A Valuable Look Back at Bolivian History

I just found a gem of an article about Bolivia on The Nation's Web site. It is a piece titled "Democracy in the Andes" written by William Rosenberg published by The Nation in August 1952. I think it is the best writing on Bolivia that I have seen in The Nation (including my own writing).
As the saying goes, history does not repeat itself but, sometimes, it echoes. The parallels between 1952 and today are haunting, but the differences are notable as well.

Violent clashes between the government and social and labor movements left many dead. The issue at the heart of the uprisings was the demand for nationalizing the country's largest industry, tin mining and export. The government falls and Victor Paz Estenssoro, a former national Finance Minister living in exile in returns to take over the presidency. Bolivia's '52 revolution, with parts both good and bad, takes control of the nation.

What does the historical perspective of this article have to say to us now?

Then as now, the nation was in turmoil over the demands of its people that its wealth under the ground (tin then, gas now) be under public control and developed in the interests of the nation as a whole rather than a select few. Then as now, the claim on the other side was that the resource had to remain in private hands in order to be exploited efficiently. Then as now, the Bolivian people weren't buying the argument. Then as now, Bolivians looked to what nature left in the land as its economic path toward development.

The levels of violence are clearly different now. In 1952 thousands died in clashes with the government. Fifty-three people died in the October 2003 uprising that ousted Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, a tragedy still, but one on a vastly different scale. In 1946, when public uprisings ended the rule of President Gualberto Villarroel, installed earlier by a military coup, The President was executed by hanging in Plaza Murillo. The last time I saw Goni he was sitting comfortably in first class on a flight from Miami to Washington.

Bolivia's vast mineral wealth has always been both its gift and its curse and the dance between that wealth and the country's fits and starts at democracy has always been at the center of Bolivian politics.

Read the article. It offers a valuable perspective.