The United States emerged from World War II with generally good relations with the countries of Latin America and with the traditional Good Neighbor policy still largely intact. But it wasn’t too ...long before various overarching strategic and ideological priorities began to undermine those good relations as the Cold War came to exert its grip on U.S. policy formation and implementation. In The Truman Administration and Bolivia, Glenn Dorn tells the story of how the Truman administration allowed its strategic concerns for cheap and ready access to a crucial mineral resource, tin, to take precedence over further developing a positive relationship with Bolivia. This ultimately led to the economic conflict that provided a major impetus for the resistance that culminated in the Revolution of 1952—the most important revolutionary event in Latin America since the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The emergence of another revolutionary movement in Bolivia early in the millennium under Evo Morales makes this study of its Cold War predecessor an illuminating and timely exploration of the recurrent tensions between U.S. efforts to establish and dominate a liberal capitalist world order and the counterefforts of Latin American countries like Bolivia to forge their own destinies in the shadow of the “colossus of the north.”
Fields of Revolution examines the second largest case of
peasant land redistribution in Latin America and agrarian
reform-arguably the most important policy to arise out of Bolivia's
1952 revolution. ...Competing understandings of agrarian reform shaped
ideas of property, productivity, welfare, and justice. Peasants
embraced the nationalist slogan of "land for those who work it" and
rehabilitated national union structures. Indigenous communities
proclaimed instead "land to its original owners" and sought to link
the ruling party discourse on nationalism with their own
long-standing demands for restitution. Landowners, for their part,
embraced the principle of "land for those who improve it" to
protect at least portions of their former properties from
expropriation. Carmen Soliz combines analysis of governmental
policies and national discourse with everyday local actors'
struggles and interactions with the state to draw out the deep
connections between land and people as a material reality and as
the object of political contention in the period surrounding the
revolution.
During the most idealistic years of John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress development program, Bolivia was the highest per capita recipient of U.S. foreign aid in Latin America. Nonetheless, ...Washington's modernization programs in early 1960s' Bolivia ended up on a collision course with important sectors of the country's civil society, including radical workers, rebellious students, and a plethora of rightwing and leftwing political parties. In From Development to Dictatorship, Thomas C. Field Jr. reconstructs the untold story of USAID's first years in Bolivia, including the country's 1964 military coup d'état.
Field draws heavily on local sources to demonstrate that Bolivia's turn toward anticommunist, development-oriented dictatorship was the logical and practical culmination of the military-led modernization paradigm that provided the liberal underpinnings of Kennedy's Alliance for Progress. In the process, he explores several underappreciated aspects of Cold War liberal internationalism: the tendency of "development" to encourage authoritarian solutions to political unrest, the connection between modernization theories and the rise of Third World armed forces, and the intimacy between USAID and CIA covert operations. Challenging the conventional dichotomy between ideology and strategy in international politics, From Development to Dictatorship engages with a growing literature on development as a key rubric for understanding the interconnected processes of decolonization and the Cold War.
Dignity and Defianceis a powerful, eyewitness account of Bolivia's decade-long rebellion against globalization imposed from abroad. Based on extensive interviews, this story comes alive with ...first-person accounts of a massive Enron/Shell oil spill from an elderly woman whose livelihood it threatens, of the young people who stood down a former dictator to take back control of their water, and of Bolivia's dramatic and successful challenge to the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Featuring a substantial introduction, a conclusion, and introductions to each of the chapters, this well-crafted mix of storytelling and analysis is a rich portrait of people calling for global integration to be different than it has been: more fair and more just.
The government of Bolivia seeks to reinvigorate the nontraditional export sector as part of its national development strategy. This Country Study investigates the role that trade should play in ...Bolivias development strategy, given the countrys rich resource endowment, and examines the lessons of Bolivias integration into the global economy. Considering the past links between trade and Bolivias economy, the study analyzes the impact of different scenarios on growth, employment, trade flows, and poverty; it also evaluates barriers to higher export competitiveness and constraints on exporting firms. The study concludes that preferential access to world markets is necessary but not sufficient for success in nontraditional exports. Efficient services are necessary to reduce exporters costs, and the government should be more proactive in laying the foundation for export diversification, increasing the effectiveness of institutions, and addressing impediments to crossborder trade.
Unresolved Tensions John Crabtree, Laurence Whitehead / John Crabtree, Laurence Whitehead
09/2008
eBook
The landslide election of Evo Morales in December 2005 pointed toward a process of accelerated change in Bolivia, forging a path away from globalization and the neoliberal paradigm in favor of ...greater national control and state intervention. This in turn shifted the power relations of Bolivia's internal politics-beginning with greater inclusion of the indigenous population-and altered the nation's foreign relations.Unresolved Tensionsengages this realignment from a variety of analytical perspectives, using the Morales election as a lens through which to reassess Bolivia's contemporary political reality and its relation to a set of deeper historical issues.This volume brings together an expert group of commentators and participants from within the Bolivian political arena to offer diverse perspectives and competing views on issues of ethnicity, regionalism, state-society relations, constitutional reform, economic development, and globalization. In this way, the contributors seek to reassess Bolivia's past, present, and future, consider the ways in which the nation's historical developments flow from these deeper currents, and assess the opportunities and challenges that arise within the new political context.
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