Pushing Tin: U.S.-Bolivian Relations and the Coming of the National Revolution*

Abstract

This work examines U.S-Bolivian relations in the years leading up to Victor Paz Estenssoro's National Revolution in 1952. Harry S. Truman's diplomats and national security planners sought to secure scarce tin for stockpiling and domestic consumption during the early Cold War, but unintentionally helped to destabilize three pro-U.S. Bolivian governments. U.S. efforts to drive down the price of tin, led by Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) chief Stuart Symington and Senator Lyndon B. Johnson but often opposed by the State Department, exacerbated Bolivian economic problems and created a climate in which Paz Estenssoro and his Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario could flourish. Although Truman did eventually intervene personally to resolve the standoff between the RFC and the Bolivians in the days before the National Revolution, he acted too late to avert one of the most significant Latin American social revolutions of the twentieth century.