the seemingly irreversible loss of the seacoast nurtured a collective national guilt and obsession with territorial and historical vin-dication. At times, recovery of the seacoast consumed the national energy and embittered Bolivia’s relations with its neighbors. The revenge- oriented policies drew four Bolivian generations into wars and misguided attempts to salvage the national patrimony and historical reputation.

On the positive side, the struggle for la salida al mar (an outlet to the sea) has served to inspire patriotism and national unity in difficult times. One way or the other, a reversal of Bolivia’s continental contain-ment will be a fundamental Bolivian goal in the century ahead. And perhaps one day Bolivians will be able to include a seacoast among their most valued resources.

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An aerial view of the Andes Mountains of Bolivia (UN/DPI photo by Milton Grant)

Major ResourcesFor most of its colonial, independent, and modern history, Bolivia has been identified with its mines. Beginning in colonial times, abundant mineral wealth has been extracted from deep mines situated along the westward spine of the Andes and high intermountain plateau, the altiplano. Much depleted today, these mines supplied vast quantities of silver and gold to the Spanish royal treasury for nearly three centuries. Historians have estimated that the rich Potosí mines alone offered up to $1 billion in silver to the European colonizers.

Mining became the country’s lifeblood, its salvation, and its curse. Virtually every aspect of Bolivia’s cultural, social, economic, and politi-cal development responded to the mining monocultures of silver and then tin. This skewed economic dependence on mineral extraction gave rise to the oft-quoted description of Bolivia as “a beggar on a throne of gold.” Indeed, extensive mineral extraction created a boom economy that enriched only a few, shamelessly exploited Indian labor, and ignored long-term development needs.

After the silver mines played out, Bolivia became one of the world’s major producers of tin. During the high point of the tin boom in the first half of the 20th century, Bolivian mines provided 30 percent of the annual world production. However, tonnage declined steadily after the Great Depression, despite a brief resurgence during World War II when Bolivia mined the all-time high of almost half of the world’s supply. By the 1980s, production had shrunk below 10 percent. Tin, which had once bankrolled Bolivia’s wars and entire government budgets, was only 6 percent of exports in 2000.

Bolivia is, nonetheless, still a mining country. In 2002, it exported an alphabet soup of other important strategic and industrial metals, including antimony, bismuth, copper, gold, iron, lead, manganese, silver, tungsten, wolfram, and zinc. The number-one mineral export was zinc, followed by gold. Hydrocarbons, primarily natural gas, have largely replaced the min-ing monoculture, and energy constitutes the new economic boom.

Despite the historical importance of mining, Bolivia’s population has primarily been agricultural, yet agricultural land has always been a valuable and scarce commodity. With its rugged Andean topography, arid altiplano, alternately wet and dry savannas, dense forests, and trop-ical jungles, only about 10 percent of Bolivia’s land area of 270 million acres is considered arable. In 2000, only a tiny fraction—2 percent—was actually cultivated.

Most agricultural land belonged historically to a handful of power-ful landowners, who controlled huge estates. Throughout the 18th


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and 19th centuries, independent Indian communities known as ayllus, competed fiercely to preserve their communally owned lands. As late as 1950, 72 percent of the economically active population—mostly Indian peasants, or campesinos—engaged in agriculture; at the same time, only 6 percent of landowners held 92 percent of the cultivable land. The 1952 revolution brought sweeping agrarian reform. Twenty-four million acres were distributed to 237,000 families in land reform carried out by 1955, and by 1970, 289,000 families had received 29 million acres of land; however, in the last three decades, a significant concentration of land inequality has recurred. Because of land scarcity and harsh rural conditions, thousands of campesinos migrated to the cities where they exchanged land-distribution problems with overcrowding, unemploy-ment, exploitation, and poverty.

The LandBolivia’s landmass covers three distinct and diverse topographical regions: the Andean, the transitional sub-Andean, and the lowland. The Andean region consists of the arid mountain plateau called the altiplano

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Rural Population in Select Latin American Countries

Latin Percent of Percent of Percent of People per Square American Population Population Population Kilometer of Arable Country in 1980 in 1998 in 2005 Land in 1997

Argentina 17 11 10 16

Bolivia 55 39 36 163

Brazil 34 20 16 63

Chile 19 15 12 111

Colombia 36 27 27 568

Ecuador 53 37 37 286

El Salvador 58 54 40 570

Guatemala 63 61 53 471

Mexico 34 26 24 98

Paraguay 58 45 41 107

Peru 35 28 27 187Source: Latin America Press (2001) and United Nations (2005)

and lies at 13,000 feet above sea level. Historically, the majority of the population settled on the altiplano, only 80 miles wide and running 500 miles from north to south between two main branches of the Andean range. The sub-Andean region consists of the rich temperate valleys (valles) nestled in the foothills of the Andes and the semitropical val-leys (yungas) of the northeastern escarpment of the Andes. The eastern lowlands (llanos, also referred to as the Oriente) of the country include subtropical forests and grasslands, as well as the dense tropical rain for-ests of the Amazon Basin.

The altiplano functions as the South American continent’s highest and most extensive landlocked water drainage system. It is believed once to have been a great intermountain sea encircled by peaks 40,000 feet high. Today’s peaks, although more modest, still tower above 21,000 feet, and the magnificent Titicaca is one of the world’s high-est major lakes. Its deep blue waters extend more than 3,400 square miles and are more than 750 feet deep. To the west, rising out of the Cordillera Occidental is Mount Sajama, an extinct volcano of 21,291 feet. In the Cordillera Real to the east, the peaks of Illampu (21,500 feet) and Illimani (21,300 feet) loom over the capital of La Paz, situated in an escarpment 1,000 feet below the altiplano.

To the southeast is Lake Poopó, the altiplano’s “dead sea.” At 965 square miles in area but only 35 feet deep, this vast, extremely salty lake empties into the salt pan of Uyuni (Salar de Uyuni) and small salt flats in the south. It may be the geological remains of the long-evaporated and -lost waters of the ancient lakes that were once part of the high inland sea. Over the years, the great salt deserts have yielded trillions of tons of salt, which is collected, crudely processed, and sold by Indians in Bolivia’s urban markets. Today, the Salar de Uyuni is the source of extensive lithium deposits so essential for lithium-ion batteries and future clean energy and alternative fuel development, especially of an eco-friendly automobile. With an estimated 5.4 mil-lion tons, the salt fields may contain half the world’s reserves of the precious metal and may be an important source of revenue for Bolivia in the years ahead.

The climate on the altiplano varies from frigid to temperate, depending on the altitude, sun, and winds. Sundown brings a rapid temperature drop. Water is scarce, and the soil supports mostly scrub grass. Conditions are poor almost everywhere for agriculture, but the sheltered shores of Lake Titicaca are an exception. Along the lake, suf-ficient water, fertile land, and a moderate climate sustain crops of corn, oca (a highland tuber), potatoes, wheat, and highland grains. Hundreds


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of potato varieties native to the Andes were cultivated by the ancient Aymara and Inca civilizations, and there are more than 200 varieties in present-day Bolivia.

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In the higher elevations and more rocky and exposed regions of the plateau, Indian herdsmen tend sheep and the distinctive Andean ani-mals related to the camel, the llama, the alpaca, and the rare vicuña. Harvesting the wool of these animals is an important source of income for indigenous communities. The wool of the alpaca and especially of the dwindling vicuña is highly prized. When it is available today, the cashmere spun from vicuña yarn is the finest and dearest anywhere.

Mining has been the primary economic activity of the altiplano. The major mining complexes of Catavi (Llallagua) and Huanuni near the city of Oruro are situated close to the frigid and steep Andean passes. Isolated and completely dependent on outside resources for clothing, food, and housing, Bolivian miners have been a hardy, poor, and long-suffering class of workers.

The transitional upper valleys of the sub-Andean region lie between 10,000 and 14,500 feet and include the departments of Tarija, Chuquisaca, and Cochabamba. The city of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest, and its surrounding valleys are the granary and food basket of the nation. These broad upper valleys of the central Andes to the east and southeast of the altiplano enjoy a perpetual spring of Mediterranean-like climate. Water shortages, however, have been a problem, and rainfall is low and variable at the higher elevations. All


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The llama (shown here) and its cousins the alpaca and the vicuña are the distinctive domestic animals of the Andean region raised for wool and meat. (Kathy S. Leonard photo)

the typical temperate and semitropical crops are grown in these valleys and transported to the cities on the altiplano.

At the lower altitude of 5,600 feet begin the warmer and more humid valleys of the yungas region. An Aymara word that means “warm,” yun-gas are the semitropical to tropical valleys between the altiplano and the eastern llanos. The La Paz yungas sharply descend from the northeast-ern slopes of the Andes. These are the extremely lush mountain jungles of the narrow valleys and canyons that form part of the traditional growing area for Bolivia’s coca leaf, which is the primary ingredient in the production of illegal cocaine. In the lower tropical valleys at 600 feet the ancient Aymara and Inca grew not only the sacred coca plant but also many semitropical and tropical fruits. Then, as now, crops such as coffee, tea, cacao, cassava (manioc), mangoes, citrus, and pineapples were transported more than 10,000 feet up the precipitous mountain roads to the highland population centers. And then, as now, no crop was more valuable or easier to grow and transport than coca.

If one considers the predominant physical geography, Bolivia is a low-land country: The third major geographical region, the Oriente, covers 70 percent of the territory and consists of the extensive and ecologically diverse eastern lowlands, or llanos. This plains region contains three dis-tinct topographical and climatic zones: the gentle grasslands, the northern tropical rain forests, and the harsh scrubland of the Chaco to the south. Generally, the lowland climate is tropical and humid with well-defined seasonal variations—a dry season in the winter (May–September) and rainy summer months (December–February). From June through August, frigid southern winds can blow up from Antarctica and produce sharp cold fronts.

Bolivia’s Pantanal region lies along the department of Santa Cruz’s southeastern border with Brazil and is characterized by tropical rain forests and a vast inland system of marshes, river forests, and lagoons. Wetland ecosystems extend northward into the departments of El Beni and Pando and the wet forests of the Amazon. The northern plains include the Llanos de Moxos, whose wetlands once formed part of a great landlocked sea. Toward the east and the south are the dryer forests and grasslands (pampas), which offer natural pasture for intensive cat-tle ranching. Tropical rain forests cover most of the less-populated and inaccessible Pando department and also extend partly into the depart-ments of El Beni, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, and La Paz. The Chapare, once a major coca-growing region of Bolivia, is located in the tropical subregion of Cochabamba department.

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The primitive slash-and-burn methods of early settlers continue to be used in these biologically rich subregions to raze thousands of acres of virgin rain forests. Consequently, the freed biomass of the very fragile tropical soils produces abundant crop yields for a short while, but soon the soil is depleted and more forest must be cleared. At the height of the coca-cocaine economy, extensive coca cultivation and hundreds of secret cocaine paste–processing labs that were hidden in the jungles contributed to their devastation. This destruction of the rain forest by human settlement, intervention, and depredation has drastically altered the delicate ecological balance of the region.

Agriculture, as well as animal husbandry, has been the economic mainstay of the lowlands. Sugarcane, rice, cotton, and soybean exports produced temporary economic booms in Santa Cruz department. Also in the 1970s and 1980s, the aggressive expansion of coca cultivation and the windfall capital infusion from the coca-cocaine economy put population growth and development in Santa Cruz on a fast track. After the first oil boom peaked in 1974, the city of Santa Cruz developed into the Oriente’s financial center for agriculture and drug traffic. More recently, the new hydrocarbon bonanza in natural gas has driven the


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Bolivian campesinos harvest potatoes from a high-altitude Andean field. For centuries, Bolivians have relied on the indigenous potato as a major food source. (UN photo/Helene Temblay)

economy of the Santa Cruz region and stimulated the population increase of the departmental capital. The national census for 2001 indicated that the lowland metropolis surpassed central La Paz, the administrative capi-tal, in overall population; however, if the population of all the outlying communities of the greater La Paz area is included, the highland capital maintains its traditional status as Bolivia’s largest city. Even so, Santa Cruz is steadily gaining.

The Chaco comprises the third ecoregion of Bolivia’s lowlands. An extension of the Gran Chaco of Paraguay and Argentina, the Chaco occu-pies the southern and southeastern portions of the department of Santa Cruz and the eastern territories of the departments of Chuquisaca and Tarija. This inhospitable, arid region of cacti, spiny scrubs, and dry que-bracho forests is swamp for three months of the year and parched desert the rest of the time. The extremely poor land can sustain the grazing only of wild cattle and goats, although with irrigation and in the subtropical climate the Chaco produces cotton, soybeans, and corn. The Chaco’s few cities supply petroleum and natural gas installations and pipelines to Bolivia and railway lines into Argentina and Brazil. The Chaco was once the bloody battlefield of Bolivia’s devastating war with Paraguay.

The PeopleOften described as a mosaic of race, ethnicity, and nationality, Bolivia is predominantly an Indian nation. Peoples native to the highland and valley regions of the country as well as the tropical rain forests and lowlands comprise 50 to 60 per-cent of the population today. The two largest and oldest indigenous groups in highland Bolivia are the Aymara, numbering 20 to 25 per-cent of the population, and the Quechua, who comprise 35 to 40 percent of Bolivia’s population.

The Aymara believe themselves to be descended from the ancient Native Americans who founded the Andean kingdom of Tiwanaku


A Quechua woman in traditional clothing (Kathy S. Leonard photo)

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hundreds of years before the con-quest by the Quechua-speaking Inca. Modern-day Aymara popu-late the temperate shores of Lake Titicaca and the central altiplano, with the majority of Aymara speak-ers (90 percent) located in the department of La Paz and most of the rest found in the departments of Oruro and Potosí.

The Quechua, descendants of the Inca and the tribes they con-quered, are Bolivia’s largest indig-enous group. Overall, Quechua speakers are also the largest ethno-linguistic group in South America. In Bolivia, Quechua speakers pri-marily live in the departments of Cochabamba and Sucre, but their communities also extend into the valleys of Potosí, Tarija, La Paz,

and Oruro.Fragments of other highland

Indians and Aymara and Quechua subgroups can be distinguished by distinct customs, music, and dress. Traditionally, before the land reforms of the National Revolution in 1952, Bolivia’s highland Indians lived as either serfs (known as pongos, colonos, or peones) on the rural haciendas or as communal freeholders (communarios) of indig enous ayllus (land cooperatives).

Bolivia’s lowland Indians are often overlooked when considering the country’s rich Native American heritage. The indigenous tribes of the savannas and rain forests contributed significantly, however, to the multiethnic composition of Bolivian society. Very few pure descendants remain of these ethnically diverse lowland tribes. Fewer than 50,000 lowland Indians of four linguistic families presently live. The two major groups are the Guaraní and the Arawak. In the 18th century, the Guaraní were converted and organized into Jesuit religious settle-ments, the missions (reducciones). When the Jesuits were expelled from South America in 1767, ex ploitation and slavery severely damaged and depleted the indigenous communities. Extermination, acculturation, deculturation, and intermarriage also reduced most lowland Indian


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A paceño, or resident of La Paz, of Aymara ancestry (Kathy S. Leonard photo)

populations and created a racial and ethnic mixture of the lowland mes-tizos. Anthropologists continue to study the diminishing tribes of the lowlands before they completely die out. At present, for example, there are only a few hundred Sirionó forest Indians remaining.

Mestizos form Bolivia’s second-largest racial and ethnic group. Interracial unions between the Spaniards and the Indians were common from the time the conquistadores arrived in what was to become mod-ern Bolivia. As a result, mestizos, or cholos, as they are called in Bolivia, of mixed Indian and white parentage now make up 30 to 40 percent of Bolivia’s population, and their numbers are steadily increasing, gradu-ally transforming Bolivia from an Indian to a mestizo nation. Members of a third group, who are primarily of white European descent, number perhaps from 5 to 15 percent.

The remaining elements of Bolivia’s population are extremely diverse and include people of African heritage, who descended from the black slaves that were brought to Bolivia and forced to work the Potosí mines in colonial times. There are also a small number of Middle Eastern, Asian Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and eastern European set-tlers, as well as immigrant colonies of Dutch and German Mennonites and descendants of Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe. Bolivia was one of the few countries in the world to accept Europe’s fleeing Jewish emigrants during the late 1930s, thus saving thousands of lives. The majority of these heterogeneous and multinational groups settled in urban areas, especially in the city of Santa Cruz and the department’s lowlands.

In many cases, the race and ethnicity of Bolivian citizens have become so diluted as to be largely indistinguishable. Nevertheless, despite extensive population mixing and the leveling effect of the National Revolution, discrimination based on race and ethnicity persists. Indeed, race often refers to ethnicity and “social race,” or a person’s overt physi-cal characteristics, cultural attributes, preferred language, socioeconomic status, and degree of social mobility and education.

Race has also been perceived differently in the many regions of the country. In the highlands, the whites, or blancos, who were identified with the descendants of the Spanish conquerors and the aristocratic upper class, are still considered a more cultured and elite class. In the southeastern valleys and lowlands, the blancos claim to be descended from pure European stock and therefore believe themselves to be superior to the white population of the highlands. The aristocracy of the lowlands has traditionally identified with the more Europeanized descendants of Argentina.

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Regional ForcesFrom colonial times, Bolivia has served as a barrier to westward expan-sion by Brazil and northward expansion by Argentina. Bolivia not only separates these two ambitious continental rivals, it also divides the conti-nent along its north-south axis into the northern tier and what is known as the Southern Cone. Because of their country’s central location and buffering role, Bolivians have become involved in the political and eco-nomic developments of South America’s three major regional subsystems: the River Plate region; the Andean region; and the Amazonian region.

Recent Bolivian governments have aggressively pursued an external policy of regional integration with neighboring countries. This outward-looking integration policy was expected to significantly expand intra- and interregional trade not only within Bolivia but also with the rest of South America. Therefore, the current regional initiative promised to accelerate Bolivia’s future economic development overall, but especially in the less accessible and historically neglected lowland regions of the interior. In this way, the government hoped that a redefined and proac-tive strategy of continental regionalism would serve multiple purposes by also deflecting the internal divisiveness and traditional parochialism among the different regions of the country.


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Modern-day La Paz, the administrative capital of Bolivia, with arid landscape in back-ground (Shutterstock)

Powerful regional forces within Bolivia influenced the country’s his-tory and socioeconomic development. Bolivia inherited from Spain’s decentralized colonial rule a tradition of localism and regionalism that hampered national integration and balanced economic growth. The colonial economy’s reliance on mining further reinforced regional ten-sions and determined the seat of political power. Before the mining era, the colonial city of Chuquisaca (later renamed Sucre) served as the political capital of the country. The silver boom in the 16th century, however, shifted economic and political influence to the city of Potosí. For a time, Potosí was the most populated city in colonial Bolivia. Later, the tin boom in the 19th century once again shifted the power balance, this time northward along the altiplano to the mining centers of the department of Oruro and the city of La Paz. Today, Sucre remains Bolivia’s constitutional capital, but its population is dwindling and its significance is primarily historical. Political power is wielded from the highland and La Paz, which is the de facto administrative capital of contemporary Bolivia.

After independence and well into the 20th century, the negative aspects of regionalism continued to burden Bolivian governments. Harold Osborne characterized Bolivia as “a land divided,” and James Malloy as “two” Bolivias separated by the outward-looking extractive economy and the semifeudal and inward-oriented agricultural economy. This economic bifurcation severely skewed the country’s communica-tions and transportation systems. As a result, goods flowed in and out of Bolivia primarily through La Paz, the country’s real economic and political capital. In turn, La Paz was narrowly linked to the vital mining centers and few major cities, such as Oruro and Potosí, on the altiplano and Cochabamba in the inter-Andean valleys. It was easier and cheaper to import foodstuffs and distribute these in the highland from La Paz than to tap the abundant agricultural resources in the country’s interior provinces.

Impressive topographical diversity also fostered Bolivia’s intense regionalism. Politics, economics, and backward transportation and com-munication networks nurtured it further. Administratively, Bolivia is composed of the nine regional departments of La Paz, Oruro, Potosí, and Chuquisaca in the highlands; Cochabamba and Tarija in the valleys; and Santa Cruz, El Beni, and Pando in the tropical lowlands. The importance of a given department has generally depended on its exploitable eco-nomic and demographic resources and its accessibility. For most of its history Bolivia’s deep interior (El Beni, Pando, and most of Santa Cruz) remained virgin or frontier territory. Even as late as the 1970s the bulk of

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Bolivia’s vast lowland regions was little accessible by road or rail. Bolivia’s lowland departments comprise 70 percent of the national territory. The altiplano and near valley settlements, however, have been home to 75 percent of the population. Traditionally described as an Andean country, two-thirds of Bolivia actually lies within the Amazon Basin.

Very early on in the country’s formation, a strong highland versus lowland regional split developed that persists up to the present. The people of the highlands are known as kollas (after one of the ancient Aymara kingdoms) and distinguish themselves from the cambas, the people native to the semitropical and tropical lowlands of Bolivia’s interior. The typical Bolivian highlander has more in common with a highlander from Peru or Chile than with a compatriot of the lowlands. And the Bolivian lowlander identifies more closely with his or her coun-terpart in Brazil and Argentina.

Historically, the central government confronted secessionist move-ments, especially in the country’s southeastern departments, where low-lander citizens preferred Argentine to Bolivian rule. Although regional disparities have declined with development, more economic opportuni-ties in neighboring countries encourage back-and-forth migration. After three decades of spectacular growth, the lowland city of Santa Cruz is no longer a rural backwater but on its way to becoming the coun-try’s most populous and powerful urban center. Bolivia’s northeastern departments, on the other hand, have yet to be fully integrated with the rest of the country. Vast rivers, dense rain forests, and wetlands, although a source of great ecological wealth, isolate and enfeeble the economies of the region.

Recently, Santa Cruz also has become the center of the conten-tious regional autonomy and decentralization movement that opposes President Morales’s constitutional and redistributive reforms. The northeastern departments or states of Pando and Beni have joined Tarija and Santa Cruz in common cause against the highlander and indigenous-dominated central government. Together, these four low-land departments comprise the Media Luna, or Half-Moon, region, a product of the country’s growing east-west political polarization and resource disparity. The eastern states are resource-rich; they contain the vast majority of oil and natural gas reserves and export most of the country’s agricultural products. On the other hand, the western states are poorer but have greater political clout and control the levers of government and economy. Thus a struggle over political power and economic resources is at the heart of the current regional dispute.


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Today’s Bolivia boasts great geographical diversity and a wealth of natural treasures. At times these assets have also been liabilities, attracting the aggression of neighbors, stirring regional separatism, and impeding the national integration of its people. Regionalism has influenced the unequal distribution and development of Bolivia’s

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population, but it has also insulated Bolivians from outsiders and pro-tected the country’s multiethnic and cultural diversity. Nevertheless, uniting and ruling the disparate regions and peoples of this under-populated country continues to challenge Bolivian governments.


1

1The Ancient

Indian Peoples

The history of ancient Bolivia encompasses primarily the Indian empires of the Tiwanakan, the Aymara, and the Incan peoples.

These native Andean cultures never developed written records, but they left behind extensive archaeological sites and a rich heritage of oral traditions and artifacts. Much of what is known about these civili-zations is drawn from the remains of their cities and villages, extensive centers of worship, and public works projects. In addition, examples of their material and artistic cultures are provided in the form of distinc-tive woven textiles, gold and silver ornaments, and intricate pottery and carvings. And, legends and stories that have been preserved by the descendants of these peoples and in some cases were recorded by early Spanish chroniclers also contribute to our knowledge of these indig-enous civilizations. From the Pacific coast to the highlands and valleys of what is now Bolivia, indigenous peoples settled and prospered from prehistoric times until a.d. 1532, when Spanish conquerors arrived and systematically destroyed the ancient Indian world and enslaved its native peoples.

Pre-Tiwanakan CulturesThe earliest Indian civilizations of Bolivia inhabited the high plateau of the Andean altiplano. A long-popular theory holds that these Andean people, known to archaeologists today as pre-Tiwanakan, were origi-nally descended from nomadic Asian tribespeople who had crossed over on foot from Siberia into North America during a period in Paleolithic times when there was a land bridge across the Bering Sea. Over millennia, these tribes gradually moved down the continents into South America, ultimately establishing permanent settlements along

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the Andean coast and in the arid Andean altiplano. Although virtually no evidence of such migrations has ever been found in the far northern Arctic regions, there are several recently discovered ancient sites along or near the Pacific coast of South America that show humans were established there many thousands of years ago, although archaeologists disagree on how far back to push the date.

Modern researchers generally believe that the early tribal groupings, which ultimately became the pre-Tiwanakan peoples, settled below Lake Titicaca between around 1600 and 1400 b.c. Little is really known about these very early Andean cultures, and it is possible that some scattered Indian communities may have dated as far back as 7500 b.c. or even 10,000 b.c.

It is indisputable from the archaeological evidence, however, that very early Indian peoples lived on the coast and up into the Andean highlands to elevations of 15,000 feet. Coastal villagers fished in the mouths of rivers, and as they gradually developed agricultural skills, they began to grow cotton, corn, and potatoes and to domesticate guinea pigs for meat. In the highlands, the early Indian peoples hunted Andean deer and herded llamas for meat and alpacas for wool.

One of the first distinctively identifiable cultures is known as the Chavín, named after extensive ruins found on the eastern Andes of Peru. It is believed that the Chavín culture, which is preserved today primarily in the ruins of religious sites, exerted influence widely and spread across the Andean region from around 900 b.c. until it went into decline around 100 b.c. (There are remains of an extremely early Chavín religious center in a mountainous valley region about 150 miles northeast of Lima, Peru, that may date from 3000 b.c., but the best-known site is the much later Chavín de Huántar, also in modern-day Peru.) Remnants of Chavín temples and palaces reveal distinctive architecture and decorative carvings of snakes and jaguars and strange figures. The Chavín influence over the surrounding Andean region and into what is modern-day Bolivia was primarily religious and cultural. As converts to the Chavín religious cult spread among neighboring tribes throughout northern and central Peru, so did their gold artistry and intricately woven cloth and tapestries of alpaca wool.

By a.d. 300, there were other important Indian communities along the dry Pacific coast and highlands of modern-day Peru, Chile, and Bolivia. For example, south of the Chavín area, the Nazca and Paracas peoples, skilled in weaving and pottery, lived in small coastal towns. In the highlands 150 miles east of Lima, far to the north of modern-day Bolivia, the Huari people built an urban empire of cities with elaborate


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paved plazas and large palaces in the Chavín architectural and decora-tive style. For 500 years, from a.d. 300 to 800, the Huari held sway over an extensive area. These cultures were important in the prehistory of South America, and they doubtless had strong influences on the indig-enous people who lived in the region that today is Bolivia, but the best-defined and most important political center was on Lake Titicaca.

Tiwanakan CivilizationModern archaeologists speculate that Aymara-speaking people may have migrated from central Peru into the Bolivian altiplano (a region that is also often referred to as Alto Peru, or Upper Peru, when discuss-ing this period) and taken up residence on the shores of Lake Titicaca as early as 700 b.c. The evidence is clear that a culture centered on the city of Tiwanaku (also spelled Tiahuanaco), less than 40 miles from Bolivia’s modern capital city of La Paz, emerged between 100 b.c. and a.d. 100 and by 600, a powerful Tiwanakan empire had developed that came to dominate the Bolivian altiplano and to control the coastal set-tlements of the Nazca and Paracas peoples in what is modern-day Peru. The Tiwanakans may be thought of as the ancestors of the modern-day Aymara Indians of the Bolivian and Peruvian highlands who still live near Lake Titicaca and in the neighboring lowland valleys. Researchers believe that the Tiwanakan Empire preceded and even rivaled the more familiar empire of the Inca in many respects.

The Tiwanakan Empire’s armies and engineers conquered and colo-nized huge areas and established an intricate paved road system linking agricultural colonies on the coast to those in the highlands and the tropical valleys and jungles beyond. This empire extended from the border of modern-day Ecuador in the north down the Peruvian and Chilean Pacific coastal lands southward, covering over half of Bolivia, and into the foothills of the Argentine Andes.

The imperial capital city of Tiwanaku probably had a popula-tion of 50,000 people and covered

THE ANCIENT INDIAN PEOPLES

A Tiwanakan pottery jar in the form of a mountain cat, made by the ancestors of the Aymara people (Peter McFarren photo)

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an area of about four square miles. At the height of its development, the city was ruled by a divine emperor-priest who directed the religious rituals and cultural life of the people. With the help of the royal fam-ily, the emperor also controlled secular affairs of state. Similar to their subsequent Incan counterparts, the Tiwanakan rulers lived a luxurious life and maintained the power of their hereditary caste through close intermarriage. The Tiwanakans are also thought to have influenced the cosmological and religious beliefs of other pre-Incan and Incan peoples. The great creator god of the ancient Tiwanakans was Viracocha, or Pachacámac, whose shrine was located near modern-day Lima, in Peru. The Inca incorporated the Tiwanakan sacred shrine and the worship of Pachacámac into their own religion, and the site remains a sacred place for most native Andean religions to this day.

Tiwanakan technology was relatively sophisticated—artisans knew how to alloy copper and tin to create bronze, for example—and the civilization’s complex social and economic organization made it pos-sible for Tiwanakans to build an extensive system of roads and maintain communications over long distances. Their intricate farming system of raised agricultural fields permitted the Tiwanakans to reap great annual harvests, and they stored the surplus in public granaries against lean crop years. According to investigations by U.S. anthropologist Alan Kolata, the Tiwanakan agricultural system was so advanced at its height 1,500 years ago that the plains around the archaeological site of the Pampa Koani valley near Lake Titicaca may have produced enough food for 125,000 people. The same region barely supports its 7,000 desper-ately poor inhabitants today.

Archaeological ruins at the imperial city of Tiwanaku show extensive skill in architecture and knowledge of astronomy. Tiwanaku was laid out in several large plazas with the dominant central plaza paved with imposing stone slabs. The few architectural walls, semisubterranean temples, and gateways that survive today are adorned with Chavín-style figures and carved animals. Most impressive of these is the Puerta del Sol, or the Gate of the Sun, and the rebuilt Temple of Kalasasaya, which in Aymara means “stones standing upright” and refers to its basalt-sandstone monoliths that are astronomically aligned around a ritual platform.

As impressive as the achievements of the Tiwanakan culture were, the empire came to a sudden end around a.d. 1200. The reason for the demise of Tiwanakan power and the dispersal of its people remain mys-teries, but Aymara oral traditions speak of cataclysmic disasters: a great flood, a massive earthquake, internal disintegration and feuding, and


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external conquest. The most probable cause of the empire’s collapse, according to several modern experts, may have been a widespread and prolonged drought.

The Kingdoms of the AymaraBolivian historians believe that the Tiwanakan Empire was succeeded on the Bolivian altiplano by numerous small, regional Indian kingdoms. The people of these kingdoms were the direct ancestors of Bolivia’s Aymara. In modern times, Bolivians use the names Kolla and Kollasuyo to refer in a collective sense to the Aymara-based indigenous culture of the Bolivian altiplano and to all the Aymara kingdoms, respectively. (Kollasuyo means “empire of the Kolla.”) There were specifically, how-ever, 12 major kingdoms or nations, of which the Kolla, who were scattered around the shores of Lake Titicaca, were the largest and most powerful.

The political, economic, and social structures of the Aymara nations, including the Kolla and the Lupaca, were highly structured and rigidly stratified into a dual-layered system. Each Aymara nation or kingdom was stratified into two separate and unequal internal kingdoms—one high and one low—and each had its own king and its own ruling elite.

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The Gate of the Sun at the site of the imperial city of Tiwanaku, near modern-day La Paz. The elaborately carved doorway was cut from a single block of stone. (Peter McFarren photo)

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Two entirely complete political and socioeconomic structures existed stacked one upon the other.

The complex organization of Aymara society was believed to have been derived from the Tiwanakans and later adapted by the Inca. On the political side it included dual sets of powerful central military lead-ers, hereditary regional chieftains (curacas), local ayllu authorities who dealt with the land communes, state religious counselors, and councils of wise elders.

Although at first glance, this dual system seems cumbersome and unnecessarily complex, it served an important function. As has been true throughout Bolivian history, during the period of the Aymara king-doms, the largest number of people lived on the high altiplano plateau, which had only a limited amount of agricultural land. The people of the altiplano had to rely on crops grown in the distant fertile valleys and in farm districts closer to the Pacific coast. When the Aymara kingdoms colonized or conquered regions that could supply food and other neces-sities to the population of the altiplano, they also transplanted their dual system of political and socioeconomic organization. This immediately created parallel functional structures in both the agricultural colony and the altiplano homeland. The system cut across differing ecological regions and climatic zones and allowed the Aymara to exploit the agricultural hinterland. In this way the dominant kingdoms, which were all located in the eastern highlands, benefited from the agricultural bounty of the subordinate kingdoms on both sides of the Andean mountain chain. According to the historian Herbert S. Klein, this integrated system exploited the agricultural potential of differing ecological zones to the fullest and made possible the production and exchange of different crops within the empire. These arrangements between the core society of the highlands and the agricultural colonies relied on an elaborate system of kinship, exchange, and labor obligations (the latter was called the mita system and was adopted by both the Inca and the Spanish).

The Aymara’s dual organizational scheme was also applied on a micro level within the social class structure of the ayllu, the self- governing tribal community and collective landholding system based on kinship. These were divided into upper and lower parts with the nobility asso-ciated with the upper ayllus and the commoners with the lower. The Aymara social order, which also influenced Incan society, rested on the extended family and tribal agricultural cooperatives of the ayllu. Several ayllus formed a federation of ayllus. The primarily agricultural economy was organized around the communal cultivation of the native potato and highland grains.


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Aymara cosmology and religion centered on nature and the sun, moon, and stars. Viracocha, or Pachacámac, was the powerful creator god; Khuno, the dark deity of evil; and Pachamama (Mother Earth), the feminine deity of fertility.

Around a.d. 1460, the aggressive and imperialistic Inca swept down from the north and rapidly conquered the decentralized kingdoms of the Aymara people. The defeated remnants of the dispersed Aymara commu-nities on the Bolivian altiplano were subsumed into the southern region of the Inca Empire. Bolivian historians attribute the disintegration and speedy subjugation of the Aymara kingdoms to internecine feuding and bloody civil wars. In 1470, this fierce love of warfare and independence erupted into a major revolt against their new Inca rulers.

The Empire of the IncaThe empire of the Inca, founded near the sacred city of Cuzco in modern-day Peru at the beginning of the 13th century, ultimately dominated the entire Andean and coastal regions. At its head stood Sapa-Inca (“supreme Inca”), the hereditary emperor who claimed descent from the sun god Inti. Although the term the Inca or Incas is generically used to describe all the Quechua-speaking inhabitants of the vast, multinational Indian empire, the term specifically refers to the ruling caste or the royal princes of the Quechua people, as well as to the supreme emperor, Sapa-Inca.

The culturally unified pan-Andean empire that the Inca created by conquest and colonization was called the Tahuantinsuyo. Bolivian his-torians like to point out that the Inca Empire was the second pan-An-dean empire of its kind—the empire of Tiwanaku came first by several centuries—but the Inca Empire certainly surpassed all others in scale and grandeur. By 1527 at the height of its territorial expansion, the Inca Empire’s boundaries extended 4,000 miles in length, and covered more than 380,000 square miles from northern Ecuador to southern Chile, and probably contained 10 million subjects.

The origin of the Quechua-speaking Inca is the subject of compet-ing legends and theories. Bolivian historians often theorize that the Inca were of Aymara origin. According to this interpretation, the Inca arose from the northern Aymara kingdom of Lupaca (the Lupaca were also known as the Chucuito after the name of their capital) and the specific ayllu, or kinship group, of the Ayares, a people who originally inhabited the region of Puno in Peru and near the Bolivian shores of Lake Titicaca. At some point, the Ayares migrated northward from Lake Titicaca to near Cuzco in Peru.

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Both Bolivian oral traditions and a commentary compiled by the conquest-era Spanish historian Inca Garcilaso de la Vega recount that the movement was ordered by the chieftain of the Ayares, Manco Kapac, and his sister-wife, Mama Ocllo. According to the legendary story, the couple claimed to be children of the sun god, who instructed them to civilize the surrounding backward tribes. They set out from the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca with a golden staff, which guided them even-tually to a mountain near Cuzco in modern-day Peru. There the divine pair established their kingdom.

The Ayares, who were Aymara speakers, intermarried with the more primitive regional Indian communities of the Quechua language family and adopted the Quechua language. Over time, the Cuzco Quechua, whose name means “people from the tropical lands,” flourished and developed into the powerful Indian nation that became known as the Inca. Following this interpretation, the emerging imperial state of the Quechua-speaking Inca was derived from the preceding political and socioeconomic systems of the Aymara and Tiwanakan civilizations.

Inca Sinchi Roca, the successor of Manco Capac, is believed to have divided the empire into four geographical sections that were ruled by viceroys and were internally further divided into provinces and sub-provinces ruled by provincial officials. The subprovinces were made up of several allyus, headed by curacas, who were either elected or the hereditary chiefs of the conquered governments. At the next lower level of organization were the tribes and the villages, which consisted of 100 families, and at the very bottom were groups of 10 families served by a headman. In this manner, the Inca adopted and perfected the admin-istrative system of the Aymara and transformed it into a complex but effective system of imperial control.

The oral traditions and chroniclers do not agree about which of the Incan leaders first began the imperial expansion of the Quechua people of Cuzco. Some accounts say it was Manco Capac himself; others believe that the Inca Empire did not expand appreciably until several generations later under the leadership of the seventh Incan ruler, Viracocha (also spelled Wiracocha), who took the name of the all- powerful deity of the Tiwanakans. Viracocha was indisputably a great conqueror who subdued tribes and kingdoms as far away as modern-day northern Argentina and incorporated them into the empire. His successor, Pachacútec, conquered the Chimú Empire in what is today part of Peru and fostered the development of religious centers and public works, including the magnificent Inca roads and aqueducts. Later, the eleventh Inca, Huayna Capac, extended Incan rule over the


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kingdom of Quito and the tribes of what is today modern Ecuador. The empire achieved its farthest extension during Huayna Capac’s reign.

The Incan economic structure was a rigid pyramid based on the same pattern as the empire’s political organization exploiting the agricultural potential of the empire to its fullest. Land was very precious; it was held in common and could not be sold. The rich natural resources of the gold and silver mines, the forests, and the vast flocks and herds of animals were tightly controlled by the Incan ruling class as state monopolies. The land’s produce and resources were always divided into three parts and dis-tributed among the Inca ruling caste, the priests, and the ayllus. Within the ayllus, land was collectively owned by the entire community as it had been in the Andean world for time out of mind but was distributed for cultivation according to the size and composition of each household in the ayllu. Generally, the land was divided into two-acre plots; one whole plot went to each male member of the family and a half plot to each female member. All members of the community were obligated to cooperatively farm the plots of land belonging to the Inca and royal fam-ily, the priests, and the community’s widows and orphans, but otherwise,

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Inca masons were superb engineers and craftsmen who constructed massive buildings, walls, and waterways out of huge stones that they fit together without mortar or the help of metal tools. (Shutterstock)

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family plots were farmed only by that family. Additionally, there was an involuntary labor system called the mita that forced all able-bodied males to serve the Sapa-Inca. In this way the empire ensured that it had the necessary manpower to supply soldiers for the imperial army and laborers to build and maintain imperial roads and irrigation systems and to work the state mines.

The Incan social system was similarly hierarchical and rigid and served to reinforce the organization of the economy and political life. At the very top of the social pyramid was the supreme emperor (Sapa-Inca) and his royal relatives. Next came the imperial nobility, who served as the principal military, bureaucratic, and religious officers of


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The Great Inca Rulers

Manco Capac: founded the empireSinchi Roca: divided the empire into four regionsMita Capac: subdued the Kolla and other Aymara kingdomsKapac Yupanqui: conquered many tribes of the central Andean valleys

and made teaching the Quechua language obligatoryInca Roca: made Quechua the sole language of the empire and estab-

lished schools for the children of the nobility in CuzcoYuhuar Huácac: weak ruler deposed by his son Ripac, who took the

new name of ViracochaViracocha: extended the empire by far-reaching conquests and built

grand palaces and canalsPachacútec: conquered the Chimú Empire in Peru, founded schools

and religious centers, constructed a system of aqueducts, and ordered the design of a calendar

Inca Yupanqui: extended the empire to the Maule RiverTupac Yupanqui: founded Copacabana, constructed the Temple of the

Island of the Moon, and marched on Quito (Ecuador)Huayna Capac: married the daughter of the ruler of Quito and

ruled over the empire at its greatest extension; divided the empire between his two sons, Huáscar and Atahuallpa

Huáscar: Ruled over the southern part of the empire in Cuzco and began a war with his brother, Atahuallpa.

Atahuallpa: Ruler of Quito, defeated and killed his brother, Huáscar, and was himself captured and killed by the Spanish conqueror, Francisco Pizarro.

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the empire. They were followed by a provincial upper class com-posed of the hereditary chiefs of the conquered tribes and their sons and daughters, who were educated at the royal court in Cuzco. This regional aristocracy was permitted to hold private wealth in the form of jewelry and slaves. One level above the base of the pyramidal class structure was a free but propertyless peasant class, and at the bottom was a slave class mainly made up of captives from enemy tribes and criminals.

A large, powerful imperial army held the empire together militarily and politically and was the means of territorial expansion, a process of conquest and absorption of the conquered into the Inca imperial struc-ture. The basic imperial colonization policy, intended to ensure loyalty to the empire, uprooted conquered peoples and whole communities and resettled them in safe territories that were friendly and loyal to the empire. Only the most trustworthy Quechua colonists were sent to colonize and control the strategically important agricultural zones such as the fertile valleys of Cochabamba and Chuquisaca in Bolivia.

The great Incan rulers unified this pan-Andean society of multiethnic tribes and kingdoms into a formidable imperial state. But Incan political hegemony was not achieved by power alone. These millions of people were joined and integrated culturally as well by one religion, a common body of laws, and the official Quechua language.

The Inca also developed an efficient system of communication that used royal runners (chaski) to carry oral messages and the knotted mes-sage ropes called quipus (adopted from the Aymara) from all corners of the empire to the central government in Cuzco. The messengers trav-eled along two parallel coastal and Andean highways radiating outward from Cuzco and traversing the length of the 4,000-mile empire from north to south. The great Inca Road was a marvel of ingenuity and engi-neering skill. The road, level and paved with stones, was designed for foot travel because the Inca had not discovered the wheel. The road tra-versed fearsome rivers by means of hanging bridges made of the twisted fibers of the maguey plant and plunged down into large underground tunnels and up steep staircases. Historian Victor Von Hagen writes that Sapa-Inca in his palace in Cuzco could dine on fresh fish from the coast carried along the Inca Road over the highest Andes, a distance of 200 miles, in only two days.

Shortly before the coming of the Spanish in the 16th century, the highly developed Inca Empire began to decline. Critical to its demise were the division of the empire and resulting civil war between the brothers and dual rulers Huáscar and Atahuallpa, as well as growing local

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uprisings among distant and partially subdued tribes such as the one in 1470 by the Bolivian Aymara-Kolla, who had retained their Ay mara language and distinct cultural identity despite the repeated waves of Quechua conquest and colonization. When the European adventur-ers arrived in South America early in the 16th century, the vast Inca Empire of thousands of soldiers and millions of inhabitants was easily conquered by a combination of Spanish treachery and advanced military technology. Within a year, the great capital of Cuzco capitulated, and the victorious Spanish marauders regrouped and marched against the recalcitrant Indians of Bolivia’s altiplano.

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2Colonial Bolivia

(1532–1780)

We came here to serve God, but also to get rich.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo (Hamill 1992, 14)

Some of the prophecies of the Indian peoples of the Americas fore-told the arrival of the Spanish, but nothing could have prepared

the native population of Bolivia for the stunning impact of the brutal, avaricious conquerors who came in search of gold, silver, gems, and—as an afterthought—to Christianize native populations in the name of the cross and the Crown. Francisco Pizarro, an illiterate military adven-turer, overnight destroyed the glorious empire of the Inca, and in the following years, Spanish explorers, priests, and royal administrators consolidated a New World colonial empire.

Pizarro’s Conquest of the Inca Empire

…these men were so bold they did not fear dangerous things; they were stuffed into their clothes, which covered them from head to foot; they were white and had beards and a ferocious appearance.

Father Bernabé Cobo, 17th century (1979, 160)

Francisco Pizarro, the illegitimate son of an obscure Spanish officer, fought as a young man in the Indian wars in Central America and later became prosperous. But in his comfortable middle age he became obsessed by reports of a mighty kingdom and legendary riches to the south and launched a late career as an explorer and conqueror. In 1524,

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Pizarro, in league with Diego de Almagro, led a disastrous expedition down the South American coast. On a second voyage, however, Pizarro and his men luckily intercepted a small shipment of gold and silver and other treasure from the northern Incan outpost of Tumbes on the Peruvian coast, and the booty whetted his appetite.

Pizarro, convinced that there were more riches in the interior, sailed to Spain to find men and money for a new expedition. He won the favor and support of King Charles I of Spain, who named Pizarro governor of Peru and hereditary adelantado (military governor) for life. With reinforcements from Pizarro’s hometown of Trujillo, including his three half-brothers, Hernando, Juan, and Gonzalo, Pizarro returned to South America and launched his expedition.

When Pizarro and his small army of experienced and well-equipped conquistadores marched inland from their landing on the Pacific coast, they discovered an Incan empire in the aftermath of a terrible schism. Fortuitously for the Spanish, the discord had decisively damaged the power of the Inca to resist an outside force. The trouble had begun with the death of Huayna Capac, who had been emperor for 34 years. He may have succumbed to the epidemic of European smallpox that swept down the Pacific coast during the 1520s ahead of Pizarro and his men.

On his deathbed, Inca Huayna Capac had divided the empire between two of his sons. Huáscar, the eldest, was to control the southern empire from the traditional capital in Cuzco. Atahuallpa, Huayna Capac’s favorite and the better soldier of the two, was to lead the professional army and rule the recently conquered northern lands of the empire (modern-day Ecuador and Colombia) from the court in Quito. For two


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The Advance Men

Pizarro and other illustrious explorers and soldiers of fortune were granted the title of adelantado (from the Spanish verb adelantar, or

“to advance”). These adelantados were private individuals who preceded or advanced Spanish conquest and rule. The Spanish king extended to private individuals royal grants to explore new territories at their own expense (or sometimes with royal favor) and to found a colony and govern it in the name of the Spanish Crown. Once the New World was settled, the honorific and administrative term was used to designate a colonial governor of a frontier district or province. Pizarro was named adelantado for life before he had even set foot in the heart of the Inca Empire.

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years following their father’s death, the half-brothers maintained a deli-cate political status quo, but eventually Atahuallpa challenged Huáscar’s rule, and a long and ex hausting civil war followed.

The strife and dislocations of the bloody Brothers’ War threw the Inca Empire out of balance. The Inca system was strictly hierarchical and

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COLONIAL BOLIVIA

Francisco Pizarro led an amazingly small number of Spanish soldiers in the stunning conquest of the mighty Inca Empire. (Library of Congress)

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authoritarian; without a clearly designated Sapa-Inca and the official-dom he commanded, the empire, including the army, was paralyzed. Whom were the layers of officials to look to for instruction? Whom were the people to obey? Huáscar or Atahuallpa? Moreover, the civil war drained off manpower into two opposing armies, and as a conse-quence, fields were left unplanted and unharvested.

Eventually, Atahuallpa’s military superiority tipped the balance, and he defeated his half-brother in the Battle of Quipaypampa (Huanuco Pampa), which took place several miles outside Cuzco in 1532. Huás car was captured and held as a prisoner, and thousands of his supporters were slaughtered.

In the climax of this desperate internecine struggle, Pizarro and his avaricious adventurers arrived. Pizarro’s timing could not have been more favorable for quick conquest. Although the Inca Empire was defended by more than 40,000 soldiers, the bitter internal war allowed the meager contingent of 168 Spanish invaders to infiltrate and enslave one of the last great civilizations of the Americas.

Pizarro encountered Atahuallpa’s victorious forces near the city of Cajamarca. The Spanish leader realized the potentially desperate situa-tion he was in, facing a huge army of Indian warriors, so he put in place a plan of savage deceit whose success exceeded what must have been his wildest hopes. He enticed Atahuallpa to a meeting in the town plaza of Cajamarca, and the Sapa-Inca, who apparently felt invincible after his recent victory and unthreatened by these strange outsiders, came with only a small bodyguard, leaving the bulk of his army encamped nearby. Pizarro first sent out a priest to meet Atahuallpa and to offer the emperor conversion on the spot to Christianity. When the Sapa-Inca quite natu-rally refused, Pizarro had all the pretext he needed, and the Spaniards unleashed a vicious, unforgiving ambush. The attack by cannon, harque-bus, crossbow, lance, and sword caught the Inca entirely unprepared, and a slaughter ensued. Several hundred, perhaps more than 1,000, Inca were killed there and then, and Atahuallpa was taken captive without the loss of a single Spanish life. In the space of a few hours, the balance of power shifted completely from what had seemed like a vast and all-powerful Indian civilization to a mere handful of scruffy Spanish soldiers.

For the Inca, this disaster, coming on the heels of the succession crisis and brutal purge of Huáscar’s supporters by the victorious Atahuallpa, destroyed the foundations of the empire. With Atahuallpa in Spanish hands, there was no one to direct the response, no one to give orders to the generals or the legions of imperial officials. The huge Incan armies, which could have crushed the handful of Spaniards at any time, did


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COLONIAL BOLIVIA

nothing. Moreover, the remnants of Huáscar’s loyalists (among them highland Bolivia’s Aymara nations) eyed the Spanish invaders as poten-tial allies in their struggle against Atahuallpa.

Atahuallpa, fearing a renewed threat from his brother more than from his Spanish captors, ordered Huáscar killed and offered to ransom himself with enough gold and silver to fill three sizable rooms. Pizarro promised to return the captive supreme Inca to his northern capital in Quito once the ransom was paid. Soon, an amazing horde began to flow into Cajamarca. While Atahuallpa dickered complaisantly with his cap-tors, his subjects amassed a ransom that may have amounted to nearly 40,000 pounds of gold and silver.

Unfortunately, Atahuallpa had misjudged Pizarro’s intentions, and in the end, Pizarro ordered Atahuallpa’s execution. Since the young Inca had converted to Christianity in the last hours of his life, Atahuallpa was garroted to death rather than burned at the stake as a pagan and heretic. The Sapa-Inca had deeply feared the destruction of his body, a sacrilege in the Andean world that would preclude its mummifica-tion and an assured afterlife. Contemporary chroniclers reported that Atahuallpa accepted his fate with equanimity.

Pizarro moved quickly to begin to consolidate his victory and assert Spanish dominion over the Indian peoples of the Inca Empire. Since there was no clear succession, the Spanish decided to crown puppet

Atahuallpa’s Ransom

Francisco Pizarro extorted from Atahuallpa the most fabulous ransom in history, which was delivered to the Spanish in the form of finely

worked gold and silver. The Spaniards melted down these priceless trea-sures into 13,420 pounds of 22-carat gold and 26,000 pounds of pure sil-ver (46). Each foot soldier in the Spanish expedition received 45 pounds of gold and 90 pounds of silver; a cavalryman received 90 pounds of gold and 180 pounds of silver; an army captain’s share was greater yet. As adelan-tado, Francisco Pizarro received 630 pounds of gold and 1,260 pounds of silver (46). A fifth of the treasure went to the king. The men commanded by Pizarro’s erstwhile colleague Diego de Almagro arrived too late to take part in the massacre at Cajamarca, so their shares were much less, feeding the factionalism that would lead to civil war in later years.

Source: Burkholder, Mark A., and Lymon L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America. 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

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Incan rulers as a means of control. The first was Tupac Huallpa, but he died only a few months later, apparently of poison. Pizarro then appointed Manco Capac II (Manco Inca Yupanqui), a half-brother (or relative) of the former Sapa-Incas, to the throne.

Pizarro and his army had captured Cuzco, brushing aside Atahuallpa’s generals on the way, and stripped the Inca capital of its remaining wealth. To distract the feuding Spanish factions, Pizarro appointed Diego de Almagro to command an expedition into Chile and then him-self headed for the coast. In January 1535, he founded the Ciudad de los Reyes (“city of the kings”), which later became known as Lima, the capital of his Peruvian province.

Both contemporary chroniclers and modern historians marvel at the rapid collapse of the Empire of the Sun, as the Inca called it. How could a few hundred Spaniards defeat an army of tens of thousands and con-trol a population of 10 million natives? The traditional answer is that the Spaniards had superior military technology: steel swords, cannons, matchlock firearms, and horses—unknown and mysterious things that greatly terrified the Inca. The Spanish were also cunning, daring, and greedy; at times they were diplomatic and often extremely lucky. In addition, they expertly exploited the ethnic and tribal differences among the Indians; their military tactics were innovative, and they were able to manipulate circumstances in their favor.

On the other hand, the Inca lacked most of these qualities. Atahuallpa routinely underestimated the Spanish invaders. Indeed, often the strange white men were not even treated as invaders but welcomed with great curiosity and respect. Atahuallpa believed that his superior numbers provided him the luxury to determine when, where, and how he would confront the Spanish threat. He was disastrously wrong.

Conquest of Upper Peru and Founding of Colonial Cities

Finders keepers was not only the Pizarros’ maxim, but the rule of life everywhere in the Indies, repeatedly recognized by the crown itself.

(Lockhart 1972, 180)

In the years immediately following Pizarro’s capture and execution of Atahuallpa, the Spanish conquest of South America—although never seriously in danger—ran over very rough ground, primarily because the


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main actors bickered over the spoils of the Inca Empire and came to hate and despise one another more than they feared the native population. Within a few years, all the Pizarro brothers excepting Hernando and their rival Almagro were dead, either captured by enemies and executed, as happened to Gonzalo Pizarro and Diego Almagro, or assassinated, like the elderly Francisco, who was killed by Almagro’s revengeful mestizo son (who was himself executed for his crime).

The supposed puppet Inca, Manco Capac II, meanwhile, took advan-tage of the discord among the Spanish and escaped their control. He organized the first large-scale Indian resistance to the conquest and was briefly successful, laying siege to both Lima and Cuzco. The Spanish finally paused in their internal strife long enough to defeat Manco Capac II, however, and the Inca withdrew his rebellious forces to the distant, hidden city of Vilcabamba.

During the turmoil of the disputes between the Spanish factions and the revolt of Manco Capac II, the Aymara kingdoms of Bolivia had found themselves divided and forced to choose between Spanish or Incan overlords. While the Lupaca nation aggressively favored Manco Capac II’s uprising, the Kolla failed to support the Inca’s revolt and sided with the Spanish forces. After Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca rebels, the victorious Spaniards took their retribution against all Indians who had supported the Inca revolt. For Kolla loyalty, the Spanish rescued the Kolla from an attack by the remaining Inca-Lupaca rebel armies in the region of Chuquito and Desaguadero. There, the Pizarro forces defeated the very last of the Inca rebel holdouts and were able to promote serious colonization. Upper Peru, which became modern-day Bolivia, had originally been part of Diego de Almagro’s territorial claim but was colonized by Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro. By 1544, the region, which became known as Charcas, had been completely pacified.

In the years 1538 to 1606, the Spanish founded the major cities of colonial Bolivia. The first Spaniards to enter the region had been a con-tingent of Almagro’s forces—570 Spanish and more than 10,000 Indians captained by Juan de Saavedra—that had marched along the shores of Lake Titicaca near Desaguadero en route south to Chile in 1535. Three years later, Gonzalo Pizarro advanced into Upper Peru along Lake Titicaca and moved southward into Charcas, located in the ancient valley of Choquechaca, which belonged to the Charcas people. There, despite the very aggressive resistance by the local Indians, who were subdued only after Hernando Pizarro rushed in urgent reinforcements from Cuzco, Gonzalo established the great colonial city of Chuquisaca, renamed Sucre in 1840. Near Chuquisaca was the reason for the city’s

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founding, the fabulously rich Porco silver mine, which funneled wealth into the coffers of the Pizarros and the Spanish Crown, and drew hordes of fortune hunters to the region.

Initially, Chuquisaca served as the administrative and agricultural supply center for the entire Potosí mining region. But the silver boom was so fantastic that in 1545 the city of Potosí, or the Villa Imperial de Carlos V (imperial city of Charles V), became the second major city to be founded in highland Bolivia near another amazing discovery: the Cerro Rico (rich mount) mine. The unbelievable silver riches of this mine transformed Potosí into the greatest and most important city of the Spanish New World.

The city of Nuestra Señora de La Paz (Bolivia’s current de facto capital, named for Our Lady of Peace) was not founded until 1548 by Viceroy Pedro de la Gasca. At the time, the city served, according to his-torians, primarily as the way station on the route from the silver mines of Potosí to Lima. Bolivian historical sources emphasize that La Paz was also established to exploit the discovery of gold in the Choqueyapu River that runs through the valley.

The concentration of Aymara and Quechua Indian populations and the immense silver and mercury deposits in the province of Potosí made

Founding of Bolivia’s Major Cities

1538 Chuquisaca (also called La Plata or Charcas, later renamed Sucre; the colonial capital and the constitutional capital of modern-day Bolivia)

1545 Potosí (center of the fabulous 16th- to 19th-century silver mining boom)

1548 La Paz (originally a way station, the present-day political and de facto capital)

1561 Santa Cruz de la Sierra (currently the second-largest city; center of the sugar, cotton, and oil booms of the 20th century)

1571 Cochabamba (center of colonial wheat and corn production; presently the third-largest city)

1574 Tarija (frontier city near prosperous haciendas in the 19th century)1606 Oruro (center of 18th-century silver and 19th- and 20th-century

tin mining booms)

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the central altiplano and southern valleys the natural site of Spanish colonial rule in Bolivia. Silver wealth, of vital and strategic importance to Spain, assured that distant Bolivia would not become an insignificant and isolated backwater of the empire. In 1558–59 the semiautonomous Audiencia of Charcas (Upper Peru) was established with the city of Chuquisaca serving as the region’s judicial and administrative seat.

Because highland Bolivia was accessible from the coast only by tra-versing steep Andean passes and roads, the Spanish conquerors also approached Bolivia from the eastern and southeastern lowlands. These pampas and wetland regions were inhabited by tropical forest Indians of the Tupi-Guaraní linguistic family and other warlike tribes. On the northeastern savannas and tropical forests of Moxos, the city of Trinidad was founded in 1556 by Captains Tristán de Tejada and Juan de Salinas. Despite fierce Indian resistance, in 1561 the Spanish explorer Nuflo de Chávez proceeded westward from Asunción, Paraguay, and discovered and established the subtropical, lowland city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Territorial rivalries between the Paraguayan and Peruvian explorers loyal to Spain, as well as encroachments by aggressive Portuguese adventurers from Brazil, occurred over the rich Bolivian spoils. These were partially resolved by the Spanish Crown and the new colonial governing structure. In 1776, the Audiencia of Charcas was joined to the newly established Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

City of Silver and Silver Mining

The motor of this capitalism was mining, carried on first in the footsteps of the Indians, later in deep deposits discovered by Spanish prospectors.

(Wolf 1959, 176)

Mining dominated the colonial economy of Charcas (Upper Peru, or mod-ern-day Bolivia) from the 16th to the 18th centuries, making Potosí, the fabled City of Silver, into the wealthiest and most populated in the New World. In 1650, at the zenith of silver production, Potosí boasted 160,000 inhabitants (five times its current population). Major silver production occurred during the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries, with the first veins producing unprecedented quantities of virtually pure silver.

During the first two decades of spectacular silver exploitation, from 1545 to 1565, rich silver ore could easily be mined from the surface

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A view of Cerro Rico, the enormously rich mountain of silver, as seen from the streets of Potosí (Courtesy of Guillermo Delgado-P)

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of the famous Cerro Rico. But by 1560 production began to falter and mining was in full crisis. One problem was a severe shortage of labor-ers to work the mines; a second was the depletion of the almost pure surface deposits. With lower-content less-accessible ore, the process of extraction became more complex and costly in labor and capital. For a time production increased with the introduction of new mining and refinement technologies such as the mercury amalgam process suit-able for high altitudes and hydraulic power used to sink deeper shafts and create large refining centers. But the silver revival would have been impossible without a large and steady labor supply. To this end, the Spanish colonial viceroy Francisco de Toledo reintroduced a draft Indian labor system adapted from the Incan mita system, thereby ensur-ing practically free unskilled labor to the mine and mill owners. Other changes included a new mining code, a rationalized taxation structure, royal control of silver production, and a royal mint in Potosí.

According to historians Herbert S. Klein and Jeffrey Cole, these devel-opments dramatically reordered the mining economy and the social and economic life of the Indians. The mercury amalgam process was especially significant because it broke indigenous control over refining, which the Indians had dominated previously. Fifteen thousand small open-hearth smelters (known as guayra, or “wind ovens”) used by the Indians were replaced by several hundred large Spanish refineries driven by hydropower. Viceroy Toledo also created a royal monopoly of mercury with the Huancavelica mine in Peru, which became the exclu-sive supplier. By controlling this necessary input the Crown could reduce tax evasion and contraband and monitor fairly accurately the actual production of silver ore by the mill and mine owners.

Further, all ore had to be smelted into bars and bullion in the royal mint, where taxes and the royal fifth of all production could be extracted directly and most efficiently. The mining code was also important to the preservation of order and rational operation of the industry. With more than 600 individually owned mines in Potosí, all representing different shafts, elaborate rules of ownership were essential. As a result of these innovations, silver production revived and continued to the end of the 17th century.

In the 18th century, even as silver extraction was declining, the magnificent colonial city of Potosí flourished. Its impressive churches, architecture, and works of art were produced in this golden century. Unfortunately, when the great silver era finally ended by the early 19th century, Potosí lapsed into penury and sleepy solitude. During the independence wars between 1810 and 1825, the royal treasury in

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Potosí remained depleted. Briefly, further improvements in extraction technologies and the discovery of new mines permitted the last resur-gence of silver production at the end of the 19th century, which served to bankroll the construction of the first Bolivian railroad.

Colonial Agriculture

These Spanish enterprises—mining, agriculture, stock-raising, manufacture—inevitably changed the face of the land and the relation of men to the land they inhabited.

(Wolf 1959, 179)

The indigenous populations under Spanish rule struggled to cope with widespread deprivation and social inequality, although some colonial historians believe that life in Upper Peru did not change fundamentally for the Indians, who were now subject to Spanish, rather than Inca, overlords. Even though hardships were the common lot of the poor-


Cultivating meager crops and raising cattle on the arid Altiplano have not changed significantly since colonial times. (Photo © Elayne Zorn, 2002)

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est classes under both systems, other historians have emphasized the exploitative nature of Spanish rule. In particular, two socioeconomic institutions have been singled out for censure: the Spanish colonial ver-sion of the mita and the encomienda system.

The mita originated under the ancient Aymara civilization and was later reinstituted by the Inca. Both cultures used the mita to provide compulsory labor by Indian vassals to the imperial elite. Reintroduced yet again under Spanish rule by Francisco de Toledo, viceroy of Lima, in the 1570s, the mita assured an abundant supply of free labor for state and private enterprises in such activities as agricultural production and especially silver mining. The historian Jeffrey Cole believes that Toledo expected the mita system to be only temporary and had intended to create sufficient monetary incentives to renew the voluntary labor pool in Potosí, which had become depleted because of declining profits and increasing hardships for the miners. But several decades after its implementation by the Spaniards, the mita had degenerated into a harsh and racist peonage system that was finally abolished by Simón Bolívar in 1825.

Back in 1503, the Spanish Crown had also adopted a legal device known as the encomienda, which assigned the legal rights over Indians in the Spanish colonies of the Americas to designated Spanish explorers and conquerors. A grant served as both a reward and an obligation to the recip-ient: The encomendero, as the “one who is entrusted,” was charged with supervising the physical and spiritual well-being of the Indians; in return, he benefited from the free labor and the communal lands of the Indians in his trust. The encomienda system was initially conceived as a humane reform of the repartimiento (from the Spanish verb repartir, or “to divide up”) under which the Spanish conquerors and colonists had brutally seized and enslaved the native peoples and appropriated their communal lands. (Often encomienda and repartimiento are used interchangeably, with the latter simply meaning “an allotment of land and labor.”)

The encomienda system deteriorated, however, and instead of civi-lizing the indigenous peoples, the encomenderos became their feudal overlords, exploiting their labor and expropriating their lands and mines. Abuses of the encomienda paved the way for the hacienda land-holding system that has impeded Latin American economic and social development in many countries to the present day. The Spanish Crown attempted to abolish the repressive encomienda system in the 16th and 17th centuries and finally succeeded near the end of the 18th century, on the eve of the national independence revolutions.

Under colonial rule, both the encomienda and the mita served several functions. As an institution the encomienda served to consolidate the

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conquest by granting to Spanish military governors new territories to administer. The Spanish encomendero (later the hacendado, or hacienda owner) in what would become Bolivia was entrusted to oversee a spe-cific Indian population within an ayllu. Aside from free Indian labor, the Spanish overlord enjoyed other benefit such as having the right to tax all male Indians, although the Spanish Crown attempted to with-draw these rights in the New Laws of 1542 and later reforms. Historian Rafael Varón Gabai scrupulously catalogued the extensive properties and resources that were transferred to the Pizarro family and their men who conquered and settled Lower and Upper Peru; this research con-firmed that the great conquests were about capitalism and commercial gain. Human labor and land were as much commodities as silver and gold.

The Spanish Crown created two types of compulsory laborers: the yanaconas and the mitayos. The yanaconas were exempted from mita service and were basically serfs or slaves permanently bound to large private estates where they worked the fields or served in the household of the landowner. The mitayos were Indians organized under the mita to provide low-paid or unpaid labor for a percentage of the year, working in the mines. The mita combined the Incan system of tribute labor with the Iberian medieval feudal system of obligatory labor and adapted it to the capitalistic needs of the New World entrepreneurs, particularly the mining industrialists.

The Incan mita had been limited to the period between the harvesting and the planting of crops. Initially the Spanish mita was also limited to Indians between 18 and 60 years old to work without pay in the fields or the mines three months of every year. Over time the mitayos were abused and treated as slaves year-round. Indians, who were the unskilled ore carriers, perished by the hundreds of thousands in the silver mines. The Bolivian historian Fellmann Velarde states that in the mines at Potosí in any one year the death toll ranged from 2,500 to 12,000 men. The high cost of food in Potosi, which had to be brought in from the distant valleys of Cochabamba, meant that mitayos were often chronically underfed and so desperate for food that they were reduced to eating their own Ilamas. Many Indians fled Potosí to unde-veloped areas or to the agricultural estates to evade the onerous mita service.

The encomienda reinforced this harsh system of colonial exploita-tion. Despite attempted reforms by the Spanish Crown, grants intended for one or perhaps two generations at most had been consolidated by the 18th century into the permanent hereditary property rights of the


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colonial aristocracy. Most Indians were either outright feudal serfs or marginal sharecroppers of tiny subsistence plots rented for a portion of their harvest and personal service obligations to the wealthy hacendado and his family. After independence, the hacienda landowning structure created and perpetuated the feudal or semifeudal society in which the hacendado was the autocratic lord of the manor who exercised ultimate political, social, and economic control over everything and everyone on his lands. In Bolivia, these conditions remained basically unchanged until the 1952 revolution.

Spain’s Administrative BureaucracyIn Spain, royal authority was absolute and this exclusive control was replicated as much as possible in the New World. In 1524, King Charles I established the Council of the Indies as Spain’s chief agency to gov-ern the New World. The members of the council were nobles from wealthy families and former colonial officials. Its staff was extensive and included accountants, solicitors, mapmakers, and historians. The council resided at court, met in secret, and promulgated the king’s colonial policy. It submitted the list of nominees for important politi-cal positions for the king’s approval and prepared the voluminous laws and decrees governing the colonies. Additionally, the council served as a final appeals court, supervised all colonial officials, and maintained detailed records and reports of their activities.

The Spanish Crown governed the distant New World colonies through an elaborate bureaucracy composed at its apex of viceroyalties and audiencias (royal courts). Although all power, favor, and legality emanated from the king, the sovereign granted sweeping powers to the early explorers and conquerors from Columbus to Pizarro. Most of these adelantados only held power as such for a few years, although Pizarro was named adelantado for life. Usually, the king, in the mean-time, appointed a governor whose office could be terminated by the Crown. As these adelantados and governors became too powerful and threatened the prerogatives of the Crown and the court, their privileges were easily curtailed or revoked and central authority reasserted.

In the case of Upper and Lower Peru, with the outbreak of the conflict between the Pizarros and Almagro, the king sent the region’s first viceroy, Blasco Núñez Vela, from Spain to pacify and govern the Vice royalty of Peru from the seat in Lima. A viceroy was the highest personal representative of the king with extensive power and respon-sibility; a good viceroy, according to Antonio de Mendoza, the first

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viceroy of New Spain in Mexico, was expected “to do little and to do that slowly.” With absolute power and so far from Spain, only the most trusted and loyal of individuals were chosen by the king as his viceroys. At first, the term of office was three years; later it was changed to five. The viceroy’s salary was extremely generous, providing him a regal lifestyle in the colony. His duties encompassed administration, colonization, law enforcement, tax collection, and trade expansion; he was commander in chief. The Viceroyalty of Peru was more prestigious and extensive than that of Mexico and incorporated all of the territories colonized by Spain in South America. By 1600, the Viceroyalty of Peru included six audiencias in Lima, Panama, Bogotá (or Santa Fe), Charcas, Quito, and Santiago de Chile.

An audiencia was a vital administrative institution of Spanish colonial rule, second only to the viceroyalty. In addition to being the highest court of appeal, it served as the center for all executive, administrative, and judicial action in the colony. Often the audien-cia rivaled the power and influence of the viceroy, and it acquired, according to historian Charles Arnade, political, economic, legisla-tive, ecclesiastic, and military functions. Further, the Laws of the Indies stipulated that the audiencia review the viceroys; thus, the viceroyalty and audiencia acted as a reciprocal checks-and-balance system. In 1551, the Council of the Indies advised the Crown to create an audiencia in Charcas and in 1559 a royal decree establish-ing the Audiencia of Charcas was issued. At the same time the new administrative center of Upper Peru was placed on an equal status with the Viceroyalty of Lima.

The Audiencia of Charcas began to exercise its jurisdiction in 1561 over a radius of 320 miles outward from its seat in the city of Chuquisaca. Although limited at first, the audiencia for Charcas expanded to include present-day Bolivia and, at its height, territories in Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. The extensive boundaries of the audiencia were constantly changing, sowing confu-sion and fractious postindependence and contemporary territorial disputes between Bolivia and neighboring South American countries. Nonetheless, Arnade describes the judge of the Charcas audiencia as virtual sovereign of the Spanish colony who arrogantly scoffed at the orders of his often distant rival, the viceroy in Lima.

After extensive administrative reorganization in the 18th century, the Audiencia of Charcas was placed under the newly established Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires in 1776. The reorganization was intended to dilute the political autonomy of the very independent highland audiencia. In the

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end, the viceroy in Buenos Aires was as distant from Chuquisaca as Lima had been, and so the power of the Audiencia of Charcas was not effec-tively diminished. When two more audiencias were created, in Buenos Aires and Cuzco, however, the territory and power of the Audiencia of Charcas was effectively reduced. Moreover, the system of eight intendan-cies established in 1782 to centralize and reinforce weakening Spanish control in the vast territory of the audiencia successfully limited the audi-encia’s sway. Each intendancy was headed by an intendant, who reported directly to the viceroy in Buenos Aires. As a result, most political and administrative functions were performed by the intendancies, limiting the influence of the audiencia as it served primarily as a court of appeal.

Despite the elaborate bureaucracy established by the Spanish monarchs to govern the New World under a regime of law, the rigid centralization and uniformity often defied the spirit and intentions of the laws. Indeed with over 6,000 laws on the books by 1681, confusion as well as wide-spread disregard and corruption were critical problems for Spanish rule.

Decline and Revolt of the Indian PopulationThe Spanish brought with them many European diseases—smallpox, measles, influenza, and tuberculosis—unknown in the New World. These killed more than 15 percent of the indigenous highland popula-tion in the first 50 years of the colony. More epidemics followed roughly 20-year cycles well into the 17th century. The harsh and hated Potosí mita also killed thousands of Indians. The system brought about the decline of the indigenous population by destroying their communities and way of life, forcing many to choose among evils: migration, servi-tude on the haciendas, or the mita.

The colonial reorganization of their traditional ayllus and many scat-tered, small villages into reducciones (“reductions,” or the regrouping and resettlement of dispersed Indian populations into larger, centralized villages) often forced ethnically distinct Indian communities to func-tion as one. This administrative system was created by the Spanish to facilitate their exploitation of Indian labor. The reducciones destroyed the cohesiveness of original communities and led to conflict among Indians and widespread Indian flight and migration.

Similarly, the encomienda system operated to extract surplus from the indigenous population in the form of taxes, silver, forced sale of imported Spanish goods, or their labor. And the encomendero grants became effi-cient ways to appropriate more and more indigenous lands. Routinely, Indians were taxed far and above what the royal laws allowed. This heavy


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taxation coincided with major subsistence crises, especially in the fertile valleys of Cochabamba in the 1700s. One of these crises occurred between 1782 and 1785 during the great Indian rebellions of Upper Peru.

All these administrative and socioeconomic changes contributed to the social breakdown and demographic collapse of the native popula-tion, and the vicious circle of exploitation continued. As the popula-tion declined, Indians and their labor came into shorter supply, and it became necessary to tax and work even more the dwindling number of Indians. According to Herbert S. Klein, reforms of the tax tribute structure in the 1700s and a gradual increase in the rural population alleviated indigenous hardships somewhat for a time.

The extensive interbreeding among Spaniards, Indians, and black African slaves also represented an assault against the indigenous popu-lation, creating the new racial class of the mestizo. In Bolivia, mestizos came to be known as cholos.

The Catholic Church played its role in the decline of the Indian population as well. The Crown and its Spanish administrators forcefully promoted Catholicism in Upper Peru. The conquest had brought a flood of secular clergy and missionary priests from the major religious orders—the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Augustinians, and the Jesuits. In 1552, the bishopric of Chuquisaca was created, giving colonial Bolivia its first independent ecclesiastical authority, and in 1605, a second bish-opric of La Paz was established. In 1561, the church in Upper Peru initi-ated aggressive evangelization, translating the catechism into Quechua and later into Aymara. The church authorities worked with the village chiefs to establish churches in villages and Christian religious shrines and festivals across the altiplano. The first was the shrine of the Virgin of Copacabana, still revered today. Rapidly the blending of Christianity and preconquest religions formed a unique syncretic religion that infiltrated into indigenous culture and native spirituality.

Another consequence of Spanish colonial misgovernment was Indian unrest and numerous local revolts. More threatening was the series of Indian uprisings that erupted in the late 18th century as part of the Tupac Amarú rebellion. This bloody indigenous uprising attempted to reestablish the glory and independence of the Inca Empire and to drive the hated Spaniards and their allies definitively from the highlands.

Remembered in the history books as the “Great Rebellion,” these massive and well-orchestrated revolts by the native people of the alti-plano initiated a terrible race war that rocked the foundations of the colonial world. While this awesome multiclass and multicaste move-ment extending from southern Ecuador into northern Argentina

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appeared to leave no lasting impact, it actually served as harbinger of the South American independence revolts. By the end of the 18th century the rigid Spanish social and juridical system that favored the peninsular-born and the revolutionary ideas of the French Enlightenment had heightened the desire of Bolivia’s homegrown aristocracy for auton-omous rule.


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3Independence Wars and

the New Nation (1780–1839)

Success will crown our efforts, because the destiny of America has been irrevocably decided.

Simón Bolívar, “The Jamaica Letter,” September 6, 1815 (Lynch 1994, 308)

The Spanish colonial territory that became the Republic of Bolivia was a land of revolution from the beginning. Both the indigenous

peoples and the Spanish colonists burned with a zeal for autonomy. When Napoléon Bonaparte’s invading armies in faraway Europe crushed Spanish continental and imperial ambitions, bringing to a conclusive end Spain’s great power status in 1807, the resulting confusion over who ruled Spain, coupled with corruption and misguided reforms in the colonies, spawned independence rebellions throughout the Spanish New World. Upper Peru transformed itself into the Republic of Bolivia, even though it was one of the last colonies to consolidate independence. The birth of Bolivia in 1825 brought more turmoil as the fledgling nation struggled to preserve its political existence from the expansionist schemes of its neighbors and the grand designs of its liberators.

The Native Seeds of Revolution

Popular rebellion anticipated the revolutions for independence in many parts of Spanish America, and continued throughout the revolutionary period and beyond.

(Lynch 1994, 21)

Decades before the first independence movements in South America, an escalating wave of Indian uprisings engulfed the central and southern

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Andes. These indigenous rebellions were unequaled elsewhere in the New World and precipitated a major crisis of colonial rule. Incited by Spain’s increasingly restrictive bureaucratic and economic policies, the Indian populations embraced a truly revolutionary path.

The first outbreak of rebellion in Upper Peru was in the city of Cochabamba in 1730, followed by a revolt in Oruro in 1739. In vary-ing degrees these early revolts involved shared grievances and tentative multiclass and multiethnic alliances of Indians, mestizos, and Creoles (whites born in South America) against increased Spanish taxation and trade restrictions. The especially important radical millenarian manifesto of the Oruro insurgents anticipated and perhaps inspired the widespread Indian revolts in Peru-Bolivia more than 40 years afterward.

The first of the later revolts broke out in Cuzco, Peru, in 1780. It was led by José Gabriel Condorcanqui, better remembered as Tupac Amaru II, who claimed lineal descent from the Inca Tupac Amaru. Condorcanqui had been granted the title of marquis by the royal audi-encia and was a leading curaca (local chief) in Cuzco. Moreover, he was an educated member of the Indian nobility, who read Latin and Spanish but not Quechua. He had served as a royal Indian agent and had taken his grievances against the colonial mita system to the royal court in Spain for adjudication. When his legal attempts to abolish the mita failed, he organized an Indian army and pronounced himself emperor of Peru.

