Bolivia’s Faltering Revolution

Bolivia’s Faltering Revolution

Bolivia’s history provides a case study, exaggerated almost to caricature, of the reasons for the economic and political backwardness of Latin America. Geographic poverty, the heritage from Spain, a one-crop economy, racial and social tensions, and the absence of a middle class—these conditions, present everywhere to the south of us, are so overwhelming in Bolivia that one almost despairs of bringing the nation into the twentieth century. Yet this bitterly poor country of only 3.5 million people (two-thirds of them illiterate Indians who cannot even speak Spanish) celebrated this April the tenth anniversary of a genuine social revolution, one of the few ever to take place in this hemisphere. The significance of this revolution is enhanced by Bolivia’s key position in the heart of South America, by its relation with similar revolutionary movements elsewhere in the area, and by its close ties with the United States, all of which make Bolivia a proving ground for the conc...