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CHAPTER 2The Bolivian N ationa! Revolution:

A Twenty-First Century PerspectiveLaurence Whitehead

I t was impossible, maintained L:tNation, to measure the magnitude ofany social revolution merely by the degree of its violence: theBolivian National Revolution got underway in 1952 with only about600 casualties whereas hundreds of thousands of deaths in la violentia ofColombia after 1948 had not insured social change there. On the contrary, maintained L:t Nation, a social revolution could be determined onlyby advances in all of a country's aspects of development - political,social and economic - and therefore 'we cannot assert with any certainty at this time that the Cuban Revolution can be considered as such.!This chapter deals with the twelve years of government by the MN R thatwas inaugurated by the National Revolution of April 1952 and that cameto an end with the military coup of November 1964. On one view, this wasessentially a political revolution, the inauguration of a dominant partyregime, followed by its eventual decomposition. The chapter will indeedpay attention to the national dynamics of this political regime. But on asecond view, one particularly prevalent in Bolivia at that time, this wasmore than just a political change of guard - i t was a social revolution.This chapter draws on the by now reasonably well-established narrativehistory of those 12 years,2 bu t it has a more comparative and theoreticalfocus. It draws on that history to construct a synthetic interpretation ofthe Bolivian Revolution, one that can be compared with other social revolutions. This synthetic interpretation is constructed from the perspectiveof the ensuing half-century, and more especially in the light of our changing perceptions of social revolutions in general. This involves revisitingsome very old questions from a new perspective. Was 1952-64 really asocial revolution as claimed in the 1950s, or - knowing what we do aboutthe subsequent trajectory of the MN R and its leaders - should we reclassify it as another relatively banal instance of merely political change refl ecting elite opportunism and manipulation? Even if we regard it as more thanjust a change of guard in the government, did it clear the way to some kindof 'progressive' reconstruction of Bolivian society that would no t havebeen attainable through more consensual means? Or did it impose disruption and sacrifice in the name of a utopian future that was either illusory


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26 27roclaiming fuvolution: 130livia in Comparative lJerspeclzve

or, to the extent that it was genuine, could better have been pursuedthrough persuasion and negotiation with those it in fact defeated? Was therevolution 'betrayed' from within or blockaded by its enemies? In whatsense did it 'succeed' or 'fail'?As indicated in this and the following two chapters, these discussionsabout comparative experiences of social revolution raise big issues of historical method (notably because of the strong counter-factuals they invoke);and of social theory. For example, can we identify and bracket for comparison large-scale structures and processes, with the latter periodically breakingthrough the former? Are there discontinuous periods of accelerated historical change, and if so do they have any determinate direction? Similar questions have been asked about the Mexican, Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions, not to mention their French, Russian and Chinese forerunners andcounterparts. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, these are questions thatlook different from the way they seemed during the Cold War.Looking back at the National Revolution after half a century, and withthese comparative and theoretical preoccupations in mind, involves takingthe Bolivian Revolution as seriously as all these other counterparts. Th emain aim of this chapter is to demonstrate that the Bolivian case canextend and refine the general analysis of revolutionary change and equallythat comparative analysis can add value to the interpretation of Bolivia'shistorical experience. .

Other contributors to this volume consider some major aspects of thepre-revolutionary regime and social structure and offer assessments ofaspects of the post-revolutionary outcome. Thi s chapte r deals with the political and social dynamics of the relatively short period of the NationalRevolution itself. The folloWing section looks 'inside' the 1952-64 MNRregime and offers an overall interpretation of its revolutionary trajectory.Three critical issues are selected for this purpose: i) the sources of the initialradicalism; ii) the interplay between local and national dynamics; and iii) themeans by which the MNR leadership attempted to reconstitute its nationalauthority once the initial pressures from below had been released. Ratherthan viewing the first MNR regime as a predictable project, this frameworkdraws attention to the improvisation and contingency of the revolutionaryperiod. However, it also assumes that there was a structure underlying thecontingency: in theoretical terms this chapter rests on the assumption thatsocial revolutions can be analysed as 'dialectical' processes with limited timespans an d a constrained range of possible outcomes} If so, this frameworkcan not only be used to reinterpret the Bolivian experience of 1952-64, itcan also be used to compare the National Revolution with similar e x p e r i ~ ences in the light of more general theories of revolution. The third and finalsection of this chapter reverts to such analytical issues.

A Twenty-First Century Perspective

1952-64: A Synthetic InterpretationInitial RadicalismFifty years la ter it is easy to underestimate the boldness and radicalism ofthe experiment launched in April 1952. The only precedents then availablewere the Mexican, Russian and Chinese revolutions, all very violent andprotracted. After six years Bolivia would be overshadowed by Cuba and itssequels but none of that was foreseeable in the early 1950s. On the contrary, 1952 was a t the height of the Korean War and witnessing the rise ofMcCarthyism. Just when Bolivia nationalized its mines, the Mossade q government in Iran was overthrown for threatening to control its oil companies. No sooner had Bolivia decreed a sweeping land reform than the CIAoverthrew Arbenz in Guatemala. (He was accused of communism in partfor promoting a milder land reform law.) In Cuba, 1952 was the year of theBatista coup. In South America, this was an era of Washington-approvedmilitary dictatorships in Venezuela, Colombia and Peru. The more compatible regimes of Vargas and Peron were both heading for a fall. The onlysignificant sources of external sympathy for a revolutionary project inBolivia were distant Mexico and perhaps (to a degree) neighboring Chileunder Carlos Ibanez. Fo r public consumption the Peronists might expressverbal solidarity with the Bolivian Revolution, but MNR leaders knew better than to count on any real help from Buenos Aires. 4 As for the USA,Washington might eventually be reconciled to afait accompli in La Paz, butit was certainly no promoter of revolutionary radicalism in Bolivia andPatiiio Mines was registered in Delaware.So the initial radicalism waS clearly generated from within. Some of itssources are well covered elsewhere in this volume: the rural struggles overland and education and against internal colonialism; the Chaco War and itsconsequences for nationalism and state building, most notably during theVillarroel regime. There is also a now unfashionable but not-to-be forgottenliterature on the mining sector and the labor radicalism it generated throughthe Miners Federation, and later the COB, under the leadership of JuanLechin.5 In addition to these Bolivia-specific sources of radicalism, the comparativist will search for more standardized precursors of revolution, forexample, in the state apparatus, the military establishment, within the leadership of the insurgent forces and in the system of political representation.Since this chapter is about developments after April 1952 there is onlyspace here for a very summary mention of these issues. A standard interpretation would be that the status quo ante (it hardly merits the designationancien regime) was too narro\v, too rigid and too precarious to manage thepressures outlined above. Th e 'military socialist' experimen ts of Busch andVillarroel were failed attempts at a proactive response, but when they fell(and the way they fell) this fractured no t only the army, but the state as a


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292S Froclazmzng Kevolutton: Jjolzvza zn Lompararzve yerspecrzve

whole and it bequeathed a legacy of frustrated hopes that would haveoverwhelmed any subsequent reformist administration. After the artificialeconomic stimulus of the Second World War, post-1945 Bolivia faced fis-cal, monetary and investment bottlenecks that left almost no margin forclass compromise. The party system was in any case both incipient andhighly polarized. After the violence of the 1946 showdown. representativepolitics became unviable because (as the 1951 election confirmed) anyopening of political space would be filled by outlawed figures from thedeposed regime. So, with a disorganized state, a demoralized and fracturedmilitary and a dysfunctional party system, pre-revolutionary Boliviawas inno condition to absorb discontent either from below, or from the 'outs'.The resultwas a classic 'reactionary' interlude between 1947 and 1952, onein which those with something to lose relied on repression and played fortime, without being able to formulate any hegemonic project. On thisinterpretation, the radicalism of 1952-55 arose largely from the pent-updemands of all those disparate forces that had been united by exclusionover most of the preceding sexenio. 6They were united by the MNR, a movement with a record for verbal radicalism, combined with great tactical flexibility (critics would say 'opportunism') and an impressive ability to co-opt or outmanoeuvre its rivals. Inopposition, the MNR rallied very diverse tendencies, some steeped in socialradicalism (in the mining camps, sectors of the peasantry and certain urbanpopular groupings), but also conservative nationalists and, of course, a leav-ening of careerists. Once back in power, the MNR had broad mass appeal,but was also a centralized and hierarchical structure with an authoritarianjqe.It could win democratic elections (even under Bolivia's restricted suffrage),but was not known for accepting electoral defeats graciously. Oligarchs asso-ciated it with the murder of prominent opponents under Villarroel and thePIR (the Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria, the main Marxist party ofthe 1940s) had dogmatically portrayed it as a fascist party. Those whoentered into alliance with the MNR risked being outmaneuvred by it (asmany RADEPistas felt they had been in 1946 - this may help explain whythe Falange backed out of its partnership with the conspirators on the veryeve of the revolution).7 The aggressive and intolerant style of the MNRforced its opponents into a corner: either they accepted its leadership or theyjoined the reactionaries. So when the MNR returned to power in triumph, inApril 1952 (with the twin mandates of a democratic majority and a popularurban insurrection) neither right nor traditional left were in a position toexercise countervailing power. The right migrated to the Falange SocialistaBoliviano - FSB (or fled) and the PIR dissolved itself as an organized alternative. Any restraint on radicalism in the early years would therefore have tobe generated from within the MNR.As with other revolutions, it was not immediately clear who wouldinherit power, nor on what basis, no r to what ends. The La Paz conspirators ....