Tupac Amaru and his supporters seized most of the province of Cuzco and laid siege to its capital from November 1780 to March 1781. The Spanish colonial officials of the Audiencia of Charcas immediately organized a large army and sent it against the Indian rebels. The colo-nial army defeated and captured Tupac Amaru, and the government brought his rebellion to an end by having him drawn and quartered in a public execution.

Meanwhile, the second phase of the Great Rebellion had already begun with a revolt near Potosí in January 1781, by Tomás Catari, a curaca of Upper Peru who had been denied his office. In March, Andrés Tupac Amaru, a nephew of Tupac Amaru II, led an uprising that engulfed the entire area along the eastern shores of Lake Titicaca. In August, Andrés Tupac Amaru captured the provincial capital of Sorata and killed all the Spanish defenders. He then marched on the regional capital of La Paz, where he joined the local leader Julián Apaza, who had taken the name of Tupac Catari. Together, they laid siege to La Paz and fought pitched battles across the altiplano that pitted tens of thou-sands of Indian rebels against Spanish colonial troops. The rebels were


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ultimately defeated, however, when colonial officials in Buenos Aires sent an army of 15,000 troops northward to aid the government of Upper Peru. Tupac Catari and Andrés Tupac Amaru, as well as Tomás Catari and other rebel leaders, were ultimately captured and executed.

These Andean revolts had important elements in common that dis-tinguished them from typical Indian rebellions elsewhere in Spanish America. First, the Bolivian-Peruvian revolts were essentially utopian and nativist. Like the earlier Oruro insurgents, the Indian rebels of the 1780s fought to restore the Inca monarchy and a pre-Spanish social order. Second, they also fought to abolish the mita labor system and the abuses of the district officials. Third, unlike earlier, more general rebel movements, which represented the interests of mestizos and whites as well as Indians, the Amarist and Catarist agendas centered on the full restoration of rights and power for the indigenous peoples of Bolivia and Peru and were inspired by pan-Andean nationalism.

Millenarianism also helps explain the powerful appeal of Tupac Catari’s insurgency. Historian Nicholas Robins writes that Catari’s charismatic leadership was infused with a millenarianistic outlook that predicted the triumphal return of the Inca and the establishment of a divinely ordained new order. In this golden age, indigenous peoples

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A modern-day Indian woman weaver near Lake Titicaca, working on an ancient style of hand loom (UN photo by John Isaac)

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would be liberated once and for all from white culture and oppression. Although Catari at first distinguished between “good” Creoles and “bad,” in the end, he declared that there would be no coexistence with the whites or their culture. With the reestablishment of native rule, white culture and all non-Indians in the region would be exterminated.

Catari was, nevertheless, inconsistent, even bizarre, in his approach to Spanish culture. On the one hand, he ordered his followers to speak only Aymara and avoid Spanish dress. Violators of these strictures were executed. On the other hand, Catari himself often wore Spanish-style clothes, alternating between a black velvet shirt and Inca noble dress. He also remained ambivalent about Catholicism. He mistreated and persecuted priests, yet he celebrated mass daily and claimed divine rev-elations and special powers from the Christian god. These supernatural powers included the alleged ability to control the elements and bring


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Who was Tupac Catari?

Tupac Catari was an Aymara Indian of humble origins. He was born Julián Apaza in the town of Ayoayo in the Bolivian province

of Sicasica around 1750. Orphaned at a young age, he was raised by a Catholic official in his hometown. Tupac Catari spoke only Aymara and remained illiterate all of his life. He labored as a sugar mill worker, a miner, a baker, and an itinerant trader of coca leaf and textiles, traveling extensively between highland La Paz and the tropical valleys. Very little else is known about his life before 1781, when he assumed the name of Tupac Catari in honor of Tupac Amaru and Tomás Catari and emerged as a charismatic revolutionary leader.

In January and February 1781, he raised an indigenous army in the provinces of Sicasica and Pacajes, and in March he began the protracted siege of the city of La Paz. Despite many fierce assaults, the Indian armies never took the city. Nevertheless more than 10,000 inhabitants, or a third of the city’s population, died, largely of disease and starvation. After consuming all the horses, donkeys, dogs, and cats in the encircled city, the hunger-crazed residents were reduced to eating leather goods and trunks to survive. At the height of his insurgency, Tupac Catari commanded an army of 40,000 Indians from more than a half-dozen provinces of Upper Peru. In November 1781, he was captured and sub-sequently drawn and quartered.

Source: Robins, Nicholas A. El mesianismo y la semiótica indígena en el Alto Peru: La gran rebelion de 1780–1781 (La Paz: Hisbol, 1998), pp. 128–139.

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to life Indian ancestors previously killed in battle. María Eugenia del Valle de Siles, a noted Bolivian colonial historian, referred to this assimilation of Spanish elements as the “cultural mestization” of the Catari rebels.

The Catarist and other indig-enous revolts, even the more con-servative and reformist ones, were clearly dangerous to the white Creole class of Upper Peru. The Creoles themselves had also begun to differentiate their interests from those of the Spanish motherland, but although they also protested against the exacting fiscal and ad ministrative policies of the Spanish Bourbon monarchy, in the end the Creoles could not make common cause with the indigenous rebels. The radical socioeconomic and nativ-ist goals of the Indian revolutionaries promised the destruction of the Creole class and race. Gente decente (literally, “decent folk”) of the white, educated, and propertied classes of Upper Peru were also racists. For these reasons, a united anti-Spanish revolutionary front for indepen-dence never emerged in Upper Peru. This lack of social cohesion—and an absence of political cohesion as well—largely doomed the earliest independence uprisings in the Audiencia of Charcas.

The 1809 Revolts

Patriots, I may die, but the torch of liberty that I have left burn-ing can never be extinguished.

Pedro Domingo Murillo (Ayala 1980, 71)

In 1809, Charcas exploded again when an insurrection broke out in Chuquisaca, followed by a revolt in La Paz. In standard textbooks, the Creole rebel Pedro Domingo Murillo is celebrated as the leader of the La Paz uprising. Charles Arnade’s careful research, however, indicates that the priest José Antonio Medina was the real mastermind behind the

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A Bolivian woman in traditional dress, including an elaborate hat (Kathy S. Leonard photo)

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La Paz revolt. Another indispensable figure was Mariano Michel, a free-thinking graduate of the University of San Francisco Xavier in Chuquisaca and the most radical member of the revolutionary cell there. Michel was appointed the secret delegate to La Paz, where he was to incite revolution. Arnade describes Michel as rebellious but “not an advocate of complicated political theories,” and endowed with “the gift of stirring the masses” (1970, 26).

The La Paz uprising was the product of a complex situation. With the Napoleonic invasion of Spain and the forcible deposition of the Spanish king Charles IV in favor of his son, Ferdinand VII, going on across the Atlantic, a local power struggle broke out in Upper Peru. Key political and ideological forces divided into opposing factions: the radicals, the royalist-absolutists, and the loyalists. The radicals favored independence; the royalist-absolutists remained true to the imprisoned King Charles IV and absolutist government; and the loyalists supported the integrity of the empire and Spanish imperial rule by whoever was the rightful successor of the Bourbon monarchy.

The radicals were made up of the law students, graduates, and legal scholars and law professors of the Universidad Pontífica y Real de San Francisco Xavier in Chuquisaca, the seat of the audiencia. Philosophical debates and satiric political pamphlets against Spanish rule proliferated, and Enlightenment-inspired liberal treatises circulated widely in this closed intellectual environment. Although these freethinkers of the gen-eration of 1809 were influenced by the liberal and democratic thought in France and the United States, their radicalism was primarily rooted in Roman Catholicism and the politically explosive philosophy of Francisco Suárez and Saint Thomas Aquinas. By supporting papal supremacy over the ruler, both philosophers justified resistance to a bad ruler and pro-vided moral grounds for revolutionary action against tyranny.

The radicals, however, were the minority in Upper Peru. The major-ity of the Creoles and common people loved the Spanish king and sol-idly supported Bourbon rule. Thus, when news arrived in 1808 of the formation of a popular junta in Seville against the French usurpation of the throne and occupation of Madrid, the bulk of the population in Upper Peru responded conservatively. The Seville junta claimed to rule in the name of Ferdinand VII and sent José Manuel de Goyeneche to the Viceroyalty of Rió de la Plata to secure the allegiance of the colonials to their authority.

In the Audiencia of Charcas the reaction of the authorities was con-fused and divided. The three offices that represented the highest ech-elon of Spanish authority—the judges and the president of the audiencia


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and the archbishop—responded quite differently. The esteemed judges of the audiencia, who could only be Spanish-born nobility—a source of great resentment to the ambitious native elite—assumed a highly con-servative posture. Representing the royalist-absolutist faction, they were suspicious of the unsubstantiated claims of Seville and ideologically opposed to a governing authority founded upon popular revolution. They insisted on a written order from the king or the Council of the Indies, an impossible demand since the king was imprisoned and the council was controlled by the Napoleonic usurpers.

Meanwhile, the president of the audiencia, Ramón García León de Pizarro, and the archbishop, Benito María de Moxó y Francolí, supported allegiance to the junta in Seville and enthusiastically welcomed its rep-resentative in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, Goyeneche. As loyalists, they viewed their response as the only patriotic action that could protect

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The Church Fathers, Machiavelli, and Revolution

One of the most studied philosophers at the university in Chuquisaca was the church father Thomas Aquinas. Students

could recite whole tracts of the Summa Theologica from memory. Aquinas defended good government and full civic participation, and he believed if a ruler ceased to govern for the common good and his rule degenerated into tyranny, citizens had the right to depose the tyrant and establish a just government.

Similarly, the Jesuit theologian Francisco Suárez weighed in on the great controversies between church and state and “concluded that gov-ernment was to serve the physical needs of men. Should a ruler forget this basic responsibility it was within the rights of the people to replace him with one who would not ignore his duty” (7). Thus two celebrated Catholic writers and thinkers promoted the right to revolution.

The great Italian philosopher and strategist Niccolò Machiavelli rounded out the revolutionary education of the Upper Peruvian intel-lectuals. From Machiavelli they learned the importance of deception and patience in statecraft—that is, the ends justify the means. And from their legal studies they developed the syllogistic reasoning that refashioned these philosophies into the radical agenda for self-rule.

Source: Arnade, Charles W. The Emergence of the Republic of Bolivia (New York: Russell & Russell, 1970).

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the Spanish Empire from certain disintegration. The archbishop, more-over, used his position (even threatening excommunication) and great personal zeal for the beloved motherland to mobilize public opinion in Upper Peru behind allegiance to the junta of Seville. His actions brought him into head-on conflict with the autocratic judges.

Ironically, both the narrow-mindedness of the audiencia judges and the emotional patriotism of the president and archbishop played into the hands of the radicals. The radicals recognized that it was in their immediate interest to support the archconservative judges of the audien-cia: Favoring the pro-Seville forces would ensure maintaining the unity of the empire; support for the audiencia, however, would achieve a tem-porary quasi-independence until Upper Peru could completely separate from Spain. According to Charles Arnade, the radical law professors of Upper Peru reasoned that “Chuquisaca, the intellectual center of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, would lead the way to independence” (1970, 15).

On November 11, 1808, José Manuel de Goyeneche, representative of the junta of Seville in Río de la Plata, arrived in Chuquisaca from Buenos Aires. The shrewd Goyeneche quickly sized up the bitter fac-tionalism within the Audiencia of Charcas. When the judges were finally willing to receive him, he presented royal letters from Carlota Joaquina of Bourbon, who was the daughter of the dethroned Spanish king, sis-ter of the king’s legal heir, and also the princess-regent of Portugal and ruler of Brazil. Carlota claimed the Spanish colonies in the name of the royal family of Spain. The letters threw the audiencia into heightened confusion. In effect, Carlota represented the claim of Portugal, a bitter colonial rival of Spain.

The president and archbishop naively endorsed Carlota’s claim. This act allowed the radicals to accuse the loyalists of treason because they urged submission to a foreign power and rival of Spain. An elaborate campaign of subversion, engineered by the radical conspirators, soon undermined the dwindling support for the loyalists. On May 25, 1809, the radicals; the executives of the audiencia; the cabildo, or town coun-cil; and members of the university deposed the president and began an open insurrection. By the light of that evening’s full moon, an uncon-trolled mob joined them and marched toward the president’s house, shouting, “Viva Fernando!” The revolution engulfed Chuquisaca. Carlota’s letters had accelerated events and precipitated the War of Independence in Charcas.

In the name of King Ferdinand VII of Spain, the Audiencia of Charcas assumed all power at four o’clock in the morning on May 26, 1809.


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Furthermore, the audiencia declared independence from the Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires (which had supported the junta of Seville and Carlota) and the illegitimate authorities in the Iberian homeland. The briefly successful revolution in Charcas had been effected by no more than 50 people. The three most important figures were Jaime Zudañez, a lawyer for the audiencia; Manuel, his brother and an office holder in the town council and university; and Bernardo Monteagudo, another lawyer with the audiencia and an influential member of the university.

The audiencia quickly sent delegates to the larger cities of Charcas. Along with the official mission, the delegates carried secret directives from the revolutionaries to bring others into the rebellion. Mariano Michel, the delegate to La Paz, was instrumental in the celebrated revolt there. Officially, he was instructed to inform the intendant of La Paz to arrest anyone supporting Carlota’s claims; secretly, he was to engi-neer the arrest of the intendant and the takeover by the cabildo. The intendant was deposed with the assistance of José Antonio Medina, the parish priest of Sicasica, near La Paz, and a graduate of San Francisco University and an extreme radical of the generation of 1809.

The revolutionaries, however, did not stop there. Patriots of La Paz formed a governing junta and elected Pedro Domingo Murillo as its president. This new governing body proclaimed its independence and self-rule in the name of Ferdinand VII. Unfortunately, Murillo and the La Paz patriots had gone too far too soon. The independence movement was premature and produced internal dissension. Charles Arnade holds that the public declaration of independence “was a great mistake,” which “proved to be the downfall” of Bolivia’s revolutionary generation (1970, 28).

Meanwhile, the Spanish viceroy in Lima, José de la Serna, dispatched 5,000 soldiers led by the new president of the audiencia in Cuzco, Goyeneche, to crush the revolution in Upper Peru. Outnumbered and betrayed by the moderates, the revolutionary government in La Paz col-lapsed. Mercilessly, Goyeneche hunted down the leaders of the uprising. Few escaped his retribution; most were either executed or sentenced to hard labor in the mines. As a priest, Medina, the real leader of the revolt, was given a life sentence. Murillo, the nominal head of the revolution, and other rebel leaders were hung in the central plaza on January 29, 1810. Today a statue of Murillo stands in the center of the plaza that bears his name to commemorate the first declaration of independence in Spanish America.

With the news of Goyeneche’s defeat of the La Paz movement, the judges of the audiencia in Chuquisaca reconsidered their actions, ulti-

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mately repented, and compromised with the royalist authorities on the condition that Goyeneche’s army would not be sent against the city. The new president of the audiencia, Vicente Nieto, conducted an investiga-tion and the Zudañez brothers and Monteagudo were imprisoned. By early 1810, most of the revolutionary generation of 1809 had perished in Upper Peru. For the revolution, however, all was not lost, although Bolivian independence would take another 15 years.

The 15 Years’ War

Because successes have been partial and spasmodic , we must not lose faith. In some places the fighters for independence tri-umph, while in others the tyrants have the advantage.


The radicals in Buenos Aires, the seat of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata that had gained jurisdiction over Upper Peru, declared indepen-dence on May 25, 1810. In the Andean highlands, local allies against the Spanish forces eagerly supported the rebellion in Buenos Aires, and Upper Peru spontaneously rallied to the cry of independence by the revolutionary Argentine junta. Sympathetic uprisings swept across the Audiencia of Charcas: Cochabamba in September, Potosí in November, and Tarija and Santa Cruz in the following months.

In time, however, the men and women of Upper Peru desired not only independence from Spanish bureaucracy, but also autonomy from all external encroachments, including those of Argentina. With ter-ritorial interests in mind, the newly independent Argentines hoped to wrest the prosperous northern provinces of the former Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata from the weakened grasp of colonial authorities in Lima. The liberating auxiliary armies from the south proved to be ruthless marauders, who left an angry citizenry in their wake.

Between 1810 and 1817, several Argentine expeditionary armies confronted the royalist forces of General José Manuel de Goyeneche. The royalists defeated each of the three auxiliary armies dispatched by Argentina. The brutal Juan José Castelli marched the first auxiliary army into Upper Peru in 1810. By the time he retreated, most of the region’s citizens hated him and had turned against the Argentine liberators. The capable general Manuel Belgrano headed the second army in 1813 and almost succeeded in liberating the north. In 1815,


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the ineffective general José Rondeau commanded the third unsuccess-ful Argentine army. Finally, the brief incursion of a small force in 1817 under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Gregorio Araoz de la Madrid also failed. Despite their tenacity and assistance from sporadic urban revolts and roving rural bands and guerrilla forces of Upper Peru, a tense stalemate between the Lima royalists and the Bolivian-Argentine independence forces ensued.

Upper Peru once again presented the classic dilemma that had accorded the Audiencia of Charcas relative autonomy under colonial rule. Its main population centers were too distant from Buenos Aires but still too close to Lima, Spain’s traditional stronghold in South America. Royalist forces from Lima could easily suppress unrest in Upper Peru, but at the same time external revolutionary forces sent from Buenos Aires were unable to sustain a unified and indigenous proindependence revolution there.

A period that Bolivians term the Heroic Era of the 15 Years’ War followed these initial revolutionary uprisings. From 1810 to 1816, a diffuse and protracted guerrilla insurgency bubbled in the highland.

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Mothers of Revolution

In the second half of the 20th century, mothers in authoritarian Chile and Argentina became international celebrities because of their

determination and courage. Mothers in Chile demonstrated against the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and cleverly crafted political messages into their artistic arpilleras, or embroidered tapestries, depict-ing everyday Chilean life. In Argentina, the desperate Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo began to march every Thursday, demanding an accounting of their missing loved ones, who had been “disappeared” by repressive military juntas.

In the 19th century, Bolivia’s mothers were no less courageous. On May 27, 1812, the heroic women of Cochabamba defiantly fought in the second independence revolt of the city. When the men had been killed in the revolutionary fighting and there was no one left to hold back the royalist armies, the cochabambinas, or women of Cochabamba, fiercely battled against professional Spanish soldiers. A statue and small park in Cochabamba commemorate their great personal sacrifice of life and limb. Fittingly for a country with a proud revolutionary heritage, the women’s day of struggle and heroism, May 27, is traditionally celebrated as Mothers’ Day throughout Bolivia.

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Rural republiquetas, or independent “little republics” of local resistance, sprang up in the countryside, harassing Spanish forces and royalists.

There were six areas of concentrated guerrilla activity and control that seriously challenged Spanish hegemony in Upper Peru. Identified by their powerful guerrilla leaders, these republics were Arenales, Ayopaya, Camargo, Muñecas, Padilla, and Warnes. Geography and political economy largely determined the boundaries of these guerrilla zones. Two towns of strategic importance were Potosí, with its rich silver mines, and Chuquisaca, the political capital of the audiencia. The other major cities of Upper Peru—La Paz, Oruro, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz—were important because of mining and agricultural activ-ity. The six republiquetas were distributed along the royal highway and these critical urban centers.

In his extensive analysis of the armies of the independence move-ment and partisans of Upper Peru, Charles Arnade emphasizes the unstable and fluid nature of these guerrilla republics. In addition to the six major republics, there were numerous minor republics, smaller republics within larger republics, and factions within these that were led by virtually independent partisan leaders. Often these guerrilla leaders failed to communicate or coordinate operations. Despite this crazy-quilt resistance, by 1816 the republics posed a major threat to Spanish forces in the region. A fierce royalist offensive that year, however, destroyed all but the Ayopaya republiqueta, which remained active until Bolivian liberation in 1825.

The leader of the Ayopaya Republic was Miguel Lanza, who controlled the roads between La Paz, Oruro, and Cochabamba. He survived the independence war and became a trusted lieutenant of Bolivia’s president Antonio José de Sucre. Lanza was the only guerrilla leader to participate in the birth of the Bolivian republic. For Bolivian historians, the story of this isolated republic has become one of legendary heroism. Most that is known about Ayopaya is drawn from the diary of a soldier and drummer simply known as Vargas. Although patriotism is generally assumed to have been the major incentive of the Upper Peruvian guerrillas, Charles Arnade’s reading of the drummer’s diary indicates that a free life of adven-ture outside of established society and the law was a greater factor.

The role of the highland Indian in the War of Independence of Upper Peru was even more complex. Although on both sides the “great Indian masses offered a large reservoir of able fighting men,” the native peoples were often very ignorant of the reasons and factional dynamics of the war (Arnade 1970, 50). The Indian was a dangerous element, Arnade writes, because he would often shift allegiances and fight for whichever


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side was more convenient; after all, Bolivia’s indigenous people had been mistreated by the criollos, and to some, the Spaniards were the lesser evil. Both sides wooed the Indians with sweet offers of privileges and equality that they had no intention of fulfilling. Indians were simply so much cannon fodder, which neither side ever considered emancipating. Most Indians may have preferred the elimination of both elements; nev-ertheless, there were staunchly loyal Indian forces on both sides of the War of Independence in Upper Peru.

By 1820, the independence struggle in Upper Peru had ground to a halt. The guerrilla wars by the republiquetas and the repeated incur-sions by the auxiliary armies of the United Provinces of Buenos Aires had proven inconclusive. More great heroes were needed to rekindle the revolution that Bolivia’s Creole patriots had precipitously ignited in Upper Peru more than a decade earlier. The successful culmination of Bolivia’s 15-year war for independence rested with the great liberators of South America.

The Great Liberators and Bolivian IndependenceOn July 28, 1821, José de San Martín, an Argentine general who had led a liberating army across the Andes and defeated the royalists, proclaimed the independence of Peru. However, San Martín then withdrew from the scene, leaving the celebrated Venezuelan Simón Bolívar at the helm of liberation forces in Upper Peru. The unified armies of Bolívar and San Martín confronted the remnants of loyalist resistance, the armies of Viceroy de la Serna in Peru and General Pedro Antonio Olañeta in Upper Peru. On August 6, 1824, the independence and royalist armies fought the decisive Battle of Junín. Although outnumbered, Bolívar’s troops defeated the royalists. More revolutionary victories steadily followed.

In the Andes near Lake Titicaca, the independence commanders General Andrés de Santa Cruz and General Agustín Gamarra crushed the royalists in the Battle of Zepita. In the Battle of Ayacucho on December 9, 1824, Antonio José de Sucre defeated royalist forces and captured the commander, Viceroy de la Serna. Only one royalist gen-eral remained. On April 2, 1825, Colonel Carlos Medinaceli, who later became a founder and general of the Bolivian army, betrayed General Olañeta. On the morning of April 9, 1825, Sucre proclaimed the deci-sive end of the independence war.

Both Santa Cruz and Sucre became celebrated figures in the his-tory of Bolivian independence. The mestizo general Andrés de Santa Cruz was a local revolutionary leader from the region near La Paz.

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Although he had been a former royalist commander, Santa Cruz had defected to the revolution and become one of its ablest gen-erals. Sucre was a Vene zu elan and Bolívar’s chief lieutenant.

The destiny of Upper Peru as an independent republic was unre-solved, however. Its future turned upon the designs of Sucre and Bolívar. Marshal Sucre indicated in his letters to Bolívar and other revolutionary generals that the people of Upper Peru desired au ton omy and should decide their own fate. Bolívar, on the other hand, opposed the autonomy of the Andean region. Bolívar’s dream was a continental federation of states that could withstand European and North American influences. He had already unified the northern South American states under the Federation of Gran Colombia. At the very least, Bolívar intended

Upper Peru to remain an integral part of Lower Peru and subject to the administrative control of Lima.

The Argentines, moreover, had proclaimed the United Provinces of South America in 1816. This act incorporated the administrative region of the former Audiencia of Charcas within the territories of the former Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata. After 1825 and the end of the indepen-dence wars, the competing claims of sovereignty and the conflicting territorial ambitions of Argentina, Peru, and Gran Colombia presented serious problems. The creation of an independent buffer state in Upper Peru might provide a logical and feasible solution.

Sucre decided to act. While Bolívar was being honored in distant Lima, Sucre promulgated an important decree in La Paz on February 9, 1825. The decree called for an assembly of notables to meet in Oruro on April 29 to decide the fate of Upper Peru. The assembly, which had to be postponed several times, actually met on July 10 in Chuquisaca, the seat of the Audiencia of Charcas. The assembly hall was in the


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Simón Bolívar, the Liberator, was a Venezuelan who led the independence move-ment in northern South America. He was the founder and namesake of the modern Bolivian nation. (Reproduced with permission of the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States)

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University of San Francisco Xavier, the intellectual home of the revolu-tionary generation of 1809.

There, the constituent assembly debated three propositions: The first supported an independent Andean state; the second, unification with Peru; and the third, unification with Argentina. The dominant voices in the historic assembly were for independence. After lengthy debates and delays, the actual vote was taken on August 6. The final vote was not unanimous. Two of the 47 delegates voted in favor of union with Lower Peru. The 48th delegate was the heroic guerrilla leader General Miguel Lanza, who served as honorary president for the historic occasion and counted the votes. When all was said and done, however, all 48 delegates of Chuquisaca unanimously signed the Declaration

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The Meaning of Patriotism

Why did the men and women of Upper Peru fight in the long independence struggle? The historical record indicates that

except for vague expressions of discontent with Spanish rule and pro-test against the Crown, one word was mentioned time and time again: la patria.

La patria means “the fatherland.” The guerrilla units were referred to as the “armies of the patria,” as opposed to the armies of the realis-tas or the Royalists. But what exactly was meant by the word patria? There was as yet no country to which the term referred.

Upper Peru in 1809 was the Audiencia of Charcas and an administra-tive province in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata. In 1810, when Buenos Aires declared independence, the Viceroyalty of Lima annexed Upper Peru.

Historian Charles Arnade provides an answer from the diary of the guerrilla soldier Vargas: “Patria is the soil on which we step and on which we must defend at all costs; for the Patria we must sacrifice our interests and our lives” (52).

Patria meant the love of freedom and the love of place. From the very start—even before there was officially the country of Bolivia—bolivianos have held a special attachment to the soil, which, as the Bolivian his-torian Humberto Guzmán states, “inspired the origin and meaning of Patria” (53). A beloved Bolivian queca (traditional Andean scarf dance) begins with the words “Viva mi patria Bolivia!”


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of Independence that created the new Bolivian state.

The Chuquisaca delegates antici-pated that Bolívar would disapprove of their actions. They, therefore, christened the new nation the Republic of Bolívar, hoping to appeal to the general’s pride. In addition, the Upper Peruvians honored the Liberator by appointing him the country’s protector and first presi-dent. They designated August 6, 1825—the date of the critical vote and Bolívar’s triumph in the Battle of Junín a year earlier—as Bolivia’s day of national independence.

By this stratagem, the elected delegates of Chuquisaca secured Bolívar’s tacit acquiescence in the founding of the República Bolívar. Nevertheless, Bolívar recognized Bolivian autonomy only reluc-

tantly. In office, he continued to refer to Bolivia as Upper Peru and signed his presidential decrees as the dictator of Peru. Only in 1826, after he had stepped down as the country’s president, did he approve the independence of Bolivia.

The Presidencies of Bolívar and SucreWith what may have seemed the more difficult task achieved, the Bolivians turned from the revolutionary struggle to the challenge of self-rule. The 14 years following Bolivian independence were mixed, but generally positive, ones for the new nation. The country’s first three presidents—Bolívar, Sucre, and Santa Cruz—provided a degree of integrity and stability that would be greatly missed as the century progressed.

Two days after the declaration of independence, Bolívar was enthu-siastically welcomed in La Paz. His residence in, and administration of, the Andean republic was brief, lasting a mere five months. In that short time, Bolívar issued a stream of experimental and liberal decrees. He reduced tax levies by half, promulgated a land reform that benefited


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Antonio José de Sucre, chief lieutenant to Simón Bolívar, was a pivotal figure in the Bolivian movement for independence and the founding of the nation in 1825. (Reproduced with permission of the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States)

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the indigenous population, declared the equality of all citizens, and secularized government and politics.

Unlike his triumphs in the wars of independence, however, Bolívar’s civil administration of Bolivia was less successful. In part, Bolívar was of two minds when it came to government. Although he favored demo-cratic rule in principle, in practice, he discovered that only a strong hand could restrain the willful and fractional South Americans. His reforms, too ambitious for the times and under difficult conditions within Bolivia, remained unimplemented. Nevertheless, Bolívar’s ideal-istic governing principles are enshrined in Bolivia’s first constitution of 1826, which was written by the Liberator himself.

The first constitutionally elected president of the young republic was Antonio José de Sucre. In January 1826, before departing Bolivia for Lima, never to return, Bolívar handed the government over to Sucre,

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Who Is the Real Father of Bolivia?

Casimiro Olañeta, the nephew of loyalist general Pedro Antonio de Olañeta, holds a hallowed but debated place in the history of

Bolivian independence. Respected historians differ over his role and con-tributions: Some glorify him as the ultimate patriot and true “father of Bolivia”; others describe him as “perverse,” “crafty,” and “self-serving.”

Olañeta’s glory derives from his claim to have inspired Marshal Antonio José de Sucre with the idea of the independence of Upper Peru, and, as Olañeta wrote, with “the foundation of a new republic, which came to be called Boliviana by the assembly of deliberation to which I belonged” (166). Bolivian historian Humberto Vázquez Machicado calls this the “myth of Olañeta” and believes that it should be revised.

He and other historians, including Charles Arnade, argue that Sucre supported Bolivian independence and promulgated the famous decree of February 9, 1825, solely out of his own personal conviction and without Olañeta’s influence. Sucre, therefore, is the rightful “father of Bolivia.” Arnade suggests that perhaps both are “fathers” of the new nation, Olañeta deserving this acclaim because of his “shrewd intrigues and scheming,” and Sucre, because of “his honest, forceful, and clear policy” (168–169).


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his handpicked successor. Sucre ruled by decree until May of that year when a Bolivian Constituent Assembly formally elected him president. Despite controversy among Bolivian and non-Bolivian historians, Sucre is sometimes recognized as the “father of Bolivia.” The claim to this honor rests on Sucre’s promulgation of the decree of February 9, 1825, which initiated the chain of events that led both to the country’s cre-ation and his election as Bolivia’s president.

In the two and a half years of his able, yet unpopular administration Sucre struggled to rebuild the country. Sixteen years of war and severe economic conditions had depopulated the highlands, ruined the mines, and bankrupted the treasury. Sucre instituted ambitious political, eco-nomic, and social reforms. Despite implementation of fiscal reforms and a system of direct taxation to fuel the economic recovery, within a year Sucre believed it necessary to renew tribute payments, a type of regressive head tax that Bolívar had abolished. The Creole government, more so than the colonial one, relied on these tribute payments by the country’s 800,000 indigenous citizens for 60 percent of its tax receipts. Sucre also authorized the seizure of the extensive properties of the Roman Catholic Church, reducing the church’s economic and political influence in Bolivia.

Sucre’s reforms had little time or support to succeed, however. His progressive policies alienated the established political and economic interests in the country. As his government became increasingly unpop-ular, Sucre’s Bolivian opponents used their newly found nationalism against him. A Venezuelan by birth, Sucre was branded by his enemies as a foreign interloper. In turn, the honest, sober, and dedicated Sucre was appalled by the rampant greed and incivility of the officers and citi-zens around him. Political intrigues, fueled by renewed Peruvian and Argentine designs on Bolivia, worked to unseat him.

The year 1827 proved to be a critical turning point. In Lima, a mili-tary coup ousted Bolívar from the lifetime presidency of Peru, and its perpetrators declared war on Bolívar’s Colombian regime. In Bolivia, an attempt on Sucre’s life failed, but a mutiny swept the ranks of his unpaid army in December, and the Peruvian general Agustín Gamarra amassed an army along the Peru-Bolivia border. In April 1828, Sucre was seri-ously wounded during another revolt in the army. At this juncture, with the pretext of protecting Sucre from his own troops, Gamarra invaded Bolivia. Betrayed by the Bolivian generals, Sucre was forced to capitulate to Gamarra in the Treaty of Piquiza on July 6. Finally, in August 1828, Sucre resigned in despair and returned to his native Venezuela.

General Gamarra was now the powerful arbiter of Bolivia’s fate. He installed Pedro Blanco, a Bolivian general, to succeed Sucre as presi-


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dent. Within five days, this obvious Peruvian puppet was assassinated, and another Bolivian general, José Miguel de Velasco, became interim president. From Colombia, Bolívar sent Sucre to deal with Gamarra. Commanding a Colombian army, Sucre defeated General Gamarra’s more formidable force of 8,000 soldiers in the Battle of Tarqui on February 27, 1829. Gamarra returned to Lima and on May 4, 1829, became the presi-dent of Peru. The Bolivian assembly of notables invited Marshal Andrés de Santa Cruz, then in Arequipa, Peru, to assume the presidency of Bolivia.

Santa Cruz: Bolivia’s First CaudilloFrom 1829 to 1839, the presidency of Andrés de Santa Cruz achieved remarkable political and economic stability in an era generally known for postcolonial anarchy. The administrative reforms that Santa Cruz implemented greatly influenced the institutions of modern Bolivia. He compiled Bolivian law into one of the first legal codes in the new repub-lics, expanded higher education and public works, balanced the budget, and reduced the public debt. Santa Cruz reorganized the Bolivian army and created a new coastal department with its capital at the free port of La Mar, better known as Cobija. He established a ministry of interior and foreign relations and a major university in La Paz in 1831. Still, many of his innovations could not be implemented because of Bolivia’s limited economic resources.

Politically, Santa Cruz is remembered as Bolivia’s first native-born military strongman, or caudillo. President Santa Cruz favored authori-tarian government and superseded Bolivia’s second constitution of 1831, a slightly more democratic document that replaced the first constitution of Bolívar. By the time the inconstant Bolivians exiled him in 1839, he was reviled as a dictator. But unlike his successors, who treated Bolivia as their private fiefdom over the next 40 years, Santa Cruz tempered one-man rule with scrupulous honesty, efficient public administration, and true patriotism. He brought peace and stability to the country.

Santa Cruz had greater ambitions than the presidency of Bolivia. A cholo (to use the Bolivian term for mestizo), Santa Cruz was born near La Paz to a Spanish father and an Indian mother. He was strongly influ-enced by the Quechua heritage of his aristocratic mother, Juana Basilia Calahumana. She claimed royal ancestry with Tupac Amaru, the last Inca. Her son dreamed of resurrecting the glorious Inca political order and reuniting Upper and Lower Peru.

On his father’s side, Santa Cruz was well connected to the ruling elite of Cuzco. Critics would rightly say that he was always more Peruvian

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than Bolivian. Santa Cruz, moreover, had served as provisional president of Peru from 1826 to 1827 until ousted by the Peruvian caudillo General Gamarra. These two leaders, despite having been boyhood friends and comrades in arms, became formidable rivals and hated enemies.

Santa Cruz continued to be enmeshed in Peruvian politics and obsessed with his goal of creating a greater Peru-Bolivia. Civil war in Peru provided him with his first important opportunity to effect his plan. An 1834 treaty with beleaguered Peruvian president Luis José de Orbegoso invited Bolivian intervention in a three-way dispute between warring Peruvian generals. In June 1835, the army of Santa Cruz invaded Peru. By early 1836, he had defeated the forces of the gov-ernment’s two rival Peruvian caudillos, Generals Gamarra and Felipe Santiago Salaverry.

Finally, in October 1836, Santa Cruz realized his burning ambi-tion to unify the two countries and create the Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation. In May 1837, he convened a congress to formalize the pact of unification. Peru was reorganized into two autonomous states: South Peru governed by Orbegoso, and North Peru by President Pío Tristán. General José Miguel Velasco administered Bolivia. Santa Cruz became their “protector,” or dictator of the confederation.

The historian Herbert S. Klein has noted that the confederation “brought both peace to Peru and respect for its power along the entire Pacific region” (1992, 117), and the territorial union also made Bolivia “a major power of contention” in South America (1992, 119). Some Bolivian historians, nevertheless, have considered the confederation “completely disadvantageous to Bolivia,” by subordinating it to Peru (Vázquez Machicado 1988, 356).

At first, anarchy within Peru prevented effective internal resistance to the grand designs of Santa Cruz. Bolivian opposition to the unity pact was repressed for a time as well. External reaction to the confederation, however, was fierce and devastating from the outset. The confederation reminded Peru’s neighbors of the hated Spanish viceroyalty of Lima that had once lorded over them. By consolidating the dominance of Peru, moreover, the confederation destroyed the precarious geopoliti-cal equilibrium of the Southern Cone and Andean regions. This power imbalance directly threatened the national interests of Argentina and Chile. In 1837, both countries declared war on the confederation and invaded Peru.

Santa Cruz was able to repulse the Argentine expedition of General Juan Manuel de Rosas. He then confronted the Chilean armies of Minister Diego Portales and General Manuel Bulnes. In 1839, the tena-


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cious Chileans defeated the confederation forces in the decisive Battle of Yungay. Chile’s victory terminated the Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation and the ambitions of Santa Cruz, and ensured future Chilean commer-cial and territorial expansion at the expense of Peru and Bolivia.

Santa Cruz, one of the great Bolivian independence figures, was forced into exile in Ecuador. He attempted to return to Peru but was intercepted and imprisoned by the Chileans on the island of Chillán. In 1845, he was accorded a liberal pension and the following year sent into permanent exile in Europe. Once there, Bolivians relented and allowed him to serve in various diplomatic posts.

Far from South America and his Andean home, Santa Cruz died in France in 1865. Although in defeat Santa Cruz was reviled as a dicta-tor and traitor unworthy of being called a Bolivian, his contemporaries came to judge him less harshly before his death. History has been even kinder. After the presidency of Santa Cruz, more Bolivian leaders of grandiose visions and great egos emerged. Their historical legacy was not as benign.

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4The Age of Caudillo Rule

(1839–1879)

States are slaves either through the nature of their constitution or through its abuse. A people is therefore enslaved when the government, by its nature or its vices, encroaches on and usurps the rights of the citizen or subject.


A fter 1839, violence and venality characterized the governments of the young Bolivian republic. In retrospect, the capable administra-

tions of Bolivia’s first presidents, Antonio José de Sucre and Andrés de Santa Cruz, proved to be notable exceptions to postindependence history. For the next 40 years, a succession of corrupt military strongmen, known as caudillos, controlled the country’s political and economic destiny.

Who Were the Caudillos?A question often posed in Latin American history is whether the caudi-llos who emerged in most of the newly independent nations during and after the 1820s were heroes or villains, or both. Some observers argue that the Latin American caudillos brought order and stability out of chaos, thereby providing a service to the new nations of the hemi-sphere. Also, caudillos supplanted the extreme regionalism of local warlords and established a necessary centralized authority. The majority of the critics, however, have condemned Latin America’s caudillos for their cupidity, brutality, and despotism.

Bolivia’s caudillos, in most respects, were no different than the other colorful military strongmen throughout Latin America. Some histori-ans, nevertheless, have claimed that they were more flamboyant and

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notorious. Certainly a comparison with other, famous Latin American caudillos of the period suggests that Bolivia’s military rulers damaged the country’s immediate and long-term national interests more exten-sively than most. Caudillismo became so endemic and destructive in the country’s history that the Bolivian philosopher and acerbic social critic Alcides Arguedas distinguished between los caudillos bárbaros (the bar-barous caudillos) and los caudillos letrados (the cultured caudillos).

The exile of Santa Cruz initiated this age of chronic misrule and instability, the age of caudillismo. The officers and generals of the new Bolivian army, unaccustomed to peaceful civil society, used their forces to carve out private fiefdoms. When they managed to gain enough mili-tary and political power, these warlord generals made themselves dicta-tors of the hapless country. Militarism and authoritarianism became a chronic pattern in the life of Bolivia. Once reinforced, this pattern has also plagued modern-day Bolivia.

Rebellion and MisruleThe age of the caudillos in Bolivia began with the internal power strug-gle between Generals José Ballivián and José Miguel de Velasco. These generals had cooperated in the overthrow of Santa Cruz in early 1839, but by July they were bitter rivals. Ballivián revolted when the constitu-ent assembly that met in Chuquisaca turned against him and declared Velasco president, frustrating Ballivián’s own ambitions. This same par-tisan assembly, reflecting the country’s turmoil, excoriated Santa Cruz and drafted Bolivia’s fourth constitution in 14 years. (The delegates also renamed the city of Chuquisaca in honor of Sucre and reconfirmed its status as the constitutional capital of the republic.)

Ballivián’s first of several revolts against the Velasco government failed, and he fled to Peru. There, he secured the support of Peru’s president and caudillo, General Agustín Gamarra. As in 1835, a faction in the Bolivian civil war irresponsibly invited the Peruvians to intervene in Bolivian affairs. The Velasco regime opposed the potential return of exiled Santa Cruz and confiscated the former president’s property. In June 1841, a pro–Santa Cruz uprising by Bolivian general Sebastián Agreda ended the shaky Velasco government. Intending to capitalize on Bolivian instability and annex the province of La Paz, General Gamarra invaded Bolivia for the second time in July, and the powerful Peruvian army swiftly seized the city of La Paz.

Bolivia’s factions ceased feuding over the return of Santa Cruz and united behind General Ballivián and defense of the country. Ballivián


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overthrew General Agreda, who had supported the restoration of Santa Cruz and been president less than four months. A key instigator of the political intrigues and revolts, General Ballivián finally became presi-dent. He rallied the disorganized Bolivian forces and defeated Gamarra in the Battle of Ingavi on November 14, 1841. This historic and decisive victory consolidated Bolivian independence and lifted at last the pal-pable threat of a Peruvian reconquest of Bolivia.

During the next six years of Ballivián’s rule, the country could focus on territorial exploration and economic development. As president, Ballivián encouraged constitutional reform and a greater civilian role in national life. Historians consider his presidency as the last stable gov-ernment in an era of increasing unrest.

Revolts by the youthful colonel Manuel Isidoro Belzú and Generals Agreda and Velasco forced Ballivián’s resignation in late 1847. After a 10-day interim government, General Velasco became president for the fourth time in January 1848, but his presidency did not last out the year. In December, Belzú, now a general, removed Velasco from national office for the last time. Belzú’s presidency ushered in the period of mis-rule by Bolivia’s “barbarous caudillos.”

Belzú, the Plebeian Caudillo

Comrades, private property is the principal source of transgres-sions and crimes in Bolivia. It is the cause of the permanent struggle between Bolivians.

Manuel Belzú (Bethell 1985, III:571).

Manuel Isidoro Belzú became interim, then constitutional president of Bolivia, governing for seven years, from 1848 to 1855. Unlike Ballivián, who was an educated, white aristocrat representing the powerful oligar-chy of the new republic, Belzú was a plebeian in birth and tastes who had fought his way to power. He represented a new force in Bolivian politics—the urbanized, up-and-coming cholos—a threatening and “dangerous” development for the Creoles. Despised by the oligarchy because of his inferior pedigree, Belzú appealed to the impoverished classes of the country. He was one of them, and they granted him their complete adulation and loyalty. For the first time in Bolivian history, these men and women of humble station discovered in Belzú a voice and a decisive role in national politics.

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THE AGE OF CAUDILLO RULE

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The country’s economic and political elite proved unable to oust Belzú from the presidency despite an assassination attempt in 1850 and more than 42 subversive plots against him. He was affectionately called Tata (Father) Belzú by the cholo masses who loved him. The commoners rescued their idol repeatedly, defying the guns of the orga-nized army.

Belzú is often recognized as Bolivia’s first populist caudillo because his policies flagrantly curried the favor of the Indians and oppressed classes. He implemented numerous beneficial reforms and protectionist economic legislation. His government produced a nationalistic Mining Code, Bolivia’s fifth constitution in 1851, and an important population census in 1854. In particular, the mercantilist trade policies that Belzú pursued generated great internal and external opposition.

The nationalist Belzú was convinced that the flood of foreign goods inhibited the development of Bolivia’s own domestic market. As a result, he constrained the activity of foreign merchants and investors. This protectionist policy led to a confrontation with the British repre-sentative in Bolivia, who was ultimately expelled. The expulsion gen-erated numerous unsubstantiated, but colorful and uncomplimentary legends about Belzú and Bolivia. Historians discount the anecdotes that


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Since colonial times, burros have been used extensively as beasts of burden in rural Bolivia. (Kathy S. Leonard photo)

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The 1854 Census

The national census of 1854 indicated that the country’s popula-tion, long in a downturn, had increased to 2.3 million inhab-

itants—over two-thirds of Bolivia’s population in the 1950s, and a quarter of its population in 2001. Many important demographic patterns that have influenced Bolivia’s historical development were already evident in this early census.

In the mid-19th century, great portions of the country remained relatively barren of Bolivian residents, especially in Bolivia’s coastal province (El Litoral) and the port of La Mar, or Cobija. This territo-rial vacuum proved to be critical. The great Uruguayan philosopher José Enrique Rodó correctly observed in his book of essays Ariel (1900), “To govern is to populate.” Bolivian governments, by failing to populate the whole of the national territory, did not fully go - vern Bolivia. As one can see, the 1854 census should have rung early alarm bells.

Population of Departments and Departmental Capitals, 1854 Census

Departmental Departments Population Capital Population

Chuquisaca 349,119 Sucre 18,002

La Paz 593,779 La Paz 68,118

Cochabamba 382,919 Cochabamba 35,837

Potosí 254,728 Potosí 25,588

Oruro 91,751 Oruro 5,654

Santa Cruz 255,599 Santa Cruz 5,625

Tarija 277,724 Tarija 3,473

El Beni 114,922 Trinidad not available

El Litoral 18,000 Puerto La Mar, 1,703 or Cobija

Source: Vásquez Machicado, Humberto, José de Mesa, Teresa Gisbert, and Carlos D. Mesa Gisbert. Manuel de historia de Bolivia. 3d ed. (La Paz: Editorial Gisbert, 1988), p. 371.

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Belzú humiliated the British consul, clipping his earlobes and parading him around on the back of a donkey, or that Queen Victoria imperiously eliminated Bolivia from her world map when told of Belzú’s effrontery. Nevertheless, one can see from these tales that Belzú was a man of extremes, both passionately loved and hated.

Whatever Belzú’s populist sentiments, he was a typical military auto-crat, addicted to excesses and terrified of assassination and rebellion by rival caudillos. He knew that impatiently waiting in the wings were formidable foes—Mariano Melgarejo, Agustín Morales, and José María Linares. Nevertheless, Belzú survived as president for seven years, long enough to hold elections and leave office voluntarily—a notable record for Bolivian dictators of the day.

Tata Belzú’s successor was General Jorge Córdova, his politically inexperienced son-in-law. In March 1855, a national congress elected Córdova president. Historian Herbert S. Klein described the event as a “controlled election” in which some 13,500 electors voted. The elec-tion, however, brought only brief tranquility for the pro-Belzú forces. Having scant confidence in his soft son-in-law, Belzú is said to have voted for the opposition candidate, José María Linares, who represented


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The Fate of Belzú

One might say that Manuel Isidoro Belzú not only benefited from a great deal of luck, but also his sense of timing for when to leave

office was excellent. Neither of these assets, however, would last. After he stepped down as president, Belzú wisely left Bolivia to travel abroad. He later served as Bolivia’s representative on various diplomatic mis-sions in Europe. In 1861, Belzú returned to his native Bolivia.

Once in La Paz, his old power base, Belzú soon became drawn into political plotting and regional feuding. Surrounded by his mob of sup-porters, Belzú renewed his dormant presidential ambitions. Ironically, the fear of assassination that had haunted him during his dangerous days in office also returned and was finally realized. In a wild confrontation in the presidential palace, his rival General Mariano Melgarejo shot and killed Belzú in an argument over the presidential succession.

According to a popular account of the affair, Melgarejo rushed to the presidential balcony after the cold-blooded murder and defiantly pro-claimed to the mob below, “Belzú is dead! Who lives now?” The crowd roared back, “Long live Melgarejo!”

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the free trade lobby. Moreover, when Córdova ascended the presidential dais, Belzú reportedly quipped he would not last. Indeed, within two years General Agreda and Linares cut short the undistinguished and unstable Córdova government.

The Civilian InterludeThe presidency of José María Linares, Bolivia’s first civilian president, from 1857 to 1861, interrupted the pattern of caudillo rule. A member of an aristocratic Spanish family from the city of Sucre, Linares had advanced in politics not because of the advantages of a military career but because of his legal and administrative skills. He had first tried constitutional means of gaining power, running against Córdova in the rigged elections of 1855. In spite of the impossible electoral odds, Linares still received 4,000 votes. He and his supporters then succeeded with extraconstitutional methods: an armed coup.

As president, Linares instituted needed fiscal, administrative, and judicial reforms. Unlike Córdova and Belzú, President Linares catered to the mining bourgeoisie, the free traders, and the foreign capitalists eager to invest in Bolivia and grow rich on the profits. Although he ended the extensive government’s monopoly of the mining industry, Linares retained control over the refining and minting of silver. His government, nevertheless, encouraged the formation of an official interest group to represent the powerful mining sector. Herbert S. Klein indicates that the mine owners of three large companies alone represented investments of 1.5 to 2 million pesos annually, which was almost “the total income generated by the national treasury in any one year” (1992, 131–132).

Although he broke with General Ballivián, Linares remained tied to the Red Party, or Partido Rojo, that Ballivián had founded. An important predecessor to the civilian political parties of the 1880s, the rojos opposed militarism and advanced the interests of a new political ruling class made up of silver magnates, lawyers, and the educated class. To stay in office Linares imposed unpopular authoritarian measures. In September 1858, he created a formal dictatorship, and in 1860, his harsh rule resulted in a large-scale revolt and an infamous Indian massacre at the holy shrine of the Virgin of Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

Chronic coup plotting against Linares and the rojos intensified. Finally, before he could organize national elections, his opponents and traitors in his own cabinet launched a military revolt against him. In January 1861, the minister of war, General José María de Achá, seized power. The Bolivian Congress, recently elected and controlled

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by opponents of Linares, sanctioned the takeover by formally select-ing Achá as the next president. After only a brief interlude of civilian rule, the military men were back in power.

The government of Achá may not have been more brutal than its ante-cedents or that of Melgarejo soon to come; nevertheless, in terms of its repression of political opponents, Achá’s rule has received a reputation as the most violent government in the 19th century. In 1861, the local mili-tary commander in La Paz, Colonel Plácido Yañez, summarily executed 70 high-profile opposition politicians, including former president Jorge Córdova, who were known supporters of ex-president Belzú. The La Paz commander claimed that a revolt by Belzú had necessitated his ruthless reprisal. The atrocity became known as the Massacre of Loreto, after the old convent where the majority of the political prisoners had been held.

During Achá’s presidency, there were few political and economic changes in overall government policy from the Linares period. Bolivia, however, moved closer to open conflict with Chile. In 1857, rich guano and nitrate deposits had been discovered in Mejillones, an isolated and underpopulated region in El Litoral province along Bolivia’s Pacific seacoast. A dispute between rival claims of Chilean and Brazilian inves-tors over the exploitation of these lucrative resources erupted in 1863. With a puny Bolivian army that had dwindled to fewer than 2,000 men, Achá was unable to mount an effective resistance to the Chilean incur-sions. And, before he could organize either a defense or the upcoming presidential elections, Mariano Melgarejo, a close relative and the most infamous of Bolivian tyrants, deposed him on December 28, 1864.

Melgarejo, the Consummate Caudillo Bárbaro

For the caudillo time is pressing. If he is not rich, he must become rich as soon as possible.

François Chevalier (1992, 34)

A cholo of illegitimate birth from Cochabamba, Mariano Melgarejo lived up to the stereotype of a 19th-century caudillo. He was a brutal and dis-solute despot who squandered scarce state resources on mistresses and drunken orgies, and he suffered fits of outright madness.

Insisting on the title of “the most illustrious man of the century,” Melgarejo compelled his officers to frolic and roll around on the floors of the national palace imitating overexcited pet poodles. He personally


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conducted horrifying rampages of pillage and rape down the streets of La Paz. When pesos dwindled in the national treasury, Melgarejo debased the currency and issued his own money—worthless melgarejos.

In one of his most infamous acts, Melgarejo practically gave away 40,000 square miles of Bolivia’s tropical Matto Grosso territory to Brazil. Some historians emphasize that Melgarejo “meant well” by signing the 1867 treaty with Brazil that was intended to gain Bolivia an outlet on the Atlantic Ocean, but it was also under Melgarejo that Bolivia relin-quished its legal claim to the extraordinarily valuable guano and nitrate deposits in the Atacama Desert.

The 1866 Mejillones Treaty, which the Melgarejo government signed, permitted Chile greater control over Bolivia’s coastal territories on the Pacific Ocean. By its terms, all the land below the 24th parallel was ceded to Chile and exempted from Bolivian taxes levied on mining and other exports from Pacific ports. As a result of his secret machinations with the Chilean nitrate interests, Melgarejo filled his personal coffers at the expense of the nation, and his greed and irresponsibility hastened the War of the Pacific between Bolivia and Chile.

Melgarejo was hated by the country’s traditional upper classes, con-sisting of the aristocratic families of Sucre and the Creole landed elite of southern and central Bolivia. Not only was Melgarejo’s crude behavior repugnant to them, but he represented the rise of the nouveau riche mining elite on the national scene. During the independence wars, the colonial mining industry—the major engine of Bolivia’s economy—had been virtually destroyed. After 1839, the increasingly liberal trade policies of Bolivian governments, the infusion of local and international capital, and modernized machinery and mining methods led to a resur-gence of the silver mining industry and the national economy.

For 40 years since independence, Bolivian governments had depended on a severely limited tax base. Income from the extraction of quinine from cinchona, or Peruvian, bark dominated Bolivian commerce and treasury receipts from 1847 to 1855. But the brief monopoly was lost to Colombia, and as a result, by 1860, quinine exports were down to a trickle. By 1864, exports of guano and nitrates produced vital revenue and investment capital for the cash-starved economy.

President Melgarejo’s social and economic policies benefited the free trade capitalists and the resurgent silver mining oligarchy, and investors scrambled to carve up the resources of Bolivia’s Pacific Litoral province, which harbored the Caracoles silver mines and guano and nitrate deposits. The majority of these new owners and merchants were foreign or connected to Chilean interests. Melgarejo

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exempted them from silver export taxes and dismantled the state con-trol of silver production and pricing.

Bolivian historians have excoriated the Melgarejo regime for selling the lucrative resources of the nation to the highest bidder. On the other hand, historian Herbert S. Klein has wondered whether other Bolivian governments, if also faced with flat revenues and deficit budgets, would have acted differently from Melgarejo. Klein has further questioned whether the new mining elite was truly concerned with the lucrative concessions the Bolivian governments extended to foreign interests in this period given that venality appeared to be widespread among the Bolivian ruling class of the day.

Indeed, in 1865, bountiful natural and capital resources were avail-able to the country and those who controlled it for the first time since independence. The hungry generals, and Melgarejo was obviously one of the hungriest, could not pass up this unique opportunity for unheard-of personal gain. The loans and long-term contracts that Melgarejo signed enriched all the greedy special interests. Un fortunately, these deals, mostly corrupt and irresponsible, did not benefit the country as a whole or the majority of the people.

Many of Melgarejo’s policies hurt Bolivia’s indigenous people. Under the unpopular 1866 land decree, Indians were required to purchase individual land titles to replace communal claims. These individual titles were not permanent, however, and had to be renewed every five years to maintain effective ownership. If Indian farmers failed to comply, their lands reverted to the state and were auctioned off to the highest bidder or exchanged for the debts the state owed private individuals. Lands that were not purchased remained state property, and landless Indian farmers had no choice but to rent them from the government.

The majority of the indigenous population could not afford the new titles or the rents. Typically suspicious of the government, many simply ignored the law. Despite the guise of reform, the actual intent of the insidious law was to transfer communal lands to the white and cholo owners of the country’s rural haciendas. It also provided a golden oppor-tunity for Melgarejo’s favorite mistress, Juana Sánchez, her family, and his favorite cronies to buy up indigenous properties for a pittance.

Melgarejo’s comprehensive attack on the properties of the indepen-dent Indian communities provoked desperate and violent resistance. To enforce the land law, the national army ruthlessly killed thousands of Indians. Public outcry was so great, however, according to Herbert S. Klein, that the confiscation scheme was aborted and temporarily reversed when Melgarejo was ousted from power.


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The disastrous six-year rule of Melgarejo became known simply as “el sexenio” (the six years). Bolivians tired of his despotism and misrule, but as revolts followed revolts—each one bloodier than the last—none suc-ceeded in ridding the country of the tyrant. Finally, in December 1870, paceños, the people of La Paz, rose up, assisted by Colonel Hilarión Daza, who was the commander of the city’s crack Colorado Battalion and who was well paid for this betrayal of Melgarejo. On January 15, 1871, in a terrible struggle in which more than 1,000 Bolivians died, Melgarejo was defeated and deposed by Colonel Agustín Morales.

The Last Days of Melgarejo

A fter his defeat, Mariano Melgarejo fled across the altiplano, hounded along the journey by vengeful Indian pursuers, who

had not forgotten his seizure of their lands and the massacres of entire villages. According to the Bolivian historian José Fellman Velarde, of the 300 soldiers who escaped from La Paz with Melgarejo, only five reached Peru. The deposed tyrant arrived safely in Arequipa, where he was well received at first.

In La Paz, Melgarejo’s distraught mistress, Juana Sánchez, remained a hostage. She found herself imprisoned and unable to pay her debts, which she claimed in a flowery and ingratiating letter to Colonel Agustín Morales not to have contracted. Sánchez implored the victorious Morales to allow her to sell her property in order to buy her free-dom. Portraying herself as the victim of cold ingratitude, bad faith, and betrayal, she pleaded with him to release her and permit her exile.

Disturbed over the desperate plight of his beloved “Juanacha,” Melgarejo hurried to Lima and begged and borrowed money from friends to send to Bolivia to rescue Juana. Unfortunately, Melgarejo’s devotion to his mistress proved to be his undoing. Once freed and com-fortably established in Lima, Sánchez heartlessly rejected the former president. Melgarejo tried to recover some of the wealth he claimed the Sánchez family owed him, and a lengthy, public litigation ensued that aired many intimate details of their relationship.

Finally on the night of November 23, 1872, Melgarejo, nearly des-titute, half crazed, and reportedly inebriated, attempted to gain entry into Sánchez’s house. There Sánchez’s brother, and Melgarejo’s own son-in-law, José Aurelio Sánchez, shot Melgarejo dead in the street. The remains of the reviled tyrant were buried in Lima and have never been repatriated to Bolivia.

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The Madness of General MoralesIn 1871, Agustín Morales, a native of La Paz and newly appointed a general, became the provisional president of Bolivia. He had been exiled during Belzú’s rule but later returned to serve in the governments of Achá and Melgarejo. Under the guise of honoring this dangerous rival, Melgarejo appointed Morales to various consular posts abroad. Even from outside the country, however, Morales managed to engineer Melgarejo’s violent overthrow.

The regime of General Morales promised to be as authoritarian and erratic as its predecessor. After serving only as provisional chief execu-tive, Morales was elected constitutional president in May 1872. Unlike his predecessor, however, Morales conducted the state’s financial affairs with integrity, and despite the chaos and corruption he inherited, he seriously attempted to extract the country from its indebtedness.

In order to restore a degree of calm in indigenous relations, the new government immediately annulled Melgarejo’s disastrous agrar-ian reform decree; however, the return of communal lands, or ayllus, that had already been sold created a legal tangle and thorny political dilemma that was eventually resolved in favor of the landowning class. Also, now that the Bolivian government had steady revenues available to it, Morales could pursue general fiscal reforms and some greatly needed public works, for example, the minting of new currency to replace the debased coinage of previous governments, the additional freeing of trade and silver exports from governmental control, and the establishment of the semiprivate National Bank of Bolivia to reorganize the nation’s money.

The Morales government also renegotiated the more onerous foreign contracts and trade concessions of the Melgarejo years. Unfortunately, for one reason or the other, some corrupt loans were continued. The companies that were affected negatively demanded and received mon-etary damages. The contract with U.S. financier George Church to establish a steamship company to ply Bolivian rivers in the east and open up a Bolivian port on the Atlantic Ocean proved to be a major scandal. Of the 2 million pounds raised for the company, according to Herbert S. Klein, the Bolivian government received practically nothing. Several railroad concessions granted foreign investors the construction of rail lines, which when completed would link commercial activities in Antofagasta, Mejillones, and the Caracoles silver mines in Bolivia’s Pacific coast province with the new seat of government in La Paz.

By 1872, the world market price of silver had declined, and the descent continued at a rate of approximately 5 percent annually. The

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historian José Fellmann Velarde writes that this decrease advanced the concentration of wealth in the hands of a very small number of silver mining entrepreneurs. This process had been building steadily and had created a new economic elite, the silver mining oligarchy. Bolivian historians refer to these three or four major silver entrepreneurs as “Big Silver.” Generally more focused on profits than politics, during the gov-ernment of Morales these interests converged. Big Silver began to flex its political muscle in proportion to its increasing economic power.

In 1872, the Bolivian Congress approved a tax that favored the large producers at the expense of the small silver miners. Because of this tax, the concentration of mining wealth in a few hands received an enormous new impetus. After 1871, the intensive exploitation of the rich silver lodes found in the coastal mines of Caracoles revived silver production, which once again became the mainstay of the indebted Bolivian economy. Indeed, the decade of the 1870s culminated with the beginning of an important new politico-economic period, the Great Age of Silver. By 1880, according to Herbert S. Klein, silver output was phenomenal, with one enterprise alone generating more income than the central government.

According to historian Humberto Vázquez Machicado, the incon-stancy and violence of Morales’s character obviated his good intentions as president. Despite his displays of public modesty and reticence, Morales hungered for national power; for example, in a dramatic inci-dent at the constitutional assembly of June 1871, Morales renounced his position as provisional president, then reversed himself and com-pelled the delegates to accept his retraction. In May 1872, the return to Bolivia of Adolfo Ballivián, the son of the popular ex-president, threat-ened Morales’s election chances.

President Morales left office as violently as he had entered it. Congress, which was about to act against the designs of the president, was forced to suspend its activity because of a disruption by Colonel Hilarión Daza instigated by Morales. The next day, before an empty chamber, the choleric Morales dismissed Congress and his entire cabi-net and declared himself dictator. Morales, who was directly challenging the silver mining and landowning interests, withdrew to the presiden-tial palace, where he met a dramatic end. His behavior became more and more demented (Bolivian historians have described it as that of a fren-zied caged beast) and on November 27, Morales’s nephew, Lieutenant Colonel Federico La Faye, tried to intervene as Morales attacked one of his own aides. Morales, a giant of a man, turned against the frightened La Faye. Morales advanced toward his nephew, and La Faye emptied the entire contents of his service pistol, killing Morales.

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After Morales’s assassination, Tomás Frías, a distinguished civilian politician and doctor of law who had been Antonio José de Sucre’s private secretary, served as interim president. On May 6, 1873, Adolfo Ballivián became president. Although also a military man, Ballivián was well educated and the son of a former national hero and president, José Ballivián. His brief rule consolidated the return to power of the civilian constitutionalists, or the rojos.

To his credit, the capable Ballivián negotiated important loans and seriously attempted to rescue the country from imminent bankruptcy. The external national debt at the time exceeded the fantastic sum of 1.5 million pounds sterling. Unfortunately, Ballivián was incurably ill and soon died of stomach cancer. With President Ballivián’s untimely death, Frías, the leader of Congress and the Constitutionalist Party, became president once again in 1874.

These civilian governments struggled unsuccessfully to resolve the escalating territorial conflict with Chile. And, despite the bravado of the military as the international crisis heightened, the nation remained largely unprepared for the outbreak of war. The civilian rojos were impotent against the unruly and hawkish army and popular mood, which became ever angrier with the disastrous international contracts and negotiations. Moreover, the populist politicians of the day exhibited few reservations in personally capitalizing on the harsh economic con-ditions and volatile internal and international climate.

As the constitutionally mandated elections of 1876 approached, the dominant political groups remained severely divided, all vying for the coveted presidency. It seemed probable that no single candidate or strong leader would emerge to unite the country. In order to run as a candidate, General Hilarión Daza, who was minister of defense and commander of the Colorado Battalion, would have to resign his military offices. He feared that in the process the military would lose power and that he would lose control of the military. He decided not to rely on the doubtful institutional outcome and to thwart the scheduled elections instead. General Daza and his troops voted with their bayonets. On May 4, 1876, Daza deposed President Frías and became the last of Bolivia’s military caudillos before the outbreak of the great Pacific war.

The Last 19th-Century CaudilloThe presidency of Hilarión Daza was landmark in Bolivian history. During his administration, the legislature approved the historic Liberal Constitution of 1879 (the county’s ninth since independence), which


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remained, with slight modifications in 1880, Bolivia’s fundamental gov-erning charter until the 1930s. It protected private property rights and the economic concerns of Bolivia’s Big Silver industrialists and their Chilean interests.

General Daza’s rule, however, figures most tragically in the nation’s collective memory because it marked the loss of Bolivia’s access to the Pacific Ocean. His government and Congress of 1878 passed the infamous 10¢ tax on the nitrates exported by the British-Chilean Nitrates and Railroad Company of Antofagasta. This tax, which the bankrupt Bolivian treasury desperately needed, provided Chile with the perfect pretext to occupy Bolivia’s seacoast and launch a war with its neighbors.

President Daza cannot be blamed entirely for the war and the loss of the seacoast. Years before his government, Chilean, British, and U.S. capital had extended financial tentacles into virtually every profit-generating enterprise available to Bolivia: guano, nitrates, borax, even silver. The economic concessions of the Bolivian Litoral province produced an estimated 28 million pesos annually, according to historian José Fellman Velarde. By his calculations, this bonanza

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The Uncouth General Daza

Bolivian historians have bestowed on Hilarión Daza the epithet “el soldado mandón” (the imperious soldier). According to historian

Humberto Vázquez Machicado, Daza was born in the constitutional capital of Sucre around 1840 the illegitimate son of an itinerant Italian snake-oil salesman named Grossolín. As a child, Daza had difficulty pro-nouncing his father’s surname, and from these attempts he received the ludicrous nickname of “Chocholín.” Not pleased, he started to use the surname of his mother.

Daza received his limited education on the tough streets of Sucre as a small-time crook and con artist and in the rough barracks of the army. He showed a talent for being in the right place at the right time and rapidly rose in the military ranks with Mariano Melgarejo, whom in the end he betrayed for 10,000 pesos. Daza was overthrown in 1879, while at the battlefront in Tacna, and headed for Europe. There, he lived the good life until the enormous fortune that he had pilfered became depleted. He returned to Bolivia intent on heading another military coup but was killed in 1894.

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exceeded 14 times the Bolivian budget and eight times that of Chile at the time. This appropriation and Bolivia’s semicolonization by domestic and foreign capital caused the War of the Pacific as much as the incompetence and venality of Daza and earlier Bolivian regimes did. Already, on the eve of Daza’s military coup of May 1876, Chile in effect controlled the bulk of Bolivia’s coastal assets demographi-cally and financially. By the time General Daza was overthrown in December 1879, the Chilean forces had also militarily occupied the entire Bolivian Litoral.


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5Republican Rule and the New Oligarchy

(1879–1932)

People who cannot read will not have the right to vote; and since almost all Bolivians speak Quechua or Aymara, know nothing of the Castilian language, and cannot read, only a handful of select males will have that right.

Eduardo Galeano (1987, 130)

Two major wars—the War of the Pacific and the Chaco War—frame the historical period of 1879 to 1932. Bolivia’s devastating

defeat in the War of the Pacific left a deep imprint on the national psyche, serving as both a catharsis and a catalyst. At the war’s end, blame and guilt completely discredited Bolivia’s military strongmen and brought the era of caudillo rule to an abrupt close. The war also marked a significant turning point in the nation’s development: the establishment of civilian, republican rule.

In this critical period, Bolivia realized a measure of political stabil-ity and economic growth, albeit under the tutelage of a new oligarchy. The narrow new ruling class—the silver- and tin-mining elite and landed aristocracy—was represented by civilian political parties, so the system’s success depended on the franchise remaining limited to the privileged few. More than a half century later, the Chaco War shattered the republican status quo that the War of the Pacific had created.

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On the Eve of the Great Pacific WarNo war breaks out over guano, of which little remains. It is saltpeter that throws the Chilean army into the conquest of the deserts, against the allied forces of Peru and Bolivia.

Eduardo Galeano (1987, 218)

The War of the Pacific was a war over resources, although territorial rivalry was its most immediate cause. The conflict also involved geo-politics, economic rivalry, greed, corruption, and personal ambitions. Indeed, the basic ingredient of the war—rivalry for power and eco-nomic dominance—first came into play with Bolivian independence. Because of this endemic regional rivalry, some historians have argued that the War of the Pacific was inevitable.

In the 1870s, the conflict of national interests and increasing dis-parities in economic and political power among the three neighboring South American countries of Bolivia, Chile, and Peru reached a critical climax. The new power distribution greatly favored Chile, and Chilean statesmen seized this opportunity to consolidate and further expand their nation’s influence and control along the Pacific coast.

Since its founding as a sovereign nation, Bolivia’s survival had been tentative. At first, Lima and Buenos Aires considered Bolivia’s very existence suspect. Bolivia, after all, had been capriciously carved out of the colonial audiencias that they had jealously controlled. Once established, Bolivia was troublesome and unstable. The new coun-try seemed unable to rule itself, much less populate and effectively administer its vast and dispersed territory. Bolivia’s rich natural resources were the constant envy of its more powerful and aggressive neighbors in the Southern Cone. Debilitated by corruption and insta-bility, Bolivia dismally failed to preserve its territory and resources when challenged by Chile.

In great part Bolivia’s geopolitics and unique national conditions facilitated this disastrous war and the loss of its Pacific seacoast. As late as the 1880s, the altiplano region remained the geopolitical cen-ter of the shaky new republic. The majority of the country’s territory, however, was neglected and isolated from the highland by formidable natural barriers—impassable and hostile mountain ranges, rivers, des-erts, and jungles. Bolivians in these frontier regions were forced to fend for themselves. Moreover, Bolivia’s population was largely indigenous with only a thin upper crust of Spaniards and other Europeans. Neither

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social group had the necessary mobility or motivation to migrate to the less hospitable parts of the country.

These factors had a devastating impact on settlement of Bolivia’s Atacama province. Even after the discovery of guano and nitrate deposits in the Atacama Desert, which stretched from Peru in the north to Chile in the south, the Bolivian government was unable to incorporate and fortify this distant, sparsely populated coastal province. The unexpected bonanza in natural fertilizers brought a sudden influx of new settlers, prospectors, and entrepreneurs to the region; however, this population increase only compounded Bolivia’s problems since Bolivian citizens were now outnumbered 10 to one by

The Least Hospitable Place on Earth

The Atacama Desert stretches along the Pacific coast of South America from approximately 21º to 27º south latitude. The War

of the Pacific was fought over this most inhospitable terrain. Today the territory belongs to Chile, but the region remains exceedingly poor. As in Inca times, the economy depends on a few natural ports and fish-ing, but between 1840 and 1885, it was the scene of economic boom and huge wealth derived from extracting natural deposits of guano and sodium nitrates.

Off the coast, the cold waters of the Humboldt current meet the shore and the wall of coastal mountains rising 4,000 feet above the sea. A perpetual cloud cover forms over the peaks and the coastal plateau beyond. About 100 miles wide and stretching 1,000 miles north and south, this barren plateau is one of the driest places on earth. With an average annual rainfall of less than an inch per year, the Atacama may see no rain for decades at a time.

The region is also subject to terrible earthquakes that can be fol-lowed by devastating tidal waves. After an offshore earthquake in August 1868, a massive tidal wave ravaged the coast from Ecuador to Chile and swept out of existence the Atacama seaports wedged between the sea and the surrounding hills. Before modern transportation, the scarcity of water also encouraged plagues of yellow fever and cholera. The region was hell for prospective colonists.

Source: Farcau, Bruce W. The Ten Cents War: Chile, Peru, and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific, 1879–1884 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000), pp. 5–6.

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Chileans and other immigrants, including thousands of Chinese coo-lies brought here by Peru and Chile as cheap, captive laborers.

With other nations and foreign firms competing for the profits from the bird droppings and saltpeter, Bolivia’s share of the bonanza steadily shrank. The remainder was squandered by the corrupt caudillos on profligate living and ill-advised foreign concessions and loans. Bolivian entrepreneurs’ resources were depleted or invested elsewhere, primarily in the highland silver mines. As a last resort, with the economy stagnant and the country heavily indebted, Bolivian governments permitted and encouraged British and Chilean capital to exploit the desert windfall on their behalf. In short, Bolivia’s inherent political and economic weak-nesses directly contributed to the outbreak of the war.

Chile, on the other hand, stood in a position of relative strength. Unlike Peru or Bolivia, Chile’s exceptional political stability and eco-nomic growth since 1830 had helped make it the dominant power in the region. Chileans held regular elections for civilian governments and enticed foreign investors by the credibility of their sound political and financial systems. Chile’s cities were modern, and its people were mostly European immigrants, rather than Indians. Its economy was more diver-sified, and its territory was more integrated and cohesive. Chile had what both Peru and Bolivia lacked. Indeed, one Chilean president boasted in 1858 that the country had “the honor to have proved to the world that the Spanish American people can govern themselves by their own unaided efforts and can continue to prosper” (Bader 1967, 25).

This is not to say that all was well in Chile at the time. The country had its share of shortcomings and crises, and it was precisely a national crisis—the depression of 1878—that pushed Chile closer to war. By the mid-1870s, Chilean progress had come to a halt. Chilean exports had declined and the foreign debt had skyrocketed at the same time that droughts and diseases ravaged the country. Upward of 50,000 Chileans—mostly rotos, or landless peasant farmers of European descent—were forced to emigrate. Many would slave in the grueling guano and nitrate operations in Bolivia’s Atacama Desert.

Chile’s economic decline was an incentive to resolve the territorial dispute with Bolivia aggressively. Chile saw in the great riches of the coastal desert an immediate solution to the 1878 financial crisis and reliable long-term financing for the national debt and future commer-cial and territorial expansion. Decades later, Chile’s foreign minister, Abraham Köning, dissected Chilean motivations succinctly: “The area is rich and worth many millions” (Siles Guevara 1960, 68). Indeed, in the 20 years from 1880 to the end of the century, the gross value of the


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Miners of the Atacama

On a moonscape of parched sand and rock, virtually devoid of plant life, mountains of guano, or bird droppings, were “discov-

ered” in 1840. (In the early 1800s, entrepreneurs had tried unsuccess-fully to market the natural fertilizer in Europe, and it is thought that the Inca used the nitrate-rich guano as fertilizer for their fields.) The cold current rising up from Antarctica created ideal conditions for plankton, and the waters teemed with fish, attracting tens of thousands of sea birds to nest on the shore. And since it never rained, millions of tons of bird droppings had accumulated practically undisturbed for centuries.

The grayish-white guano needed no further processing; it was directly shoveled up into bags and loaded onto nearby ships. But the work was grueling and dehumanizing. The guano workers lived on these piles of excrement that formed the ground. Their digging raised an acrid and fetid dust that irritated their eyes, choked their mouths, contaminated their water, and blanketed their meager food. There was an “appalling stench that could be detected miles out to sea, an odor not just of hundreds of sweating bodies that would not be washed for weeks on end, but of rotting fish, salt, and excrement from which there was no escape” (9).

Few would work in this hellish place for the miserable wages. Thousands of prisoners from the jails of Lima, Peru; La Paz, Bolivia; and Valparaíso, Chile, were conscripted to do the job. And thousands of indentured Chinese coolies were brought over under near slavery conditions to shovel and load the guano.

The Atacama also offered extensive deposits of sodium nitrate that had concentrated for centuries in vast dried-out saltpans cre-ated by the scant runoff from the snowy Andes. Unlike the guano, these nitrate minerals were often well below the surface. Prospectors, mining equipment, and substantial capital investments were neces-sary to bring the resource to market. By 1856, with the guano boom still under way, new mining towns and camps began to extract and process sodium nitrate, in great demand in Europe as a fertilizer and the ingredient in the manufacture of explosives such as the recently invented TNT. Thousands of landless and unemployed Chilean peas-ants comprised the workforce of the nitrate mines along the Peruvian and Bolivian littoral.

Source: Farcau, Bruce W. The Ten Cents War: Chile, Peru, and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific, 1879–1884 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000).

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nitrate exports from the conquered regions reached nearly 3 billion pesos.

On the eve of the war, corruption in Peru and Bolivia and the eco-nomic crisis in Chile had diminished the military preparedness of all three future belligerents. Chile, nevertheless, was relatively more pre-pared. For several decades Chile had been locked in a fierce military and commercial rivalry with Peru and had competed fiercely over control of the western seacoast. Now, Peru, like Bolivia, was virtually bankrupt, in political chaos on the eve of the war, and outclassed militarily by Chile. War decided this rivalry and assured Chilean hegemony on the Pacific coast.

Legacy of Disputed Territorial ClaimsThe dissolution of the great Spanish colonial empire left in its wake conflicting and ambiguous territorial claims that incited long-standing disputes and border wars. Perhaps none was as intractable as Bolivia’s contested coastal boundary with Chile and subsequent loss of its access to the sea. Bolivia’s fundamental claim to the Atacama province was based on a legal rule dating from 1810.

According to this principle of international law, colonial boundar-ies became international boundaries. In other words, the territory that had been within the jurisdiction of the Audiencia of Charcas devolved directly to the independent country of Bolivia. Moreover, Bolivia’s 1825 Declaration of Independence specifically incorporated within its national territory the province of Potosí, whose southern boundary included the disputed Atacama Desert. In contrast, the Chileans never explicitly dealt with the boundary issue until the discovery of guano.

