Bolivia-History World - Bolivia History

HISTORY OF BOLIVIA

Las Charcas: AD 1538-1825

In conquering the Inca empire, the conquistadors - even though few in number - move with surprising speed into the Altiplano, the high plateau in the Andes which is often called Upper Peru and which comprises much of modern Bolivia. This is a region with a rich past, as the ruins of Tiwanaku bear witness, but it has been a relatively unimportant part of the Inca realm.

Nevertheless in 1538, just five years after the murder of Atahualpa, there is a Spanish administrative centre at Charcas, later known as Chuquisaca. It is almost as if the conquistadors have forewarning of the discovery which will soon transform this inaccessible region into the wealthiest corner of the Spanish empire.

In 1545 silver deposits are found at PotosÃ. They turn out to be vast. In 1548 the town of La Paz is established on the trade route between the silver mines and the viceregal capital at Lima. By 1650 the population of PotosÃ has risen to about 160,000 (London at the time has some 400,000 inhabitants).

Las Charcas, the region administered from Chuquisaca, extends steadily east of the Andes until it eventually includes eastern Bolivia, Paraguay and much of Argentina. This shift of balance is reflected in a change of administrative policy. In 1776 the Spanish empire east of the Andes is removed from the control of Lima and is transferred to Buenos Aires, capital of the new viceroyalty of La Plata.

Astride the Andes, with strong links to both east and west, Las Charcas becomes a battleground during the wars of independence between rebels from Argentina and Spanish royalists in Peru (after a very early failed uprising in Bolivia itself, in 1809). A series of battles here in 1812-14 persuades San MartÃn that he can only lay a lasting basis for independence by campaigning west of the Andes, through Chile and up into Peru.

His analysis proves accurate. Ten years later the Altiplano is the only part of south America in Spanish hands after rebel forces capture the Peruvian viceroy and his army at Ayacucho in 1824.

Sucre and Bolivia: AD 1825-1827

The republican victory at Ayacucho leaves only one Spanish army at large, in the high Andean territory of Upper Peru. Sucre moves into this region early in 1825 and defeats the Spanish in April at Tumusla.

Upper Peru has been administered from Lima in the early centuries of Spanish rule, although geographically - lying mainly east of the Andes - it has more obvious links with Buenos Aires. The republican governments in both cities are eager to incorporate this region, with its famous mines at PotosÃ, but locally a spirit of independence prevails. When Sucre convenes a congress in July 1825 to consider the region's future, the vote is for a separate state.

In honour of their liberators the delegates propose to name the new republic after Boliv?r and to rename as Sucre the historic city (Chuquisaca) in which they are meeting.

The nation is duly proclaimed on 6 August 1825 as Rep?blica BolÃvar, soon to be better known to the world as Bolivia. BolÃvar himself drafts a constitution. When it is adopted, in 1826, Sucre is elected president for life. Prudently he accepts a term of only two years, but the violence of political life in this new and remote republic means that he does not complete even this modest term. Already in 1827 there are several uprisings, in one of which Sucre is wounded. He resigns as president and returns to his home in Ecuador.

The sudden departure of Sucre before his term is up prefigures a pattern in Bolivian political life. Even by the standards of Latin America, regimes here prove remarkably unstable. It has been calculated that between independence and 1952 (the most significant date in Bolivia's subsequent history) there are no fewer than 179 uprisings against the government of the moment.

Nevertheless in the early years, from 1828, the nation has a dicatator who is unmistakably a strong man in the continent's caudÃllo tradition. But his aggressive machismo brings considerable harm to Bolivia at the hands of neighbouring Chile.

Triangular conflicts: AD 1835-1884

During the first few decades of their existence as the independent nations of Peru, Bolivia and Chile, the three Andean provinces of the old viceroyalty of Peru engage in two bouts of war.

The issue on the first occasion is a straightforward attempt at dominance by a typical Latin American caudÃllo. Andr»s Santa Cruz establishes himself from 1828 as dictator in Bolivia - after failing in an attempt in the previous year to be elected president of Peru. In 1835 he takes steps to correct this error of judgement by the Peruvians. He marches into Peru with an army from Bolivia.

During 1836 Santa Cruz successfully wins control in Peru and proclaims a new Peruvian-Bolivian confederation with himself as president. But the potential strength of this new neighbour alarms Chile, which goes on the offensive. Three years of warfare end in a Chilean victory. In 1839 Santa Cruz is thrown out of both Peru and Bolivia.

The next serious conflict between the three nations is by contrast entirely economic in origin. In the 1860s valuable deposits of nitrates are discovered in the Atacama desert. This region is so arid that it has previously been considered useless except as Bolivia's only access to the sea (the coast around Antofagasta is at first included in the newly independent republic of Bolivia).

A mutual distrust of Chile causes Peru and Bolivia in 1873 to make a secret alliance which later drags them both into war. In 1878 Bolivia attempts to impose increased taxes on Chilean enterprises in Bolivian territory, following this with a threat of expropriation. Chile, retaliating in February 1879, seizes the port of Antofagasta. By April all three nations are at war.

Two Chilean naval victories over Peru later in the year (off Iquique in May and Angamos in October) are followed by an invasion. In January 1880 Chilean forces take Lima. They remain in the city until a treaty is signed in 1883 at Anc€n. A separate truce follows a year later between Chile and Bolivia.

The outcome of this conflict, known as the War of the Pacific, is a disaster for both Bolivia and Peru. Bolivia cedes to Chile its Pacific coastline and the nitrate-rich province of Antofagasta, while Chile in return merely agrees to build a railway from La Paz to the coast and to guarantee the unrestrained passage of Bolivian goods to certain ports. Peru loses the equally valuable minerals of the Tarapac? province, stretching up the coast north of Antofagasta.

