Indigenous Struggle and the Bolivian National Revolution

Land and Liberty!

James Kohl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367471521
• eBook ISBN: 9781000210118
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Indigenous Struggle and the Bolivian National Revolution: Land and Liberty! reinterprets the genesis and contours of the Bolivian National Revolution from an indigenous perspective.

In a critical revision of conventional works, the author reappraises and reconfigures the tortuous history of insurrection and revolution, counterrevolution and resurrection, and overthrow and aftermath in Bolivia. Underlying the history of creole conflict between dictatorship and democracy lies another conflict – the unrelenting 500-year struggle of the conquered indigenous peoples to reclaim usurped lands, resist white supremacist dominion, and seize autonomous political agency. The book utilizes a wide array of sources, including interviews and documents to illuminate the thoughts, beliefs, and objectives of an extraordinary cast of indigenous revolutionaries, giving readers a firsthand look at the struggles of the subaltern majority against creole elites and Anglo-American hegemons in South America's most impoverished nation.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of modern Latin American history, peasant movements, the history of U.S. foreign relations, revolutions, counterrevolutions, and revolutionary warfare.

1
WAR

The Generation of the Chaco

Bolivia at mid-twentieth century was a country frozen in time. A nation of extremes: lofty Andean peaks, tropical jungles, a vast Altiplano 4,000 meters above sea level; the most inequitable land tenure system on the planet; three million Indians ruled by a creole oligarchy; an army whose only victories were against its own people. “What is certain is that there is no other country of its size which contributes so little to the general stock of information of the reasonably well-informed,” opined a foreign observer in 1953: “Even in the neighboring countries there are few among the general public who know or wish to know more of it than fanciful and slightly malicious gossip.”¹ But change was afoot.

In the crucial decades 1932–1952, Bolivia’s ancien régime began to self-destruct. The catalyst was an ill-advised and ill-fated war with Paraguay over the expansive Chaco Boreal.

The Chaco War (1932–1935) was a turning point in Bolivian history, a conflict that exposed the decadence, corruption, and incompetence of the oligarchy, not only in the eyes of a generation of creole-mestizo elites but also to those peasants and workers who survived the ordeal. The war was a travesty: creole generals notorious for cowardice and gross ineptitude and an army of peasants and workers sacrificed in a contest whose real lesson would come to involve questions of race and class. The bloody fiasco was a catalyst to the destruction of the traditional order—and the coming of South America’s singular social revolution.

The backdrop to the Chaco War lies in President Daniel Salamanca’s response to the collapse of the tin-based export economy occasioned by the Great Depression. Revenue from tin exports fell, government deficits rose, unemployment in the mines and cities grew, and a credit crunch bankrupted overextended landlords.² The answer to these difficulties was economic diversification: weaning the economy from tin and developing the country’s petroleum reserves as a strategic resource. The locus of Bolivian oil production was in the Oriente, the eastern lowlands where the Standard Oil Company drilled and refined oil on hundreds of thousands of acres of leased land. In 1929, Argentina refused landlocked Bolivia’s request to construct a pipeline to the Atlantic Ocean. The remaining option was to build a pipeline from the Bolivian oil fields, through the scrublands of the Chaco Boreal to a port on the Rio Paraguay, and export the oil downstream to the Atlantic. However, claims to the Chaco were disputed with Paraguay. Skirmishes became more frequent between the countries as Bolivia’s President Salamanca assumed a bellicose position. The belligerents reinforced their border outposts.

Map 1.1 Bolivia

Source: Courtesy of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Bolivia’s claim to sovereignty of the Gran Chaco dated from the Spanish Empire and therefore presumably included in the nation after independence.³ Paraguayan sovereignty rested on right of occupancy by settlers, with the influential Argentine estancieros, estate owners, raising cattle and harvesting quebracho (wood used in wine and leather processing) on nearly a million acres of the Gran Chaco.⁴ Wars waged in the nineteenth century were failures for both nations. Bolivia fought a war against Chile from 1869 to 1873, resulting in the ignominious loss of 200,000 square kilometers, including its seacoast along the Atacama Desert.⁵ A second nineteenth-century war with Brazil over the rubber forests in the Department of Acre led to the loss of some 187,800 square kilometers. The shame of defeat has remained a thorn in the side of Bolivian nationalists.⁶ Paraguay was halved in size following the genocidal War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870) that pitted the megalomaniac Francisco Solano López’s army against the combined forces of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The result was catastrophic: two-thirds of the population killed—more deaths per national population than any war in modern history.⁷ For Paraguay, defeat in the Chaco was not an option: failure could spell the demise of the nation itself.

