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A History of Organized Labor in Bolivia

2007; Duke University Press; Volume: 87; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2007-068

1527-1900

Robert Smale,

Politics and Society in Latin America

Robert J. Alexander’s history of organized labor in Bolivia is an unintentionally timely text; the book reminds readers of the central role played by the working class in twentieth-century Bolivia. Many contemporary scholars of Andean history, influenced by ideological trends originating in a new Indian nationalism, have preferred to focus on other socioeconomic groups, eschewing class-driven narratives that place the Bolivian working class at the heart of the 1952 National Revolution. Alexander provides a succinct reminder that approaches now out of favor can still provide clear insight into the course of Bolivian history.Alexander began studying Latin America in the 1940s. Since then he has produced a distinguished body of work. This new book on Bolivian labor history started as part of a larger project: a comprehensive history of organized labor in Latin America and the Caribbean. The author eventually decided to break the project into a series of shorter texts. In addition to this history of Bolivia, he has already published similar books on labor history for Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Uruguay, Paraguay, and the English-speaking West Indies.This specific text is primarily a political and institutional history of the Bolivian labor movement beginning in the nineteenth century, yet the overwhelming focus of the book is the twentieth century. The author uses his own experience as a participant-observer since the 1940s to construct an intimate portrait of labor politics; Alexander is especially good at analyzing the various left-of-center political parties in Bolivia. In the bibliography, the author lists interviews with 87 different individuals conducted over five decades. This source material lends the book its unique insider perspective.In addition to the personal feel of Alexander’s narrative, the text makes a unique contribution by placing pivotal events into an international context. When discussing the important Catavi Massacre of December 21, 1942, Alexander not only examines the internal political repercussions of the incident but discusses the international reaction to the Bolivian military’s use of deadly force against the country’s mine workers.As a participant-observer in much of this history, Alexander does not shy away from making judgments about the choices of some of the historical actors discussed in the text. He criticizes the U.S. Embassy for opposing the 1964 presidential pretensions of Juan Lechín, leader of the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), the country’s principal labor union. Generally, the author’s political proclivities do not cloud his historical analysis, but Alexander’s long familiarity with and sympathy for Víctor Paz Estenssoro and the party that he headed for so many decades, the Movimiento Nacionalist Revolucionaria (MNR), produce some exaggeration and a couple of surprising omissions. The author vigorously defends the MNR’s commitment to reform on the eve of the 1952 National Revolution. Alexander notes that some scholars have argued that “the MNR had not originally intended to launch an agrarian reform but was forced to do so by the peasants” (p. 94). He rejects the contention and attributes to the MNR all of the great reforms of the 1952 revolution. Alexander exaggerates the reforming vision of the MNR and downplays the political pressure exerted by peasants, the working class, and political parties to the left of the MNR, such as the Trotskyist Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR). Paz Estenssoro and the MNR continue to enjoy this delicate and somewhat laudatory treatment even in the book’s final pages, when the man and the party set out to destroy organized labor in Bolivia between 1985 and 1989. In the introduction, Alexander even blames the Bolivian working class for this defeat: “Although organized labor sought to defeat the neoliberal economic program, it failed, in large part because it did not present any feasible alternative to that program” (p. 4).Despite the occasional exaggeration or omission, Alexander’s unique perspective as a participant-observer adds more to the book than it detracts; the one chapter where the author cannot rely upon his extensive collection of interviews is the most disappointing. The first chapter of the book on organized labor in Bolivia before the Chaco War (1932 – 35) lacks the insider feel of later chapters. This chapter relies almost exclusively on one secondary source: Guillermo Lora’s four-volume masterwork, Historia del movimiento obrero boliviano. Of the chapter’s 102 footnotes, 94 cite one of Lora’s volumes as the principal source and only 7 do not come from one of Lora’s volumes. Alexander uses interviews with only four individuals in this first chapter.The interviews collected over a lifetime of research in Latin America are the praiseworthy bedrock of this work. Aside from the first chapter, Alexander uses this unique source material to good effect to remind scholars of the critical political role played by the Bolivian working class in the twentieth century.