Bolivia: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND



Pre-colonial and Colonial Era: Advanced Indian societies inhabited the Andes region of South America long before the arrival of Europeans. Ruins of these societies, especially the Tiwanaku civilization, dot the high-altitude Bolivian countryside, serving as reminders of the first great Andean empire. Tiwanakan dominance lasted until 1200, when the regional kingdoms of the Aymara subsequently emerged as the most powerful of the ethnic groups living in the densely populated region surrounding Lake Titicaca. Power struggles continued until 1450, when the Incas incorporated upper Bolivia into their growing empire. Based in present-day Peru, the Incas instituted agriculture and mining practices that rivaled those put in place many years later by European conquerors. They also established a strong military force and centralized political power. Despite their best efforts, however, the Incas never completely controlled nomadic tribes of the Bolivian lowlands, nor did they fully assimilate the Aymara kingdoms into their society. These internal divisions doomed the Inca Empire when European conquerors arrived.



Francisco Pizarro and his fellow Spanish conquistadors first glimpsed the “New World” in 1524. Visions of a land of gold led to aggressive colonization. Even without the arrival of the Europeans, the Inca Empire was floundering. Pizarro enjoyed stunning initial success in his military campaign against the Incas. After initial defeats, the Incas rallied some resistance against the Europeans. But in 1538, the Spaniards defeated Inca forces near Lake Titicaca, allowing penetration into central and southern Bolivia. Although Indian resistance continued, Spanish imperialists pushed forward, founding La Paz in 1549 and Santa Cruz de la Sierra (hereafter, Santa Cruz) in 1561. In the region then known as Upper Peru, the Spaniards found the mineral treasure chest they had been searching for. Potosí had the Western world’s largest concentration of silver. At its height in the sixteenth century, Potosí supported a population of more than 150,000, making it the world’s largest urban center. In the 1570s, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo introduced a coercive form of labor, the mita, which required Indian males from highland districts to spend every sixth year working in the mines. The mita, along with technological advances in refining, caused mining at Potosí to flourish.



Breakdown of Colonial Authority: In the early eighteenth century, the mining industry entered a prolonged period of decline, as evidenced by the eclipsing of Potosí by La Paz. After 1700, only small amounts of bullion were shipped from Upper Peru to Spain. In the mid-eighteenth century, Spanish control over South America began to weaken. In 1780 the Inca descendant, Túpac Amaru II, led nearly 60,000 Indians against the Spaniards near the Peruvian city of Cuzco. Spain put down the revolt in 1783 and executed thousands of Indians as punishment, but the revolt illustrated the precarious nature of Spanish colonial rule in the Andes.



The invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1807 by Napoleon Bonaparte and its aftermath further undermined Spain’s authority. Although many elites in Upper Peru stayed loyal to Spain, others began to seek independence. On May 25, 1809, radical criollos of Upper Peru led one of Latin America’s first independence revolts. Although defeated, the radicals set the stage for more successful rebellions. After July 1809, Spain never again fully controlled Upper Peru. The region became the battleground for a seven-year struggle between royalist troops from Peru and the forces of the independent Argentine Republic. By 1817 the royalists, based in Lima, had suppressed Argentina’s independence fighters seeking to wrest Bolivia from Spanish control. It proved to be only a temporary victory. In 1820 conflict reemerged in Upper Peru among three groups: loyalists, who accepted the direction of the Spanish Cortes; rebels, led by Simón Bolívar Palacios; and Conservative Party criollos, led by General Pedro Antonio de Olañeta, who refused to join either royalist forces or the rebel war effort. Bolívar’s victory over royal troops at the Battle of Ayacucho in 1824, followed by the assassination of Olañeta by his own men on April 1, 1825, brought to an end Spanish rule in Upper Peru.



Early Republic: Bolívar left the inhabitants of Upper Peru to determine the details of their own independence, transferring authority to General Antonio José de Sucre Alcalá. In August 1825, a constituent assembly convoked by Sucre rejected attachment to either Peru or Argentina and passed a resolution of independence. In an attempt to placate Bolívar’s reservations regarding the country’s fitness for self-rule, the new nation became known as the Republic of Bolivia.

Bolívar served five months as Bolivia’s first president before being succeeded by Sucre in January 1826. The new country faced many challenges, including numerous boundary disputes with its neighbors, a moribund silver mining industry, lack of foreign credit, and conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. In 1828 Sucre was forced from office by an invading Peruvian army seeking to reunite the two territories. The ousted president redeemed himself by defeating a Peruvian force at the Battle of Tarqui in February 1829. In May Sucre was succeeded as president by Andrés de Santa Cruz y Calahumana (1829–39), who forged a voluntary political union of Peru and Bolivia in the short-lived Peru-Bolivian Confederacy (1836–39). Santa Cruz’s tenure ended in January 1839 with the defeat of the Peru-Bolivian Confederacy by a Chilean expeditionary force at the Battle of Yungay.



