Using the Cold War: The Truman Administration’s Response to the Bolivian National Revolution
Using the Cold War: The Truman Administration’s Response to the Bolivian National Revolution
Written by Benjamin Dangl
Monday, 06 May 2013 10:54
Author’s note: At a May Day speech this month, Bolivian President Evo Morales announced that his government would be expelling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) out of the country for seeking to undermine the leftist policies and agenda of the Morales government. As I wrote in an investigative article on this topic in 2008 for The Progressive Magazine, the US government has for years been attempting to oppose the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), the political party of Morales, and weaken Bolivia’s leftist social movements.
Washington is no stranger to interfering in leftist and nationalist politics in the Andean nation. As the following paper, originally published in the University of Vermont History Review in 2012, outlines, the Harry Truman administration worked against the progressive policies, self-determination and grassroots base of Bolivia’s transformative National Revolution in 1952. This history's legacy lives on; Washington’s power is woven into the fabric of Bolivian politics, from the dreams and nightmares of the National Revolution, into the MAS era of today.
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At the beginning of the Cold War, Bolivian miners and peasants took to the streets in what would become one of the most transformative and symbolically-rich political events of the twentieth century for the Andean nation. Bolivia’s National Revolution in 1952 initiated shockwaves that are still felt among the country’s impoverished and indigenous majority. From land reform and the nationalization of the tin mines, to expanding access to voting, education and healthcare, the changes and promises wrought by the National Revolution were historically unprecedented for Bolivia.
Public support for the National Revolution was fed by many Bolivians’ dissatisfaction with working conditions in the fields and mines of the nation and the country's widespread social and economic inequalities. A testimony from Bolivian miner Domitila Barrios de Chungara conveys the perception of injustice that was common among Bolivian workers at the time of the revolution: “Why should we allow a few to benefit from all of Bolivia’s resources while we go on forever working like animals, without having higher aspirations, without being able to provide a better future for our children? Why shouldn’t we aspire to better things when our country is rich thanks to our sacrifice?”[1] Barrios de Chungara’s complaints illustrate the rage felt by many poor Bolivians, a rage which gave expression to the demands of the revolution. Yet, in the months and years following the uprising, many of the National Revolution’s promises remained unrealized. A string of military dictatorships, corrupt presidents, racism and vast inequality in the country contributed to these challenges. But a look at Washington’s response to the revolution in 1952 points to some other roadblocks to development and social change.
This essay explores the ways in which President Harry Truman’s administration undermined the historic nationalist changes that took place during the National Revolution in Bolivia. In the US fight against communism in the Cold War, the decisions of leading Truman administration foreign policy officials working on Latin America were consistently informed by US commercial interests. Such US policy fought against nations who challenged those commercial interests in their own countries by way of the state-led expropriation of private businesses, industry and land. Diplomatic cable exchanges between government officials and diplomats in Washington and La Paz detail how the Truman administration worked against the self-determination of Bolivia’s National Revolution. Of specific interest here is the extent to which the Truman administration, following Bolivia’s nationalization of tin mines, pressured Bolivian officials into reimbursing the private businessmen who were the former owners of the government-expropriated mines, a move that was against the popular sentiment of the grassroots base of the Bolivian revolutionary government.
Considering the roots of the Truman administration’s foreign policy in the wake of World War II, and the development of the Truman Doctrine, the administration’s response to the National Revolution took place at an important juncture in US-Latin American relations. In the years following Bolivia’s revolution, Washington notoriously helped orchestrate bloody coups against leaders with nationalist leanings elsewhere in the region. The way in which Washington dealt with this earlier threat to US hegemony in the Andes sheds important light on the machinations of US foreign policy in Latin America in the early Cold War.
More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/4275-using-the-cold-war-the-truman-administrations-response-to-the-bolivian-national-revolution