Bolivia's radical tradition: permanent revolution in the Andes

Abstract

In December 2005, following a series of convulsive upheavals that saw overthrow of two presidents in three years, Bolivian peasant leader Evo Morales became first Indian president in South American history. Consequently, according to S. Sandor John, Bolivia symbolizes new shifts in Latin America, pushed by radical social movements of poor, dispossessed, and indigenous people once crossed off maps of official history. But, as John explains, Bolivian radicalism has a distinctive genealogy that does not fit into ready-made patterns of Latin American left. According to its author, this book grew out of a desire to answer nagging questions about this unusual place. Why was Bolivia home to most persistent and heroically combative labor movement in Western Hemisphere? Why did this movement take root so deeply and so stubbornly? What does distinctive radical tradition of Trotskyism in Bolivia tell us about past fifty years there, and what about explosive developments of more recent years? To answer these questions, John clearly and carefully pieces together a fragmented past to show a part of Latin American radical history that has been overlooked for far too long. Based on years of research in archives and extensive interviews with labor, peasant, and student activists as well as Chaco War veterans and prominent political figures book brings together political, social, and cultural history, linking origins of Bolivian radicalism to events unfolding today in country that calls itself the heart of South America.