did no t intend to precipitate a head on confrontation with the arm ed forcesand they seem to have envisaged a number of quickly discarded possibilities- co-government with a military president, new elections for both president and congress, perhaps the marginalization of exiled party leaders inBuenos Aires. It took strong pressure from the labor movement (quicklyorganized into the Central Obrera Boliviano - the COB) to precipitate thenationalization of the mines and to accelerate and radicalize the agrarianreform. Returning from exile without a renewed electoral mandate, or a congress, or even a cabinet of his choice, President Paz Estenssoro had tomaneuvre constantly between the COB, the surviving armed forces, hisparty rivals and the US Embassy. The radicalism of his initial policies was aproduct of this vulnerability as much as of any prior pragmatic decisions.So the incoming president andjqe de la revoluci6n tried to play for timebefore defining his course. Two failed coups from the right helped to crystallize the radical course that soon emerged. In synthesis, there were twocompelling reasons for this, but it is hard to apportion the weight betweenthem. The initial radicalism of the revolution was 'over-determined' by, onthe one hand, the balance of forces within the victorious movement and, onthe other, by the 'objective' need to dismantle the status quo ante and to securethe regime against a counter-revolution, before attempting to rein in revolutionary excesses.

For the schematic purposes of this section it may suffice to classifyApril 1952 until around early 1956 as the period of initial radicalism.8 ThenPaz Estenssoro began preparing to hand leadership of the revolution (andthe poisoned chalice of an IMP stabilization plan) to his vice-president,and long-term rival, Hernan Siles Zuazo. The interplay between strong.local and weak national power dynamics (to be discussed below) occupiedmost of the period f rom the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. And the effortsto reconstitute national authority and to subordinate pressures from below(also discussed below) became much more central once Victor Pazreturned to the presidency for a second term in 1960.

The radical tilt to the balance of forces after April 1952 can be tracked. from a number of angles. The very fact that urban insurrectionaries in LaPaz had secured a capitulation by the forces of order resulted in a shift of power that was by no means foreseen, let alone desired, by many backersand even leaders of the new government. The initial plan had been a mil-itary coup, backed by popular support. 9 But once the military had crum. bled the armed leaders of the insurrection (with Juan Lechin and his s i n d z ~

cato supporters at the forefront) controlled power on the streets. Thus theywould only relinquish that leverage if offered extensive co-government'and opportunities for autonomous organisation. In return for the ministries of mines, labor and peasant affairs, and the legitimation of the COB,the MNR secured acceptance of the outcome of the 1951 presidential


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30 31lJroclazmzng fuvo/utzon: no/zwa zn comparanve Yersplm"tVI! ./: i 1wenry-r'zrst century Ferspectzve

election. The exiled jife returned from Buenos Aires to occupy what wastermed the constitutional presidency to which he had been elected in 1951(with the head of the insurrection, Hernan Siles, as his vice-president). Butthe congress of 1951 was not called into being and no local elections wereheld. The cabinet over which Victor Paz Estenssoro presided was the onealready nominated in his absence by the victors in the street fighting. Andlocal power was exercised by party militants who exercised defacto rather thande jure control. For the first couple of years press freedom was not protected.1 But this meant institutionalizing a degree of power sharing that prolonged and in some ways even intensified the administrative paralysis of thepre-revolutionary period.11 It also created two options for all those claimantswho had been either genuinely persecuted or could at least present themselves as worthy of favours from the new regime. They could seek satisfaction through the :MNR, or through its equal par tner in directing the revolution, the trade union confederation headed by Juan Lechin, the COB. Thismade controlling and absorbing the return of the 'outs' far more problematic than before. ('Las peras no alcanzan para todos' was the famous phraseof Victor Paz on this point.) It prompted radicalisation, because one of themost effective ways to accommodate all these demands was to redistributeproperty and to expand state employment.At a more basic level, radicalization was driven by the distribution ofweapons (a 'correlation of forces' in the most literal sense). Even before therevolution, the Chaco veterans had often retained their firearms and thustransformed the balance of power in their communities. The miners had hadtheir own access to dynamite. Many Indian communities had possessed thenumerical strength, organization and basic implements needed periodicallyto impose their wills on their localities (except when contested by detachments of security forces). This was why the pre-revolutionary Bolivian statewas so vulnerable and why the insurrection of April 1952 was militarilycapable of prevailing. After the insurrection, the COB secured a commitment that one third of all subsequently imported weapons would be distributed via its channels. For a while it even seemed possible that sindicato militias might permanently displace the security forces of the state. In duecourse, by purging and reorganising the military, and by enlisting US support, Victor Paz contrived to roll back this situation. 12 But it was not until1956 that rival militias began to divide the mining camps and that a wedgewas driven between the worker and peasant wings of the COB.During the early years such repressive force as remained at the government's disposal (essentially the ControlPolitico forces under Colonel ClaudioSan Roman) were directed principally against the threat of counter-revolution from the right. Until then, therefore, the :MNR government was inno position to rein in radicalism on its left. In fact, failed attempts by theright wing of the :MNR to break free from co-gobierno and block the COB

provoked successive waves of further radicalisation in 1953 and 1954 asthe dissidents were purged and the sindicatos pressed ahead with their socialdemands. The crucial political victories that Paz secured during this pe riodwere to secure left-wing acceptance of a system of representation thatcould later be deployed against them and to construct a 'nationalist' project (actually dependent o n US aid) with wide enough appeal to stabilize theregime until the initial wave of radical demands had abated.So much for the internal balance of forces within the :MNR as an explanation for the revolution's initial radicalism. But we must not underestimate the importance of a second, parallel and overlapping consideration.If, as key elements in the :MNR leadership apparently believed, the statusquo ante had proved itself too narrow and rigid to accommodate any degreeof reformism, then it would have to be dismantled and replaced. Thepurge of the armed forces was bound to be far-reaching, even in theabsence of the COB, given all that the military hierarchy had done to blockreform since 1946. It is true that the :MNR hoped to ret urn to power via amilitary coup, but it was also known that Villarroel's attempts to coexistwith the mining Rosca and the semi-feudal oligarchy were seen to havefailed, so that when the party did regain power, much more drastic measures would be required, at least in the altzplano. Nationalization of themines, a sweeping land re form and universal suffrage were already on theagenda, however the conspiracy unfolded, because that is what Bolivia's

previous history had led many in the opposition to expect, and to demand.This is not the place to rehearse the well-known arguments for andagainst the :MNR's most distinctive revolutionary measures of the 1950s.Victor Paz, as president responsible for enacting these measures, himselfacknowledged their deficiencies. (In the 1980s he initiated a comprehensiveoverhaul and - in key respects - reversal of the statist and distributivistpolicies he had implemented in the 1950s). The question at issue here isslightly different. Why were so many radical (and in many respects urttried)measures enacted so rapidly immediately after April 1952? This was not theorderly implementation of a sequence of developmental strategies by acoherent administration with a long-term planning horizon. It was a chaotic and revolutionary upheaval driven by a sense of immediate necessity andby the desire to create irreversible outcomes before it was too late.