Especially important in terms of Bolivia’s access to Pacific ports, this boundary confirmed that the seaports of colonial Bolivia belonged to the independent nation. In 1825, Bolivia’s first president, Simón Bolívar, had designated the small port of Cobija, founded in 1587 and located between the Loa River in the north and the Salado River in the south, as Bolivia’s Pacific seaport. Slightly south of Cobija, Bolivia also maintained the small port of Mejillones, which later served as the main transport point for the guano and nitrates.

Although Cobija was the port closest to Potosí and the silver mines, it proved wholly inadequate, since the trek to Cobija from Potosí demanded a month of rigorous hauling by mule train. In 1840, only little more than half of Cobija’s total population of 550 was Bolivian, and

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the port town’s water and food had to be brought in from Chile. Most of Bolivia’s silver exports, as a result, were packed out to the larger port of Arica in southern Peru.

Part of the Audiencia of Charcas, Arica was originally part of Peru. Later it was placed under the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, which rebelled in 1810 and became the Province of Río de la Plata. Bolivia, or Upper Peru, then seceded and joined Lower Peru. Bolívar argued that Upper Peru belonged to Lower Peru, and when in 1821 Peru secured indepen-dence, Peru claimed Arica and land down to Chile’s Copiapó. After 1825, numerous attempts were made to get the Peruvian port of Arica ceded to Bolivia. In the Treaty of 1826, the Peruvian government agreed to transfer to Bolivia a segment of the Pacific coastal territory, including the port of Arica, but Peru’s congress would not ratify the treaty. In 1841, a frustrated Bolivian government briefly occupied Arica and offered to purchase it outright. (This hope remains alive. For historical and geographical rea-sons Arica is the most logical seaport for Bolivia.)

Only after 1840, when the discovery of guano proved wildly profit-able, did Chile seriously challenge Bolivian sovereignty in the Atacama Desert. According to legal documents of 1842, boundaries of the two nations directly overlapped: Chile claimed coastal territory as far north as the 23rd parallel south latitude; Bolivia claimed land as far

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The Bay of Cobija, the original site of Bolivia’s Pacific seaport. Today, the port is defunct, and the area belongs to Chile, lost by Bolivia after the War of the Pacific. (Martin Glassner photo)

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south as the 27th parallel. This disputed possession drove the two countries to the brink of war in 1857. That year, the Chileans attempted to seize the guano-rich Mejillones region but failed. Six years later, Chilean forces finally occupied the coastal headland. The Bolivian government nervously brandished a declaration of war, but both sides backed down in the end, and negotiations temporarily defused the cri-sis. Their outcome, unfortunately, depended on the incompetent diplo-macy of Bolivia’s blatantly pro-Chilean dictator Mariano Melgarejo.

The injudicious Melgarejo signed the infamous Treaty of 1866. By the terms of the agreement, both sides renounced their previous territorial claims. The treaty fixed the Chilean-Bolivian coastal boundary at the 24th parallel south latitude and established a shared zone of exploita-tion between the 23rd and 25th parallels. In effect, Bolivia gave up all claims south of the 25th parallel.

Missed Opportunities

Bolivian presidents and diplomats squandered several opportunities to resolve the territorial dispute with Chile. After 1840, the Chileans

generally turned a cold shoulder to Bolivia’s frantic diplomatic missions to the capital of Santiago and its protests over Chilean encroachments. In 1863, Chile’s conflict with Spain and threatened hostilities with Argentina handed Bolivian diplomacy a unique negotiating edge.

That year, Chile occupied the Bolivian port of Mejillones. The Bolivian Congress authorized a declaration of war if “all conciliatory and diplo-matic means being exhausted, no return of the usurped territory or a peaceful solution compatible with national dignity can be achieved.” At this tense moment the Spanish flotilla attacked Peru’s guano-producing region, and the Peruvians and Chileans allied against Spain.

Bolivia remained neutral but allowed Spanish warships access to the port of Cobija. Fearful of the outcome of the hostilities, Chile sent an envoy, Aniceto Vergara Albano, to La Paz in March 1866. Historian Bruce Farcau writes that allegedly Vergara was instructed to offer the Bolivian’s virtual carte blanche in drawing the border with Chile. But Melgarejo, who was president at the time, had already canceled Bolivia’s neutral-ity and closed its ports to Spain. Flattered and distracted by Vergara, Melgarejo refused to discuss the boundary dispute until the Spanish had sailed home. With the Spanish threat removed, and buoyed by their naval victories against Spain’s superior force, Chile lacked incentive to be magnanimous. The result was the despised Treaty of 1866.

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The ambiguities in this last provision proved to be especially perilous and guaranteed future clashes. For example, the treaty failed to specify precisely which resources other than guano were to be included within the 50-50 split. In 1871, when a massive silver vein was discovered near the small town of Caracoles, just south and east of the 23rd paral-lel, the dispute intensified. Bolivia claimed the mines, but the Chileans provided all the working capital and 10,000 miners to the operations.

Not surprisingly, Bolivians widely condemned this rash agreement as a sellout of their national patrimony. The treaty, unquestionably, was extremely disadvantageous to Bolivia, which conceded three times as much territory than Chile did by its terms. As a result, instead of resolving the ter-ritorial dispute, Bolivian resentment against the treaty’s unequal demands and the heavy-handed manner of its negotiation only festered. At the same time, the quarreling over the shared exploitation zone steadily intensified. In the end, the treaty effectively drove the parties closer to war.

All attempts to amend the unequal provisions of the 1866 treaty failed abysmally. The Bolivians sent a mission in 1872 to revise the boundary, but the Chileans rebuffed it. Finally, in 1873, when it became obvious that negotiations were fruitless, Bolivia’s president-elect, Adolfo Ballivián, signed a secret defense treaty with Peru. Historians believe, however, that the Chileans knew of this vague agreement from the outset but reserved the knowledge until the most opportune moment. Indeed, Chile later produced this secret alliance as the official rationale for the military occu-pation of Lima and all of Peru’s rich nitrate operations.

In 1874, another treaty was ratified between Chile and Bolivia that terminated the zones of shared economic exploitation, but once again fixed the territorial boundary at the 24th parallel and at the crest of the Andes on the east. Shared export duties, unspecified in the earlier treaty, applied only to nitrates. A final clause in the agreement granted Chilean companies operating in Bolivia’s Atacama fields a 25-year exemption from all new taxes. When Bolivia rashly ignored this provision, Chile precipitated all-out hostilities; thus, the 1874 treaty provided the imme-diate catalyst of war.

The Ten Centavos WarThe War of the Pacific was popularly dubbed the “Ten Centavos (cents) War.” In 1877, after a devastating tidal wave destroyed much of the port of Antofagasta, the municipal council there passed a reconstruc-tion tax. In 1878, President Hilarión Daza and the Bolivian Congress approved the modest 10¢ tax on every 100 pounds of nitrates exported

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from Bolivian territory. This law directly violated the 1874 treaty, and the Chileans and foreign investors were outraged. The British and Chilean–owned Nitrates and Railroad Company of Antofagasta refused to pay the tax, and tensions mounted.

At first, cooler heads prevailed. President Daza temporarily sus-pended the tax, and the company agreed to an annual voluntary con-tribution. But then Daza ended the moratorium and demanded that the tax be paid retroactively. Once again, the foreign company refused to comply. The Chileans responded with gunboat diplomacy, and anchored an ironclad in Antofagasta harbor and mobilized their entire fleet.

This time, President Daza refused to back down. With Bolivian sov-ereignty seemingly besmirched, Daza canceled the mining contract of the British-Chilean consortium. On February 14, 1879, Chile occupied Antofagasta—home to 5,000 Chileans and fewer than 600 Bolivians—and issued an ultimatum: Bolivia had 48 hours to accede to interna-tional arbitration of the dispute. President Daza ignored the deadline and insisted that the port first be liberated. He also withheld news of the Chilean landing for a week until after the conclusion of the popular carnival festivities then under way.

In no mood for more wrangling, Chile occupied Bolivia’s Antofagasta province and the entire Pacific coast south of the 23rd parallel in March. On March 14, Bolivia announced a formal declaration of war, but war still might have been averted if Peru’s last-minute conciliatory diplo-macy had succeeded, or if Peru had not honored its defensive alliance with Bolivia. By this time, however, word of the Bolivian declaration of war had reached Santiago, and therefore, on April 5, Chile formally declared war against Bolivia and Peru.

Defeat and Loss of the SeacoastBolivia was totally unprepared for war, especially one so distant from its population centers and resource base, and suffered from grossly irre-sponsible leadership. Despite his patriotic bluster, President Daza was inept in the military campaign. On the battlefield, he proved cowardly, self-motivated, and (according to some accounts) often drunk. Daza withdrew his crack Bolivian regiments from the field and left the allied forces to be defeated by the Chileans in the Battle of San Francisco. Although the remaining allied forces were victorious days later in the indecisive Battle of Tarapacá, President Daza’s desertion became a great national embarrassment to Bolivia.


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Historians have argued that Daza wanted to protect his prized regi-ments as a hedge against coup attempts, but on December 27, 1879, in a clever and meticulously timed plot, officers at the front and Colonel Eliodoro Camacho, the chief of staff, overthrew Daza, and the ex-president fled into exile in Europe.

In January 1880, General Narciso Campero, a distinguished career officer and division commander, was appointed Bolivia’s provisional president and assumed command of the allied forces in the field as by-then both the Bolivian and the Peruvian presidents had effectively deserted command of their armies. Campero’s Bolivian-Peruvian force was decisively defeated by the Chileans in May, and Campero and his exhausted troops retreated toward La Paz. At the head of one column of survivors, Campero was met with the news that the National Assembly had formally elected him president on May 31. As the marauding horde of desperate soldiers approached the Bolivian border, a cavalry force from La Paz intercepted and forcibly disarmed them. The government feared violence when the wounded and exhausted returnees learned that they would not receive the back pay owed them. For Bolivia, the shoot-ing war was over, although hostilities between Peru and Chile continued for three more years while Bolivia watched from the sidelines, hoping for a favorable resolution.

On April 5, 1884, Bolivia signed the Truce of Valparaíso, which gave Chile control, but not permanent transfer, of Bolivia’s coastal territory. A peace treaty was finally signed in 1904, whereby Chile formally annexed Bolivia’s Atacama province (called Antofagasta today). Bolivia was guar-anteed the right to import and export its goods through the ports of Arica and Antofagasta and to set up customs’ stations. Duties on imports were to be divided, providing Bolivia 75 percent and Chile 25 percent.

Thus, with the stroke of a pen, Bolivia lost a fourth of its territory and became the landlocked nation that it is today. The War of the Pacific was officially over, but not Bolivia’s relentless quest to regain a seacoast.

Rise of the Modern Party SystemThe War of the Pacific deeply divided Bolivian society and govern-ment, and the ensuing rancorous debate within the white ruling class produced two political factions. In short order, these factions coalesced into the two major political parties that would determine the destiny of Bolivia’s citizens—rich or poor, white, mestizo, or Indian—for most of the next half-century. Despite minor differences and pseudo-ideological distinctions, both parties desired stability, national unity, and economic

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development. These did not come easily because both parties also desired to appropriate political power.

The Liberal Party was founded in 1883 and represented the politi-cal “hawks,” who were determined to press on with the futile war at all costs. The founding Liberal leader was the highly respected General Eliodoro Camacho, the wartime chief of staff. Camacho and his loyalists—among them the president, General Narciso Campero (another war hero who had replaced Daza), and Fernando E. Guachalla (a noted diplomat)—rejected even the hint of a “dishonorable” peace settlement with Chile. These statesmen and army leaders insisted that for the sake of national honor, Bolivians could and must fight on. Or, in other words, the Liberals unrealistically refused to accept defeat and the inevitable loss of Bolivia’s seacoast to Chile.

The Conservative Party responded to the entrepreneurial interests of the silver mining oligarchy and was headed by Mariano Baptista, a longstanding and very vocal opponent of the war and noted attorney for “Big Silver.” Along with Baptista, who was Campero’s foreign minister at the time, other leading “doves” of the Conservative Party included two wealthy mining barons, Vice President Aniceto Arce and Gregorio Pacheco. Because significant Chilean capital had funded the resurgence of Bolivia’s silver mining operations, the Conservative Party was also perceived as pro-Chilean.

As the 1884 elections neared, Campero’s administration formed two partisan camps, split over war policy and political ideology. This schism appeared to bode ill for the upcoming elections, but they came off without violence.


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Baptista’s Diplomacy

A n able diplomat, Mariano Baptista represented Bolivia during the U.S.-brokered Arica peace talks on the American ship Lackawanna

in October of 1880. Chile had attempted to split the Bolivian-Peruvian alliance by secretly offering Bolivia a corridor to the sea carved out of occupied Peruvian territory and the Peruvian port of Arica as the prize for abandoning its ally. Although such an offer was rejected and remained unpopular at home, Baptista had consistently supported a deal or sepa-rate peace with Chile. It may be small comfort to Bolivians today that to their country’s credit, Baptista’s diplomatic realism and pro-Chilean sympathies failed to win out over nationalism, idealism, and fair play.

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In rhetoric more than in practice, the Liberals stood for the classi-cal principles of the 19th century: liberty and secular, federalist rule. The party opposed the official status of the Roman Catholic Church as the state religion and the unitary form of government established in the existing Constitution of 1878. In their view, unitary government had contributed to caudillismo and chronic instability. They lost out on both of these policy reforms to the Conservatives.

Early in the presidency of the Liberal general Campero, the national convention of 1880 reaffirmed the 1878 constitution. This charter basi-cally remained in effect until 1938—longer than any Bolivian constitu-tion before or since. In 1883, Camacho, a noted Liberal theoretician, described his party as devoted to the sacred principle of liberty. Baptista and the Conservatives countered by attempting to discredit the party program as “socialist” and “revolutionary.”

The platform of the Conservative Party reaffirmed Catholicism as the state religion and the unitary form of government. The Conservatives identified their party with peace, stability, and traditionalism. During the 15 years immediately after the war, the pro-Chilean “peace” party seemed to capitalize on an image of realism, pragmatism, and single-mindedness in power. The firmness of the party’s rule, however, pro-voked more violence than peace.

Rule of the Conservative OligarchyIdeology served as a smoke screen for hard political competition among moneyed elite interests. Political leaders preferred to believe that ideology was best to differentiate their party in contested elections, but the real battles, often bloody, were actually over political power and control of the government, not ideas. Personal and ideological rivalry aside, both politi-cal parties shared conservative political agendas. To historian Herbert S. Klein, the 1884 election anticipated a novel form of civilian politics in Bolivia. It represented “a political contest between civilian capital-ists instead of barracks militarists . . . wherein the influence of money re placed the praetorianism of the past” (1968, 27, author’s translation).

In the 1884 election, the two leading candidates were to have been the leaders of the Liberal and Conservative Parties, Camacho and Baptista, respectively. Instead, Baptista was edged out and two silver magnates sympathetic to the Conservative Party, Gregorio Pacheco and Aniceto Arce, vied for presidential victory. Pacheco was the candidate of the small Democratic Party, which he created purely as his personal electoral vehicle. In the results, Pacheco received the most votes but not

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the necessary absolute majority. Arce, the candidate of the Conservative Party, came in second, and Camacho, third in the count.

Camacho’s Liberal Party, however, controlled the most votes in the congress, which would decide the election. After an anxious behind-the-scenes compromise among the political parties, the Bolivian Congress elected Pacheco as president. By the terms of the agreement, Baptista would serve as the vice president, and in the next go-around, it would be Arce’s turn at the highest office. According to plan, Arce received an absolute majority of the vote in the elections of May 1888; another silver millionaire became president.

The Liberals contested his election, openly rebelling in September 1888. With great force and violence, President Arce put down the Liberal revolt in October 1888. The silver baron exacted a fierce retribution against his enemies, and prominent Liberals were exiled, imprisoned, or shot. From exile in Peru, General Camacho mas-terminded an uprising in La Paz in May 1890 that also failed. The election of Mariano Baptista in 1892 elicited further civil violence by the Liberals, provoking a state of siege days before the handover of office. Once again, the government exiled General Camacho and cracked down on the Liberals. While this pattern of chronic instabil-ity continued, these Conservative governments developed significant reforms, explorations, and railroad and communications infrastruc-ture, such as banks and military institutions, the vital railways from Antofagasta to La Paz and to Oruro, and internal roads connecting major cities.

Between 1884 and 1899, the Conservative Party monopolized the office of the presidency. The Liberal opponents, quite appropriately, labeled these 15 years of exclusion from power as the era of the “conser-vative oligarchy.” Blocked from national office by means of free and open elections, the Liberals believed themselves justified in employing intrigue and civil violence. Although these measures failed, as the century drew to a close, the influence of the Conservative Party began to wane and that of the Liberals to rise. In the Liberal Party’s favor was its alliance with the up-and-coming tin oligarchy, the dominant political force of the new century. A revolt ended the tenure of the archtraditionalists in 1899, and ushered in two decades of government by the Liberal Party.

The Federal Revolution and Liberal Party RuleIn 1898, the Conservative Party was the undisputed voice of Bolivia’s traditional ruling classes. These consisted of the silver industrialists, the


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old aristocrats of Sucre and Potosí, and the great landowners of Bolivia’s rich central and southern agricultural regions. Unfortunately, the agricultural sector—despite the fact that Bolivia remained 75 percent rural—was no longer a progressive and vibrant sector of the economy. Similarly, after sharp declines in the price of silver on the international market and in Bolivia’s overall production, the great silver industrial-ists were no longer so “great.” Their economic and political clout had been reduced by the new power brokers of the northern altiplano—the merchants of tin.

In this shifting power context, an incident in 1898 precipitated civil war. In November, the Conservative-dominated legislature, over the strong opposition of the representatives from the city of La Paz, approved the law that maintained Sucre as the nation’s legal capital. This parliamentary act, which ironically had been nonpartisan, touched off the bloody but brief civil war between the Conservatives and Liberals known as the Federal Revolution.

The revolution of 1899, in effect, transferred the seat of government from Sucre to the city of La Paz. In many respects, the dispute over

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The city of Sucre, formerly called Chuquisaca and renamed after the Bolivian independence hero Antonio José de Sucre, was reaffirmed as the nation’s legal capital in 1898, setting off a brief civil war. (Peter McFarren photo)

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the country’s legal capital was symbolic and symptomatic of the most recent political-economic shift in oligarchic rule since the great Pacific war. Although regionalism was an incendiary issue, the ostensible principle of federalism versus unitary government represented a partial explanation, if not pretext, for the major revolt, which resulted in no constitutional alterations in Bolivia’s governing structures.

The struggle was between the old power brokers, the silver-mining and landed elite of the Conservative Party, on the one hand, and the new power elite, the tin-mining industrialists, urban professionals, and export-importers of the Liberal Party, on the other. Additionally, Liberal politicians capitalized on a genuine grassroots indigenous rebellion for their limited partisan ends. In the highlands, the great Indian leader Pablo Zárate Willka turned the anti-Conservative revolt into a struggle against all whites and their encroachments on Indian lands of the northern altiplano. When Willka and his supporters massacred and cannibalized a detachment of Liberal soldiers, the white elite united to repress the indigenous uprising.

Frustrated by electoral fraud and unable to take over the presidential palace constitutionally, the Liberal revolt was an extraconstitutional route to office. The new century began for Bolivia with a new Liberal oligarchy: In 1900, General José Manuel Pando, a very popular war hero, explorer, and architect of Liberal uprisings, became the first Liberal president of the new era. The subsequent presidencies of the great Liberal statesman Ismael Montes from 1904 to 1908 and 1913 to 1917 further consolidated Liberal Party rule.

In the classical republican period that lasted through to 1920, there were two dominant political parties. These parties operated within a certain “gentleman’s code” that provided the opposition party or parties limited expression and competitive representation in the legislature. By these means, Bolivian political party development achieved the legal, but rarely fair and nonviolent transmission of power among partisan competitors. Party government, as a result, could merely reduce rather than completely eliminate the violence and instability that has plagued modern Bolivian politics.

In 1900, of an estimated total population of 1.6 million, about 35,000, or about 2 percent, of citizens generally voted. Historian Herbert S. Klein has suggested that only 10 to 20 percent of the population were participant observers, much less formal actors, in the political process. Moreover, since independence, Spanish-speaking literacy, a voting requirement, never exceeded 25 percent of the predominantly Indian population, still slightly over 50 percent in 1900.


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The Deep Roots of the 1899 Indian Revolt

Señor Baptista, I and those of my race demand justice, justice, nothing else but justice; justice which you have the duty to give us.

Telésforo Mendoza, mayor of the Puraka Ayllu, 1893 (Platt 1987, 280).

Recent historical scholarship emphasizes the autonomous nature of the popular Indian uprising in 1899, and that the roots of

indigenous rebellion can be traced back at least to the years before the War of the Pacific. Unquestionably, the mobilization of Indian communities in 1899 behind the Federal Revolution was crucial to the victory of the Liberal Party over the last Conservative govern-ment. Did the Liberals uncork the genie of Indian rebellion for their own ends? Were the Indians passive victims of manipulation? Or, were complex and independent interests behind the 1899 revolution?

Historians have proposed many theories to explain the causes of the civil war. One argument is that the rebellion was a rivalry between the “mining capitalism” of La Paz and the “feudal estates” of Sucre; another asserts that it was the underlying competition between northern tin miners and southern silver miners. A third interpretation characterizes it as a struggle between the “middle classes” (Liberals) of La Paz and the “ruling classes” (Conservatives or Constitutionalists) of Sucre; or the mestizos versus the white Creoles, respectively. But what about the Indian revolt?

Historians of the Zárate Willka uprising believe the indigenous revolt predated the founding of the oligarchic parties and represented an autonomous movement. The Indians pursued their own independent agendas—rebellion against the republic’s taxation and tribute systems, liberal capitalist markets, and regressive land reforms. The indigenous alli-ance with mestizos and Liberals did not mean that these groups led the Indians by the nose. At best, the Liberal Party merely exploited the deeply rooted and explosive contradictions in the Andean social order.

The Liberals came to fear what they had unleashed, nonetheless. During the height of the rebellion in March 1899, the war hero and later president José Manuel Pando warned Alonso: “No one can be unaware

(continues)

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In great part, civil violence continued because Bolivians lacked a political culture of compromise. Also, in a country of scarce and unequally distributed resources, politicians and party loyalists, espe-cially those not independently wealthy, relied on the easy spoils of government for personal enrichment and social advancement. Indeed, political violence may have occurred because of the party system rather than simply in spite of it. To the degree that the political parties reflected the highly competitive and dominant economic interests of the day, some political infighting was to be expected. As long as the middle, lower, and indigenous classes remained out of the political picture, this inter- and intraparty instability did not threaten the oligarchic status quo. But this chronic instability, even if not deep rooted, could not con-tinue indefinitely without unintended consequences. One of these was the loss of Bolivia’s Amazonian region.

At the height of the rubber boom, the Bolivian Amazon region of Acre produced millions of dollars’ worth of crude rubber annually. Everyone had an eye on it, too—Brazilians, Peruvians, British, and Americans. At the turn of the century, Bolivians and the new Liberal government of General José Manuel Pando were confronted with the problem of how to enforce its legal sovereignty from a great distance. Distracted by internal politics, President Pando misjudged and mis-handled the crisis. He sent three costly military expeditions from the altiplano to Acre.

Brazilians greatly outnumbered Bolivian settlers, and the Brazilian government coveted the zone’s riches for itself. To protect its assets, in December 1901, the Bolivians formed the Bolivian Syndicate with Anglo-American investors (among them the noted U.S. industrialist J.


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(continued)

of the damage that is being done by this fratricidal war; to which may be added . . . the caste war that is upon us, impelled by the Indian race itself.”

Sources: Condarco Morales, Ramiro. Zarate, el temible Willka (La Paz: Talleres Gráficos Bolivianos, 1965), p. 295; Platt, Tristan. “The Andean Experience of Bolivian Liberalism, 1825–1900: Roots of Rebellion in the 19th-Century Chayanta (Potosí).” In Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries. Ed. Steve J. Stern (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), p. 283.

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Pierpont Morgan) to lease the Bolivian Acre for $40 million. Potential involvement by the United States especially alarmed Brazil, which opposed the concession outright.

In August 1902, revolt broke out in Acre, led by the Brazilian rubber man José Plácido de Castro. The Brazilians of Acre declared their inde-pendence from Bolivia, and after months of steady fighting, the Bolivians left the region for good in January 1903. Although the Amazon bubble and monopoly on world rubber would burst soon enough, Bolivia would never regain the 59,000 square miles of territory that it ceded to Brazil in the Treaty of Petrópolis.

The Empires of Silver and TinSince the Spanish conquest, mineral wealth has been the backbone of the Bolivian economy and a critical determinant of social class and political power. A king’s treasure was extracted from the great mountain of silver at Potosí, and Bolivia’s fantastic silver mines steadily produced valuable ore up until independence. In the 1850s, new capital, new technol-ogy, and new discoveries revived the dying silver trade. Flooded mines were reopened and worked with greater efficiency using steam engines.

In the mid-19th century, the colonial city of Potosí witnessed a revival of silver mining that created the great silver magnates of the young republic. (Courtesy of Guillermo Delgado-P.)

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Foreign and domestic capital formed creative and aggressive joint ven-tures. And the new Bolivian govern-ments, especially the Conservative governments, which were of, for, and by the silver barons, provided the political order and supported the economic liberalism and tax and transportation incentives necessary for expansion. The world market helped too, with a fantastic rise in demand for silver.

The decade of the 1860s marked the emergence of the famous bar-ons of silver. The first of his kind was José Avelino Aramayo, who reopened the rich mines of Potosí to modern extraction methods and founded the Real Socavón Mining Company. Another baron, Aniceto Arce, ranked first in the overall vol-

ume of silver production. In 1865, Arce became a Bolivian millionaire from the riches of his Huanchaca Mining Company, the second-largest producer of silver in the world. Gregorio Pacheco opened the Guadalupe Mines in the 1870s, and became the second-richest and most important silver magnate of 19th-century Bolivia.

These men had money and power; however, silver is a limited resource and international markets are ever fluid and fickle. Silver prices dropped globally in 1870 and again in 1893, as the world’s financial systems abandoned the silver standard. The age of silver, which had begun in 1873, was suddenly over by 1895. And with it went most of the great silver magnates, who failed to survive the tran-sition into the next Bolivian mining bonanza—the tin empires of the 20th century.

The underlying conditions and governmental policies that had favored silver mining were especially important for Bolivia’s entry into the modern era of mining. Publicly and privately sponsored infrastruc-ture projects, like the opening of the Antofagasta-Oruro railway in 1895, facilitated the transport and export of industrial ores. Both the great silver age and the long period of civilian rule by the Conservative

A potosino, or resident of Potosí, wears clothing typical of the area: a decorated wool vest, a shirt called an “unku,” and flannel trousers. (Kathy S. Leonard photo)

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and Liberal oligarchy were essential in the successful transition to the mining of industrial metals, such as copper, lead, zinc, wolfram, anti-mony, and, of course, tin.

The period of 1900 to 1927 saw a meteoric rise in world tin prices. Most silver mine owners were displaced by an adventurous new group of Bolivian and foreign prospectors and entrepreneurs. Of the world-famous silver magnates, only Aramayo survived the transition to tin to become one of the “big three” tin barons. The Aramayo hold-ings accounted for 25 percent of the country’s total tin production. The biggest and most important tin magnate, however, was Simón Patiño. His extensive holdings represented nearly 50 percent of all of Bolivian tin production. The third tin baron, Mauricio Hochschild, was of European descent, a Chilean-Argentine-Jewish entrepreneur.

The rise of the three great tin empires altered Bolivian history irrevocably. Economically, the new tin elite, and their investments, production, and profits became intimately linked with the move-ments of international capital and international markets. As a direct consequence, the tin era, which spanned more than half a century from 1900 to 1952, created a highly dependent national economy.

Bolivian miners at work in a tin mine. The nation’s most important mining operations were established during the first decades of the 20th century. (Guillermo Delgado-P. photo)

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Cash-starved Bolivian governments and the underdeveloped economy became slavishly reliant on the limited taxes that these private enter-prises afforded the state. Often in Bolivian history, a major national resource has enriched a very few at the expense of the many, and this was clearly the case with tin.

The Bolivian economy—and therefore the Bolivian people—became further impoverished through a destructive syndrome of underdevelopment: the unequal and declining terms of trade. This structural condition trapped the country into living beyond its means because foreign imports were more expensive than the pesos earned by Bolivia’s exports abroad. Unless international prices were exceptionally high, tin exports rarely earned sufficient revenues to offset the country’s demand and need for expensive luxury items and


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The Great Tin Baron

Simón Patiño, the richest and most powerful tin magnate, began life as a man of the people with limited means. He was a mestizo

of humble origins who worked his way up in the world. He became a white-collar administrative employee in the large silver mines of Potosí. An adventurer, his risks paid off when he struck it rich in the depleted Uncía silver mine. Patiño steadily consolidated his holdings. He bought out the British Uncía Mining Company in 1910 and the Chilean Llallagua Company in 1924.

Patiño Mines became the single largest mining empire to be owned solely by Bolivian capital. As his enormous wealth increased, he ulti-mately acquired vast European holdings in mining-related and nonmin-ing ventures.

Patiño was quite the cosmopolitan bon vivant. He maintained luxury suites in the best hotels in Paris and New York. The sweaty and dirty work—both in and out of the mines—he relegated to the tough, under-paid Bolivian miners and to his managers. In the name of Patiño Mines, his administrators would cavalierly dictate political and economic policy to Bolivian governments—and get away with it.

Until his death in 1940, Patiño remained Bolivia’s most powerful and internationally known capitalist. He had routinely extended siz-able private loans from his vast fortune to the government in return for private tax concessions and personal political favors. Few disputed the fact that Patiño had once wielded veto power over the Bolivian government.

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manufactured goods. Moreover, an unequal trade structure promoted budget deficits and a growing national debt. In short, despite the great tin wealth, the Bolivian economy as a whole became more, rather than less, impoverished during the reign of the tin barons.

Bolivian governments served the tin interests as they had Big Silver earlier. The state subsidized mining exports in countless ways in cluding infrastructure, transportation, monetary policies, and taxes. In short, the government footed the costs of economic development, yet received as little as 3 percent of annual mineral exports in taxes. With the government’s revenues so intimately tied to Big Tin, national development projects in sectors that did not directly benefit this tiny clique of national and foreign capitalists fell by the wayside. Short of nationalization or revolution, the government had few alternatives—if it had wanted to exercise any, that is—to collaborat-ing with Big Tin. Quite simply, the large tin mines were the source of the nation’s only significant employment, foreign exchange, and state revenue.

The political consequences of the government’s intimate relation-ship with the tin oligarchy popularized an appropriate and unique Bolivian term, la rosca (literally a “screw” or “twist”). Rosca referred to the tightly interwoven clique of political and economic elites that served and answered to the tin barons. The term served as a jibe against the corrupted ruling establishment that had been seduced by the power and money of the Big Three mining industrialists. Within this ruling establishment were the generals and military officers, the traditional landed aristocracy, the rising urban entrepreneurs and merchants, and the political class of politicians, lawyers, and bureaucrats.

In the decades before the Chaco War, the tin economy was a bumpy ride, and governmental stability and resources had bounced up and down with it. From price highs before the 1929 depression, tin prices and fiscal revenues plummeted. Earnings in 1932 were 17 percent of those in 1929. Tin profits had helped pay the country’s bills, but by the end of the republican period, the state treasury was bankrupt. Without the tin revenue, the economic foundation of Liberal Party rule col-lapsed. Out of the debris emerged a new third party.

The Republican Revolution and the Chaco CrisisBolivia’s two-party political system withstood two important changes in 1914 and 1920. The Liberal Party splintered in 1914 when an

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important group of leading Liberal statesmen and intellectuals became disaffected and abandoned the party. Zealous and well organized, these dissidents—among them Daniel Salamanca, Bautista Saavedra, and General José Manuel Pando—founded the Republican Party. Although this rupture created the first major third party, for a time, things settled back into the classic two-party pattern of oligarchic rule and fraudulent elections. At first, the new Republicans were no different from the old Liberals.

In July 1920, these Republican partisans revolted and deposed the last Liberal president, José Gutiérrez Guerra. Political fragmentation and abuses of presidential power in government by both the Conservatives and the Liberals were two major causes of the Republican Revolution. As noted by Herbert S. Klein, the party’s founder, Salamanca, claimed that his party’s goal was to guarantee fair elections. Ultimately, the sei-zure of power by the Republican Party did lead to the end of two-party, oligarchic rule because the party splintered almost immediately.

The Republicans divided into two personalist factions. Daniel Salamanca formed the Genuine Republican Party (the genuinos), and Bautista Saavedra headed the Socialist Republicans (the saavedristas). The Socialist Republicans introduced a new kind of populist politics that was often contradictory and dangerous. For the first time, politi-cians appealed to the interests of the rising urban middle classes. The political climate was changing in other ways, too. New ideas from abroad encouraged the formation of smaller, more ideological parties. This speeded the development of a less predictable and less controllable multiparty system. The instability introduced into Bolivian politics by the highly partisan climate, especially the rancor and rivalry between the leaders of the two Republican parties, later complicated the crisis, which arose in Bolivia’s Chaco territory.

The new bosses of the Republican parties were fundamentally dif-ferent in personality, political style, and class support. Saavedra was a populist with more ties to middle-class Liberals than to the powerful tin mining interests. He drew his class support from urban artisans, small merchants, and workers. His orientation fomented a new middle-class consciousness that threatened the traditional monopoly of power by the urban and rural upper classes. These establishment voters gravi-tated instead to the party faction led by one of their own, the aristo-cratic and intellectual Cochabamba landowner Daniel Salamanca. The personal animosity and competitiveness of the two leaders compounded the party rift and the underlying class conflict.


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Saavedra became president in 1921. His first acts established pro-gressive social and labor codes and doubled the taxes on mining. Clearly more attuned to the underprivileged than the other parties, Saavedra’s populism was, nevertheless, intended to woo and manipu-late voters. As a result, his policies were often inconsistent and repres-sive. In 1922, he repressed the first general workers’ strike with brute military force. A miners’ strike the following year resulted in the infa-mous Massacre of Uncía, in which military troops were set against the desperate miners. Saavedra also responded to a major Indian uprising in the highland village of Jesús de Machaca near Lake Titicaca with brutal repression.

Saavedra governed in difficult economic times, which undoubtedly contributed to the heightened social and political unrest. Extremely vulnerable to the fluctuations of the international tin market, the Bolivian economy seemed on a roller-coaster ride. Saavedra’s response was to negotiate for millions of dollars in private loans from U.S. bank-ers at very disadvantageous terms for the country. His more radical critics complained of his cavalier and incautious approach to foreign capital. His government welcomed foreign investments and promoted the exploration for petroleum in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands by Standard Oil of New Jersey. The Genuine Republicans and later an offshoot of the Socialist Republicans, the Nationalist Party, claimed that Saavedra had sold the country to the highest foreign bidder.

In 1925, Hernando Siles Reyes was selected as the Socialist Republican Party’s candidate for president, much to Saavedra’s dismay. Siles was Saavedra’s main competitor and opponent within the party. Since Saavedra could not run for the presidency again, he had to come to terms with Siles. Saavedra, therefore, forced Siles to sign a pact. In it, Siles promised that he would strictly follow the party’s agenda and Saavedra’s counsel. Once president, however, Siles desired to be his own man and break out of Saavedra’s political orbit. In January 1927, Siles duly established his own political party, the Nationalist Party.

In some respects, Siles was a progressive president; at least in com-parative terms, he was no worse than most of his day. His government had sponsored enlightened university reforms in 1928, and when a crisis developed in the Chaco, his government responded forcefully but avoided war. Siles hoped that a more cautious policy might defuse the country’s serious territorial dispute with Paraguay in the Chaco region. Nevertheless, during his presidency, Siles had to confront Bolivia’s serious economic crisis. His cost-cutting policies gained him

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few friends. In the end, he failed to discover better alternatives to new foreign loans. With the country facing immediate bankruptcy and daily demonstrations in La Paz, he was forced to borrow despite exorbitant rates of interest.

The political deed that most discredited him and ultimately brought down his government was his highly unpopular initiative to amend the constitution so that he might extend his term in office. He claimed that a national crisis, both economic and political, necessitated the amendment. His plan provoked universal opposition, especially among Bolivia’s students, who had become radicalized by bad economic times and socialist and Marxist ideas. Political opponents of all stripes and mobs of students took to the streets in protest. The death of a student in an antigovernment demonstration ignited a full-scale rebellion. The unrest escalated into a bloody revolt with the army, the three main opposition parties, and the poor urban workers joining the protesters’ ranks. On June 25, 1930, a revolt that had begun largely as a student demonstration, toppled the Siles government.

This Constitutionalist Revolution was a harbinger of major political changes. The immediate consequence was to affirm the constitutional prohibition against consecutive terms in presidential office. Another con-sequence was the rise of student radicalism and political activism. After 1930, Bolivian students continued to march in the front lines of revolution-ary action against unpopular or unjust governments. Also, the upheaval demonstrated the power of mass action and street demonstrations over the classic palace coup. Finally, the overthrow of the Siles government cleared the way for Daniel Salamanca and the costly Chaco War.

After a brief military caretaker government, Daniel Salamanca, the candidate of a multiparty alliance, was elected president. His severe and rigid personality did not endear him to his associates or to the people. More important, he held no new solutions to Bolivia’s deepen-ing economic crisis; indeed, he made things worse with his massive expenditures in the Chaco. He tolerated no dissent and used his firm hand against the students, workers, and the political parties of the right and the left. Furthermore, President Salamanca became obsessed with the Chaco and the territorial dispute with Paraguay.

His critics have said that he saw in foreign adventures the solution to Bolivia’s desperate political and economic crises. Despite Bolivia’s lack of military preparation, Salamanca escalated Bolivia’s aggressive colonization and militarization of the Chaco, an inaccessible and bar-ren southeastern region bordering Paraguay and Argentina. As the armed clashes between Bolivian and Paraguayan troops increased,


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so did Salamanca’s determination to show a strong hand. In 1931, Salamanca unwisely escalated a minor border incident into a full-scale war. The resulting Chaco War with Paraguay, a much weaker and smaller nation, was intended to restore Bolivian pride and confidence. Instead, like the War of the Pacific of 50 years earlier, the Chaco War achieved the opposite results, and in the process altered Bolivian soci-ety irrevocably.

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6The Chaco War and

Its Aftermath (1932–1951)

The Chaco War was the catalyst that started the process of undermining the traditional social system of Bolivia.

Robert Alexander (1962, 199)

The Chaco War was a pivotal event in the history of Bolivia. The tur-moil of war and defeat provoked postwar reform, reaction, and civil

war. These dramatic events, in turn, hastened the coming of social revolu-tion. In the end, however, the painful lessons of the Chaco War and the ensuing revolution helped Bolivia regain both national pride and purpose.

The Gran ChacoThe Gran Chaco region encompasses more than a quarter of a million square miles and is currently shared by Argentina, Bolivia, and Para-guay. The vast territory is divided into three areas: the Chaco Boreal, the Chaco Central, and the Chaco Austral. The Chaco War was fought over the Chaco Boreal, the northern region between the Paraguay and Pil-comayo Rivers. The Chaco Central, which Bolivia ceded to Argentina, lies between the Pilcomayo and Bermejo Rivers. The Chaco Austral is the southern region between the Bermejo and Salado Rivers, and is also part of Argentina.

The great plain of the Gran Chaco is one of the more inhospitable regions in South America. Even at present, the region largely remains an enigma to many citizens of the Americas. Because of extremes in topography and climate, the Chaco has been variously described as

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a “green hell” and a desolate wasteland. It is not exactly a desert or a jungle, but the worst of both.

Water is critical to the Chaco. Depending on its presence or absence, the Chaco can become either an arid plain or a swampland. In the winter months there is little rain, but in the summers the rainfall can be excessive (up to 43 inches). Major rivers cut through the Chaco’s rugged scrub plains, grasslands, and low-lying forests: the Bermejo and Pilcomayo Rivers drain southeastward from the foothills of the Andes into the Paraguay and Paraná Rivers, which are further fed by the great rivers of the Amazon Basin in the north. In the northern Chaco of Bolivia, the lesser Parapetí River meanders along a very inconsistent course.

The Chaco rivers frequently shift their course, leaving dry riverbeds and isolated lagoons in the deeper depressions of the clay soil during the dry season (late March through December). At this time, much of the Chaco turns into a giant dust bowl. In the wet months, the shallow depressions form streams, lagoons, and wetlands. The region’s climate also varies radically, shifting from freezing southern winds in the winter to saunalike heat well above 100º Fahrenheit in the summer.

These extremes created a nightmare for the armies fighting in the Chaco War. During times of drought, desperate men searched for water and fought over the few isolated lagoons. During the spring and sum-mer downpours, miserable Bolivian and Paraguayan soldiers contended with the heat and a water-soaked terrain. The mud sometimes came up above their boot tops, and the sucking mire “could swallow trucks and their cargoes whole” (Farcau 1996, 5).

Since pre-Columbian times, nomadic and seminomadic Indians have inhabited the Gran Chaco. These diverse and hardy peoples have sur-vived by hunting, fishing, gathering, and seasonal agriculture. With the arrival of the Spanish conquerors and the postindependence pressures of national development, the hostile Chaco became a sanctuary for its original indigenous inhabitants and other Indian groups. Despite lim-ited settlement by Europeans and the spread of Jesuit, Franciscan, and modern-day religious missions, the region remained relatively isolated and underpopulated well into the 20th century.

The northern Chaco was settled and occupied relatively peacefully, giving way to cane fields, timber exploitation, and large cattle ranches. Bolivian and Paraguayan forces militarily occupied this northern region by the beginning of the 20th century because of a long-standing terri-torial dispute. In 1927, Mennonite immigrants arrived and established agricultural communities in the area. The Indians, who provided a large


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labor pool for these European activities, were gradually “pacified,” cul-turally “Westernized,” and integrated into capital markets.

In the 20th century, the peoples of the Gran Chaco suffered great hardships and upheavals. In particular, the Chaco War brought dis-ease and suffering to the indigenous groups of the region. Caught between two determined and destructive armies, the lowland Indians became pawns in their own land, denied the right to decide if Bolivia or Paraguay would govern them. Perhaps the highland Bolivian Indians conscripted into the Bolivian army fared worst: They died by the tens of thousands for a country that they hardly knew and over an alien and contested wasteland.

Conflicting Historical ClaimsThe boundary of the Gran Chaco had been contested since the 16th century. At independence, both Paraguay and Bolivia claimed the terri-tory, but the claims were not pursued. The Bolivians relied on the natu-ral boundaries established in Spanish royal decrees, which extended to the conjunction of the Pilcomayo River with the Paraguay River. The Paraguayans claimed all the land east of the Parapetí River. Fortunately, this land was sparsely inhabited, and settlements by the two new countries were great distances apart. The boundary dispute, as a result, remained dormant until the 1860s.

As with the Atacama province in the Pacific war, Bolivia based its claim to the contested Chaco on the principle that Spanish colonial ter-ritories should directly transfer to the new independent nations of Latin America. The territory that had belonged to Bolivia’s colonial predeces-sor, the Audiencia of Charcas, therefore, now belonged to the indepen-dent nation. Paraguay, not unlike Chile in the Pacific dispute, staked its rights instead on actual exploration, settlement, and development of the Chaco. Additionally, Paraguay received unexpected diplomatic support from the United States in the Hayes Award, an arbitration judgment that strengthened Paraguay’s legal position in international tribunals. A judge for the case, U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes, had decided that the territory between the Pilcomayo River and the Verde River belonged to Paraguay. This triangular piece of land west of the Paraguay River had been part of the historic Bolivian claim. By completely ignoring Bolivian rights, the Hayes Award became the major sticking point that compounded diplomatic resolution of the dispute. Both countries stub-bornly refused to amend their claims during the next 30 years when diplomatic efforts produced a series of treaties.

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THE CHACO WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH

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Unfortunately, none of these treaties was ever ratified. Indeed, Daniel Salamanca, a prominent opposition leader in 1907, heartily attacked the Pinilla-Soler Treaty, which had divided the disputed Chaco region in half between the nearest Bolivian and Paraguayan outposts. The par-ties were not permitted to advance beyond these established positions. Despite the failure to ratify the treaty, the Paraguayans perceived its existence as proof of a tentative status quo.

The Road to War

Is even Paraguay going to push us around? War should be an adventure for Bolivia. Let us go to the Chaco, not to conquer or die but to conquer!

President Daniel Salamanca (Farcau 1996, 13)

The territorial conflict, dormant for many years, was revived in the late 1920s. Three incidents heated up the conflict. In February 1927, a small Paraguayan patrol attacked Bolivia’s Fort Sorpresa. The Bolivians captured them and in the process killed an officer. This brief clash recorded the first death of the Chaco conflict. The public reacted angrily in both countries, but President Siles defused the crisis by agreeing to an arbitration conference in Buenos Aires.

In August 1928, there was another Bolivian-Paraguayan clash, followed once again by the exchange of irate diplomatic notes and attempted mediation. In December 1928, Paraguayan troops attacked Bolivian Fort Vanguardia, killing several Bolivian soldiers. Bolivian public opinion exploded in rage and hawkish demonstrations. Siles ordered the Bolivian military to retake Vanguardia and seize the Paraguayan outposts of Boquerón and Mariscal López. In an escalat-ing chain of action and reaction, both countries mobilized; however, a commission of Pan-American countries intervened and pressured the two belligerents to accept a compromise in September 1929, whereby Paraguay would reconstruct and return Vanguardia to Bolivia, and Bolivia would hand over Boquerón to Paraguay.

In his study The Chaco War (1996), Bruce Farcau emphasizes the irrational and political dimensions of the dispute. Although the Chaco territory was not essential to land-rich Bolivia, a huge country with only 2 million citizens at the time, even the hint of compromise provoked heated political agitation. The políticos of the opposition


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parties blatantly manipulated the Chaco dispute to their own advan-tage, whipping up the nationalistic fervor of the Bolivian upper and middle classes to a fever pitch. In this chauvinistic climate, many Bolivian politicians avoided public expressions of pacifism fearing that they might be perceived as traitors selling out the country to a weaker power.

While still representing the political opposition, Salamanca and his supporters promoted the macho slogan “to stomp hard in the Chaco.” Salamanca excoriated President Hernán Siles for his feeble response to Paraguayan aggression in 1927 and 1928. Both countries severed dip-lomatic relations and ordered general mobilizations, largely to appease the angry demonstrators in the streets and as a calculated bluff. Neither side was ready for full-scale war.

Paraguayan defense preparations were barely midway along and the country had not yet received armaments ordered from Europe. Also, the system of roads and telegraphs in the Chaco was still incomplete. Bolivia was in a similar situation. Its foreign minister, Tomás Manuel Elío, observed that the arms that Bolivia had ordered from London had only begun to arrive and that “the war materials actually in the coun-try would not permit an offensive” (Farcau 1996, 14). To gain time, both parties agreed to diplomatic arbitration. The judgment favored Bolivia and named Paraguay the aggressor. This enflamed Paraguayan nationalists and stirred up rancorous political infighting.

Between 1930 and 1931, both countries stalled in order to build up their arsenals for an inevitable war. Unlike in Bolivia, the Paraguayan government and public opinion were sharply divided over the Chaco policy. Cooler and wiser heads realized that a war with Bolivia would be devastating, whether Paraguay won or lost—and there was almost universal fear among the country’s military leaders that Paraguay would lose. With an underdeveloped and impoverished economy, woefully deficient military preparedness, and a tiny population base in Paraguay, its war-making capabilities were inferior in every sense.

According to Paraguayan military experts, Bolivia had 8,000 men in arms compared to Paraguay’s 2,900 in 1928. By the outbreak of war in 1932, Paraguay commanded a total manpower of only 3,300 troops with no trained reserves against a Bolivian force of 21,000 soldiers and trained reserves of 10,000 noncommissioned officers and 300,000 rank and file. To emphasize (and exaggerate) the disparity, the Paraguayan historian Luis Vittone described the war as a conflict between an armed country and an unarmed one.

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Despite the deficient military preparation, Paraguayans were as nationalistic as the Bolivians and refused to surrender to La Paz’s demands. Unlike Bolivia, however, most leading statesmen believed that the dispute could be postponed indefinitely, as in the past, and that Bolivia would accept a juridical solution. The majority of Paraguayans were anxious to avoid war at all costs.

In Bolivia, the Nationalist Party shouted down the radical leftist and pacifist voices and triumphed in the presidential elections of March 1931. Once in office, President Daniel Salamanca pulled all the stops to advance his Chaco policy, to the delight of his ultranationalist supporters and over the objections of his political opponents. The country faced a serious eco-nomic crisis because of the drastic drop in tin prices and production, as well as a debilitating political instability brought on by Salamanca’s poli-cies, but, obsessed with the Chaco, he virtually ignored other issues.

Herbert S. Klein suggests that Salamanca’s impotence on the domes-tic front encouraged him to turn his energies to the Chaco crisis, a problem that he believed he could deal with. He pushed the Bolivian military into an aggressive expansion of Chaco outposts and a more


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“El Hombre Si mbolo”

Bolivian historians have given Daniel Salamanca the epithet “El Hombre Símbolo” (the symbolic man). A complex and private

man, Salamanca carefully cultivated his public image of fierce national-ism and scrupulous integrity. When he became president in 1932, he was 62 years old, emaciated, and in chronic pain with stomach cancer. José Fellman Velarde’s description of him is graphic: “Skeletal, practically mummified, with a curved spine and fixed countenance, yellowed like ancient parchment, Salamanca viewed himself as the instrument of des-tiny” (III: 151, author’s translation).

An aristocrat, Salamanca was steeped in the rigid orthodoxy of eras past. As a younger man, he had witnessed the signing of the 1904 peace treaty with Chile, which he took as a personal disgrace, and became determined to prevent a similar national humiliation. He generally sus-pected diplomacy as a trick. Salamanca was convinced that only a victori-ous war against Paraguay could reverse Bolivia’s record of international defeats and rescue the national reputation from further ignominy.

Source: Fellman Velarde, José. Historia de Bolivia. 3 vols. (La Paz: Editorial Los Amigos del Libro, 1978–81).

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offensive national policy, and he began to build up Bolivia’s defenses. His government’s massive military expenditures taxed the national budget, already strained by earlier debt and defense increases of more than 70 percent while revenues decreased by half in 1932.

A conservative and a hawk, President Salamanca opposed conciliation on both political and deeply personal levels. Claiming a leftist-communist threat, he repressed pacifist dissent and radical opposition to his policies at home. Abroad, Salamanca’s aggressive foreign policy intentionally escalated the Chaco conflict. Jingoism and rumors that there were rich oil deposits in the Chaco further fed the war fever. Indeed, in July 1932, Standard Oil of New Jersey purchased petroleum concessions in south-eastern Bolivia, which produced a significant quantity of oil; however, the Bolivian oil could not be exported to the world market because both Argentina and Paraguay refused transit rights.

Bolivians, especially after the war, generally held that U.S. and British corporate interests had supported Paraguay indirectly through Argentina. They believed (and most still do) that the American and British oil com-panies, Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell, respectively, were behind the Chaco War. Historians have still to uncover definitive proof to sup-port this popular Bolivian conspiracy theory found in national history texts. There were, however, significant political and economic interests at work behind the scenes that aided Paraguay directly or indirectly. Nevertheless, although wealthy Argentine and foreign investors had lucrative stakes in the outcome of the dispute, there is no doubt that Bolivia’s decision to go to war in 1932 was Salamanca’s doing.

Bitter Defeat in the ChacoWar finally broke out in an unexpected way. It was preceded, as so many times in history, by a minor border incident. In the summer of 1931, one such incident pushed the parties to the brink of war, but diplomacy pulled them back again. In July, Salamanca withdrew the Bolivian ambassador from Paraguay’s capital of Asunción and severed diplomatic relations with the country. The parties initiated talks for a nonaggression pact, while extending and fortifying their military out-posts. A year later, another clash occurred over control of a vital and strategic source of water in the parched Chaco. This time the outcome of hostilities was very different.

In July 1932, Paraguayan forces attacked and recaptured the nomi-nally Bolivian fort Santa Cruz near Lake Chuquisaca. Originally, this fort had been the Paraguayan fort Mariscal López, which Bolivia had

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seized in May. Salamanca, perhaps confused about what had actually occurred, nevertheless, denounced the counterattack on Fort Santa Cruz before the entire Bolivian nation as blatant Paraguayan “aggression.” The general public and political elite rallied around their president and flag. Salamanca then ordered, over the opposition of his general staff, an immediate military assault on Paraguayan positions. The generals were fully aware that this military reprisal meant total war, for which Bolivia was unprepared. Unable to deter him, they forced Salamanca to take complete personal responsibility in writing. On July 18, 1932, Salamanca intentionally escalated a minor border incident into all-out war. But did Salamanca really know what he was doing?

One view is that Salamanca naively believed that if Bolivia landed a quick and heavy blow in reprisal, Paraguay would be strategically outmaneuvered and sue for peace. He therefore ordered the military to seize three vital Paraguayan forts: Boquerón, Corrales, and Toledo. By August, however, the Bolivian offensive had stalled amid the squabbling of Salamanca and his generals.

The military experts criticized Salamanca’s “eye-dropper war” and limited mobilization strategy. When the war began, Bolivia had counted only 1,200 men in the Chaco. The generals had demanded 60 days to muster additional troops and reserves. In contrast, the Paraguayans, who were fighting for national survival, had called a general mobili-zation immediately. By September, they had 18,800 men in arms and launched a major counterattack. Disorganized, undersupplied, and undermanned on the spot, Bolivia suffered a rout at Fort Boquerón.

Herbert S. Klein writes that the shocking news of the defeat led to rioting by 20,000 antigovernment demonstrators. The rioters demanded the resignation of Salamanca and the return of the German general Hans Kundt, the former chief of staff whom Salamanca had exiled in 1930 after the revolt against Siles. In October, Bolivia suffered another serious defeat at Fort Arce, and Salamanca recalled the old German general.

Kundt, however, proved to be a terrible commander. He recklessly squandered his men in bloody frontal assaults on Paraguayan forti-fications, and by the time Kundt was replaced by General Enrique Peñaranda in December 1933, the German’s insane tactics had resulted in 14,000 Bolivian dead and 32,000 wounded.

The war became a string of defeats for the Bolivian forces. Forts Nanawa and Campo Vía fell in July and December 1933. In November 1934, a disaster at El Carmen left more than 2,600 Bolivian dead; most had died of agonizing thirst. The defeat triggered a showdown between the civilian and military leadership. The general command had tired of


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Salamanca’s meddling in the conduct of the war, and the president had had enough of the military’s incompetence and insubordination. In November, Salamanca traveled to the front intent on removing General Peñaranda. Instead, an officers’ coup, thinly disguised as a voluntary resig-nation, replaced Salamanca with Vice President José Luis Tejada Sorzano.

The war effort did not immediately improve, although Tejada Sorzano ordered a full-scale mobilization and proved a better political leader. A disaster at Picuiba in December resulted in 2,300 Bolivian dead, most of whom died because of thirst and the shameful incompetence of their offi-cers. By spring 1935, the Paraguayans were at the foothills of the Andes and within striking distance of Bolivia’s oil centers—the regions of Tarija and Santa Cruz—and the Chaco command center in Villamontes.

The Battle of Ibibobo, deep in Bolivian territory, proved an important turning point of the war. For the first time, the Paraguayans experienced the same disadvantages of long supply routes across the desolate Gran Chaco that had hampered Bolivia during the war. Even overextended and far from the Paraguay River, however, the Paraguayans proved they could win and inflicted on Bolivia its most humiliating defeat ever. Paraguay had almost total control of the Gran Chaco.

Desperate to defend the oil fields and their home territory, the Bolivians rallied and pushed the Paraguayans back toward the central Chaco. The Bolivians recaptured the precious petroleum region by May, as the war stalled. Exhausted, both parties agreed to a cease-fire on June 12, 1935. Although a final peace treaty was not signed until July 21, 1938, the three-year war was effectively over.

Why Did Bolivia Lose?Recriminations began long before the war ended, and the finger-pointing intensified as the outraged Bolivian people demanded an accounting. All the major actors in the drama sought to escape blame and find scapegoats. The burning question that Bolivians, rich or poor, asked of their leaders remained the same: Why had their country lost the war? A laundry list of errors presented itself.

From the first day, chronic civilian-military bickering had hobbled the campaign. In only three years of war, Bolivia had shuffled through four barely capable supreme commanders of its forces. Paraguay had had but one, General José Félix Estigarriba, a military genius. Bolivian officers at the front had been cowardly, incompetent, and corrupt, seldom fighting and more often carousing behind the lines. Cruel nature had done more than its share to destroy four Bolivian armies. Brave and resilient Bolivian

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soldiers had considered the brutal Chaco itself as their greatest enemy, followed by their own officers and the Paraguayan soldiers, respectively. They had deserted by the tens of thousands. Most were illiterate and practically untrained highland Indians, who had been dumped into the Chaco wilderness to fight for the draft dodgers of the white and mestizo Bolivian establishment. In their eyes, the war had not been a national war of survival for Bolivia, as it had been for Paraguay, but a “foreign” war precipitated by Salamanca and his party or instigated by dark imperialist forces greedy for oil.

The wages of war were excessive for both belligerents. The human toll shocked the world: about 60,000 Bolivians and 40,000 Paraguayans had died. While the Paraguayan nation as a whole suffered, in Bolivia, the Indians suffered most for the entire nation. The economic price of war was staggering for both belligerents, and the social and political conse-quences of war were destabilizing and revolutionary.

Unlike the Bolivians, however, Paraguay’s citizens engaged in less recrimination after the war. They had conducted themselves honorably in the military campaign, defending their homeland and greatly expanding its territory and resources, and they were the undisputed victors. Bolivian leaders, on the other hand, had precipitated another extensive and humil-iating dismemberment of their country. Bolivia was the vanquished party for the third time running. The traumatic and unexpected Chaco defeat, therefore, served as a massive earthquake might to further destabilize the already shaky foundations of the traditional order.

Upward of 200,000 Bolivian soldiers, or roughly 10 percent of the population, had been mobilized for the war. The indigenous veterans who survived and returned from war were forever changed men. Many abandoned their old lives and were caught up in the postwar radicalism. The war had exposed the injustice of the old system and the corrup-tion of the ruling class. Once it became clear that “the emperor had no clothes,” only military repression could hold back the discontent.

Postwar Radicalism and Reform

The system had failed in a crucial hour, and that failure com-promised it forever.

Herbert S. Klein (1969, 203)

A radical political coalition of veterans, unionized labor, organized peasant syndicates, and student groups emerged in the postwar fer-

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ment. Colonel David Toro and Colonel Germán Busch, veterans and heroes of the Chaco War, became natural leaders in the movement. These young military reformers contemplated a new pol itical system based on social justice and equality. Mili tary socialism would help them get there. Vague socialist, populist, and nationalist rhetoric charac-terized their speeches and politi-cal program.

In practice, they hoped to in crease popular participation in politics and renew citizens’ national pride. At the heart of this new postwar nationalism and military so cialism was anti-imperialism. The lofty goals of the reformers were to liberate the country from the control of the private economic interests and to create a strong and independent Bolivian state. In their eyes, the government had been hostage to the influence of foreign capital and the tin barons far too long. The military reformers hoped to break this stranglehold and to free the government to pursue the country’s national development on its own terms.

As the presidency of Tejada Sorzano neared its last months, the cli-mate became unusually tense. On May 17, 1936, a military coup d’état by Colonels Toro and Busch preempted the elections and deposed Tejada Sorzano. A coalition of two civilian political parties—the Republican Socialists and the new Socialist Party—joined the civilian-military junta. As the junta’s president, Toro announced the establishment of a new system of state socialism that would defend the rights and interests of the working classes and the veterans. His government pledged to regain Bolivia’s economic sovereignty and to end the widespread misery and poverty of the people.

Military intervention in civilian politics had already had a long history in Bolivia, so at first, the majority of the political parties accepted and even welcomed Toro. The mixed junta took great pains to reassure the traditional power brokers that reforms would not affect existing parties

President Germán Busch, who died young and tragically by his own hand (Reproduced with permission of the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States)

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or leaders. By promising an evolutionary and socioeconomic coup rather than a political revolution, Toro struck an important balance between the conservatives and the radicals. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of the reform-ers included such phrases as the “radical transformation of the operative system” and the “transformation of the institutional base” of the govern-ment, which undoubtedly caused many to wonder what lay ahead.

The initial political calm did not last. The speeches about national reconstruction, social justice, economic development, and veterans’ rights played well in theory, but when the government proposed a new mass party and aggressive legislation to implement these principles, the conservative parties panicked. Dissension within the junta also grew. The official Socialist Party, an offshoot of the Nationalist Party founded by Hernán Siles before the war, represented the junta’s civilian ranks.

Socialism, however, was a confusing label for a party that barely served to unite incompatible personalities and ideological agendas. The postwar party lumped together three important groups: the traditional Republican Socialists of Bautista Saavedra, the old populist warhorse of the 1920s; supporters of the radical labor activist Waldo Alvarez; and young Marxists under the leadership of Ricardo Anaya and José Antonio Arze. When the more radical elements of the party turned against Saavedra, Busch and the military threatened another coup to end the civilian infighting. Intolerant of the civilians, Busch removed them from the coalition in an in-house coup in June.

This revolution from above left the government without a broad-based and organized civilian support other than labor and the Legion of Chaco War Veterans, a pseudocivilian group many thousands strong. To shore up his regime, Toro at first decided to create state-controlled “functional syndicates” that would organize and group the masses into professional unions. He also hoped that these syndicates would prevent the increas-ing communist agitation within the labor movement. When this attempt failed, Toro experimented with a state socialist party. As the partisan agitation continued, Toro moderated his policies and in so doing began to lose the confidence of Busch and the military reformers.

This civilian-military tension forced Toro’s hand. Gambling that he could revive popular support for the regime, Toro took a drastic and unprecedented step in Bolivian and Latin American history. On March 13, 1937, he nationalized the operations of the New Jersey–based Standard Oil Company. The expropriation was truly revolutionary. No other Latin government up till then had dared to seize a North American company, especially without offering economic indemnification. (The Mexicans would do so a year later but with a generous indemnity.)


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The idea of nationalization had germinated during the war and had become popular with the veterans, labor, and the postwar student radicals. The government of Tejada Sorzano had explored the legal ramifications. The actual confiscation, however, became the hallmark of the extreme economic nationalism of the military reformers. Toro and Busch repudiated the liberal free-market system that had subordinated the Bolivian state to the private interests of the tin barons. Their brand of national socialism increasingly followed a corporatist model wherein government regulation of the tin industry, imposed only as a temporary wartime emergency measure, became permanent.

Centrists in relation to the great extremes of the postwar political con-tinuum, Toro and Busch came under attack from the right by the money and political interests known as the Rosca and from the left by the Marxists. Of the two military reformers, Toro implemented more radi-cal economic policies, ranging from currency controls and tax reform to food rationing and subsidies. Neither leader succeeded in curbing the pervasive political and economic power of the tin-mining industrialists, although they tried. Both were constrained by the reactionary capital-ists and the revolutionary labor movement. Angry strikers demanded that the government enact wage increases and price controls, while the industrialists vehemently opposed these measures.

The one radical economic act of which all Bolivians approved was Toro’s bold nationalization of Standard Oil’s holdings and operations. The company had become a popular symbol of foreign exploitation and economic imperialism, and many believed Standard Oil had caused the Chaco War. The company became a scapegoat for everything that was fundamentally wrong with Bolivia. The expropriation eased the people’s frustrated nationalism and economic impotence, but it was a desperate act that could not prevent Toro’s overthrow just a few weeks later.

Busch and the Constitution of 1938

The government that I head is not a government of class or of political sects. It is characterized by its absolute independence and will lead the country on a course that will ennoble it.

Germán Busch, July 1937 (Morales 1977, 215)

On July 13, 1937, Colonel Germán Busch unseated David Toro, his comrade in war and reform. Conservative interests interpreted the Busch coup as the end of state socialism and a return to the old order. Busch cultivated this view, and his government, he said, would be based

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on nationalism and the harmony of capital and labor, not on class, sects, or ideology.

Busch, however, surprised everyone, because he meant and believed what he preached. He viewed himself as the champion of the May Revolution of 1936 and intended to bring to fruition the progressive policies of his predecessor. One of his first acts was to uphold the celebrated oil-company nationalization decree. He declared a national amnesty for the exiles of all political parties. Finally, Busch announced a constitutional convention to legitimize the political, economic, and social reforms of the military revolution.

National elections were held in March 1938 to elect representatives to the convention. The system of representation allotted seats accord-ing to state-recognized and -sanctioned professional or occupational organizations. The established political parties were included, although some abstained in protest. The system was cleverly designed so that majority representation fell to the organized groups most friendly to the May Revolution.

In a virtually unanimous vote on May 27, 1938, the pro-Busch majority in the constitutional assembly elected Busch the new constitu-tional president. Enrique Baldivieso, a prominent leader of the postwar Socialist Party and an ally of Busch, was chosen as the nation’s vice president. Historian Herbert S. Klein describes the convention as “a major breakthrough in postwar political development” for the parties and organizations of the left (1969, 278).

The Busch convention stood out as a landmark of social progress and reform. The convention’s first product was a remarkable new constitution, which anticipated in many ways the comprehensive legislation of the subsequent 1952 revolution. The historic 1938 constitution introduced a state-managed central economy that would offset and be able to balance the special interests of powerful foreign and domestic capitalists against the country’s national development needs. Central to this economy was a new property law based on the principle of “social” ownership, which would respect an individual’s private property rights as long as these ful-filled a social function. The constitution stopped short of outright land reform but granted the state the legal authority to expropriate estates that were unproductive and redistribute these to the peasantry.

The convention delegates failed to pass binding legislation that would guarantee civil and human rights of Bolivia’s indigenous peoples. Racism remained strong, and the thorny “Indian question” provoked heated controversy among the constitutional representatives. The more


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radical delegates proposed laws to protect Indian communities and their system of collective land ownership and to abolish the hated and humiliating system of involuntary personal servitude on the haciendas. The convention did approve a significant education reform law based on the principle of free and universal education for all of Bolivia’s citi-zens. This impetus furthered the development of rural education cen-ters for the highland Indians. Warisata, one indigenous school on the altiplano that received support, acquired a hemisphere-wide reputation for its progressive pedagogy.

President Busch abruptly closed down this massive experiment in con-stitutional reform in October 1938. The constitutional convention had generated such intense sociopolitical upheaval that the Busch govern-ment, which had initiated the process, found itself assailed on all politi-cal fronts. Busch felt unable to contain the extreme forces of revolution and reaction within the constitutional structure. Despite heroic attempts to establish and conduct his government on the basis of constitutional

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The movement to establish rural education centers, which were aimed primarily at the Indian population, gained strength in the 1930s. This photo shows a modern Bolivian classroom. (UN/DPI photo by Greg Kinch)

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legitimacy, Busch remained a military man at heart. And like the majority of veterans of his generation, he was deeply apolitical.

The political party system had been so categorically discredited by the Chaco War that Busch remained suspicious of all partisan activity. Despite the unprecedented growth of progressive organizations during his regime, Busch intentionally kept the civilian reformers and the leftist political par-ties at arm’s length. At times, labor and national socialist groups were tol-erated within his government. At others, he would make common cause with the conservative elements to fend off his militant critics. As Toro had done, Busch even experimented with a state socialist party.

To some extent these vacillations worked in his favor, keeping his crit-ics off balance, but this inconstancy hurt the stability of his government. Busch’s suspicion of political parties would—among other things—be his undoing. Although he had the advantage of heading an armed military regime, his was the typical lot of reformers—easy game for reactionaries and revolutionaries alike. Busch was discovering first-hand the dangerous problems that had bedeviled Toro. Without the support of the civilian reformers and parties of the political left, Busch and his following only had their guns to keep them in power.

Warisata

Through the Office of Indigenous Education, the government of Germán Busch promoted Indian leaders and indigenista (Indianist)

teachers. Elizardo Pérez headed the office. He was a teacher and radi-cal intellectual who in 1928 had founded Warisata, the famous Indian teacher training school near Lake Titicaca. The Warisata school was imbued with indigenismo. This pro-Indian ideology believed in the moral value and regeneration of indigenous traditions and culture as the foundation for a holistic Bolivian identity and nationalism. The school’s teachers were dedicated to improving the social and political status of the highland Indian, and their training ultimately furthered Indian con-sciousness and political organizing.

Not everyone in the Busch administration agreed with this approach. In 1938, Waldo Alvarez, a militant union leader and a former minister of labor, argued that the Indian problem was primarily one of land ownership and only secondarily one of education. However, schools like Warisata helped to mobilize the Indians to fight for their rights and demand land reform. Today there is an indigenous university in Warisata.

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As his stubborn strategy to largely circumvent the parties backfired, Busch resorted to direct popular rule. In April 1939, Busch proclaimed himself dictator. He claimed that the country’s chronic economic, social, and moral crisis demanded this extreme step. In a radio address to the people, he blamed this national crisis on the power struggle between the forces of financial privilege that were striving, as in the past, to grab power and the extremists who were seeking the radi-cal overthrow of institutions. Dictatorship allowed Busch to rule by decree.

A major achievement during his brief dictatorship was the Busch Labor Code of May 24, 1939. Although the constitution affirmed the right to unionize and to strike, the Labor Code provided for greatly improved working conditions. The progressive code represented a major triumph for the Bolivian labor movement. This extraordinary legislation was the result of successful political pressure and agitation by the recently organized workers. Shortly after the war, labor united into the Confederation of Bolivian Workers (Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores de Bolivia, or CSTB) and confronted postwar governments with their demands. The miners and railway workers were especially militant, launching a number of general strikes during the reform years of 1936 to 1939. The united mine workers’ union even held a national congress in August 1939.

President Busch’s final legacy of reform was the Mining Decree of June 7, 1939. This act, advanced for its time, nationalized the Mining Bank (Banco Minero), which facilitated mineral sales for small and medium-sized mining operations, and tightened state control over the Central Bank. With his signature, Busch advanced the most fun-damental goal of the military reformers of 1936: national economic independence. He institutionalized and legitimized the state’s control over the dominant tin-mining interests. After more than 100 years on the margins of fantastic resource bonanzas, the government’s right to manage the nation’s rich mineral wealth became permanently enshrined in the rule of law.

By law, the mining companies were required to remit foreign exchange currency from mineral exports to the Central Bank at a sub-stantially lower, government-controlled rate. This fiscal policy alone quadrupled the government’s tax revenues and increased its share of profits from mining by 25 percent. Of all the Busch reforms, this law would endure under conservative and radical regimes alike. Until 1952, according to Herbert S. Klein, the Central Bank “maintained complete control over all foreign sales of Bolivian tin, manipulating the exchange

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rate to generate government income in the form of indirect taxes” (1992, 208).

Despite his tremendous achievements in two brief years in office, Busch became terribly frustrated and discouraged. The “Great Captain


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A Martyr of the Revolutionary Left

Germán Busch Becerra, born in the regional capital of Trinidad in 1903, was the son of a German medical doctor and a lowlander

Bolivian woman from the department of El Beni. He became an army cadet, a valiant officer, and a decorated war veteran. Charles W. Arnade writes that Busch was “noted for his daring, physical fitness, and hot temper—characteristics that served him well in the Chaco War” (489). As a charismatic leader of the May Revolution and president of Bolivia, he implemented military socialism.

He died by his own hand when he was only 36 years of age. His tragic suicide shocked the country and made Busch a glorious martyr of the revolutionary left. Doubts about his death spawned a powerful conspiracy theory of Bolivian history. Popular belief held that the Rosca (the oligarchy and the Big Tin barons) had murdered Busch because his reforms threatened them; indeed, the tin magnate Mauricio Hochschild had been arrested for sabotaging the Mining Decree. Violation of the law carried the death penalty, and Busch had ordered Hochschild’s execution. But when his cabinet balked, the order was rescinded. Busch, frustrated by the Hochschild case and the wholesale resistance to his reforms, committed suicide in front of his aides, explaining, “It is best to terminate my life” (Arnade, 489).

The May Revolution and Busch’s historic reforms and inspired words are his lasting legacy. An excerpt from the La Paz newspaper El Diario of June 11, 1939, expresses his revolutionary nationalism: “The slogan of my government is the economic emancipation of my country. … It will be said that my government is revolutionary. Yes, citizens, I aspire to a revolution whose results will be these: that Bolivia enjoys its own riches and that these serve to develop its industries and agriculture” (Morales, 277).

Sources: Arnade, Charles W. “Busch Becerra, Germán.” In Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. Vol. 1. Ed. Barbara A. Tenenbaum (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996); Morales, Waltraud Quesier. “A Comparative Study of Societal Discontent and Revolutionary Change in Bolivia and Paraguay: 1930–1941.” Ph.D. diss. (Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver, 1977).

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of the Chaco,” as he was known, felt personally assailed by the intrac-table forces of social change and reaction, reportedly lamenting, “I am a man accustomed to fighting in war, but this battle with invisible ene-mies disturbs me beyond measure” (Ayala 1980, 257). Busch increas-ingly feared that political polarization and outright sabotage would undermine the May Revolution and nullify his reforms, and in a fit of despair, he committed suicide on August 28, 1939.

After Busch’s death, the oligarchy and conservative parties seized control; however, they had to contend with a mobilized and radicalized political system. Before the Chaco War new political groupings had arisen; after the war this activity expanded exponentially as dozens of new factions, movements, and political parties were formed. The Chaco experience had transformed the population and undermined old politi-cal allegiances, creating a crisis of political legitimacy. The experiment in military socialism and the constitutional convention had provided a critical opening for new parties, especially parties of the left.

The Rise of Revolutionary PartiesFour revolutionary political parties became significant in postwar politics. Two parties that represented the cause of nationalism were the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, or MNR) and the Bolivian Socialist Falange (Falange Socialista Boliviana, or FSB). The MNR became a major actor in the 1940s and the key protagonist of the 1952 National Revolution. On the left, two Marxist parties were especially important: the Party of the Revolutionary Left (Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria, or PIR), and the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (Partido Obrero Revolucionario, or POR).

The Nationalist Revolutionary Movement emerged in the wake of military socialism’s demise and the oligarchy’s regaining control. The party had arisen out of the pre- and postwar political ferment and had originally been closely associated with the official Socialist Party that collaborated with the governments of Toro and Busch. In the 1930s, many radicalized student activists, war veterans, and middle-class journalists who later became founding members of the MNR joined the socialists. Among these were Víctor Paz Estenssoro, Augusto Céspedes, Hernán Siles Zuazo, and Walter Guevara Arze. In 1936, these future MNR leaders opened the newspaper La Calle. Its partisan pages took a stridently nationalistic and anti-imperialistic stance and denounced the oligarchical Rosca and the Big Three mining capitalists as class enemies

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of the people. The newspaper’s radical nationalism came later to char-acterize the ideological program of the MNR.

The MNR was founded on May 10, 1941, with Víctor Paz Estenssoro as its first leader. According to the official program, the party supported revolutionary nationalism, a strong and secure state, and the economic independence and sovereignty of the Bolivian people. The MNR’s ori-entation, therefore, was a uniquely Bolivian blend of nationalism and socialism, but never outright fascism, particularly not of the European variety. At the time, the new party proposed a radical program, but not a revolutionary one.

The Bolivian Socialist Falange was founded in August 1937. The party had developed from a Bolivian student-exile movement in Chile that had exposed the outcasts to fascism. Important leaders of the Falangist movement included Carlos Puente, who founded the Bolivian Nationalist Action, and Oscar Unzaga de la Vega, who founded the FSB. After Puente’s death, the two groups merged in 1940, and Oscar de la Vega reigned as undisputed FSB leader until his own death in 1959.

The country’s conservative and privileged Catholic high school stu-dents, especially from Cochabamba and the country’s temperate valleys and lowland regions, crowded into the party’s ranks. The FSB professed a pro–Catholic Church, nationalistic ideology, much like fascist coun-terparts elsewhere in Latin America and Europe. The party was stri-dently anticommunist and antiliberal and adopted the national socialist model popular in Germany and Italy.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Party of the Revolutionary Left (PIR) became the most influential Marxist party of the 1940s. Its leading intellectuals were José Antonio Arze and Ricardo Anaya, who established the PIR in July 1940. The party had prewar roots in the Marxist student groups of 1928 and the exiled leftist organizations of the early and mid-1930s.

The PIR was a confrontational and revolutionary party that opposed the traditional political order as well as the postwar experiment in military socialism. The party’s militant Marxism attracted the radical students and intellectuals of the middle class, including teachers and labor activists.

The PIR professed a Stalinist-Marxist ideology but claimed to be independent of international communism or Soviet control. The party was split into an internationalist, pro-Soviet faction and a nationalist, indigenista (pro-Indian) faction. Because of its fanatical opposition to the fascist parties of the 1940s, including the MNR, the leftist revolu-tionaries eventually allied with the reactionary parties of the oligarchy.


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(Leftist/Marxist parties often made alliances of convenience with the right, which only served to undermine their ideological credibility.)

More radical but less influential than the PIR was the Revolutionary Workers’ Party of Tristán Marof and José Aguirre Gainsborg. Like similar parties of the period, the POR was the product of a leftist group that had been exiled because of its agitation against the Chaco War. In December 1934, a conference of leftist exiles founded the POR in Argentina. The party had developed from Bolivia’s socialist left and the extensive writ-ings of Tristán Marof (the pen name of Gustavo Adolfo Navarro, an internationally known Marxist theorist). Marof was credited with the celebrated revolutionary slogan “Land to the Indian, mines to the state.” The phrase, probably first used by Marof in 1926, epitomized the goals of the leftists in the 1940s and became the rallying cry of the nationalist revolution of 1952.