Bolivian interest in the Chaco focused on access to the Atlantic through the Rio Paraguay and the chimerical dream of potential oil reserves in the region. Paraguay initially fought to defend its remaining patrimony: but as its armed forces pushed beyond the disputed border, deep into Bolivian territory, strategy shifted to a war of conquest. Paraguay benefited from troops acclimated to the arid region, familiarity with the terrain, superior leadership, and logistics. The military historian Matthew Hughes argues convincingly that Paraguay’s superior logistical infrastructure was instrumental to its success on the battlefield. Paraguay purchased war materiel from manufacturers in 13 countries, evidencing prescient strategic planning (as well as a competitive advantage in quality and price of armaments).⁸

Bolivian efforts were severely hampered by chronic political infighting between President Salamanca and his General Staff, the refusal of Argentina and Chile to allow shipment of supplies through their territories, and the logistical difficulties of delivering war material to the distant Chaco. In a grievous affront, the Standard Oil Company violated its petroleum contract with Bolivia and refused to increase oil production or refine aviation fuel. The Standard Oil Company, claiming neutrality, capped wells and moved equipment from the Bolivian oil fields to Argentina.⁹ These difficulties were compounded by the monumental failures of the officer corps: ignorance of the terrain (e.g., cavalry troops reduced to infantry after their mounts died of thirst), chronic breakdown of logistical support, and poor communication within the largely illiterate, ill-equipped, and untrained conscripts. Reliance on the British manufacturer Vickers proved fatal to the war effort: much of the equipment (generally of poor quality) never arrived; what did arrive (estimated at one-fourth to one-third of the contract) was delayed reaching the front because of Bolivia’s abysmal transportation infrastructure.¹⁰ The American aircraft manufacturer Curtiss-Wright Corporation sold Bolivia 34 warplanes in 1933. But President Franklin Roosevelt, honoring a League of Nations mandate, imposed an arms embargo on sales to the Chaco belligerents and only a few of the warplanes arrived in Bolivia.¹¹

Figure 1.1 Bolivia Rushes Its Troops to the Chaco Front

Source: Courtesy of the U.S. National Archives (Photo: 306NT-933F2). New York Times, 26 January 1933.

The two poorest nations in South America fought with armies largely comprised of Indian conscripts. In the early months of the war ( June–December 1932), patriotic creole-mestizos fought alongside Indian peasants, miners, and urban workers. But as casualties mounted, patriotic fervor dwindled as did the number of volunteers. Initially the generals drew upon urban reservists because they were more accessible, more likely to be literate, and easier to train and transport than rural Indians.¹² The war was devastating; of the 77,000 Bolivian soldiers mobilized in the first year of combat; 14,000 were killed in action; 10,000 were captured; 6,000 deserted; and 32,000 were lost to wounds, sickness, and disease. Death, desertions, and casualties accounted for the loss of over 80 percent of the conscripts. In one year of combat, the army was reduced to 7,000 soldiers in the front lines, and another 8,000 (primarily creole-mestizos) who served behind the lines were removed from harm’s way.¹³

Besides the high numbers of prisoners and deserters, which roughly doubled by war’s end, the number of casualties due to illness is shocking.¹⁴ Dehydration, starvation, disease (yellow fever, smallpox, dengue fever, malaria, cholera, typhus, typhoid fever, bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis), and illness resulting from extreme vitamin deficiency decimated the troops who arrived at the front after an arduous trek on foot for hundreds of miles.¹⁵ Illness and disease contributed to 85 percent of the deaths reported at the Villa Monte hospital in 1932; malaria infected 899 patients. Avitaminosis, the most common disease (1,999 cases reported at the hospital in 1933), caused by extreme or chronic vitamin deficiency, contributed more casualties than malaria and tuberculosis combined. One in four patients deemed unfit for service suffered from tuberculosis, and gastrointestinal infections from foul food and polluted water were the cause of two-thirds of the deaths at the San Antonio Military Hospital.¹⁶ Psychological disorders (depression, self-mutilation, and suicide) took their toll among those who could no longer endure the nightmare.

The Chaco’s extreme temperatures debilitated the Andean conscripts. The arid Chaco Boreal is without rain for eight to nine months of the year. “They say we were fighting a war for oil in the Chaco,” recalled an Indian miner, “We weren’t fighting for oil; we were fighting for water. Over each puddle we waged a war with the Paraguayans because we were dying of heat in that blazing sun.”¹⁷ An ethnic divide plagued the Bolivian military and hampered its effectiveness, as the Kallawaya veteran Antonio [Mamani] Álvarez, recounts: “The war was a failure because nobody was able to communicate. The campesinos didn’t know how to operate any kind of armaments, the climate didn’t favor them and nobody was anybody’s friend. There was still much regionalism, the Aymaras together on one side and the Quechuas on the other and they insulted each other in their dialects… . [T]hose who didn’t know how to speak another language other than their own, weren’t able to understand.”¹⁸

The casualties of war also include the surviving victims of the call to arms. The impact of disease—on the primarily Indian soldiers—was compounded as the pathogens were carried home. Bolivian health care, such as it was, served the urban populace and ignored the nation’s rural majority. On the eve of the war, an outbreak of yellow fever devastated the Colorado regiment while stationed in Santa Cruz. Miserable living conditions for the troops—overcrowded barracks, poor sanitation, the lack of potable water, and mosquito netting—created the ideal environment for the spread of infec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Maps
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 War: The Generation of the Chaco
• 2 Revolution
• 3 Counterrevolution
• 4 The Sexenio
• 5 Revolution: Redux, 1952–1965
• 6 Agrarian Reform
• 7 Sindicato and Revolution
• 8 The “Revolution of Restoration”
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index