This may be easier to understand when one recalls that for its supporters, the failure of the Villarroel administration was a cathartic experience.After six years in opposition, uncertain whether they would ever get a second chance, or what terrible price they might have to pay in order toreturn, the authors of the revolution did not think they could afford to riska second reversal. In this, they may have resembled other revolutionaryleaders, such as the Cubans in 1959 who could not risk another 1933, orLenin's determination to avoid another 1905. The Bolivians' sense of

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3332 Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective

urgency and danger would have been reinforced by the intransigence oftheir opponents, who had already suppressed one major MNR-led rebellion in 1949 and who showed no compunction about cancelling the 1951election after they had lost it. To the disappointment of the La Paz revolutionary committee, their opponents had also proved resilient enough tothwart General Seleme's initial coup of 9 April 1952.Admittedly the radicalism of 1952-55 was somewhat out of line with themore calculated practices of the MNR in government both before and since.

It reflected the unexpected loss of control and the consequent risk of beingoutbid by disorderly pressures from below (shades of the bogotazo?). But itwas not purely an opportunistic reflection of the balance of internal forces.Reading the MNR's proclamations and self-justifications before the insurrection confirm that their return to power was theorized as a revolutionary discontinuity in Bolivian history, as a step change from one system of domination and socioeconomic organization to another. Such a reading can bedefended notwithstanding the accompanying evidence of ambiguity and dis-agreement about the specific content of the measures envisaged and of thecoalition required to put them into operation. If this contention is correct,then Bolivia belongs in a specific cluster of historical experiences that deservethe designation of 'social revolutions' and that require comparative analysisas a distinctive category of processes.To pursue this argument with specific application to the radicalism of1952-55 requires careful study of the measures then adopted. Most analysis concentrates on the land reform,13 the nationalization of the mines orthe reform of education. But it is also worth emphasising the far-reachingimplications of establishing universal suffrage in the wake of the 9 Aprilinsurrection.Bolivia's registered electorate rose from 205,000 (6.6 per cent of the estimated population) in 1951 to 1,127,000 (33.8 per cent) in 1956, and thenumber of valid votes recorded rose almost eightfold - from 126,000 (61.6per cent of those registered) to 958,000 (85 per cent).14 It is worth recallingthe regional context at this time. Although Argentina had enjoyed universalmanhood suffrage since 1916 it was not until 1951 that women voted for thefirst time, and similarly it was not until 1952 that Chile extended the vote toboth sexes. Although women gained the vote in Peru in 1956, itwas not until1980 that illiterates were enfranchized there. In Brazil, women gained thevote in 1932, but illiterates were excluded until 1989. In Mexico, the principle of universal manhood suffrage (i.e. including illiterates) extended rightback before the revolution, but females only obtained the vote in 1955. InGuatemala after 1945 the vote was theoretically obligatory for all literatesand voluntary for illiterate men. Illiterate women could not vote until 1966;In Ecuador, illiterates did not gain the vote until 1978. In summary, whenthe Bolivian Revolution granted the vote both to women and to illiterates, by .regional standards this was a bold innovation,15


In post-revolutionary Bolivia, universal suffrage was not just an isolated measure. It was an integral component of the whole package of earlyradical legislation. This involved extending the vote to illiterates in a society where over half the urban population and more than three quarters ofthe rural population were truly unable to read and write, and indeed wherea majority of the population lacked basic schooling and perhaps even verbal fluency in the language of state administration. It involved granting theright to choose both national and local political representatives to communities that had often recently obtained their own supplies of armamentsand had organized their ftrst sindicato assemblies (which constituted a formof direct democracy in many localities). It meant giving a say on publicpolicy to hundreds of thousands of land reform beneftciaries and organized workers who could be counted on to vote against any reversal of assetredistributing measures.

In some circumstances, the granting of votes to women can be a technique for strengthening conservative values (for example, where the CatholicChurch has a strong following amongst them). In others, the enfranchizement of illiterates can reinforce the political leverage of local landowners (anargument against universal suffrage used by some on the Brazilian left at thistime). But in Bolivia, as in post-revolutionary Mexico, the effect of universal suffrage was to signal to those opposed to the revolution that its policieswere here to stay and that the MNR would remain in office for the indefihite future,16 In this context the promise of universal suffrage both boostedthe initial radicalism of the regime and increased its chances of reconstitut.ing state authority on a different basis over the longer run. But the experience of successive elections under the MNR was disillusionary. Either openelectoral contests generated local factionalism and perhaps even violence, orcentrally controlled elections alienated those they excluded. A more genuinely competitive party system would be needed eventually to generate apost-revolutionary source of popular legitimacy.Interplay between the National and the LocalThis section is mainly concerned with the dynamics of the MNR regime. once the initial wave of radical measures had been absorbed and beforeadministrative centralization had taken hold (i.e., between the mid-1950sand the early 1960s),17 In Malloy's questionable terminology 'a deflation ofnational power took place, and the country reverted to "lower" forms oforganisation. Effective decision-making power became localized and/or.segmented.'18 But it should be noted from the outset that similar patternsWere apparent from the earliest days of the revolution (and indeed evenbefore 9 April), and that they were never completely overridden either by thenumerous intervenciones decreed by the National Policy Committee of the/MNR, or by the Pacto Militar-Campesino, or indeed by the subsequent


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Barrientos dictatorship. Still, they were most visible, and perhaps most constraining, during the administration of Hernin Siles Zuazo (1956-60). Thiswas the period when the central government seemed at its weakest and mostvulnerable. The military were still keeping a low profile, with the police andthe militias mainly responsible for public order; the ruling party was dividedinto factions, most of which looked to the absentjg'i! as the ultimate arbiter;the major revolutionary changes had been enacted and the problem now washow to make them work effectively; the economy was at its low point, withstrict IMF disciplines reinforced by heavy dependence on a us aid programthat was becoming increasingly intrusive; the FSB was conspiring to overturn the regime by direct action, knowing that despite its electoral strengthin key cities and some small towns it could never break the l\t1NR's hold onpower by any other means; and President Siles was resorting to hungerstrikes to offset his administration's lack of authority and manoeuvrability.Even if he had spent twelve hours a day signing land reform decrees, thebacklog would still have continued to mount up.1 9In short, during this period the aspirations aroused by the National

Revolution came into conflict with its real possibilities. All revolutionshave to contend with this disjuncture, and typically revolutions can drawon sources of legitimation, hope and fear, that carry them through theearly setbacks. In Bolivia too, the r evolution had accumulated a reserve ofstrength that sustained the national government until Paz Estenssorocould return with a ne w project (the Washington-financed Triangular Plan)and at the head of a new coalition (with Lechin as his vice-president anda revived military providing backbone to the j g ' i ! ~ control of the party). Butin the interim the national authorities looked weak and directionless.President Siles (1956-60) attempted to rule by constitutional means. Hewas elected concurrendy with the Congress and he sought institutionallegitimacy to offset his relatively weak position in the l\t1NR. He divided theCSTCB from the COB and he did his best to face down the Comite ProSanta Cruz. It was his bad luck that the Cuban Revolution eclipsedBolivia's claims to vanguard status and that economic events conspired todiscredit his national leadership. However, at least for external observers,the re-emergence of Bolivia's chronic problem s of administrative incapacity and political paralysis at the national level has one beneficial side effect.It enables them to inspect the interplay between local and national initiatives with an unimpeded view from beloVl. This view highlights theextreme heterogeneity of the revolutionary process as experienced by the .various groups, interests and regions that it engulfed. .Few if any parts of Bolivian society were unaffected by the cascade qf ..measures enacted in La Paz, yet the impacts were strongly fJ1tered through .;diverse local experiences. The Land Tenure Centre at Madison Wisconsiphas generated a rich array of local studies tha t can be mined to docume!}t


this assertion for much of the altiplano and valley regions. For example,Charles Erasmus portrayed a pattern of delayed mobilization and partiallandlord accommodation to the new order in traditional Quechua areas ofChuquisaca that differs drastically from most of the conventional stereotypes.20 The Nor Yungas coffee and cocoa zone studied by MadelineBarbara Leons is a world apart from the Norte de Potosi as portrayed byTristan Platt, or the lakeside conflict zone of Achacachi, or the dense periurban agriculture of Cliza and Ucurena;21 not to mention the high pastoralists, or the new setders who followed the highways that began opening up to the Oriente. A similar multiplicity of local realities opens up oncewe explore the mining sector beyond the stereotypical but unrepresentative cases of Catavi/Siglo XX. The wolfram co-operative at Kami was attimes one of the most productive and best organized of units within theMiners Federation, but wolfram followed a quite different economicrhythm from that of tin and Kami's relationship with the l\t1NR regime wasaccordingly desynchronized.22 I f we look beyond highland agricultural andmining the picture becomes yet more varied. What most mattered at theborder posts was whether the customs regime favoured opportunities forsmuggling, and if so in which direction. What particularly mattered tolarge landowners in Santa Cruz was whether they could gain access toheavily subsidized credit in order to import agricultural machinery.Meanwhile, the lowland city's urban elite was mosdy interested in the oilroyalties that they hoped to ring fence beyond the reach of grasping fiscalauthorities in the capital. Ordinary lowlanders feared the competition forwork from the migrant army of highlanders who followed the opening of. the Santa Cruz-Cochabamba highway. In vineyards of San Pedro (Ciniti

