Kevin Young uses Bolivians’ struggles for sovereign control of natural resources (“resource nationalism”) to write a comprehensive history of the results of the Bolivian revolution of 1952 and the middle-class, reformist party that led it, the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR). He particularly emphasizes the type of multi-class, multi-ideological coalitions that coalesced around the call for an end to foreign exploitation of commodity production.
In tandem with his examination of the MNR, Young also dissects US cold war policy in the country, a policy that aimed to undermine popular, democratic initiatives, and supported the MNR in its conflicts with the left. Young concludes that Washington was not so much concerned with Bolivia becoming communist as it was with the threat of “resource nationalism, material redistribution, and an independent foreign policy” (11). There is a certain irony here: Even if one accepts that the US aims were not specifically ideological and anticommunist, experience has taught (especially in Cuba, but also in Chile under Allende, and even with Arbenz in Guatemala) that US policy itself contributed to making these national aspirations impossible without socialism.
Young does an excellent job of explaining the early origins of resource nationalism in Bolivia's Chaco War with Paraguay (1932-35), which many believed was provoked by competition between international petroleum companies. Using archival documents, newspapers, and published sources, he carefully explains both the strengths and weaknesses of the populist coalitions formed around the defense of national resources. One of the greatest strengths of these formations also turns out to be a major weakness: resource nationalists can fall almost anywhere on the political spectrum. In Bolivia, Communists, Trotskyites, labor union activists, some students, and intellectuals (not mutually exclusive categories) constituted the left of the movement pushing for socialization of the means of production. On the other hand, more conservative elements, and even national capitalists, could oppose foreign control of basic resources and favor Bolivian private interests taking over national extractive enterprises. This means that these populist coalitions can be very broad and apply a lot of popular pressure.
In the case of Bolivia, popular sentiment was strong enough to help the MNR overthrow the military government in 1952 and then force the Party to nationalize the mines and enact an agrarian reform. But it is clear, too, that such political fronts are inherently fragile and often controlled by the most conservative parties. In Bolivia's case, the right wing of the MNR, with strong US backing, was able in the late 1950s to impose an economic stabilization program, partially privatize the petroleum industry, place limitations on state control of tin mines, and undertake severe repression of the organized working class.
Nonetheless, the left was not completely crushed, and, in fact, the sentiment for national control of natural resources was so widespread that in 1961 the United States was forced to do something it had vowed it would never do: extend loans to the nationalized petroleum company. A great merit of Young's narrative is that in addition to discussing protests against repression and the denationalization of Bolivia's resources, he details how popular sectors, including unionized workers and Chaco War veterans, put forward concrete proposals for industrialization, taxation of foreign enterprises (if they were not taken over by the government), redistribution of wealth, and popular democracy.
An epilogue compares the current government of Evo Morales and the Movimiento a Socialismo (MAS) with the MNR. The MAS program of the twenty-first century includes the demands of indigenous people, women, and concern for the environment, issues largely ignored by the middle-class reformers of the MNR. MAS also appears to be more radical than the right-wing MNR of the 1950s and 1960s. Young demonstrates that the MAS coalition, which won broad popularity because of defense of national resources, nonetheless shares some of the same contradictions as other populist formations, and that the government, like the MNR, still has to deal with popular protest from groups that feel it is not keeping its promises.
Kevin Young is to be congratulated on creating a comprehensive history of recent Bolivian history that also offers a new lens for interpreting Latin American populism. It is one of the finest examples of the recent, and very welcome, production of works on Latin American economic history. Although he focuses on the particular situation of Bolivia, Young is careful to draw parallels with other Latin American countries, for example, making comparisons with events in Guatemala in 1952 and acknowledging the impact of the Cuban revolution on Bolivia and on US foreign policy. The book is very well written and is appropriate for graduate and upper-level undergraduate classes. It will be of interest to students of populism, Marxism, Latin American economic development, US foreign policy, and labor history.