Mid-nineteenth-century Bolivia was beset by political instability and the rule of authoritarian strongmen, economic stagnation, and a growing sense of geographic isolation. During the authoritarian government of Manuel Isidoro Belzú Humérez (1848–55), for example, the country endured 42 attempted coups. In an effort to gain access to the main routes of transoceanic trade, in 1867 Bolivia ceded more than 100,000 square kilometers of territory to Brazil in exchange for riverine access to the Atlantic Ocean.



War of the Pacific and Aftermath: An ongoing dispute between Bolivia and Chile over the mineral-rich coast of the Atacama Desert resulted in the War of the Pacific. A tentative peace, established in 1874, proved temporary. In 1879 Bolivia, in alliance with Peru, declared war against Chile, which had previously landed troops in the contested area. Chile won a decisive victory, forcing Bolivia from the entire coastal area in 1880. In 1904 Bolivia officially ceded the coastal territory to Chile under the Treaty of Peace and Friendship. In the most traumatic episode in its history, Bolivia’s path to the Pacific Ocean was lost. More than a century later, the perceived injustice of Bolivia’s landlocked status remains a prevailing theme in Bolivian nationalist sentiment.



From 1880 to the 1920s, Bolivia recovered from its defeat while simultaneously witnessing the rebirth of silver mining and the growth of the tin industry. Politically, the Conservative Party dominated national politics until its overthrow by the Liberal Party in the “Federal Revolution” of 1899. A new political force, the Republican Party, came to power through a bloodless coup in 1920, but the Great Depression of the early 1930s cut short Bolivia’s economic recovery.



The Chaco War: In 1932 a border dispute again turned into full-fledged war. Bolivia and Paraguay both claimed the Chaco region⎯a largely undeveloped area that had been the site of some oil discoveries. A series of border incidents led to broken diplomatic relations and then war. President Daniel Salamanca (1931–34) believed that the Bolivian army, trained by Germans and well armed, would overwhelm the smaller Paraguayan force. In actuality, Paraguay won all the major battles of the three-year war and drove Bolivian forces nearly 500 kilometers back into the Andes. Opponents of the war overthrew Salamanca in 1934, but it was too late to change the outcome. Bolivia suffered nearly 65,000 deaths and lost the Chaco region.



World War II and Postwar Governments: Following the humiliating defeat of the Chaco War, and in the midst of the global economic depression of the early 1930s, Bolivian governments looked inward in their efforts to promote economic development. After coming to power in 1936 through a military coup, Colonel David Toro Ruilova (1936–37) introduced a program of “military socialism.” Among other measures, Toro nationalized the holdings of U.S.-owned Standard Oil. Although Toro fell victim to a military coup in 1937, subsequent leaders continued many of his statist economic policies. During World War II, Bolivia repaired relations with the United States and compensated Standard Oil for losses incurred in the nationalization. In the early postwar era, which coincided with the beginning of the Cold War, Bolivia reaffirmed its alliance with the United States and embraced the cause of anticommunism. Domestically, Conservative-led governments sought to stem the growth of the left and contain growing labor unrest. However, they failed to reverse the inflationary economic policies that were inflicting severe hardship on much of the population.



The Bolivian Revolution, 1952–64: The Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario⎯MNR) ushered in Bolivia’s nationalist “revolution” on April 9, 1952, when it launched an armed takeover of La Paz by mine workers in collaboration with disaffected elements of the National Police. Movement leader Víctor Paz Estenssoro assumed the presidency after a brief struggle. Begun as populist opposition party in the wake of the Chaco War, the MNR was a loose coalition of mine workers, Indian subsistence farmers, and middle-class mestizos. Once in power, the MNR moved quickly to establish its populist credentials, decreeing universal suffrage, nationalizing mining and export industries, and reapportioning large tracts of farmland among Indian smallholders. Initially, the MNR governments garnered multi-class support, but rampant inflation and declining farm productivity resulting from inadequate capital investment in agriculture held back economic growth. In 1964 Paz Estenssoro ran for and won re-election, only to be deposed by armed forces members concerned over the threat of Cuban-style revolutionary violence in the Andes. Although fundamental changes remained in place, many observers on the left lamented that the Bolivian revolution remained as yet “unfinished.”