.. province), the revolution threatened the market for singani and the investments from the Patino interest; in Tarija the biggest worry was that a.nationalist project would leave the needs of remote provincial capitalsunattended; and so on.So how did the big themes on the revolutionary agenda fJ1ter down toall this myriad of specific local and provincial interests? Only a few roughapproximations of an answer are possible here. One is that somehow orother almost all the groups and interests mentioned above were reachedand affected by what the Revolution did (or failed to do). Its success, itsmeaning, its presence has to be deciphered through all these indirect andmediated effects, and not just by some summary reading of official inten.tions or aggregate indicators. Much of the literature contains a tendency toover-schematize, to take very partial viewpoints or counter-verities as morerepresentative of the whole than they can possibly be. We need to attendto the part played by intermediaries, brokers and political entrepreneurswho assisted the process of reconciling national agendas with extremelyvaried and specific local interests. (Think, for example, of the La Paz police


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36 Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective A Twenty-First Century Perspective 37

man whose response to 9 April was to take off his uniform, walk back to hishometown in the altiplano and turn himself into the leader of its peasantsindicato, while always maintaining contact with his former colleagues in the .capital's police force so that he was alert to opportunity and to danger asnational politics lurched one way or the other.) A second, rather obvious,point is that - at least in the absence of strong centralized discipline - theprocess of adjusting parochial interests in line with a new national revolutionary discourse generates a spectrum of excuses for relaunching local conflicts under a new guise. No doubt the rivalry between Cliza and Ucurenahad deep historical roots, but before the revolution it remained mostly latent.Once one side had the opportunity to secure weapons and encouragementfrom say the COB, the other side would be sure to line up with the rival revolutionary faction, and as the two became proxies for a national power struggle the local rivalry degenerated into virtual trench warfare. Similar conflictsarose between the mining sindicato of Catavi/Siglo :xx and the smaller butstrategically located sindicato of Huanuni. The urban land invasions orchestrated in Santa Cruz by Luis Sandoval Moron reflected a parallel struggle forpower within that city's MNR comando (which, in turn, was weighty enoughto attract powerful patrons and equally powerful enemies within the national structure of the party).23

In summary, while there was always a two-way interplay betweennational and local political dynamics, in Bolivia the local componen ts werecharacteristically strong and diverse. What seem at fIrst sight to be national divisions motivated by questions of high politics or even ideology wereoften tributary to lower level conflicts which often had much mor e specific and parochial motivations.24 From the mid-1950s to the early 1960s thistype of political struggle became increasingly visible and intractable, as theinitial impulse of the revolution lost momentum. I f a national revolutionary government was to maintain its cohesion and to steer the countrytowards a coherent developmental path, it would have to reconstitute itsauthority on a more centralized and disciplined basis.The Reconstitution ofState Authority25To some extent this third theme dates right back to 9 April 1952, and in fairness to the Siles administration it also constituted a priority between 1956and 1960, although not one where he achieved much success either then orsubsequently.26 Malloy overstates the case when he describes the position ofthe national authorities in 1960 as 'absurd', but there is enough truth in hischaracterisation to reveal something of the psychology of the time:

It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that national authority wasroughly coterminous with the city limits of La Paz. Sandoval Moron andRuben Julio effectively ruled almost half the existing territory of the

country between them. The bulk of the altiplano was under the thumb ofToribio Salas. Jose Rojas held sway in the Valley .. . Northern Potosiwasin a state of anarchic inter-tribal warfare. The major mining camps wereindisputably controlled by local sindicatos. The overall situation had deteriorated to such a point that national officials, including the president,could not safely travel throughout large sections of the country withoutthe express permission and protection of local bosses.27The reconstitution of state authority emerges most clearly as a dominantpreoccupation after the return of Paz Estenssoro to the presidency for asecond term (which he eventually, and unsuccessfully, sought to extendinto a third successive period of personalized control). His return coincided with the election of Kennedy to the White House and the subsequentlaunch of the Alliance for Progress, so one element in the analysis concerns an attempt to position post-revolutionary Bolivia as a benefIciary,and perhaps even a 'showcase', of Washington's new policy. But there wasalso a downside to this international strategy. The Alliance for Progressmay have offered aid to reformist governments, and it looked forgivinglyon pro-US regimes that also engaged in land reform and economic interventionism. But it was also a counter-insurgency alliance. Within thisframework the only kind of national authority that could be built up andconsolidated with US support was a reliably anti-communist regime with afum commitment to the suppression of pro-Cuban tendencies. It wasdoubtful whether Washington would ever overlook Juan Lechin's role inbuilding up the Bolivian Miners' Federation by mobilizing workers againstAmerican mine managers, or could forget his flirtations with various formsof Marxism. In any case, beyond the personal profJ1e of Paz's vice-president (and presumptive successor in the presidency in 1964) the miners federation and the COB remained full of class warriors and anti-imperialistactivists, who rejoiced over the Bay of Pigs. I f they had a complaint againstthe Cuban Revolution it was that it was showing up the timidity of itsBolivian counterpart. In short, if Paz proposed to reinvigorate theBolivian Revolution by making it a showcase of the Alliance for Progress,his new project would involve breaking the coalition he had forged tobring him back to offIce.Turning therefore to the domestic balance of power, if the COB andthe FSTMB were to be marginalized (they eventually broke away to formthe PRIN, Partido Revolucionario de la Izquierda Nacionalista, withLechin as its chief) Paz's project for the reconstitution of a national revolutionary authority would have to rest on alternative sources of support.The Bolivian case can be fitted into a comparative framework that wouldalso accommodate such analogous episodes as the institutionalization ofthe Mexican Revolution after 1928. Within such a framework the main

.. areas for consideration would be: i) the formulation of an overall diagno


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sis and prescription ('project') that may unify disparate forces in pursuit ofa common goal; ii) the organisation of a system of consultations, and ifnecessary side payments, aimed at strategic groups where co-operationwould be needed and who could not simply be rallied to this official project; iii) the structuring of a system of intelligence, discipline and controlaimed at those who may otherwise have the capacity and inclination toresist the resurgent authorities; and finally, iv) some process of feedback,perhaps based on an electoral calendar or some other pre-fixed timetableof party congresses or cabinet reshuffles, that could institutionalize project monitoring and that may provide the flexibility needed to protect theauthority from the possible failure or discredit of its initial project.The Pro/ectThe 'project' of the second Paz administration was a long-term plan foreconomic development. After the revolutionary legislation of the early1950s, it had been necessary to stabilize the economy, under IMP direction. Now that the economic and political foundations of the new regimewere in place, the next stage would be a state co-ordinated drive from asustained growth 'take off' backed by loans and technical assistance fromthe Washington-based development agencies. Under this project the disparate and conflicting power groups within Bolivia could be directed torefocus their energies on this long-term collective objective from whichthey could also stand to benefit in the end. Within this logic, the MNRwould monopolize the national interest, and would be justified in imposing discipline on dissenters. This pursuit of national unity could also beinvoked to justify a policy of reconciliation with elite groups that had formerly been identified with opposition to the revolution.Coalition StrategyConsequently the second Paz administration also required a coalition s t r a t e ~ gy. It aimed to establish working relations with such strategic groups as themedium-scale mine owners, the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee, the CatholicChurch and even the conservative press, all of which had felt under threatduring the first years of the revolution, but which would now need to bereassured and, if possible, enlisted in the national development project.When considering how to reconstitute state authority it was critical toassess which elements of the status quo ante remained intact after the d i s o r ~ .der of the revolutionary period, and what it would take to neutralize theiropposition, or better still to secure their co-operation. For example, the la(ijundistas of the altiplano had been eclipsed, but the large landowners of Oriente were on the rise.28 Likewise the 'big three' mine o w n e r s w e i : ~ expropriated, but other privately owned mines remained in existence, atl'g