With this increase in territory, and the prestige of its two successive victories, Chile replaces Peru as the main Pacific power in south America.

In Bolivia one effect of the loss of Antofagasta is to direct attention eastwards. If Bolivian goods can now only reach the Pacific through Chilean territory, then maybe an outlet to the Atlantic is a more promising proposition. One part of the great network of rivers draining into the Plate is not far from Bolivia's southeastern border.

The Paraguay river at this point is navigable, and Bolivian access to it would be through the virtually uninhabited region known as the Gran Chaco. But neighbouring Paraguay has designs upon the Chaco too. In the early 20th century there are thought to be strong economic reasons for annexing this inhospitable area.

The Chaco War: AD 1932-1935

The Gran Chaco is a huge arid low-lying plain, in which savanna grasses and scrub are interspersed with regions of saline swamp. It is an unenticing area, but discoveries of oil in the early 20th century raise hopes (later unfulfilled) of great wealth in the region.

It has never been considered necessary to define any exact border here, but now both Bolivia and Paraguay begin building small military outposts (almost every place name here begins with 'FortÃn', a humble word in the Spanish military lexicon sometimes equivalent to little more than pillbox or bunker). From 1928 there are occasional clashes between these outposts, in a process which escalates by 1932 to outright war.

The first major engagement is at FortÃn Boquer€n, taken by the Bolivians in June 1932 and recaptured by Paraguayan forces in September. There is subsequent fighting over an eight-month period around FortÃn Nanawa. The likely advantage seems on the side of Bolivia, a larger nation with a better equipped army. But the Bolivian troops, from highland regions, prove less well adapted to fighting in the lowland swamps. More of them succumb to disease and snakebite than to bullets.

By 1935, at the end of an inconclusive war, 100,000 men have died. A peace signed in Buenos Aires in 1938 gives Paraguay most of the disputed region but brings within the borders of Bolivia the port of Puerto Suarez, with access to the Paraguay river.

Paz Estenssoro and the MNR: AD 1941-1964

By the era of the Chaco War, Bolivia has taken almost no steps towards democracy and has made no attempt to integrate or educate its indigenous Indians (representing more than 80% of the people). The undemocratic nature of the nation is well suggested by the fact that liberal regimes in the first two decades of the 20th century double the size of the electorate - but only from 2.5% to 5% of the population.

The Chaco War is something of a social turning point, in that Indians form the bulk of the Bolivian armies and thus take part for the first time in an essentially national endeavour. And the war is soon followed by the founding of the first political party to have their interests on its agenda.

In 1941 Victor Paz Estenssoro and others form the left-wing Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR). During the 1940s the MNR establishes strong links with the unions in the Bolivian mines, at this stage almost the sole source of the nation's wealth.

The pattern of violent coups and counter-revolutions continues, with the MNR as active as its opponents in the contest. An uprising by the MNR fails in 1949 and a general strike is ruthlessly crushed by a military junta in 1950. But in 1952 the MNR succeeds in seizing power. Paz Estenssoro, in exile since 1949, returns as president.

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He immediately puts into effect reforms so wide-ranging that they amount to a revolution. The great agricultural estates of the central plateau are nationalized and are distributed among the Indian peasants. The Indians are given the vote.

The nation's mines are taken into public ownership.They are now valuable mainly as a source of tin, since the silver at PotosÃ has been mined to extinction, but it is an indication of their importance that the three largest mining companies each has an annual turnover greater than that of the central government. To secure these measures, the size of the Bolivian army (the most likely source of the next coup) is successfully reduced.

The MNR, not above using ruthless methods to suppress any opposition, stays in power for twelve years - an unprecedented period in Bolivian history. Paz Estenssoro's vice-president serves as president in 1956-60, after which Paz Estenssoro returns for a second term. He is elected for a third time in 1964, with 70% of the vote, but he is then thrown out by a military junta.

In 1985 Paz Estenssoro, now aged seventy-seven, is once again elected president - in the first orderly election and transfer of power in a quarter of a century. The intervening period has seen political chaos extreme even by Bolivia's own standards.

The cocaine years: from AD 1964

During much of the twenty-one years before Paz Estenssoro's return as president in 1985 Bolivia has military governments. Oppressive rule is imposed in an attempt to turn back the clock and undo the reforms of the 1952-64 period.

The situation of the peasants and workers in Bolivia is now so bleak that Che Guevara choose this as the Latin American nation most ripe for revolution. He arrives incognito, late in 1966, to launch a campaign of guerrilla warfare. For eleven months he makes little headway, until in October 1967 he and his men are discovered and surrounded by the Bolivian army. Guevara himself is wounded in the battle, then captured and shot

A special problem in Bolivia is the decline in tin prices. This is to some extent solved by a change of emphasis to agriculture. The snag, however, is that the main crop grown by the peasants is the valuable coca plant, the source of cocaine.

By the early 1980s the nation's main source of foreign currency is cocaine dealing (and foreign currency now goes a very long way, since Bolivia at this time has the world's highest rate of inflation). Successive Bolivian governments are reluctant to destroy the coca crops, because of the damage to the income of farmers and peasants. However US pressure gradually has some effect, combined with assistance for programmes of crop diversification.

The return of Paz Estenssoro in 1985 introduces a period of better government, with a reduction in the inflation rate and at last a succession of orderly elections every four years. He is followed as president in 1989 by Paz Zamora, a distant relation.

The election of 1993 is won by a right-wing candidate, Gonzalo S?nchez de Lozada . That of 1997 brings to power a retired general, Hugo Banzer Suarez. Ominously he was also president from 1971 to 1978, the most oppressive period in recent Bolivian history. But he rules now with the support of a multiparty coalition in congress.