The proliferation of radical and violently revolutionary political par-ties after the Chaco War prepared the political stage for the dramatic developments of the 1940s. Three developments in particular shifted the strategic balance of power between the old and the emerging new order. First, the revolutionary parties proved that they could generate significant popular support. Second, the extremely tiny national elec-torate had been gradually expanding and radicalizing. The franchise was no longer the secure preserve of the rich, famous, and reactionary. Third, it became increasingly difficult for the oligarchy to rule through the traditional party system if it could no longer guarantee, or at least contain, the outcome.

The Oligarchy RegroupsBadly shaken by military reformism and the inroads of the far left, a resurgent oligarchy moved to dismantle reforms and regroup the conservative forces. In March 1939, months before Busch’s suicide, the Rosca had formed the Concordancia, an alliance of the traditional political parties. The oligarchy had also enlisted the support of the con-servative sector of the military. In an attempt to hold back the radical tide and block the parties of the left from congressional participation, the Concordancia supported the governments of two distinguished war veterans, General Carlos Quintanilla and General Enrique Peñaranda.

In August 1939, the conservative general Quintanilla established a-provisional government edging out Busch’s constitutional succes-sor, Vice President Enrique Baldivieso, who was a socialist and unac-ceptable to the oligarchy. Quintanilla scheduled new presidential

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elections for March 1940. The oligarchy backed the candidacy of General Peñaranda, an apolitical traditionalist, and exiled the reformist general Bernardino Bilbao Rioja, the commander in chief of the armed forces and leader of the Legion of Chaco War Veterans. The Concordancia’s choice, General Peñaranda, became president without significant opposition.

The election of March 1940, nevertheless, demonstrated a fundamen-tal shift. The incipient PIR, unlike other radical parties, did not abstain from participating in the election but rather fielded their leader, José Antonio Arze, as the presidential candidate. At the time, the franchise included less than 5 percent of the literate population. The opposi-tion candidate, moreover, was a decorated war hero, who had the full moral and monetary support of the oligarchy and political establish-ment, including the Toro-Busch reformers and nationalists. Arze, a Cochabamba professor of law and sociology, received 10,000 votes out of a total 58,000 cast, or roughly 17 percent of the national vote. These results were extraordinary and indicated the widespread disaffection with the traditional system. This major protest vote shook the compla-cency of the establishment.

Herbert S. Klein suggests that during the postwar years the left had grown virtually unchecked and had made significant inroads among the middle class, which had previously supported the old political system. The complacency of the traditional parties, according to Klein, was disturbed even further when the moderate and radical left swept the congressional elections that year and took control of the new legislature (1992, 210–12). Although the political left had found a place in the system, the return to republican government in 1940 represented no more than a brief interlude.

To some extent the oligarchy’s restoration was incomplete. Klein described this parliamentary interregnum of Peñaranda as the calm before the total collapse of the traditional system. General Peñaranda was an essentially passive figure, “a partisan of all causes, devoid of ide-ology or established convictions” (1968, 389). In the broader scheme of things Peñaranda’s policies were basically conservative, especially in foreign affairs.

In the early 1940s, international events and World War II intruded on domestic politics. The Peñaranda government cooperated closely with the United States and was rewarded with economic and military assistance. After global war spread to the Pacific theater and the Japanese interrupted Malayan tin exports, Bolivia became strategically important to the United States as the Western Hemisphere’s major tin supplier. To ensure an


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uninterrupted supply of strategic metals, the United States began to exert greater influence in Bolivia’s internal politics, propping up friendly and amenable governments like that of Peñaranda and the oligarchy.

Peñaranda’s regime contracted several controversial agreements with the United States, riling the radical nationalists and leftists. The govern-ment renewed Bolivia’s repayment of the outstanding debt owed to U.S. banks since payments were suspended by the moratorium of 1931. In a major tin deal Bolivia agreed to sell the United States 1,500 tons of tin per month over five years.

Bolivia and World War IIIt was no coincidence that Bolivia during Peñaranda’s presidency was the strongest supporter in South America of the Allied cause. In 1942, soon after Bolivia severed diplomatic relations with the Axis powers, Sumner Welles, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of state, announced that the U.S. Export-Import Bank had approved a $5 million loan to Bolivia. Bolivia was required to apply $1.75 million, or one-third, of this loan to indemnify Standard Oil for the 1937 confiscation of its properties. In 1943, the hand of the U.S. State Department was evident again. On April 7, days after the state visit of U.S. vice presi-dent Henry Wallace to Bolivia, the Peñaranda government declared war on the Axis. A month later, President Peñaranda was welcomed in the United States with more loans and military assistance.

The countries of South America responded in different ways to the outbreak of World War II. Although there was general solidarity with the United States in the region, the expressions of cooperation by individual countries were warmer in some instances than in others. The majority of the South American countries remained neutral until 1945 and then declared war on the Axis. Brazil and Colombia declared war only on Germany and Ecuador only on Japan. Bolivia declared war on the Axis powers as a whole. Bolivia’s declaration of war distinguished it as the sole South American country to take such a comprehensive position very early, demonstrating the Peñaranda government’s support of the United States.

The Bolivian declaration of war also reflected the country’s tumul-tuous internal politics during the 1940s and the tension between domestic and foreign policy. Because of their fascist proclivities, the MNR and FSB were pro-Axis. The Soviet-style but antifascist PIR favored the Allies. The declaration of war, however, was in the form of an executive decree issued by President Peñaranda. More than six months of bitter and heated wrangling were required for the Bolivian

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Congress to constitutionally ratify the declaration of war. The ratifica-tion passed on December 4, 1943.

Opposition to the expanding U.S. role in Bolivian affairs dangerously strained partisan relations within Congress and with the Peñaranda regime. The MNR emerged as the key protagonist, bringing down five cabinets within three years through its vocal criticism of Peñaranda. The oligarchy desperately tried to discredit the party. In July 1941, the U.S. ambassador exposed the so-called Nazi Putsch, an alleged MNR-Nazi coup that involved the German ambassador. The government expelled the German ambassador and arrested suspected Nazis and MNR activists. In this purge, the radical newspaper La Calle, the voice of the MNR party, was raided and silenced.

Historians agree that the Nazi Putsch was fabricated by the United States, Peñaranda, and the oligarchy to crack down on fascist sympa-thizers. The Nazi scare was a convenient pretext to discredit the MNR, the loudest critic of the compensation agreement with Standard Oil. The tense climate also justified martial law and the formation of the Antifascist Democratic Front, an unlikely alliance between the oligar-chy and the leftist PIR. Upon quelling the fascist threat, official repres-sion next visited the tin miners upon whom the cheap flow of Bolivian tin to the war effort of the Allied powers depended.

The Catavi MassacreThe Catavi mining complex lies on the altiplano near the city of Oruro. In 1942, the mining center shut down in a wave of wildcat strikes. The miserable miners demanded better wages and working and living conditions. Insensitive and irresponsible, the government of General Peñaranda ordered the military to deal with the miners. The strike was broken in December only after hundreds of miners were killed or wounded in a bloody confrontation known as the Catavi Massacre.

In the aftermath of the tragedy were major investigations by the Bolivian government and the United States. In the Bolivian Congress, the MNR and other radical opposition parties demanded an official inquiry. Because of the moral and legislative support of the MNR and its congressional delegates, the miners and the party developed an impor-tant working alliance. For its part, the United States sent the Magruder Commission to investigate and issue a report of the massacre. The Magruder Report exposed the repressive and inhuman conditions that generally prevailed in the Bolivian mines at the time and recommended major reforms, few of which were actually carried out.


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The Catavi strikes were symptomatic of a wider economic crisis. Production downturns in other trades promoted widespread labor unrest and major strikes by railway and postal workers and the country’s teach-ers. Militant labor and the radical political parties discovered a common cause in their opposition to Peñaranda. Attacking on two fronts—the national assembly and the streets—the labor movement succeeded in gaining strength and steady improvement in pay and benefits.

Historians note that the Busch labor reforms had facilitated the prolif-eration of labor militancy and impeded official repression by Peñaranda and the Concordancia. The Catavi Massacre and the many incidents like it that did not achieve the same historical recognition became rally-ing points in labor’s struggle for its rights. The Catavi tragedy and labor militancy in the early 1940s was especially significant in forging a new era of political party–labor cooperation.

The Revolution of the MajorsThe military had never been swept clean of the nationalistic younger officers who sympathized with the Toro-Busch style of military social-ism. During Peñaranda’s regime, these officers, like the civilian opposi-tion, had become increasingly frustrated with domestic and inter national policies. For four years, this faction of the military had tried to over-throw the government. Within his first weeks in office Peñaranda had had to quash a serious military rebellion, and several more coup attempts followed. The government had anticipated what became known as the Revolution of the Majors but failed to arrest soon enough the five junior officers who had masterminded the revolt.

Major Gualberto Villarroel and a group of radical officers overthrew the conservative government of Peñaranda on December 20, 1943. The MNR and a secret military lodge—the Reason of the Fatherland (Razón de Patria, or RADEPA) made up of a brotherhood of nationalistic, young military reformers—were behind the Villarroel coup. The secret society was the product of the Chaco War and included members of Legion of Chaco War Veterans and Busch devotees. In Paraguay’s prisoner-of-war camps, lower-ranking Bolivian officers had formed an ad hoc brother-hood for protection and solidarity. Influenced by the European tradition of Masonic lodges and popular fascist ideologies, the secret military soci-ety assumed political importance in the postwar era. The military cells proved most effective for political organizing and coup plotting.

The tenure in office of the first MNR-RADEPA government was chaotic. At first the outside world, especially the United States, did not

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know what to make of the unusual Bolivian hybrid. With the excep-tion of Argentina (on the verge of a similar experiment by Juan Domingo Perón), all the Latin American governments and the U.S. State Department withheld diplomatic recognition for six months until the MNR left the cabinet, as the sticking point for them was not so much the military government but the MNR members in its ranks.

The RADEPA seemed a strange animal with incongruous body parts. The military lodge housed two incompatible tendencies: a hard-core fas-cist right and a more pragmatic pseudofascist left intimate with the MNR. This unusual political-ideological mix generated as much confusion as did the earlier experiments in military socialism. The junta achieved international recognition once Villarroel dismissed the notorious MNR members, such as Víctor Paz Estenssoro, Augusto Céspedes, and Carlos Montenegro, from their cabinet posts (although they would be reap-pointed later) and promised to hold elections in the near future.

In the elections of August 1944, Villarroel became Bolivia’s constitu-tional president. A large contingent of MNR deputies also returned to


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President Gualberto Villarroel, center, who attempted radical reforms after taking power through a coup (Reproduced with the permission of the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States)

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the halls of Congress. Even after the constitutional formalities, foreign and domestic opposition to the Villarroel government continued. An informal alliance of the oligarchy, the Marxist PIR, and the United States schemed openly against the radical government. They simplistically attacked the Villarroel government as Nazi.

The government did indeed profess a Bolivian-style nationalist socialism and admired European fascism as a universal doctrine, which espoused a strong and sovereign state. At a time when Bolivians of all walks of life and ideological persuasions viewed their country as economically depen-dent and sought to exert its national independence, this preeminently nationalist view had great political resonance. Moreover, Villarroel’s government was not monolithic; it represented disparate and competing tendencies. Clearly, the RADEPA was more attracted to fascism than the Busch reformers, and members of the secret society held great antipathy toward the Marxist left, especially the PIR. RADEPA agents harassed and violently attacked PIR members. The party’s leader, José Antonio Arze, was almost killed by RADEPA goons in 1944 when he ran for president against Villarroel.

The government’s brutal repression of the perpetrators of a failed coup attempt in November 1944 gave it a black eye abroad and discred-ited it at home. The opposition used the event to dish out some damn-ing antigovernment propaganda. All told, nine coup plotters were shot by a firing squad, but opposition versions circulated in which more than 60 dissidents had reportedly been killed, tortured, and mutilated. The shooting incident, or the Fusilamiento, as it became known, forced Arze into exile; he taught in the United States and requested U.S. humanitar-ian assistance and intervention to save Bolivian democracy.

The firing squad incident precipitated the rapid decline of the Villarroel regime, much as the Catavi Massacre had contributed to the fall of Peñaranda. Despite the progressive decrees that his government had issued on behalf of poor Bolivians, Villarroel soon found himself in a position similar to that of Busch near the end of his experiment in reformism—on the defensive and besieged on all sides.

Expansion of Labor and Indian RightsRepression was not the most important legacy of the Villarroel years, however, since the MNR-Villarroel government was concerned with populist causes and the welfare of workers and peasants. One major achievement of the Villarroel administration was the expansion of labor unions, especially with the founding in June 1944 of an impor-

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tant union representing the coun-try’s miners. The Bolivian Mine Workers’ Federation (Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia, or FSTMB) was orga-nized by Juan Lechín Oquendo, a Trotskyite. The miners’ union would become labor’s most influ-ential and militant political force in the next half century.

Politically the FSTMB was under the wing of radical political parties, including the MNR. In the Villarroel cabinet, the MNR held the labor portfolio. Through its control of the labor ministry, the MNR fostered trade union development for unskilled work-ers and ushered through Congress additional labor reform laws that established provisions for vol-untary retirement, job security, and workers’ benefits. The MNR-

Villarroel administration also passed important housing and family legislation to improve the general welfare of the poorer classes of society.

A second major achievement of the MNR-Villarroel years—the expansion of indigenous rights—was of historic significance. In May 1945, the government sponsored Bolivia’s first National Indigenous Congress. During its sessions, the sensitive problems of land reform and indigenous servitude were raised. In part, the government was sympa-thetic to the plight of the Indian, but also Villarroel hoped to control a movement that had developed its own momentum.

Holding such a conference represented a provocative, indeed revo-lutionary, political move. By simply airing long-standing questions about indigenous rights, the delegates challenged the extensive feudal hacienda system, the oligarchy’s last bastion of traditionalism and power. The rural fiefdoms of the oligarchy perpetuated the insidi-ous racial prejudice and second-class status accorded Bolivia’s Indian majority.


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Members of the Sakaka ethnic group (including a woman holding a swaddled baby) watch a folklore presentation in northern Potosí. (Photo © Elayne Zorn, 1989)

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For many reasons, social reforms by previous regimes had largely ignored land and indigenous issues and had concentrated on legisla-tion that benefited the urban and mining proletariat. Indigenous activ-ism, nevertheless, was quietly spreading, encouraged by the Busch educational reforms, teacher training schools such as Warisata, the radical party movement, labor solidarity, and independent grassroots peasant organizing. There had been several past successes, such as the vibrant peasant cooperative movement founded at Cliza-Ucureña in the Cochabamba valley, which would later be the birthplace of the 1953 land reforms. Until the National Indigenous Congress, how-ever, the reform governments had been content to enact symbolic measures.

The National Indigenous Congress, therefore, marked a departure from the past in that some tangible progress was realized—at least on paper—and the congress received official support and legitimacy. The government’s main concern was labor relations, not property rights, and the congress’s achievements were left incomplete because the gov-ernment’s reform decrees were not enforced until after the National Revolution of 1952. The National Indigenous Congress, however, abol-ished all remaining forms of the feudal system of involuntary servitude. With this meaningful step forward the delegates stopped short and did not push for comprehensive land reform.

The occasion, which seemed designed for public relations pur-poses as much as for lasting reforms, served as a valuable exercise in consciousness raising. The congress provided an opportunity for the political intelligentsia and military reformers to express their solidarity with the indigenous cause. President Villarroel’s speeches focused on the important achievement of justice for all Bolivians. And the young MNR activist and future president Hernán Siles Zuazo confirmed what the more than 1,000 delegates present already knew: Bolivia’s greatest challenge was the land problem. Siles declared that a main principle of the MNR party was that “the land should belong to those who work it,” but this “leap” would take many years to achieve. “I believe,” he added “that this Congress is the first step” (Dandler and Torrico 1987, 353).

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the indigenous congress was the national unity that it imposed on the nation’s disparate indig-enous groups. Across the country, indigenous communities organized for the great event in a series of massive meetings and regional con-gresses. Often the preliminary assemblies erupted in confrontations. The feudal bosses or landowners often instigated these incidents so

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The National Indigenous Congress

The historical record, according to Bolivian scholars Jorge Dandler and Juan Torrico A., exposes the conflict within the

government over the National Indigenous Congress. President Gualberto Villarroel’s administration justified its call for a national Indian congress “as a method of channeling and ‘controlling’ a grow-ing wave of rural agitation helped along by other political groups and even peasant leaders” (349). Putting this into practice, the govern-ment removed indigenous leaders such as Luis Ramos Quevedo and Antonio Alvarez Mamani under the pretext that they were not truly members of the indigenous class and instead appointed a govern-mental steering committee presided over by a non-Indian to direct the congress.

After numerous postponements, the National Indigenous Congress was inaugurated on May 10, 1945, at the Luna Park sports coliseum in La Paz. Francisco Chipana Ramos, representing the Aymara constituency, was elected president of a three-man directorate. The other two direc-torate members represented the Quechua and Oriente indigenous constituencies.

The congress opened with the pomp and solemnity of a 21-gun salute and the national army, diplomatic corps, and the cabinet in full attendance. The MNR newspaper La Calle wrote, “[T]he inauguration of a congress of natives must have appeared unusual and inexplicable to many people—something which denotes the upset of all that is customary and silently accepted as normal” (352).

President Villarroel’s address was simple but moving. In the more than 100 years of the republic, he reminded them, previous govern-ments had systematically postponed the solution to the plight of the Indian. He explained that his government wanted them to live better and to have housing, clothing, food, education, and health care. His government would end the abuses against them: “[T]he campesino is as much a son of this flag as any man of this land, and must be treated like a son by the government” (352).

Source: Dandler, Jorge, and Juan Torrico A. “From the National Indigenous Congress to the Ayopaya Rebellion: Bolivia, 1945–1947.” In Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries. Ed. Steve J. Stern (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).

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that the peasants would be repressed or arrested as rural agitators. In its distorted reporting, the antigovernment press stoked the popular fears of an imminent indigenous rebellion.

The MNR, labor unions, and the PIR competed for a leading role in the indigenous movement. Villarroel had forged a bond with the indig-enous peasants, and tragically, the ultimate fruits of this native awaken-ing were the widespread indigenous persecutions of 1946–52 under the conservative rule of the mining oligarchy. Nevertheless, once unified in the struggle for the rights of campesinos (rural workers), Bolivia moved into the driver’s seat, and the radical political parties and governments found themselves in for a bumpy ride. The political effervescence of the 1940s brought the “Indian problem” to culmination and resulted in civil war and finally revolution.

Villarroel’s AssassinationVillarroel’s days were numbered once he divorced himself from his civil-ian base. The cooperation between the MNR and Villarroel’s military

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La Paz’s Plaza Murillo, named after Pedro Domingo Murillo, a hero of the 1809 revolts, was the site of a ghastly event in July 1946, when a mob broke into the official residence, killed President Gualberto Villarroel, and strung his body up from a lamppost in the square. (Peter McFarren photo)

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officers became seriously strained because of escalating international and internal pressures, and the MNR’s deputies were forced to leave the cabinet. Like Busch earlier, Villarroel resorted to an exclusively military government, but the military itself was fragmented into two warring camps of junior versus senior officers. On June 13, 1946, Villarroel nar-rowly survived a coup.

Seven weeks later, Villarroel was assassinated in one of the more horrific incidents in Bolivian political history when various forces con-verged to bring down the government. On July 21, a mob of hundreds of striking teachers, railway and construction workers, student demon-strators, and the violent agitators of the Democratic Antifascist Front besieged the presidential palace.

Unable to save his regime, Villarroel resigned the presidency but unwisely refused to leave the official residence. The mob stormed the Palacio Quemado, killed Villarroel and his closest associates, dragged their bodies into Plaza Murillo, and hung them from lampposts.

The divided military had not intervened to rescue one of their own, and Bolivia’s second major experiment in military socialism ended in tragedy. Villarroel’s was a chaotic rule at a chaotic time, not only for Bolivia but also around the world, yet his government had struggled for the country’s economic independence and the betterment of its dispos-sessed. The apparent political lesson to be drawn from these two devastat-ing failures of reformism was that reform was insufficient. A multiclass, multi-institutional insurrection was necessary—in short, a revolution.

The Last of the OligarchyThe death of Villarroel was followed by oligarchic rule. During the ensu-ing six years of social struggles and repression, known as the Sexenio, the Rosca enlisted the military and political reactionaries to violently roll back every progressive reform implemented in the decade after the Chaco War. In particular, the indigenous communities and the miners felt the severity of the repression and revenge of the oligarchy. The reac-tion was implemented under the guise of constitutional legitimacy and parliamentary civility.

Immediately after Villarroel’s assassination, a provisional civilian-military junta was established and called for elections. With many radical parties banned and key leaders exiled, “secure” elections were held in January 1947. Two conservative candidates acceptable to the oli-garchy ran for the presidency. Enrique Hertzog, the oligarchy’s favorite, represented the conservative Republican Socialist Union (Partido de la


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Unión Republicana Socialista, PURS), a conglomerate of factions from the old Republican Party; the distinguished diplomat and statesman Tómas Manuel Elío represented the Liberal Party.

The results of the controlled elections were fairly predictable: The oligarchy regained power. But even under these carefully engineered conditions, the return of the oligarchy generated dissent. Hertzog achieved a narrow victory of 44,700 votes to an opposing 44,300, of which 13,000 votes were cast for the exiled MNR candidate, Paz Estenssoro. Nevertheless, the oligarchy was back in power and took immediate steps to stay there. The establishment formed the National Conciliation, an alliance of conservative political parties and the Marxist PIR. The unusual cooperation between a Marxist party and the oligarchy was the final nail in the PIR’s coffin. Discredited, many former members of the PIR decided to found a new party, the Bolivian Communist Party (Partido Comunista Boliviano, or PCB) in January 1950. Others defected to the MNR.

The MNR continued to function in this period although its leaders were mostly in hiding or in exile. With representatives in Congress, the

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Bolivian miners at one of the many mines that saw labor unrest in the 1940s (Courtesy of Kathy S. Leonard)

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MNR pursued its radical agenda and verbal disruption of the govern-ment. When congressional elections were held in May 1949, the MNR reemerged as a major legislative force despite the government’s relent-less repression. The MNR’s electoral success was partly the product of its intimate cooperation with labor, especially the miners.

The government’s repression undermined its legitimacy and aided the MNR. In the eyes of the public, MNR loyalists were seen as martyrs of liberty. The twin evils of economic recession and political repression visited Bolivia in 1949. The mining centers were in a crisis. When the economy soured, Bolivia’s miners were always among the first to fall into hard times, and in 1949, thousands lost their jobs. Labor strikes occurred almost daily, not only in the mines but also in all sectors of the economy. The conservative government resorted to military repression, ignoring even the few labor reforms on the books. This intransigence and the gross violence of the regime further radicalized the MNR and its labor contingent. The showdown produced another massacre.

The Thesis of PulacayoIn November 1946, thousands of organized tin miners had held a spe-cial union conference in Pulacayo. There they had adopted a historic and revolutionary document known as the Thesis of Pulacayo. Inspired by Guillermo Lora, the militant unionist who reorganized the Revolu-tionary Workers’ Party (POR) in the 1940s, and his Trotskyist beliefs, the document elaborated the ideology and plan of action of the Bolivian Mine Workers’ Federation, the FSTMB. According to the Pulacayo document, Bolivian workers were the true and sole fighting vanguard of a socialist revolution. As such, workers were to initiate an armed class struggle and directly move to establish a workers’ state. Workers were to reject any accommodation with all nonrevolutionary forces, from the oligarchic government to democratic regimes or even progressive political parties. The revolution could not be compromised and had to be launched immediately.

This agenda of militant class struggle constituted a virtual declaration of war against the oligarchy. Moreover, the plan of action of Pulacayo was also fundamentally at odds with the political program of the MNR, which rejected the doctrine of class warfare and proposed a multiclass, gradual-ist, and nationalist “revolution” in its place. In January 1947, the deter-mined miners staged a walkout strike to affirm the confrontational agenda of Pulacayo. The oligarchy’s labor minister, who was a Marxist belonging to the “accommodationist” faction of the PIR, ordered in the troops.


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This act set into motion an escalating cycle of armed confrontations and deaths; for example, in June 1949, two U.S. technicians and 300 Bolivians died when the military repressed another major strike in the mining centers of Catavi, Llallagua, and Siglo XX. Juan Lechín, the char-ismatic general secretary of the FSTMB and an MNR senator in Congress, publicly condemned the government for these reprisals against the min-ers. Later, after the oligarchy had Lechín exiled, more blood was shed in armed clashes between the army and the miners.

Two MNR coup plots were then discovered. The government imposed a state of siege, or military rule, which limited civil liberties and freedoms. In the midst of another major strike on August 26, the MNR rebelled against the government. The MNR insurrection had the support of miners, workers, and peasants, as well as sympathetic active and retired military officers, although no major military units defected to the rebels. Nevertheless, because of the heavy resistance in some regions of the country, especially in the mining centers, the revolt touched off a brief but fierce domestic war. The premature dis-covery of the insurrection in La Paz and other serious mistakes by the MNR led to the civil war being crushed within 20 days.

Although the degree and extent of the resistance surprised the gov-ernment, there was never a full-scale uprising of the masses. The mili-tary solidly backed the government, and the insurrectionists themselves were never really mobilized or armed to fight in the major cities. The MNR had expected to pull off a quick coup d’état, but the tenacity and brutality of the oligarchy in defense of the old order surprised the resis-tance as well. The brief civil uprising, however, had disrupted even the far regions of the country, with rebel forces holding out for some time in Cochabamba and Santa Cruz.

When it became clear that the uprising would not succeed, the revo-lutionaries raided the banks, seized planes from the Bolivian national airline, and on September 15, 1949, many of the leaders of the MNR and rebel forces flew into exile. However, a number of those who did not escape were captured and subsequently interned on the notorious penal island of Coati on Lake Titicaca.

Despite its dismal failure, the premature insurrection taught the MNR and the radical miners some important lessons about how to make a revo-lution. For the embattled oligarchy, even the failure of the revolt provided an ominous portent of the rapid shift in the balance of power against the status quo. First, the national uprising had revealed the growing strength of the MNR-labor-peasant alliance. Second, the civil war had demon-strated the extensive and deep-rooted national support for revolution.

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By October 1949, the government had restored order in much of Bolivia. Despite President Enrique Hertzog’s public statements that he detested arbitrary violence and repression, much of the time his gov-ernment was under military rule. Pleading the strains of the civil crisis and his failing health, Hertzog officially resigned in October in favor of his vice president, Mamerto Urriolagoitia, who had been running the government since May in any case. Constitutionally, President Urriolagoitia’s term as chief executive ended in August 1951. More decisive and repressive in office, he would be the last hope of the oligarchy.

The Election of 1951The decade before 1952’s National Revolution had been the most cha-otic and critical in Bolivian history. The important changes in social-political institutions and popular attitudes that had taken root after the Chaco War achieved an unstoppable momentum in these years. Several developments were especially significant and essential to creating the conditions for the prerevolutionary crisis of 1949 to 1951.

The electorate had been progressively expanding and changing. Middle-class support for the traditional political parties had been eroded by the war, and the support of the upper-class intelligentsia had also declined. The youth of Bolivia’s prosperous classes were drawn to radical political parties and to the streets in direct action. The MNR had managed to forge a multiclass bloc of voters that could and did win elections. Beginning with the extraordinary protest vote for the PIR in 1940, the MNR steadily won more and more votes in the con-gressional elections of 1942, 1944, 1947, and 1949. The PIR protest vote in 1940 marked a turning point for the radical agenda, showing that the oligarchy was vulnerable. In its wake the MNR also benefited, especially after it radicalized its agenda and adopted some of the POR’s program.

The ideological foundation of Bolivian politics had been challenged and revolutionized, and the MNR emerged from this ideological caul-dron as a multiclass party of the democratic left. Indeed, the MNR even-tually discovered its political identity in the incendiary revolutionary slogan “Land to the Indian, mines to the state.” By 1951 this battle cry resonated throughout the country.

Also by 1951 Bolivian society had become irrevocably polarized between the forces of revolution and reaction; there was no longer a middle course to follow. Reforms, elections, and congressional mea-


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sures had all been tried repeatedly and had failed. Bolivian society seemed engulfed in a psychology of frustration intensified by a cycle of rising and declining expectations. With each series of reforms and stark reversals, the people’s expectations of improvement would rise and then fall precipitously.

The MNR finally won a presidential election in 1951, but the elec-tion was stolen away from the party. Approximately 126,000 votes representing around 5 percent of the population were cast. The MNR candidate for president was Víctor Paz Estenssoro, in exile in Argentina. The oligarchy was horrified when the tally revealed that Paz had won 43 percent of the total votes cast. The magnitude of this MNR victory was clear: Despite the restricted electorate and the money and clout of the Rosca, Paz had received a five-to-three plurality over the official candidate, Gabriel Gosálvez.

How had this happened? The victory was not simply the result of Paz Estenssoro’s popularity. The conservative parties had unwittingly diluted their votes. There were five conservative candidates competing against one another, as well as the single candidate of the MNR and rad-ical parties. Had the conservatives backed a unified ticket, they could have won, but even in the last days of the old order, party factionalism and political opportunism impeded unity.

According to the Bolivian constitution, however, if no candidate receives an absolute majority or 51 percent of the vote, the election must be decided by Congress. Had the legalities been followed, the conservative candidates would probably have won in any case, but President Urriolagoitia was unwilling to take even the slightest risk of a pro-opposition outcome. He resigned and turned the government over to the chief of the army, General Ovidio Quiroga. Convinced that an MNR victory would bring communists to power, General Quiroga annulled the elections, and a military cabinet was appointed with General Hugo Ballivián as the interim president.

The military government was widely reviled and never able to consolidate its 11-month rule. The provisional junta was blatantly illegitimate, and the inconsistency of its rule, at times repressive and at others conciliatory, only intensified the constitutional crisis. Internal divisions among the oligarchy and traditional parties weakened the government needlessly. In the confused political climate, the civil-ian opposition, including the conservative Liberal Party, continued to attack the government.

A major economic crisis further exacerbated the last days of the tradi-tional order. After World War II, the demand for tin and its international

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price had steadily declined. The U.S. government had stockpiled exten-sive stores of tin as an emergency measure during the war. In the late 1940s, sales from this strategic reserve created havoc with Bolivia’s already depressed mining economy. In late 1951, a dispute with the United States over the price and sale of tin heightened the economic and political crisis. For once there was complete unanimity and solidarity. Even the oligarchy joined the MNR in denouncing this case of U.S. imperialism.

Little did anyone realize that in a few short months Víctor Paz Estenssoro would be in the Palacio Quemado and the nationalistic MNR would be negotiating with the United States not merely over the price of tin, but over diplomatic recognition and the survival of the MNR’s National Revolution.


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7The National revolution

(1951–1964)

In semi-colonial countries neither the proletariat alone nor the mid dle class can triumph. When there is an alliance of classes, however, conditions are right for the National Revolution’s triumph.

Víctor Paz Estenssoro, February 1953 (Mitchell 1977, 39)

Reforms in modern society have served as a prelude either to stabil-ity or to revolution. By 1952 in Bolivia, two decades of reforms

had been overturned, and the path to peaceful change, blocked by a conservative, repressive oligarchy. The major reforms legislated by the military socialists and the MNR had been reversed virtually overnight in 1951. An oligarchy determined to protect its power and privileges beat down popular dissent with military repression. Frustrated reforms, therefore, resulted in a revolution.

Bolivia’s defeat in the Chaco War and the massive political mobiliza-tion in the war’s aftermath were also responsible for the social revolution that engulfed the landlocked nation during Easter week of 1952. The dis-gruntled war veterans and the general population had rejected the failed political system of the republican era. The disastrous war had changed Bolivia’s men and women irrevocably and transformed its electorate.

Bolivia’s citizens, in turn, transformed the country’s politics and social institutions. Citizens who had never voted in elections or who had been systematically excluded from civic life were suddenly aware of the promise and disappointment that politics could effect in their personal lives. Disgusted with endemic corruption, economic inequal-ity, and injustice, this new majority found its voice and rallied to the cause of radical reform. The sons and daughters of the middle and

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upper classes as well as the dispossessed became politically aware, active, and militant. By 1952, the majority of Bolivians opposed a conservative restoration and were empowered by their anger. Bolivians transformed the MNR’s revolt for national liberation into a people’s revolution.

The MNR RevoltThe loyalists of the MNR launched the National Revolution on April 9, 1952. The revolt was the work of a vanguard of revolutionaries sup-ported by workers, miners, and middle-class students and intellectuals. Initially, the peasantry and the indigenous communities were not on the front lines of the revolution; consequently, the insurrection was primar-ily a proletarian and urban-based revolution similar to the MNR’s failed revolt in 1949. Unlike the 1949 civil war, however, better planning and kind fortune favored the rebels. Not until the months after victory did the rural revolutionary contingency join the MNR and radicalize its agenda.

Timing was critical in the revolution’s success. The political climate immediately before and after the 1951 elections had been chaotic. The old elite parties had fractured into warring factions, and the economy had been devastated by a severe crisis in the price of tin. The conser-vative Liberal Party and even the Big Three tin mining interests were against the government, having excoriated it for the bankrupt economy and its “soft” treatment of labor and leftists. Indeed, the government had attempted to woo labor at the 11th hour before the vote by decree-ing a one-third increase in salaries for miners. The mining companies, however, had denounced and blatantly defied the unilateral decree. In no small measure, therefore, this escalating dissension within the govern-ment and the traditional political parties exposed in the pre-electoral confusion had worked in the plotters’ favor.

Initially, the military takeover by General Ballivián following the disastrous election results had offered hope for the old order. Claiming a duty to protect the country from a Nazi-communist menace (refer-ring to the pact among the MNR and the Marxist parties), the junta had restored a brief stability. But within a few months the prostrate economy and deep political polarization had undermined the junta’s efforts and civilian support.

Ballivián blustered and threatened, but other top military command-ers began to aspire to the presidential office, and everyone knew that the


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junta would fall sooner or later. The question was who would strike the blow and reap the political victory? At this critical juncture, the MNR, political scientist James M. Malloy writes, “began plotting day and night with everyone and anyone looking for a formula to power” (1970, 156).

When it finally came, the insurrection was not a spontaneous rising; indeed, extensive planning and plotting secured its ultimate success. Two key MNR leaders, Hernán Siles and Juan Lechín, who had been instrumental in the 1949 uprising, once again played major roles. Both had learned from past mistakes. In 1949, a timid MNR had not armed the people, fearing the spread of civil war and a bloodbath. In 1952, a more desperate and radical MNR decided to risk greater violence, and they armed the opponents of the government.

The leaders of the revolt enlisted professional soldiers to their cause, but this was not an easy task. The MNR was suspicious of and ambiva-lent about the military, and the old days of MNR-military collaboration were long over. After the fall of Villarroel, the army had been thor-oughly purged of its radical elements. As a result, the military establish-ment had remained loyal to the government in revolts, especially the uprising of 1949. The MNR judged it unlikely that career officers would defect to the revolutionaries’ cause in 1952. Indeed, the military junta in power had outlawed the MNR, and the army’s conservative chief of staff, General Humberto Torres Ortiz, was rumored to be interested in the presidency himself. Nevertheless, the MNR pursued a potential alli-ance with Torres and the right-wing (Bolivian Socialist Falange FSB), but at the last minute Torres backed out.

The MNR rebels then sought the assistance of the militarized national police, known as the carabineros. On the eve of the revolt—moved for-ward from April 15 to April 9 for fear of discovery—General Antonio Seleme, the minister of internal security and the chief of the national police, secretly agreed to support and arm the revolutionaries. He ordered the police force to open up the armories and distribute weapons to the MNR and the rebellious workers. The plan, according to James M. Malloy, was for General Seleme to become president in an MNR-military cabinet and for Hernán Siles, personally in charge of the revolt, to become vice president. But events soon took a different course.

On the morning of April 9, the startled citizens of La Paz woke to armed confrontations in the narrow streets and plazas of the city between the MNR loyalists and carabineros on one side and the army and government supporters on the other. The revolutionary forces of the MNR rapidly seized the city center, forcing the national army to

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regroup below the rebel positions. The government army also com-manded El Alto along the rim of the altiplano heights above the city. Encircling the city, which lay in the deep bowl below, the govern-ment’s well-armed and confident troops moved pincerlike to smash the rebel forces.

After the first day’s fighting, the position of the revolutionaries seemed precarious. The superior forces of the loyalist army had the advantage, and General Seleme, who had armed the rebels gambling on an easy vic-tory, now feared all was lost. In a panic, Seleme deserted his command and sought diplomatic asylum in the Chilean embassy. The police gen-eral’s cowardice further panicked the insurgents, and some began to con-sider the possibility of compromise or surrender. But Siles and the MNR leaders refused to capitulate. The rebels fought on as the uprising spread to the major cities of Oruro and Cochabamba. Meanwhile, in La Paz, the city’s factory workers and those from nearby Viacha armed themselves with captured weapons and joined in the battle.

The situation was reversed dramatically the next day. Militant miners from the Milluni mining complex, 10 miles north of La Paz, overran El Alto and seized the railroad station and the air force base located there, above the city. This decisive action intercepted a trainload of munitions and prevented the bombing of rebel positions. Converging on the army’s forces along the heights above the city, the angry miners trapped the army from behind and pushed the government’s forces ever closer toward the edge of the altiplano and the precipitous drop to the central city below.

Meanwhile, about 70 miles south of La Paz on the altiplano, the MNR cadres and miners of Oruro prevented the military garrison there from sending reinforcements to rescue the government’s soldiers trapped on El Alto. This rearguard action proved to be a decisive move in the revolt. Had reinforcements arrived from Oruro, the Milluni min-ers would have been squeezed between the two armies of the govern-ment and probably wiped out. As it was, the government troops in La Paz realized that there would be no rescue from outside the city and became disheartened. According to Malloy’s account of the battle, there was a final heroic but fruitless stand by the cadets of the military college before the government surrendered.

After three days of intense fighting, the historic Battle of La Paz sealed the MNR’s victory. On April 11, the government general Torres Ortiz gave up and signed a truce with the revolutionaries. Most of the army’s high command, including General Torres, who had defended the bankrupt oligarchy, fled into exile. The violent revolutionary takeover


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had been costly for both sides: The official record listed 552 dead and 787 wounded.

The structure of the revolt had not been that radically different from previous civilian-military coups. Indeed, Malloy notes that “the original plan smacked strongly of a Villarroel-type formula, that is, a rapid coup involving little civil participation, followed by a military-civil coalition government” (1970, 157). Malloy suggests that this may have been a conscious decision by some of the MNR leaders to diminish the role of the radical labor elements. A more conservative-reformist sector of the MNR wanted Siles rather than the more radical Paz Estenssoro to head the new government. In short, Malloy writes, “the in-country MNR elite was aiming at establishing a Villarroel-type reformist regime in which labor could have a secondary role, at best” (1970, 158).

But again events took a different course. The Battle of La Paz had been unexpectedly fierce and bloody, and although confined largely to the city, there was extensive citizen involvement, especially by the miners and factory workers. Without the support of these radical labor elements the revolt would most likely have fizzled out in the first 24 hours. Whether party leaders had intended it, the MNR owed the spec-tacular and surprising success of its revolutionary putsch to the socialist and Marxist miners and workers of La Paz. The MNR leadership could ignore the radical and revolutionary social goals of its leftist labor sup-porters only at great cost.

Making the Social Revolution

The MNR’s triumph was due to its being a party of proletarians, of the peasantry, of the middle class and the petty bourgeoisie which sought transformations.

Víctor Paz Estenssoro (Mitchell 1977, 39)

Víctor Paz Estenssoro was welcomed home from exile in Argentina amid the wild jubilation of the citizens of La Paz, on April 15, 1952. The next day, Paz took the oath of office and became Bolivia’s first revolu-tionary president. Ensconced in the Palacio Quemado, his government and the MNR directorate now faced the daunting task of bringing to fruition the first major Latin American revolution since the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

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Winning the revolutionary vic-tory proved an easier task than effecting profound social change. Making a social revolution chal-lenged the core identity of the once-reformist and protofas-cist MNR. And the revolutionary agenda, as yet only theory and promise, raised important but unanswered questions: What was the MNR in 1952? Who were its loyalists and supporters? Which component of its “nationalist so cialist revolution” would take pre ce dence? What would be the party’s program and policies?

In principle, the program of the MNR’s 1952 National Revolu-tion had been well established and publicized. The three central goals, which the MNR espoused before the revolutionary victory and which served as its revolutionary banner, were universal suffrage, national-

ization of the mines, and land reform. The first two goals, although radical in the context of the times, could be reconciled with the nation-alistic and reformist aspirations of the original MNR program. Without question, the third goal of land reform was the most revolutionary and provoked serious strains within the party.

Behind its radical-reformist facade, therefore, the first decade of MNR rule exposed a house divided between “reluctant” and “radical” reformers. Two key policies—expropriation of the mines and land reform—tested the party’s mettle and revolutionary resolve. Most observers concluded that if Bolivia’s peasantry had not acted aggressively and independently in land takeovers, the agrarian reform decree might not have been signed as early as 1953. Even the generally popular nationalization of the proper-ties of the Big Three mining capitalists gave the MNR leaders moments of indecision.

Once the MNR’s revolutionary coalition had achieved power, party leaders seemed to hesitate before enacting promised reforms. The

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Víctor Paz Estenssoro, political leader and president of Bolivia. The confettilike material on his head and shoulders is called mistura and is scattered on people to show honor and respect. (Peter McFarren photo)


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more radical sectors and lower-class interest groups, however, were determined to fulfill the MNR’s revolutionary promises. Thus, the euphoria of the revolutionary process and the constant pressure from the party’s multiclass interests shaped legislation between 1952 and 1956. In the end, each major interest group attained its core goal. On this most fundamental level, the MNR’s social revolution was a success: The nationalists, labor left wing, and the miners’ union realized the nationalization of the mines; the peasants and indigenous communities achieved the passage of land reform; and the majority of Bolivia’s dis-possessed experienced meaningful citizenship and full voting rights. By

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The Three MNRs

The MNR was not a homogeneous party but a multiclass and multi-ideological coalition. The broad nature of the party had been the

very basis of its far-reaching appeal and revolutionary victory. In its diversity, however, lay its potential strength and resilience in power as well as the future seeds of its eventual demise and disintegration as a ruling party.

There were, according to James M. Malloy, really three MNRs. The first MNR, the core of the party, represented the loyalist cells. The sec-ond was the labor left wing led by Juan Lechín, which included the min-ers’ union (the FSTMB) and radical students. And the third MNR was the support group of Víctor Paz Estenssoro, in exile in Argentina.

Malloy describes these three MNRs as fundamentally different in their aims, style, and tactics. The first group, which was the closest to the original MNR and its middle-class base, had a moderate, even right-ist, reformist tendency. The second group favored a revolutionary and socialist program. And the third exiled group proved the most prag-matic and nationalistic in approach.

The primary MNR had only a vague program based on principles of national dignity and self-determination. According to Malloy these core party faithfuls were more interested in the mystique of revolution and the seizure of power than in its exercise. In victory, these party loyalists had no clear idea of where the revolution was going or why. Thus, the first MNR administration would begin a journey in self-discovery and intrapartisan class conflict.

Source: Malloy, James M. Bolivia: The Uncompleted Revolution (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970), 158–159.

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achieving these three sweeping social, economic, and political reforms the MNR’s revolution has been “ranked as one of Latin America’s most far-reaching processes of social change” (Mitchell 1977, 6).

Votes to the PeopleThe first reform was the new electoral law that guaranteed universal adult suffrage to all Bolivian citizens of 21 years of age (or 18 years if married) and abolished the old requirements of literacy tests and discriminatory property restrictions. The political impact of the voting act was revolutionary. Literally over night, the country’s total number of voters increased fivefold.

Since the early republic, Bolivia’s electorate had represented as little as 2 percent and no more than 6 percent of the population. Over the decades, the gradual and modest expansion of the voting rolls had occurred only because of steady population increases. Just as important as the number of new voters, however, was the expansion in the elec-torate’s social and racial composition. Before the revolutionary law, the indigenous population, which accounted for almost 60 percent of the total, had been denied the vote. The majority of new voters, therefore, were illiterate indigenous peasants, miners, and factory workers.


The 1952 revolution brought full citizenship and voting rights to all members of Bolivian society, including campesinos like this man, near Tarabuco. (UN/DPI photo by Greg Kinch)

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A quick review of voting statistics reveals the dramatic transforma-tion of the traditional elite politics before the revolution into the popu-list mass-party politics of less than a decade later. In 1952, before the electoral reform law, the electorate consisted of approximately 200,000 eligible voters, or 6 percent of the nearly 3 million total population. In the 1951 elections, for example, only 126,000 persons voted. After the new law’s passage, the electorate increased to nearly 1 million eligible voters, or more than 30 percent of the population. As a result, in the 1960 elections there were 900,000 voters, or about 25 percent of the 3.5 million Bolivians. In both the 1978 and 1979 elections, there were approximately 2 million registered voters, or 40 percent of the country’s population of 5 million.

Because of the decree for the universal vote, for the first time in the country’s history, Bolivians had the opportunity to create an authentic, working democracy. The universal vote empowered them politically, but, as they would soon learn, only if it were respected and used wisely.

Mines to the State

We did not aim at making a social or a political revolution but an economic revolution.

Walter Guevara Arze (Malloy 1970, 170)

The nationalization of Bolivia’s mineral riches represented the heart and soul of the MNR’s goal of economic liberation. The momentous Act of Bolivia’s Economic Independence was signed on October 31, 1952, at the infamous Catavi mining complex, the site of two bloody mas-sacres of Bolivian miners. The radical decree nationalized the mining enterprises of the Big Three—Patiño, Aramayo, and Hochschild—and established the powerful state mining corporation Corporación Minera de Bolivia, better known as COMIBOL.

In economic terms, according to Richard S. Thorn, the nationaliza-tion transferred control over 85 percent of the country’s tin production, 95 percent of its foreign exchange receipts, and about 50 percent of the central government’s fiscal receipts from private hands to the state (1971, 168–69). The decree did not affect the country’s medium and small mining companies, which remained in private ownership. Since passage of the Busch Mining Decree in 1939, the state Mining Bank had

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indirectly taxed these private mining enterprises, and the MNR govern-ment continued this policy.

Restricting nationalization to the Big Three tin producers proved critical for U.S.-Bolivian relations. Several of the medium-sized mines were U.S. owned, and the MNR had no desire to directly confront the United States. Respecting the private property of these enterprises was intended to allay U.S. suspicions concerning the MNR’s intentions and ideological orientation. Nevertheless, even the targeted expropriation of Bolivia’s Big Three mining capitalists proved a problem for the revolu-tionary government. The implementation of the decree created an early rift with the MNR’s more radical labor left wing.

The official MNR program had promised that the big tin barons would not be compensated for the expropriation of their properties. The MNR had always charged that the Big Three were exploiters, who had stolen the national patrimony and had withheld taxes owed the state. The middle-class leaders of the MNR, however, were desperate to gain the favor of the United States, which had withheld diplomatic recognition from the revolution and would most likely continue to do so if there were no indemnification of private property. Since the early 1940s, the volatile Bolivian economy had relied increasingly on U.S. foreign aid, and the MNR government hoped to restore and increase the flow of dollars as quickly as possible before the economy collapsed completely.

MNR policymakers of the party’s core vetoed the MNR’s labor sector and agreed to compensate the big tin barons. No doubt the middle-class leadership rationalized the softening in policy as a necessary evil for the good of the revolution. Indeed, they feared that deteriorating economic conditions and continued diplomatic isolation by the United States could doom their revolution. This decision proved to be a mis-calculation when the millions ultimately paid in compensation to the big tin interests bankrupted the treasury and aggravated the desperate postrevolutionary fiscal crisis.

Despite its shortcomings, this single reform law transformed the Bolivian economy. Unfortunately, it proved to be too little too late. By 1952 when the decree was passed, tin mining revenue was already in a free fall. Diminished resources, higher extraction costs, and decapitaliza-tion had already taken their toll and would continue to do so. Rather than buy Bolivia’s economic independence, the nationalization decree ensured the country’s continued economic dependence—and the inevitable day of reckoning between the core MNR and its labor-left constituents.


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Land to the TillerThe peasantry had never fully recovered from the repression that fol-lowed the murder of their hero, President Gualberto Villarroel. Their efforts both through open rebellion and litigation in the courts had failed to realize the legal guarantees that Villarroel had decreed in 1945. The landowners had ignored the laws outright or had feigned compliance, and most landowners also resorted to direct repression. Indians who had attended the National Indigenous Congress were punished with double the workload or thrown off the haciendas to become vagrants. Ostensibly, the subjugation of the campesinos had not changed.

In the spring of 1952, an independent and spontaneous indigenous land reform movement erupted near Cochabamba in the town of Ucureña. The peremptory land seizures there spread like wildfire across the altiplano and intermountain valleys forcing the MNR to speed up and radicalize its official agrarian reform policy. The Ucureña move-ment had deep roots in the region and prerevolutionary antecedents as far back as the 1930s. Shortly after the Chaco War in 1936, returning Indian war veterans had begun to organize independent rural unions in the high valleys of Cochabamba.

The Indian movement in Ucureña, nevertheless, was somewhat of an exception; it had been more advanced and less repressed than other peasant movements before the revolution. Generally, indigenous orga-nizations and ties to the post-Chaco middle-class and mestizo political parties were weak or nonexistent before 1952. The MNR had remained ambivalent about the agrarian question during the 1940s, and com-pared to the other radical and reformist parties, the MNR’s position on land reform had been ambiguous and tentative. Indeed, both the pre- and post-1952 MNR had sought to counter and control this growing indigenous autonomy.

In contrast, both the Party of the Revolutionary Left (PIR), a principal rival of the MNR and opponent of the Villarroel government, and the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (POR), a frequent ally of the MNR, had formulated decisive positions on domestic Indian and agrarian issues. Indeed, the PIR had struggled to become the preeminent voice of peas-ant demands. Because of its aggressive and revolutionary stand on land reform, the Marxist party had made significant headway, especially in Ucureña where it controlled the peasant unions. Even the dogmatic POR, which had insisted on subordinating the indigenous-peasant movement to the proletarian vanguard, had established a stronger pres-ence in the countryside than the MNR had before 1952.

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The MNR became more serious about rural organizing immediately after the revolution (in which very few peasants had participated). The government created the Ministry of Peasant Affairs. Its primary task was the formation of MNR-based peasant unions, especially in the Cochabamba region. The Bolivian scholar Xavier Albó has noted that the MNR typically maneuvered to channel popular impulses toward its own objectives. And although the party sought new peasant participa-tion, it wanted to remain in the driver’s seat, “But in 1952, in the valle alto (“high valley”) of Cochabamba, the MNR was forced into the pas-senger’s seat” (1987, 383).

The peasants of Ucureña and their leader, José Rojas, who were at the heart of the indigenous union movement, joined the MNR. In return for their supporting the party, the Ucureña unionists retained their own leaders and proposed their own, more radical agrarian reform pro-gram. “In the face of governmental indecision,” Albó explained, the campesinos of Ucureña started to occupy the haciendas on their own, “and thanks to these de facto actions, the MNR government ended up deciding in favor of agrarian reform” (1987, 383). The Agrarian Reform Decree of 1953 legalized the violent seizures of large haciendas


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Land reform was a crucial part of the National Revolution of 1952. It allowed theretofore dispossessed farmers to own and work their own land, as do these campesinos, shown here shearing a live alpaca. (UN/DPI photo by Greg Kinch)

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in Ucureña and elsewhere around the country where the government failed to maintain control. The historic reform effected one of the most sweeping land transfers in Latin America, second only to the Mexican Revolution’s agrarian reform.

If measured solely in terms of new property rights, the Bolivian agrar-ian reform may not have seemed very radical. The law confiscated only the largest estates and compensated the former owners with 25-year bonds based on the assessed property value. Medium-sized properties widely remained intact. The social and ethnic consequences of the decree, however, were especially significant, and the land reform decree reaffirmed many of the labor and human rights that Villarroel had granted the Indians in 1945.

The 1953 law abolished the entire gamut of feudal labor practices that had oppressed the indigenous population. Foremost among these was the comprehensive system of rule by the local and regional bosses and oligarchs. The bosses and their paid underlings had kept the Indians ignorant and isolated. The corrupt system had prevented reforms decreed by the central government (such as those of Busch or Villarroel) from being disseminated and implemented in the countryside.

Further, the reform decree abolished the unpaid and involuntary personal services (that is, slavery) provided to the haciendas and the residences of the patrones, or landowners. The law ended the use of lands in exchange for labor and a portion of the produce to the haci-enda. It abolished the practice of gratuitous transport of the hacienda’s produce to urban markets by the peasant’s beasts of burden solely at the peasant’s expense.

The agrarian reform also restored to Indian communities the collec-tive lands that had been seized by unscrupulous hacendados over the last 100 years. The reform’s critics, however, contended that the ulti-mate intent of the MNR plan, not unlike previous liberal land reforms, was to incorporate the Indian into the market economy and ultimately replace the indigenous communities with agrarian freeholders. In short, the MNR intended to modernize Bolivian agriculture. To this end, the final provisions of the reform included technical assistance, rural devel-opment, and extensive exploration of the national territory in order to secure new lands for internal migration.

The MNR’s agrarian reform radically altered the economic and social makeup of Bolivia. The before and after statistics are telling. Nearly 72 percent of the country’s economically active population still depended on agricultural production in 1950. Most were landless campesinos; the rest, who owned small parcels or shared collective farming rights within

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traditional indigenous communities, were squeezed onto only a small percentage of the cultivated land. The 1953 land decree introduced major changes in these ownership patterns over the next two decades.

By June 1970, more than 30 percent of nearly 15 million acres of total agricultural land had been distributed to Bolivia’s landless or land-poor. This successful transfer of property, however, came with signifi-cant setbacks; for example, the established policy of compensation to former owners often failed. Furthermore, land reform confiscated only very large properties. It took years or even decades to process transfer


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Bolivia’s Land Reforms

Bolivia has undertaken three land reform programs in its history as an independent state. The first was in 1825, the second in 1874,

and the most recent in 1953. According to Xavier Albó, all three were basically attempts to “liberalize” and modernize agriculture. Central to all three plans was the replacement of the ayllus, the traditional indig-enous agricultural communities based on lineage, with private individual land ownership.

The history of land reform, moreover, followed two distinct but inter-related and continuous phases demarcated by the Chaco War. Albó argues that in the pre-Chaco period, the Indians primarily struggled to protect their communities from dispossession by the new white-mestizo oligarchy. The Indian uprisings of this period were desperate attempts to defend community lands. After the Chaco War, the players and the goals shifted. During the second phase of land reform, the Indians struggled for better living conditions on the haciendas and then the destruction of the oppres-sive system and the redistribution of the land to the tiller. They allied with progressive political parties and labor unions. In this phase the ayllus became irrelevant, according to Albó. The indigenous communities had been destroyed, transformed, or reduced to 22 percent of the lands.

The goal of the MNR land reform, therefore, was to sweep away the feudal system of lords and slaves and transform the Indian peasants into citizens and producers and consumers in an internal market. In this process the Indian would disappear altogether through intermarriage, the “Hispanization” of language and culture, migration, and the loss of the traditional communities.

Source: Albó, Xavier. “From MNRistas to Katarists to Katari.” In Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries. Ed. Steve J. Stern. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 380–382.

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titles. Medium-sized holdings (1,500–12,500 hectares) were left intact. The land reform decree promised to compensate former owners by issuing bonds at 2 percent interest over 25 years. New (peasant) owners had to pay off assessed value of their land in that time, but as soon as the title transfer was processed, many defaulted and the 25-year bonds became worthless paper.

A more serious problem was the catastrophic decline in agricultural productivity. The agrarian reform encouraged excessive parceling of the land into extremely small farms, and these mini-holdings were inef-ficient and often suffered from chronic capital shortages. The entire reform process was plagued by sluggish bureaucracy and irregular or delayed transfers of titles.

Despite a host of difficulties, the agrarian reform destroyed the feu-dal landowning system and the power of the landed oligarchy on the national and especially local and regional levels. This system had kept Bolivia’s Indians enslaved and impoverished since the Spanish con-quest. After the revolution in 1952, indigenous peoples, now officially known as campesinos, became citizens, voters, and property owners. The MNR was the first to realize that its major reforms had transformed both power and class relations in the new Bolivia. The MNR’s desire to create a modern and economically developed country served as the major impetus for these radical transformations.

Modernization for the MNRThe MNR pursued its inherently modernizing mission through foreign aid, universal education, and economic development programs. An educational reform decree, which reaffirmed the initiatives introduced by Busch and Villarroel, was announced on January 20, 1953. The reform reestablished the right to universal education, and the revolu-tionary government pledged to extend this benefit to Bolivia’s indig-enous and rural communities. Local bosses had thwarted previous reforms, and the MNR was determined that this time Indians would benefit from the law.

Another important aspect of the MNR’s modernization strategy was the exploration and development of Bolivia’s vast land area. Major new roads were constructed, including a vital link between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. At the same time, the government provided incentives to colonize and develop the country’s rich tropical and subtropical regions. Consequently, the underpopulated departments of El Beni and Santa Cruz saw a population explosion over the following decades.

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These development projects were ambitious. With the economy bankrupt, most could not have been realized without the infusion of extensive foreign assistance from the United States. Moderation of revolutionary and economic nationalism was the price the MNR government paid. In a very real sense, therefore, the MNR revolution came to depend on the goodwill of the United States and the wary new Republican administration of President Dwight Eisenhower.

Specifically, the MNR agreed to renew payment of Bolivia’s national debt, which had been suspended in the post–Great Depression mora-torium of 1931. Also, in June 1953, the government promised to com-pensate the Big Three tin capitalists for the expropriation of their mines the previous fall. In October 1953, Paz Estenssoro approved a new petroleum code that encouraged private foreign investments and explo-ration by U.S. oil interests. Consequently, Gulf Oil began operations in 1955. Nine other U.S. petroleum companies eventually followed. This petroleum code put the Bolivian State Petroleum Enterprise (YPFB, which stands for Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos), founded in the wake of Busch’s nationalization decree, at a competitive disadvan-tage, and the U.S. aid came with strings. If the new MNR government desired the technical skills and operating capital that the U.S. govern-ment and corporations had to offer, then the state petroleum industry would have to take second place to private and foreign interests, at least for the time being.

During the difficult economic times after the National Revolution, the U.S. government shipped large quantities of food aid to Bolivia. In 1953 alone, this aid amounted to $5 million. Bolivia also received siz-able U.S. foreign assistance in 1956. These funds, however, were made contingent on implementation of a harsh stabilization plan devised by the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). By 1960, Bolivia had attained a special status in its relations with the United States. That year, the revolutionary government received a staggering $100 million in U.S. assistance, making Bolivia the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in Latin America.

This aid dependency raised important questions concerning the fun-damental character of the MNR and the revolution. Did the MNR’s record of accommodation reflect survival of the revolution on U.S. terms? Or, did the MNR’s pragmatism and moderation also reflect the core interests of the party’s mainstream? For whatever reason, did the MNR compro-mise its principles and thereby undermine the party and the National Revolution? Or did this primarily middle-class party always harbor the seeds of failure within its distinct institutional structure and governing


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style? These intriguing questions have given rise to the ongoing debate over whether and why the MNR and the revolution ultimately failed.

Divide and RuleShortly after the revolutionary victory, Víctor Paz Estenssoro bluntly characterized both his personal pragmatism and that of the new gov-ernment. “Different modes of action,” Paz explained, “correspond to different periods. The hour of the revolutionaries has passed; this is the hour of the policy makers” (Mitchell 1977, 51). During the first four years of the revolution, the MNR lacked the resources to resist the demands of powerful interest groups within the party. By 1956, condi-tions were different as the party engaged in a comprehensive governing style of divide and rule.

Although remaining in power and in charge demanded popular support, especially at the polls, the party leaders had to make difficult decisions that inevitably alienated one or more groups in the MNR’s multiclass constituency. From 1956 to 1964, the party employed a bag of political tricks to try to keep the opposing interests within its ranks in line or at the very least from tearing the party apart completely.

Among the MNR’s various tactics were penetration and co-optation. The party employed these tactics most effectively in its organization and takeover of peasant unions, or sindicatos. Generally, the MNR preferred to gain the loyalty of existing associations, especially since the middle-class MNR cadres disliked the hard work of recruitment and grassroots organizing. It was easier to penetrate existing unions. Another reason was that indigenous groups remained highly suspi-cious of political parties, even of the MNR and its land reform decree. On the other hand, since the land reform the peasantry had become an essentially passive and even conservative political force that could be easily manipulated through its leaders. Recognizing that most peas-ants still identified with their rural unions rather than the party, the MNR simply co-opted the local union leaders to gain the loyalty of the peasants. After 1952, organizing the peasantry became vital to the party’s political future. At the very least the MNR was determined to deny its rivals the peasant vote. Later, the peasants also became useful as the shock troops that the party could throw against the miners and the workers.

The MNR established the Ministry of Peasant Affairs, headed by Nuflo Chávez Ortiz, an effective MNR peasant and labor organizer. Chávez, working with Juan Lechín, recruited and sent out roving

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organizing teams into the countryside. The MNR also created and financed the first national rural union, the Bolivian National Peasant Confederation (Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia, CNTCB). These efforts were largely successful. Within a few months of the revolution, there were 1,200 peasant unions in the department of Cochabamba with 200,000 members. By 1961, there were more than 7,500 rural peasant unions throughout the country affiliated with the MNR.

As a political party, the MNR’s organizational presence in the coun-tryside remained weak. Party structures were lacking below the level of the country’s 98 provincial capitals. Often party and union structures were one and the same, and at the grassroots level there existed only the sindicatos. The CNTCB had always seemed to be a creature of the MNR and an instrument of state control over the rural workers. The national peasants’ organization, according to Christopher Mitchell, tended to be a shadow organization. Moreover, Mitchell argues that the MNR’s rural weakness was ultimately insignificant given the party’s inherently divi-sive strategy. The MNR was not interested in mobilizing the peasants but in dividing and isolating them in order to neutralize their influence in national politics.


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The Peasant Sindicato

The rural unions, or sindicatos, that the Ministry of Peasant Affairs organized between 1952 and 1960 became all-embracing asso-

ciations. Political scientist Christopher Mitchell described them in these terms:

Originally modeled on industrial-style mining unions, the peas-ant organizations become multifaceted social institutions which monopolized local power. They dispensed justice, sometimes played a role in cultivation, and became the social center of peasant life. Most important, they provided a channel through which postreform peasants dealt with the central government. The often agonizingly slow process of obtaining land titles, the search for assistance from La Paz (schools, teachers, roads, water), the trading of votes for political favors—all these tasks in political linkage were handled by the sindicato.

Source: Mitchell, Christopher. The Legacy of Populism in Bolivia: From the MNR to Military Rule (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1977), p. 46.

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By 1960, however, the MNR’s divide-and-rule strategy had unraveled for several reasons. Probably the most important was the MNR’s falling out with the labor-left. Indeed, the divisiveness that the MNR intention-ally sowed in order to keep the middle-class faction on top and compet-ing class interests down fostered the decline of the party.

The MNR and LaborThe tactic of co-optation that had worked relatively well in building a coalition with the passive peasantry fell short in the party’s dealings with the powerful and radical labor sector. Since labor support was critical to political success, the MNR was forced to make greater concessions in coalition building and coalition management. A key tactic in the party-government’s relationship with labor was a form of direct power sharing known as cogobierno, or “cogovernment.” This governing strat-egy provided labor with a virtual veto over the MNR government’s poli-cies. As James M. Malloy observes, “through the COB [Central Obrero Boliviano, or Bolivian Labor Central], the labor-left became a govern-ment within the government” (1970, 186). By 1956, this constraint on the government’s ability to maneuver became unacceptable to the MNR. Finally, as a result of the economic crisis between 1956 and 1960, the MNR-labor coalition broke down completely. Labor had his-torically had an independent voice in Bolivian politics; the MNR’s attempt to tame the labor move-ment proved a frustrating and probably doomed endeavor.

Initially, the revolution further consolidated labor’s influence. The COB was created in the heady days after the revolutionary triumph and was a national labor union that claimed to represent the general voice of Bolivian workers. Under the independent umbrella organiza-tion of the COB, most of the coun-try’s labor unions became affiliated with the party. The most impor-tant functional unions included the

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Juan Lechín was Bolivia’s foremost labor activist and union leader. He served as minister of mining following the 1952 revolution. (Peter McFarren photo)

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miners, the urban factory and construction workers, the railroad and transportation workers, and the white-collar workers such as the teachers and other state and public employees. Membership in the 1960s totaled nearly 145,000 unionized workers.

The largest single union within the COB was the Bolivian Mine Workers’ Federation, or FSTMB, with 52,000 members in 1960. Juan Lechín, the famed 1940s labor ac tivist and leader, served both as the executive secretary of the FSTMB and the COB after the revolution. As long as Lechín remained in the party’s top leadership and dominated both unions, the MNR was able to maintain an effective handle on labor. After 1956, however, when Lechín left the cabinet as the minister of mining and the MNR imposed the U.S.-IMF stabilization plan, this cooperation disappeared.

The MNR’s hold over the radical labor unions had always been incomplete and tentative, because, in part, the party’s organization structure was spotty at the local level. The MNR’s top echelon formed the National Political Committee. This nine-member core group served as the central executive organ of the party. Several hundred active members also provided leadership under the direction of the executive committee. On the regional and departmental level, MNR chapters and command centers coordinated the activities of the affiliated, but largely autonomous interest groups.

In the labor sector, party leaders were either subordinate to union leaders or union and party leaders were the selfsame individuals. The union leaders responded directly to the COB and circumvented the MNR’s functional command centers at the shop steward level. Especially in the miners’ unions, this parallel leadership structure proved the rule. At the root of this dualism was the persistent class-struggle ideology of the labor-left. Labor radicals, including those in the COB and the FSTMB, had always rejected the MNR’s multiclass program (although these class concerns were temporarily muted immediately after the revolution). The workers’ unions maintained that only the proletariat and organized unionists could be trusted to fight for labor’s interests—and events proved them right.

After 1956, when the MNR lost influence within the COB, the party relentlessly pitted union against union. With this divide-and-rule strat-egy, the MNR exploited the ideological and class divisions within the labor movement. The strategy successfully splintered and weakened the labor-left. Eventually, however, the divisiveness that was sown backfired on the MNR.


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Revolutionary Governance Mexican Style

We want to make a Mexican Revolution, but without ten years of Pancho Villa.

Walter Guevara Arze (Malloy 1970, 235)

The MNR modeled the party’s governing structure along the populist and corporatist lines of the Mexican Revolution. The ultimate goal was to create a one-party dominant state that mirrored the governing style of the Partido Revolucionario Institutional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI), which had consolidated the Mexican Revolution. The party believed that it could consolidate control over the dominant inter-est groups—the middle class, the military, the peasant associations, and the labor unions—within its broad populist coalition.

To this end, MNR organizing cadres established a number of func-tional associations, such as unions or party cells, within these groups. Also, all major interest groups were linked to the party either directly or indirectly in a hierarchical fashion. But from the start this scheme pre-sented difficulties that in Mexico’s case, were handled with the threat or use of force. (Indeed, every Mexican president in the first two decades after the revolution had been a general with armies under his com-mand.) Thus, under this system, from the beginning the MNR was split internally between the intractable forces of the party’s right and left. On January 6, 1953—before the revolution was even a year old—the party’s right wing had attempted a coup against the Paz presidency, which they saw as too leftist and in league with the COB communists.

Only the extremely adept political maneuvering of Paz and the cen-trist leadership kept a lid on the situation, at first by playing off the right against the left and later reversing the process. Perhaps this divide-and-rule strategy kept the MNR in power for as long as it did; nevertheless, the MNR has been severely criticized for its controlling, divisive, and manipulative governing style. Leading scholars have viewed the divide-and-rule strategy as the primary cause of the party’s disintegration and downfall.

In peasant affairs, the critics argued that the MNR’s approach varied little from the traditional patrimonial control and patronage politics of the past. The party simply replaced the old landlords and corrupt políticos with the MNR’s co-opted local leaders, party men, or

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government-sponsored syndicates. The MNR’s top-down governing style, moreover, did not encourage democratic development.

Another critical cause of the party’s demise was the chronic leader-ship crisis within the party and its major interest groups. Rather than diffuse these leadership conflicts, the MNR crassly manipulated them to the party’s advantage. This devious behavior was especially apparent in the case between the MNR and the peasant movement. The degree to which the MNR’s divisive policies were the cause or the consequence of an inherent tendency toward interest group fragmentation remains unclear and debatable, but it is clear that the MNR actively exploited and exacerbated existing tensions. Christopher Mitchell and other crit-ics of the MNR have concluded that divisiveness was endemic to the MNR’s multiple personalities and schizophrenic populism.

The voter reform law also complicated the party’s attempts to con-solidate and institutionalize one-party hegemony. With thousands of additional voters, especially ones easily manipulated, governing majori-ties were hard to come by. The explosion in political participation and interest group mobilization that characterized the new mass politics proved extremely difficult to manage. It seemed that everyone had a vote and a demand. The MNR’s populist strategy and bag of tricks did not always work.

Despite clever governing techniques, the MNR failed to become a cohesive party. Mitchell has concluded that the MNR “simply supplied a party label which legitimized interest-group claims to fragments of governmental power” (1977, 7). With so few inducements, the MNR could not sustain a national party, Mitchell has further argued. The party lacked ideology or military force to induce compliance. Instead, the MNR relied on patronage and rewards, but in an underdeveloped and poor country, there are insufficient rewards for everyone. In the end, carving up its power meant fragmenting the party.

If the MNR had established a cohesive party out of its tenuous coali-tion of factions, perhaps the revolution might have developed differ-ently. But severely divided both personally and structurally, the party’s leaders were unable to contain their own opportunism and the growing chaos. In important respects, Bolivia proved to be unlike Mexico and the MNR unlike the PRI.

Fragmentation of the MNRIn the months before and after the revolution, the MNR had been infil-trated with thousands of defectors from both the right and the left of


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the political spectrum as the traditional party system disintegrated. The party received a particularly large infusion of leftist adherents who had defected from the PIR or been brought in through the MNR’s aggressive mobilization of labor. As a result, the MNR’s major tendencies reflected three competing ideological visions and policy agendas: those of the conservative right, the pragmatic center, and the radical left.

The party also mirrored the contrasting personalities of four key leaders. The conservative right identified with Hernán Siles Zuazo and Walter Guevara Arze. The pragmatic but activist reformers of the center admired Víctor Paz Estenssoro. And the labor-left idolized the charis-matic Juan Lechín. In an attempt to create party solidarity, a governing pact promised each leader the opportunity to run as the MNR’s candi-date for president. Paz Estenssoro and Siles Zuazo headed the first two MNR administrations from 1952 to 1960, after which the gentleman’s agreement broke down.

It was understood originally that Guevara Arze would be nominated as the MNR candidate in 1960 and Juan Lechín in 1964. The increasing fragmentation of the party, ideologies, and strong personal egos inter-vened, however. Instead, Paz agreed to serve and was elected as president both in 1960 and 1964. To curtail the intraparty feuding and resolve the stalemate between the far right and far left of the party, a majority of the party temporized with Paz’s continuation in office. This decision, which required a constitutional amendment, eventually led to an irrevocable split in the party.

Perhaps the biggest problem for the MNR and the revolution was the economy. By 1956, inflation held the MNR hostage. In four years, the cost of living had increased more than 20 times. The party’s mid-dle-class supporters, as well as labor, suffered. Internal domestic and party pressures and external pressure by the IMF and the Eisenhower administration convinced the MNR’s more conservative and pragmatic sectors that without economic and political stabilization the revolution would fail.

Before President Paz left office in August 1956, he established a Monetary Stabilization Commission. The U.S. government sent the U.S. banker George Jackson Eder to advise the commission. The Eder mis-sion and the IMF designed an austerity program that drastically reduced government spending and stabilized the currency. Within two years these measures had significantly reduced Bolivia’s inflation.

The economic stabilization, however, was a bitter pill for the MNR’s labor constituency to swallow. Reductions in government spending ended social welfare benefits and food subsidies. The free-market economic

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plan also froze wages and trimmed bureaucracy by firing thousands of workers in the public sector, including the mines. All state controls on pricing and monetary policy were removed and the market was allowed to dictate the value of goods, services, and foreign currency.

Although an economic success in large terms, the stabilization plan cost the party heavily. Critics of the austerity argued that instead of saving the revolution and the party, the stabilization destroyed both. Its supporters countered that without the stabilization plan and the $25 million provided by the United States to help ease the pain, a rightist coup by the Bolivian Socialist Falange (FSB) in 1956 might have over-thrown the MNR and ended the revolution. At the same time, an addi-tional cost of the survival of the MNR and the revolution was greater U.S. involvement in Bolivian affairs.

The MNR’s presidential candidate in the elections of June 1956 was Hernán Siles Zuazo. The sober Siles agreed to implement the unpopular economic plan, although voters did not know this at the time. Three other parties that fielded candidates included the FSB, the Bolivian Communist Party (PCB), and the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (POR). Although the MNR won easily, the party’s victory was less than expected. With 17 percent of the vote, the FSB emerged as Bolivia’s second-largest political party.

The MNR swept the elections with 83 percent of the total, or 790,000 votes. The party had been especially strong among urban and middle-class whites, and this support increased over the next four years because of Siles’s efforts. The economic stabilization primarily benefited the middle class, and they proved grateful. The MNR competed fiercely for the middle-class vote, and in the process, the MNR consciously distanced itself from its labor allies. Siles ended the cogovernment agreement with labor and turned the party’s administration over to his middle-class loyalists. His government, moreover, directly attacked labor.

In July 1957, Lechín and the COB attempted a general strike to protest the stabilization plan that had been implemented in January. President Siles, however, succeeded in splitting the labor movement and aborting the strike. Progovernment unions were induced to vio-late Lechín’s strike order. The strategy briefly helped the government and weakened Lechín’s influence within the COB. The workers’ union, which became polarized into radical and conservative unions, was also weakened. Lechín’s ineffectiveness angered the factions within the COB, and they tried to unseat him.


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The MNR government’s tactics were not always noncoercive. At first, Siles tried to defuse the miners’ strikes with his own hunger strikes or threats of resignation. Ultimately, he called in the army against both the miners and the peasants in 1959 and 1960. The economic crisis and the more conservative administration of Siles had encouraged the worst in the MNR’s divisive policies. The party began to disintegrate.

Two new MNR factions were formed in 1957. One was the conser-vative Action in Defense of the MNR (Acción de Defensa del MNR). The second was the National Left of the MNR (Izquierda Nacional del MNR), a radical group that opposed Lechín. Then, in 1958, Lechín organized the Leftist Sector of the MNR (Sector Izquierda del MNR) to serve as militant labor’s opposition voice in the Bolivian Congress.

As the 1960 elections approached, the MNR fragmented further. The party leadership violated its own agreed-on line of presidential succes-sion. Guevara Arze was denied the party’s presidential nomination, so he split with the MNR, forming his own MNR faction, the MNR Auténtico (MNRA), and running as a candidate in the election. (After ward he split with the MNR completely and formed the Authentic Revolutionary Party [Partido Revolucionario Auténtico, or PRA].) The MNR majority, however, compromised on a Paz-Lechín ticket in 1960. The bulk of the party believed that only Paz could reunify the party and maintain U.S. support. Lechín was appointed his running mate in order to guarantee labor peace or at least some leverage with the workers.

During Paz’s second term, the MNR’s disintegration continued. Despite the fact that Lechín was vice president and a prominent labor leader, the new government imposed further economic austerity mea-sures. Among these was a multinational plan for the fiscal reform of the mines, known as the Triangular Plan. The ultimate showdown between Paz and Lechín over the plan mirrored the MNR’s confrontation with labor. The crisis, according to James M. Malloy, also proved to be “the swan song of the labor left” (1970, 301).

The Triangular Plan’s fiscal rationalization and restructuring of the state mining corporation, COMIBOL, provoked terrible conflict in the mines and forced Lechín to break with the government. The Bolivian mines had been losing money and according to foreign experts were mismanaged and draining the treasury. As the Triangular Plan unleashed market forces on the mining sector, wages were cut and jobs were lost. Labor was harshly “disciplined” while Paz was promised $30 million in aid from the United States, Germany, and the Inter-American Development Bank once his government implemented the plan.

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It is easy to imagine that the financial incentives appealed to the econo-mist in Paz. He had planned to refinance the revolution and stimulate economic development with $205 million in U.S. economic assistance promised over the next three years. He had also hoped that a bigger economic pie and a new breed of MNR technocrats would rescue the MNR and the revolution. Instead, the mines erupted in violence, and the MNR’s political opposition hit the streets in protest. The Paz government imposed a state of martial law and cracked down on the dissent.

Factionalism increased before and after the 1964 elections, and Paz Estenssoro organized his personal lobby to promote his reelection. In 1961, a constitutional amendment permitting two consecutive presi-dential terms had been passed. Paz’s reelection, however, violated the MNR’s electoral pact for a second time. Lechín was next in line to run for president, but the United States and the conservative wing of the MNR opposed him. In addition, the MNR feared another coup attempt by the rightist FSB if Lechín were elected.

In the final showdown, the political ambition of Paz won out. Having been passed over, Lechín founded the Revolutionary Party of the Nationalist Left (Partido Revolucionario de la Izquierda Nacionalista,

The Hostage Crisis

In fall 1963, the government of Víctor Paz Estenssoro fired more than 1,000 miners in the Catavi–Siglo XX mining complex. In

December, before the miners could launch a violent protest, the govern-ment arrested two leaders. In retaliation, the miners seized 17 hostages, three of them citizens of the United States.

James M. Malloy recounts that the miners threatened to execute the hostages and march on La Paz if the government did not improve conditions in the mines. Juan Lechín, “once the second most powerful man of the revolution and at that time vice president of the nation, was powerless to avert the crisis or to negotiate a settlement favorable to the embattled miners” (301).

