Bolivia

Bolivia is an inland republic of South America, once a part of the Spanish vice-royalty of Peru and is known as the province of Charcas, or Upper Peru. It is the third largest political division of the continent, and extends, approximately, from 9° 44' to 22° 50' South latitude, and from 58° to 70° West longitude. It is bounded North and East by Brazil, South by Paraguay and Argentina, and West by Chile and Peru. Estimates of area vary widely and have been considerably confused by repeated losses of territory in boundary disputes with neighboring states, and no figures can be given which may not be changed to some extent by further revisions. Official estimates are 640,226 to 703,633 square miles, but Supan (Die Bevölkerung der Erde, 1904) places it at 515,15 square miles.

Boundaries

The boundary line between Bolivia and Brazil has its origin in the limits between the Spanish nad Portuguese colonies determined by the treaties of Madrid and San Ildefonso (1750 and 1777), which were modified by the treaties of 1867 and 1903. Beginning at the outlet of Bahia Negra into the Paraguay river, lat. 28° 08' 35" S., the line ascends the latter to a point on the west bank 9 kilometers below Fort Coimbra, thence inland 4 kilometers to a point in lat. 19° 45' 36" S. and long. 58° 04' 12.7" W., whence it follows an irregular course N. and E. of N. to Lakes Mandioré, Gaiba or Gahiba, and Uberaba, then up the San Matias river and N. along the Sierra Ricardo Franco to the headwaters of the Rio Verde, a tributary of the Guaporé. This part of the boundary was turned inland from the Paraguay to include , within Brazilian jurisdiction, Fort Coimbra, Corumbá and other settlements on the west bank, and was modified on 1903 by the recession of about 1158 sq. m. to Bolivia to provide better commercial facilities on the Paraguay. The line follows the Verde, Guaporé, Mamoré, and Maderia rivers down to the mouth of the Abuna, in about lat. 9° 44' S., as determined by the treaty of 1903. This is a part of the original colonial frontier, which extended down the Madeira to a point midway between Beni and the Amazon, and then ran due W. to the Javary. The treaty of 1867 changed this starting point to the mouth of the Beni, in lat. 10° 20' S., and designated a straight line to the source of the Javary as the frontier, which gave Brazil a large area of territory; but when the valuable rubber forests of the upper Purús became known, the Brazilians invaded them and demanded another modification of the boundary line. This was finally settled in 1903 by the Treaty of Petropolis, which provided that the line should ascend the Abuna river to lat. 10° 20' S., thence along that parallel W. to the Rapirran River which is followed to its principal source, thence due W. to the Ituxy river which is followed W. to its source, thence to the source of the Bahia Creek which is followed to the Acré or Aquiry river, thence up the later to its source, whence if east of the 60th meridian it runs direct to the 11th parallel which will form the boundary line to the Peruvian frontier. This frontier gave about 60,000 sq. m. of territory to Brazil, for which the later gave an indemnity of £2,000,000 and about 1158 sq. m. of territory on the Matto Grosso frontier. The boundary with Paraguay is unsettled, but an unratified treaty of the 23rd of November 1894 provides that the line shall start from a point on the Paraguay river 3 miles north of Fort Olimpo and run south-west in a straight line to an intersection with the Pilcomayo in long. 61° 28' W., were it unites with the Argentine boundary. The boundary with Chile was greatly modified by the results of the war of 1879-83, as determined by the treaties of 1884, 1886, and 1895, Bolivia losing her department of the littoral on the Pacific and all access to the coast except by the grace of the conqueror. Provisions were made in 1895 for the cession of the port of Mejillones del Norte and a right of way across the province of Tarapacá, but Peru protested, and negotiations followed for the cession of Cobijo, in the province of Antofagasta. These negotiations proved fruitless, and in 1904 Bolivia accepted a pecuniary indemnity in lieu of territory. The new boundary line starts from the summit of the Sapaleri (or Zapalegui), where the Argentine, Bolivian, and Chilean boundaries converge, and runs west to Licancaur, thence north to the most southern source of Lake Ascotán which it follows to and across this lake in the direction of the Oyahua volcano, and thence in a straight line to the Tua volcano, on the frontier of the province of Tarapacá. From this point the line follows the summits of the Cordillera Silillica north to the Cerro Paquiza, on the Tacna frontier, and the Nevado Pomarape, near the frontier of Peru. Thence it continues north to an intersection with the Desaguadero, in about 16° 45' S. lat, follows that river to the Winamarca lagoon and Lake Titicaca, and crosses the later diagonally to Huaicho on the north shore. From this point the line crosses the Cordillera Real through the valley of the San Juan del Oro to Suches Lake, follows the Cololo and Apolobamba ranges to the headwaters of the Sina river, and thence down that stream to the Inambari. Thence the line follows the latter to its confluence with the Madre de Dios, or the water-parting between that river and the Tambopata or Pando, to the valley of the Madre de Dios, from which point it runs due north to 12° 40' S. lat., and north-west to the new Brazilian frontier. The N.W. angle on the map represents the Bolivian claim until the settlement of 1909, which gave the territory to Peru.

The Republican Party and the Great Depression

The Liberal Party's long rule of Bolivia, one of the most stable periods in the country's history, ended when the Republicans seized the presidency in a bloodless coup d'état in 1920. Fernando Díez de Medina, a Bolivian writer, commented on the change: "Twenty years of privilege for one group ends, and ten years of privilege for another begins."

