This book, part of the Hoover Institution’s “Politics in Latin America Series,” assays the Bolivian experience—geography, demography, economics, history, and politics from pre-Columbian past to contemporary present, together with some observations on foreign relations and the future of the republic—all in 140 pages. The author, who is to be appreciated for attempting an overview of a subject considered “inscrutable” by his editor, focuses on the political history of the last half-century, with appropriate emphases on the Chaco War and National Revolution, subjects pursued in his The Bolivian National Revolution (1958); coverage here of the later MNR years and the postrevolutionary military dictatorships brings the story up to date.

Alexander is at his best recalling historical curiosities: the “elements of comedy” in the RADEPA coup of 1942 (p. 71); a tale of the young Juan Lechín at the mines (pp. 72-73); Víctor Paz Estenssoro’s observation on Germán Busch’s suicide (p. 68). He disagrees with the interpretation that the MNR agrarian reform was merely a response to peasant land seizures, noting the movement’s early interest in the topic, but continues an earlier tendency to equate agrarian reform with land redistribution. The nature and extent of the redistributive process has been questioned in a doctoral thesis by Paul Turovsky, “Bolivian Haciendas: Before and After the Revolution” (1980) and the agrarian reform process critiqued by Alain de Janvry’s The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America (1981) and Ernst Feder’s The Rape of the Peasantry (1971).

Buy Bolivia: Past, Present, and Future of its Politics at Attic books in Nairobi Kenya.

Book details

• Format Hardcover
• Pages157 pages
• LanguageEnglish
• ISBN100030617626
• ISBN13978-0030617621