President Paz ordered in the military and peasant unions from Cochabamba. On December 15, Lechín and the miners were forced to surrender unconditionally. The power of labor had been definitively broken.

Source: Malloy, James M. Bolivia: The Uncompleted Revolution. (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970).


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PRIN). Siles was not pleased by the turn of events either and also deserted the MNR’s fold. He organized his own anti-Paz faction, the Bloc for the Defense of the Revolution. Both Siles and Lechín—representing the party’s right and left—boycotted the 1964 elections.

By 1964, the MNR had facilitated the military’s reentry into politics. The party had destroyed its mass base among the workers, alienated its conservative and middle-class supporters by its divisiveness, and reha-bilitated and elevated the military to a new position of legitimacy and prominence. Therefore, when Paz found himself rejected by two-thirds of the party, he agreed to a military man as his running mate, the leader of the MNR’s military cell, air force general René Barrientos Ortuño.

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8The Military and

Counterrevolution (1964–1982)

We do not vacillate in pointing out that weapons in the fists of proletarians constitute the greatest guarantee of democracy.

Bolivian Workers’ Central (Mitchell 1977, 111)

By 1964, the National Revolution and the MNR were in an advanced stage of disintegration. The forces of counterrevolution took over,

and militarism ravaged the country during most of the next 18 years. Although this brutal period of military rule appeared to descend pre-cipitously and inadvertently, appearances were deceptive. The MNR’s shifting relationships with the labor-left, the United States, and the Bolivian armed forces greatly influenced this unfortunate turning point in the revolution.

The challenge of consolidating the revolution had proven to be a huge task—certainly more complex than the destruction of the old regime and social order had been. Indeed, this was the ultimate test for the staying power of the MNR. Although great reforms had been realized, much remained undone when the return of military rule stalled and reversed the course of the revolution politically, socially, and economically.

Perhaps, as experts observed, the MNR’s modernizing revolution never had more than a slight chance. James M. Malloy concluded more than three decades ago that the Bolivian case demonstrates the overwhelming difficulties that poor and underdeveloped countries confront in “completing a development-oriented revolution” (1970, 341). Malloy held that the MNR’s efforts had fallen short and that the

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National Revolution of 1952 remained an “uncompleted revolution.” In great part, the rise of militarism not only interrupted the process but also ensured the revolution’s failure.

The “New” MilitaryFrom the outset, the victorious MNR leaders had remained suspicious of the old military, and there was heated debate and intraparty dissen-sion concerning the future role of the armed forces in postrevolution-ary society. The radical left believed that the armed forces should be dismantled permanently and replaced by revolutionary worker and peasant militias. During the long revolutionary struggle, these popular militias had arisen almost spontaneously, been placed under nominal MNR control, and been loyal to the MNR revolution. Moreover, only a truly people’s army, the left argued, would reflect the will of the people and protect the revolution in difficult times.

The conservative and pragmatic sectors of the MNR, however, believed that the military establishment was necessary to national development and defense and could and should be rehabilitated. A “new” military, pruned of its reactionary officers and integrated into the party’s structure and patronage system, they insisted, could protect both the country and the revolution. Although the solution to the problem was basically a compromise, the conservatives and moderates won: The traditional military was reformed.

At the same time that President Paz Estenssoro reorganized the old army, he set about to weaken the military’s autonomous power and subordinate the institution to the MNR and civilian authority. To this end, Paz maintained and strengthened the coercive resources that peas-ant and worker militias held. He intended to hold these revolutionary militias in reserve as the MNR’s shock troops should the party need to offset the military.

The army’s size was greatly diminished, and the ranks of existing officers were trimmed by 20 percent. The rank and file was cut by 75 percent, falling from the high of 20,000 men in uniform to 5,000. The oligarchy had forced the pro-MNR officers who had supported Villarroel and RADEPA into early retirement in 1947, but Paz reinstated these sympathetic officers to active duty.

The military’s institutional mission was reassessed, as well. For the first time Bolivia’s armed forces were expected to actively assist in national development. Indeed, modernization and development were to become the military’s primary function. In June 1952, when the


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military’s new role was elaborated publicly, the stated goal was to cre-ate a “productive army” that contributed to the country’s progress and welfare. The military was given the tasks of constructing new roads and exploring and colonizing remote territories. The military cleared land, built schools, and distributed food around the country. Troops served as roving labor brigades to boost agricultural production. As James M. Malloy noted, the new Bolivian army became one of the first “civic action” and “modernizing” militaries in Latin America.

The revamped military also contributed to civic education in the countryside. An important part of the military’s new role was to help incorporate the mass of indigenous people into citizenship and national life. This civic and educational outreach became a more natural task as the social composition of the armed forces became more diversi-fied. After the old military academy was shut down in the wake of the revolution, the Instituto Coronel Villarroel opened. “As part of the new approach,” James M. Malloy explains, the new academy welcomed “lower-class mestizos and educated Indians” (1970, 181).

The MNR, well aware that a hostile army had kept them from power between 1947 and 1952, recruited heavily within the new army. The MNR organized party cells and openly promoted officers sympathetic to the MNR. Such was the party’s confidence that Paz and Siles also permitted the size of the army to steadily increase after 1956. The MNR still had ties to the native and civilian militias; however, after 1964, these militias often were not under the control of the party. Many militias, especially in the peasant sector, became linked directly to the military and repressive military governments. As a result, popular mili-tias became highly politicized and manipulated. They fought against popular causes and, ultimately, their own best interests. Feuds and con-frontations among the militias allied with the government and those in opposition were prevalent and destabilizing.

After 1956, the Bolivian military’s civic action functions were sup-ported with extensive U.S. military training and foreign assistance. The new U.S. administrations, especially that of John F. Kennedy, favored the civic action model of civilian-military relations in Latin America. The United States viewed the rehabilitated military as an unassailable nationalistic bulwark against communist subversion in the hemisphere. As the careful research of Christopher Mitchell has discovered, the Kennedy/Johnson administrations assisted in the reorganization and training of the new Bolivian armed forces to the tune of $12.4 million in military assistance from 1960 to 1965 (1977, 91).

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THE MILITARY AND COUNTERREVOLUTION

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All U.S. military funding was in the form of grants or gifts to the Bolivian government. Beginning with small grants in 1958, U.S. military aid jumped to more than $3 million in 1967. Overall assistance approxi-mated $19 million over this period (Mitchell 1977, 91). Critics suggest that beefing up the Bolivian armed forces, albeit as peacekeepers and road builders, was a mistake. The training and assistance restored the military’s confidence and transformed the recently humbled institution into a powerful adversary of civilian governments. Moreover, despite the unconditional support that the U.S. ambassador Douglas Henderson accorded President Paz, some analysts suggest that the U.S. military mission in Bolivia might have given a military coup the green light. In any case, historical events proved that the military was discontented with its new role as peacekeeper and civic do-gooder. Some senior offi-cers clearly had the presidency in their sights.

The Restorative RevolutionAlthough social and political chaos ostensibly provoked the coup against President Paz, he had unwittingly facilitated his own downfall. Paz’s reelection to a third term had been widely unpopular in the coun-try and had fragmented his party. With the MNR and civilian parties weakened, the military had pressured Paz to appoint a military man as his vice president. After the elections, the diffuse but extensive opposi-tion to the MNR focused on Paz himself. Many viewed the rump MNR as corrupt and Paz as a dictator. General René Barrientos Ortuño, chief of the air force and now vice president, was a Trojan horse within the government.

Strikes and demonstrations in late October 1964 brought the popular discontent to a head. On October 29, President Paz ordered the army to crush a strike by the miners of the large Huanuni-Catavi mining com-plex. The government also forcefully repressed the striking teachers and the students of San Andrés University, in La Paz, who marched in soli-darity with the teachers. With the opposition political parties stirring up social discontent, the political atmosphere, according to Mitchell, was one of “national crisis” (1977, 95).

The moment was opportune for General Alfredo Ovando Candía, commander in chief of the army, and Vice President Barrientos to act. The Cochabamba army garrison rebelled, and in rapid succession, major army units around the country joined the rebellion. President Paz quickly realized that unless he called out the MNR’s popular mili-tias, he would not survive in office. But rather than risk the certain


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bloodbath, Paz resigned on November 4. He flew into exile, first to Lima, Peru, and later to the United States.

The political parties had been cleverly courted by the coup plotters and expected the military to establish a transitional government and quickly return the country to civilian rule. In particular, the disaffected MNR faction leaders Siles Zuazo and Guevara Arze on the right and Lechín on the left had supported the military takeover as an expedient way to rid the party of Paz. The majority of the MNR leadership was thus terribly disillusioned. Only one MNR faction survived the coup: the MNRA of Walter Guevara Arze, transformed almost immediately into the PRA, became the official representative of the MNR party under the new military government. With this PRA/MNRA alliance, Barrientos was able to drape the mantle of revolutionary legitimacy around his shoulders and at the same time exile the three top MNR leaders, Lechín, Siles, and Paz, who might threaten his regime.

Generals Barrientos and Ovando announced that the new government constituted a “restorative revolution.” The coup leaders characterized the military’s action as a necessary and valiant rescue mission that had saved the revolution from the MNR’s feuding and corruption. The military lead-ers also justified the coup in the face of increasing danger of a communist takeover by the striking workers and Marxist left. Barrientos portrayed himself and the military as the authentic guardians of the revolution.

The new government became known as the Second Republic. Barrientos and Ovando formed an all-military cabinet on November 5, 1964. Two junior members of the cabinet were Colonel Juan José Torres and Colonel Hugo Banzer Suárez. Both men became prominent leaders of disaffected military factions in the decades ahead. The military junta, headed by Barrientos and Ovando, ruled de facto until the presidential elections of July 1966. In these controlled elections, Barrientos emerged as Bolivia’s constitutionally elected president.

The Barrientos government was both loved and hated. While his harsh repression of the miners and political left generated a much-de-served opprobrium, the president’s charismatic and populist leadership style endeared him to the peasant masses. A native of Cochabamba and fluent in Quechua, Barrientos spoke to the peasants in their language literally and politically. He seemed to understand their concerns and promised them governmental support. Barrientos assiduously culti-vated the large peasant political bloc. He flew around the country in his helicopter from one remote village to the other wooing powerful Indian caciques and their followers. Not surprisingly, Barrientos became known as the “peasant president.”

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The personal alliances that Barrientos formed with the indigenous bloc paid off handsomely for his government and ultimately severed many of the MNR’s organizational links with Indian communities. The president substituted his charisma and military populism for the party’s weak populist rhetoric. The peasants’ personal loyalties to Barrientos formed the basis of a long-term military-peasant cooperation. In 1966, Barrientos institutionalized these new political ties in the Military-


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The General of the People

The flamboyant president René Barrientos Ortuño earned the glow-ing epithet “General of the People” from his many supporters, espe-

cially among the Bolivian peasantry. He was born in Tarata near the city of Cochabamba on May 30, 1919. Barrientos entered the military acad-emy but was expelled as a supporter of Colonel Germán Busch. Later readmitted, he graduated as a second lieutenant in 1943 and was among the younger officers who backed the reformist military coup of Major Gualberto Villarroel that year. He trained in Bolivia’s Military College of Aviation and in the United States, earning his wings in 1945. He also par-ticipated in the first National Indigenous Congress that year.

An MNR loyalist, Barrientos was cashiered from the military in 1949 but was reassigned as a captain after the National Revolution of 1952. A daring pilot, he flew critical missions for the revolutionary cause, surviv-ing one nearly fatal crash. He was considered a true MNRista and rapidly rose in the esteem of the party and military to become a general of the air force. Although he headed the MNR’s military cell and was elected vice president in 1964, Barrientos turned against Juan Lechín and Víctor Paz Estenssoro and the radical sectors of the party.

Barrientos believed that his mission was to continue the military reforms of Busch and Villarroel and to effect a responsible revolution “equidistant from the oligarchy and demagoguery” of the left (40–41). Whatever his intentions, Barrientos presided over a counterrevolu-tion that entrenched a new oligarchy of mining industrialists, urban merchants, and agribusiness interests. Through systematic military repression, he temporarily controlled labor activism; nevertheless, his hold on power became shaky by 1968. Historians speculate that had he not died in a helicopter crash on April 27, 1969, Barrientos would have been overthrown.

Source: “Barrientos Ortuño, René.” In Biographical Dictionary of Latin American and Caribbean Political Leaders (Greenwood Press, 1988).

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Campesino Pact. This formal agreement allied the country’s two power-ful and basically conservative political forces.

The military-peasant alliance served not only as the populist founda-tion for the Barrientos government but for future military rulers. It was necessary for Barrientos and subsequent military presidents to carefully nourish and manage this conservative coalition. The peasantry was the only social force in the country large enough and potentially powerful enough to challenge the army itself. The loyalty of both interest groups had to be bought with special privileges and promises. Barrientos assured the loyalty of the military’s officers with generous defense spending, showering them with new weapons, training, and advance-ment opportunities. He won over the campesinos with lavish local cel-ebrations and well-orchestrated land distribution ceremonies in dozens of rural communities across the country.

In addition to the government’s political interests, the Military-Peasant Pact furthered the military’s aggressive national security policy. Through the pact, the peasantry pledged to loyally support and defend the military against leftist subversion. The campesinos were naturals for this countersubversive role. From the outset, the primary con-cern of the indigenous peasantry had been agrarian reform and land titles. Once these central goals had been achieved, the peasant bloc

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A family of street vendors, selling their homemade pottery (Kathy S. Leonard photo)

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became politically conservative and malleable. As long as Barrientos and the military protected, or professed to protect, the agrarian reform, the indigenous leaders and communities remained loyal to the government.

The National Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia (Confe-deración Nacional de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia, or CNTCB), founded in 1953, had aggregated the interests of numerous autono-mous and competitive indigenous organizations. The MNR had crassly manipulated this force and turned peasant militias against angry miners. In March 1959, for example, the MNR government employed 800 armed peasants to beat down the miners’ strike near Oruro. Indeed, the MNR’s urban politicians were the first to break up the potent miner-peasant-student coalition, which had contributed to the success of the party and the revolution.

Barrientos continued this pattern of peasant co-optation, control, and mobilization, but with a new twist. As with the MNR, the pact permitted the Barrientos government to launch the organized peasantry against the regime’s political opponents. The critical difference was that the local indigenous caciques pledged personal loyalty directly to Barrientos and to the military. The Indian leaders formally recognized Barrientos as the sole “maximum leader” of the country’s peasantry. Moreover, Barrientos pitted the countryside, from where his power emanated, against the cities, the stronghold of the MNR’s middle-class base. In this manner, the peasantry served as a populist, militant force that backed Barrientos and the military against the miners, leftist par-ties, and urban social and labor activists.

Despite his conservative tendencies, Barrientos refused to ally with like-minded political parties, especially the ultraconservative FSB. His political coalition, moreover, excluded labor and the bulk of the MNR. As a result, his rule suffered from a major institutional weak-ness. He attempted to remedy the organizational vacuum by founding his own political party; however, his Popular Christian Movement (Movimiento Popular Cristiano, or MPC) was mainly a personal electoral vehicle. As a party, it lacked a clear ideology, program, or organizational structure.

In the run-up to the 1966 elections, the MPC expanded into the Bolivian Revolutionary Front (Frente de la Revolución Boliviana, or FRB) and drew various political groups within its fold. The FRB’s elec-toral slate represented the peasant confederation and various political parties, including the PRA, the PIR, and the Social Democratic Party (Partido Social Demócrata, or PSD). The FRB candidate for the vice


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presidency was Luis Siles Salinas, half-brother of Hernán Siles Zuazo and leader of the PSD.

The FRB coalition swept the elections with 54 percent of the 1.2 million votes cast. The peasantry represented the largest voting bloc for Barrientos. His FRB drew only 16 percent of the urban vote. No other party or coalition drew a sizable slice of the electorate in opposition. The Falangist coalition polled only 11 percent of the vote, and two fac-tions of the MNR received 12 percent between them. In protest, the rest of the MNR abstained, and key parties of the left cast blank ballots. In even worse shape, the political remnants of the prerevolutionary par-ties of the oligarchy, represented by the PURS and the Liberals, failed to generate even token representation.

The electoral success of the FRB proved ephemeral, however. A con-trolling military man, Barrientos quickly became frustrated by the insta-bility of the multiparty system and the vagaries of civilian politics. In 1968, a determined Barrientos followed the path of his military reformer predecessors Busch and Villarroel. He formed an official state party, the Partido Unico, but by the end of the year, as discontent continued to rise, Barrientos resorted to outright military rule.

Critics of his regime blamed Barrientos for the rise of a new Rosca, or oppressive oligarchy inti-mately associated with the United States. Barrientos had allied himself with an up-and-coming economic elite, which included urban indus-trialists and merchants and agribusi-ness promoters. This alliance had been conditioned on keeping labor in its place by whatever means. Also, the Barrientos government had passed the controversial 1964 investment code, which provided privileges and protections to for-eign investors such as Gulf Oil and United States Steel. In the eyes of the revolutionary nationalists and radical left, this act compromised the economic independence that had been the central aspiration of the revolution.

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César Lora was a leftist union leader and miner who was killed in a clash between miners and government military forces in May 1965. (Photo from Palabra Encendida, 1996, by Víctor Montoya)

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Barrientos was also criticized for his aggressive implementation of the later stages of the controversial Triangular Plan. The multinational plan for economic reorganization forced the mines to become profitable by severely trimming the bureaucracy, workers, and salaries and benefits. As unrest escalated in opposition to these draconian policies, the mili-tary took over direct man agement of the nationalized mining industry. In 1966, COMIBOL realized a profit for the first time since nationaliza-tion, but the social and political costs were extremely high.

This strict economic rationalization of the mines pitted the govern-ment’s military force against the organized opposition of the miners’ unions and armed militias. In March, May, June, and September of 1965 there were increasingly violent clashes, and the number of deaths mounted with each encounter. In May, after scores of miners had been fired by COMIBOL, at least 48 died and hundreds were wounded. Leftist union leaders, like Juan Lechín, were jailed or exiled, and at least one, César Lora, was killed. Sources vary on the true count, but the death toll in June ranged from 30 to 200.

Che Guevara and His Foco Strategy

Bolivia will sacrifice itself so that revolutionary conditions can be created in neighboring countries.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara (Anderson 1997, 703)

When the charismatic Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara targeted Bolivia in his continental guerrilla offensive, he believed Bolivia would become the strategic center, or foco, for anti-imperialist revolu-tions throughout Latin America. In his revolutionary writings, this hero of the Cuban Revolution declared that Latin America would become “another Vietnam” with its center in Bolivia. He expected the United States to overreact and respond to a guerrilla insurgency there with full military force. Furthermore, he believed that the United States, once engaged, would become mired in a protracted war of national liberation against a more determined indigenous foe. Just as he believed U.S. defeat in Vietnam was imminent, he predicted as much in Latin America too.

Che Guevara detailed his guerrilla strategy in his famous treatise Guerrilla Warfare, which he based on the successful revolutionary insur-gency of Fidel Castro in Cuba, where Guevara had cut his teeth in 1959. As Castro’s chief lieutenant, he had fought bravely with the Cuban guer-


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rilla army in the hills of the Sierra Maestra. In the early 1960s, Guevara distilled the lessons of the Cuban Revolution and applied them to all of Latin America. He believed that the lofty Andes would become the Sierra Maestra of South America and that revolution there would first come to Bolivia. From Bolivia’s location in the heart of the continent, Guevara believed that insurrection would spread like a raging contagion to every country in the hemisphere. Eventually, overwhelmed and overextended, the forces of U.S. imperialism would be decisively defeated.

In Bolivia, Guevara miscalculated terribly and paid with his life, becom-ing a martyr to radicals and revolutionaries the world over. What went wrong? A better question might be what had not gone wrong. Guevara selected Bolivia almost incidentally, because of geography, but ironically,

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The Revolutionary

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the legendary revolutionary, was born in Argentina on June 14, 1928. He studied to become a medical doc-

tor and after graduation, began his exploration of the Americas. He arrived in Bolivia shortly after the revolution in 1953 and was impressed by the popular fervor. In 1954, he witnessed the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán and Guatemala’s revolutionary government in a coup orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In Mexico City in 1955, he met Fidel Castro, and in December 1956, Guevara returned with the exiled lawyer and leader to Cuba to become one of the origi-nal guerrillas who overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and brought Castro to power in 1959.

After victory, Guevara remained Castro’s right-hand man. Castro appointed him to important economic posts and diplomatic missions for the revolutionary government. As the minister of industry, Guevara shaped Cuba’s socialist economic policy. Above all, Guevara attempted to create a “new socialist man” dedicated to the ideals of the revolution, but when the Cuban economy faltered, a restive Guevara resigned from the government.

In early 1965, Guevara set out on a personal mission to bring revo-lution to underdeveloped countries. A roving revolutionary, he partici-pated in national liberation movements across Africa. He returned to South America and Bolivia in 1966 to lead the guerrilla movement that he hoped would spark a continental revolution against imperialism. His life was dedicated to one central purpose: the defeat of colonial and imperialist oppression and the victory of socialism.

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the geographical location and topography of the guerrillas’ zone of opera-tions facilitated their defeat. The guerrillas first established their main base in the isolated and wild southeastern region near the Ñancahuazú River and later moved north into the barren and rugged Vallegrande region near the Río Grande basin. The terrain was so hostile that maintaining the con-stant mobility demanded of rural guerrilla warfare was near impossible. To a great extent, this harsh environment of raging rivers and steep and dense jungle canyons defeated Guevara’s hapless band.

The political and social conditions were also inhospitable. The indig-enous people of this region spoke Guaraní, and the guerrillas—even the Bolivian recruits—had difficulty in communicating with some of them. The local people were very suspicious of the guerrillas, many of whom spoke a foreign-accented Spanish, and alerted the authorities immediately of their presence. None of the local peasantry joined the insurgency. The peasants of the region supported the Barrientos regime, and most had had their land aspirations fulfilled by the 1952 revolution. Guevara and his men might as well have been appealing to the deaf for all the resonance that their revolutionary message had with the local people; indeed, Guevara wrote in his diary that the region’s inhabitants were “as impenetrable as rocks.”

The attitudes of the general Bolivian population toward the guerril-las ranged from cautious and critical to fearful and antagonistic. The guerrilla force numbered only around 40 to 50 combatants, and the fact that nearly half were Cuban or non-Bolivian worked against them. The Barrientos government effectively appealed to Bolivian national-ism, further isolating the guerrillas from the people. In his writings, Guevara had repeatedly cautioned that the support of the people is “an indispensable condition” for success. Nevertheless, not only did the guerrillas lack the assistance of the rural people of the region, but also they were denied any popular support from the cities.

Guevara and the foco strategy were abandoned and betrayed by the pro-Soviet faction of the Bolivian Communist Party, and the revolution-aries mistakenly never established reliable links with other potentially sympathetic political groups. For example, there was strong urban opposition to Barrientos among the labor-left, and the miners were in open rebellion. The military government, in fact, claimed that the miners were coordinating with the guerrillas and publicized these false claims to justify the terrible repression in the mines. Except for a hand-ful of mine workers, Communist Party members, and students who had joined the guerrilla band initially, however, Guevara had never con-nected with the authentic sources of discontent in the country.


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In the midst of the guerrilla threat from Guevara in the southeast of the country, a major strike erupted at the Catavi–Siglo XX mining com-plex in June 1967. A panicked Barrientos ordered the army to repress the protesters with brute military force. This deadly reprisal in which nearly 90 people died, including women and children, became known as the San Juan Massacre. Barrientos may have been unduly alarmed and overreacted because of the revolutionary insurgency. Guevara, for his part, when he heard of the massacre, issued a communiqué that was never received expressing solidarity with the miners.

Barrientos aggressively targeted the miners and the labor-left as communist agitators and enemies of Bolivia. Imbued with U.S. anticommunist doctrine and counterinsurgency training, the armed forces interpreted political opposition of any kind as outright com-munist subversion. To stem the potential Marxist threat, Barrientos instituted an offensive policy of military intervention into the labor movement after 1965. The goal was to subordinate labor by destroy-ing its leadership and autonomy. The two major unions, the FSTMB and the COB, were placed under the military’s administrative control. By 1967, the real fear was that unrest in the mines could spark gen-eral opposition to the government; however, as Guevara discovered, “the elements in Bolivia that could threaten public order—guerrillas, miners, students and leftist political groups—had failed to coalesce” (Ryan 1998, 98).

The Bolivian army’s counterinsurgency campaign might not have been successful without extensive U.S. economic and military assis-tance. Guevara had selected Bolivia for his first guerrilla foco in part because Bolivia’s military was considered one of the weakest in the region. Although the army had been rebuilt and strengthened after the revolution and the defense budget doubled by Barrientos, it was not prepared to handle a guerrilla threat. As soon as news of Guevara’s and his guerrillas’ presence reached him, Barrientos lobbied hard for high-tech U.S. military training and aid. The U.S. government and U.S. ambassador Douglas Henderson feared that Barrientos would overre-act and play into the guerrillas’ hands. The United States consciously sought to avoid the mistakes of Vietnam.

Instead of pushing the panic button when the guerrilla operation was first confirmed, Richard L. Harris explains, “[T]he Washington policy makers responded to the situation in a very uncharacteristic manner for the times—they played it cool” (2000, 214). Although various Bolivian sources and journalistic accounts have portrayed the U.S. role in the campaign against Guevara in Bolivia as primary and

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decisive, Harris concludes “that direct American involvement in the entire episode was minimal” (2000, 214). He dismisses all claims of how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) captured Guevara as with-out factual foundation.

The counterinsurgency campaign against the guerrilla foco, however, indisputably necessitated intimate cooperation among the Bolivian mil-itary, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the CIA. U.S. military assis-tance and training, already extensive after 1962, increased significantly with the guerrilla threat. Early in April 1967, according to Harris, the first installment of U.S. military equipment of light arms, ammunition,


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The Bolivian Diary

A fter Che Guevara was captured, his intimate diary fell into the hands of the Bolivian military and the CIA. When the existence

of the diary was announced on October 10, 1967, publishers, anxious to make a deal for exclusive rights to its publication, descended on Bolivia. Reportedly, General Alfredo Ovando wanted to sell it to the highest bidder, and at first, some offers approached $500,000; however, as excerpts became public and copyright protection became suspect, the big bidders dropped out.

In Cuba, Fidel Castro claimed to have a copy, which Bolivian presi-dent Barrientos irately disputed. But it was revealed a year later that Antonio Arguedas, the Bolivian minister of government and both a CIA agent in the Barrientos government and a Castro sympathizer, had sent a clandestine copy to Fidel Castro after Guevara’s capture. The Cubans published and released the diary to the world in July 1968, distributing hundreds of thousands of free copies.

The diary became an international sensation. Chronicling the gruel-ing 11-month guerrilla struggle, its pages revealed Che the revolution-ary and Che the man. The guerrillas endured incredible deprivations, especially near the end. Finding food and water became an interminable struggle. On one occasion, desperately thirsty and already fainting from dehydration, men drank their own urine. Severe diarrhea and cramps afflicted them afterward. Unkempt and malnourished, they suffered from scurvy, parasites, and malaria. During the last months, Guevara was nearly incapacitated by severe asthma. In early August he had exhausted his supply of antiasthma injections and resorted to an intravenous novocaine injection to get through an attack.

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sophisticated communications equipment, and helicopters arrived in Santa Cruz. More important, the United States set up a special camp, La-Esperanza, in the area to train a crack regiment of 640 Bolivian Rangers in counterinsurgency warfare.

Wearing green berets and smart uniforms, the well-equipped and trained Bolivian Rangers, known as the Second Manchego Ranger Battalion, were ready to engage the guerrillas by mid-September; how-ever, the regular Bolivian army had already handed Guevara one of his worst defeats on August 31. Ten guerrillas under the leadership of the Cuban recruit Joaquín had been ambushed and killed in an attempt

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Confessing that physically he was “a real mess” and had “lost con-trol,” Guevara, nevertheless, rallied his men on August 8, with prophetic words: “Whoever feels unable to withstand it should say so. We have reached a moment when great decisions are called for. This type of struggle provides us the opportunity to become revolutionaries, the highest level of the human species” (250). Conditions and Guevara’s health continued to deteriorate.

On August 13, Guevara wrote, “Since yesterday my asthma has been getting worse; I now take three tablets a day. My foot [which had devel-oped an oozing abscess on the heel] is almost all better.” The entry the next day reveals Guevara’s extreme physical and mental anguish after the army discovered his cache of medicines and supplies. “A black day. . . . Now I am doomed to suffer asthma for an indefinite time” (252–253).

On August 28, there was another despondent entry: “A dreary and somewhat troubled day. … We finally slaughtered the little mare, after she had accompanied us for two difficult months. I did all I could to save her, but our hunger was getting worse. Now, at least, the only thing we suffer from is thirst. It appears we will not reach water tomorrow either” (260).

The last entry held little indication that the end was near. “Today marks eleven months since our guerrilla inauguration. The day went by without complications, bucolically, until 12:30 p.m., when an old woman, tending her goats, entered the canyon where we were camped and had to be taken prisoner” (295). All that the guerrillas learned from the old woman was that they were not far from La Higuera. The next day, October 8, 1967, they were ambushed.

Source: Guevara, Ernesto “Che.” The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara (New York: Pathfinder, 1994).

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to cross the rain-swollen Masicurí River and rejoin the main guerrilla force. The victims included the celebrated East German agent Haydée Tamara Bunke, known as “Tania,” who had helped establish the foco and had briefly visited the guerrilla camp.

In early October, with expert intelligence provided by Hispanic CIA advisers (primarily Cuban exiles) and the aid of the local people, the Rangers cornered and captured Guevara and his comrades in a steep canyon near the tiny adobe settlement of La Higuera. A wounded Guevara was interrogated by the CIA operative Félix Rodríguez (an


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Who Killed Che Guevara?

Popular opinion in Latin America and among international left-ists held that the CIA had ordered the death of Ernesto “Che”

Guevara. The excellent study by Henry Butterfield Ryan concludes oth-erwise: “Contrary to widespread opinion, the CIA did not kill Guevara, but neither did it nor any other branch of the U.S. government try to save him, despite subsequent claims by some officials that Washington wanted him alive” (10).

Although eyewitness accounts conflict to this day, unclassified docu-ments have resolved some mysteries surrounding Guevara’s death and exposed the fabrications that President Barrientos and the Bolivian mili-tary concocted to hide his execution. Intervention by the U.S. ambas-sador in La Paz might have saved the revolutionary’s life, but Ambassador Douglas Henderson claimed that he only learned of Guevara’s capture after the guerrilla fighter had been killed. Ryan insists that U.S. officials knew of Guevara’s capture by evening of the day before his execution. American officials could have intervened and saved Guevara had they acted expeditiously and decisively.

Félix Rodríguez, the CIA agent at La Higuera, argued that his instruc-tions had been to keep Guevara alive, but that the Bolivian commander had received an order from army chief General Ovando to execute Guevara immediately. The Bolivian military feared that Guevara would become another international cause célèbre like Régis Debray. A French Marxist and theoretician of guerrilla warfare, Debray had been caught leaving the guerrilla foco in April and was being prosecuted as an insurgent in a Bolivian court.

Ryan speculates that the United States played the role of Pontius Pilate and left Guevara’s fate to the Bolivians. He reports that accord-

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anti-Castro Bay of Pigs survivor) and then executed by the Bolivians. Guevara’s body was wrapped in tarp and strapped to the landing skid of a helicopter, then flown to the Eighth Army Division’s forward com-mand post in the town of Vallegrande. There his death was officially revealed to the world.

Over the next months, the Bolivian Rangers continued to hunt down the handful of remaining guerrillas. Five of the 17 ambushed had escaped immediate capture. Three Cubans made it back to the Caribbean island in March 1968, and two Bolivians were killed in 1969. The Bolivian army,

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ing to the CIA station chief in La Paz, the United States feared that an imprisoned Guevara would become a potent rallying cry for revolu-tionaries everywhere. Consequently, upon orders delivered at 1:10 p.m. on October 9, 1967, a Bolivian sergeant (accounts vary as to whether reluctantly or willingly) entered the one-room schoolhouse where the army had been holding Guevara and shot and killed him. Reportedly, Guevara’s last words were “Know this now, you are killing a man” (Ryan, 154).

Barrientos and the Bolivians put out several misleading and premature reports informing reporters that Guevara had been killed in battle before the execution order had actually been carried out. A declassified memo to U.S. president Lyndon Johnson on October 9, from Walt Rostow, the national security adviser, confirmed this and noted: “President Barrientos at 10:00 a.m., October 9, told a group of newsmen, but not for publica-tion until further notice, that Che Guevara is dead.” The Bolivians kept to this story publicly and insisted that the national army alone had caught Guevara. On October 13, Barrientos affirmed that the successful coun-terinsurgency operation had been an exclusively Bolivian victory, which had been achieved without special foreign assistance.

Back in Washington, D.C., Rostow wrapped up the affair in a memo to Johnson dated October 11, stating, “CIA tells us that the latest infor-mation is that Guevara was taken alive. After a short interrogation to establish his identity, General Ovando—Chief of the Bolivian Armed Forces—ordered him shot. I regard this as stupid, but it is understand-able from a Bolivian standpoint” (Kornbluh n.d.; Ryan, 139).

Sources: Ryan, Henry Butterfield. The Fall of Che Guevara: A Story of Soldiers, Spies, and Diplomats. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Kornbluh, Peter. “The Death of Che Guevara: Declassified.” National Security Archive, George Washington University. Available online. URL: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB5/.

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exuding its newfound pride and confidence, had defeated the legend-ary Che Guevara and discredited the Cuban model of revolution. In his eulogy for El Che on October 18, Castro instead insisted that “they who sing victory are mistaken.” This “lucky blow” that eliminated Guevara’s physical life, he proclaimed, did not represent “the defeat of his ideas, the defeat of his tactics, the defeat of his guerrilla concepts” (Kornbluh n.d.). Nevertheless, after Guevara’s untimely death at 39 years of age, Castro abandoned the strategy of exporting his revolution.

Also after Guevara’s death, Barrientos’s hold on the government and the military weakened. A scandal sparked by Guevara’s diary provoked violent demonstrations and a major political crisis in July and August 1968. By 1969, many found the social and political costs of Barrientos’s rule unacceptable. With U.S. diplomatic and military support, repres-sion had intensified. Furthermore, obsessed with anti-communism and internal security, the U.S. government had approved the deployment of U.S.-supported military units in the mines and had applauded Barrientos’s no-nonsense response to social unrest. Despite steady growth on the economic front, the increase in foreign debt and the unregulated foreign exploitation of the country’s natural resources had severely compromised economic nationalism.

Although Guevara’s defeat was a feather in the cap of Barrientos, the victory also strengthened the role of the armed forces. In an internal memo of October 1967, Thomas L. Hughes, the Cuban specialist in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, predicted the military’s political activism. He feared that “victory could also stir politi-cal ambitions among army officers who were directly involved in the anti-guerrilla campaign and who may now see themselves as the saviors of the republic” (Kornbluh n.d.). The reformist military and especially Barrientos’s original coconspirator in the 1964 coup, General Alfredo Ovando Candía, had become restless. And some of the younger officers were ambivalent and concerned about the increased U.S. influence in the country. Only the sudden death of Barrientos in a helicopter crash on April 27, 1969, delayed the military’s response.

Revolution from AboveAfter Barrientos’s demise, Vice President Siles Salinas briefly headed an interim civilian government; however, with street demonstrations and renewed partisan bickering between the MNR and the FSB, the political climate continued to deteriorate. Elections were planned and everyone hoped to win. The impatient General Alfredo Ovando Candía


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refused to tolerate civilian chaos, especially after it became clear that the odds of being elected president were against him. Claiming the need for “national pacification,” on September 26, 1969, he overthrew Siles. As commander of the Bolivian armed forces, General Ovando remained the undisputed power behind the presidents. If anyone had entertained doubts, the coup demonstrated that as long as the mili-tary and the government remained unified, the government in power would stay in power.

An enigmatic and nationalistic reformer, General Ovando proved to be the antithesis of Barrientos. He adopted the Peruvian military’s left-ist strategy of “revolution from above,” stating that, although countries and problems differed, “fundamentally our revolution is the same as Peru’s” (Mitchell 1977, 110). Ovando’s civilian-military government of the “national left” ended the repression and created a democratic open-ing. Once again labor unions could organize freely and exiled union leaders such as Juan Lechín could return home. Ovando terminated military occupation of the mines. COMIBOL rehired thousands of min-ers fired in 1965 and restored higher wages. Ovando’s most popular move, however, was the expropriation of the Bolivian subsidiary of Gulf Oil.

There had been continuous opposition to the generous foreign concessions since 1955, when the Paz government had passed a new petroleum code. The goal of the cash-strapped government had been to attract foreign investment into the department of Santa Cruz and to develop Bolivia’s oil resources there. Over the next 15 years, Bolivia received less than half of the profits from oil and subsequent natural gas exports, even after production increased significantly. Although gener-ally popular in Bolivia, the nationalization stirred up significant opposi-tion abroad and even in some sectors at home. According to James M. Malloy and Eduardo Gamarra, the Ovando government did not enhance its image by the maneuver, which “had been poorly thought out and in the short run was costly” (1988, 51).

Both the U.S. government and Gulf Oil retaliated. The United States cut aid to Bolivia by 75 percent, and the company imposed a boycott. The Bolivian treasury nearly drowned in its oil as the government lost close to $15 million in revenues. The nationalization also stirred up strong regional animosity in Santa Cruz. The department’s economy, which had received 11 percent of the oil royalties, was severely hurt and its long-term regional development was threatened. Special interests—the private sector, departmental authorities, and oil workers—opposed the nationalization. Even worse, the Ovando government caved in to the

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combined foreign and domestic pressure. In September 1970, Ovando promised Gulf Oil a generous $78 million compensation.

Ovando’s populist policies sparked serious internal tensions, which his fragile governing coalition could not handle. His government could rely on only tentative support from the labor-left, political parties, and the military. With its civilian and the military supporters split, Ovando’s government teetered on a very narrow political base. The young civil-ian reformers in his cabinet, among them the radical reformer Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, who served as the minister of mines, lacked politi-cal standing and were too leftist for the military.

The military remained highly suspicious of these civilians and forced many, such as Quiroga, out of the government. The root of the problem was that the military itself was split into opposing factions of conserva-tives and progressives. The latter favored national populism and backed Ovando and the up-and-coming general Juan José Torres. The conser-vative military sector was associated with General Rogelio Miranda. The rightist officers opposed the labor-left and believed that Ovando’s populism was irresponsible and dangerous.

Marxist union leaders also criticized the Ovando government as “bourgeois” and not radical enough. At best, they argued, Ovando’s pol-icies could achieve a form of state capitalism, but never state socialism; thus, labor’s plan was to agitate and push the government ever closer toward full socialism. Because of these opposing agendas, the civilian-military rift widened steadily. Ovando attempted to mediate between the labor-left and the conservative military faction. But without a reliable or independent political base, Ovando’s government depended more and more on the military, which forced him to tone down his populism and shift to the right.

The increasing opposition to Ovando climaxed in July 1970 with a series of crises and scandals. Rumors of corruption in high places had been circulating, which compromised Ovando’s reputation. One rumor even implicated Ovando in the death of Barrientos. A more credible one involved Gulf Oil. Reportedly, Gulf Oil had bribed the previous military government with extravagant kickbacks. Although the evidence was sketchy at the time, later a 1975 U.S. Senate investigation would confirm that in 1966 Barrientos had used some of this foreign money to acquire a new helicopter. Overall payoffs to top Bolivian officials in the Barrientos-Ovando government were later estimated to be around $1.8 million.

Yet another crisis and scandal developed over an insurgency in the Teoponte district. This guerrilla activity, so soon after the Guevara attempt, further destabilized Ovando’s government. A group of radical


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students of diverse ideological tendencies had formed a guerrilla foco at Teoponte, a region northeast of La Paz near the U.S.-owned gold min-ing company South American Placers. The members of this guerrilla band were largely leftist students from the University of San Andrés in La Paz. Because of extensive student unrest, the police had invaded the university in May and confiscated pamphlets on guerrilla insurgency. The students began agitating in defense of university autonomy, and some took more drastic action.

A small number, many of whom were members of the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN) that had been linked to Guevara’s guerrilla operation, staged an action at Teoponte. On July 20, 1970, the Teoponte guerrillas seized hostages working for the mining company. The precipitous action was doomed from the outset, and in late October, the incident came to a head. Exhausted rebels accepted the government’s offer of amnesty and surrendered, but the local military commanders ignored the stated policies of Ovando and his successor and ordered the guerrillas shot. According to Christopher Mitchell, nearly 70 of the 80 university students were killed (1977, 113).

The deaths of other political opponents, journalists, and politicians of varied political orientations indicated that Ovando was unable to con-trol the divided military and that his orders were flagrantly disobeyed. The events of early October 1970 confirmed the military’s disintegra-tion. On October 4, General Rogelio Miranda attempted but failed to overthrow Ovando. In the resulting confusion and threat of violence, however, Ovando resigned, and General Juan José Torres emerged as the new president on October 7.

Under the short 10-month rule of Torres, the tensions within the military-led revolution from above increased. General Torres advanced closer, either willingly or by default, toward a radical and socialist model of development. By this time, however, Bolivian society had become dangerously polarized over the future direction of the revolution. Should the revolution continue to be radicalized and the U.S. role drastically reduced? Or, should the revolution pursue the moderate path of state capitalist development and maintain intimate U.S.-Bolivian ties?

Despite strong opposition in some quarters, the Torres government chose the first option and moved to the left. He declared that his gov-ernment was supported by four pillars—the peasants, the workers, the university students, and the revolutionary military. He pledged to further economic nationalism, agrarian reform, industrialization, labor autonomy, and an independent foreign policy. Defying the United States, Torres established relations with the socialist bloc, and defying

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Representation of Major Parties and Groups in the Popular Assembly

Ideological Important Party Percent Tendency Leader(s)

Revolutionary Workers’ 4 Trotskyite Guillermo Lora Party (POR) (syndicalist Filemón Escóbar left)

Bolivian Communist Soviet Marxist Mario Monje Party (PCB), line Simón Reyes pro-Moscow wing (ideological Jorge Kolle left) Cueto

Bolivian Communist 7 Chinese Marxist Oscar Zamora Party (PCB), pro-Peking (Maoist) line Medinacelli wing (also known as (ideological Communist Marxist- left) Leninist Party [PCML])

Revolutionary Party of 13 Socialist workers’ Juan Lechín the Nationalist Left syndicalism Oquendo (PRIN) (syndicalist left) Nationalist Revolutionary 24 Moderate Hernán Siles Movement (MNR), national Zuazo Siles-Paz splinter group reformist Víctor Paz (unofficially represented) (center left) Estenssoro

Revolutionary Christian N/A Progressive Jorge Ríos Dalenz Democratic Party Christian (PDCR) democracy (center left)

Leftist Revolutionary 6 Leftist radical Jaime Paz Zamora Movement (MIR) reformers and splinter of the PDCR (ideological left)

Socialist Party (PS) N/A Radical socialist Marcelo Quiroga and national Santa Cruz liberationist or anti-imperialist (ideological left)

Bolivian Socialist 3 Conservative Mario Gutiérrez Falange (FSB) and right wing Gutiérrez

Source: Based on Malloy, James M., and Eduardo Gamarra. Revolution and Reaction: Bolivia, 1964–1985 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1988), p. 62.

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military and middle-class conservatives, in April 1971, he pardoned communist guerrilla Régis Debray and the survivors of the Teoponte uprising. Torres also nationalized the US.-owned Matilda zinc mine.

Torres is most remembered for the controversial Popular Assembly, or Asamblea del Pueblo. On May 1, 1971, a gala parade of more than 50,000 demonstrators participated in its opening ceremonies. With 222 delegates representing labor and peasant syndicates and radical political parties, the assembly began its deliberations on June 24, and ended them on July 2. The Set of Statutes approved by the assembly stated, “the Popular Assembly is constituted as the leadership and unifying centre of the anti-imperialist movement, and its fundamental objective lies in the achieve-ment of national liberation and the installing of socialism in Bolivia. It is an anti-imperialist front directed by the proletariat” (Dunkerley 1984, 194). From the outset this workers-students-peasants’ parliament seemed a wild, democratic free-for-all. All the forces of the left, which had been stifled dur-ing the reactionary decade of the 1960s and partially mobilized by Ovando, now vied for the political limelight.

Despite the diverse ideological tendencies represented in the Popular Assembly, the labor-left and Marxist groups dominated the assembly’s sessions. Juan Lechín, the country’s main labor leader and the executive secretary of the Bolivian Labor Central (COB), was elected president of the assembly. He attempted to moderate the ideological extremes and advance labor’s core agenda, although he was not always successful. The people’s assembly, nevertheless, did adopt the socialist program of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (POR), while the peasantry remained

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Class Makeup and Political Affiliation of Delegates to the Popular Assembly

Class Percent of Representation

Labor and trade unions 60

Middle-class organizations 24

Peasants 10

Official leftist parties 6

Delegates claiming party affiliation 76

Independent or nonaligned delegates 24

Source: Malloy, James M., and Eduardo Gamarra. Revolution and Reaction: Bolivia, 1964–1985 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1988), p. 61.

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largely neglected, with only minor representation. James M. Malloy and Eduardo Gamarra indicate that the ideological left had a tendency to den-igrate the peasantry as a political force. Despite the advances of the revo-lution, the rural Indian population’s weak representation also reflected their continued subordinate status in relation to the middle class.

In the June plenary session, the assembly passed radical measures, including the rearming of popular militias, the nationalization of middle-sized and small mining companies, the establishment of worker control, or cogovernment, in the mines, and the expulsion of Peace Corps missions in Bolivia. At the same time that the Popular Assembly debated policy during the 10 days it was in session, workers’ groups resorted to direct action. Miners took over private mines, and in Santa Cruz, a radical peasant group seized haciendas and hostages. Christopher Mitchell notes that local and regional groups took advan-tage of the leftist and democratic opening to aggressively push their own agendas and extract concessions from the government. Santa Cruz was an important regional center of politicization and anti-Torres sentiment. The regional and rightist military commanders there finally decided to move against Torres.

The conservative military interpreted the direction of the new government as Marxist or communist inspired. They not only feared but also opposed Torres’s populist mobilization of the left and his dependence on the Marxist political parties and radical unions. At all costs they wanted to forestall the reopening of the Popular Assembly in September. Despite the frustration and idealism of reformers and the strident demands by radicals to further the revolution, more than anything the failure of Torres’s leftist experiment proved that the heady days of the Popular Assembly and national revolution were definitely over. It was time for “peace, order, and work” (Dunkerley 1984, 203).

Banzer’s Revolt of the Right

Soldier: destiny has changed you from a man of war, to a guard-ian of social peace. Serve peace, then, with your arms!

General Hugo Banzer Suárez (Mitchell 1977, 124)

In January 1971, Hugo Banzer Suárez, former commandant of the Bolivian army’s military college, staged a coup in Santa Cruz. When the revolt fizzled, Torres swiftly exiled Banzer to Argentina, but


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the banished colonel stole back into Santa Cruz—the center of anti-Torres plotting. This time, a broad antigovernment coalition that included supporters of the FSB, the Siles-Paz sectors of the MNR, and the anti-Torres military formed. When a second insur-gency erupted in Santa Cruz in August 1971, these antigovern-ment forces in the country joined Banzer’s rebellion. On August 22, Banzer came to power and remained there for seven years, the longest term in presidential office since Barrientos.

Banzer based his rule on the authoritarian governing model of the Brazilian military. In the early 1970s, Latin American countries were strongly influenced by the modernizing military models of Peru and Brazil. Although both militaries pursued rapid national development, the Brazilian military was more conservative and repressive than the Peruvian armed forces. The Peruvian “develop-mentalist” experiment, which emphasized a more radical populism and economic nationalism, came into conflict with the United States. The Brazilian model remained more directly aligned with U.S. inter-ests and free-market policies.

Left-leaning Bolivian presidents Ovando and Torres had copied the Peruvian military model. The conservative colonel (later general) Banzer shifted direction and cast his eyes toward Brazil. His recipe of repressive stability and generous foreign borrowing generated unprece-dented economic growth and prosperity. Basically, Banzer reintroduced the conservative policies of the Barrientos period, and his government favored the entrepreneur class, which had invested heavily in mining, hydrocarbons, and eastern agribusiness enterprises. At the same time, his government sought to demobilize and control the popular sectors. If nonviolent efforts failed, Banzer resorted to authoritarian and repres-sive measures to quash the slightest militancy from the worker, peasant, or student sector.

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Hugo Banzer Suárez became president and then dictator of Bolivia from 1971 to 1978 after masterminding a coup d’état. He was president again from 1997 to 2001 after winning democratic elections. (Peter McFarren photo)

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Banzer’s rule reflected the values of the die-hard military traditional-ists. This very conservative sector of the armed forces became known as the “institutionalists” because of their fierce desire to protect the integrity and unity of the military institution and to avoid politici-zation of the armed forces. The Banzer government also aligned its policies closely with those of the United States and Brazil, standing firm against all leftist and radical movements in Bolivia. Nationalist and populist critics charged that Banzer had sold the country to these foreign interests.

With few exceptions, his rightist military government rejected the uncertainties of party politics and democratic competition. In the beginning, the Popular Nationalist Front (Frente Popular Nacionalista, or FPN), a coalition of the MNR faction loyal to Víctor Paz and the FSB of Mario Gutiérrez, had lent political support to the Banzer gov-ernment, but the civilian-military alliance did not last. Despising the petty partisan feuding and chaos of everyday politics, in November 1974, Banzer decided to limit political activity altogether and impose dictatorial rule. Typical of dictators the world over, Banzer believed that social stability at any cost was necessary for Bolivia’s economic progress.

The government’s economic policies benefited only a narrow sector of the population, however. While key sectors of the middle and upper classes prospered, workers and peasants experienced the darker side of the economic boom. The massive devaluation of the Bolivian peso in October 1972, for example, fell heavily and inequitably on Bolivia’s mar-ginal classes. Banzer’s free-market strategy further aggravated existing socioeconomic inequalities: The government repeatedly froze workers’ wages yet refused to regulate the skyrocketing costs of basic necessities.

On the other hand, Banzer’s single-minded pursuit of free-market development was hugely popular among the prosperous new bourgeoi-sie. The country’s private sector and regional interests, especially in the department and city of Santa Cruz, welcomed Banzer’s no-nonsense capitalism. In Santa Cruz, an agribusiness elite had already grown fat on rice, sugar, and cotton profits, and increased oil and gas sales further elevated the region’s political and economic significance.

The rightist government also rolled out the welcome mat to foreign investors with a slew of beneficial investment laws. Banzer’s petroleum code, for example, encouraged 15 U.S. oil companies to sponsor new explorations in eastern Bolivia, and in 1974, the government awarded Brazil a generous natural gas contract. Pleased with the government’s responsible economic and fiscal management and the probusiness invest-


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ment climate, foreign banks were eager to extend generous loans to the Banzer government. Bolivia’s conservative and stable politics and capital-ist development model also encouraged the United States to double and then triple its military and economic assistance to the country.

As long as the economy grew, the majority of middle-class Bolivians tolerated Banzer’s authoritarian rule, and its oppression of labor and indigenous groups, which were often in open opposition to the rightist policies. The government blocked all union organizing by the FSTMB and the COB and declared strikes illegal. In January 1974, 100 peasant syndicates blocked Cochabamba’s main artery to protest the doubling of food prices. The military was ordered in to end the demonstra-tions, and a bloody clash ensued that became known as the Massacre of Tolata. According to Christopher Mitchell, the military killed more than 100 peasants in the confrontation (1977, 127).

The Cochabamba crisis ended the complacency of the Banzer gov-ernment toward the indigenous farmers. Indeed, the Tolata massacre, according to Herbert S. Klein, was the first major bloody encounter between the peasantry and the military since 1952. Banzer recognized, however, that once aroused, the campesinos would remain a formidable challenge to the military. Thus, on February 12, 1974, the government hastened to renew the Military-Peasant Pact that Barrientos had formu-lated a decade earlier. Banzer reasserted his personal leadership over the peasant syndicates, removed troublesome and independent leaders, and appointed progovernment caciques to keep the peasants in line.

Political life had become severely circumscribed. Only conservative parties such as the military’s Popular Nationalist Front (FPN), MNR, and FSB were permitted. The FPN served to provide the military gov-ernment a modicum of civilian party backing without circumscribing its decision making. Both the MNR and the FSB were so fragmented that each party zealously guarded its bureaucratic spoils. The FSB eventually splintered into personalist factions. Key MNR leaders, who refused to go along with Banzer’s policies, abandoned the coalition. In 1972, Hernán Siles was exiled and founded the MNR-Left (MNR-lzquierda, or MNRI). Víctor Paz also broke with Banzer and was exiled once again in early 1974.

Although some of the MNR and FSB continued to back Banzer, the semblance of party democracy was becoming more difficult to main-tain. The military was also split and restive. On June 4, 1974, a pre-dawn coup in the capital La Paz failed. A second coup on November 7 also failed. In a “self-coup” on November 9, Banzer reasserted control, purged the military, and banned all party activity.

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After the “self-coup,” the Banzer government dispensed with demo-cratic niceties and resorted to naked military rule. On November 11, textile and mine workers went on strike in protest. The military occu-pied the factories and mines and departed only with Banzer’s ouster in 1978. Banzer enacted a civil service law that permitted him to remove elected union officials and replace them with his own “coordinators.” Strikes and unapproved union activity were banned, and Bolivian labor seemed effectively cowed. The miners, however, resisted military inter-vention and retained their elected labor leaders. Military occupation did not prevent miners from striking from 1975 to 1977.

By 1977, both the economy and political repression had worsened, and the pressure for the restoration of democracy was increasing. The middle class joined the disaffected popular classes against the Banzer govern-ment. Ambitious military commanders sensed an opportunity for direct advancement through a coup d’état. Indeed, if the armed forces had not been so divided, Banzer might have been overthrown much earlier.

In Washington, D.C., the administration of newly elected president Jimmy Carter focused on human rights in Latin America and criticized Banzer’s antidemocratic rule. Moreover, after his foreign policy initia-tive failed to regain Bolivia’s sovereign access to the Pacific lost in 1879, Banzer could no longer rely on Bolivian nationalism over the seacoast dispute with Chile to generate support for his regime. Nevertheless, Banzer attempted to stall his opponents with a partial political amnesty in 1977 and promises of elections in 1980. Facing the threat of an imme-diate coup, however, Banzer was forced to advance this timetable. He promised to retire at the end of 1977 and to hold elections in 1978.

Partially reversing himself again in December, Banzer backed his offi-cial presidential candidate, General Juan Pereda Asbún. These maneu-vers fanned the opposition, and in late December, a handful of miners’ wives and children began a hunger strike in La Paz’s main cathedral. Intimidated by the national support for the miners, in January 1978, the government granted unconditional amnesty to political dissidents and unionists. As the exiled and imprisoned leaders reentered political life, a frenzy of activity preceded the July presidential elections.

Frustrated DemocracyThe 1978 elections were especially significant because there had been no democratic elections since 1966. On July 9, 20 political parties fielded seven presidential candidates. Only two candidates, however, had any real chance of winning: Juan Pereda Asbún representing a conservative


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coalition called the People’s Nationalist Union, was the official candidate; the other was Hernán Siles Zuazo, representing the Democratic and Popular Unity Front, a coalition of political moderates and populists. The elections, however, were marred by widespread fraud.

When Pereda won, the public was scandalized. Everyone, including the winner (probably to save face), demanded that the electoral court annul the results. General Pereda, however, was not about to squander this opportunity to become president on another uncertain election. On July 21, he led a coup from Santa Cruz, the base of his electoral

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Results of the 1978 Presidential Election (Major Parties and Coalitions)

Total Votes Candidate Party or Coalition Received

Hernán Siles Zuazo Democratic and Popular Unity Front 484,383

Juan Pereda Asbún People’s Nationalist Union 987,140

Víctor Paz Estenssoro Nationalist Revolutionary Movement 213,622 (MNR)

Total Votes Cast 1,971,968

Source: Morales, Waltraud Queiser. Bolivia: Land of Struggle (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992), p. 95.



Hernán Siles Zuazo Democratic and Popular Unity 528,696 (UDP)

Víctor Paz Estenssoro MNR Alliance (AMNR) 527,184

Hugo Banzer Suárez Nationalist Democratic Action 218,587 (ADN)

Total Votes Cast approx. 1,600,000


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support. When Pereda promised new elections in six months but then reneged, his tenure in the presidential palace was cut short by General David Padilla, who seized power in November.

Padilla’s motivation and that of the younger officers in his cabinet centered on preserving the integrity of the military. The majority of the civilian demonstrators, including all the parties of the left, assumed a wait-and-see attitude. Only a faction of the FSB and the COB attacked the military’s transitional regime. Despite several failed coups, the care-taker government held the scheduled 1979 elections.

Another chaotic, but also violent election season ensued. Nevertheless, after significant electoral reforms, approximately 1.6 million voters participated in the country’s first truly democratic elections in 15 years. Although 57 political groups originally registered, only eight candidates participated on polling day. Of these, only three were possible victors—Siles, Paz, and Banzer—however, no single candidate received an abso-lute majority as required under the constitution. The Bolivian Congress would have to break the impasse.

An MNR majority controlled Congress, but observers expected either a Siles or Paz victory. Congress, however, was unable to find a majority (73 deputies of 144) to elect a president. The electoral impasse proved internationally embarrassing as foreign dignitaries arrived to celebrate Bolivia’s return to democracy. On August 8, 1979, the legislators finally reached a compromise. Walter Guevara Arze, who had aspired to the country’s highest office for nearly two decades, would serve as interim president for one year. The highly respected politician was the leader of the Authentic Revolutionary Party (PRA) and the president of the Senate.

But it seems that no one had consulted with the armed forces in this decision. After a mere three months, Guevara, the first civilian president Bolivia had had in more than 10 years, was ousted. Colonel Alberto Natusch Busch perpetrated the violent and bloody coup. Upwards of 200 people died in the military action of November 1, which was fol-lowed by 15 days of repression known as the “Massacre of All Saints.” The procoup faction of the military had brutally vetoed the wishes of the people. General Padilla, who had headed the anticoup faction, was cashiered, whereupon he appealed to civilians to resist.

Bolivia’s angry civilians needed little encouragement. Thousands of demonstrators from all sectors of society crowded the streets, and the national labor union paralyzed the country with a general strike. Perhaps the most serious blow to the coup supporters was the suspen-sion of $27.5 million in aid by U.S. president Jimmy Carter. The coup


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collapsed, and the problem was again thrown into the legislature. On November 16, the Bolivian Congress selected Lydia Gueiler Tejada as interim president. Then serving as the president of the Congress, Gueiler became the first Bolivian woman to be elected president.

President Gueiler’s difficult task was to preserve what remained of the democratic opening and to shepherd the country through the next presidential election. Bolivia was mired in a severe economic as well as political crisis. The peso had to be devalued a second time, and civilian-military relations fell to an all-time low. There were constant coup rumblings right up to the elections. Gueiler’s own cousin, General Luis García Meza, headed a dan-gerous procoup faction. Despite Gueiler’s attempts to restrict García Meza’s insidious influence, in April she was forced to acquiesce to his appointment as commander of the army. There was an assassination attempt on President Gueiler in early June and a coup attempt several weeks later.

The conservative sector of the military feared constitutional elections and the return to democracy. García Meza manipulated the armed forces’

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General Luis García Meza ruth-lessly used military force to seize power and ruled as president in 1980 and 1981. (Peter McFarren photo)



Hernán Siles Zuazo Democratic and Popular Unity (UDP) 507,173

Víctor Paz Estenssoro MNR Alliance (AMNR) 263,706

Hugo Banzer Suárez Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN) 220,309

Marcelo Quiroga Socialist Party-One (PS-1) 113,309 Santa Cruz

Total Votes Cast approx. 1,500,000

Source: Morales, Waltraud Queiser. Bolivia: Land of Struggle. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992), p. 97.

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mistrust and resentment of prying civilians. He stoked the anticommu-nist fervor of military hard- liners and the reactionary security appara-tus. He also took advantage of fears that civilian rule would likely lead to an investigation into charges of army corruption and drug involvement. The army faction loyal to García Meza had received training from the repressive, reactionary Argentine military and had developed a cozy rela-tionship with Bolivia’s drug lords.

Miraculously, however, the election went forward on June 29, 1980. Voter turnout was one of the highest ever. One-and-a-half million Bolivians went to the polls. Unfortunately, once again no single candidate had an absolute majority. This time around Siles and Paz, who had received the most votes, joined forces, and their supporters in Congress were instructed to vote for Siles. Fearing the victory of civilian reformers, García Meza and the military hard-liners intervened.

Rise and Decline of the Cocaine MafiaOn July 17, 1980, García Meza unleashed his paramilitary against civil-ians. The rampage continued over the next year as García Meza’s forces ruthlessly killed, tortured, imprisoned, and exiled opponents. The military attacked the Bolivian Workers’ Central and killed labor lead-ers. The military bombed the mines, intimidated the Catholic Church, and censored the press. García Meza boldly compared his expurgatory role to that of Chilean president Augusto Pinochet, who had burned the “Marxist cancer” out of his country’s body politic during the 1970s.

Because of human rights abuses and blatant drug connections, the regime became an international pariah denied recognition by the Carter administration and the government of Ronald Reagan, as well as Latin American and European governments. Consequently, most foreign aid dried up. The Bolivian human rights assembly claimed that 300 people had been killed by the García Meza regime. Meanwhile, President García Meza and his interior minister, Colonel Luis Arce Gómez, were implicated in cocaine trafficking. Top military officers, embarrassed by Bolivia’s tattered international reputation and suffering economy, decided to force out García Meza’s cocaine mafia.

In August 1981, Generals Celso Torrelio Villa and Guido Vildoso Calderón seized power. But after 14 months, the most they achieved was a tepid normalization of Bolivia’s foreign relations with the United States and the international community. The generals could not restore civilian respect for or trust in the government. Civilians were not fooled


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by the unimaginative musical chairs; the corrupt face of the generals was one and the same in their minds.

When General Vildoso, who had taken over in July 1982, announced that the next elections would be held in 1983, he was greeted with a hail of protest. Civil society wanted elections and constitutional legiti-macy immediately. There were daily strikes and protest marches in La Paz and across the country. A demonstration by 50,000 angry civilians in early September finally convinced Vildoso that the military had to leave. On September 17, he resigned. The Bolivian Congress revalidated the results of the 1980 elections, and on October 5, more than two-thirds of the legislators elected Hernán Siles Zuazo president. By one count, more than 100,000 demonstrators cheered Siles on his return to La Paz three days later. On October 10, he was formally sworn in as Bolivia’s president. Siles had made history. After 18 years of mili-tary rule, he became the country’s first civilian president to be legally elected. In 1982, democracy had gained an important foothold, but because of the legacy of militarism, Bolivia’s democratic transition would not be smooth.

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9The Challenge of Democracy

(1982–2002)

Any regime, democratic or otherwise, will face problems border-ing on the insoluble.

Robert J. Alexander (1985, 73)

A fter almost two decades of military rule, Bolivians were anxious for the restoration of civilian government and constitutional

normalcy. With such high expectations for the future, however, there was bound to be widespread disappointment. As the first civilian president following a long authoritarian hiatus, Hernán Siles Zuazo confronted the monumental challenge of reestablishing and institu-tionalizing democratic rule. Virtually every socioeconomic and politi-cal sector of Bolivian society demanded special favors and immediate results from the first civilian government. Despite improvements in human rights and social welfare, Siles’s populist democracy failed to contain economic collapse and political instability.

Not surprisingly, the civilian rulers proved unable to resolve the pressures and demands placed on them without resorting to force to a greater or lesser degree. To the credit of Bolivia’s citizens and politi-cal establishment, however, civilian rule was sustained despite major governing and economic crises. During most of the first decade of renewed civilian government, Bolivian presidents of diverse ideological and partisan persuasions struggled to overcome economic collapse and renewed social unrest and violence.

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In June 1985, Víctor Paz Estenssoro was elected to his fourth term in office as Bolivia’s president. The 1985 election represented a his-toric transition: It marked the first time since Bolivian independence that there had been a peaceful transfer of power between opposition political parties. The election also represented the first peaceful trans-fer of office between two constitutionally elected civilian presidents since 1960, when Paz Estenssoro had been elected president for the second time.

From the following 1989 election into the new century, the pattern of constitutional succession continued, beginning with the presidency of Jaime Paz Zamora, and followed by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and Hugo Banzer, respectively. Bolivia appeared to have turned a corner in the permanence of civilian and democratic rule. Each of these govern-ments, however, faced one or more national crises. Each responded with varying degrees of authority and pragmatism. The tension between democracy and authoritarianism was endemic. Although all politi-cal actors appropriated the mantle of 1952’s National Revolution, the civilian presidents with the exception of Siles generally abandoned the populist policies and ideology of the revolution for solutions that would ameliorate Bolivia’s overriding problems.

Three critical problems complicated the difficult transition to democ-racy. First, Bolivia’s military governments had contracted massive national debts during the 1970s, a legacy of fiscal and economic irre-sponsibility that plagued the new civilian presidents. Second, the politi-cal and economic order of the hemisphere and the world had also been altered significantly by the early 1980s. Globalization and liberalizing market forces had created new difficulties, challenges, and opportunities for developing nations such as Bolivia, and Bolivia’s civilian presidents were required to come to terms with the new global economic order. Finally, Bolivia became mired in a full-blown drug problem. During the 1980s and 1990s, every civilian government committed its resources to fighting the hemispheric drug war and drastically reducing Bolivia’s role as a coca/cocaine supplier.

Considered in isolation, any one of the three crises of debt, glo-balization, and drugs would have proven daunting for Bolivia’s fledg-ling democracy. At times, tackling all three problems simultaneously seemed nearly impossible. More often than not, Bolivian democracy suffered in the process. By the end of the 20th century, the consolida-tion of civilian rule and democratic legitimacy had become a tortu-ous and difficult journey and certainly one that remained an ongoing struggle in the century ahead.


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The Crisis of Democratic PopulismThe Siles government retained office by giving in to whatever current demand was pressed upon it.

James M. Malloy and Eduardo Gamarra (1988, 191)

Hernán Siles Zuazo assumed office in October 1982 fully expecting to complete his four-year term as specified in the constitution, but the Siles government barely survived three tumultuous years. During that time, there were incessant rumors and serious threats of military coups. These came to nothing, partly because of external pressures and partly because Siles stepped down a year early. Despite the harsh criticisms leveled against his administration, the United States seemed as anxious as the Bolivian electorate to preserve the fragile democratic opening that Siles had provided. To a large extent, the Siles presidency became undone less by its incompetence than by the irreconcilable demands of democracy and debt.

During the period of 1982 to 1985, Bolivia’s staggering indebtedness to foreign banks and multinational organizations precipitated a major national crisis. The country owed the impossible sum of $5 billion, and there simply was no way to pay. The bulk of this massive foreign debt was in short-term loans and had been contracted by and inherited from the military, especially the Banzer and García Meza governments. Service on the debt approximated more than half of the total value of exports. To partially meet its obligations, the government was compelled to print more banknotes. By mid-1985, economic experts reported an inflation rate ranging from 14,000 to 25,000 percent—one of the highest ever.

In the 1980s, the chronic pattern of underdevelopment and misman-aged development that had trapped Bolivia so often in the past reasserted itself. The pattern hardly seemed to vary from one century to the next. First there would be the discovery of an unexpected resource bonanza, followed by excessive spending and reckless foreign loans. Eventually, when the resources and/or prices declined, an overextended treasury would be unable to make good on the debts, and the country would descend into extreme political and economic instability. The downward spiral of one of these destructive cycles engulfed President Siles.

This time around the new bonanza was oil. In the mid-1970s, the Santa Cruz region had experienced a boom in petroleum and natural gas devel-opment. As the profits rolled into the department’s and the central gov-ernment’s coffers, ambitious regional and national development projects

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THE CHALLENGE OF DEMOCRACY

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took off. Bolivia became a profitable investment, and the flush foreign lending banks courted the military governments, shopping their loans at advantageous interest rates. But the crunch eventually came. Oil and gas prices fell, and interest rates doubled virtually overnight as the global economy went into recession. Bolivia’s loans came due, and every spare peso was needed to make the exorbitant interest payments. The principal remained undiminished and even grew as unpaid interest upon interest mounted. Bolivia, like many other developing countries around the world, found its economy in the grip of the debt trap.

But things would get worse before they got better. Foreign creditors and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had a one-size-fits-all solu-tion to Bolivia’s debt crisis: a draconian economic austerity program. This so-called neoliberal economic formula intensified the common people’s acute economic distress and the country’s political instability. Throughout Latin America and the Third World, neoliberalism meant conservative, market-driven solutions to the debt crisis: debt reform without a human face. Very few governments, especially democratic ones, could withstand the public protest. Military regimens tended to fare better because repres-sive measures were implemented to maintain civil order. Thus, economic austerity directly threatened weak democracies.

Bolivian democracy proved to be no exception. In order to secure payment extensions and additional loans to discount earlier loans, the Bolivian government was forced to severely slash government spending. In effect, this meant firing thousands of public-sector employees and trimming or holding the line on wages and benefits. The government terminated all unnecessary services and subsidies on foodstuffs, fuels, and other basic necessities. Scores of public enterprises were privatized. Overtime this stabilization formula worked to tame inflation and com-pel the market to weed out all but the fiscally fittest. The social conse-quences, however, were devastating.

By 1984, 2 million Bolivians were on the verge of starvation. An IMF austerity program had compounded the misery already created by major natural disasters—drought and floods—in the early 1980s. By early 1985, for example, the average monthly take-home pay of a Bolivian worker was $10. Lending institutions imposed harsh repayment terms that undermined the attempts by the Siles government to restore civil liberties and shore up social welfare. Given the widespread economic desperation, it was virtually impossible to restrain Bolivia’s militant labor unions and radical political parties and still respect democratic freedoms.

President Siles faced a crucial political choice to move to the right or to move to the left. He could impose the conservative austerity program


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and thereby alienate the workers and peasants who served as his base of support. Or, he could pursue a populist policy of the left and reject IMF austerity and meddling. To resolve the dangerous crisis he could no longer sit on the fence. Perhaps, as critics claimed, the fact that Siles was prevented from serving out his term suggested that he had made the wrong decision. Indeed, his failure provided a sad but instructive lesson on the difficulties inherent in reconciling debt, democracy, and stability. (His successors would learn and profit from this lesson.)

Attempts to squeeze by with a populist left-of-center policy while simultaneously restraining both extreme radicalism and conservatism destroyed the Siles government. By early 1985, Siles had scrapped his sixth cabinet. In less than three years, he had dispensed with more than six dozen ministers. Political infighting and partisan feuding para-lyzed his government. Opposition parties, including Paz Estenssoro’s Historic Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario Histórico, or MNRH) and Banzer’s ADN, dominated Congress and stalled or opposed all the government’s legislation, forcing Siles to rule by executive decree. If policies made it into law, nonetheless, the opposition would impeach cabinet ministers. Even worse, the ADN and MNRH plotted with factions of the Leftist Revolutionary Movement (MIR) and the military to effect a “constitutional coup.” The strategy was to have the opposition-controlled Congress force Siles’s resignation and announce new elections.

The Bolivian left, notorious for its factionalism, provided an unreli-able foundation for the civilian government. Siles’s multiparty coalition, Democratic and Popular Unity (UDP), acted more like the opposition than as political allies of the president. The UDP consisted of several left-of-center parties, including the left faction of the MNR, the MIR, the Bolivian Communist Party (PCB), and the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). Divided by ideology, personal ambitions, and partisan competition for power and patronage, more separated these coali-tion partners than united them. To buy their support, Siles followed a timeworn practice in Bolivian politics: He parceled out the government ministries among the parties of the left. As a consequence, the process of governing was bogged down by partisan wrangling.

When Siles’s own party, the MNR-Left, or MNRI, fragmented, he lost all ability to govern. The country became a rudderless ship on stormy seas. Everyone defied the government. The PCB split into combative factions over the government’s economic policy. The MIR and its leader, Jaime Paz Zamora, nephew of the powerful opposition leader Paz Estenssoro, deserted the governing coalition whenever policy disagreements arose.

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This chronic instability of the governing coalition was a major problem in itself, but it was compounded by the fact that Paz Zamora, who was also the vice president, reportedly was conspiring with the military to take over the government. The hapless Siles found himself surrounded by enemies and disloyal “friends.”

The military mirrored the social and political chaos and fragmented into numerous opposing factions. On one end of the spectrum were the “institutionalists” who wanted to preserve constitutional rule, and on the other were the hard-liners who resisted Marxist influ-ences in the government and were prepared to unseat the president by force. Corruption and drug trafficking compounded the military’s disarray. In June 1984, there was a drug-related coup attempt. A far-right military faction backed the “cocaine coup” of cashiered army colonels Faustino Rico Toro and Norberto Salomón. Both were notori-ous for their intimate connections to narcotics trafficking in Bolivia. When the Siles government attempted to investigate the military’s drug involvement, this hard-line faction turned against the govern-ment. The rebellion almost succeeded; the elite antidrug forces, the


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The Otazo Affair

The United States and Bolivian political opposition charged that President Hernán Siles Zuazo was soft on drugs. Some even claimed

that not only had he failed to apply effective pressure on the narcotraffick-ers and seriously pursue coca eradication, but also he personally colluded with the drug chiefs. In August 1984, an incident known as the Otazo Affair severely damaged Siles’s public image and that of his government.

As James M. Malloy and Eduardo Gamarra relate the story, the head of Siles’s Narcotraffic Control Council and intimate friend, Rafael Otazo, met with the infamous drug baron Roberto Suárez. During the meetings, which Otazo claimed Siles had authorized, the drug lord offered the gov-ernment $2 billion toward the national debt. When Siles publicly denied everything, Otazo revealed the names of government officials, including a cabinet minister, connected with the coca/cocaine trade.

Although Siles’s involvement remained unsubstantiated, in September 1984, the opposition-controlled Congress initiated proceedings to impeach the president for his alleged drug complicity.


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Leopardos, even managed to kidnap Siles on June 30. The hasty inter-vention of the U.S. ambassador, Edwin Corr, however, secured the president’s release.

The labor-left, which had been the heart of the government’s ini-tial support, also had a large hand in the demise of the Siles govern-ment. Union unrest undermined the government’s austerity programs between 1982 and 1985. In an attempt to reverse or moderate these economic measures, Juan Lechín turned his Bolivian Labor Central, or COB, against the government. As a result, there were hundreds of industrywide strikes in 1983 and six devastating nationwide strikes in 1984. Siles responded with vacillation, repeatedly temporizing with the union’s ultimatums. James M. Malloy and Eduardo Gamarra believe that Siles pursued a conscious strategy to evade the socialist structural changes demanded by labor while appeasing them with short-term bread-and-butter issues.

One issue was especially rancorous: cogovernment. During the first revolutionary government of the MNR, a governing partnership existed briefly between labor and government. This cooperation was known as cogovernment, or the joint worker-state management of public enterprises. For a time COMIBOL, the state mining company, operated under cogovernment. Labor always insisted on this right under populist and prolabor governments. As with Siles, cogovern-ment had been a major sticking point in Torres’s military-socialist government.

Cogovernment, however, would mean that labor could veto fiscal reforms and austerity measures, and the United States, foreign investors, and Bolivia’s own private sector vigorously obstructed labor’s struggle for dominance. Siles waved the promise of cogovernment like a flag of truce before labor militants; however, he only acceded to it under duress in 1983, and only in COMIBOL after the miners’ union (FSTMB) occupied the state mines and dictated worker control. In 1984, a desperate Siles agreed to labor’s demand to halt repayment of the national debt. And after a prolonged national strike, Siles offered labor a voice in Congress in May 1985. (The last time that the COB had achieved this singular privilege was during the Popular Assembly of 1971.) Siles proffered numerous concessions, but the COB refused them all. Their goal was to precipitate a nationwide crisis and force the government to suspend the constitution and postpone elections.

Although the majority of political observers blamed Siles for labor’s recalcitrance and the governing crisis, the breakdown was structural and systemic. Siles was being pulled in opposite directions by two

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powerful and antagonistic class forces: unionized labor and private capitalists. The private sector had emerged as a very powerful lobby, represented by the Bolivian Confederation of Private Entrepreneurs (Confederación de Empresarios Privados de Bolivia, or CEPB). Despite incessant strikes and street demonstrations by tens of thou-sands of workers and peasants, labor could not triumph against con-servative business interests. But labor could and did seal Siles’s fate. As his government swung back and forth like an erratic pendulum between anti- and prolabor policies, investors lost all confidence in the country.

Personally defeated and with the drug corruption scandal engulfing him, Siles acquiesced to early presidential elections. This move proved to be the death knell for the forces of the left. Discredited by their asso-ciation with Siles’s failed policies, the political parties that had formed the victorious UDP coalition fragmented and were unable to cooperate and mount a united electoral front. In the close presidential election of 1985, two parties on the right benefited from the disintegration of the left, and they were able to monopolize the popular vote between them.


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Jornadas de Marzo

In March 1985, the Bolivian Labor Central (COB) trucked 10,000 min-ers into La Paz for a “march against hunger.” Civilian servants and local

unions joined in the march to the presidential palace. With the municipal band at their heels and tossing dynamite into the air, the strikers demanded Siles’s immediate resignation and the establishment of labor rule.

The march turned into a 20-day siege of La Paz known as the Jornadas de Marzo, or “working days of March.” As food became scarce, Siles ordered out the troops to break the strike. In the view of James M. Malloy and Eduardo Gamarra, the incident was a “sad testimony” to the political deterioration in Bolivia. Siles, the “father of a ‘populist’ revolu-tion” and ally of the working class, confronted Lechín, “another father of the revolution” and leader of the disillusioned workers. A bloody clash seemed inevitable, but bishops stepped in and resolved the crisis. After achieving a few concessions, labor backed down, and the “working days of March” marked the COB’s defeat.