!:".,


some had considerable geological potential. Paz was still the jeft of a revolutionary movement and knew better than to expect an easy spontaneousreconciliation with the propertied classes. But if the MNR could convincethese key actors that they would have something to gain from co-operat ionand much to lose from die-hard opposition, this would broaden the baseof the new strategy and improve its chances of success. Side payments,personal appointments and a judicious distribution of the resources generated from Washington would be required. The more Paz asserted hisauthority within the MNR, and the more he used it to curb the pro-Castroleft, the easier his relations with these conservative groups should become.Reasserting Social DisciplineSo the reconstitution of state authority also required a strategy for reorganising the ruling party and for reasserting social discipline through therestored forces of order. Hunger strikes had no part in Paz Estenssoro'spolitical repertoire, but more successfully than Siles, he had long specializedin cultivating support within the military, and in linking the party he hadfounded with the security agencies. Evidently the Alliance for Progresswould not welcome the restoration of the so called campos de concentracion thathad characterized his first term, but perhaps there was no need for that.Within the MNR he had encouraged the formation of military cells withinthe party, initially to ensure the loyalty of the reformed military.29 Thisinstrument could now be used to control factionalism and stiffen disciplinemside the ruling party. Although the sindicatos still had their old guns, the statecould issue its regular forces with new calibre weapons requiring a differenttype of ammunition.3D The president could ensure control over the NationalPolitical Committee of the MNR and then use that instrument to 'intervene'. and suspend disorderly elements of the ruling party at locallevel.31

It s difficult to know whethe r a strategy of this kind guaranteed a con.flict between Paz and the left from the outset. As it turned out, however,the Bay of Pigs was followed by the Missile Crisis, the assassination of. Kennedy and the rise of the Mann Doctrine in Washington. Under suchCircumstances. Paz was increasingly forced into making an explicit choicebetween protecting his ties with the USA (which increasingly bypassed the.. tWing party in its dealings with the resurgent military) and seeking to conciliate Lechin and his followers. In this context he was almost bound tochoose the military, and his strategy for the reconstitution of state authortty became detached from the consolidation of a broadly based ruling rev;/Olutionary party.32The MNR cycle therefore came to a demoralising close.''Constitutional and Democratic StructuresThus far this synthetic interpretation of the 1952-64 experience has high-"lighted the 'revolutionary' dynamics of the period. This may facilitate com


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410 Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in c'omparative Ferspective

parison between Bolivia and subsequent Latin American revolutionaryprocesses, for example in Cuba and Nicaragua. But from the perspectiveof subsequent Bolivian history, and taking into account the currently prevailing negative assessment of revolutions as little more than false utopiasand excuses for authoritarianism, this section canno t close without at leasta brief mention of the constitutional and indeed democratic components ofthe Bolivian National Revolution.The lvlNR derived part of its legitimacy from its conquest of power viaa popular insurrection in April 1952. It also generated support as the onlyavailable embodiment of popular nationalist aspirations, a source of legitimation that was raised to a higher level by the revolutionary laws of the firstPaz administration. But in addition to these powerful national-populist credentials, the lvlNR could also claim a democratic and constitutionallegitimaey. Despite the absence of trustworthy rules of the electoral game, it wona succession of electoral victories in the 1940s, culminating in the success ofthe Paz-Siles ticket in the 1951 presidential elections. Following the revolution, Siles and Lechin chose (after some hesitation) to allow Paz to returnfrom exile and serve his constitutionally mandated four-year term (at a timewhen their leadership of the insurrection might well have enabled them todisregard that constraint). Thereafter, Paz handed over to his vice-presidentat the appointed moment, and he withdrew from direct involvement innational politics when Siles took office. Universal suffrage may have createda very lopsided electoral balance, but between 1956 and 1962, elections wereheld on schedule and democratic procedures were more or less respected. 33Within this framework it would have been perfectly possible for Paz tocomplete his second term and then hand over to an elected successor. Thisraises an intriguing counter-factual issue. Had he done so, the latent conflicts within his party and in Bolivian society concerning the outcome ofthe post-revolutionary settlement might well have proved unmanageable.He may have been particularly swayed by the thought that his most obvious successor, Juan Lechin, was a divisive figure and perhaps incapable ofrunning a responsible government. But there is also an alternative argument, and it was one that his former party comrades found increasinglyconvincing. By imposing himself on the presidency for a third term inopposition to Siles and Lechin and without a credible democratic mandate,Paz assumed responsibility for destroying the institutional foundations ofthe lvlNR regime. Twenty years were to elapse before reliably fixed electoral calendars were re-established and formal democratic legitimation wa,srestored. This constitutional thread runs through the dynamics of the1952-64 process quite as much as the 'revolutionary' thread. Both are inte- .gral to any 'dialectical' interpretation of the Bolivian Nat ional Revolution.


1952-64 in Comparative and Theoretical PerspectiveThe previous section drew on fairly well-established analyses of Bolivianpolitical history, but the narrative was pruned with the aim of highlightingaspects of the Bolivian Revolution that facilitate comparison with analogous processes and underscoring the themes of most theoretical interest.

Bolivian revolutionaries were home grown, but they were not completely insulated from parallel experiences elsewhere. Images (possibly distorted)of the Mexican and Soviet revolutions were present in Bolivia as examplesand influences, and some rather traditional variants of Marxism (mostly ftl-tered through the Chile of the 1930s) provided an important intellectual reference point. There was also a nationalist tradition sharpened by the ChacoWar, which seems to have incorporated some influences from European fas-cism. The Falange owed a debt to Franco, and the liberal constitutional tradition received some succour from parts of Latin America (for exampleUruguay and Chile) and intermittently also from Europe and NorthAmerica. So it is not ahistorical to compare Bolivia with other parallel experiences and external sources of influence. After 1959 the BolivianRevolution was eclipsed by the more spectacular and outward lookingCuban, Chilean and Nicaraguan processes, and it exerted almost no external. influence of its own. Nevertheless, from the perspective of 2002 it is legiti mate to compare the Bolivian Revolution both with relevant predecessorsand with analogous successors. The Bolivian experience provides a realitycheck on general theories of social revolution that can be used to supplement the more classical exemplars. So this section explores that terrain.There are various 'stage' or 'sequence' theories of revolution. The sim plest framework is to distinguish between causes, course and consequences.But that takes the revolution itself as a sharply demarcated event or set of events that can be clearly segregated from what went before and came after.However, the Bolivian case confirms the comparative generalisation that aievolution is an extended process, with deep historical roots and long-termrepercussions. It would be very artificial to argue the revolution began in, say,April 1952 and ended in, say, November 1964. We can date a political regime in that way, but as a socialprocess the Bolivian Revolution built up from theChaco War, through military socialism and accelerated after the failureof the

. Villarroel regime. In some respects it had lost impetus by about 1955, in, other respects it was still alive in the Asamblea del Pueblo of 1971, or indeed

in the road blockades of recent years. It was, therefore, a social revolution andriot just a political regime change. This is because of its impact and the holdl ~ d e v e l o p e d on the popular imagination of an entire society, and because of)he way it reordered Bolivia's collective understanding of relations of\po,wer and of social purpose.