Military Rule, 1964–82: The army takeover of the government in 1964 ushered in a prolonged period of authoritarian military rule. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, successive military governments focused on maintaining internal order, modernizing the mining sector, and vigorously defending Bolivian sovereignty. Espousing a program of “revolutionary nationalism,” General Alfredo Ovando Candía (co-president, May 1965–January 1966; president, January–August 1966, 1969–70) outlined the “Revolutionary Mandate of the Armed Forces.” According to Ovando, the only way to end Bolivia’s underdevelopment was to allow, and encourage, the military to manage the economy and intervene in domestic politics. In October 1967, the armed forces scored a major victory when a Bolivian ranger battalion captured Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara and a small band of guerrillas in the remote Villagrande region. The guerrilla band, dispatched from Havana, had tried unsuccessfully to incite a peasant rebellion among Bolivia’s majority Indian population.



The 1970s were dominated by the figure of General Hugo Banzer (president, 1971–78). During its first few years, Banzer’s populist military government enjoyed the support of the MNR and oversaw rapid economic growth, driven largely by heavy demand for Bolivia’s commodity exports. By 1974, however, the governing coalition had splintered, and labor unrest intensified as the economy experienced a slowdown. These events prompted the military regime to resort to greater repression to maintain political control.

In the late 1970s, Bolivia’s military regime came under pressure from the United States and Europe to liberalize and restore civilian democratic rule. With international pressure and opposition from civilian groups mounting, General Banzer announced a presidential election for 1980. However, two subsequent coups in the midst of congressional and presidential elections delayed the transition schedule. In September 1982, the military finally handed over the government to a civilian administration led by Hernán Silas Zuazo (president, 1982–85) of the Democratic and Popular Unity (Unidad Democrática y Popular—UDP) coalition.



Economic Crisis and the “Pacted Democracy”: In the early 1980s, Bolivia faced the most severe economic crisis of the preceding three decades. The economy was beset by chronic balance of payments and fiscal deficits and a foreign debt of nearly US$3 billion. The Siles Zuazo government attempted to address Bolivia's economic crisis by negotiating several tentative stabilization programs with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, during the first half of 1985, the international tin market collapsed and Bolivia’s inflation reached an annual rate of more than 24,000 percent. As the crisis intensified, the opposition forced Siles Zuazo to give up power through a new round of elections held in July 1985.



The 1985 presidential race became a head-to-head contest between former military dictator Banzer and MNR founder Paz Estenssoro. After luring the left-wing Movement of the Revolutionary Left (Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria—MIR) with promises of state patronage, Paz Estenssoro was elected president of Bolivia for the fourth time since 1952. Abandoning his left-wing allies and his own populist past, Paz Estenssoro decreed one of the most austere economic stabilization packages ever implemented in Latin America. Hailed as the New Economic Policy (Nueva Política Económica—NPE), the decree aimed at ending Bolivia's record-setting hyperinflation and dismantling many of the large and inefficient state enterprises that had been created by the revolution. Although successful in ending hyperinflation, the NPE brought about a sharp reduction in real wages for workers and temporarily increased the country’s already high levels of poverty.



In the political realm, Paz Estenssoro and Banzer negotiated a formal power-sharing agreement, the Pact for Democracy, creating a mechanism to overcome the fragmentation of the political party system and allowing the government to push forward with its austerity measures. The pact played an important role in resolving other political impasses during the 1989 and 1993 presidential elections, in which no single candidate could claim a majority of the vote. The coalition government of President Jaime Paz Zamora (1989–93) provided continuity with the market reform policies of its predecessor and oversaw a modest economic recovery, aided by a rebound in the tin market and the discovery of vast reserves of natural gas.



The 1993 presidential election saw Paz Estenssoro’s former planning minister and prominent businessman Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada receive a plurality of the vote on the MNR ticket. Sánchez de Lozada represented a new generation of MNR leaders firmly committed to the modernization of Bolivia with the aid of private capital investment from abroad. In a policy known as “capitalization,” private capital and expertise were attracted to the hydrocarbons sector. In exchange for 30-year operating contracts, foreign investors doubled the capital of state energy companies and embarked on aggressive gas exploration. As a consequence of renewed investment, known natural gas reserves increased almost fivefold by 2000, and the Bolivian state received more than US$500 million per year in royalties.



The 1997 elections saw the return of Hugo Banzer to the presidency as a civilian. Despite his campaign promises to halt privatization, Banzer continued most of the economic policies of his predecessor. The retired general also embarked on a campaign to halt the illicit export of coca, the primary ingredient of cocaine, and a cause for concern in the United States. Coca farming has existed in parts of Bolivia since Inca times, but it took on increased importance and spread to new areas of the country as the international drug trade expanded during the 1980s and 1990s. Pressure from the United States to curb coca production led the Banzer administration to implement the Dignity Plan, an aggressive program of crop eradication by the Bolivian armed forces. Although temporarily successful in its limited aims of eradicating coca fields, the Dignity Plan increased rural poverty and sparked a new generation of social protest movements among the largely indigenous coca farmers (cocaleros) of the Chapare region.