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Paz and Authoritarian Democracy

Bolivia is dying before our eyes.

Víctor Paz Estenssoro (Mesa Gisbert 2000, n.d.)

The campaign before the July presidential elections provided a field day for Bolivia’s myriad “taxi” parties, political fragments so tiny that the party convention could practically assemble in a taxi. By the April regis-tration deadline, almost 80 political groups were in the running. Despite coup threats, postponements, and irregularities, 18 political contenders remained on polling day. The two serious presidential contenders were Hugo Banzer, representing the ADN, and Víctor Paz Estenssoro of the MNRH. The parties of the left formed two fronts but had little chance of winning.

Almost all of the 2 million registered voters, accounting for a third of the country’s 6 million inhabitants, went to the polls. The vote split

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Results of the 1985 Presidential Election (Major Parties)

Political Party Total Popular Percentage Congressional and Candidate Votes Received of the Vote Seats Allocated

Nationalist Democratic 493,735 29 51 Action (ADN), Hugo Banzer Suárez

Historical Nationalist 456,704 26 59 Revolutionary Movement (MNRH), Víctor Paz Estenssoro

Leftist Revolutionary 153,143 9 16 Movement (MIR), Jaime Paz Zamora

MNR-Left (MNRI), 82,418 5 8 Hernán Siles Zuazo

MNR-Vanguard (MNRV) 72,197 4 6


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almost equally along urban-rural lines, the urban voters deciding for Banzer and the rural peasant vote favoring Paz Estenssoro. Although Banzer emerged ahead, neither candidate had attained a majority of the


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Paz Estenssoro’s Economic Technocrats

Behind the scenes of his new government Víctor

Paz Estenssoro formed a select group of economic advisers headed by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. President of the Senate and the owner of a medium-sized mine company, Sánchez de Lozada had close ties with the pri-vate sector and had served as planning minister in Paz’s previous government. Paz’s economic technocrats devel-oped a stabilization and recovery program modeled on that of the Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN) working group, which had vis-ited Harvard and consulted with Harvard economist and “shock therapy” expert Jeffrey Sachs, in the months before the elections.

“There was a great deal of cross-fertilization” between the eco-nomic teams of the ADN and the reconstituted MNR (which had uni-fied for the election), explained James M. Malloy and Eduardo Gamarra. The MNR-ADN-Harvard plan emphasized the role of the free market and the private sector, and the “taming” of labor radicalism. Paz kept his economic plan secret even from his own cabinet and carefully timed its unveiling for August 29, 1985.

Source: Malloy, James M., and Eduardo Gamarra. Revolution and Reaction: Bolivia, 1964–1985 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1988), p. 194–195.

Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who served as chief economic adviser to Víctor Paz Estenssoro, became Bolivian president in 1993. (Peter McFarren photo)

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popular vote necessary to win. According to electoral law, Congress, serv-ing as a college of electors, would have to decide the final outcome.

After two rounds of balloting, a pact among the congressional del-egates on the left decided the presidency. Of the 145 electors, 94 voted for Paz Estenssoro. With overwhelming U.S. and hemispheric pressure to respect the final outcome, the defeated Banzer had little choice but to accept his loss gracefully. Moreover, not only had he been promised a clear field next time around, but also, as a former military dictator, his future bid for the presidency depended on his continued respect for civilian rule and the constitutional process.

Paz Estenssoro was determined not to repeat Siles’s mistakes, but he was fully prepared to impose orthodox economic policies and authoritarian measures to maintain order. In his inaugural speech, Paz Estenssoro promised a “government with authority, and without anar-chy” (Morales, 1992, 103). A wily and experienced politician, he made sure that he had the political clout to do what he said. Unlike Siles, who had lacked an independent mandate to rule, Paz had solid legislative, partisan, and interest-group support.

He organized his cabinet to maximize his political maneuverability and control. Pragmatism rather than ideology or populism influenced his difficult governing decisions. Since this would undoubtedly be his final presidency, the 77-year-old Paz seemed not to care what Bolivians thought of him in the short term. A realist and an astute economist, he understood that he had a difficult but historic charge—to restore Bolivia’s economic viability by the only means possible: economic austerity.

After less than a month in the presidential palace, Paz Estenssoro bypassed the legislature and issued the historic and infamous executive decree Law 21060, known as the New Economic Policy (Nueva Política Económica, NPE). He prepared for and implemented the stringent aus-terity program like a blitzkrieg military maneuver. Caught off guard, the COB fired back with an indefinite nationwide strike in early September 1985. Ten days later, the government imposed martial law and arrested and interned hundreds of union leaders in isolated detention centers. With a rare legislative majority in his pocket, Paz Estenssoro consti-tutionally extended this authoritarian stratagem and kept labor at bay well into 1986.

It had been many years since a democratic president could exert such dominance over the legislature. This rare executive power was the result of a political agreement, the Pact for Democracy, between the MNR and the ADN. Signed in October, this legislative alliance guaran-teed “cooperative action” between the two major parties of the right.

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The pact guaranteed the government the necessary legislative majority to implement its programs. Some compared the exceptional executive power that the pact provided to the “imperial presidency” in the United States. Indeed, Bolivia’s new model of “pacted democracy” appeared to solve a long-standing and vexing dilemma—how to maintain a formally democratic system and still produce strong governments. The trick would be to get the balance just right.

Paz Estenssoro’s “democracy with authority,” however, generated criticism in many quarters. Imposing a draconian economic austerity program by military force created a number of enemies. The govern-ment’s relations with labor, business, and the middle class were often strained. Paz was ineffective and not authoritarian enough in the eyes of the private sector. From the perspective of the popular classes (workers and campesinos), Paz was a dictator, ruling by executive decree and martial law.

The NPE and the government’s ruthless repression of dissent hit the miners especially hard. When Paz Estenssoro reorganized the state mining company, 11 mines were closed and 23,000 miners lost their jobs. In August 1986, more than 10,000 striking miners marched on La Paz in a final attempt to save the nationalized mines. Paz Estenssoro reimposed martial law and arrested more than 150 of the leaders. Labor was severely weakened by the government’s aggressive response. Symbolically, in 1987, the once indomitable labor leader, Juan Lechín, stepped down as the chief of the COB and ended his union activism of more than three decades.

The workers’ desperation was such that they continued to hold out, however. Labor stoppages nearly every month disrupted economic recovery from mid-1986 to mid-1989. In March 1988, a nationwide strike of petroleum workers threatened a military coup, and unrest by students led to a police invasion of the university. Thousands of unem-ployed and “relocated” miners and peasants migrated to the subtropics to raise coca leaf and join the illegal drug economy. As a result, the total acreage of coca leaf cultivation tripled after 1985, and Paz Estenssoro was compelled to sign a powerful antinarcotics decree, Law 1008, in 1988. The unpopular Law on the Regulation of Coca and Controlled Substances made the cultivation of coca leaf illegal in specified regions of the country. Paz Estenssoro also acceded to further militarization of the drug war and intervention by U.S. military advisers and special troops to accommodate Washington, D.C.

The drug trade also played a back-door role in the country’s economic revitalization. At the same time that the severe austerity stimulated the rise


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in coca/cocaine production, the profits from increased production subsi-dized the difficult economic recovery. An estimated $500 million (around 20 percent of total profits) may have returned to the domestic economy from the multibillion-dollar illegal trade. The dollars generated from one-third to one-half of the country’s foreign exchange. No wonder that some dubbed Paz Estenssoro’s economic miracle the “cocaine stabilization.”

Despite significant improvements in inflation and international credit, the New Economic Policy had its problems, some of its own making. Bolivia’s tin-based economy took a dive after the crash in the tin market in 1985. Monthly strikes hurt economic recovery and risked

The Narco Video Scandal

A ll Bolivian governments have been tarred with the drug cor-ruption brush at one time or another. Víctor Paz Estenssoro’s

administration, which had created the Pact for Democracy with the Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN) Party of Hugo Banzer, was no exception. The narco video scandal that erupted in spring 1989, however, tarnished the reputations of several political figures. A year earlier, the Bolivian drug king Roberto Suárez had received a visit from ADN politi-cians, who had sought financing for the upcoming 1989 electoral cam-paign. The event was secretly taped, and to embarrass Banzer’s ADN and Paz Estenssoro’s MNR-ADN government—as well as the presidential hopefuls of both parties—Suárez released the video, which documented the meeting between an ADN congressman and a military officer with Suárez. Because Banzer had developed close ties with the Republican Party of the United States during his presidency and had capitalized on this relationship after he left office in 1978, the scandal reflected poorly on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Republican Party’s victorious presidential candidate, George H. W. Bush.

Moreover, the narco video scandal also embarrassed the MNR, which had unified behind the candidacy of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, as well as the Leftist Revolutionary Movement’s (MIR) presidential contender, Jaime Paz Zamora, who was shown embracing a major drug trafficker. The tapes touched off a national outcry against the three major parties (ADN, MNR, and MIR) in the May election and their alleged drug connections. Congress launched an immediate investigation. The scandal, however, blew over as the congressional deputies of the three parties absolved one another of wrongdoing. Instead, they indicted those involved in leaking the videotapes, and a month later they arrested Suárez.

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democracy. A military coup became a real possibility during a major strike by the country’s petroleum workers in 1988. The NPE exacted an unfair toll on humble workers, while the professional and urban middle classes were affected only mildly, and white-collar jobs remained plen-tiful despite austerity. The injustice inherent in the NPE exacerbated social inequality and conflict. A popular quip held that the economy was doing better, but the people might not survive.

One could debate whether Paz Estenssoro played the part of savior or villain. Did Paz’s controversial policies reflect his “tough love” or a disguised authoritarianism? No doubt his government had its share of setbacks. The drug scandal embarrassed the party, and the MNR lost seats in 1987 mayoral elections. But one thing was clear: The octoge-narian left office a very popular president. Paz Estenssoro’s 70 percent popularity rating, according to Eduardo Gamarra, was “the highest ever for an outgoing Bolivian president” (1996, 330). And Herbert S. Klein has concluded, “To the surprise of both enemies and friends, this seem-ing relic of a past era proved to be the most dynamic and able civilian politician to rule in the last two decades” (1992, 274).

Still, party loyalists, who were already jockeying for an advantage in the next presidential elections, viewed Paz Estenssoro as a political liabil-ity. When ex-general Banzer announced in mid-1988 that he would run,


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Bolivian workers protest in 1986 against the collapse of the world tin market, an economic catastrophe for which they blamed the United States. (Guillermo Delgado-P. photo)

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the two-party governing pact between the ADN and MNR quickly unrav-eled, and party cooperation ended in February 1989. With the elections around the corner, it was each man (and party or faction) for himself.

Liberal Revolution and Continuity

Coca is not cocaine. Coca is good and it is ours. Cocaine is bad; it is a substance that came from elsewhere.

Jaime Paz Zamora (“Coca Is Banzer’s First Priority” 1997, 2)

The three most promising contenders in the 1989 presidential elec-tions were Hugo Banzer Suárez, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, and Jaime Paz Zamora. Political pundits called the trio the “three look-alikes.” More appropriately, they should have been called the “three sound-alikes,” because their campaign promises were practically indistinguishable. With the collapse of the economy in 1985, Bolivian politics had shifted to the right, and despite the cocaine crisis and escalating violation of human rights, Bolivians were almost single-mindedly focused on economic recovery. Therefore, so were the lead-ing candidates.

Almost everyone expected Banzer, who was being portrayed as “a gentle, intelligent dictator,” to win easily. He was the oldest (at 62 years of age) and most experienced statesman of the three, but Bolivians had long and mixed memories of his authoritarian rule. Some, like a La Paz chola interviewed by a New York Times reporter on polling day, recalled only the prosperity, while political activists on the left remembered a quite different man and promised never to be reconciled to a Banzer victory.

The MNR’s candidate was Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, or “el Goni,” who earned his political stripes as Paz Estenssoro’s economic point man for the New Economic Policy. A true MNR party loyalist, he was blatantly Paz Estenssoro’s favorite. The feelings were mutual, and at the party’s nominating convention, Sánchez de Lozada insisted that he was not Paz Estenssoro’s successor but his disciple. With his “gringo” accent that reflected his upbringing and education in the United States, Sánchez de Lozada made quite a stir in Bolivia. To many of his compatriots, the 58-year-old rising star acted more American than Bolivian. On the other hand, his technocratic and Americanized image became a part of his attraction to Bolivia’s younger generation of voters.

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Jaime Paz Zamora was the youngest presidential contender, and the least likely to win. Fifty years of age, the cochabambino had served as vice president in Siles Zuazo’s UDP-coalition government. As a young man, he had studied for the priesthood in Europe but soon discovered his calling in politics instead. Paz Zamora was a longtime activist. In 1971, he had been one of the founders of the MIR, the left-of-center protest party. He had been among party members who had been impris-oned and exiled during the Banzer dictatorship. As the current leader of the somewhat moderated and social democratic MIR–Nueva Mayoría (MIR–New Majority), his candidacy appealed to the bulk of younger


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Percentage Number of of Popular Total Congressional Vote Votes Seats Candidate Party Received Received Apportioned

Gonzalo Nationalist 23 363,113 49 Sánchez Revolutionary de Lozada Movement (MNR)

Hugo Banzer Nationalist 23 357,298 46 Suárez Democratic Action (ADN)

Jaime Paz Leftist Revolu- 20 309,033 41 Zamora tionary Move- ment (MIR)

Carlos Palenque Conscience of 11 173,459 11 Avilés the Fatherland (CONDEPA)

Antonio United Left (IU) 7 113,509 10 Aranibar Quiroga

Other Parties 6 99,457 0

Total of Valid 90 1,415,869 157 Votes Cast


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middle-class voters and professionals, who had become alienated from the traditional parties.

The 1989 presidential election was somewhat unusual compared to previous elections since the transition to democratic rule. In 1986, the Paz Estenssoro government, with the support of the ADN, had passed a new electoral reform law, which prevented the electoral slate from becoming clogged with the dozens of “taxi” parties and their nominees. Consequently, nine parties were on the ballot on voting day; however, only the three most powerful and popular parties—the MNR, ADN, and MIR—could realistically attain the presidency.

The elections were well conducted. There were problems, however, with ballot irregularities and voter abstention. Six percent of the vote had to be annulled, and blank votes totaled 4 percent. Although more than 2 million voters had registered, another million citizens, who could have registered and voted, failed to do so. Nevertheless, Bolivians could be rightly proud that they had conducted another peaceful demo-cratic transfer of power.

The vote was extremely close, and no one received a majority. Once again, Congress would have to decide the final outcome. With 23 percent of the popular vote, Sánchez de Lozada stood ahead of Banzer only by a thin margin. Paz Zamora trailed with almost 20 per-cent. Nevertheless, in Congress, his party commanded a pivotal role. Shopping for the best political deal, he sealed a pact with Banzer. With the required absolute majority of votes in his pocket, Paz Zamora, who had trailed both Sánchez de Lozada and Banzer in the popu-lar vote, emerged as Bolivia’s next president.

The final outcome was an upset and seemed unfair when the third runner-up was elected. What was really impressive is that all the contenders respected the pro-cess nonetheless. After the 1985 elections, James M. Malloy and Eduardo Gamarra noted that, “To

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Jaime Paz Zamora became president of Bolivia after the 1989 elections even though he actually finished third in the popular balloting. (Peter McFarren photo)

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accept defeat and remain in the political fray according to the existing rules is one of the more crucial ethics of a democratic system” (1988, 194). This observation proved especially true in 1989.

The results shocked many, as did the new governing pact, the Patriotic Accord. After all, Banzer had had Paz Zamora imprisoned in 1974 and had repressed MIR loyalists. Paz Zamora publicly explained the alliance with his former enemy as the product of a new spirit of national consensus and dialogue. Indeed, the two parties carved up the cabinet and government between them. Banzer’s ADN selected the vice president and 10 out of 18 cabinet ministers. They controlled finance and planning and overall economic policy. Although he had no cabinet position, everyone recognized that Banzer would remain an important informal power in the government.

The policies of Paz Zamora were basically similar to those of his uncle, Paz Estenssoro. His first test came when 80,000 protesters besieged the newly dubbed “National Unity” government in October. Teachers who had not been paid and demanded salary increases orga-nized a nationwide hunger strike. Despite his campaign rhetoric and the populist program that had characterized the MIR in the past, Paz Zamora rejected their demands. He held firm on the harsh neoliberal austerity program instituted by his predecessor and in mid-November imposed a state of siege. A predawn military operation rounded up more than 800 protesters and ended the teachers’ strike. Despite sharp criti-cism from the Catholic Church and human rights groups, Paz Zamora persisted in this hard line. When popular protest got out of hand, he responded with martial law.

The MIR-ADN coalition government continued the conservative policy shift begun in 1985. To justify his reorientation, Paz Zamora employed such catchphrases as “new-style politics.” In his speeches he echoed Paz Estenssoro and consistently criticized the “old” political formulas, which had manipulated ideology, populism, and radicalism to sway voters. Ironically, Paz Zamora began his presidency promising to return morality to government and to govern for all, especially the poor and dispossessed. But when his term ended, his administration was considered one of the most corrupt since the return of civilian rule. Allegedly, his party and cabinet had become linked with drug trafficking.

Democratic and economic continuity was the major contribution of the Paz Zamora government. Despite the outcry against his unscrupu-lous and pragmatic style, Paz Zamora was not more authoritarian than Paz Estenssoro had been. One might argue further that in order to con-trol unrest and implement policy, especially the unpopular antinarcot-


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ics control law, Paz Zamora’s successors were also forced to emphasize the authoritarian component of Bolivia’s unique brand of democracy.

Paz Zamora’s government, like the majority of democratically elected governments after 1982, primarily sought to guarantee the political stabil-ity essential for renewed foreign investment and economic growth. There was a new political climate, and in many respects Bolivia had closed the book on the tumultuous era that had begun after 1935. The great tin min-ing enterprise had collapsed in 1985. Although important, mining could no longer be the lifeblood of a more diversified and modern national economy. The recalcitrant labor movement, especially the once powerful miners’ union and Bolivian Labor Central, had largely been subdued.

In its place were powerful new forces. These were the grassroots organizations of the indigenous peoples and the peasantry and the national and regional unions of the militant coca growers. Connected to the coca/cocaine economy, they posed a formidable challenge to the state. How could civilian governments deal with these explosive grass-roots movements and still advance democracy? The resolution of this dilemma had become critical to the consolidation of electoral democ-racy and its deepening respect for civil and human rights.

The drug problem and the militancy of the peasantry and coca grow-ers has bedeviled every post-1982 civilian government. Paz Zamora responded with a new antidrug strategy. He attempted to divorce coca production from cocaine and drug trafficking and associate it with alternative development. He popularized the slogans “Coca no es cocaína” (Coca is not cocaine) and “Coca for development” at home and abroad. His antidrug policy ostensibly opposed—at least publicly—the “crimi-nalization” of coca production and its forcible eradication.

This tactical shift away from the more hard-line antidrug policy of Paz Estenssoro was unpopular in the United States. Paz Zamora’s gov-ernment was drawn deeper, nevertheless, into the full militarization of the drug-producing Chapare region of the country. Bolivia received record amounts of antinarcotics-related assistance from 1990 to 1993, despite the fact that the minister of interior and several key officials were removed for rumored drug connections. As Bolivia’s economic problems receded, the drug crisis loomed ever greater on the political horizon and colored the 1993 elections.

Ascendancy of the New MNRThe major parties and coalitions that competed in the 1993 elections included the MNR, a coalition of the MIR and ADN, and two populist parties that had emerged in the late 1980s. The first of these latter

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Resurgence of the Peasantry

In the late 1970s, a new peasant union, the Confederation of Peasant Unions of Bolivia (Confederacíon Sindical Unica de Trabajadores

Campesinos de Bolivia, or CSUTCB), was founded and became Bolivia’s largest umbrella organization of peasant unions. Until 1988, its leader was Genaro Flores, an Aymara who headed the indigenist party Tupac Katari Revolutionary Liberation Movement (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Katari de Liberación, or MRTKL). Confined to a wheelchair after García Meza’s paramilitary goons tried to assassinate him, Flores served as spokesman for the peasants.

The economic austerity programs imposed on the Bolivian economy pushed the country deeper into the drug crisis. Desperate miners and peasants turned to coca cultivation and the drug trade to survive. The government responded with eradication programs and militarization of the drug war. In the 1980s and 1990s, the indigenous and peasant move-ments coalesced to oppose the eradication and criminalization of coca production. Using direct action tactics like strategic roadblocks, hunger strikes, mass rallies with coca leaf “chew-ins,” marches, and occupations, the peasants forced the government to compromise.

Both economics and the indigenous culture encourage coca produc-tion. In the tropical regions, coca is the most easily grown, harvested,

The army discovers a Bolivian cocaine factory. (Peter McFarren photo)

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and marketed crop. And coca is the sacred leaf of the Aymara and the Quechua peoples, central to their religion, folklore, medicine, and social relations. The peasant majority identified coca with their unique national identity and saw the drug problem as not of their making. Federations of coca-leaf growers of the Chapare-Cochabamba, Yungas–La Paz, and Yapacaní–Santa Cruz regions turned coca cultivation into an issue over national sovereignty and the preservation of Andean culture.

Defense of coca cultivation unified the peasant movement behind the powerful regional and national Peasant Coca Growers’ Union. Over the years, the popular campesino leader Juan Evo Morales Ayma has become the premier representative of these cocaleros, or coca-leaf growers. Since 1988, as leader of the largest Chapare coca growers federation, Morales has passionately defended the farmers’ right to grow the sacred coca leaf, arguing that the cocaleros were not addicted to coca but to eating: They depended on the crop to survive. As their most influential spokes-man, Morales charged that the plight of the growers, who had seen plenty of eradication but little development, was being ignored.

The cocalero unions, meanwhile, have become very influential in the CSUTCB, which in turn has come to dominate the COB, much as the miners’ unions had in the past. Both the peasant and the labor movements have developed close ties to the parties of the left and the indigenous movement. In 1989, this alliance resulted in 7 percent of the national vote for the United Left (Izquierda Unida, IU) Party and gave the cocalero and campesino unions a voice in the National Congress. The leader of the CSUTCB, Felipe Quispe Huanca, known as “el Mallku” (eagle in Aymara), also heads the Pachakuti Indigenous Movement (Movimiento Indígena Pachakuti, MIP), a political party that competes with Morales’s Movement toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS).

Since 1997, when he was overwhelmingly elected the Chapare’s dep-uty, Morales has repeatedly attacked official drug enforcement policies in the legislature. In January 2002, majority lawmakers of the Chamber of Deputies (109 of the 130-member lower house of Congress) expelled Morales for serious ethical transgressions because of statements against the government’s antidrug policy. Widespread campesino protests in support of Morales and charges of interference by the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia, however, forced Morales’s reinstatement. In the 2002 elections, anti-Morales comments by the U.S. ambassador Manuel Rocha helped, rather than hurt, Morales’s bid for the presidency.

The battle for the coca leaf has had a major impact on the political mobilization and ascent of the peasantry and the empowerment of the indigenous peoples. Since a resurgent peasantry represents the larg-est voting bloc in the country, democratic governments have had to become more accountable to this radical constituency.

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parties was the Civic Solidarity Union (Unión Cívica de la Solidaridad, or UCS) of Max Fernández, a wealthy beer entrepreneur. The sec-ond was the Conscience of the Fatherland (Conciencia de Patria, or CONDEPA), led by Carlos Palenque, owner of a popular radio station. Both of these up-and-coming parties appealed to the marginalized and working-class voters, but they pulled votes away from the mainstream candidates, making it harder for a single candidate to win a majority.

Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada of the MNR was the victor, nevertheless, beating out Banzer for the second time. Sánchez de Lozada had lost the presidency in 1989, despite a plurality of the vote. He had become chief of the MNR in 1990 and was a passionate critic of Paz Zamora’s admin-istration. Finally taking over the presidency, he was determined to effect major structural reforms in governance, education, and the economy. As


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Constitutional Reform

Simón Bolívar created the first Bolivian constitution of 1826 and modeled it after his idea of Athenian democracy. This constitution

was in effect for only two years before it was modified in 1831. The sec-ond constitution replaced the lifetime presidency of Bolívar’s document with the more democratic four-year presidential term.

The 1831 constitution established the provision that a presidential candidate must win an absolute majority of the vote (50 percent plus one); otherwise the Congress would have to decide among the top three contenders. Given the instability of Bolivian party politics, this provision has been central in the majority of presidential contests ever since. And since the return to democracy in 1982, every president has been elected indirectly by the Bolivian Congress. This has produced tense and unexpected electoral outcomes.

In August 1994, Congress approved the Constitutional Amendments Law. Its 35 articles established direct elections for half of the members of the Chamber of Deputies from single-member districts. The term of office for presidents, members of Congress, and mayors was increased from four to five years, and the voting age was lowered to 18 years.

Reflecting changed political and global circumstances, especially the decreased role of the state apparatus, the reformed governing structure devolved more power to the regional and local levels. Article One of the constitution defined Bolivia as a multiethnic and pluricultural society. New provisions also created the office of an independent human rights ombudsperson to monitor democratic rights and liberties and Bolivia’s compliance with international human rights norms.

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a wealthy mine owner, Sánchez de Lozada favored the power of private enterprise and market capitalism, and his extensive privatization program eliminated many of the remaining vestiges of state capitalism, reversing to an even greater degree the legacy of the National Revolution.

A mastermind of Paz Estenssoro’s economic “shock therapy,” Sánchez de Lozada was committed to the NPE, and promised to continue its policies; however, he wanted to combine structural adjustments with democratic and legal reforms. To realize his goals, he allied with the UCS, the Tupac Katari Revolutionary Liberation Movement, and the leftist Free Bolivia Movement. This coalition guaranteed him a two-thirds majority in Congress and the passage of major constitutional and administrative reforms in 1994 and 1995.

Generally, the reforms focused on expanding participation in gov-ernment decision making and alleviating the suffering and inequality created by market-oriented economic policies. Especially important were reforms that addressed cultural rights and ethnic self-determination. Polling data had alerted Sánchez de Lozada to the importance and weight indigenous groups and issues had gained in Bolivian politics. Partly for this reason, he selected Víctor Hugo Cárdenas, an Aymara and leader of the indigenist Tupac Katari party, as his vice president. Once in office, Sánchez de Lozada sponsored constitutional reform, bilingual and multicultural education reforms, and several new agencies to over-see ethnic and gender issues.

The new, technocratic MNR of Sánchez de Lozada seemed to be pulling a page from the party’s past in its pursuit of modernization and development. However, Sánchez’s modernizing project sought to combine a cultural and political revolution with the structural and economic one. Two 1994 laws epitomized these dual, seemingly contradictory goals: the Law of Capitalization and the Law of Popular Participation. Capitalization meant the privatization of state enterprises like the YPFB, the national railroads, electricity, smelting foundries, telecommunications, and national airlines. The profits from the sales were partly slated for (and went toward) direct social investment and poverty reduction. Citing anthropological research, however, Kevin Healy and Susan Paulson question if the capitalization reforms achieved their intended consequences. The privatization program, which was to redis-tribute wealth to the people, actually benefited multinational corpora-tions, “leaving little or no money in the hands of the majority of the population” (Healy and Paulson 2000, 2, 12).

Popular participation involved a major devolution of decision mak-ing and budgetary autonomy to the local level. By redistricting and

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multiplying local governing units, more than 300 municipalities were recognized and established. It was especially important that indigenous villages and their traditional governing units, largely unincorporated in the past, were included. This decentralization has transformed the political landscape into one where 85 percent of the municipalities have rural (and often indigenous) majorities. Based on population, the new municipalities receive 20 percent of central government remittances to manage local development needs. Towns that had received nothing or a pittance in the past and had been forced to rely solely on municipal receipts in some cases multiplied their resource base 10 times over.

Regional counterparts and developmental experts continue to dis-agree about whether Bolivia’s neoliberal policies and innovative reforms will succeed in the long term. If they do, they have the potential to profoundly alter Bolivian politics. But critics such as Susan Paulson and Pamela Calla view Sánchez de Lozada’s popular participation and privatization reforms as a shaky marriage of “apparently irreconcilable political philosophies” (2000, 124). The radical new local structures have been plagued with corruption, mismanagement, inertia, and insufficient financial support. For some time, there has been a growing consensus in Bolivia and abroad that the neoliberal policies, despite the Sánchez reforms, have actually exacerbated the social and economic inequalities that they had promised to overcome.

Once again, Bolivia provided the region with a controversial and chal-lenging model. In 1985, the Paz Estenssoro government implemented a textbook economic stabilization, the so-called Bolivian miracle. In 1994, Sánchez de Lozada developed a strategy of political and economic restruc-ture that has been watched carefully by the rest of Latin America. Bolivia’s following president, Hugo Banzer Suárez, offered yet another Bolivian model to the region, his “zero coca” policy. This new plan pledged to end the country’s drug dependence in merely five years.

Banzer’s Final Presidency

Bread, Housing, Work.

Campaign slogan of Hugo Banzer, Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN) party presidential candidate, 1997

In 1997, Bolivians went to the polls for the fifth time since the return to formal democracy, and for the first time, the 1994 reforms of the consti-

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tution determined the electoral outcome. Newly elected candidates for president, Congress, and mayoral offices now served five years instead of four. Voters elected half the members of the Chamber of Deputies (65 of 130 deputies) in single-member districts by simple majority. A propor-tional representation system determined the rest. This was also the first time that Hugo Banzer won both the popular vote and actually achieved the presidency. The question is, Why did he finally win in 1997?

Bolivian voters seemed to want change. Opinion polls suggested a reaction against the privatizing trend of the Sánchez de Lozada years. In particular, the economically and politically marginalized felt alien-ated from the reforms and the corrupt government. With close to 70 percent of the population below the poverty line, Bolivians were most concerned about the economy, specifically unemployment, poverty, and low wages. Not surprisingly, parties of all persuasions depicted them-selves to be on the side of the marginalized and promised them relief.

With 10 political parties running, why did the electorate move fur-ther to the right? Several possible reasons may explain Banzer’s victory. In times of crisis, the Bolivian electorate has a strong tendency to favor

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Percentage Number of of Popular Congressional Vote Seats Candidate Party Received Apportioned

Hugo Banzer Suárez Nationalist Democratic 22 43 Action (ADN)

Juan Carlos Durán Nationalist Revolutionary 18 30 Movement (MNR)

Jaime Paz Zamora Leftist Revolutionary 17 30 Movement (MIR)

Remedios Loza Conscience of the 17 22 Alvarado Fatherland (CONDEPA)

Ivo Kuljis Civic Solidarity Union 16 23 (UCS)

Total of Valid 148 Votes Cast

Source: United States Central Intelligence Agency. “Bolivia.” The World Factbook 2000. Available online. URL: http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/wofact2000/index.html. Accessed November 30, 2009.

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conservative parties that emphasize nationalism, order, and discipline. The ADN blamed the MNR for poverty and unemployment. Claiming he would roll back political corruption, Banzer proposed the elimination of the privatization laws and contracts with foreign companies. He also pledged an expanded state role in credit, health, and housing and the total eradication of the coca/cocaine problem via alternative development.

The MNR, instead, insisted that privatization would help capitalize and regenerate the economy. Paz Zamora, the MIR candidate, was highly critical of liberal market economics and proposed a stronger state role. In the area of drugs, he proposed alternative development and a dialogue with the coca-leaf growers. The populist CONDEPA party focused on corruption and the humble majority’s fears of privatization and foreign investors. Of all the main parties competing, only CONDEPA’s presiden-tial candidate, Remedios Loza (popularly called “la chola Remedios”), had an indigenous, as well as populist, background. Although three of the vice presidential candidates represented populist indigenous sectors, on the whole, indigenous voices were poorly represented. This reality partly explains the general alienation of ethnic majorities from the elec-toral and party process and market reforms.

Bolivians saw the expensive media campaign as a “dirty war” among the three favored candidates. In televised debates and high-priced television spots, the incumbent president (although prohibited by the constitution from running himself) focused on personal attacks against Banzer and Paz Zamora rather than the issues. Banzer was character-ized as an unreformed dictator and Paz Zamora as a close friend of drug dealers. Voters were also reminded of the 1989 alliance between the two by the jingo “A vote for Jaime Paz is a vote for General Banzer.” Despite efforts, Banzer received a plurality of the popular vote, and after a con-gressional runoff election, Banzer was finally in office.

As his predecessors had done, Banzer first fashioned a powerful “mega-coalition” of the ADN with the MIR, the UCS, CONDEPA, and several smaller parties. This alliance assured his government the larg-est parliamentary majority since redemocratization (CONDEPA left the coalition in 1998) and still allowed him to enforce his conservative and authoritarian policies with legislative and international, especially U.S., backing.

Shortly after his election, Banzer initiated what he called a National Dialogue, in which he proposed a four-point program for his govern-ment. His administration was to rest upon four equal pillars: dignity, opportunity, equity, and institutionalization. Of these four, social equity ultimately proved impossible to attain. Although the government insti-


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tuted poverty-reduction initiatives, President Banzer did not reverse the privatization policies instituted by his predecessors. He deepened market reforms and forged additional and stronger ties with private and foreign investors.

The opportunity provided through economic development was also problematic. The economy fell into another severe crisis in 1999–2000, forcing an economic reactivation program. By the end of Banzer’s term in 2001 (Banzer left office a year early because of his declining health), the economy had recovered somewhat but had not achieved the goal of 7 percent growth. Institutionalization had focused on strengthening the judicial system and democracy, and these results were mixed as well. A reformed penal code and judicial system proved very harsh and very effective in arresting and prosecuting drug offenders. The reform, how-ever, was widely seen as a major impediment to further democratization and improved respect for human rights.

Coca, Economy, and Indigenous Culture

The coca leaf has had a central role in native economies and cul-tures of the Andes dating back 4,000 years to the region’s earli-

est civilizations. In the Inca Empire cultivation of coca was protected and regulated by the royal family, and the right to chew coca leaves was reserved for the highest nobility. Historians believe that mass consumption of coca followed the Spanish conquest and accompanied extensive forced Indian labor in the silver mines of Potosí. Only by chewing coca leaves were the Indians able to support the absolute darkness, extreme temperatures, brutal work, and chronic hunger that assailed them in the mines. Coca had a sedative effect on the stomach and physical pain.

Initially, the Spaniards considered coca chewing an unhealthy, danger-ous, and diabolical practice and tried to suppress its use. They eventually realized, however, that their prejudices were reducing the treasury, for without coca, the mitayos could not work the mines efficiently. Deprived of the vitamins that the coca leaf provided, many Indians had lost their teeth, were unable to chew, and consequently died. Coca provided an important economic as well as cultural function. Bolivia’s indigenous people of today believe that it still does.

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The fourth pillar, his Dignity Plan, was intended to restore the country’s dignity in the inter-national arena by means of the complete eradication of all illegal coca-leaf production in Bolivia. Banzer directed much of the renewed power of the state to real-ization of an active foreign policy agenda and his single-minded com-mitment to end the coca/cocaine scourge. His “zero coca” policy brought the government and the military into increasingly repres-sive and violent confrontations with the country’s coca growers and the powerful Cochabamba-Chapare unions. The last year of his presidency was disrupted fur-

ther by the first of the protests known as the Cochabamba Water Wars in 2000–01. The valley residents were up in arms against the water privatization contract with Bechtel, a powerful multinational corpora-tion. The old dictator, already on his last legs with terminal cancer, responded with force, handling down these crises to his successors. As a result, the government’s repressive tactics and violations of human rights quickly became the object of hemispheric and international criti-cism and threatened democratization.

Nevertheless, perhaps, as Paz Estenssoro will be remembered for his economic miracle, Banzer will be remembered for his “zero coca” policy. When he stepped down and transferred his mandate to Vice President Jorge Quiroga Ramírez in August 2001, President Banzer, like Paz Estenssoro over a decade earlier, announced to his constitu-ency and the world, “mission accomplished.” But the final word was far from in.

In 2001–02, more Water War protests against the government’s water privatization erupted when President Quiroga, a young U.S.-educated technocrat and free marketer, at first refused to nullify the contract with Bechtel. The privatization’s staggering increase in water rates angered Cochabamba’s largely poor mestizo and indigenous citizens, who viewed water as a natural birthright. At the same time, conflict and violence escalated between the military and peasant farmers in the


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Two Bolivian women miners taking a coca leaf–chewing break (Courtesy of Kathy S. Leonard)

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coca-growing regions of the Chapare and Yungas. Ultimately, Quiroga was forced to suspend both the water privatization contract and the vigorous anti-coca efforts that he had inherited from Banzer.

The drug problem and the endemic violence between the military and the coca growers continued to plague Banzer’s successors. If and how this seemingly intractable drug war is finally won will determine the future of Bolivian democracy and economic development. A clear example of the complex interplay was the 2002 national elections.

Elections of 2002The powerful prococa candidate Evo Morales demonstrated incredible voter support despite U.S. meddling in the 2002 presidential election. A recession and escalating campesino-military confrontations during the latter half of 2001 that spilled over into the six months leading up to the June 30 election posed a dilemma for the 11 candidates. Leading MNR contender and former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, whom pollsters had indicated was unpopular because of his government’s promarket reforms, promised jobs and a gentler hand in coca eradica-tion. The leftist Morales, representing the Movement toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS) promised to end U.S.-led coca eradi-cation altogether, stop payment on the national debt, and renationalize privatized enterprises. Other candidates, who also sounded populist antimarket themes, included the independent Manfred Reyes Villa, a former army captain and Cochabamba mayor and millionaire. Two popular mayors, the independent Ronald MacLean from La Paz and Santa Cruz’s Johnny Fernández of the UCS, also ran, while MIR’s Jaime Paz Zamora attempted a comeback.

In a country with 60 percent of the population below the poverty line and an outstanding $6 billion national debt, millions of dollars were spent on the campaign. (By one count, more than $5 million were applied to Sánchez de Lozada’s and Paz Zamora’s campaigns.) Furthermore, with the exception of Morales, who was called a Marxist and drug trafficker by opponents, all of the top four runners were embarrassed by corruption-related scandals during the campaign. As a result, apathy ran high; Bolivia’s 4 million voters seemed turned off by all the usual suspects from the traditional parties, which hoped to capitalize on the need for change by enlisting popular soccer players and folksingers for congressional tickets. Meanwhile, on the altiplano, Felipe Quispe and his Pachakuti Indigenous Movement represented the frustrated indigenous vote.

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With only miniscule support in the months before the election, Morales’s second-place finish was the big surprise. As analysts had predicted, remarks made days before the election by U.S. ambassador Manuel Rocha that U.S. aid could be jeopardized if a certain prococa leader were to be elected popularized Morales’s militant message. Indeed, none of the front runners received the necessary majority of the popular vote, so the outcome was decided in the Bolivian Congress, where a pact between the MNR and the MIR (including the UCS and ADN) made Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada the country’s next president. The irony of the outcome was that pre-electoral polls had indicated that the MNR candidate was the least favored by Bolivia’s voters. But


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Percentage of Number of the Popular Congressional Popular Vote Seats Candidate Party Vote Received Apportioned

Gonzalo National 624,126 23 47 Sánchez Revolutionary de Lozada Movement (MNR)

Evo Morales Movement 581,884 21 35 toward Socialism (MAS)

Manfred Reyes New Republican 581,163 21 27 Villa Force (NFR)

Jaime Paz Leftist 453,375 16 31 Zamora Revolutionary Movement (MIR)

Felipe Quispe Pachakuti 169,239 6 6 Indigenist Movement (MIP)

Total Valid Vote 2,778,808 93

Source: Corte Nacional Electoral. Available online. URL: http://www.cne.org.bo. Accessed September 27, 2002.

such seemed to be the way of Bolivian elections, as voters prepared for another five years of “Goni” and pacted democracy. In opposition to the ruling coalition were the antiestablishment, proindigenous, and prococa parties of Morales and Quispe, a polarizing and potentially ominous sign for Bolivian democracy. The presidency of Sánchez de Lozada did not survive 2003. Beginning in February, violent clashes between antigovernment and government forces over economic and coca eradication policies left more than 80 Bolivians dead and forced the president’s resignation on October 17.

Widespread protest coalesced in a monthlong “Gas War” against the government’s plan to export liquefied natural gas to the United States via Chilean ports. Strong nationalist sentiment and fears of exter-nal interference in Bolivia were key motivations behind the popular revolt. As provided by the constitution, Vice President Carlos D. Mesa Gisbert assumed the presidency and formed an emergency government. President Mesa, a journalist and noted historian, promised to hold a referendum on the gas export controversy and to call a constituent assembly to decide the future of Bolivia’s fragile democracy.

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10The Democratic Revolution of

Evo Morales (2003–2009)

We believe in a democratic revolution, an indigenous revolution, to claim back our land and all of our natural resources.

Evo Morales (Vazquez 2007)

By 2003, the militancy of Bolivia’s popular classes that had erupted in force in late 1999 could no longer be contained within the elitist

political order that had taken hold since the return to democratic rule in 1982. Two decades of neoliberal or market privatization policies had so impoverished Bolivia’s citizens, the majority of whom were of mixed or indigenous heritage, that they were fighting back. This renewed militancy and grassroots activism, in large part, also owed a debt to democratic consolidation and the constitutional reforms of 1994–95, which, for the first time, recognized the country’s rich multiethnic and pluricultural heritage and decentralized local and regional governance. Hundreds of new municipalities, the majority representing indigenous communities, now were able to exercise an unprecedented degree of administrative self-rule.

Despite the greater state repression that ended the decade of the nineties, the newly empowered and mobilized indigenous groups were able to unite with other grassroots social organizations to challenge the corrupt political establishment in the halls of Congress and directly in the streets. The confrontations escalated and between 2003 and 2005, massive street protests and blockades over natural resources, particu-larly water and natural gas, succeeded in derailing three presidencies.

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Not surprisingly, regional experts viewed Bolivia’s protracted governing crisis with alarm, and some even feared for the country’s long-term ter-ritorial integrity. However, their pessimistic characterizations of Bolivia as a failed state in its “last days” proved inaccurate, or at least prema-ture, as new protests with roots in the Water Wars and Gas Wars from 1999 to 2005 centered on regionalism and reform.

The December 2005 election of Evo Morales Ayma as Bolivia’s first dem-ocratically elected president of indigenous descent briefly renewed hope that governance by crisis and siege was over, but this heady optimism did not survive 2006. President Morales’s efforts to implement his inaugural promise to “refound” Bolivia soon unleashed a firestorm of conservative and regional opposition. The lowland eastern departments (similar to U.S. states) that represent 70 percent of the national territory and are col-lectively known as the Media Luna (Half Moon, or Crescent) demanded regional autonomy or self-rule and threatened outright secession.

Fierce disagreements over natural gas and oil, land reform, regional autonomy, and a new constitution provoked armed clashes across the country between 2006 and 2008. These were difficult years of near chaos and bloodshed over contested national and regional referenda on elected officials and draft charter amendments. Finally, on January 25, 2009, a new national constitution was approved by 61 percent of the voters. Yet this major achievement has not united the fractured country. The fundamental reason is opposition to radical reform.

President Morales is engaged in an all-out social revolution that threatens powerful economic and regional interests. Despite his popu-larity with the country’s indigenous majority, the forces of democracy and populism that brought Morales to office can also work to unseat him. Morales’s appeals to race and class have proven divisive and often unmanageable, and increasingly other indigenous leaders have dared to challenge him. However, in the December 6, 2009, elections man-dated by the new constitution, Evo Morales won handily, realizing even greater support than in 2005. Now, with a majority in Congress, the refounding could proceed, and the new administration could begin implementing the contentious new reforms.

The Mesa InterludeThe interim presidency of Vice President Carlos Diego Mesa Gisbert began abruptly on October 17, 2003, when President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who had been in office for only 15 months, fled the county. The immediate cause for the hasty resignation was the horrific violence


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of “Black October,” when the government’s security forces shot and killed demonstrators in La Paz who were protesting natural gas exports through Chile. The protests—the first in a cycle of confrontations known as the Gas Wars that disrupted the country into 2005—came to a head between September and October. Shocked and disheartened by the escalation in violence, Vice President Mesa broke ties with the president over the repression. The death toll by the end of Sánchez de Lozada’s rule was reported as 80 to 100 dead.

President Mesa had the country’s initial support. He was able to restore temporary order by promising to hold a national referendum on gas and oil policy and presidential elections in 2007. His popularity was based on the fact that he was not a politician—the reason the respected histo-rian and journalist had been on the ticket of the National Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, MNR) with Sánchez de Lozada in 2002. At first, because he was seen as an honest broker, Mesa was insulated from the partisan fray. However, Mesa’s lack of political experience and organizational support left him vulnerable to the protests over the privatization of natural resources—the Water Wars and the Gas Wars—that continued to convulse the country.

The referendum on the future of Bolivia’s extensive natural gas reserves was held on July 18, 2005. The results indicated that the majority of voters favored the nationalization of gas and oil resources and the repeal of Sánchez de Lozada’s promarket Hydrocarbons Law. However, the referendum’s intentionally complicated wording—it was composed of five murky questions that the majority of voters answered affirmatively—skirted outright nationalization. The high abstention rate (around 40 percent) and spoiled or blank ballots suggested that most voters remained confused by both the process and the outcome. In the end, and despite the official spin, the referendum failed to diffuse the Gas Wars and restore stability. In January 2005, a beleaguered Mesa offered his resignation to Congress (which refused to accept) as contin-ued agitation over gas policy spilled over into Bolivia’s Water Wars.

The wars over water and gas succeeded in cutting short Mesa’s presi-dency. In May 2005, more than 80,000 demonstrators, in what became known as the second Gas War, closed down La Paz with blockades, strikes, and street battles against the police. Most protestors came from the Aymara communities of El Alto; they demanded the nationalization of gas and water. Spurring them on were prominent indigenous figures: Evo Morales, leader of the coca growers’ federation; Felipe Quispe, head of the peasants’ union and indigenous party; and Abel Mamani, leader of El Alto neighborhood committees and El Alto Water War protests.

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THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION OF EVO MORALES

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Bolivia’s Water Wars (1999–2005)

Political resistance in Bolivia has often centered on access to natural resources and their protection—one vital resource being water.

In rural areas, 60 percent of the population lacks access to drinking water and 90 percent may not have access to water for irrigation. Even in some major cities water service has been precarious. Encouraged by World Bank development experts and their privatization agenda, President Hugo Banzer’s government passed legislation in 1999 to privatize water in major cities and signed contracts with transnational corporations to provide the services at a substantial profit.

Nationwide, popular demonstrations against water privatization, which became known as Bolivia’s Water Wars, occurred between 1999 and 2005. The first Water War broke out in the city of Cochabamba in a series of protests against Aguas del Tunari, a transnational consortium (U.S., German, and Spanish interests) and subsidiary of the U.S. Bechtel Corporation, which had privatized the arid valley’s urban water system. Cochabamba had more than doubled its population between the 1970s and 1990s, but less than half its population had access to drinking water, and even then it was sporadic and unreliable. Water privatiza-tion was believed to be the solution, but it was implemented with little transparency and citizen input or even concern for those opposed. The contract favored the transnational companies at the expense of the local residents.

The Aguas del Tunari contract prohibited private wells and rainwater collection and imposed a 200 to 400 percent increase in water prices in Cochabamba. Reportedly, even citizens who were not supplied with water were being billed for the service. Civic and neighborhood committees quickly organized into the Coordination for the Defense of Water and Life (La Coordinadora), which was led by Oscar R. Olivera, head of the city’s Federation of Factory Workers. In December 1999, more than 15,000 irate demonstrators flooded the city’s center, and on February 4, 2000, a two-day street war resulted in 175 persons injured. On April 4, 2001, more than 30,000 people protested in Cochabamba. Then President Banzer responded with martial law on April 8 as demonstrations spread to the cities of El Alto and La Paz. Six people were killed and dozens injured in protests. On April 10, the government canceled the water contract only to discover that Aguas del Tunari had already packed up and left the country.

There were additional demonstrations in the Cochabamba Water Wars when Olivera was arrested in November 2001 and, in 2002, when

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Aguas del Tunari/Bechtel sought $25 million in damages against Bolivia before the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Olivera even led a group of 125 protest-ers to Bechtel’s corporate headquarters in San Francisco in April 2002. Finally, on January 19, 2006, the Bolivian government and the share-holders of Aguas del Tunari announced a settlement that imposed no monetary damages.

Bolivia’s second major Water War protests erupted in the highlands in late December 2004 and January 2005. Poor residents of the popu-lous indigenous city of El Alto (overlooking La Paz) took on Aguas del Illimani, a transnational consortium and subsidiary of the French Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux corporation that had provided water services since privatization in 1997. Encouraged by Cochabamba’s Water Wars and the October 2003 Gas War protests against Sánchez de Lozada, the combative and predominately Aymara residents of El Alto shut down the city in anger over the spotty service and high rates. Some 80,000 families (roughly 10 to 11 percent of the population) accused the com-pany of denying them water, and many residents who typically survived on a dollar a day faced new connection rates of 400 times that.

The El Alto Water War was led by Abel Mamani, the Aymara presi-dent of the Federation of Neighborhood Councils of El Alto (Federación de Juntas Vecinales, FEJUVE). The interim government of Carlos Mesa, perhaps learning from experience and fearing bloodshed, promised to cancel the consortium’s concession in January 2005. However, the gov-ernment’s delay and aborted attempt to structure a new public-private partnership with the consortium in order to avoid international litiga-tion renewed the protests. Massive demonstrations, hunger strikes, and roadblocks continued into April. Finally, in 2006, more than a year after Mesa left office, Aguas del Illimani’s operations in El Alto/La Paz ended.

Political resistance during Bolivia’s Water Wars had major national and international repercussions. At home, the populist anger cut short four presidencies. Abroad, horrific scenes in newspapers and across the Internet of police teargassing and shooting people demonstrating for water rights focused everyone’s sympathetic attention on the struggles in Bolivia.

For Bolivia’s impoverished majorities, elite corruption and exploit-ative globalization were to blame for their water woes. The country’s indigenous and revolutionary heritage viewed water as a natural and human right that the state has the obligation to protect, not market to foreign corporations as a commodity for private profit. This is also

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On May 6, the Bolivian Congress enacted a new Hydrocarbons Law that fell short of outright nationalization but increased the state’s share of oil and gas royalties. When popular unrest remained unabated, President Mesa resigned in early June. Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé, head of the judi-ciary and further down the succession, became president a few days later when both the presidents of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies declined the office. Rodríguez immediately called for December elections.

First Indian President

Our constitution says that Bolivia is a multiethnic democratic country, but that is only in theory. If we win we have to change the country, not only in theory but in reality.

Evo Morales (Vera-Zavala 2005, online)

In a November 2005 preelectoral interview, candidate Evo Morales con-fidently explained his agenda for a future government. “The Constituent Assembly is our number-one priority . . . The majority of people in this country—people from more than 30 indigenous groups—did not par-ticipate in the foundation of Bolivia in 1825. We have to refound Bolivia


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(continued)

the perspective in the international community. The United Nations Millennium Goals to end poverty and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights consider water a limited and vital natural resource for the maintenance of life and dignity. In no small way, then, Bolivia’s Water Wars initiated a debate over rights and water privatization policies elsewhere in the developing world.

Sources: Assies, Willem. “David versus Goliath in Cochabamba: Water Rights, Neoliberalism and the Revival of Social Protest in Bolivia.” Latin American Perspectives 30 (2003): 14–13; Olivera. Oscar R., Cochbamba! Water in Bolivia (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2004); ———. “Interview: The Fight for Water and Democracy, An Interview with Oscar Olivera,” Multinational Monitor 21, no 6 (June 2000). Available online. URL: http://multina-tionalmonitor.org/mm2000/00june/interview.html. Accessed March 20, 2009; Frontline/World. “Bolivia—Leasing the Rain timeline: Cochabamba Water Revolt.” PBS. Available online. URL: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bolivia/timeline.html. Accessed March 20, 2009.

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in order to end the colonial state, to live united in diversity, to put all our resources under state control, and to make people participate and give them the right to make decisions” (Vera-Zavala 2005). Morales’s political program consisted of three central goals: nationalization of oil and gas, a constituent assembly to redraft the country’s constitution and provide more rights and power to “original peoples” (pueblos origi-narios), and a national referendum on regional autonomy.

On December 18, 2005, Juan Evo Morales Ayma, 47 years old and from a tiny Altiplano village in the department of Oruro, swept the elec-tion with 54 percent of the popular vote. Evo Morales became Bolivia’s first democratically elected president of indigenous heritage. Most Bolivians and international observers went further, describing Morales as the country’s first “Indian” president. Still, some questioned Morales’s claim to Indian identity in the controversy over his governance that fol-lowed because he was not fluent in an indigenous language (although he spoke Aymara as a child) and adopted cholo or mestizo manners and culture. Among critics were Aymara leaders Felipe Quispe Huanca of the

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Aymara-speaking yatiris (ritual specialists) perform a ch’alla (ritual offering) over miniature objects that represent the wishes of buyers at La Paz’s Alasitas (“Buy Me”) Fair at noon on January 24, 2006, a few days after President Morales’s inauguration. (Photo © Elayne Zorn, 2006)

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Pachakuti Indigenous Movement and former vice president Víctor Hugo Cárdenas. On the other hand, Morales’s mostly white opponents in the eastern lowlands pejoratively characterized him as “that Indian.”

These questions of identity exemplify the complexity of race and class in Bolivia. In the last official census (2001), 62 percent of Bolivians


Percentage Percentage of Valid of Total Candidate Party Votes Votes VotesCast

Evo Morales Movement 1,544,374 53.74 49.78 Ayma toward Socialism (MAS)

Jorge Quiroga Democratic and 821,745 28.59 26.49 Ramírez Social Power (Podemos)

Samuel Doria National Unity 224,090 7.80 7.22 Medina Front (UN)

Michiaki Nationalist 185,859 6.47 5.99 Nagatani Revolutionary Movement (MNR)

Felipe Quispe Pachakuti 61,948 2.16 2.00 Huanca Indigenist Movement (MIP)

Total Valid 2,873,801 100.00 92.63 Votes

Blank Votes 124,046 4.00

Nullified Votes 104,570 3.37

Total Votes Cast 3,102,417 100.00

Registered Voters 3,671,152

Voter Turnout 84.51Source: Corte Nacional Electoral. Boletín Estadística. Elecciones Presidenciales en Latinoamérica. Unidad de Análisis e Investigación. Área de Educación Ciudadana. Junio de 2007, Año III, No 1, pp. 1–8. Available online. URL: http://www.cne.org.bo/centro_doc/bol_estadistico/bol_est1_III.pdf. Accessed March 22, 2009.

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over 15 years of age self-identified as indigenous, indicating that being Indian was not simply a question of race but also included social and cultural traits. Before the 1952 National Revolution, to be Indio, or “Indian,” invited social disrepute and exclusion, and despite revolu-tionary reforms that banned the worst abuses, racial prejudice and discrimination continued. Even after the 1994 constitutional reforms that recognized Bolivia’s multiethnic heritage, being of (and claiming) indigenous descent compromised one’s social standing and prospects for success. Morales’s election and embrace of indigenous identity made being Indian a source of pride.

A Historic LandslideHow Evo Morales won the 2005 election was also historic: He achieved an unheard-of 54 percent of the popular vote—an absolute majority. To fully appreciate this novel feat, consider that Bolivia’s electoral pro-cedures demanded that a candidate receive an absolute majority (50 percent plus 1 vote) to win in the first round of voting. In past elec-tions, presidential contests were decided in the National Congress by indirect second-round or run-off elections between the top two or three contenders. Rarely did the first round of voting deliver even a simple majority. Morales’s landslide, in which he outdistanced his closest chal-lenger by 25 percent, marked the very first time that a Bolivian presi-dent was elected outright by absolute majority. The election’s impressive 85 percent voter turnout—the highest in 25 years—was also a strong indication of Bolivian democracy at work.

Although Morales’s electoral landslide was due in part to populist rage against elite misrule and corruption, the hundreds of autonomous organizations and movements, which emerged on all levels of a society determined to change things, were essential to his victory. These new social movements that were organized to protect the rights of excluded groups and create a more democratic form of citizenship directly chal-lenged the country’s bastions of power and wealth. They helped create a uniquely Bolivian brand of democratic populism.

Evo Morales, the indigenous leader of the peasant coca growers union (the cocaleros), is no political newcomer. He only narrowly lost the 2002 presidential election and has been a colorful, anties-tablishment figure for more than a decade, a style he has continued as president. His unofficial indigenous inauguration on January 21, 2006, at the top of the Kalasasaya Temple at the archaeological ruins of Tiwanaku, presented the world with probably the most spectacular

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Andean ceremony to be held there since ancient times. Tens of thou-sands of well-wishers, the majority of indigenous descent, had gath-ered to witness Morales’s symbolic investiture and ritual blessing. Wearing a wreath of coca leaves and attired in ceremonial garments of the type Tiwanakan priests and nobility may have worn more than a thousand years ago, Morales gave thanks to the Andean deity Pachamama, or Mother Earth. And holding a condor-headed staff of precious metals—a powerful symbol of indigenous rule—Morales called out for national unity (Zorn 2009).


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Populism, Social Movements, and Democracy

The traditional political concept of populism is experiencing a revival in Latin America. Some academics have even coined the

term neopopulism to differentiate the old from the new variety. Typically populism has been understood as a top-down form of social and political mobilization around a dominant personality or charismatic leader who represents the needs and frustrations of excluded groups. However, in Bolivia it is more a bottom-up phenomenon and autonomous expres-sion of popular resistance to privatization and globalization.

Bolivian populism also reflects the resurgence of indigenous identity and the empowerment of the country’s Indian majority. This empower-ment was possible because of political reforms and the expansion of civil society and grassroots social movements in the form of civic com-mittees and social self-help organizations. These new social movements united multiple interest groups and strata of society with a common grievance and objective. They largely replaced the once powerful unions, which were decimated after 1985, and the traditional political parties.

Bolivia’s social movements opened up political space for more radi-cal parties, such as the Movement toward Socialism and the Pachakuti Indigenist Movement, and alternative forms of organization and repre-sentation. By giving voice to popular and excluded groups, social move-ments have “democratized democracy.” The Water Wars and Gas Wars were won because of mass movements such as the Coordination for the Defense of Water and Life and the Federation of Neighborhood Councils of El Alto. These democratizing developments directly contrib-uted to the election of Evo Morales and enabled his style of populist leadership.

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At his official inauguration in La Paz the next day, Evo Morales received the presidential medal, staff of office, and red, yellow, and green tricolor sash. President Morales did not select formal business attire for the Western ceremony but a black alpaca jacket embellished with handwoven panels of traditional Andean textiles. Later, in his many state visits abroad, Morales became famous for the unpretentious wool “Evo sweater” of red, white, and blue stripes (Zorn 2009). These distinctive forms of dress share a central purpose: They project Evo’s indigenous identity and populist image as a man of the people.

Populist Democracy ChallengedPresident Morales is a true populist and democratic leader. His elec-tion brought about a peaceful and democratic power transition from Bolivia’s nonindigenous ruling elite to its predominately Andean indigenous majority. It culminated five years of populist revolt and provided President Morales with the national mandate to implement sweeping reforms, in effect, a second Bolivian social revolution. His new agenda for political reform and socioeconomic redistribution spe-cifically addressed the demands of the popular coalitions and social movements. And despite the turmoil and sporadic violence between his supporters and opponents, President Morales has respected the rule of law and the democratic process. In the national referendums held from 2006 to 2009, he has retained the support of the majority of Bolivians.

President Morales’s cabinet appointments have been inclusive of gender, class, and ethnicity, reflecting the country’s diversity. In the Chamber of Deputies, his left-of-center party, the Movement toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS) commands the necessary majority to pass important reform legislation. In the Senate, where opposition parties outnumber the MAS government by three seats, his support is weaker. In fact, the ongoing instability and rounds of regional and national referendums indicate that rather than being too powerful, Morales may actually lack sufficient power to readily pass and imple-ment his reforms, especially on the regional level.

The central government’s inability to control more local and regional politics is the direct result of important decentralization reforms that democratized governance. The constitutional reforms of 1994 and 1995, specifically the Law of Popular Participation (Ley de Participación Popular, LPP), strengthened the municipal and local levels of govern-ment, providing these with more autonomy and funding. The Law of Civic Associations and Indigenous Peoples reform also extended

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legal recognition to Territorial Base Organizations (Organizaciones Territoriales de Base, OTB) or local organizations and institutions, such as ayllus (traditional indigenous communities), peasant groups, and neighborhood associations. Municipalities and OTBs were given direct control over elections, policy making, and budgets. This devolution of power and governance was especially important for the OTBs because it allowed indigenous groups to follow their customs and traditions in the selection of their leaders and political representatives. In effect, this reduced the influence of national parties that had controlled the nomi-nation process and also weakened the influence of the central authori-ties (Conroy 2007).

At the departmental level, the central government retained its influence through the appointment of prefects. However, additional constitutional reforms in 2004 established the direct election of departmental prefects or state governors, allowing regional actors more autonomy and political power. The prefects of the country’s nine regions or departments were elected for the first time in December 2005. Only three of the nine pre-fects represented the MAS, creating a potential problem for the Morales administration—later realized by the concerted regional opposition to his policies. Even before taking office, President Morales confronted a lineup of state governors ready to block his reform agenda.


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2005 Political Party Representation in Bolivian National Congress

Seats in Seats in Chamber Total Seats in Party Senate of Deputies Congress

Movement toward 12 72 84 Socialism, MAS

Democratic Social Power, 13 43 56 PODEMOS

National Unity Front, UN 1 8 9

Nationalist Revolutionary 1 7 8 Movement, MNR

Total 27 130 157Sources: Corte Nacional Electoral. Boletín Estadística. Elecciones Presidenciales en Latinoamérica. Unidad de Análisis e Investigación. Área de Educación Ciudadana. Junio de 2007, Año III, No 1, pp. 1–8. Available online. URL: http://www.cne.org.bo/centro_doc/bol_estadistico/bol_est1_III.pdf. Accessed March 22, 2009; Morales, Waltraud Q. “Bolivia,” pp. 556–588. In Politics of Latin America: The Power Game. 3d ed. Edited by Harry E. Vanden and Gary Prevost (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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In the departments of La Paz, Beni, and Pando, the opposition PODEMOS party won the prefectures, and in both Tarija and Santa Cruz, regional and autonomy parties seized control. The departments that united in opposition to Morales and demanded more power devolution became known as the Media Luna (Half Moon) because their combined territorial boundaries formed a crescent configuration in the eastern por-tion of the country. The Media Luna included the four lowlander depart-ments of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, and Tarija, and at times these four were joined by the valley departments of Chuquisaca and Cochabamba to form the Media Luna Ampliada (Enlarged Half Moon) region.

However, the Constituent Assembly, elected on July 2, 2006, to redact and approve a new constitution, was dominated by Morales supporters. Although this pro-government majority was an asset for Morales, it also led to major disruptions and confrontations, and even violence and a few deaths, during and surrounding the chaotic and rancorous assembly’s sessions. Unfortunately, the regional, ethnic, and class tensions that frag-mented the assembly mirrored the divisions on the departmental level, where the central government encountered strong opposition, primarily

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The walls of this Trinidad dwelling are covered with pro-Evo graffiti indicating that Chuquisaca and Beni support Morales. (Courtesy of Annabelle Conroy)


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Corte Nacional Electoral. Resultados. Asamblea Constituyente y Referéndum sobre Autonomias 2006. Documentos de Información Pública. 2006, No. 4, pp. 1–24. Available online. URL: http://www.cne.org.bo/centro_doc/separatas/acr2006_cartilla_resultados.pdf. Accessed March 22, 2009.

over land reform, energy policy, and regional autonomy. In fact, the terri-torial distribution of the election results for the 255 representatives to the Constituent Assembly basically reinforced the regional east-west divide of pro-Morales and MAS constituencies, versus those sympathetic to the Media Luna’s autonomy agenda.

At the same time that the assembly was elected, Bolivians also voted on a national referendum on departmental autonomy. The ref-erendum presented voters with one fairly convoluted question (here paraphrased): It asked if they agreed that the Constituent Assembly

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Results of 2006 Constituent Assembly Elections and Autonomy Referendum

Number MAS PODEMOS Percent Representatives Affiliated Party Affiliated Yes Percent Elected to Represen- Represen- Department Vote No Vote Assembly tatives tatives

Chuquisaca 38 62 23 14 15

La Paz 27 73 50 32 7 (6)

Cochabamba 37 63 35 23 6

Oruro 25 75 20 13 3

Potosí 27 73 29 18 (6) 2

Tarija 61 39 20 10 1 (8)

Santa Cruz 71 29 44 20 18 (3)

Beni 74 26 20 3 10 (7)

Pando 58 42 14 4 8

Total 255 137 60Sources: Corte Nacional Electoral. Asamblea Constituyente y Referéndum 2006. Documento de Información Pública. No. 1, Mayo, 2006, pp. 1–12. Available online. URL: http://www.cne.org.bo/centro_doc/separatas/acr2006_sep2.pdf. Accessed March 22, 2009; ———. Resultados. Asamblea Constituyente y Referéndum sobre Autonomias 2006. Documentos de Información Pública. 2006, No 4, pp. 1–24. Available online. URL: http://www.cne.org.bo/centro_doc/separatas/acr2006_cartilla_resultados.pdf. Accessed March 22, 2009.

Note: A large number of parties and civic associations fielded candidates for the assembly, but for simplicity only the MAS and PODEMOS are shown. Votes for other political-civic groups further reinforced the polarization; where significant, the third-highest party’s vote is given in parentheses, according to its ideological alignment.

could establish the procedures for departmental autonomy, which would come into effect in the departments where the referendum had been approved by the majority of voters as soon as the new constitu-tion was enacted, so that regional authorities could be directly elected and given executive authority to control the administrative and eco-nomic resources as established by the new constitution. Voters were to respond with a simple “Yes” or “No.”

The results of the referendum mirrored the partisan and regional polar-ization already pronounced in the 2005 presidential and 2006 Constituent Assembly elections. The eastern lowland departments of the Media Luna overwhelmingly voted in favor of autonomy, and the western highlands heavily favored against autonomy. The east-west division tracked the par-tisan and ideological polarization reflected in votes for the socialist MAS party and the promarket, conservative PODEMOS party.

The Regional Autonomy StruggleThe political and regional polarization evident in the flurry of elec-tions and referendums since 2005 should not be surprising. Indeed, the


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The main plaza in Tarija displays the red-and-white flag of the department and a banner of the “Sí” vote for autonomy. (Courtesy of Annabelle Conroy)

urban elites of the resource-rich eastern departments had lobbied for greater decentralization and regional autonomy since the 1980s. By the 2002 election, regional, ethnic, and ideological divisions were already evident and became more pronounced by the organized opposition to Morales’s election and his indigenist and reform agenda. This indicates that regionalism alone does not explain Bolivia’s current polariza-tion and instability. Instead, regional autonomy is symptomatic of the intense dissatisfaction and frustration of eastern lowlanders with the new social and political order.

Relatively impotent to overturn the election or block Morales’s reforms on the national level, the Media Luna agribusiness and politi-cal elites employed autonomy and complicated legal and constitutional provisions to insulate their regional power base and economic inter-ests from encroachments by the central government and indigenous majority. However, when legal recourse failed, the opposition increas-ingly turned to direct street action—roadblocks, demonstrations, and mass social mobilization—to confront the Morales government. Since Morales’s supporters used the same tactics to defend the government and advance its policies, the country was engulfed in chaos and vio-lence for most of 2007 through 2009.

Regional opposition and autonomy have been centered in the city and department of Santa Cruz and orchestrated by the powerful Pro–Santa Cruz Civic Committee (Comité Cívico Pro–Santa Cruz, CPSC), a citizen organization largely composed of the wealthy Cruceño entrepre-neurs, cattle barons, and agribusiness elite. Also, the Union of Cruceño Youth (Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, UJC), a militant student group, has manned the front lines of the autonomy struggle there. The National Democratic Council (Consejo Nacional Democrático, CONALDE), a coalition of five opposition prefects and their departmental civic com-mittees, coordinated the antigovernment strikes and confrontations across the southern and eastern region in 2008.

The fact that the region holds one of Bolivia’s last remaining natural resources and a major export—oil and natural gas—is no coincidence. The Gas Wars of 2003 and 2005 had heated up the autonomy dispute; the lowlanders had strongly supported energy privatization. Now after President Morales increased the country’s hydrocarbons revenue by “nationalization” of the industry in May 2006, the battle over the wind-fall oil and gas money further intensified the regional struggle. The Media Luna departments declared autonomy in December 2007 and passed statutes to keep two-thirds of the tax revenues. Organized oppo-sition to the government’s plan to use a percentage of the Direct Tax

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on Hydrocarbons (Impuesto Directo a los Hidrocarburos, IDH) to fund old-age pensions ignited major conflict during the latter half of 2008. A key demand of the autonomistas (autonomy supporters) has been greater departmental control and a greater percentage of the income generated by hydrocarbons and other resources (land, hardwoods, and semiprecious stones) located in their territory.

In the last two decades, Bolivia’s economic development has centered in the subtropical and tropical southeastern lowlands. Much of the country’s political power and natural resources flowed into the hands of the predominantly white lowlander elite. The struggle between the highlanders (Kollas) and lowlanders (Cambas), and pro- and anti-Morales supporters, has inflamed regional and racist tensions. The autonomy conflict, however, is primarily about economics. In addition to natural resources, the fight is over land reform and its redistribution to poor small farmers. In the Media Luna, land is highly concentrated in the hands of a few powerful timber and cattle barons and soybean producers. The new constitution includes a contested article that


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The graffiti on this Santa Cruz city wall support the fiercely pro-autonomy prefect Rubén Costas Aguilera and the Union of Cruceño Youth (Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, UJC). The second line reads, “Long live the Camba Nation.” (Courtesy of Annabelle Conroy)

reduces these holdings by half. The national referendum in January 2009 resolved the issue and approved the disputed article.

Over the last 100 years, the eastern region has spawned a number of secession movements, and its residents, especially the more prosper-ous ones, see themselves as the “other,” “white,” Bolivia and resent the indigenous characterization of the country. Eastern lowlanders sport their own flag and call themselves the Camba Nation (Nación Camba). In turn, the highlanders, or Kollas, fly the wiphala, the seven-colored

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The May Day “Nationalization”

On May 1, 2006, President Morales kept one of his central cam-paign promises: to nationalize Bolivia’s hydrocarbons. At issue was

some 25 to 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and potentially some $70 billion in future revenues—no one seemed too sure. To their peril, two previous presidents (Sánchez de Lozada in the first Gas War and Mesa in the second Gas War) had failed to heed the mass popular sentiment for nationalization. More than 80 percent of voters (concentrated in the highland departments) favored nationalization in the convoluted 2004 referendum. Many feared that absent state control the wealth from one of Bolivia’s last major natural resources would be squandered and largely benefit foreign energy companies.

Morales declared to the exultant crowds that “the state recovers ownership, possession and total and absolute control,” which would fall to the revitalized Bolivian State Petroleum Enterprise (YPBF). However, the May Day decree did not really effect a true nationalization or confiscation of privately owned foreign properties. Rather, it was a “symbolic nationalization” because it forced a contract renegotiation with companies doing business in Bolivia and wishing to continue to do so. By the end of October, the major oil companies—Brazil’s Petrobras, the Spanish-Argentine Repsol, British Gas and British Petroleum, French Total, and U.S. Exxon Mobil—had all signed new agreements. As a con-sequence, Bolivia increased its share of revenue to 60 percent in minor fields and from 50 percent to 82 percent in major fields.

The new hydrocarbon policy was a great success: It more than doubled Bolivia’s revenues from oil and gas from 5 percent of GDP in 2004 to 13 percent of GDP in 2006. Instead of approximately $300 mil-lion, the country earned more than $2 billion annually, providing a fiscal surplus through 2008.

rainbow flag that symbolizes the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Still, the Media Luna departments are also home to dozens of indige-nous groups of the various Amazonian and Tupi-Guaraní forest Indians. These lowland Indians have been systematically oppressed and margin-alized for as long as historians care to remember.

In the autonomy fight, divide-and-conquer tactics have attempted to split the indigenous vote and turn lowlander Indians against highlander indigenous groups. However, in the last two decades the Landless Movement (Movimiento sin Tierra, MST), heavily composed of the eastern peasants and indigenous peoples, has gathered momentum and been heartened by the indigenous resurgence in the rest of the country. Morales’s socialist policies and aggressive land reform will test whether lowlander Indian loyalties and interests favor regional autonomy or ethnocultural autonomy.

Indigenous autonomy is the other side of the autonomy struggle, one that is unpopular with the Media Luna elites. The autonomy of Original Peoples provides greater self-rule and cultural and economic rights to Bolivia’s diverse indigenous communities. Articles in the new 2009 con-


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An indigenous woman carries the seven-colored wiphala (rainbow flag), which symbolizes the indigenous peoples of the Americas, at Tiwanaku on the day before Evo Morales’s inauguration as president on January 22, 2006. (Photo © Elayne Zorn, 2006)

stitution significantly extend earlier decentralization reforms that ben-efited the country’s indigenous groups and increased lowland peasant and indigenous organizations. Among those aggressively lobbying for

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The Wiphala

Composed of Aymara words that mean “flag,” the wiphala is the sym-metrical and square, seven-colored rainbow flag that has become

the symbol of brotherhood for the indigenous peoples of the Americas and pro-indigenous movements in the Andes. In addition to being an emblem of Amerindian unity and solidarity, it symbolizes the indigenous struggle and resistance in highland Bolivia and neighboring Andean coun-tries against oppression. Its origins are disputed, with some attributing it to both ancient Tiwanaku and the Inca Empire and Peruvian city of Cuzco. Historically, it was considered a subversive symbol, and the Spanish colo-nizers and postindependence governing elites banned its display.

The flag is square in contrast to rectangular Western emblems, and consists of 49 smaller squares—all of which symbolize the equality, equity, harmony, solidarity, and reciprocity of indigenous peoples and their multicultural diversity. Its iconography is complicated and reflects Andean moral principles, cultural rituals, cosmology, and the ancient indigenous calendar. The wiphala is also related to the indigenous national emblem—Pusinsuyo, or Tawantinsuyo—as the unity of the four suyos, or regions, of the ancient Andean First Nations. Each of these regions is represented by the colors in the wiphala: The color for the Antisuyu is green; the Cuntisuyo, yellow; the Qullasuyu, white; and the Chinchaysuyu, red (Katari.org and Andean First Nations Council).

The use of the wiphala by Indian communities exploded in Bolivia in the 1970s with rural peasant mobilizations and the resurgence of indigenous movements. The Amerindian flag has been present at all the cultural events and demonstrations in Bolivia, especially since the election of Evo Morales, and it was very prominent at his indigenous inauguration at Tiwanaku. The new 2009 Bolivian constitution mandates that the wiphala fly alongside the national tricolor (red, yellow, green) flag of Bolivia on all public buildings. Not everyone was pleased with the order, especially in the eastern departments, and many Bolivians had no clear understanding of the wiphala’s meaning.

Sources: Katari.org. “La Wiphala como expression de unidad e igualdad.” Available online. URL: http://katari.org/wiphala/unidad.htm. Accessed April 3, 2009; Andean First Nations Council. “Wiphala.” Available online. URL: http://www.pusinsuyu.com/english/html/wiphala.html. Accessed April 3, 2009.

their members’ interests are the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Bolivia (Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas del Oriente Boliviano, CIDOB); Assembly of Guaraní People (Asamblea del Pueblo Guaraní, APG); and Aid for Indigenous Peasants of Eastern Bolivia (Apoyo para el Campesino-Indígena del Oriente Boliviano, APCOB). Critics of indigenous (as opposed to regional) autonomy argue that this constitutional provision will further balkanize the country. One thing seems certain, it will complicate attempts by either central or regional authorities to influence and control indigenous groups as had been done in the past.

The Constitutional Crisis

Brothers and sisters, the colonial state ends here.

Evo Morales (BBC News, January 26, 2009)

The Bolivian constitutional crisis has primarily been about authentic democratic representation and effective state governance. In pursuing these ends, the debate since Morales’s election has centered on what direction the country should take and how the Bolivian state and its relationship with the economy should be organized. The struggle has involved two competing socioeconomic systems: a version of the social-ist model inherited from the 1952 National Revolution, and the capital-ist neoliberal model of the last two decades.

The 2009 constitution has decided the issue in favor of the former and restructured representation and governance around indigenous autonomy and socialist and communitarian values. But the protracted contestation may not be over. The next big question is whether this latest represen-tational, economic, and administrative reorganization of the state can be implemented without more conflict and violence. And further ahead, the question is whether the constitution’s major structural changes can and will persist beyond the era of a Morales-style populism.

It is important to remember what started this process. Control of the state and economy by a corrupt few had disadvantaged Bolivia’s poor and indigenous majority. The established parties largely ignored their needs and demands. So these excluded groups organized and increased their political participation, electing more indigenous and social- movement representatives to Congress since the 1990s. But without a


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legislative majority, the conservative political establishment was able to block their demands for fundamental constitutional reforms. Frustrated and unable to realize peaceful structural change, these progressive groups turned to popular insurrection. The establishment’s unstable and unresponsive governing system eventually broke down under the assault. Although Morales’s election ended the civil unrest from 2000 to 2005, his government initiated a lengthy constitutional struggle over the country’s future political and economic order.

The constitutional crisis began with the election of the Constituent Assembly in July 2006. Tasked to write the new constitution, the assem-bly was inaugurated on August 6 and began its deliberations. The 255 delegates—the majority from indigenous and peoples’ organizations—focused on two broad areas: greater representational openness and transparency in government and an increase in the authority, resource base, and effectiveness of the state. However, the constitutional process soon stalled in disagreement, rancor, and violence, and the assembly’s period of deliberation, which was to have been completed in July 2007, had to be extended three times. At the outset, there was a split over the

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President Evo Morales (center), wearing an embroidered shirt and hat typical of the region, inaugurates the Jesuit Missions Circuit in the Chiquitania in the town of Concepción, Santa Cruz, in 2006. (Photo © Elayne Zorn, 2006)

voting rules—whether resolutions and articles required a majority or two-thirds vote for approval—and that plagued the process to the end.

