Our Social Conquests Will Be Respected: Peasants and Military Dictatorship in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Abstract

Abstract Peasant support was a crucial factor in the Bolivian military's assault on labor and the Left in the 1960s and 1970s. Analysts have offered diverse explanations for the so-called Military-Peasant Pact, ranging from the bribery of peasant leaders to rank-and-file conservatism. These interpretations tend to be methodologically superficial and often reflect elitist prejudices about peasant behavior. Archival evidence and oral histories from Cochabamba suggest that the pact did enjoy substantial rank-and-file support. The military maintained that support by protecting peasant land rights and expanding rural access to public goods while imposing high costs on peasants who dissented. However, the Military-Peasant Pact was also more tenuous than most scholarship implies. Attempts to institute a new tax on land, to disarm peasants, and to impose austerity measures engendered major opposition by the 1970s, leading to a military massacre in 1974. This trajectory reveals both the foundations and limits of the military's power.