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From this perspective it seems appropriate to explore a 'dialectical'interpretation of the Bolivian Revolution. On this vie\ll, the revolutionexpressed a clash of ideas about fundamental issues of national identityand collective direction. The ideas motivating the revolution gained earlyexpression in the 1938 Constitutional Convention and extended their popular appeal through the 1940s. After 1952, prior constraints on the application of these ideas were abruptly lifted and a variety of rival interpre tations of the meaning of the revolution competed for ascendancy. Withina few years its initial consequences were visible and many illusions hadbeen shattered. But the debate continued and indeed continues to someextent right down to this day (for example when the MNR, the MIR Movirniento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria - and the indigenistas clashover the legacy of 1952). Some of the competing ideas that had beenpushed to margin during the radical phase of the revolution (constitutionalism, rule of law) have staged a remarkable comeback. Other ideas thatwere once thought to express the genius of the revolution have fallen intodesuetude and perhaps even been disowned by those who invented them(controlobrero, union assemblies, co-gobierno). But this revolutionary fermentof proposals, ideas and experiments needs to be understood as a continuous dialecticalprocess. These powerful collective experiences remain availablefor reincorporation into ongoing debates, they are all generated by a sharedexposure to a revolutionary political and social transformation, and the lessons of the 1950s remain present in all subsequent political debate.More concretely, this chapter has focussed on 1952-64, and on thepolitical dynamics of the revolutionary period. What this procedure isintended to highlight is that the 'revolution' cannot be treated as a blackbox, neatly separated from what caused it and from what it caused. I t wasan extendedprocess characterized by a great deal of contingency a nd u n c e r ~ tainty. Within that general framework it is, however, possible to distinguishan underlying structure of initial radicalism, leading to localism and dispersion, followed by the attempted re-establishment of hierarchicalauthority constructed on an alternative basis. Looking at the BolivianRevolution from this perspective serves to improve its comparability withsocial revolutions more generally and to link it up with wider debates incomparative historical analysis.34However, Latin American and comparative history is full of episodes andindeed processes that are characterized by contingency, abrupt policy lurches, localism and recentralization. I f 1952 Bolivia is to be distinguished frommost of these and bracketed instead with the more celebrated upheavals ofMexico, Cuba and Nicaragua (not to mention such 'classical' revolutions those of France, Russia and China) then we need to specify some higqthreshold characteristics of a 'social revolution' to distinguish this period .from more general episodes of turmoil. The claim here is that Bolivia went .

A Twenty-First Century Perspective 43

through a national revolution in the following vital aspects: i) its far reachingsocial changes affected the national population as a whole, extending moreor less comprehensively (albeit unevenly) throughout the population; ii)these changes generated a new sense of national identity and gave rise to aqualitatively distinct form of state-building; iii) although in many respectsinitially disorderly and incoherent, these changes were cumulatively irreversible and created a new baseline for all subsequent developments.

I f this characterisation is accepted, then 1952 Bolivia does belong in arelatively select class of historical experiences, which requires separatecomparative and theoretical examination. Reverting to an issue raised inthe introduction, this involves the claim that in certain circumstances wecan identify either an ancien regime, or at least a status quo ante, that is sufficiently resilient and coherent to obstruct necessary change, but that isunable to absorb it. A revolution is then the moment of breakthroughwhen this old structure is swept away and - in a short period of time a concentration of delayed innovations and untested experiments takes itsplace. Clearly, if an ancien regime is to b e 'swept away' by political action, thiswill involve a degree of violence. But the essential criterio"n is the extent ofthe resulting social change, rather than the magnitude of the violenceinvolved in securing it. Bolivia was far less violent than any of the othercases mentioned.35 But it has been argued that the social impact of 1952was sufficiently far-reaching to raise Bolivia above the threshold for inclusion in this universe of transformative processes. The resulting policyinnovations and untested social experiments may work badly, but in theabsence of counter-revolution (for example Guatemala in 1954 or Chile in1973) they become the benchmark for all subsequent national politics.Since the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, all social revolutions havetended to lose their mystique, and this context of disenchantment tends todefine prevailing assumptions about what revolutions involve even amongacademics. Revolutionary rhetoric is hard to re-read and take seriously insuch a setting. The debates that fired the imagination of participants wh obelieved they had the opportunity to create a better society now seemunrealistic or even incomprehensible. It is tacitly or even explicitly assumedthat all such radical attempts at utopian social engineering were eitherutterly fanciful, or tnore probably cynical deceptions. (Reformist and market friendly utopians are typically exempted f rom this anathenization, however.) There is indeed plentiful evidence that those recent exponents of.revolutionary change often used their advantages to shore up authoritarian elites, to monopolize privileges and to suppress criticism. Cuba and. Nicaragua are increasingly viewed from this optic even by those who usedto defend these two revolutions.

The Bolivian Revolution provides an interesting counterpart to all this.Unlike Castro, Allende or the Sandinista leadership, the MNR leaders made


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Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective4 45 Twenty-First Century Perspective

few bids for international support. Domestically, they generated a legit mestizo uniformity on communities of indios ruled by a white elite. But thisimizing discourse that envisioned a big expansion of the state and what critique both exaggerates and at the same time underestimates the 1952might be called social engineering to bring about a better future. But nei ;, Revolution. It also essentializes 'Indian' identities that were actually morether Paz nor Siles embraced any form of utopianism, and Lechin , fluid, even then. It exaggerates the MNR's capacity to remold society fromimprovized according to whoever happened to be his current policy advis above, but it simultaneously underestimates the assault on symbolic hierer.36 This is not to underestimate the intellectual content of the debates archies that flowed from the April insurrection.between the various Bolivian contenders for power at the national level. President Paz chaired many cabinet meetings and engaged in a lifetimeIdeas mattered in revolutionary Bolivia. But the ideas in question were of political intrigues, bu t one of the greatest shocks to his entourage camemostly quite practical and the main debates were known to be over tactics shortly after his return from exile, in April 1952, when he instructed hisand factional interests.37 Bolivian nationalism was mostly defensive - an ministers to dance with the cholas who had been invited into the presidenexpression of the fear that without a big collective effort Bolivia's fragile tial palace from the nearby central market. The revolution was partly aboutinstitutions and national identity would be in peril rather than optimistic, breaking down caste-like barriers of social distance inherited from coloniallet alone aggressive. It was not until the second Paz administration that seri times. These days all right-thinking radicals scorn the way the MNRous social engineering was proposed, and at that point the discourse wasalready highly technocratic.38 The radical rhetoric of the COB or the

redescribed the indios as campesinos. But this is because they fail to grasp thesymbolic breakthrough that this represented at the time. At the local level,Asamblea del Pueblo had a narrow domestic audience and was often not to recognize all Bolivians as sharing some com mon identity (however ficintended all that seriously. There were radical movements on the streets and titious) was literally to turn the world upside down.in the communities, but what drove them were overwhelmingly immediate Theorists of revolution working from the classical Marxist traditionand local demands. The recent mass mobilization in Cochabamba in 2000 used to argue that a genuine revolution needed to express the ascendancyagainst the water companies provides a contemporary illustration of this of the proletariat over the propertied classes (preferably a working classgeneral pattern. When Che Guevara raised the banner of continental social led by an enlightened vanguard party). The MNR always rejected this lanist revolution in Bolivia, only a small cadre of students and left-wing activists guage, asserting that it was a 'nationalist' movement uniting Bolivians of allunderstood the terms of his proposal. His death, and what was often viewed classes (other than the Rosca and those leftist intellectuals who had fallenas his noble example, may perhaps have struck a chord in the hearts of many captive to anti-national ideologies and even the latter might be subjectBolivians. But his revolutionary theory came from another planet. to recuperation). The reality is that the Bolivian system of social stratificaThis observation connects with the earlier discussion in this chapter of tion was neither so horizontal as in the Marxist model, nor so verticallythe interplay between local and national perspectives. Revolutionary elites segmented (between 'nationalists' and the 'anti-patria') as in the alternativemay decree sweeping changes from the balconies of presidential palaces in account. As Malloy noted in 1970, most cleavages were localized and idencapital cities. But if society is affected, it is because of the way local actors tities were often defmed by markers other than property-ownership andrespond to these signals in their villages, neighborhoods and mining camps. dependence on wage labor. There were big opportunities for social mobilThat was true in April 1952, and it remains true whoever currently occupies ity within the revolutionary process, with new settl ement and truckers' netthe Palacio Quemado. In Bolivia the presence of the parochial, and the pre Works springing up in the countryside in the wake of the organic reform.cariousness of the presidential, is palpable. This is a contrast with most coun Even the proletarian COB drew its strength as much from neighbors,tries that have undergone a social revolution and then constructed a persua . housewives and the unemployed as from its unionized workforce. Theresive edifice of rationalizers and defenders of the post-revolutionary order. . was plenty of revolutionary conflict over property entitlements, access toRevolutions are sometimes presented as 'integrating' or even . the state and more local issues of power and symbolic ascendancy. Duringhomogenising previously fragmented societies, but at least in the Bolivian the radical phase of the land reform it was not uncommon for ruralcase that image vastly exaggerates the scope for remolding a nation from activists to slaughter the livestock on the basis that at least they wouldthe top downwards. After all, even the decrees enacting the most radical enjoy a fiesta before the inevitable landlord revenge. There was said to bemeasures were legalistic documents in written Spanish. This in a society a risk of famine in some of the larger cities after 1953, as peasants with-where the law hardly reached the bulk of the population, where sophisti held supplies that would have been purchased with worthless currency.39cated literacy was known to no more than a very small minority and where Neither a class theory of revolution, nor its 'populist poly-class' antithesisa majority was no t even fluent in the language of administration. The indi" ;takes us anywhere close to mapping such interactions.genistas of today anathemize the MNR for attempting to impose a false ,