In September 2007, the deliberations deadlocked and were suspended for a month over an improbable issue and century-old dispute—the location of the country’s capital. An opposition movement to change the country’s working capital and seat of government from La Paz to Sucre had gained unexpected momentum. The dustup, however, was more than a disruptive tactic by anti-Morales groups; it reflected the lowlander and non-Indian regional divisions and animosities against Morales’s concentrated indigenous power base in the highlands and cities of El Alto/La Paz. That fall, protests and violence engulfed the constitutional capital of Sucre, where sessions were being held. The assembly had to be temporarily suspended when protests and vio-lence between pro- and anti-Morales groups from November through December 2007 resulted in a number of deaths.

The final December sessions relocated to Oruro, a highland city back-ing Morales, but without the attendance of opposition delegates who had been boycotting the meetings. There the final draft of the “New Political Constitution of the State” was passed and formally unveiled by President Morales in El Alto on December 15, 2007. However, the boycotting opposition delegates considered the draft charter illegal and antidemocratic because disputed articles were approved without a two-thirds vote, and the final draft was passed in their absence. In protest that same day, the Media Luna departments declared their autonomy from the central government and announced future regional referen-dums to legitimize their actions.

For most of 2008 the Morales government battled the organized oppo-sition to constitutional reform by the prefects and autonomy movements of the Media Luna departments. These held departmental referendums in May and June that rejected the draft constitution outright and passed autonomy statutes. The dissident states demanded departmental control over their natural resources and the police, and the retention of two-thirds of the revenues generated in their departments, revising the 50-50 split with the central government. The Media Luna governors also asserted direct control over land rights and veto of redistribution and reform mea-sures proposed in the new draft constitution. Departmental autonomy, once enacted, would provide regional elites with the legal means to influ-ence how indigenous rights and community autonomy provisions in the new constitution would be implemented in their territory.

With the country polarized over the draft constitution, a war of refer-endums at the national and departmental levels consumed 2008. Early


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in the year, the Media Luna prefects challenged Morales and demanded a recall referendum to test his mandate. The president countered and proposed a referendum on all nine departmental prefects as well. On August 10, the recall referendum, which had convulsed the country for months, delivered a 67 percent vote of approval for President Morales. However, two of the anti-Morales prefects were recalled.

In September, protests over the constitution and violence against its supporters convulsed the eastern states and delayed ratification. The worst of the violence, which resulted in some 30 deaths in the region as a whole, occurred on September 11 in the northern Pando department, where 11 Morales supporters were killed. President Morales imposed martial law the next day and on September 16 had the departmental prefect, Leopoldo Fernández, arrested. After concessions to opposition politicians, on October 21 the Bolivian Congress ratified a revised draft of the constitution. One of the major changes in the modified version was term limits for the president. The amended constitution had to go before the voters before it could be adopted as the new Fundamental Law of the Bolivian State.

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Results of 2009 National Constitutional Referendum

Percentage of “Yes” Vote Percent of “No” Vote Department Supporting the CPE Opposed to the CPE

Chuquisaca 61 39

La Paz 78 22

Cochabamba 65 35

Oruro 74 26

Potosí 80 20

Tarija 43 57

Santa Cruz 35 65

Beni 33 67

Pando 59 41

National Vote Totals 61 (2,064,417 39 (1,296,175 valid votes) valid votes)

Source: Corte Nacional Electoral. Referendum Nacional Constituyente 2009. Available online. URL: http://www.cne.org.bo/ResultadosRNC2009/wfrmConstituyente.aspx. Accessed March 28, 2009.

On January 25, 2009, more than 61 percent of Bolivian voters approved the Political Constitution of the State (Constitución Política del Estado, CPE) in the national constitutional referendum. However,


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The 2009 Political Constitution of the State

Bolivian news sources reported that tens of thousands of people gathered in El Alto on February 7, 2009, to celebrate the formal

enactment of the country’s new constitution by President Evo Morales. The constitution’s 411 articles affirmed Bolivia’s unitary, plurinational, and secular character. It expanded indigenous peoples’ rights, providing them with more seats in the legislature, land rights, cultural recogni-tion, and community autonomy. The constitution also approved local and departmental autonomy, but implementation was contingent on additional legislation that had to be approved by two-thirds of Bolivia’s Plurinational Legislative Assembly.

The new charter reaffirmed the state’s control over natural resources, especially Bolivia’s hydrocarbon reserves, and it limited the size of large landholdings to 5,000 hectares (12,350 acres). A popu-lar article prohibited foreign military bases on Bolivian territory. The CPE retained the number of members in the Chamber of Deputies and increased the number of senators, which were to be elected by simple plurality. Early elections for all public offices were to be held on December 6, 2009.

Constitutional provisions allowed for the one-time reelection of the president for a consecutive term. As previous terms were not counted in the term limits, Morales could serve two additional terms, but he pledged not to run after 2014. If a president was not elected in the first round with more than 50 percent of the vote, a second round of voting would decide the outcome.

At the enactment ceremony, President Morales noted that he had accomplished his mission to refound Bolivia. He stated: “Since colonial times, we have been fighting against invasions and against oppression, and in this constitution of the Bolivian state is enshrined the deepest aspirations of the most neglected sectors, such as the workers and the indigenous people.”

Source: BBC News. “Bolivia Enacts New Constitution.” February 9, 2009. Available online. URL: http//www.bolviaun.org/cms/?p=721. Accessed March 30, 2009.

in most of the dissident southeastern regions of the country the consti-tutional referendum failed to gain support. Three of the eastern lowland departments, Beni, Santa Cruz, and Tarija, rejected the new constitution by a solid majority. In both Pando, the scene of last fall’s violent clashes between government supporters and opponents, and Cochabamba, where the former prefect had been one of the main proponents of autonomy and critics of Morales, a majority of voters supported the new charter. Not surprisingly, given President Morales’s and the MAS’s power base, the strongest voter approval for the constitution was in highland Potosí and La Paz departments.

By an overwhelming 81 percent, voters also approved the text of the disputed land reform article (Article 398), which reduced large landholdings from a permissible maximum of 10,000 to 5,000 hect-ares (24,700–12,350 acres) (Corte Nacional Electoral 2009). President Morales wasted no time after the article became official in distributing to indigenous Guaraní farmers in a special ceremony held in the eastern lowlands thousands of acres of land seized from large holdings. With his usual flair, he announced: “Today, from here, we are beginning to put and end to the giant landholdings of Bolivia” (Boliviaun.org, March 15, 2009). In the wake of the land-reform article, some indigenous com-munities in various parts of Bolivia began to preempt legal action and take over private properties.

A number of voters interviewed after the referendum believed that the strong national showing marked the start of a new era and signaled that the old way of governing was over. The optimism that many Bolivians shared may prove to be justified because—at least constitutionally—there were new rules to the governing game. However, both critics and supporters of the 2009 constitution feared that a power struggle over the implementation of controversial articles and undefined provisions was likely to continue for some time.

Evo Morales, Coca, and the Drug War

Let me chew my coca leaves.

Evo Morales, 2009

The election of Evo Morales placed a former coca grower and leader of the peasant coca growers union into the presidency. This and

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President Morales’s refusal to step down from his leadership role in the coca growers’ association raised concerns over the future of Bolivia’s antinarcotics policy. During most of the Andean drug war years, Bolivian governments generally pursued aggressive coca eradi-cation and antinarcotics policies. Stricter legislation and militarized enforcement between 1985 and 2005 largely criminalized and con-trolled the cultivation and distribution of the coca leaf in the country. These aggressive antidrug policies impoverished and incarcerated many traditional and innocent coca growers not involved in the drug trade, as well as peasant farmers and relocated highlanders who were connected only indirectly on the growing end. Few actually processed the leaves or supplied illegal coca paste to the cocaine production networks of the Andean drug cartels.

The fallout from the Andean drug war gave rise to Evo Morales and the cocalero movement. At first, the goal of coca activists and peasant growers was to defend the right of indigenous peoples to cultivate the “sacred coca leaf.” However, as resistance to antidrug militarization and forcible coca-leaf eradication gathered momentum and became more confrontational, the local struggle grew into a nationwide movement. And the limited goal of protecting the growers and the cultural heritage of the coca leaf expanded into a more comprehensive movement for indigenous rights and autonomy. As with the ascendancy of Morales, the political and electoral success of the MAS over the last decade can be traced to its sympathy with the growers and its promise to suspend coca-leaf eradication once in power.

The drug war has never been popular in Bolivia. Nevertheless, most governments acquiesced to U.S. pressure to “fight the good fight” in the Andean drug war and, somewhat cynically, welcomed antinarcotics assistance monies into chronically strapped treasuries and military bud-gets. Still, the majority of Bolivians viewed the drug problem primarily as a problem of demand rather than supply, and the greatest demand originated in the U.S. market. In order to reduce the lure of the illegal drug economy, the central goal of Bolivian governments, particularly of the Morales administration, has been to further economic develop-ment. His government’s position, which has led to internal conflict and international concern, stresses “social control” and verification of legal cultivation limits by local farming communities. The emphasis on self-policing of coca production rather than forced eradication was captured in Morales’s inaugural speech pledge—“no to zero coca leaf, yes to zero cocaine”—a policy he has reiterated in a number of versions since (International Crisis Group 2006, 27).


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President Morales, following the strategy of previous presidents, has been vigorously engaged in selling the international community the Bolivian perspective that “coca is not cocaine.” He has been especially aggressive in his efforts to decriminalize what he has described as a “healthful Andean tradition” in response to recent threats to tradi-tional uses of coca. In March 2009, President Morales attended the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs to urge the organization to reform the international drug-enforcement regime and remove the coca leaf from the list of narcotic drugs on which it has been included with cocaine since the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

The convention also mandated that coca-leaf chewing be abolished by 2001. In March 2008, when the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board sought to criminalize traditional coca chewing and coca tea, it set off angry demonstrations in Bolivia. If the UN adopts the recommenda-tion, Bolivia could be in breach of international law. For this reason as well, Morales has sought to distinguish between his defense of the coca leaf, “an important symbol of the history and identity of the indigenous cultures of the Andes,” and his strong support for domestic and inter-national antidrug efforts (2009, A17).

In line with his “Yes to Coca, No to Cocaine” policy, the Morales gov-ernment has been reticent about eradicating coca crops but has provided legal cooperation and support for illegal drug seizures and interdiction. Nevertheless, the potential decline in coca-leaf eradication concerned U.S. and international antinarcotics enforcement agencies. In 2006, according to the Morales government’s figures, Bolivian enforcement agents destroyed about 5,000 hectares (12,350 acres) of coca crops, the minimum under U.S.-Bolivian antinarcotics protocols (International Crisis Group 2007, 13). However, the eradication of illegal coca crops increased by 25 percent between 2006 and 2007 (UN World Drug Report 2008). The Morales government has argued that nonrepressive and voluntary methods that gain the coca growers’ support have been more effective. Enforcement has targeted the interdiction of precursor chemi-cals, cocaine seizures, which rose from 14 tons in 2006 to 17 tons in 2007, and the destruction of coca-processing sites, which also increased in 2006 over previous years, according to the 2008 UN World Drug Report. In March 2009, the Bolivian government announced a major drug bust—the seizure of a vast cocaine processing operation in Santa Cruz Department—claiming it was the largest in 10 years.

At the same time, according to Washington, there has been an increase in Bolivia’s coca-leaf cultivation between 2006 and 2009, espe-cially in the nontraditional coca-growing region in the Chapare, where

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Morales was reelected president of the cocalero federations. The U.S. State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report for 2009 indicated a 14 percent increase in coca cultivation in 2007, while the UN’s 2008 World Drug Report estimated only a 5 percent increase. The Morales government argued that increased cultivation has been for alternative products and traditional purposes, which have increased since the legal limit (12,000 hectares, or 29,640 acres) was established in a 1971 study (and incorporated into Law 1008 in 1988) when the country’s population was half its size. A European Union–funded study on traditional coca-leaf use remained pending but, meanwhile, the government hoped to revise the legal limit upward to 20,000 hectares (49,400 acres).

In any case, the UN report indicated that Bolivia’s coca cultivation remained “well under annual totals during the early and mid-1990s” (2008; Kadia 2009, 3). This meant that coca cultivation had not risen to the 1990 highs before the repressive eradication efforts of President Banzer’s zero-coca policy took effect and drastically reduced the crop. On the other hand, critics felt that criticism by the U.S. administration, which blacklisted Bolivia in 2009 for the first time as a major drug-producing country, was politically motivated (Kadia 2009, 4).

For 2007 to 2010, Bolivia developed a new counterdrug strategy that emphasized the “fight against drug trafficking” and the “revalo-rization of coca” rather than eradication. The strategy focused on five main areas: coca industrialization, integral development, voluntary and negotiated coca crop reduction, interdiction of drug trafficking, and drug use prevention (International Crisis Group 2007, 13). The ultimate goal of Bolivia’s antidrug policy is to have additional coca leaf commercialized and marketed internationally in alternative products, such as teas, foods, medicines and pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. For the new strategy to succeed, the 1961 UN Convention that only allows coca production for domestic use and prohibits its industrialization and trade for export must be modified.

Continued regional and international cooperation will also be impor-tant. Since November 2008, when the Morales government suspended counternarcotics activities by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Bolivia has begun to coordinate more closely with South American neighbors, especially Brazil, and cooperate with the international com-munity. In early 2009, the European Union welcomed Bolivia’s plans for alternative uses of coca and its commercialization for overseas markets. Also, Bolivia and Russia signed counternarcotics and counterterrorism cooperation agreements in February.


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Bolivian-U.S. Relations

Please don’t consider me to be one of the Axis of Evil.

Evo Morales (Stewart 2007)

Relations between the United States and Bolivia have been rocky since Evo Morales’s election, which Washington interpreted as the spread of the “pink tide” of Left radicalism in the region. Initially, the official U.S. response was civil and constructive, but soon diplomatic relations with the administration of George W. Bush deteriorated into a negative cycle of tit-for-tat. By 2008 and the last months of the Bush presidency, U.S.-Bolivian relations had reached an all-time low. The direction of rela-tions with the new administration of President Barack Obama remains uncertain, although President Morales—along with the majority of Bolivians—welcomed Obama’s electoral victory, drawing comparisons with Morales’s own electoral success. Still there are hands at the U.S. Department of State and associated foreign policy think tanks that continue to see Morales as a threat to Bolivia and the stability of the continent as a whole (Roberts and Schwarz 2009, 3). With Morales’s impressive reelection in 2009, relations may improve.

In principle, because President Morales was twice democratically elected and represented an excluded majority, he was the kind of Latin leader that any U.S. administration should be eager to embrace. On December 18, 2005, even before the final tally was in, U.S. ambassa-dor to Bolivia David Greenlee publicly congratulated Morales on his electoral victory, and former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice’s response was that “the issue for us is: Will the new Bolivian government govern democratically?” (BBC News, December 21, 2005). U.S. policy makers undoubtedly realized that premature or overtly hostile criticism would likely backfire—as it had in attacks on Morales in 2002—and expose Washington’s professed democratization agenda to charges of hypocrisy. Consequently in December, 2009, Washington emphasized a continuing desire to work more closely with Morales’s government, especially in bilateral talks initiated last May.

Yet inherent disagreement with Morales’s style and program, evi-dent even before his first election, only worsened. Key areas of discord included his government’s antidrug policy, socialist ideology, economic nationalism, anti-American rhetoric, and radical international orienta-tion. In 2006, President-elect Morales’s first trips abroad were to Cuba

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and Venezuela, where he signed bilateral cooperation agreements. Bolivia received development assistance from both countries—largely in kind for health care and literacy from Cuba and diesel fuel and mil-lions of dollars outright from Venezuela (International Crisis Group 2006, 28). The “Bolivarian” orientation of the new Bolivian government was confirmed at Morales’s January inauguration, where the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, was a guest of honor. In addition to embrac-ing leftist Latin American leaders on America’s blacklist, Morales’s rhetoric was stridently anti-American and anticapitalist.

In February 2006, after only a month in office, the United States reduced military aid to Bolivia by 96 percent when the MAS-dominated Bolivian Congress refused to ratify a bilateral treaty exempting U.S. military per-sonnel from International Criminal Court jurisdiction (International Crisis Group 2006, 27). In May, President Bush singled out Bolivia in an address and criticized the status of its democracy. Not coincidentally, the May Day nationalization of the oil and gas operations of international corporations and threats of further nationalizations met strong criticism and opposition in U.S. circles. From November to December 2007, when the violence in Sucre and the Constituent Assembly over the draft con-stitution raised fears of a military coup, the U.S. State Department merely commented that some of the assembly’s proceedings that had limited participation and debate were regrettable.

On the other hand, President Morales received strong public support from Latin American and European governments, and the secretary-general of the Organization of American States (OAS) in defense of democracy. Unfortunately, when Venezuelan president Chávez prom-ised to intervene in case of a coup attempt against Morales and blamed Washington for the 1997 instability, it only increased the criticism in Bolivia and abroad—especially the United States—that Morales was a Chávez surrogate. In the subsequent autonomy crisis in September 2008, Chávez once again charged U.S. destabilization and offered to send military support to Morales, who imposed martial law after the kill-ing of 11 supporters in the Pando Department. The 10 countries in the Union of South American Nations (Unión de Naciones Suramericanas, UNASUR) also rallied behind Morales, providing moral support to his democratic government.

An important bone of contention between Morales’s administration and the U.S. foreign-policy establishment has been Bolivia’s role in the Andean drug war. According to U.S. drug-enforcement officials, there had been a decline in coca-leaf eradication and an increase in cultiva-tion over the last year. On September 15, 2008, the Bush White House


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announced that Bolivia was noncompliant in its counternarcotics com-mitments under the Andean Trade Promotions and Drug Enforcement Act (ATPDEA) and threatened not to renew Bolivia’s participation. Finally, on November 25, Bolivia’s trade preferences, or duty-free access to the U.S. market under the ATPDEA, was officially suspended, throw-ing thousands of Bolivians working in the textile sector out of work and depriving the country of millions in export earnings.

On the heels of a major diplomatic breakdown between the two countries from September to November 2008, the cancellation of trade preferences was viewed as an act of political retaliation. In the span of a few short months, Bolivia expelled the U.S. ambassador, USAID, and the DEA. On September 11, President Morales indicated that he would request the recall of U.S. ambassador Philip Goldberg, charging him with conspiring with Media Luna opposition groups against his gov-ernment; on September 22, he officially did so. (In turn, on September 12, Washington asked Bolivian ambassador Mario Gustavo Guzmán Saldaña to leave.) Morales also accused USAID and DEA of spying and plotting with and funding eastern departmental autonomy groups. With much fanfare, on November 1 he terminated all DEA counternarcotics activity in Bolivia (International Crisis Group 2008, 10–12).

Another area of disagreement between Bolivia and the United States has been President Morales’s radical international orientation. At every opportunity, President Morales has criticized U.S. policy generally and specifically toward his government in multilateral forums such as the UN and OAS. Before the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2008, President Morales denounced U.S. meddling in Bolivian affairs in the wake of the recall of Ambassador Goldberg. In 2008 and at the 2009 General Assembly, he was critical of the U.S. drug war and the interna-tional community’s sanction on coca-leaf cultivation.

Finally, President Morales has extended his left-wing diplomacy beyond Latin America, courting diplomatic and cooperative agree-ments with Iran and Libya in 2007. Morales visited Iran, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Bolivia in September 2007. Bolivia has also expanded its diplomatic and commercial relations with socialist governments in Asia. President Morales visited China in 2006, seeking investment in hydrocarbons, and in March 2009 a Vietnamese delegation visited Bolivia to establish better relations and cooperation between YPFB and PetroVietnam, which already had operations in Cuba and Venezuela. Also in February 2009, President Morales visited Russia and signed several cooperative agreements, including an alliance with Gazprom (Open Joint Stock Company), the world’s largest extractor of natural gas.

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Common denominators in these associations have been hydrocarbon development and cooperation with socialist-oriented regimes.

This sampling of Bolivia’s actions vis-à-vis the United States and its international activism demonstrate President Morales’s determination to offset traditional U.S. influence in the country and show his populist foreign-policy orientation and independence. Traditionally, Bolivian for-eign policy has been aligned with U.S. foreign policy. Instead, Morales’s stance is in line with his revolutionary populism at home and abroad. It reflects either a healthy caution or understandable paranoia in its rela-tions with the United States, which has historically intervened in the region—especially in Bolivia.

Almost at the outset, the Morales administration complained of interference and that U.S. “democracy promotion” assistance lacked transparency or, in layman’s terms, was being used in manipulative and insidious ways to fund groups opposed to the government. The Morales administration viewed these U.S. programs (largely funded through USAID) as ways for Washington policy makers to support groups aligned with U.S. foreign policy and capitalist globalization and to suppress popular groups and social movements advocating democra-tization and socioeconomic reforms (Robinson 2007).

In simple terms, the goals of U.S. foreign policy and those of the Morales administration have been at odds from the start. When he entered office, Morales himself characterized his movement as a “nightmare” for the United States. Indeed, he has positioned himself in solidarity with the global anti-imperialist struggle and has taken as his mentors the revolutionary icons—Castro, Chávez, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara. His MAS political party has pledged to end neoliberalism in Bolivia (and, if possible, further afield) and legalize coca-leaf cultivation in Bolivia and beyond.

On the other hand, the Morales government has also cooperated with the United States against drug trafficking, respected international agree-ments, and governed democratically. At least formally, these were the cen-tral issues that Washington said would influence relations with Bolivia. As long as Morales retains his overwhelming popular support and maintains and respects democratic and constitutional processes and norms, bilateral relations with Washington may remain rocky but largely unchanged.

The U.S. policy of “democracy promotion” may serve as a double-edged sword in this case, constraining more overt interference in Bolivian politics or direct pressure on Morales’s administration. In this limited sense, therefore, Bolivia’s bilateral diplomacy has been relatively successful. On the other hand, how the eastern autonomy rebellion is


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resolved in his second term and how events leading up to the 2010 departmental and municipal elections develop will be critical. If past practice serves here, should President Morales’s domestic support significantly weaken and political and social instability increase, U.S. policy toward his government may assume a more interventionist role again. However, given that both AID and DEA are no longer operating in the country as before since AID was expelled from the main coca-growing region and DEA was expelled from the country altogether in 2008 and full diplomatic relations are in temporary hiatus, the task may be more difficult this time around.

The Perennial Seacoast DiplomacyOf Bolivia’s many domestic and international concerns, one issue has had a persistent, pervasive, and perennial influence on the country’s politics and psyche: the struggle for a sovereign outlet to the Pacific Ocean. Ever since Bolivia lost its coastal province in the 19th-century War of the Pacific, governments of every persuasion have promoted both bilateral and multilateral efforts to regain a sovereign seaport. The classic dilemma that has bedeviled every Bolivian government is how to negotiate from a position of strength with Chile and Peru when the government is weak and being assailed at home. In other words, inter-nal weakness and instability translate directly into weak and ineffective seacoast diplomacy.

This domestic vulnerability has especially been the case for Bolivian governments since 2003. Nationalist anger over the lost seacoast brought down Sánchez de Lozada when his plans to export Bolivian natural gas via Chile became known. Nationalist xenophobia also unseated Mesa when he failed to insulate natural gas policy from the ongoing seacoast debate. Bolivia’s natural gas riches, which Chile has been anxious to import for its own use as well as industrialize for further export from its Pacific port, provided a strong economic incentive for favorable bilateral talks. However, Peru lobbied for its own interests and played the spoiler in any possible rapprochement between its neighbors.

The elections of Michelle Bachelet and Evo Morales provided another promising opportunity for dialogue—in a long line of bilateral talks held among democratic Chilean and Bolivian presidents since the 1980s. There was real potential that the two like-minded heads of state could make some progress toward an accommodation. Both presidents genuinely liked each other, but as the history of Bolivia’s seacoast diplo-macy has shown, friendly personal feelings alone are not enough for a

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resolution to this perennial problem. Moreover, Morales was faced with the same dilemma of his predecessors. Bolivia’s internal violence from 2006 to 2009, which often skirted civil war, has severely undercut the Morales administration’s ability to advance on the issue of la salida al mar (the outlet to the sea).

Indeed, the tables have turned somewhat in Chile’s favor. As oil and gas prices have fallen precipitously from 2008 to 2009, both Brazil and Argentina, Bolivia’s main markets for its natural gas, are buying less and paying less for what they buy. This has greatly reduced Bolivia’s export earnings and increased the need to diversify its markets. Chile as a market for Bolivian natural gas is looking better every day. In early April 2009, Bolivia’s minister of planning floated the idea of future natural gas sales to Chile. Of course, a central element in the govern-ment’s proposal was the seacoast question. The bedrock Bolivian posi-tion, eloquently expressed by the Carlos Mesa government, had not changed: “Not a molecule of gas for Chile” without prior resolution of the seacoast issue. Unfortunately, this rigid position had been a non-starter in the past and was unlikely to deliver different results for the Morales government.

An Election to WinThe protracted constitutional reform process stoked a number of long-smoldering tensions: economic, racist, class, ideological, regional, and nationalist. The divisions that polarized the country during most of President Morales’s presidency did not disappear during the last year of his first term. In fact, the battles in April 2009 shifted to a new front: the provisions of the crucial transitional electoral law that would influence the outcome of elections on December 6, 2009.

The transitional electoral law had stalled in the opposition-con-trolled Senate over objections to the “officialist” version passed by the MAS-dominated lower house. Opposition senators charged that the law overrepresented rural, peasant, and indigenous constituents and favored the governing MAS party. In protest, pro-government organiza-tions amassed and “encircled” the Congress building—a tactic of both pro- and antigovernment groups to force resolutions in their favor. In the Media Luna region, the prefects and civic committees began an emergency mobilization against the proposed electoral statute and demanded immediate autonomy.

When the statute (Law 4021) passed and was promulgated on April 14, dissident departmental leaders increased their efforts to unite anti-


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government political parties behind a unity candidate for December. A number of opposition candidates threw their hats into the ring. The candidate of the new citizens’ association Gente (People) was Victor Hugo Cárdenas, Aymara politician and former vice president (1993–1997) and a strong vocal critic of the new constitution. Nevertheless, consistently favored in all the opinion polls conducted in the months preceding the election, President Morales (and his vice president, Álvaro García Linera) anticipated a second term. Morales reportedly dreamt of winning by more than 70 percent of the popular vote this time around. Initially, a matchup between two Aymara indigenous candidates—the conservative Cárdenas and the radical Morales—had everyone tuned in to developments in Bolivia. However, Cárdenas trailed badly in the polls, as did the majority of declared opposition candidates.

The opposition’s best chance, according to neutral observers and par-tisan operatives alike, was a unified, anti-Morales ticket. This scenario seemed improbable with 14 political parties, alliances, and citizens’ associations registered with electoral authorities, and seven declared candidates (three of indigenous peasant roots and one a woman) all planning to challenge the government. Although the field of candidates remained disorganized and shifting, by the filing deadline of September 7, a number of presidential hopefuls had withdrawn. However, even with a more unified opposition, late polling indicated that Morales continued to attract more popular support and remained poised to win reelection handily. Indeed, the polls were right on target. Morales achieved a significant victory that delivered majority control of the national legislature and would enable passage of stalled reforms and consolidation of his revolution.

11Conclusion:

What’s Ahead for Bolivia?

Now I want to tell you that they can drag me from the palace. They can kill me. Mission accomplished for the refounding of the new united Bolivia.

President Evo Morales (BBC News, February 7, 2009)

Months before his first term in office ended, President Evo Morales reminded Bolivians that he had accomplished the key objectives

of his administration. He had largely nationalized the country’s hydro-carbon and energy sector, enacted a new state constitution, and held a national referendum on regional autonomy. By his own assessment and that of his many supporters and admirers, Bolivia’s first indigenous presi-dent had completed his historic mission to “refound” Bolivia as a truly multicultural and multiethnic society and as a kinder land for the coun-try’s 36 indigenous groups and impoverished and excluded majority.

The crowning achievement of his government has been the new Political Constitution of the State (Constitución Política del Estado, CPE), which was approved by 61.43 percent of the voters in the national referendum of January 25, 2009. The radical new charter extended sweeping political, social, and economic rights to all Bolivians in the form of social benefits, land reform, environmental protection, sovereignty over natural resources, economic development, and greater legal protections and self-governance. In terms popularized by Morales and his social movement supporters, the new state constitution has “democratized” Bolivian democracy.

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However, when the jubilant speeches and celebratory demonstrations of February’s official promulgation of the constitution and the March Carnaval (Mardi Gras) festivities were over, Bolivians faced more uncer-tainty and instability. The eastern and southeastern lowlanders had rejected the constitution by large majorities and were organizing for more street action and political agitation. As the December 2009 elections neared, the battle with the central government over how and when to implement regional autonomy and political devolution to the departments, munici-palities, and indigenous communities as established in the constitution was compounded by crazier than usual pre-electoral madness.

There were sporadic clashes among the supporters for and against the various potential and declared electoral candidates from spring into fall. In March, for example, pro-Morales supporters attacked the home of former vice president Víctor Hugo Cárdenas, who later declared his presidential candidacy and then withdrew from the race in September. Also in September, a month before the start of official campaigning, there were violent confrontations between MAS partisans and the oppo-sition bloc of Manfred Reyes Villa in La Paz and Santa Cruz. And amid a swirl of conspiracy fears, there were charges of terrorism plots and assassination teams, even an anti-Morales contract being hawked to the lowest bidder online. In April, the government arrested and proposed prosecuting high-level Santa Cruz civic leaders and ex-military officers reportedly involved in a plot to assassinate President Morales.

In statements, President Morales often referred to assassination and to lynching—an angry mob had strung up a previous president in the 1940s from a lamppost in the main plaza of the presidential palace—perhaps reflecting the general mood of insecurity and belligerency that gripped much of the country. Although democracy remained in force, it was being severely tested by contention and civil unrest. Bolivia con-tinued to be polarized between two competing visions for the country, and once again hope focused on the upcoming presidential elections to resolve the crisis.

The 2009 elections would also prove to be historic. For the first time since the return to democracy in 1982, a president would be reelected with more than 60 percent of the vote and achieve control of the legisla-ture. And for the first time in electoral history and with less than a year to prepare, a massive biometric or electronic voter registration initiative was under way, and the voter rolls were expected to reach 4 million reg-istered voters. Ultimately, more than 5 million voters were inscribed. The focus especially was on enfranchising rural and indigenous voters. There were feverish efforts to register an unprecedented number (211,000) of


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Bolivians outside the country as well. Under the new constitution, all reg-istered Bolivians living outside the country—largely in Spain, the United States, Argentina, and Brazil—were permitted to vote.

Both Morales’s forces and those of opposition political parties and the Media Luna mobilized for the all-important contest. President Morales managed to win again with an even more impressive voter mandate of 64 percent of the vote. Building on solid support in rural areas, Morales and his new electoral front, MAS-MSM (Movimiento sin Miedo [Movement without Fear]), reorganized for the election as MAS-IPSP (Instrumento Político para la Soberanía de los Pueblos [Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples]), courted the urban mid-dle-class vote, a campaign strategy that sometimes led to criticism and protests in the more ideological and indigenous base (Corte Nacional Electoral 2009). Morales shook off complaints, reminding followers that no revolution ever succeeded without the middle class and that Bolivia was a “plurinational” state after all. His goal was to create a “social pact” among Bolivians and draw all social sectors into the revolutionary process. And he warned MAS candidates not to expect party funding for their campaigns but to work hard for the cause (Caero Gisela 2009). Meanwhile, the lowland states failed to organize around a unity ticket and winning candidate in an effort to recapture control of the country or at least of their prosperous region. The opposition political parties and fronts were fragmented and disorganized well into the fall. Only as the official two-month electoral campaign (October 4–December 3) began did a more unified opposition emerge around the presidential ticket of Manfred Reyes Villa (former leader of the New Republican Force, Nueva Fuerza Republicana [NFR]), and Leopoldo Fernández Ferreira. Both men had close associations with Bolivia’s old guard and the conservative and wealthy political forces of the Media Luna and its hard line pro-autonomy movement. Their ticket and political alliance, the Progress Plan for Bolivia—Autonomy for Bolivia (Plan Progreso para Bolivia—Autonomía para Bolivia [PPB-APB]), later reorganized as Progress Plan for Bolivia—Convergence (Plan Progreso para Bolivia—Convergenica [PPB-Convergenica]), came in a weak second to Morales with 27 per-cent of the vote nationally. Reyes Villa was associated with the unpopu-lar and deposed Sánchez de Lozada, and Fernández languished in La Paz’s San Pedro prison charged with “genocide” and instigating the “Massacre of Porvenir.” Next in contention, according to popularity, was the electoral team of the Burger King millionaire Samuel Doria Medina and Gabriel Helbing of the Nation Unity Front—Popular Consensus (Frente de Unidad Nacional—Consenso Popular [UN-CP]), or simply

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National Unity (UN), which placed a weak third with only 6 percent of the national vote (National Electoral Court 2009).

Unlike the MAS strategy, which courted the urban and middle class, the opposition’s main political fronts had sought to incorporate rural peasants and indigenous and native peoples into the fold, nominating a number of them to run as legislative candidates. Even with a more populist and diversified appeal and the advantage of greater campaign financing—including from exiled Sánchez de Lozada, according to the government—these conservative political alliances ran a desperate uphill race against the MAS-Morales ticket. When Morales received an absolute majority and well over the required 40 percent minimum of the vote, and, according to the new constitution, no opposition candi-date placed within 10 percentage points of his return, the opposition’s last-ditch hope of a win evaporated. Once again, as in 2005, Morales had avoided handily a second-round runoff election with a resound-ing majority, securing a consecutive second term in office. Whatever the outcome of five more years of Morales, Bolivia’s territorial integ-rity, political stability, and future social order could well hang in the balance.

What’s Ahead?

The struggle has not stopped. The struggle will keep going.

Esther Morales Ayma, First Lady of Bolivia (Jekks 2009)

What’s ahead for Bolivia and its people remains the million-dollar ques-tion. The election and affirming reelection of Evo Morales and his radical program to refound Bolivia represent a historic milestone for indig-enous rights and a revolutionary turning point for the country. Bolivia’s new state constitution stands among the world’s first to enshrine the principles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. With the charter’s adoption, Bolivian citizens confront a difficult chal-lenge ahead: to implement a new political and socioeconomic model that will further democratize their democracy and multiethnic society and equitably and sustainably develop their economy.

For now, Bolivia’s majority has rejected unregulated economic priva-tization and globalization and reintroduced a state-led, social welfare model. In their external relations with other countries, Bolivians have reasserted their right of national sovereignty and rejected interference in


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the country’s energy and drug-enforcement policies. In part, Bolivian vot-ers first elected Evo Morales president because he has not been afraid to exercise independence and reject foreign and U.S. dominance. With this major U-turn in state organization and policy, Bolivia’s reformers have not only invoked the spirit and principles of the 1952 National Revolution, but they are engaged in delivering the revolution’s promise more than a half-century later.

Bolivia’s fractious history documents a number of exceptional and unique moments of change. The 1952 National Revolution was clearly one of these. In large part—like Morales’s Second Bolivian Revolution today—it occurred because of a decade of social mobilization and tur-moil. It also followed in the aftermath of an unexpected and historic electoral victory topped by an even greater display of democracy in 2009 with his reelection. And even in 1951, when the Bolivian electorate was so narrowly circumscribed, democracy could not be suppressed.

Despite the National Revolution’s great impact, it remained incom-plete and was ultimately betrayed by its own militants. Its extensive reforms were attacked both from within and without the country. Historians have continued to dispute whether the 1952 revolution failed or not. And the debate has persisted because “failure”—the flip side of success—is a tricky and relative concept. Still, the National Revolution transformed almost every aspect of Bolivian life.

In the end, all revolutions fizzle out as ideals clash with reality. Young revolutionaries become old and comfortable, and the powerful agents of the old order reemerge and reconstitute themselves into formidable challengers. The dialectic of change never ceases, so that hand-in-hand with reform and revolution stalk the opposing forces of counterreform and counterrevolution. Bolivians know this; they have experienced this cycle many times, and that is why they continue to struggle.

The radical changes that Evo Morales, the MAS, and popular social movements have achieved since 2006 are no less exceptional than those of the 1952 revolution. And they may be no less vulnerable to opposi-tion. In a speech in October 2008, President Morales exclaimed: “Now we have made history.” With an untested certainty, he reassured his cheering supporters: “This process of change cannot be turned back . . . neoliberalism will never return to Bolivia” (Dangl 2008). Only the future can confirm Evo Morales’s certainty. Historians will have to record and, perhaps, debate whether the achievements of his two-term presidency have proven lasting and transformative.

The future may also hold the answer to Bolivia’s other unresolved and more immediate questions. Will President Morales’s revolutionary

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experiment that so far has intensified social and regional polarization restore growth and relative stability? And, after the extreme contention over social and constitutional reforms recedes, will the process of politi-cal decentralization, begun over a decade ago, ultimately strengthen or weaken Bolivian democracy? For Bolivia and its indomitable people, it seems that the struggle is never completely over. Struggle is a way of life etched in the national psyche.

Bolivia’s refounding through the direct participation of its indig-enous majority has had an unprecedented impact in the hemisphere. The words of Rigoberta Menchú Tum, an indigenous Quiché woman of Guatemala’s highlands and the celebrated and controversial winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, remind us that the democratic achieve-ments in Bolivia mark “a new era of struggle” for the peoples of Latin America (Dangl, February 2, 2009).

Bolivia’s progress in democracy has inspired and energized the region’s indigenous peoples. Still marginalized after more than 500 years, they are making their presence known and their voices heard from across cyberspace to the palaces of government in every Latin American country. With hope and solidarity, the Indian peoples of the Americas are busy organizing in defense of their culture and history and mobilizing behind radical alternatives to secure their right to demo-cratic governance and socioeconomic equality. In Bolivia, they have had a victory. By law, the indigenous flag of the Americas now flies in equality with the national flag of Bolivia.


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Appendix 1Basic Facts

about Bolivia

Official NameRepública de Bolivia (Republic of Bolivia). Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia (Plurinational State of Bolivia) is also the current official name under the 2009 constitution.

GovernmentThe new Political Constitution of the State (Constitución Política del Estado, CPE) was passed by national referendum on January 25, 2009, and promulgated into law on February 7, 2009, by President Evo Morales. The CPE of 2009 is an entirely new document of 411 articles that replaces the last official constitution of 1967 and its revisions of 1994. Under the new constitution there are four branches or organs of government: the executive, the legislative, the judicial, and the electoral. The executive branch, based in the administrative capital of La Paz, consists of the president, vice president, and a cabinet of ministers. The president serves as both the head of state and the head of government. The vice president is not only a member of the president’s cabinet but also serves as the president of Congress (Asamblea), performing an important role as the major legislative office. Cabinet officers are appointed by the president. In February 2009, there were 20 ministers in the cabinet.

The president and vice president are elected on the same ticket by direct popular vote and serve a five-year term. However, with the passage of the new constitution, general elections are to be held a year early on December 6, 2009. Constitutionally, beginning with the 2009 elections, the president and vice president may be reelected for only one consecu-tive (back-to-back) term of office. To be elected, a presidential candidate must receive an absolute majority of the popular vote (50 percent plus

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one valid vote), or a minimum of 40 percent of the valid votes with at least a 10 percent advantage over the candidate with the second-highest number of votes. If no candidate fulfills these conditions, a second round of voting or direct election will be held within 60 days after the first elec-tion, and whichever candidate receives the most votes (plurality) will be the duly elected president.

The legislative branch, also based in La Paz, includes the bicam-eral Congreso Nacional (National Congress)—renamed the Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional (Plurinational Legislative Assembly) in the 2009 constitution—with a total of 157 seats until the December 2009 elections when the assembly increased to 166 seats. Both legislative chambers are of equal importance but with distinct and complementary responsibilities. The lower house is the Cámara de Diputados (Chamber of Deputies), which has 130 delegates elected for a five-year term. Under the old con-stitution, seats were apportioned according to 68 members (uninominales) elected by simple majority vote from single-member districts; the remain-ing 62 members (plurinominales) were elected from party lists by propor-tional representation. However, in a minor reapportionment for the 2005 general elections there were 70 delegates from single-member districts and 60 elected by proportional representation. With the new 2009 Political Constitution of the State, the Chamber of Deputies remained relatively unchanged, except that for the December 2009 elections seats based on proportional representation were reduced to 53, and the remaining seven seats became special districts (circunscripciones especiales) reserved for peasant peoples of indigenous and original nations (las naciones y pueblos indígena originario campesinos). The special districts are determined by the density of population in each department, can not exceed departmental boundaries, and are established only in rural areas and where indigenous, original, and peasant peoples are a minority. The goal of the new constitu-tion is to guarantee a fair and proportional representation to indigenous and rural citizens in the election of legislators.

The upper house under the 1967 constitution was the Cámara de Senadores, or Senado Nacional (Chamber of Senators or the National Senate), with 27 seats, or three senators for each of Bolivia’s nine depart-ments, who were elected by direct popular vote for a five-year term. The 2009 constitution increased the Cámara de Senadores to four seats for each of the nine departments, or a total of 36 legislators (senators) who are directly elected by a party list proportional representation system.

The third branch of government is the judiciary, which includes the Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación (Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation)—renamed Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (Supreme Tribunal of


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Justice) under the 2009 constitution—with the judicial seat in Sucre. Under the old constitution the sitting Supreme Court consisted of 12 ministers (ministros), or judges, who were elected by a two- thirds vote of Congress, and were to serve a 10-year term without immedi-ate reelection. However, the new constitution mandates that all public officials are subject to the general elections in December 2009 and departmental and municipal elections in April 2010. Under the new constitution the Supreme Tribunal justices are nominated by two-thirds of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly and then directly elected by the voters according to simple majority for a six-year term with no reelection. The old Tribunal Constitucional (Constitutional Tribunal) is replaced with the Tribunal Constitucional Plurinacional (Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal) in the 2009 constitution, and its judges are also elected by universal suffrage but drawn from a plurinational roster of candidates equally representing the regular judicial system and that of indigenous and peasant communities. The Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal resolves issues of constitutionality and conflicts between the central government and autonomous territorial and decentralized enti-ties. It determines the constitutionality of international treaties and minor reforms to the constitution. The court’s decisions are binding and not appealable.

There is also the Tribunal Agroambiental (Agro-environmental Tribunal) which is elected by universal suffrage and deals with land, water, natural resource, and environmental issues. Under the new judicial system, there are three distinct areas of jurisdiction: the regular courts, the agro-environ-mental tribunal, and the jurisdiction of the original, indigenous, and peas-ant peoples. The decisions of the latter are given their own competency, full equality, respect, and finality, and may be implemented with the state’s support. Thus the 2009 constitution incorporates indigenous community justice into the state’s Spanish-based judicial system.

The fourth branch of government under the 2009 constitution is the Órgano Electoral Plurinacional (Plurinational Electoral Organ)—formerly the National Electoral Court—which is composed of seven members, with at least two representing the nations and original, indig-enous, and peasant peoples. The Plurinational Legislative Assembly elects six of the electoral councilors by a two-thirds vote of members present, and Bolivia’s president designates one councilor. The electoral councilors serve a six-year term and cannot be reelected. The exclusive function of the Plurinational Electoral Organ is to organize and admin-ister the elections and their results, and maintain the electoral rolls and Civil Registry (Registro Civil).

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Major political parties registered with the National Electoral Court (Órgano Electoral Plurinacional) and represented in Congress (Plurinational Legislative Assembly) since 2006 include the Movement toward Socialism (MAS), Democratic and Social Power (PODEMOS), National Unity Front (UN), and the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR). Other parties that have figured in recent elections and been registered with the National Electoral Court include the Pachakuti Indigenous Movement (MIP), Movement of the Revolutionary Left–New Majority (MIR -NM), New Republican Force (NFR), Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN), Civic Solidarity Union (UCS), Socialist Party (PS), Christian Democratic Party (PDC), Patriotic Agrarian Front of Bolivia (FREPAB), Social Union of Bolivian Workers (USTB), Leftist Revolutionary Front (FRI), Movement without Fear (MSM), Free Bolivia Movement (MBL), and the Patriotic Social Alliance (ASP). For the 2009 elections, a number of new and renamed political par-ties, fronts, blocs, and alliances were formed; many would disappear or reform shortly thereafter.

Political DivisionsCapitalThe constitutional capital is Sucre; the de facto or administrative capital and seat of government is La Paz.

DepartmentsThere are nine departments, divided into 112 provinces and 327 municipalities.

GeographyCovering 425,000 square miles (1.1 million square kilometers), Bolivia is about the size of Texas and California combined. It is the sixth-largest country in South America.

BoundariesBolivia occupies the heart of South America between 9º 38′ and 22º 53′ south latitude and between meridians 57º 25′ and 69º 28′ longitude west of Greenwich. A landlocked nation since the War of the Pacific in 1879, Bolivia borders Brazil on the north and east, Peru and Chile on the west, and Argentina and Paraguay on the south.

TopographyTwo chains of the great Andes (the Cordillera Occidental and the Cordillera Oriental, or Real) transverse the western part of the coun-


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try and form a great plateau called the altiplano, which has an average altitude of 3,658 meters (12,000 feet) above sea level. Many of Bolivia’s major cities (La Paz, Oruro, Potosí) and about half of its population inhabit the altiplano. The city of La Paz is the highest working capital in the world at 3,640 meters (11,910 feet) in altitude. Lake Titicaca, shared with Peru, lies at an altitude of 3,812 meters (12,507 feet) and is recog-nized as the world’s highest commercially navigable body of water.

The vast majority of the country is in the eastern lowland region of the Oriente. Extensive grasslands, rain forests, and intermountain val-leys form the northern and eastern two-thirds of Bolivia. Many of these regions comprise the coca-leaf-growing area of the country. Extensive river systems, including the Río Beni, Río Mamoré, and Río Madre de Díos, flow northward into the Amazon Basin and bisect the Oriente, but because of rapids only a few rivers are readily navigable. Via the Río Pilcomayo and the Río Bermejo, which empty into the Paraguay River in the southeast, Bolivia has access to the River Plate and Atlantic Ocean.

Highest ElevationThe Nevada Sajama, a volcanic peak that extends 6,542 meters (21,464 feet) skyward in the Cordillera Occidental of the Andes, is Bolivia’s tall-est point and among the highest in South America. In the Cordillera Oriental of the Andes, the peaks of Illampu at 6,421 meters (21,067 feet) and Illimani at 6,402 meters (21,005 feet), which overlooks the city of La Paz, are the two next highest mountains in Bolivia

Demographics

PopulationWith a population of 9.7 million people (July 2009 est.), Bolivia is one of the less populous countries of South America and the world. About 64 percent of the population is urban, and 36 percent, rural (2005 est.). Life expectancy at birth is 67 years (2008 est.). The illiteracy rate is 10 percent (2006 est.).

Largest CitySanta Cruz, the lowland capital of the Oriente, has overtaken La Paz, the governing capital on the Altiplano, as Bolivia’s largest city. With a population of 1.5 million (2008), Santa Cruz exceeds by a significant margin that of La Paz (835,300). The entire La Paz metropolitan area, with the city of El Alto (890,520) included, comprises an estimated population of 1.7 million.

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LanguageBolivia is a multiethnic, multicultural society with an indigenous popu-lation of 55 to 70 percent. According to the old constitution, Spanish, Aymara, and Quechua were Bolivia’s three official languages. The 2009 constitution establishes Spanish and all 36 indigenous languages as Bolivia’s official languages. Spanish is spoken by more than 80 percent of the population, and 20 percent of the population may speak only Aymara and/or Quechua, or Guaraní. A majority of Bolivians speak an indigenous language, as well as Spanish. Aymara is spoken in the northern altiplano, Quechua in the southern highland and valleys, and Guaraní in the eastern lowlands. There are also more than two dozen distinct indigenous languages and dialects in the lowlands.

ReligionRoman Catholic, 95 percentProtestant, 5 percent

EconomyGross Domestic Product, or GDP (2008 est.)$18.9 billion; 63 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

Economic Sectors (2008 est.)Agriculture, 11 percentIndustry, 37 percentServices, 52 percentTrade, $6.4 billion, largely with Brazil, Argentina, and the United StatesTotal external debt, $4.6 billion

Most Important Sources of Foreign RevenuesMining: Tin, Gold, Zinc, Tungsten, Antimony, Silver, Lead, and IronHydrocarbons and Natural GasWood and Textile Products, JewelryIndustry/Manufacturing: Mineral SmeltingAgricultural Products: Coffee and Soybeans


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Appendix 2Chronology

Pre-Columbian BoliviaBefore 10,000 b.c. Peopling of the Americas from Asiaca. 10,000 Development of the early cultures of the Upper

Andes900 Chavín, the first Pan-Andean civilization100 b.c. Early Tiwanaku and regional statesa.d. 900–1000 Classical period of the Tiwanakan civilizationca. 1100–1460 Development of the Aymara civilizationca. 1460–1500 Armies of the Inca invade and conquer the

Aymara kingdoms1470 Aymara kingdoms revolt against the Inca

Spain in South America1532 Spanish conquerors led by Francisco Pizarro

begin the conquest of the Inca Empire1536 Rebellion of Manco Capac II1538 Spanish conquerors colonize Upper Peru, estab-

lish the Viceroyalty of Lima, and founding the city of Chuquisaca (Sucre)

1542 Spain institutes the repartimiento and encomienda systems

1545 Cerro Rico is discovered, leading to the founding of the Villa Imperial of Potosí; silver becomes the basis of the new colonial economy

1558–59 Establishment of the Audiencia of Charcas with its seat in Chuquisaca (Sucre); founding of the city of La Paz

1570s The mita labor system is instituted to ensure steady flow of Indian workers for the mines

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1572–76 Spanish viceroy Francisco Toledo visits Upper Peru; forced resettlement of the Indian popula-tion is instituted; mercury amalgamation process is used to extract silver

1624 Founding of the first university in Upper Peru, the University of San Francisco Xavier of Chuquisaca

1695 Discovery of silver at the mountain of Uru-Uru, near Oruro

1730 Indigenous rebellion in Cochabamba against Spanish authorities

1767 Jesuits are expelled from the Audiencia of Charcas1776 Establishment of the Viceroyalty of Río de la

Plata, with seat in Buenos Aires, and transfer of the Audiencia of Charcas to the control of Buenos Aires

1780–82 Indian rebellion of Tupac Amaru II (José Gabriel Condorcanqui)

1782 Reorganization of the Audiencia of Charcas and the establishment of the intendancy system

Struggle for Independence1808 Napoléon invades Spain and overthrows the

royal government1809 Rebellion of Pedro Domingo Munillo and popu-

lation of La Paz on July 161809–25 War of Independence in Upper Peru1825 Liberation of Upper Peru and Bolivian indepen-

dence on August 61825–26 Simón Bolívar rules in name for only a few

months after the Assembly of Notables appoints him Bolivia’s first president on August 13

1826–28 Marshall Antonio José de Sucre is elected presi-dent of Bolivia’s first republican government

1829–39 Rule by General Andrés de Santa Cruz1825–26 Assembly of Notables in La Paz appoints Símon

Bolívar as Bolivia’s first president in 1825, and he rules for only a few months

1835 The army of Santa Cruz defeats Peruvian general Agustín Gamarra


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1836–39 Santa Cruz creates the Peru-Bolivian Confed-eration, but Chile invades and defeats Santa Cruz

1841 Peruvian president Gamarra invades and is defeated, ending attempts to annex Bolivia and unify the two countries

1841–47 Government dominated by General José Ballivián1848–55 Governments dominated by General Manuel

Isidoro Belzú1850s Modern silver mining era1850s–70s Discoveries of guano, nitrates, and silver deposits

in Bolivia’s Atacama province1864–71 Government of Mariano Melgarejo, who cedes

Bolivia’s Amazonian lands to Brazil1879 War of the Pacific begins with Chile’s seizure of

Bolivia’s coastal territory1880 Battle of Tacna ends Bolivia’s direct role in the

War of the Pacific1884 Bolivia is defeated and becomes landlocked

Era of Civilian and Republican Government1880–99 Civilian Conservative Party rule under the silver

oligarchy1899 Revolt of Liberal Party shifts power to La Paz and

the tin oligarchy; the Zárate Willka Indian upris-ing is put down

1899–1903 Rebellion of the Acre region, which is ultimately lost to Brazil

1899–1920 Liberal Party governments1902 Tin supersedes silver as Bolivia’s major export1904 Peace treaty of War of the Pacific signed with Chile1920 Rebellion by Bolivia’s indigenous peoples is

repressed1923 Miners’ revolt is suppressed with violence and

bloodshed1932–35 Chaco War with Paraguay results in devastating

Bolivian defeat

Era of Military Socialism, Reform, and Revolution1936–39 Military reformist governments of David Toro

and Germán Busch

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286

1937 President Toro nationalizes Standard Oil on March 15

1939 Suicide of President Busch1940–43 Return of conservative civilian rule under

President Enrique Peñaranda.1941 Founding of the Nationalist Revolutionary

Movement, MNR1942 Catavi Massacre kills hundreds of striking min-

ers in December1943 Bolivia declares war on the Axis powers during

World War II1943–46 Military reformist government of Gualberto

Villarroel and MNR1944 Founding of the Bolivian Mine Workers’

Federation (FSTMB)1945 First National Indigenous Congress1946 Overthrow and death of President Villarroel1946–51 Conservative rule by feudal-mining oligarchy;

repression of revolts of 1947 and 19491951 Nationwide elections are overturned and military

takes over1952 National Revolution led by the MNR takes place

in April1952–64 Civilian MNR governments of Víctor Paz

Estenssoro and Hernán Siles Zuazo1952 Establishment of the Bolivian Labor Central

(COB)1952 Universal vote extended to all Bolivians; nation-

alization of the mines1953 Land Reform Decree; Educational Reform Decree1956–57 International Monetary Fund (IMF) economic

stabilization program imposed1961–64 Reform of state mining; U.S. aid is increased

Militarism and the Postrevolutionary Era1964 Vice President René Barrientos Ortuño over-

throws President Paz Estenssoro1964–69 Restorative Revolution of Barrientos1966 Barrientos cements the Military-Peasant Pact1966 Ernesto “Che” Guevara brings his guerrilla foco

to Bolivia


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1967 Military-miner confrontation turns into the San Juan Massacre at Catavi–Siglo XX mines in June; Che is captured and killed on October 7

1969 President Barrientos dies in helicopter crash; coup by General Alfredo Ovando; nationalization of Bolivian Gulf Oil Company

1970–71 Left-wing military “revolution from above” by General Juan José Torres

1971–78 Military coup and conservative rule by General Hugo Banzer Suárez

1974 Massacre of Tolata during military-peasant con-frontation. Banzer’s “self-coup” postpones elec-tions and represses opposition

1978–80 Cycle of coups and transitional governments; elections of 1978 are sullied by fraud and mili-tary intervention; democratic elections of 1979 are followed by another military coup

1979 “Massacre of All Saints” in November; Lydia Gueiler Tejada, Bolivia’s first woman president, heads interim government

1980 Bloody cocaine coup of General Luis García Meza overturns the year’s presidential election

1981–82 Generals Celso Torrelio Villa and Guido Vildoso Calderón seize control as pressure for elections grows

Return to Democracy and Growing Economic Crisis1982 Congress revalidates the 1980 elections; Bolivia

returns to democracy and presidency of Siles Zuazo in October

1982–85 Hyperinflation, economic collapse, and govern-ing stalemate end Siles’s rule a year early

1985–89 Economic stabilization by Paz Estenssoro gov-ernment under governing pact with ex-dictator Banzer and his ADN party

1985 Global crash of tin prices sends economy into deep recession

1986 Major mine closings cause political unrest; U.S.-Bolivian antinarcotics operation “Blast Furnace” begins in July

1987 Antinarcotics operation “Snowcap”

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1988 Narco-video scandal embarrasses Paz-Banzer coalition; antinarcotics Law 1008 criminalizes coca-leaf cultivation

1989–93 Coalition government of Jaime Paz Zamora’s MIR and Banzer’s ADN; “Coca for Development” and neoliberal economic policies put in place

1989 First national “Coca Chew-In Day”; García Meza is tried in absentia for drug corruption

1990 Andean Drug Summit militarizes the Bolivian drug war; indigenous peoples undertake the “March for Territory and Dignity”

1993–97 Privatization of state enterprises and constitu-tional reforms by government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and MNR technocrats; Víctor Hugo Cárdenas becomes the first Aymara vice president

1993–94 Bolivian Supreme Court convicts García Meza, who is extradited from Brazil to serve a 30-year prison term for drug trafficking

1997–2001 Banzer government’s economic austerity and forcible coca eradication incites coca growers and worker-peasant unions

1998 Earthquake in Cochabamba region destroys three towns

1999 Bolivia ends year with the lowest growth rate in 10 years

2000–01 Banzer claims eradication of illegal coca crops in the Chapare; floods and natural disasters; IMF and World Bank grant Bolivia $1.3 billion debt forgiveness

Political Turmoil, Indigenous Resurgence, and Refounding Bolivia2000 Violent “Water War” protests in Cochabamba

against water hikes and privatization by the Bechtel Corporation force government to impose martial law from February to April; monthlong peasant roadblocks seal off La Paz in September and October; government linked to corruption–drug traffic scandal

2001 Paz Estenssoro, four-time president, dies in June at 98; battling cancer, Banzer hands over govern-


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ment to Vice President Jorge Quiroga Ramírez; mine workers’ leader Juan Lechín dies at 89 in August

2001–02 President Jorge Quiroga faces social unrest as Cochabamba “Water Wars” derail water privati-zation by Bechtel; Evo Morales Ayma, leader of the coca growers’ federation, and coca growers protest coca eradication in the Yungas and bans on the sale and transport of coca leaves in the Chapare; Evo Morales is ousted from Congress but runs for president in 2002 elections in which Morales’s Movement toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS) party has strong showing

2002 Clashes of military, peasants, and coca growers force government to suspend eradication and controls on coca-leaf marketing; ex-president Banzer dies in May; Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada wins elections in June

2003 Bloody protests against proposed tax hike in January and February and against projected gas exports during the “Gas Wars” of September and October; Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada resigns as president on October 17. Vice President Carlos D. Mesa Gisbert becomes interim president

2004 President Mesa holds July referendum on gas and oil policy, and 80 percent of voters approve proposed new hydrocarbon law

2005 Congress approves new hydrocarbons law increasing taxes on gas and oil for new fields; President Mesa refuses to sign and is forced by rising protests to call elections. On December 18, in a landslide victory, Evo Morales wins the presidency as Bolivia’s first elected president of indigenous heritage and promises to “refound the nation”; U.S. Department of State conditions future relations on Morales’s policies

2006 May Day “renationalization” of Bolivia’s hydro-carbons and energy sector; Morales is reelected leader of the coca farmers’ union in March; Constituent Assembly elections held in July

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to rewrite the constitution; MAS party wins over half of the assembly seats but is short a two-thirds majority needed to control agenda; four lowland, or Media Luna (Half Moon), departments vote “yes” in National Autonomy Referendum in July; Constituent Assembly is inaugurated on August 6

2007 July demonstrations by right-wing assembly del-egates to move national capital to Sucre; August 6 deadline for the Constituent Assembly to draft constitution is extended four months and new U.S. ambassador Philip Goldberg arrives; bloody clashes in Sucre in November between pro- and anti-Morales supporters as Constituent Assembly delegates are forced to pass draft of new constitu-tion in military garrison. Constituent Assembly moves to more Morales-friendly highland city of Oruro and approves draft constitution on December 9, despite boycott by opposition del-egates from eastern lowlands; December cel-ebrations in La Paz and opposition protests and hunger strikes in Santa Cruz; December 15 Media Luna declares autonomy and the proposed charter illegal and plans departmental referen-dums on regional autonomy

2008 Departmental referendums on the new con-stitution and autonomy provisions are held in May and June amid protests and violence in southeastern states. On August 10, President Morales is strongly supported in National Recall Referendum, but two departmental prefects are recalled. Regional politics remains tense and polarized and erupts in violence in Pando in September. Morales declares martial law; the Bush administration pulls out the U.S. Peace Corps. Morales announces recall of U.S. ambassa-dor Goldberg on September 11, and Washington reciprocates, sending home Bolivian ambassa-dor Mario Gustavo Guzmán Saldaña the next day. In November, Morales attends UN General Assembly, where he denounces U.S. meddling;


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DEA is ousted; President Bush suspends trade preferences (Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, ATPDEA) for Bolivia; Bolivia requests from the United States the extradition of former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, charged with human rights violations of “Black October.”

2009 New Political Constitution of State (Constitución Política del Estado, CPE) passes by strong major-ity in a national plebiscite on January 25; official enactment ceremony on February 7 in El Alto. On March 11, President Morales attends UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna and calls for decriminalization of coca-leaf chew-ing and reform of 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to ban coca paste not coca leaf; on March 30, Morales attends Doha (Qatar) Second Arab–South American Summit and advocates a new multilateral world order to address current global financial crisis, climate change, and nation-alization of public services in electricity, water, education, and health. In April, the opposition’s National Democratic Council (CONALDE) and prefects of the departments of Santa Cruz, Beni, Tarija, and Chuquisaca reject the government’s proposed Transitional Electoral Law and call for a new poll and referendums to validate the electoral rolls; Morales charges that opposition is plotting a “civil coup” to delay and undermine December elections; Morales attends UN General Assembly; On December 6, Morales is reelected with an unprecedented majority; on December 18, he attends the Copenhagen climate change summit and speaks out against global warming and the violation of Mother Earth by capitalist countries, demanding that world leaders radically raise their ambitions; he also meets with indigenous groups from around the world

2010 On January 22, Morales is inaugurated, and the newly elected Plurinational Legislative Assembly

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begins the task of approving 100 reform laws in the next six months in order to implement the 2009 constitution. In April, departmental and municipal elections are held.


293

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del mundo. La Paz: Academia Boliviana de Historia, 1993.———. “Toward a Sociology of International Relations: The Case of

Bolivian Quest for an Outlet to the Sea.” Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1987.

Gutiérrez Aguilar. “What Did Bolivian Society Say through the Recall Referendum?” Americas Policy Program Report. Washington, D.C.: Center for International Policy (August 22, 2008). Available online. URL: http://americas.irc.-online.org/am/5486. Accessed on November 30, 2008, pp. 1–8.

Guzmán, Humberto. Estéban Arze, caudillo de los valles. Cochabamba, Bolivia: n.p., 1948.

Harris, Richard L. Death of a Revolutionary: Che Guevara’s Last Mission. Rev. ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.

Hausmann, Ricardo. “Prisoners of Geography.” Foreign Policy (January/February 2001): 45–53.

Healy, Kevin. “Coca, the State, and the Peasantry in Bolivia, 1982–1988.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 30 (1988): 105–26.

Healy, Kevin, and Susan Paulson. “Political Economies of Identity in Bolivia, 1952–1998.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 5 (2000): 2–29.

Hillman, Grady, with Guillermo Delgado P. The Return of the Inca: Translations from the Quechua Messianic Tradition. Austin, Tex.: Place of Herons Press, 1986.

Hudson, Rex A., and Dennis M. Hanratty, eds. Bolivia: A Country Study. 3d ed. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1991.

Inter-American Development Bank. Development Beyond Economics: Economic and Social Progress in Latin America, 2000 Report. Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, 2000.

International Crisis Group. “Bolivia: Rescuing the New Constitution and Democratic Stability.” Bogotá/Brussels: International Crisis Group. Latin America Briefing No. 18 (June 19, 2008): 1–15. Available online. URL: http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/documents/latinamerica/b18_bolivia_rescuing_the_new_constitution_and_ democratic_stability.pdf. Accessed March 28, 2009.


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———. “Bolivia’s Rocky Road to Reforms.” Bogotá/Brussels: International Crisis Group, Latin America Report No.18 (July 3, 2006): i–37. Available online. URL: http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/documents/latin_america/18_bolivia_s_rocky_road_to_reforms.pdf. Accessed March 27, 2009.

Jekks, Nikkie. “Bolivia’s First Lady Hopes for Unity.” BBC World Service. February 17, 2009. Available online. URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7894334.stm. Accessed March 30, 2009.

Kadia, Tejas. “Drug Enforcement in Bolivia: Yes to Coca, No to Cocaine.” Latin America Information Office (January 1, 2009): 1–6. Available online. URL: http://www.lataminfo.org/post/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/bolivia-drug-fact-sheet-final.pdf. Accessed March 30, 2009.

Katari.org. “La Wiphala como expresión de unidad e igualdad.” Available online. URL: http://katari.org/wiphala/unidad.htm. Accessed April 3, 2009.

Klein, Herbert S. Bolivia: The Evolution of a Multi-Ethnic Society. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

———. Orígenes de la revolución nacional boliviana: La crisis de la gener-ación del Chaco. La Paz: Librería y Editorial Juventud, 1968.

———. Parties and Political Change in Bolivia, 1880–1952. London: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Kohl, Ben, and Linda Farthing. “The Price of Success: Bolivia’s War Against Drugs and the Poor.” NACLA Report on the Americas 35 (July/August 2001): 35–41.

Kornbluh, Peter. “The Death of Che Guevara: Declassified.” National Security Archive, George Washington University. Available online at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB5/.

Krauss, Clifford. “Bolivia Wiping Out Coca at a Price.” New York Times, October 23, 2000, p. A10.

Krickeberg, Walter. Mitos y leyendas de los aztecas, incas y mayas. Mexico City: FCE, 1971.

Lagos, Maria L. “Bolivia la Nueva: Constructing New Citizens.” Paper presented at the International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Guadalajara, Mexico, 1997.

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Langer, Eric D. “Bolivia: Since 1825.” In Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. Vol. 1. Ed. Barbara A. Tenenbaum. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996.

Latinamerica Press. “Bolivia: Landless Farmers Unite.” Available online. URL: http://www.lapress.org/ArticlePrint.asp?IssCode=0&lanCode=1&artCode=2430. Downloaded August 17, 2001.

Ledebur, Kathryn, and Coletta A. Youngers. “The Coca Debate: Headed toward Polarization or Common Ground?” Washington Office on Latin America (May 2008): 1–6. Available online. URL: http://www.ain bolivia.org/AINWOLACocaDebate52308.pdf. Accessed March 29, 2009.

Lehman, Kenneth. D. Bolivia and the United States: A Limited Partnership. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999.

Lockhart, James. The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972.

Lynch, John, ed. Latin American Revolutions, 1808–1826: Old and New World Origins. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.

Mace, Gordon, and Louis Bélanger. The Americas in Transition: The Contours of Regionalism. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999.

Malloy, James M. Bolivia: The Uncompleted Revolution. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970.

Malloy, James M., and Eduardo Gamarra. Revolution and Reaction: Bolivia, 1964–1985. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1988.

Marín Ibáñez, Rolando. “Bolivia y la integración de América del Sur.” In Bolivia: Temas de la agenda internacional. Ed. Alberto Zelada Castedo. La Paz: Unidad de Análisis de Política Exterior (UDAPEX), Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, 2000.

McNeish, John-Andrew. “Stone on the Road: The Politics of Participation and the Generation of Crisis in Bolivia.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 25 (April 2006): 220–240.

Menzel, Sewall H. Fire in the Andes: U.S. Foreign Policy and Cocaine Politics in Bolivia and Peru. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1996.

Mesa Gisbert, Carlos D. “Historia de Bolivia, época republicana (1900–2000).” Acerca de Bolivia. Instituto Nacional de Estadística. Available online at http://www.ine.gov.bo/iwd010305.htm. Downloaded March 14, 2001.

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Mitchell, Christopher. The Legacy of Populism in Bolivia: From the MNR to Military Rule. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1977.

Morales Ayma, Evo. “Let Me Chew My Coca Leaves.” New York Times, March 14, 2009, p. A17.

———. “Bolivia.” In Politics of Latin America: The Power Game, 3d ed. Eds. Harry E. Vanden and Gary Prevost. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, 556–558.

Morales, Waltraud Queiser. “Barrientos Ortuño, René.” In Biographical Dictionary of Latin American and Caribbean Political Leaders. Ed. Robert J. Alexander. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1988.

———. “Bolivia.” In Latin America and Caribbean Contemporary Record. Vol. 5, 1985–1986. Ed. Abraham F. Lowenthal. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988.

———. Bolivia: Land of Struggle. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992.———. “Bolivian Foreign Policy: The Struggle for Sovereignty.” In The

Dynamics of Latin American Foreign Policies. Eds. Jennie K. Lincoln and Elizabeth G. Ferris. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984.

———. “A Comparative Study of Societal Discontent and Revolutionary Change in Bolivia and Paraguay: 1930–1941.” Ph.D. diss., Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver, 1977.

———. “La geopolítica de la política exterior de Bolivia.” In Documentos de Trabajo PROSPEL. Santiago, Chile: Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Contemporánea, 1984.

———. “Militarising the Drug War in Bolivia.” Third World Quarterly 12 (1992): 353–370.

———. “The War on Drugs: A New U.S. National Security Doctrine?” Third World Quarterly 11 (1989): 147–169.

Norton, Robert E. “Jeff Sachs—Doctor Debt.” In Money Doctors, Foreign Debts, and Economic Reforms in Latin America from the 1890s to the Present. Ed. Paul W. Drake. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1994.

Olivera, Oscar R. “Interview: The Fight for Water and Democracy. An Interview with Oscar Olivera.” Multinational Monitor 21, no. 6. (June 2000). Available online. URL: http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2000/00june/interview.html. Accessed March 20, 2009.

———. Cochbamba! Water War in Bolivia. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2004.

Oria Arredondo, Ramiro. “Bolivia: La diplomacia del mar en la OEA” and “El derecho internacional y las negociaciones marítimas con Chile.” In Bolivia: Temas de la agenda internacional. Ed. Alberto Zelada

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Castedo. La Paz: Unidad de Análisis de Política Exterior (UDAPEX), Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, 2000.

Osborne, Harold. Bolivia: A Land Divided. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Painter, James. Bolivia and Coca: A Study in Dependency. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994.

Paulson, Susan, and Pamela Calla. “Gender and Ethnicity in Bolivian Politics: Transformation or Paternalism?” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 5 (2000):112–49.

Platt, Tristan. “The Andean Experience of Bolivian Liberalism, 1825–1900: Roots of Rebellion in the 19th-Century Chayanta (Potosí).” In Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries. Ed. Steve J. Stern. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.

Querejazu Calvo, Roberto. Bolivia y los ingleses. La Paz: Editorial Los Amigos del Libro 1973.

———. Guano, salitre, sangre: Historia de la guerra del Pacífico. La Paz: Editorial Los Amigos del Libro, 1979.

Quiroga Ramírez, Jorge. “Mensaje de S.E., Ing. Jorge Quiroga Ramírez, Presidente de la República, en el día de su asunción al mando de la nación.” Discursos, Señor Presidente de la República. Available online at http://www.rree.gov.bo/DISCURSOS/DISCURSOS2001/discurso%20PDteJQ7-8-2001.htm. Downloaded August 2, 2001.

Roberts, James M., and Gonzalo Schwarz. “New Constitution Pushes Bolivian Economy into Socialism.” The Heritage Foundation. WebMemo 2355 (March 23, 2009): 1–3. Available online. URL: http://www.heritage.org/Research/LatinAmerica/wm2355.cfm. Accessed March 30, 2009.

Robins, Nicholas A. El mesianismo y la semiótica indígena en el Alto Peru: La gran rebelion de 1780–1781. La Paz: Hisbol, 1998.

Robinson, William I. “Democracy or Polyarchy?” NACLA Report on the Americas. January/February 2007: 32–35.

Ryan, Henry Butterfield. The Fall of Che Guevara: A Story of Soldiers, Spies, and Diplomats. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Sabine, George H. A History of Political Theory. Rev. ed. New York: Holt 1950.

Sanabria, Harry. “The Discourse and Practice of Repression and Resistance in the Chapare.” In Coca, Cocaine, and the Bolivian Reality. Eds. Madeline Barbara Léons and Harry Sanabria. Albany: State University of New York, 1997.


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Shultz, Jim. “War on Drugs Becomes War on Poor.” Sacramento Bee, August 1, 1999, n.p.

Siles Guevara, Juan. Bolivia’s Right to the Pacific Ocean. La Paz: Fundación Manuel Vicente Ballivián, 1960.

Spencer, Bill, with Gina Amatangelo. “Drug Certification.” Foreign Policy in Focus 6, no. 5 (March 2001). Available online at http://www.foreign policy-infocus.org/.

Spitzer, Leo. Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism. New York: Hill & Wang, 1998.

St John, Ronald Bruce. “Same Space, Different Dreams: Bolivia’s Quest for a Pacific Port.” Bolivian Research Review 1 (2001), elec-tronic journal, http://www.bolivianstudies.org, (accessed 9 July 2001).

———. “Hacia el Mar: Bolivia’s Quest for a Pacific Port.” Inter-American Economic Affairs 31 (1977): 41–73.

Stern, Steve J. “The Age of Andean Insurrection, 1742–1782: A Reappraisal.” In Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries. Ed. Steve J. Stern. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.

Stewart, Jon. “Evo Morales Interview.” Daily Show. Available online. URL: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?title=president -evo -morales&videold=103275. Accessed April 6, 2009.

Stokes, Charles E., Jr. The Amazon Bubble: World Rubber Monopoly. Fort McKavett, Tex.: n.p., 2000.

Thorn, Richard S. “The Economic Transformation.” In Beyond the Revolution: Bolivia since 1952. Eds. James M. Malloy and Richard S. Thorn. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971.

Toranzo Roca, Carlos F. “Informal and Illicit Economies and the Role of Narcotrafficking.” In Coca, Cocaine, and the Bolivian Reality. Eds. Madeline Barbara Léons and Harry Sanabria. Albany: State University of New York, 1997.

Transparency International. “Corruption Perceptions Index 2008.” Available online. URL: http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2008. Accessed December 14, 2008.

United Nations. Human Development Report 2007/2008. Available online. URL: http://hdrstats.undp.org/countries/data_sheets/cty_ds_BOL.html. Accessed March 12, 2009.

———. World Drug Report 2008. United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime. Available online. URL: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/ data-and-analysis/WDR-2008.html. Accessed March 12, 2009.

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United States Central Intelligence Agency. “Bolivia.” The World Factbook 2000. Available online at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/fact-book/geos/b.html. Downloaded September 7, 2001.

Vargas, Tambor Mayor. Diario de un soldado de la independencia altope-ruana en los valles de Sicasica y Hayopaya. Sucre, Bolivia: n.p., 1952 [1954].

Vázquez Machicado, Humberto, José de Mesa, Teresa Gisbert, and Carlos D. Mesa Gisbert. Manual de historia de Bolivia. 3d ed. La Paz: Editorial Gisbert, 1988.

Vazquez, Rodrigo. “Viewpoint: A New Nationalism.” BBC News. October 9, 2007. Available online. URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7035944.stm. Accessed March 16, 2009.

Vera-Zavala, America. “Evo Morales Has Plans for Bolivia.” In These Times. Available online. URL: http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/print/evo_evo_morales_has_plans_for_bolivia. Accessed February 2, 2006.

Vittone, Luis. Las fuerzas armadas paraguayas en sus distintas épocas. Asunción, Paraguay: Editorial El Gráfico, 1969.

Von Hagen, Victor W. The Ancient Sun Kingdoms of the Americas: Aztec, Maya, Inca. New York: World Publishing Company, 1957.

———. Highway of the Sun. Boston: Little, Brown, 1955.———. The Incas: People of the Sun. New York: World Publishing

Company, 1961.Voss, Stuart F. Latin America in the Middle Period: 1750–1929. Wilmington,

Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2002.Wilkie, James W. The Bolivian Revolution and U.S. Aid since 1952. Los

Angeles: Latin American Center, University of California at Los Angeles, 1969.

———. “U.S. Foreign Policy and Economic Assistance in Bolivia, 1948–1976.” In Modern-Day Bolivia: Legacy of the Revolution and Prospects for the Future. Ed. Jerry R. Ladman. Tempe: Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State University, 1982.

Wolf, Eric. Sons of the Shaking Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.

———. “Sons of the Shaking Earth.” In Crossing Currents: Continuity and Change in Latin America. Eds. Michael B. Whiteford and Scott Whiteford. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1998.

Zimmerer, Karl. “Commentary: Social Science Intellectuals, Sustainable Development and the Political Economies of Bolivia.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 5 (2000): 179–89.


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Zorn, Elayne. “Evo Morales and the Politics of Dress in Bolivia.” In Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion. Latin America and the Caribbean. Eds. Margot Schevill and Blenda Femenias. Oxford, U.K.: Berg, 2009 [2010].

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Appendix 4Suggested Reading

This brief history has been written for nonscholars and general readers. Many topics merit more in-depth coverage. These selected suggested readings in English provide additional resources across many disci-plines. Information on Bolivia also appears in works that are not exclu-sively dedicated to the country. And the bilingual reader will discover that excellent works are available in Spanish.

Books and Other Resources Spanning Major PeriodsAcerca de Bolivia. Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE). Available

online at http://www.ine.gov.bo/iwd010305.htm.Alexander, Robert J. Bolivia: Past, Present, and Future of Its Politics. New

York: Praeger, 1982.Andean Information Network. Available online at www.scbbs-bo.com/ain.Barton, Robert. A Short History of the Republic of Bolivia. 2d ed. La Paz:

Editorial Los Amigos del Libro, 1968.Benner, Susan E., and Kathy S. Leonard, eds. and trans. Fire from

the Andes: Short Fiction by Women from Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.

Carter, William E. Bolivia: A Profile. New York: Praeger, 1971.Fifer, Valerie J. Bolivia: Land, Location and Politics since 1825. Cambridge,

England: Cambridge University Press, 1972.Healy, Kevin. Llamas, Weavings, and Organic Chocolate: Multicultural

Grassroots Development in the Andes and Amazon of Bolivia. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001.