Regionalism, Identity Politics, and the “Crisis of Governance”: New social movements founded on regionalism and ethnic identity emerged as a major force in Bolivian politics during the latter part of the Banzer administration. The discovery of vast reserves of natural gas in the late 1990s provoked a heated controversy over ownership of natural resources and the extent to which Bolivia should pursue “neo-liberal” economic policies favorable to foreign capital investment. The debate pitted the natural gas-rich eastern province of Santa Cruz against social movements that drew much of their support from the poorer communities of central and western Bolivia. Encompassing a variety of groups, such as shantytown dwellers, indigenous communities, and cocaleros, the social movements claimed to represent Bolivians who had suffered discrimination and exclusion from the country’s mainstream political and economic institutions. Common themes among the social movements were a strong anticapitalist bias and an affinity for socialism, nationalism (as expressed in anti-U.S. and anti-Chilean sentiment), and a deep-seated suspicion of foreign corporations involved in Bolivian joint ventures and privatizations. The social movements distinguished themselves from political parties by encouraging disruptive forms of protest, such as road blockades and occupations of government buildings. A key incident that galvanized opposition to the government was the so-called “water war,” in which the social movements in the city of Cochabamba vigorously disputed the concession of a commercial waterworks contract to the Bechtel Corporation on the grounds that the poor would be deprived of universal access to water.



In May 2001, President Banzer resigned from office because of a terminal illness. A caretaker administration under Vice President Jorge Quiroga completed Banzer’s term and laid the groundwork for the 2002 elections. The May 2002 presidential elections became a contest between former president Sánchez de Lozada and Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and cocalero leader who headed the ticket of the Movement Toward Socialism (Movimiento Al Socialismo—MAS) party. In the bitterly fought race, Sánchez de Lozada prevailed by a slight margin. Sánchez de Lozada’s second administration sought a continuation of his controversial capitalization program. However, the water war initiated a period of intense conflict between the social movements and the government, limiting the latter’s ability to implement its policies. During 2002 and 2003, the government was increasingly challenged by the disruptive activities of the social movements. In September 2003, violent protests erupted in response to the government’s plan to institute an income tax and to export liquefied natural gas to the United States by means of a pipeline through Chile. Approximately 80 demonstrators were killed in clashes with troops deployed to break up blockades of the highways. In October, mobs from the nearby shantytown of El Alto occupied and sacked government buildings in La Paz. In order to quell the violence, Sánchez de Lozada resigned and handed over the government to Vice President Carlos Mesa Gisbert.



Mesa’s appointment as president temporarily eased the crisis but failed to resolve the dispute between the supporters and opponents of a foreign corporate role in the extraction and sale of natural gas. Mesa attempted to defuse the crisis by submitting the gas question to the public in a national referendum. The July 2004 referendum handed Mesa a tactical victory by approving the export of gas, albeit under greater state controls than originally anticipated. Despite a promising start, Mesa’s administration was brought down in June 2005 by a new wave of road blockades and large-scale protests in La Paz. With the threat of a violent escalation looming, as well as talk of secession by the eastern provinces, Congress agreed on Eduardo Rodríguez Veltze, then serving as president of the Supreme Court, as interim president. Sworn in on June 10, 2005, Rodríguez immediately called for a special national election in December 2005.

The December 2005 elections were widely anticipated as an opportunity for Bolivians to end the “crisis of governance.” In addition to the presidential, senatorial, and congressional races, Bolivians also would be voting for the first time for nine departmental governors (prefects). The prefectural elections were expected to produce a significant decentralization of political power—one of the few initiatives on which a majority of Bolivians could agree. The presidential contest became a two-candidate race between Evo Morales of the leftist MAS and former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga of the conservative Social Democratic Power (Poder Democrático y Social—Podemos) coalition. Despite concerns that neither candidate would win a clear-cut mandate, Morales was elected with 53.7 percent of the vote, becoming the first president of Indian ethnicity in Bolivia’s history as well as the first majority president since the revolution. A high turnout of more than 80 percent of eligible voters lent added legitimacy to the results. The MAS’s strong showing in the presidential race and in the Chamber of Deputies was counterbalanced by opposition control of the Senate and of a majority of the prefectures. In early 2006, the Morales administration’s prospects for addressing Bolivia’s myriad challenges were not yet known. Bolivia remained deeply divided by contending ethnic, class, and regional loyalties that would severely test the new administration’s capacity to forge a national consensus on fundamental economic and political issues.