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Another comparative and theoretical issue concerns the nature of thepost-revolutionary order. According to a classical argument, the destructive phase of the revolution is likely to be followed by a ruthless recentralization of power, a Therm idorean reaction. However, the post-revolutionary order may also be capable of mobilising sources of support that arebroader and deeper than anything available to the pre-revolutionaryregime. So the question is not just how much centralisation of power canoccur, but where the new order's strength comes from and what it is usedfor. The classic argument is that after the trauma of revolution the societycraves order and rallies to whoever can provide it. (The Bolivian ArmedForces relied on this reflex when they took power in 1964, but they onlygenerated their own variants of disorder.) An alternative view is that a successful revolution generates stability precisely because it removes all theexpectation of future revolution, although this is not true of Bolivia. Athird consideration is that social revolution opens up opportunities forsocial ascent that were previously blocked off. The stability arises from thedesire of the 'new class' or the stratum of revolutionary activists to clingto the advantages gained by their cohor t, regardless of the broader vicissitudes of the economy or the society. In Bolivia, however, the opportuni ties for ascent were limited and precarious. Finally, there is a literature suggesting that revolution clears the way for more accelerated capitalist accumulation and the enrichment of a 'political bourgeoisie', although capitalaccumulation has been quite anaemic in Bolivia since 1952.All these discussions revolve around the new basis on which post-revolutionary authority may be constituted. This chapter has sketched a synthetic interpretation of this issue, as it applies to Bolivia in the early 1960s;The two main points to highlight here are: i) even at this stage there is agreat deal of contingency, with no guarantee that power will be s u c c e s s ~ fully reconstituted and monopolized by the heirs of revolution (hence the'revolution betrayed' issue); and ii) given the destructive potential ofinfighting within the revolutionary elite (each faction will be tempted touse the same voluntarist methods as before, this time directed against hiscomrades, until 'the revolution devours its children'), some kind of impersonal structure of rules may be required. This was how the PRI arose inMexico. In Bolivia the constitutional and even democratic framework ofthe revolution created a possibility of elite circulation and power sharing.But as it turned out - for reasons I consider to be quite contingent this proved insufficient to perpetuate the MNR in power.40Mao Zedong famously asserted that 'power grows from the barrel of agun', and it is widely argued that successful revolutions create their ownlegitimacy through imposition. The 'dialectical' perspective of this chaptercautions against any such mechanical translation of force into durablepower. Collectivities have to be persuaded to accept revolutionary outcomes;

A Twenty-First Century Perspective 47

and to o much indiscriminate use of force without accompanying justification is likely to prove delegitimizing. In the Bolivian case electoral legitimacy preceded the insurrectional variety, and when Paz sought to have himselfre-elected through an act of imposition his party was ousted from officefor a generation. This experience underlines the need to attend to themulti-dimensionality of power and authority. Nowadays, both the MNRand the PRI tend to re-imagine their historical trajectories in terms ofdemocratic legitimation. Such reinterpretations are as false and unbalancedas earlier triumphalist assertions of the conquerors' right to rule.This chapter has treated revolutions as discrete processes of nationaltransformation. Of course there is also a 'world systems' or 'dependency'school of interpretation, which draws attention to the role of externaldependency and intrusion. Others in this volume have focused on theundeniably important role of external influences on the BolivianRevolution.41 The Cuban and Nicaraguan processes are other contemporary experiences that can profitably be evaluated from this perspective.Although this brief account of Bolivia between 1952 and 1964 has madesome reference to the role of US aid, and to the intrusions ofWashington's associated political conditionality, this has not been placed atthe centre of the analysis. Here it may suffice to note that the invocationof a 'nationalist' justification for seizing power is not necessarily incompatible with a heavy resort to external support and protection.Finally, in counter-revolutionary times intellectuals may propagate thetheory that revolutions have become impossible just as at other times theymay be presented as 'inevitable.' This was the tenor of the 'end of history' analysis that received wide currency after the fall of the Berlin Wall.What this discussion, and the Bolivian case study, both indicate is that realrevolutions are relatively rare and troubling experiences. But when they dohappen they constitute a class of processes with a distinctive rhythm andlogic that can profitably be studied as a cluster. Perhaps this is an observation of purely historical interest. Or perhaps there are lessons from suchexperiences as the Bolivian National Revolution that still have some rele". vance, even in the twenty-first century.

NOTES

1 The MNR's official newspaper, La Nacion, 3 February 1959, as quoted in Knudson (1986), p. 347.2 For my bibliography of the period see the Bethell (ed.) (1995), pp.806-10. A more narrative approach to the history of the revolution iscontained in my chapter on Bolivia since 1930 in Bethell (ed.) (1992).


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48 Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective A Twenry-First Century Perspective 49

3 Orthodox Marxism sought to monopolize 'dialectical' analysis, with ceded the presidency to Siles in 1956 and declined an apparent offerthe result that when communist ideology was discredited this lan of the presidency (by Paz) in 1960. In all these cases he indicates thatguage was out of fashion. However, all revolutionary processes con a presumed US veto was the cause of his withdrawal, although othertain inner tensions which make them unstable and which unfold sources suggest that he also lacked the patience for office work.through conflict (including conflict of ideas) over time. In this sense According to his memoirs, during the flrst Paz government his sup(which is not to be confused with the old orthodoxy) the compara porters believed he could bring down the president at will, by meanstive historical analyses of revolutions would be mis-specified in the of a telephone call. Why did he never use this supposed power? 'Noabsence of a dialectical perspective. 10 derrocamos e n esta epoca porque pensabamos que sus vacilaciones4 Indeed, in the May 1951 election Per6n supported Gariel Gosalves in eran para evitar que los Estados Unidos nos estragulen. Yo pensabahis failed presidential bid against Victor Paz. For more detail see que Paz jugaba ese complicado ajedrez, pero pensaba que 10 hacia aAntezana E. (1988), p. 1752. favor del pais.' Lecmn Oquendo (2000), p. 287. See also p. 260.5 See, for example, Rodriguez Ostr ia (1991 a) and Ora (1977) (by the 12 For an exceptionally thoughtful and well-researched analysis fromtrotskyist veteran). within the armed forces see General Prado Salmon (1984). Two6 The failings of pre-revolutionary administration and government were months after the revolution the COB decided to organize its owncharted in some detail in the report of the Keenleyside Mission, a tech armed militias, an initiative that was viewed as both humiliating andnical assistance document prepared for the economic and social coun threatening to the regular armed forces. But in a shrewd maneuvrecil of the United Nations in 1951 (reporting on a three month visit in the military establishment responded by offering training and sup1950). For a 'fiscal crisis' approach to the revolution see Gallo (1991). port. 'A nivel reservado, en acuerdo con el Presidente Paz, el Mando7 RADEPA (Raz6n de Patria), a nationalist military organization, decidi6 destinar, ademas de oficiales subalternos instructores, ofiemerged out of the Chaco War. ciales superiores para que en la practica ejerzan el comando de los8 Actually it is possible to identify some critical first steps towards regimientos de milicianos organizados ... De esta manera ... Elrestraining revolutionary radicalism from a very early point (e.g. the Comando N acional de las milicias nunca lleg6 a funcionar .. . y pocoreopening of the Colegio Militar in 1953), but that is with the bene a poco las unidades de milicianos se fueron convirtiendo en gruposfit of hindsight. de presi6n zonal .. . Como elementos de sosten politico al regimen,9 Antezana (1988) reconstructs the tortuous course of the revolution en funciones de seguridad interna, de represi6n politica .. . liberandoday-by-day through the flrst half of April 1952. His account high a las fuezas militares de cualquier participaci6n en tareas represivas'lights the many misjudgements and opportunistic maneuvres that (p. 54). Thus, at the very outset the foundations were laid for an evenseparated the original plan from the eventual outcome. But the focus tual subordination of the party to the state and of an eventual dison individual ambitions fails to explain the scope of the resulting rev placement of the militias by the regular military. This clarifies pointsolution. For that a larger focus and a longer time frame are required. left unclear by Lecmn's account (2000, pp. 294-9).10 'There was censorship during the flrst two years of MNR rule when. 13 The Land Tenure Cente r at Madison Wisconsin under took a series ofthe government feared counter-revolution by the Falange Socialista detailed studies of different aspects of Bolivia's land reform, whichBoliviana and others ., . La Razon .. . was prevented from reopening still provide a large data bank for subsequent evaluation. The connot by government action but rather popular wrath .. . circumstances temporary debate in Bolivia tends to undervalue the import of whatsurrounding the assault on Los Tiempos of Cochabamba on 9 was achieved then, either because so much rural poverty persistedNovember 1953 are more confused ... but a careful study of both thereafter, or on the grounds that this was a mestizo reform undernewspapers reveals reasons why they fell victim to a social revolution taken to the detriment of the Aymara and Quechua nations. Whilewhich neither understood.' Knudson (1986), p. 380. there can be no denying the uneven impact of the land reform and