Hudson, Rex A., and Dennis M. Hanratty, eds. Bolivia: A Country Study. 3d ed. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1991.

Jackson, Robert H. Regional Markets and Agrarian Transformation in Bolivia: Cochababma, 1539–1960. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994.

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Klein, Herbert S. Bolivia: The Evolution of a Multi-Ethnic Society. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

———. “Recent Trends in Bolivian Studies.” Latin American Research Review 31 (Winter 1996): 162–69.

Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC). “Bolivia, Academic Research Resources.” Available online at http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/la/sa/bolivia/.

Leonard, Olen E. Bolivia: Land, People and Institutions. Washington, D.C.: Scarecrow Press, 1952.

Lindert, Paul van, and Otto Verkoren. Bolivia: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture. Trans. John Smith. London: Latin American Bureau, 1994.

———. Bolivia in Focus. London: Latin America Bureau, 1994.Lora, Guillermo. History of the Bolivian Labor Movement, 1848–1971.

Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977.McFarren, Peter. An Insider’s Guide to Bolivia. La Paz: Fundación

Cultural Quipus, 1992.Morales, Waltraud Queiser. Bolivia: Land of Struggle. Boulder, Colo.:

Westview Press, 1992.Osborne, Harold. Bolivia: A Land Divided. New York: Oxford University

Press, 1964.Sánchez-H., José. The Art and Politics of Bolivian Cinema. Lanham, Md.:

Scarecrow Press, 1999.Sanjinés, Jorge. Theory and Practice of a Cinema with the People. Trans.

Richard Schaff. Willimantic, Conn.: Curbstone Press, 1989.Santos, Rosario, ed. The Fat Man from La Paz: Contemporary Fiction from

Bolivia. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2000.United States Central Intelligence Agency. The World Factbook.

Available online at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ index.html.

People of South America’s HeartlandAllen, Catherine J. The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an

Andean Community. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988.

Bigenho, Michelle. Sounding Indigenous: Authenticity in Bolivian Music. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Buechler, Hans C., and Judith-Maria Buechler. The Bolivian Aymara. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1971.


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———. The World of Sofia Velasquez: The Autobiography of a Bolivian Market Vendor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Duguid, Julian. Green Hell: Adventures in the Mysterious Jungles of Eastern Bolivia. New York: Century Company, 1931.

Gill, Lesley. Peasants, Entrepreneurs, and Social Change: Frontier Development in Lowland Bolivia. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987.

———. Precarious Dependencies: Gender, Class, and Domestic Service in Bolivia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Hahn, Dwight R. The Divided World of the Bolivian Andes: A Structural View of Domination and Resistance. New York: Crane Russak, 1992.

Lucero, José Antonio. Struggles of Voice: The Politics of Indigenous Representation in the Andes. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.

Luykx, Aurolyn. The Citizen Factory: Schooling and Cultural Production in Bolivia. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.

Mortimer, W. Golden. History of Coca, The “Divine Plant” of the Incas. San Francisco: And/or Press, 1974.

Nash, June. I Spent My Life in the Mines: The Story of Juan Rojas, Bolivian Tin Miner. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

———. We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Ochoa, C. M. The Potatoes of South America: Bolivia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Osborne, Harold. Indians of the Andes: Aymaras and Quechuas. New York: Cooper Square, 1973.

Pacini, Deborah, and Christine Franquemont, eds. Coca and Cocaine: Effects on People and Policy in Latin America. Cambridge, Mass.: Cultural Survival, 1986.

Painter, James. Bolivia and Coca: A Study in Dependency. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994.

Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. Oppressed but Not Defeated: Peasant Struggles among the Aymara and Qhechwa in Bolivia, 1900–1980. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1987.

Stearman, Allyn MacLean. Camba and Kolla: Migration and development in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Gainesville: University of Central Florida Press, 1985.

———. No Longer Nomads: The Sirionó Revisited. Lanham, Md.: Hamilton Press, 1987.

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310

———. San Rafael, Camba Town: Life in a Lowland Bolivian Peasant Community. 2d ed. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1995.

———. Yuquí: Forest Nomads in a Changing World. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1989.

Stephenson, Marcia. Gender and Modernity in Andean Bolivia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.

Van Vleet, Krista E. Performing Kinship: Narrative, Gender, and the Intimacies of Power in the Andes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.

Zulawsi, Ann. Unequal Cures: Public Health and Political Change in Bolivia, 1900–1950. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007.

Pre-Columbian PeoplesAbercrombie, Thomas A. Pathways of Memory and Power: Ethnography

and History among an Andean People. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998.

Cobo, Father Bernabé. History of the Inca Empire. Trans. and ed. Roland Hamilton. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979.

———. Inca Religion and Customs. Trans. and ed. Roland Hamilton. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

Goldstein, Paul S., and Kevin A. Yelvington, eds. Andean Diaspora: The Tiwanaky Colonies and the Origins of South American Empire. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004.

Janusek, John Wayne. Ancient Tiwanaku. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

———. Identity and Power in the Ancient Andes: Tiwanaky Cities through Time. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2004.

Kolata, Alan. The Tiwanaku: Portrait of an Andean Civilization. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993.

Posnansky, Arthur. Tihuanacu: The Cradle of American Man. Vols. 1–2. New York: J.J. Augustin, 1945.

Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, María. History of the Inca Realm. Trans. Harry B. Iceland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Salles-Reese, Verónica. From Viracocha to the Virgin of Copacabana: Representation of the Sacred at Lake Titicaca. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997.

Stanish, Charles. Ancient Titicaca: The Evolution of Complex Society in Southern Peru and Northern Bolivia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

———. Ritual and Pilgrimage in the Ancient Andes: The Islands of the Sun and the Moon. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.


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Von Hagen, Victor W. The Incas: People of the Sun. New York: World Publishing Company, 1961.

Colonial BoliviaArzáns de Orsúa y Vela, Bartolomé. Tales of Potosí. Ed. R. C. Padden and

trans. Frances M. López-Morillas. Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1975.

Bakewell, Peter J. Miners of the Red Mountain: Indian Labor in Potosí, 1545–1650. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984.

Buechler, Rose Marie. The Mining Society of Potosí, 1776–1810. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilm International for Department of Geography, Syracuse University, 1981.

Cole, Jeffrey A. The Potosí Mita, 1573–1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985.

Cornblit, Oscar. Power and Violence in the Colonial City: Oruro from the Mining Renaissance to the Rebellion of Tupac Amaru, 1740–1782. Trans. Elizabeth Ladd Glick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Ferry, Stephen. I Am Rich Potosí: The Mountain That Eats Men. New York: Monacelli Press, 1999.

Godoy, Ricardo. Mining and Agriculture in Highland Bolivia: Ecology, History, and Commerce among the Jukumanis. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990.

Gutiérrez, Lolita. Blacks, Indians, and Spaniards in the Eastern Andes: Reclaiming the Forgotten in Colonial Mizque, 1550–1782. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Hanke, Lewis. The Imperial City of Potosí. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1956.Klein, Herbert S. Haciendas and “Ayllus”: Rural Society in the Bolivian

Andes in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Larson, Brooke. Colonialism and Agrarian Transformation in Bolivia: Cochabamba, 1550–1900. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Mangan, Jane E. Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005.

O’Phelan Godoy, Scarlett. Rebellions and Revolts in Eighteenth Century Peru and Upper Peru. Cologne, Germany: Böhlau, 1985.

Robins, Nicholas A. Priest-Indian Conflict in Upper Peru: The Generation of Rebellion, 1750–1780. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2007.

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———. Native Insurgencies and the Genocidal Impulse in the Americas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.

Serulnikov, Sergio. Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth-Century Southern Andes. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003.

Stern, Steve J., ed. Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.

Tandeter, Enrique. Coercion and Market: Silver Mining in Colonial Potosí, 1692–1826. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993.

Zulawski, Ann. “They Eat from Their Labor”: Work and Social Change in Colonial Bolivia. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995.

Independence Wars and the New NationAdams, Jerome R. “Simón Bolívar.” In Liberators and Patriots of Latin

America: Biographies of 23 Leaders from Doña Marina (1505–1530) to Bishop Romero (1917–1980). Ed. Jerome R. Adams. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1991.

Arnade, Charles W. The Emergence of the Republic of Bolivia. New York: Russell & Russell, 1970.

Goodnough, David. Simón Bolívar: South American Liberator. Springfield, N.J.: Enslow Publishers, 1998.

Hoover, John P. Admirable Warrior: Marshall Sucre, Fighter for South American Independence. Trans. Alicia Coloma de Reed. Detroit: B. Ethridge Books, 1977.

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Hargreaves, Clare. Snowfields: The War on Cocaine in the Andes. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1992.

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Sanabria, Harry. The Coca Boom and Rural Social Change in Bolivia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.

The Democratic Revolution of Evo MoralesAlbro, Robert. “Bolivia’s ‘Evo Phenomenon’: From Identity to What?”

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Barr, Robert R. “Bolivia: Another Uncompleted Revolution.” Latin American Politics and Society 47 (Fall 2005): 69–90.

“Bolivia Fights Back.” NACLA Report on the Americas 38 (November/December 2004).

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Dangl, Benjamin. The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia. Oakland, Calif.: AK Press, 2007.

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320

321321

AAchá, José María de 63–64Acre 90–91, 285cAction in Defense of the MNR

163activists, labor 112, 157, 158,

175, 176Act of Bolivia’s Economic

Independence (1952) 147adelantados 16, 29administration, colonial 29–32advisers, economic 210advisers, U.S. military 213Africans xliagrarian reform. See land reformAgrarian Reform Decree of 1953

150–151Agreda, Sebastián 58–59agribusiness 172, 175, 249agriculture xxxii–xxxiii, xxxviii

ancient 6colonial 23–26economic sector 87Inca Empire 9–10modernization of 152population engaged in

151regions xxxvi–xxxvii

Aguas del Tunari 236Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud 265alliances, military 81Almagro, Diego de 16, 18, 20,

21, 30alpaca herding xxxvialtiplano xxxiv, 26Alvarez, Waldo 112, 116Amazonian Indians 252Amazon region 65, 90–91, 285cambassadors recalled 265, 290cAmerican industrialists 90–91Amerindians. See indigenous

peoplesAmerindian unity 253Anaya, Ricardo 112, 120ancient Indian cultures

Aymara kingdoms 5–7Inca Empire 7–13

pre-Tiwanakan 1–3Tiwanakan 3–5

Andean Drug Summit 288cAndean Indians xxxix–xl,

242–243, 253. See also Kollas (highlanders)

Andean region xxxiii–xxxivAndean Trade Promotion

and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA) 291c

Andes Mountains xxxi, 26animal husbandry xxxvianticommunism

by anti-Torres conservatives 190

by Ballivián and MNR election annulled 137

Barrientos against miners and labor 179

Barrientos and Ovando coup 171

by García Meza 198MNR right-wing against

COB 159U.S. support of the military

169, 179, 184antigovernment protests. See

demonstrationsanti-imperialism 111antimony 93antinarcotics laws 212,

218–219antinarcotics operations. See

drug warAntofagasta

railway connecting 68, 86, 92

transfer to Chile 83War of the Pacific over 81,

82, 83Apaza, Julián 36, 38arable land xxxii–xxxiiiAramayo, José Avelino 92, 93Aramayo mining enterprise 147Aranibar Quiroga, Antonio 216tArawak xl–xliArce, Aniceto 84, 85–86, 92Arce Gómez, Luis 198

archaeological sitesearliest 2Inca Empire 9Kalasasaya Temple 241Tiwanakan 2–4, 241

architecture, ancient 4–5area of land xxixArgentina

Chaco Central ceded to 101

expatriates in 273independence and wars

44, 48lowlander affiliation with

xlivmilitary training from 198natural gas exports to 268political exiles in 121,

137, 143, 190Río de la Plata, Viceroyalty

of 23, 31, 40–42, 44transit rights through 107unification with 48–49war against Peruvian-

Bolivian Confederation 54

Arica 79, 83, 84aristocracy 73

colonial 28–29Conservative Party base

86–87race and xliRosca oligarchy 95

army. See also militaryattacks on Indians 66caudillos, age of 58Chaco War 103, 105,

108–110Chilean incursions resisted

64corruption and drug

involvement 198drug trafficking ties 206growth of 169–170Incan 20MNR policy toward

168–169of Pizarro 246m

Index

Note: Boldface page numbers indicate primary discussion of a topic. Page numbers in italic indicate illustrations. The letters c and m indicate chronology and maps, respectively.

322

of Pizzaro 16–18, 20political loyalties 141reorganized by Santa

Cruz 53strikebreakers 97, 163,

170, 179student revolt joining 98U.S. trained Rangers 181War of the Pacific 82–83

Arze, José Antonio 112, 120, 122, 127

Asamblea del Pueblo 189–190Asamblea Legislativa

Plurinacional 278, 291c–292c

Asians xliassassinations, political

Belzú, Manuel Isidoro 62Morales, Agustín 69–70Morales, Evo, attempts

on 272Villarroel, Gaulberto

131–132assembly of notables 48, 53,

284cAtacama Province xxxix

Atacama Desert 65, 75, 77

competing claims to 78, 79, 81

resource discoveries in 285c

settlement of 75transfer to Chile xxix, 83

Atahuallpa (Incan ruler) 10, 16–20

Audiencia of Charcas. See Charcas, Audiencia of

audiencias 29, 31Augustinian missionaries 33austerity programs, economic

161, 204–205, 207, 211, 218, 288c

Authentic Revolutionary Party (PRA) 163, 171, 196

authoritarian governmentAndrés de Santa Cruz 53Banzer Suárez, Hugo

191–194caudillos, age of 57–58democracy and 211–212,

219Morales, Agustín 68

authority of state 255autonomy, regional 239,

243–254constitutional reform

granting 243–244, 258indigenous peoples and

251–254Media Luna region 234,

249, 256

referendum on departmental autonomy 246m, 247–248, 247t, 290c

Santa Cruz xliv, 245Ayares people 7–8ayllu tribal communities 6

under colonialism 28, 32Inca Empire 8–9land ownership of xxxiii,

68, 152legally recognized 243–

244Aymara xl, 237

demographics xxxix–xliKingdoms of Aymara 5–7,

10, 283cNational Indigenous

Congress 130as president 239protests for gas and water

nationalization 235Tiwanakan civilization

3–5vice president Víctor Hugo

Cárdenas 223, 288cWater Wars 237

Ayopaya guerrilla republic 46

BBachelet, Michelle 267–268Baldivieso, Enrique 114, 121Balgrano, Manuel 44Ballivián, Adolfo 69, 70, 81Ballivián, Hugo 137, 140Ballivián, José 58–59, 63, 285cBanzer Suárez, Hugo 191

coup and rebellion by 190–191

death of 289cdictatorship 190–194,

287celected president 225–226,

225tpresidency (elected)

226–229, 288c, 288c–289c

presidential candidate 195t, 197t, 209–211, 214–218, 216t

Baptista, Mariano 84, 85–86barons, silver 92barons, tin 93, 95Barrientos Ortuño, René 172

charismatic president 171–172

coup by 170–171, 286cdeath of 184, 287cindigenous peoples loyalty

to 174

military-peasant alliance 172–174

vice president 165, 170weakening position 184

bases, foreign military 258Bay of Cobija 79Bechtel Corporation 228, 236–

237, 288cBelzú, Manuel Isidoro 59–60,

62–63, 285cBeni 245, 258Bermejo River 101, 102bifurcation, economic xliiiBig Silver 69, 71, 84bishoprics 33Blanco, Pedro 52–53blancos (whites) xli“Blast Furnace” antinarcotics

operation 287cBolívar, Simón 48

liberation forces led by 47naming country after xxixpresidency of 50–51, 284cpresidency of Peru 52united provinces goal 48

Bolivia, departments (provinces) of xliv m

Bolivia, modern xxxv mBolivian Communist Party

(PCB) 133, 162, 178, 188t, 205

Bolivian Confederation of Private Entrepreneurs (CEPB) 208

Bolivian Labor Central (COB) 157–158

considered communist 159

CSUTB peasant dominated 221

establishment of 286cJornades de Marzo march

208Lechín’s leadership of 158,

162, 212under military’s control

179against New Economic

Policy austerity 211against Padilla 196restricted by Banzer 193against Siles government

207strikes against the

government 207–208, 211

weakening of 219Bolivian Mine Workers’

Federation (FSTMB) 128, 134–135, 158, 179, 286c

Bolivian National Peasant Confederation (CNTCB) 156


322

323

Bolivian Revolutionary Front (FRB) 174–175

Bolivian Socialist Falange (FSB)Banzer’s support 191,

192, 193coup threats of 162, 164elections of 1956 162founding of 119, 120fragmentation of 193in Torres’ Popular

Assembly 188tWorld War II pro-Axis 123

Bolivian State Petroleum Enterprise (YPFB) 154, 251

Bolivia’s Economic Independence Act (1952) 147

Bonaparte, Napoléon 35borax 71bordering countries xxvii–xxix,

xxxi. See also Argentina; Brazil; Chile; Paraguay; Peru

relations with xliiboundaries 78–81, 103Bourbon monarchy 40Brazil

authoritarian government model 191

counternarcotics cooperation with 262

foreign investments 192land ceded to 65, 90–91,

285cbribery 186Britain, relations with 60, 62British Gas 251British Petroleum 251Brothers’ War 17–18budget deficits 95, 107Buenos Aires, Viceroyalty of 23,

31–32, 40–42, 44Bunke, Haydée Tamara 182bureaucracy

colonial 29–32IMF austerity program

reducing 161land reform process 152

burros 60Busch, Germán 111, 113–119,

285c, 286capolitical nature 116–117biography 118constitution and reforms

114–116declared dictator 117

Bush, George H. W. 213Bush, George W. 263

Ccabinet ministries, assigning of

205, 218, 243

La Calle newspaper 119, 124Camacho, Eliodoro 83, 84,

85–86Camba Nation 250, 251Cambas (lowlanders) xliv,

250–251Campero, Narciso 83, 84–85campesinos. See peasantscapital city location xliii, 22,

87–88, 256, 290ccapitalists. See also industrialists

Banzer’s promotion of 19219th century 65Patiño 94political influence 94, 208

Capitalization, Law of 223capital markets, international

93Cárdenas, Víctor Hugo 223,

269, 272Carlota Joaquina of Bourbon 42Carter, Jimmy 194, 196, 198Castelli, Juan José 44Castro, Fidel 176, 177, 180, 184Castro, José Plácido de 91Catari rebels 38–39Catari, Tomás 36–37Catari, Tupac 36, 38Catavi (Llallagua) xxxviCatavi Massacre 124–125, 147,

286cCatholicism

Bolivian Socialist Falange (FSB) and 120

colonial period 33cultural mestization of

38–39radicals of 1809 and 40Roman Catholic Church

land holdings 52as state religion 85

cattle raising 26caudillismo 58caudillos 53, 57–58census

1854 61t2001 xxxix, 240–241

central authority 57Central Bank 117Central Obrero Boliviano (COB)

157–158Cerro Rico mine 22, 23–25,

24, 283cCéspedes, Augusto 119, 126Chaco Boreal. See Chaco regionChaco region xxxix, 97, 98–99,

101–103Chaco War 107–109, 285c

battle defeats 108–109defining period 73loss of, reasons for

109–110

military preparations 105, 108

political consequences 99, 101

political consquences 119precursor conflict

104–105Chamber of Deputies 222, 225Chapare province 221Chapare region 219, 221Charcas, Audiencia of 31–32.

See also Upper Peruannexation by Viceroyalty

of Lima 49establishment of 23, 283cmining dominating 23–26revolt against Viceroyalty

of Buenos Aires 42–43transfer to Viceroyalty of

Río de la Plata 23, 284cCharcas people 21Charles I [king of Spain and

Holy Roman Emperor (as Charles V)] 16, 29

Charles IV (king of Spain) 40Chávez, Hugo 264Chávez, Nuflo de 23Chavín culture 2–3, 283cChile

coastal regions ceded to 83, 285c

economy of 76immigrants from 76territorial disputes 64, 65,

70–72, 74, 79–80use of ports for gas exports

231, 235, 267war against Peruvian-

Bolivian Confederation 54–55, 285c

War of the Pacific 81–83China, relations with 265Chinese coolies 76, 77cholos (mestizos) xli, 59Christian Democratic Party

(PDC) 205Christianity, conversions to 15,

18, 19, 33Chuquisaca (Sucre)

as capital xliii, 87–88colonial administration

31–32, 283cfounding of 21–22, 283cindependence declaration

at 48–50renaming of 58

churches, establishment of 33CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence

Agency) 180, 182–183cities xliii, 21–23

capital xliii, 22, 87–88, 256, 290c

323

INDEX

324

citizenship rights 146–147civic education 169Civic Solidarity Union (UCS)

222, 223, 225tcivilian presidents

after War of the Pacific 73, 285c

caudillo period interlude 70

Córdova, Jorge 62dictators 63election transfer between

202Morales, Evo 234,

239–241, 240t, 289cPaz Estenssoro, Víctor

211–215, 286cSiles Zuazo, Hernán 162,

199, 201, 203, 204–208, 286c

civilizations, ancient. See ancient Indian cultures

civil society 114, 242civil war

Federal Revolution 87–88, 89

Inca Empire 17–18MNR insurrection 135post-independence 58–59

class conflict 96, 134–135, 195climate xxxiv, xxxviiclimate change 291cCliza-Ucureña 128clothing 38–39, 39, 92CNTCB (Bolivian National

Peasant Confederation) 156coalition governments 205–206,

218, 226, 288ccoastal regions 75

conflict with Chile over 64, 70–72, 79–80

guano and nitrates in 64, 77

population 61COB (Bolivian Labor Central)

157–158considered communist

159CSUTB peasant dominated

221establishment of 286cJornades de Marzo march

208Lechín’s leadership of 158,

162, 212under military’s control

179against New Economic

Policy austerity 211against Padilla 196restricted by Banzer 193against Siles government

207

strikes against the government 207–208, 211

weakening of 219Cobija 53, 61, 78–79, 79coca/cocaine production xxxvii,

xxxviii, 202, 220austerity programs

consequence 220coca growing

criminalization 212, 260, 288c

coca in indigenous culture 221, 227

economic aspects 212–213, 219

peasant demonstrations for coca growing 288c, 289c

peasant involvement 220–221

“Yes to Coca, No to Cocaine” policy of Morales 259–262

“zero coca” policy of Banzer 228

cocaine trafficking 198coca leaf “chew in”

demonstrations 288ccocaleros (coca-leaf growers)

221, 260Cochabamba

anticolonial revolts in 36, 45

coca-growing Chapare province 221, 228–229

Constitution of 2009 rejection 259

founding of 22indigenous land movement

in 149, 150land and climate xxxviroads connecting 153Water Wars in 236

cogovernment (cogobierno) power sharing 157, 207

collective and communal land 9, 29–32, 66, 68, 115, 151

colonial periodland ownership 26–29silver mining 23–26

colonization of underpopulated areas 98, 153, 169

colonos (serfs) xlCOMIBOL (Corporación Minera

de Bolivia) 147, 163, 176communal freeholders

(communarios) xlcommunications, Incan 11Communist Party, Bolivian

(PCB) 133, 162, 178communist threat claimed. See

anti-communism

concessions, foreign 66Litoral province 71petroleum 107, 185railroads 68

Conciencia de Patria (CONDEPA) 222

Concordancia conservative alliance 121–122

Condorcanqui, José Gabriel 36–37, 284c

Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia 156

Confederation of Bolivian Workers 117

Confederation of Peasant Unions of Bolivia (CSUTCB) 220–221

confederation, Peruvian-Bolivian 54–55, 285c

Congress, NationalCOB labor involvement

in 207number of seats (2009

Constitution) 258opposition-dominated 205political parties in (2005)

244tpresidential selection by

196, 197, 198, 199, 211, 217, 222, 241

renamed Plurinational Legislative Assembly 278

conquest, Spanish 13, 15–22conquistadores 16Conscience of the Fatherland

(CONDEPA) 222, 225t, 226conscripts, military 103, 110Conservative Party

Federal Revolution civil war 87–88

founding of 84platform of 85rule of 85–87, 285c

conservatives, politicalBanzer Suárez, Hugo

191–194Concordancia oligarchy

alliance 121–122electoral favorites

225–226MIR-ADN coalition 218peasant-military alliance

173–174Sexenio oligarchic rule

(1947–1952) 132–134Constituent Assembly 245, 255,

289c–290cConstitutionalist Revolution 98constitutions of Bolivia 85, 222

1826 (first) 51, 2221831 (second) 53, 222


324

325

1839 (fourth) 581851 (fifth) 601879/1880 (ninth) 70–71,

851930 amendment attempt

981938 (10th) 114–1161994 amendments 222,

243–2442004 reforms 2442006–2007 Constituent

Assembly 245, 255, 289c–290c

2009 (New Political Constitution of State) 234, 252–253, 254, 256–259, 257t, 290c, 291c

cooperatives, peasant 128copper 93Córdova, Jorge 62–63Corporación Minera de Bolivia

(COMIBOL) 147, 163, 176Corr, Edwin 207corruption

army 198caudillos, age of 57, 66local government 224Melgarejo, Mariano 66Ovando administration

186Spanish rule 32

cost of living 161counterinsurgency campaign

179–181counterrevolution 167countries, bordering xxvii–xxixcoups

1855 (Córdova) 631861 (Achá) 631876 (Daza) 701879 (Daza overthrow)

831920 (Republicans) 961934 (Salamanca

overthrow) 286c1936 (Toro and Busch)

1111937 (Busch) 113–1141943 (Peñaranda

overthrow) 125–1261946 (Villarroel

overthrow) 1321949 plots by MNR 1351964 (Paz overthrow)

170–1711969 (Ovando) 184–1851971 (Banzer) 190–1911974 failed 1931978 (Perada) 195–1961979 (Guevara Arze

overthrow) 196–1971980 (García Meza) 198

1982–1985 threats 205, 206, 209

military growth encouraging 170

plotters executed 127Creoles 36, 39, 40crops xxxiv–xxxv, xxxvii,

xxxviiiCuban guerrillas 178, 181, 183Cuban Revolution 176–177,

184cultural isolation xxxicultures, historical 283c

Aymara kingdoms 5–7Chavín culture 2–3, 283cInca Empire 7–13pre-Tiwanakan 1–3Tiwanakan 3–5

currencydevaluation 192, 197Melgarejo’s 65, 68printing of 202stabilization of 161–162

Cuzco 7–8, 20, 36

DDaza, Hilarión 70–72, 81–82Debray, Régis 189debt, national 70, 95, 107, 154,

202repayment halted 207

decentralization, governmental xliv, 223–225, 243–245, 249, 253

Declaration of Independence 49–50

defense spending 169–170, 173, 179, 202

deficits, budget 95democracy

social movements 242–243

transition to 194–195, 199, 201–202, 287c

universal suffrage and 147U.S. relations and 263,

264, 266Democratic and Popular Unity

(UDP) 195t, 197t, 205, 208Democratic and Social Power

(PODEMOS) 240t, 244t, 245Democratic Antifascist Front

132demographics, rural xxxiii–tdemonstrations 213

by coca growing peasants 220, 288c, 289c

for democracy return 196, 199

Gas Wars over LNG export 231, 235, 289c

Jornades de Marzo 208March for Territory and

Dignity 288cagainst Morales’s reforms

249over capital city location

256over Chaco War defeats

108over constitutional

amendment 98over food prices 193over natural resources 233over postponed elections

199over removing term limits

98against Paz 170pro–Chaco War 105teachers for back pay 218Water Wars 236, 237,

288cdepartments (provinces) xliii,

xlv mautonomy in 2009

constitution 258autonomy referendum

246m, 247–248, 247tgovernment and elections

244–245Depression, Great 95despotism 64–65, 67development

geography and xxix–xxxhuman development index

(HDI) xxxland 153military role 168–169rural 151tropical and subtropical

regions 250devolution of decision making

223–224, 243–244dictators

Banzer Suárez, Hugo 191–194

Bolívar, Simón 50Busch, Germán 117–118caudillos, age of 57–58civilian 63García Meza, Luis

197–198Melgarejo, Mariano 64–67Morales, Agustín 69Santa Cruz 53, 55

dieties, ancient 4, 7disasters, natural 4, 75, 204,

288cdiseases, European 32Dominican missionaries 33donkeys 60Doria Medina, Samuel 240t,

273

325

INDEX

326

dress, Spanish vs. indigenous 38–39, 39, 92, 243

drinking water 236drug connections

García Meza regime 198, 288c

military 198, 206Paz Estenssoro

administration 213, 288c

Paz Zamora administration 218, 219

Siles Zuazo, Hernán 206, 208

Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. (DEA) 213, 265, 267, 291c

drug trafficking xxxviii, 198, 206, 218, 219, 262

drug war 202, 260–262“Blast Furnace” operation

287cmilitarization of 212militarized 288c“Snowcap” operation 287cU.S. advisors and troops

in 212U.S. relations and 264–

265

Eearthquakes 4, 75, 288ceast-west regionalism xliv–xlv,

xlv m, 246m, 247, 248ecomienda feudal system 27–29,

32economic policy

advisers 210austerity programs 161,

204–205, 207, 211capitalists’ influence 94New Economic Policy

(NPE) 211, 213–214, 215

“shock therapy” 210state-managed central 114

economybifurcation xliiicoca/cocaine production

212–213cost of living rise 161crisis 161, 202–204, 215,

227development xxix–xxx,

xxx, 151, 168–169, 250geography and

development xxix–xxxglobal 202Inca Empire 9–10national independence

117

post–WWII crisis 137–138pre–War of the Pacific 76recession of tin industry

collapse 213–214, 287ctin industry dominance

94–95Eder, George Jackson 161education

civic education 169Inca Empire 10indigenous peoples

115–116reform 115, 153

Eisenhower, Dwight 154Ejército de Liberación Nacional

(ELN) 187El Alto 237El Beni department 153elections. See also referendums

campaign spending 2291855 621884 84, 85–861900 881931 1061938 1141940 121–1221944 1261947 132–1331951 137, 147, 286c1956 1621960 1471964 1651966 171, 174–1751978 147, 194–195, 195t1979 147, 195t1980 197–198, 197t, 287c1985 202, 208–211, 209t1989 202, 215–218, 216t1993 219, 2221997 224–226, 225tstate (department) and

local 244–2452002 229–231, 230t2005 238–241, 240t2006 2342009 268–269, 272–274

electoral law 217, 222, 268–269, 291c

electoral reform 146–147, 160, 286c

electorate 88, 121, 122, 146–147, 272–273

Elío, Tómas Manuel 133elite

agribusiness 192, 249mining entrepreneurs 69,

73, 93, 95regional 249

encomienda system 27, 283centrepreneurs, tin 93environmental damage xxxviiiepidemics 32equality laws 51

Estenssoro, Víctor Paz 119–120, 126

Estigarraiba, José Félix 109ethnicity xxxix–xliethnic self-determination 223Europeans xliexchange rate management

117–118exile of politicians

Lechín, Juan 135, 171, 185

Liberals 86Paz Estenssoro, Víctor 171Sánchez de Lozada,

Gonzalo 274, 291cSiles Zuazo, Hernán 171,

193Torres, Juan José 142

exports 65foreign exchange

remittances 117mineral xxxiinatural gas xxxii, 231,

235, 267–268rights to foreign ports 83,

107taxation on 81–82textiles 265tin 94, 285ctrade preferences, U.S.

265

FFalange Socialista Boliviana

(FSB). See Bolivian Socialist Falange (FSB)

fascism 120, 123–124, 126, 127fatherland 49“Father of Bolivia” 51–52Federación Sindical de

Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia (FSTMB) 128, 134–135, 158, 179, 286c

federalism 85, 88Federal Revolution 87–88Ferdinand VII (king of Spain)

40, 42, 43Fernández Ferreira, Leopoldo

273Fernández, Johnny 229, 230tFernández, Max 222fertilizer resources 77. See also

guano; nitrate depositsfeudal system 27–29, 128, 15115 Years’ War 44–47firing squad incident 127Flores, Genaro 220–221foco strategy of Che Guevara

176–179food aid 154food prices 193


326

327

foreign aidantinarcotics 260antinarcotics assistance

219from Cuba 264cutting off 185, 198food aid 154from Germany 163military 169–170, 181,

193mining company fiscal

reform and 163monetary stabilization

requirement 161–162from United States 148,

154, 162, 163, 169–170, 192

from Venezuela 264foreign concesssions. See

concessions, foreignforeign debt 97, 98, 123, 184,

202, 288cforeign exchange remittances

coca/cocaine 213mining exports 117oil and gas 251tin 147

foreign investments 65–66, 68Baner’s encouragement

of 192guano and nitrates 76petroleum 97, 107, 154protections of 1964 code

175rubber 90–91

foreign military bases 258foreign policy xlii

with bordering countries xlii

with Chile 267–268coca/cocaine eradication

and 228with Cuba 263–264of Morales 263–267under Morales 263–268,

274–275of Morales 291cwith Peru 267with socialist countries

187, 265–266with United States 192,

263–267United States relations

263–267with Venezuela 264

foreign trade. See trade, international

Fort Boquerón 108Fort Santa Cruz 107–108Fort Sorpresa 104Fort Vanguardia 104FPN (Popular Nationalist Front)

192, 193

franchise, electoral 88, 121, 122Franciscan missionaries 33FRB (Bolivian Revolutionary

Front) 174–175Free Bolivian Movement 223freeholders, communal

(communarios) xlfree market 161–162, 192Frente de la Revolución

Boliviana (FRB) 174–175Frente Popular Nacionalista

(FPN) 192, 193Frías, Tomás 70fruit growing xxxviiFSB. See Bolivian Socialist

Falange (FSB)FSTMB (mine workers’

federation) 128, 134–135, 158, 179, 286c

Fusilamiento incident 127

GGainsborg, José Aguirre 121Gamarra, Agustín 52–53, 54,

58–59, 284cGarcía Meza, Luis 197,

197–198, 287c, 288cgas, natural

exporting xxxii, 231, 235, 267–268

foreign concesssions 185, 192

revenue shares from foreign companies 251

Gas Wars over LNG export 235, 249, 289c

Gate of the Sun (temple) 4–5, 5GDP per capita xxxgenerals

as presidents. See caudillos; military rule

war of independence 44–45, 47

Gente (People) association 269Genuince Republican Party

(genuinos) 96geography

population distribution 74–75

poverty and xxix–xxxgeography, landlocked xxvii–

xxxigeopolitical position xxvii–

xxviiiGermany, relations with 123–

124, 163globalization, market 202global warming 291cgods, ancient 4, 7gold as Atahuallpa’s ransom 19Goldberg, Philip 265, 290c

governors, colonial 16governors, department

(provinces) 244, 256Goyeneche, José Manuel de 40,

41–42, 43graffiti 245, 250Gran Chaco region 101–103

rival territorial claims 103–104

grasslands (pampas) xxxviigrassroots organizations 219,

233Great Rebellion 33–34, 36–37Greenlee, David 263Guachalla, Fernando E. 84Guadalupe Mines 92guano 65

collection of 77conflict with Chile over

64, 71, 75discovery of 285c

Guaraní xl–xli, 252Gueiler Tejada, Lydia 197, 287cGuerra, José Gutiérrez 96guerrilla insurgency

anticolonial revolts 45–46of Che Guevara 176–184students in Teoponte

186–187Guevara Arze, Walter 119, 161,

163, 171, 196Guevara, Ernesto “Che”

176–184, 286cbiography 177Bolivian diary of 180–181,

184Bolivians attitude toward

178capture and execution of

182–183, 287cGulf Oil 154, 175, 185–186,

287cGuzmán Saldaña, Mario Gustavo

265

Hhaciendas 115

establishment of 28as feudal system 29land reform law on 151seizures of 149–151, 190

Half-Moon region xliv–xlv. See Media Luna region

hats xl, 39Hayes, Rutherford B. 103Helbing, Gabriel 273Henderson, Douglas 182Heroic Era 45–46Hertzog, Enrique 132–133,

136hierarchy, Incan social 10–11

327

INDEX

328

highland-lowland regionalism xliv, 251–254, 256

Historic Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNRH) 205, 209t

Hochschild, Mauricio 93, 118Hochschild mining enterprise

147hostage taking

by land-seizing peasants 190

by miners 164by National Liberation

Army students 187Huanchaca Mining Company

92Huanuni xxxviHuari culture 2–3Huáscar 10, 16, 18, 19Huayna Capac 8–9, 10, 16human development index

(HDI) xxxhuman rights

García Meza regime abuses 198

independent human rights ombudsperson 222

indigenous peoples 114penal code reform and 227U.S. attention to 194

human settlements, first 1–2, 283c

hunger strikes 194, 218, 220, 237, 290c

hydrocarbons xxxii. See also natural gas; petroleum industry

Direct Tax on Hydrocarbons 249–250

Hydrocarbons Law 235, 238, 289c

hyperinflation 203, 287c

IIMF. See International Monetary

Fund (IMF) immigrants

Chilean in Atacama Province 76

European and Asian, recent xli

Mennonites in Chaco 102“imperial” democracy 211–212imports

cost of 94–95duties on 83

Inca Empire 7–13archaeological sites 9Brothers’ War 17–18coca cultivation 227decline 11, 13, 16–18

economics 9–10extent of 12mgovernance and expansion

8–9, 11origins 7–8revolts to restore 37rulers 8–9, 10social system 10–11

Inca Roca 10Inca Yupanqui 10independence declaration

Argentina 44La Paz revolutionaries

(1809) 43Upper Peru (Bolivia)

48–49, 284cindependence movements

15 Years’ War 44–47La Paz revolutionaries

(1809) 43Indian cultures, ancient 283c

Aymara kingdoms 5–7Chavín culture 2–3, 283cInca Empire 7–13pre-Tiwanakan 1–3Tiwanakan 3–5

Indians. See indigenous peoplesindigenista (Indianist) 116indigenous peoples xxxix–xli

of the Americas 253, 276Andean Indians xxxix–xl,

242–243, 253. See also Kollas (highlanders)

assimulation of 152autonomy of 252–254Aymara. See AymaraBarrientos alliances with

171–172, 174Chaco region 102–103Che Guevara’s guerrillas

and 178civic education of 169coca cultural use 220–221,

227communities (ayllus)

243–244earliest settlements 1–2education for 115–116empowered and mobilized

233, 242flag (wiphala) 251–252,

253governing communities

243–244. See also ayllu tribal communities

identification as 239–241land ownership 66, 68,

150–152land seizure movement

149, 259lowland 251–254military conscripts 103,

110

political participation 238–239, 276

population decline 32–33as president 239–240,

289cQuechua xxxix–xli, 7,

11, 130regional autonomy and

251–254regional divisions among

252rights 114–115, 128–131,

223, 258, 274rights, coca growing 260unity 129uprisings 88, 89–90, 97,

285cuprisings, anticolonial

33–34, 35–38, 284cas vice president 288cvillage government 224voting rights 146–147in War of Independence

46–47industrialists

silver industry 86–87, 88, 92–93

tin industry 86, 87, 88, 113

industrial metals 93industry nationalizing 147–148inequality, income xxxinequality, land ownership

xxxii–xxxiiiinflation 161, 203, 204, 287cinfrastructure building

Conservative Party rule 86supporting tin industry 95

institutionalization. See also austerity programs, economic

insurgency, guerrillaanticolonial revolts 45–46of Che Guevara 176–184students in Teoponte

186–187insurrection

anticolonial revolts 45–46of Che Guevara 176–184Nationalist Revolutionary

Movement (MNR) 135students in Teoponte

186–187intellectual isolation xxxiintelligentsia 136intendancies, colonial 32, 284cInter-American Development

Bank 163interest rates 204international capital markets 93International Monetary Fund

(IMF) 154, 161, 204, 286cinternational relations xlii. See

foreign policy


328

329

international trade. See trade, international

investments, foreign. See foreign investments

Iran, relations with 265irrigation 236isolation, cultural and

intellectual xxxiIzquierda Unida (IU) 221

JJesuits 33, 284cJesús de Machaca 97job losses 134, 163Jornades de Marzo march 208judges, colonial 41–42judicial system 227

KKalasasaya Temple 241Kapac Yupanqui 10Kennedy, John F. 169Kingdoms of Aymara 5–7Kolla (Aymara kingdom) 5–7,

13, 21Kollas (highlanders) xliv, 250,

251–252Kundt, Hans 108

Llabor activists 112, 157, 175,

176labor, forced 25, 27–28, 77,

128, 151labor laws 97

Labor Code of 1939 117Villarroel government 128

labor migration xxxlabor, organized 110, 117,

124–125, 127–128indigenous peoples and

131MNR government and 162MNR government

involvement 157–158Ovando government

support of 185Siles Zuazo opposition

207–208Thesis of Pulacayo

134–135weakening of 219

labor, prisoner 77labor unions. See unions, laborLa Calle (newspaper) 119, 124Lake Poopó xxxivLake Titicaca xxxiv, 2–3land xxxiii–xxxix

land area xxixland, communal 66, 68land development 153Landless Movement (Movimento

sin Tierra) 252landlocked status xxvii–xxxi

after Truce of Valparaíso 83, 285c

economic aspects xxix–xxxi

political aspects xxxilandowners xxxii–xxxiii

Conservative Party base 86–87

Media Luna region 250land reform xxxiii

of the 1952 National Revolution 149–153, 286c

in 2009 constitution 250–251, 258, 259

under Barrientos 173under Bolívar 50–51indigenous land seizures

149indigenous peoples and

151–152MNR position on 121,

136, 144, 149–151National Indigenous

Congress and 128–129partial of 1938 constitution

114post-reform conservatism

173–174problems with 152–153

Lanza, Miguel 46, 48–49La Paz

anticolonial revolts 39–40anticolonial siege of

36–37, 38as capital xliii, 87–88,

256, 290cdepartment (province)

245founding of 22, 283clandscape xliiNational Revolution of

1952 in 141–142, 143Plaza Murillo 131

La Paz uprising of 1809 39–44Latin American rural population

xxxiii–tLaw on the Regulation of Coca

and Controlled Substances 212

lead 93Lechín, Juan 157, 207

COB and FSTMB union leadership 158

exile of 135, 171, 185general strike leading 162,

207

hostage crisis 164National Revolution of

1952 141Popular Assembly

president 189retirement of 212Revolutionary Party of

the Nationalist Left 164–165

vice president 163leftist parties 119–121, 122

in Torres’s Popular Assembly 189

Leftist Revolutionary Movement (MIR) 188t, 205, 209t, 225t, 230t

Leftist Sector of the MNR 163legal codes, postindependence

53Legion of Chaco War Veterans

112, 125legislature 188t, 278. See also

Congress, NationalAsamblea Legislativa

Plurinacional 278, 291c–292c

Torres’s Popular Assembly 188t, 189–190

León Pizarro, Ramón García 42–43

Liberal Party 285callying with leftist

opposition 137elections of 1947 133Federal Revolution civil

war 87–88founding of 84, 85Indian revolt role 89–90platform of 85splintering of 95–96tin industry support 95

liberty, political principal of 85Libya, relations with 265Lima, Peru

colonial Viceroyalty 30–32, 43–45, 48–49, 283c

founding of 20Linares, José María 62–63liquefied natural gas. See LNG

(liquefied natural gas)literacy 88lithium xxxivEl Litoral Province 75

conflict with Chile over 64, 71–72

guano and nitrates 77population 61

llama herding xxxvillanos (lowlands) xxxviiLNG (liquefied natural gas)

231, 235loans, foreign 97, 98, 123

329

INDEX

330

local government 223–224, 243–244

localism xliii–xlivlooms 37Lora, César 175, 176lowland-highland regionalism

xliv, 251–254, 256lowlands (Oriente) xxxiv,

xxxvii–xxxixLoza Alvarado, Remedios 225t,

226

MMachiavelli, Niccoló 41MacLean, Ronald 229, 230tMadrid, Gregorio Araoz de la 45mafia, cocaine 198magnates, silver 63, 85, 92, 93magnates, tin 93, 94, 94, 118Magruder Commission 124Mamani, Abel 235, 237Manco Capac 8, 10Manco Capac II 20, 21, 283cMarch for Territory and Dignity

288cMariscal López, fort 104,

107–108Marog, Tristán 121martial law 164, 211, 212, 218,

257Marxist parties 119, 120, 133,

189Marxists 112MAS. See Movement toward

Socialism (MAS)MAS-IPSP coalition 273massacres

of Indians 18–19, 66Massacre of All Saints 196,

287cof protesting peasants in

Tolata 193of striking miners at Catavi

124–125striking miners at Catavi

179, 286cof striking miners at Uncía

97striking miners at Uncía

285cMay Day “renationalizion” of

hydrocarbons 251, 289cMay Revolution of 1936 111,

113, 118Media Luna region

autonomy declared 249, 256, 290c

east-west divide xliv–xlv, xlv m

indigenous peoples in 252–254

land holdings 250Morales opposition 245,

249, 273petroleum industry

revenue claims 249–250

regional autonomy demand 234, 245, 248, 290c

Medina, José Antonio 39–40, 43

Medinaceli, Carlos 47Mejillones region 78, 80Mejillones Treaty (1866) 65, 80Melgarejo, Mariano 62, 64–67,

80, 285cMenchú Tum, Rigoberta 276Mennonites 102mercantilist trade policies 60mercury amalgamation for silver

extraction 25, 284cMesa Gisbert, Carlos Diego 231,

234–235, 238, 289cmestization, cultural 39mestizos (cholos) xli

anticolonial revolts 36colonial period 33president Santa Cruz 53

metal ores 92–93Mexican Revolution 143, 151,

159Michel, Mariano 40, 43middle class

MAS party appeals to 273New Economic Policy

(NPE) impact on 213opposition to Banzer 194political aspects 96, 136support of MNR 162

migration, cross-border xlivmigration, internal

colonial period 32to unpopulated areas 98,

151, 153, 169migration, labor xxxmilitary 206. See also army

economic development role 168–169

growth of 169–170nationalized mines

management 176political factions within

206U.S. assistance 169–170,

181, 193military bases, foreign 258military campaigns, Spanish 20military conscripts 103, 110military equipment, U.S.

180–181Military-Peasant Pact 172–174,

193, 286cmilitary police (carabineros) 141military reforms 168–169

military ruleBanzer Suárez, Hugo

190–194caudillos, age of 57–58García Meza, Luis

197–198generals linked to cocaine

198–199Hertzog government

135–136MNR election annulling

137, 140–141Ovando Candía, Alfredo

185–187peasant alliance 172–174postrevolution 167Restorative Revolution

and Second Republic 171–176

Toro and Busch 111–114, 285c

Torres, Juan José 187Villarroel, Gaulberto

125–127military socialism 111military training, U.S. supported

179–181militias, worker and peasants

168, 169, 174, 190millenarianism 36, 37–38millionaires 92miners 93, 133, 175, 284c

Catavi Massacre 124–125, 179, 286c

coca consumption 227, 228

hostages taken by 164job losses 134, 163, 212,

287cjobs and wages restored

185in National Revolution of

1952 142, 143San Juan Massacre 179,

287cstrikes 117, 124–125strikes and repression 97,

163, 164, 170, 176Thesis of Pulacayo

134–135Uncía Massacre 97

mines, nationalization of 147–148

compensation paid for 148

middle and small sized 190

mine closures 212, 287cMNR call for 121, 136,

144U.S.-owned Matilda zinc

mine 189Mining Bank 117, 147–148


330

331

mining industry xxxiifiscal reforms 163government control of

60, 63military management 176Mining Decree of 1939

117modernization of industry

65, 92–93nationalization of

147–148oligarchy 65, 69, 73regions xxxvisodium nitrates 77

ministries, assigning of 205, 218, 243

MIR-ADN coalition 218, 219Miranda, Rogelio 186, 187MIR (Leftist Revolutionary

Movement) 188t, 205, 209tMIR-New Majority 216missionaries 33Mita Capac 10mita labor system 6, 32

in colonial agriculture 27–29

in colonial silver mining 25, 28, 283c

Inca Empire 10revolts against 37

mitayo forced laborers 28MNR. See Nationalist

Revolutionary Movement (MNR)

MNR Alliance (AMNR) 197tMNRA (MNR Auténtico) 163,

171MNRH 205, 209tMNR-Left (MNRI) 193, 205,

209tMNR-Vangaurd (MNRV) 209tmodernization

challenges 167of the military 167–168of mining industry 65,

92–93monetary policy 161–162monetary stabilization 161, 204Monteagudo, Bernardo 43, 44Montenegro, Carlos 126Montes, Ismael 88Morales, Agustín 67, 68–69Morales Ayma, Juan Evo 255

accomplishments 271, 275Chamber of Deputies

expulsion 221, 289ccoca growers federation

leader 221, 260, 262, 289c

coca growing policy 259–262

consitutional crisis of 254–259

elected president 234, 239–241, 240t, 289c

foreign policy 263–267, 291c

narcotics policies 260–262for nationalization of gas

and water 235presidential candidate

229–230, 238–239, 240t, 289c

presidential inauguration 241–243

presidential terms 258recall referendum approval

257, 290creelected president 268–

269, 272–274, 291cregional opposition to

244–245, 249, 250, 257regional support for 245United States relations

263–267, 290c–291cmountains xxxivMovement toward Socialism

(MAS)elections 230t, 240t,

268–269, 273–274, 289celectoral platform 229representation in National

Congress 243, 244t, 290c

state (department) and local level 244–245

Movement without Fear. See Movimiento sin Miedo (MSM)

Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario Histórico (MNRH) 205

Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR). See Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR)

Movimiento Popular Cristiano (MPC) 174

Movimiento sin Miedo (MSM) 273

MPC (Popular Christian Movement) 174

multiparty system 96municipal government 223–

224, 243–244Murillo, Pedro Domingo 39, 43,

131, 284c

NNagatani, Michiaki 240tnaming, country xxixÑancahuazú River 178Napoléon Bonaparte. See

Bonaparte, Napoléon

Napoleonic wars 35, 40, 284cnarcotics laws 212, 218–219narco-video scandal 213, 288cNational Conciliation oligarchy

alliance 133National Congress. See

Congress, Nationalnational debt 70, 95, 107, 154,

202repayment halted 207

National Democratic Council (CONALDE) 249, 291c

National Indigenous Congress 128–131, 149, 286c

nationalismChaco conflict 105, 106Nationalist Revolutionary

Movement (MNR) 119–120

post–Chaco War 111Villarroel government 127

Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN)

cabinet ministries 218coalition government 226economic stabilization

210elections 195t, 197t, 209t,

216t, 225tnarco-video scandal 213as opposition party 205Pact for Democracy

alliance with MNR 211–212, 215

Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN)

Pact for Democracy alliance with MNR 288c

Nationalist Party 97, 106, 112Nationalist Revolutionary

Movement (MNR) 145in Democratic and Popular

Unity (UDP) coalition 205

elections 195t, 197t, 209t, 216t, 225t, 230t, 240t

elections of 1956 162elections of 1966 175first in government

125–128indigenous peoples and

131insurrection led by 135labor and 157–158land reform by 149–150in Leftist Revolutionary

Movement (MIR) coalition 230

legislative gains 134, 136military reforms 168–169modernization under

Sánchez de Lozada 223

331

INDEX

332

nationalization of mines by 147–148

out of government 133–134

Pact for Democracy alliance with ADN 211–212, 215, 288c

peasant unions, co-opting of 155–156

presidential election of 137, 222

privatization, support of 226

representation in National Congress 244t

representation in the Popular Assembly 188t

revolutionary governance 159–160

revolution of 1952 launch 140–143

revolution of 1952 reforms 144, 154–155

rise of 119–120, 286csplintering of 160–163,

193World War II pro-Axis

123–124nationalization of industries

compensation paid for 123, 124, 148, 186

foreign operations 112–113

gas resources 235mines 121, 136, 144,

147–148, 189, 190petroleum 112–113, 123,

185, 235, 251, 287c, 289c

political platform 190, 229, 235, 239

National Left of the MNR 163National Liberation Army (ELN)

187National Revolution of 1952

286carmed government

overthrow 140–143claimed mantle of 171,

202legacy of 254, 275social reforms introduced

143–153uncompleted 167–168,

275national security 173national socialism 120, 126national unity xxxiNational Unity Front 240t,

244t, 271–274native peoples. See indigenous

peoples

natural disasters 4, 75, 204, 288c

natural gas. See gas, naturalnatural resources xxxii

conflict over 74geographic distribution

xlivregional claims to revenues

249–250state control over 258

Natusch Busch, Alberto 196Navarro, Gustavo Adolfo 121Nazca culture 2Nazis 124neighboring countries

xxvii–xxix, xxxirelations with xlii

neoliberal policies 204, 218, 224, 233, 254, 275, 288c. See also austerity programs, economic

New Economic Policy (NPE) 211–212, 213–215

New Republican Force (NFR) 230t

New Spain 29–32Nieto, Vicente 44nitrate deposits 65

conflict with Chile over 64, 71, 75

discovery of 285cmining of 77

Nitrates and Railroad Company of Antofagasta 71, 81

Núñez Vela, Blasco 29

OObama, Barack 263oilfields 97, 107, 109oil industry. See petroleum

industryOlañeta, Pedro Antonio de 51oligarchy

Conservative Party 85–86, 285c

conservatives, post–World War II 132–134, 139

conservatives, pre–World War II 121–123

divisions among 137, 140hacienda land owners 128,

153Rosca 95, 113, 119,

121–122, 132silver industry 65, 69,

73, 87tin industry 86, 87, 88,

95, 113United States-tied 175

Olivera, Oscar R. 236–237Oquendo, Juan Lechín 128

ores 92–93Organization of American States

(OAS) 264Oriente indigenous people 130Oruro xliii

anticolonial revolt in 36Constituent Assembly

meeting in 256, 290cfounding of 22indigenous peoples in xlmining region xxxvi, xliiirailway connecting 86, 92revolts and strikes in 142,

174Otazo Affair 206outlet to the sea xxxi, xxxix,

78–79, 267–268Ovando Candía, Alfredo

Che Guevara’s execution 182

coup by 170–171, 184–185, 287c

criticism of 186presidency of 185–187

PPachacámac (diety) 4, 7Pachacútec 8, 10Pachakuti Indigenous Movement

221, 230t, 240tPacheco, Gregorio 84, 85–86,

92Pacific, War of the. See War of

the PacificPacific Ocean access xxxix,

78–79Pact for Democracy interparty

alliance 211–212, 215Padilla, David 196Palenqu, Carlos 222Palenque Avileés, Carlos 216tPando (department) 245Pando, José Manuel 88, 90, 96Paracas culture 2Paraguay xxviii–xxix

Chaco conflict 97, 98–99, 103–107

Chaco War 107–109diplomatic relations with

105, 107military 105

Paraguay River 101, 102, 103Parapetí River 102, 103pariah state 198parliament 188t, 278. See also

Congress, NationalPlurinational Legislative

Assembly 278, 291c–292c

Torres’s Popular Assembly 188t, 189–190


332

333

Partido Comunista Boliviano (PCB) 133

Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (PIR) 119, 120–121

Partido de la Unión Republicana Socialista (PURS) 132–133

Partido Revolucionario de la Izquierda Nacionalista (PRIN) 164–165

Partido Rojo (Red Party) 63Partido Unico 175parties, political. See political

partiespartisanship 205Party of the Revolutionary Left

(PIR) 119, 120–121, 122, 133, 149

Patiño mining enterprise 147Patiño, Simón 93, 94patriotism xxxi, 49patronage 160Paz Estenssoro, Víctor 144,

287c, 288cauthoritarian democracy

211, 212, 214economic advisors 210military reorganization

168New Economic Policy

(NPE) 211–212, 213–215

post-revolution president 143

pragmatism 155presidency terms 161,

163, 164, 211presidential candidate

137, 195t, 197t, 198, 202, 209–211

Paz Zamora, Jaime 216, 217Leftist Revolutionary

Movement (MIR) leader 205–206

presidency of 202, 218–219, 288c

presidential candidate 216–217, 225t, 229, 230t

for stronger state role 226

PCB (Bolivian Communist Party) 133, 162, 178, 188t, 205

Peace Corps 190, 290cPeasant Coca Grower’s Union

221peasant cooperatives 128peasants

Barrientos support 171–175

Che Guevara, opinions of 178

coca/cocaine production 219, 220–221

electorate 175land reform law on

151–153land takeovers by 144military alliance 172–173,

193militias 168, 190Ministry of Peasant Affairs

150MNR policy toward

155–156, 159, 160neglected by Popular

Assembly 189–190protesting food prices 193repression of 149unions (sindicatos) 110,

149, 150, 155–156, 174, 220–221

working 146, 150penal code 227Peñaranda, Enrique 108, 109,

121–123, 286cChaco War general

108–109military rebellion against

125–126strike breaking massacre

124World War II 123–124

peones (serfs) xlPeople’s Nationalist Union 195Pereda Asbún, Juan 194–196Pérez, Elizardo 116Peru

alliance in War of the Pacific 81, 82

Bolívar’s intention for 48Bolivian unification with

49, 54–55, 285ccolonial Viceroyalty of

29–32, 43–45, 48–49independence of 47military intervention in

Bolivia 58modernizing military

model 191revolutionary model 185territorial disputes 79

peso 192, 197Petrobas 251petroleum industry

foreign concesssions 107, 154, 185, 192

Hydrocarbons Law 235, 238, 289c

nationalization of 112–113, 123, 185, 235, 250–251

petroleum exploration 97, 107

price falls 203–204

regional claims to revenues 249–250

revenue shares from foreign companies 251

strikes 212, 214philosophy, anticolonial 40, 41Pilcomayo River 101, 102, 103Pinilla-Soler Treaty 105Pinochet, Augusto 198PIR (Party of the Revolutionary

Left) 119, 120–121, 122, 133, 149

Pizarro, Francisco 15–20, 17, 29, 283c

Pizarro, Gonzalo 16, 21Pizarro, Hernando 16, 21plains xxxviiplebeian president, Belzú as

59–60Plurinational Legislative

Assembly 278, 291c–292cPODEMOS (Democratic and

Social Power) 240t, 244t, 245

police, militarized (carabineros) 141

Political Constitution of the State (CPE) 234, 252–253, 254, 256–259, 257t, 271

political demonstrations. See demonstrations

political partiesaristocracy-based 73banned by Banzer 193Busch’s distance from

116–117changes in 95–96civil war between 87–88,

89coalitions in 1978 and

1979 195corporatist Mexican style

159–160development of 83–85,

88local and regional

governmnet 244–245Marxist 119, 120–121multiple 96, 119National Congress,

representation in 244tnationalist 119official state parties 112,

175peaceful elected transition

between 202political violence 86, 90Popular Assembly,

representation in 188tregional partisan

polarization 248revolutionary and radical

119–121

333

INDEX

334

“taxi” tiny parties 209, 217

War of the Pacific impact on 83–85

political parties, specificAuthentic Revolutionary

Party (PRA) 163, 171, 196

Bolivian Communist Party (PCB) 133, 162, 178, 188t, 205

Christian Democratic Party (PDC) 205

Civic Solidarity Union (UCS) 222, 223, 225t

Conscience of the Fatherland (CONDEPA) 222

Conservative Party 84, 85–87, 87–88, 285c

Democratic and Popular Unity (UDP) coalition 195, 195t, 197t, 205, 208

Democratic and Social Power (PODEMOS) 240t, 244t, 245

Falange Socialista Boliviana (FSB). See Falange Socialista Boliviana (FSB)

Genuince Republican Party (genuinos) 96

Historic Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNRH) 205, 209t

Liberal Party. See Liberal Party

MIR-New Majority 216Movement toward

Socialism (MAS). See Movement toward Socialism (MAS)

Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN). See Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN)

Nationalist Party 97, 106, 112

Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR). See Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR)

Pachakuti Indigenous Movement 221, 230t, 240t

Pact for Democracy interparty alliance 211–212, 215

Partido Unico 175Party of the Revolutionary

Left (PIR) 119, 120–121, 122, 133, 149

PPB-Convergenica 273Red Party (Partido Rojo)

63, 70Republican Party 95–96,

133Republican Socialist Union

(PURS) 132–133Revolutionary Christian

Democratic Party 188tRevolutionary Party of the

Nationalist Left (PRIN) 164–165, 188t

Revolutionary Workers’ Party (POR) 121, 149, 188t, 189

Socialist Party 111–112, 119, 188t, 197t

Socialist Republican Party (saavedristas) 96, 97, 112

United Left Party (IU) 221political polarization xliv, 136,

140, 187, 231, 248–249, 268, 272

political violence. See violence, political

pongos (serfs) xlPopular Assembly 188t, 189–

190, 189tPopular Christian Movement

(MPC) 174Popular Nationalist Front (FPN)

192, 193Popular Participation, Law of

223–224population, rural xxxiii–tpopulation, urban xxxviiipopulation density xxix, 74–75populism 242, 243populist politics 96, 111,

159–160populist presidents 97

Barrientos Ortuño, René 171, 173

Belzú 59–60Morales, Evo 241–243Ovando Candía, Alfredo

186–187Siles Zuazo, Hernán 201

ports, seacoast 78–79, 267Antofagasta 81, 82Arica 84Atlantic 68Cobija 53, 79Mejillones 80

Portugal 42potatoes xxxv, xxxviiiPotosí 24, 24, 91

aristocracy of 86–87founding of 22, 283chistorical influence xliiiresidents (potosino) 92silver mining 92, 283c

pottery 3, 173poverty

capitalist inequality and 94

geography and xxix–xxxpercent population in 225reduction pledges by

Banzer 227reduction pledges by

Torres 111statistics xxx

poverty-reduction programs 227

power struggles, caudillo 58–59

PPB-Convergenica 273PRA (Authentic Revolutionary

Party) 163, 171, 196pre-historic cultures. See ancient

Indian culturespresidencies

first 50–53, 284cterm limits 98, 161, 222,

257, 258presidents, civilian 62, 196,

197, 199, 214. See also specific presidents

Pre-Tiwanakan cultures 1–3PRIN (Revolutionary Party of

the Nationalist Left) 164–165, 188t

prisoner labor 77privatization

of public enterprises 204, 223, 226, 288c

of water supply 228–229, 236–238, 288c, 289c

Progress Plan for Bolivia-Convergence (PPB-Convergenica) 273

proletarian revolution 140property law 114, 149–151protectionist trade policies 60protests. See demonstrationsprovinces. See departments

(provinces)public sector industry 147–148,

162, 204Puente, Carlos 120Puerto del Sol temple 4–5, 5Pulacayo, Thesis of 134–135

Qquality of life xxxQuechua

demographics xxxix–xliInca Empire and 7, 10, 11National Indigenous

Congress representation 130

quinine exports 65


334

335

Quintanilla, Carlos 121–122Quiroga, Ovidio 137Quiroga Ramírez, Jorge 240t,

289cQuiroga Santa Cruz, Marcelo

186, 197tQuispe Huanca, Felipe 221,

235, 240tQurioga Ramírez, Jorge

228–229

Rrace xli, 239–241racism 114radicalism

among the majority 139–140

political parties 120post–Chaco War

110–111prerevolution 136student 98

railroads 68, 86, 92Ramos, Francisco Chipana 130Rangers, Bolivian Army 181Razón de Patria (RADEPA)

125–127Reagan, Ronald 198Real Socavón Mining Company

92Reason of the Fatherland

(RADEPA) 125–127rebellions, anticolonial 33–34rebellions, indigenous

Lake Titicaca area 97of Pablo Zárate Willka 88,

89–90Recall Referendum (Morales)

257, 290crecession 213–214, 287c, 288cRed Party (Partido Rojo) 63, 70reducciones resettlements 32referendums

on the constitution 256–259, 257t, 290c

on departmental autonomy 247–248, 247t, 290c

on Morales recall 257, 290c

on natural gas 235refining, silver 25reforms

education 115, 153electoral law 146–147,

160fiscal 163military 168–169MNR ideologies 144,

154–155opposition to 234social 143–153

regional autonomy. See autonomy, regional

regionalism xlii–xlvi, 243–254regions. See departments

(provinces)regulation, tin industry 113religion

Aymara 7Catholicism 33, 38–39,

40, 85, 120conversions of Indians to

Christianity 15, 18, 19, 33

indigenous peoples 221, 237, 241

Tiwanakan 4“renationalizion” of

hydrocarbons, May Day 251, 289c

repartimiento system 27, 283crepression

of labor 97, 124–125, 134–135, 170

political 124–125, 127, 132, 134, 191

Repsol 251Republican Party 95–96, 133Republican Socialist Union

(PURS) 132–133republics, guerrilla 46resources, natural xxxiiRestorative Revolution of 1964

170–176, 286crevenge-oriented policies xxxirevolts, anticolonial 33–34,

35–44Revolts of 1809 39–44revolution 275

Cuban Revolution 176–177, 184

Mexican Revolution 143, 151, 159

MNR and labor attempt at 134–135

National Revolution of 1952. See National Revolution of 1952

Peru’s revolution 185Restorative Revolution of

1964 170–176, 286cRevolutionary Christian

Democratic Party 188trevolutionary parties 119–121Revolutionary Party of the

Nationalist Left (PRIN) 164–165, 188t

Revolutionary Workers’ Party (POR) 121, 149, 188t, 189

Revolution of the Majors 125–127

Reyes Villa, Manfred 229, 230t, 272, 273

Rice, Condoleezza 263

Rico Toro, Faustino 206rights

civil 114coca growing 260cultural 223human 114indigenous peoples 274universal education 153universal suffrage 88, 121,

144, 146–147to water 237–238

Río de la Plata, Viceroyalty of 23, 31, 40–42, 44, 284c

rituals, indigenous 237, 241–242

roads xxxiInca Empire 11, 12military construction of

169modernization by MNR

153Tiwanakan 3, 4

Rocha, Manuel 221, 230Rodríguez Veltzé, Eduardo

238Rojas, José 150rojos (Partido Rojo) 63, 70Roman Catholic Church. See

also Catholicismland holdings 52as state religion 85

Rondeau, José 45Rosca oligarchy 95, 113, 119,

121–122, 132Royal Dutch Shell 107rubber industry 90–91ruins. See archeological sitesrural development 151rural education 115–116rural education centers 115rural population xxxiii–trural unions (sindicatos) 110,

149, 150, 155–156Russia, relations with 265

SSaavedra, Bautista 96, 97, 112Sachs, Jeffrey 210Sakaka ethnic group 128Salado River 101Salamanca, Daniel 106

Chaco conflict 98–99, 104, 106–109

president 98, 109Republican Party founder

96Salar de Uyuni salt pan xxxivla salida al mar xxxi, 267–268Salomón, Norberto 206salt lakes and salt pans xxxivsaltpeter. See nitrate deposits

335

INDEX

336

Sánchez de Lozada, Gonzaloeconomic adviser 210human rights violations

291cpresident 222–224,

230–231, 288c, 289cpresidential candidate 215,

216t, 217, 229, 230tresignation of 234–235

Sánchez, Juana 66, 67San Francisco Xavier, University

of 40, 48–49, 284cSan Juan Massacre 179, 287cSan Martín, José de 47Santa Cruz

anti-Torres sentiment in 190

Constitution of 2009 rejection 259

economic development of xxxviii–xxxix

founding of 22, 23regional autonomy demand

xliv, 249region population 153

Santa Cruz, Andrés de 47–48, 53–55, 58–59

Santa Cruz Civic Committee (CPSC) 249

Sapa-Inca 7, 10, 11, 18, 19scandals, drug connection 206,

213, 214seacoast access xxxi, 78–79,

267–268seacoast territories. See coastal

regionssecessionist movements xliv,

251Second Republic 171secularism 85secularization of government 51Seleme, Antonio 141, 142self-determination, ethnic 223self-rule, local 224, 233self-rule, regional 234semitropical valleys (yungas)

xxxiv, xxxviiserfs (pongos, colonos, peones) xlserfs, colonial (yanaconas) 28settlements, first human 1–2,

283cSexenio period 132sharecroppers, colonial 29“shock therapy” economic policy

210, 222Siles Reyes, Hernando 97–98,

104–105Siles Salinas, Luis 175, 184–185Siles Zuazo, Hernán 287c

alleged drug complicity 206

conservative ideology 160exile of 171

kidnapped 207MNR leaving 165MNR-Left faction founding

193MNR party founding

member 119MNR principles declared

129National Revolution of

1952 141president 162president again 199, 201,

203, 204–208presidential candidate

143, 195t, 197t, 198silver, as Atahuallpa’s ransom

19silver magnates 63, 85, 92, 93silver mining xxxii, 91–92, 284c

cities founded for 22–23colonial 23–26, 28, 283cgovernment control of

60, 63mercury amalgamation

process 25, 284cmodernization of industry

65, 285coligarchy 65, 69, 73, 84,

87, 88Sinchi Roca 8, 10slash-and-burn methods xxxviiislaves, colonial agriculture 28,

283csmallpox 16, 32smelting, silver 25“Snowcap” antinarcotics

operation 287csocial class

ancient Indian cultures 6civilian ruling class, 19th

century 63, 73class conflict 96, 134–135,

195Inca Empire 10–11middle class 96, 136, 162,

194, 213, 273Rosca and capitalists 95,

119socialism 111–112, 119, 177

2009 constitution and 254of Torres 187, 189

Socialist Party 111–112, 119, 188t, 197t

Socialist Republican Party (saavedristas) 96, 97, 112

social organizations and movements 241, 242, 243

social revolution 144–146, 243social welfare 161sodium nitrates. See nitrate

depositsSorzano, Josée Luis Tejada 111Sorzano, José Luis Tejada 109

South America xxviii mcountries, modern xxxviii

mregions in xlii–xliiiUnited Provinces of 48

South American Placers 187Soviet Union 120Spain

allegiance to 40–42colonial administration

29–32Napoleonic invasion of

35, 40, 284cSpanish conquest 13, 15–22Spanish rule 283c–284c

Incan puppet rulers 19–20, 21

Indian resistance to 21, 33–34, 35–38, 284c

position on coca 227stabilization, monetary and

economic 161, 204, 210, 286c, 287c

Stalinist-Marxists 120Standard Oil 97, 107, 123

nationalization of operations 112–113, 286c

state authority and effectiveness 255

state-owned companies 147street vendors 173strikes 97, 113, 117, 124–125

banned by Banzer 193, 194

Barrientos repression of 179

against economic austerity policies 207, 212

general 162, 196MNR government

repression of 163, 164, 170

tin miners 117strongmen, military 57–58students

guerrilla insurgency 186–187

protests 98, 170radicalized 98, 110

Suárez, Francisco 40, 41Suárez, Roberto 213sub-Andean region xxxivsubsidies 204Sucre 87

as capital xliii, 87–88, 256, 290c

founding of 21–22naming of 58

Sucre, Antonio José de 47, 50, 50

Bolivian independence 48–49

presidency of 51–52, 284c


337

suffrage, universal 88, 121, 144, 146–147, 160, 286c

syndicates, peasantfood price protest 193MNR-controlled 150,

155–156post-Chaco War radicalism

110started by Indian

Chaco-War veterans 149

TTacna, Battle of 285cTahuantinsuyo 4Tarija 22, 245, 248, 259taxation

under Bolívar 50colonial 28, 32–33, 36on hydrocarbons 249–250,

289con mining 97on nitrate exports (10

cents) 71, 81–82protests over tax hike

289cunder Sucre 52tin industry 94, 95

“taxi” tiny parties 209, 217teacher strikes 170, 218teacher training 116technocrats 210, 215Tejada Sorzano, José Luis 109,

111, 113temperate valleys (valles) xxxiv,

xxxviitemples, ancient 4–5, 5Ten Centavos War. See War of

the Pacificterm limits, presidential 98,

161, 222, 257, 258Territorial Base Organizations

(OTB) 244territorial disputes. See also

Chaco War; War of the PacificBrazil 90–91Chile 64, 65, 70–72, 74,

79–80Paraguay 97–98, 102,

103–104theology and revolution 40–41Thesis of Pulacayo 134–135Thomas Aquinas, Saint 40, 41Tiahuanaco 3–4tidal waves 75, 81tin industry

Catavi miner strike massacre 124–125

decline of 148, 213, 219, 287c

depressed 137–138

exports 94, 285cinternational markets

and 93nationalization of 147–148oligarchy 86, 87, 88, 95,

113regulation of 113state control over 117World War II 122–123

tin mining xxxii, 93Titicaca, Lake xxxiv, 2–3Tiwanakan civilization 3–5,

283cTolata, Massacre of 193, 287cToledo, Francisco 25, 27, 284ctopography xxxiii–xxxiv

Atacama Desert 75Chaco region 102guerrilla insurgency and

178Toro, David 111–113, 285c,

286cTorrelio Villa, Celso 198, 287cTorres, Juan José 186, 187,

189–191, 287cTorres Ortiz, Humberto 141,

142trade concessions, foreign 60,

68trade, international. See also

exportsunder Belzú 60imbalance of 94–95import duties 83protectionist policies 60trade preferences, U.S.

265, 291ctransit rights, international

83, 107trafficking, drug xxxviii, 198,

206, 218, 219, 262transit rights, international 83,

107transparency of government 255transportation

of goods xxx–xxxiregionalism and xliii–xlivsupporting tin industry 95

treatieswith Brazil 65, 91with Chile 65, 80, 81, 83with Paraguay 103–104,

109with Peru 52, 54, 79, 81Treaty of 1866 80

Triangular Plan of mining fiscal reform 163–164, 176

tribute payment taxes 52Trinidad 23tropical and subtropical regions

xxxvii–xxxviii, 153Truce of Valparaíso 83Tupac Amaru, Andrés 36–37

Tupac Amaru II 36–37, 284cTupac Amarú Rebellion 33–34,

36–37Tupac Catari 36, 38Tupac Katari Revolutionary

Liberation Movement (MRTKL) 220, 223

Tupac Yupanqui 10Tupi-Guaraní Indians 252

UUCS (Civic Solidarity Union)

222, 223, 225tUcureña 149, 150–151UDP (Democratic and Popular

Unity) 195t, 197t, 205, 208UN (National Unity Front)

240t, 244t, 271–274UN Commission for Narcotic

Drugs 291cUN-CP (National Unity Front-

Popular Consensus) 273UN Declaration on the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples 274underdevelopment 94UN General Assembly (United

Nations) 265, 290c, 291cUnión Cívica de la Solidaridad

(UCS) 222Union of Creceño Youth (UJC)

249, 250Union of South American

Nations (UNASAR) 264unions, labor 110, 117

Banzer’s control of 194expansion of 127–128indigenous peoples and

131MNR government

involvement 157–158Ovando government

support of 185Thesis of Pulacayo

134–135in Torres’s Popular

Assembly 189unions, peasant 110, 149, 150,

155–156, 174United Left Party (IU) 221United Nations Commission for

Narcotic Drugs 291cUnited Nations General

Assembly 265, 290c, 291cUnited Nations Millenium Goals

238United Provinces of South

America 48United States 193, 266

border arbitration by 103CIA (Central Intelligence

Agency) 181, 182–183

INDEX

338

cooperation with, WWII 122–124

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) 213, 265

drug war 260, 261, 264, 266

foreign aid cut 185, 196, 230, 264

foreign aid from 148, 154, 162, 163, 192

hostages taken by miners 164

imperialism, charges of 176–177

liquefied natural gas exports to 231

military aid 169–170, 179–181, 184

oligarchy ties 175policy toward Villarroel

126political involvement 162,

266relations with 187,

263–267, 290c–291ctin mine ownership 148tin sales 138, 214troops involved in drug

war 212United States Steel 175universal suffrage 88, 121, 144,

146–147, 160, 286cUpper Peru 3. See also Charcas,

Audiencia ofcolony of 23independence declaration

48–49, 284cSpanish conquest of

20–23, 283cuprisings

anticolonial 33–34, 35–38, 284c

indigenous peoples 88, 89–90, 97, 285c

MNR led 134–135, 141urban middle class 96Urriolagoitia, Mamerto 136,

137Uru-Uru mountain 284cUSAID 265, 267U.S. Export-Import Bank 123U.S. industrialists 90–91utopianism 37

VValparaíso, Truce of 83Vega, Oscar Unzaga de la 120Velasco, José Miguel de 53, 54,

58–59Venezuelans as country founders

47, 48, 52Verde River 103veterans, Chaco War 110, 112, 125viceroyalties 29Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires

31–32, 42–43Viceroyalty of Peru 29–31viceroys 29–32vicuña herding xxxviVietnam, relations with 265Vildoso Calderón, Guido

198–199, 287cvillage government 224Villarroel, Gaulberto 125–127,

126, 286cassassination of 131–132labor laws 128National Indigenous

Congress address 130vindication, historical xxxiviolence, political 90

caudillos, age of 57, 64coca growers 228–229Gas Wars over LNG export

235Liberal Party 86miners unions 176MNR insurrection and

repression 134–135National Revolution of

1952 141–143over constitution draft 257over economic and coca

eradication policies 231water privatization Water

Wars 228–229, 236–238Viracocha (deity) 4, 7Viracocha (Incan ruler) 8, 10voting eligibility 88, 121, 144,

146–147, 272–273, 286c

WWallace, Henry 123Warisata teacher training school

115–116

warlords 58War of Independence (15 Years’

War) 44–47, 284cbattles, winning 47republics, guerrilla 46

War of the Pacific 81–83, 285c

causes of 72, 76–77defining period 73policies and factions 84precursor conflict 74–81

war on drugs. See drug warwars xxxiWater Wars 228–229, 236–238,

288c, 289cweaving 37welfare, social 161whites (blancos) xliWillka, Pablo Zárate 88, 89,

285cwiphala rainbow flag 251–252,

252, 253Wiracocha 8wolfram 93women

cabinet ministers 197, 243

presidents 197, 287crevolutionaries 45

worker migration xxxworker strikes 97World Bank 236, 288cWorld War II 123–124, 286c

YYacimientos Petrolíferos

Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) 154

yanacona forced laborers 28Yapacaní Province 221yatiris 237Yuhuar Huácac 10Yungas Province 221, 229

ZZárate Willka, Pablo 88, 89,

285czinc xxxii, 93, 189Zudañez, Jaime and Manuel

43, 44


Waltraud Q. Morales a Brief History of Bolivia, 2nd Edition 2010

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