11 Rene Zavaleta Mercado went so far as to describe this as a situation the acute problems of development that still afflict nearly all of theof 'dual power', analogous to Kerensky and the Soviets in 1917. Bolivian campo, in the context of its time the Bolivian land reformHowever, the leader of the COB, Juan Lecmn, was certainly no remains a remarkably revolutionary transformation. The old AndeanLenin. According to his Memorias he had agreed to stand down in . landlord class was effectively dispossessed, sindicators campesinos spreadfavour of Siles in the MNR's vice-presidential slot for 1951. He also far and wide (often serving as fronts for more traditional qyllu struc


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tures) and the Bolivian state established a much stronger presence inthe countryside. (The education refor m was also relevant here). Thecontrast with highland Peru demonstrates the difference made by theland reform, which also paved the way for more recent experimentswith 'popular participation'.14 In the first unambiguously democratic elections of 1985 there were2.1 million registered voters, of whom a little over 1.7 million actually voted.15 Gloria Ardaya is justified in arguing that despite the best efforts ofsuch dedicated woman revolutionaries neither the rvrNR's rise topower nor the enfranchizement of women did much to break thepatriarchal structure of Bolivian society, at least. during the period

under review. For her instructive account of the ComandosFemeninas and the Maria Barzola Movement in the 1950s see Ardaya(1992). Rural women were represented within the party via the (maledominated) sindicatos. The party's Comandos Femeninas only operated in the urban centers.16 In fact the rvrNR won 84.4% of the valid votes cast in 1956, 85.0% in1958,76.1% in 1960, 84.8% in 1962 and fInally- ominously in fac t-it claimed 97.9% in 1964 (a contest with no opposition and a bigincrease in spoilt ballots). Universal suffrage swamped the parties of thetraditional left, as well as those of the counter-revolutionary right. Butit was no t until the ruling party turned its machinery of electoral control against those who the Mexicans would call members of the 'revolutionary family' (fIrst Walter Guevara Arze, later Lechin and fInallyHernan Siles himself) that the regimes electoral legitimacy was squandered. Lechin claims that in the 1960 election Paz was determined to socontrol the vote that he obtained a 50% majority in the cities and 70%in the countryside, Lechin's argument was that this was unnecessary,since the rvrNR would win a free vote (Lechin, 2000, pp. 371-2).17 James Malloy has analysed the rvrNR's various early efforts to recentralize power and in particular to concentrate public spending in the'caja unica' of the public treasury, but he also notes that the immediateeffect of these measures was centrifugal - rather than producing a'seizure' of state power, the insurrection tended to destroy it (Malloy,1970, pp. 246-7). By the late 1950s the IMP and USAlD had established severe fmancial disciplines, but inflation control left the Bolivianstate with virtually no margin of maneuvre in response to demandsfrom below. No t until the Alliance for Progress reached Bolivia didadministrative centralisation become a viable option.18 Ibid., pp. 246-7.19 rvrNR militants advocated direct action to redistribute land on thegrounds that otherwise all initiative would be lost in the fog of 'alto-


Peruvian' bureaucracy. A legal dossier prepared by a local sindicato wouldbe sent to La Paz, where the Consejo Nacional de Reforma Agraria wasbesieged by interminable deputations of campesino petitionaries. Thenext step would be to seek the endorsement of the Ministry of PeasantAffairs, after which the dossier would pass to the presidency for thechief executive's personal signature of each title. Even then the document had to pass back through the whole chain, down to the departmental and then the provincial jU:


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Comando Departamental of the MNR therefore felt justified in making its own popular revolution (mainly based on the forced distribution of urban land) in defiance of the authorities in La Paz.29 The first Celula Militar was established in La Paz on 31 October 1953(prado, 1984, p. 57). By the end of the 1950s the armed forces were inthe process of recovering their prestige and their capacity for action inall parts of the national territory. At this point the top officers in thehierarchy were also the leaders of the Celula Militar. Consequently thiscomponent of the governing party did not split into factions when therest of the MNR became divided. As a united block with the armedforces behind them, during the 1960-64 period this cell gradually cameto dominate the host party (Ibid., pp 101--44).30 Until 1958 the army was equipped with German Mausers. Starting in1959 it witched toMI semi-automatic rifles from the USA. Thisinvolved a change of calibre, so that imported ammunition for thenew weapons could not be used in the (more widely available) oldones (Ibid., pp. 99-100).

31 General Barrientos began his rise to political prominence as an interventor sent to impose order on the battling factions in theCochabamba Valley, where his fluency in Quechua proved a powerful asset.32 As late as February 1964 President Paz still thought he might retaincontrol of his party and escape dependence on General Barrientos,but the tactics of his civilian rivals undercut that endeavour. On alonger view this failure was probably inherent in the 1961Constitutional provision allowing the re-election of the incumbentpresident.33 The 'more or less' in this sentence may need to be contextualized.The electoral calendar was respected. There was little electoral violence. The Falange contested these elections across the nation andsecured some important local victories. Elections were more effectively contested than in, say, Mexico at the same time. There was substantial press freedom. Not many Latin American countries consistently observed higher democratic standards than those then prevailing in Bolivia.34 There is a fairly exhaustive bibliography in Goodwin (2001). For thewider debates see Mahoney and Rueschemeyer (eds.)( 2003).35 Although if the Chaco War is taken into account this assertion wouldhave to be modified.36 This is the clue to his career that is missing from his Memorias, whichdo however reveal something of his easy-going nature and his lack of.confidence in his own grasp of ideological issues.37 Knudson's (1986) account of the ideas debated in the party newspa-


per La Nacion in the late 1950s illustrates this point. The writersincluded such noted intellectuals and polemicists as AugustoCespedes, Jose Cuadros Quiroga and Rene Zavaleta Mercado.38 In the Cambridge History I described Victor Paz as 'Bolivia's first technocrat' on the basis of an article he wrote in EI Diario in 1930(Whitehead, 1991, p. 512, footnote 1).39 US food aid may have averted that danger, but the political economyof its distribution requires further research. There is a suggestivestarting poi nt in Ardaya (1992).40 Malloy stresses the intense competition for public employmentamong the politicized urban middle classes and its destabilizing consequences in post-revolutionary Bolivia. See Malloy (1970), especially Chapter 12 on the 'structure and process' of post-insurrectionarypolitics.41 In 1964 Paz Estenssoro concluded that he could not discuss oil policy in his cabinet, since half his ministers were what he called'Gulfmen' (i.e. aligned with Gulf Oil).

whitehead, bol nat rev

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