Republican Party soon split into two parties - one led by Bautista Saavedra with his Republican Socialist Party and another led by Daniel Salamanca, who established the Genuine Republican Party. Saavedra, President between 1920 and 1925, had the support of the urban middle class, while Salamanca was more conservative. A number of minor political parties influenced by socialist or Marxist thought also emerged.

During the Republican rule the Bolivian economy underwent a profound change. Tin prices started to decline in the 1920s. After peaking in 1929, tin production declined dramatically as the Great Depression nearly destroyed the international tin market. This decline was also caused by the decrease in the tin content of ore and the end of new investment in the mines in Bolivia.

As economic growth slowed, Republican presidents relied on foreign loans. Saavedra (1920–25) and Hernando Siles Reyes (1926–30) borrowed heavily in the United States to finance major development projects, despite opposition by Bolivian nationalists to the favorable terms for the lender. The so-called Nicolaus loan aroused national indignation because it gave the United States control over Bolivia's tax collections in return for a private banking loan of US$33 million.

The rule of the Republican Party and its President Saavedra initially did not indicate any profound changes in Bolivian politics. The 1920s, however, was a period of political change. During the 1920s Bolivia faced growing social turmoil. Saavedra legalized the right to strike and introduced government arbitration in labour disputes. In 1922 he caused a general strike after banning night taxis. The strikers won and taxi services were resumed and railroad federation was recognized as representative of railroad workers. Labor unrest, such as the miners' strike in Uncia in 1923, was brutally suppressed.

The unrest reached new heights of violence after the drastic reduction of the work force during the Great Depression. Indian peasants continued to rebel in the countryside, although they had been disarmed and their leaders had been executed after participating in the overthrow of the Conservative Party in 1899. Now, for the first time, the Indians found support for their cause among the elite. Gustavo Navarro, who took the name Tristan Marof, was Bolivia's most important Indianist. He saw in the Inca past the first successful socialism and the model to solve rural problems. As Indian uprisings continued during the Liberal rule, Siles Reyes promised to improve their situation and organized the National Crusade in Favor of Indians.

The social legislation of the Republican governments was weak, however, because neither Saavedra nor Siles Reyes wanted to challenge the rosca (tin mining magnates' political representatives). Siles Reyes's four years of inconsistent rule and unfulfilled promises of radical changes frustrated workers and students. In 1930 he was overthrown when he tried to bypass the constitutional provision forbidding reelection by resigning in order to run again.

A military junta ruled until March 1931, when Republican leader Daniel Salamanca (1931–34) was elected as a candidate of Republican and Liberal coalition.[2] Although he was an esteemed economist before taking office, Salamanca was unable to suppress social unrest and to solve the severe economic problems caused by the Great Depression. Criticism of his administration mounted in all sectors of Bolivian society. Initially reluctant to enter into an armed conflict with Paraguay, he nevertheless led Bolivia into Chaco war, a move supported by the military and traditional groups.

The Chaco War (1932-1935)

The Chaco War originated in a long-standing dispute between Bolivia and Paraguay over the Gran Chaco region. This vast area was largely undeveloped except for some minor oil discoveries by Standard Oil in Bolivia and by Royal Dutch Shell in Paraguay. The Chaco, which Bolivia traditionally regarded as its province, became more significant to Bolivia after it lost its Pacific coastline to Chile in 1880. Bolivia hoped to gain access to the Atlantic Ocean with an oil pipeline across the Chaco to the Paraguay River. Despite mediation attempts by various countries, the increased number of border incidents led the military high commands of Bolivia and Paraguay to prepare for the inevitability of war.

President Salamanca used one of the border incidents to break diplomatic relations with Paraguay and to increase Bolivia's military budget, even though the country had severe economic problems. Convinced that Bolivia's better-equipped, German-trained troops, which outnumbered the Paraguayan army, could win the war, Salamanca went to war in September 1932.

The war raged for the next three years. The Bolivians suffered defeat in all major battles, and by the end of 1934 they had been driven back 482 kilometers from their original positions deep in the Chaco to the foothills of the Andes. Serious strategic errors, poor intelligence, and logistical problems in reaching the distant battle-lines contributed to the losses. In addition, the morale of the Bolivian troops was low, and the highland Indian troops could not adapt to the extreme climate in the low-lying Chaco. Despite the high command's decision to end the war, Salamanca was determined to continue at all costs. In 1934, when he traveled to the Chaco to take personal command over the war, Salamanca was arrested by the high command and forced to resign. His vice-president, José Luis Tejada Sorzano, who was known to favor peace, was installed as president (1934–36).

Salamanca's overthrow proved a turning-point in the Chaco War. The Paraguayan troops were stopped by new, more capable Bolivian officers, who fought closer to Bolivian supply lines. On June 14, 1935 a commission of neutral nations (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and the United States) declared an armistice; a definite settlement was finally reached in 1938. Bolivia lost the Chaco but retained the petroleum fields, which Paraguay had failed to reach. Both countries suffered heavy losses in the war. Bolivia lost an estimated 65,000 people killed and 35,000 wounded or captured out of a population of just under 3 million.

The humiliating disaster of the Chaco War had a profound impact in Bolivia, which saw the conflict as a watershed event in the history of the 20th century. The traditional oligarchy was discredited because of its inept civilian and military leadership in the war. Unable to deal with growing criticism, its members blamed the loss of the war on the low potential of the Bolivians and saw the earlier pessimistic assessment in Alcides Arguedas's famous novel Pueblo Enfermo (A Sick People) confirmed.

After the war, a group of middle-class professionals, writers, and young officers questioned the traditional leadership. This group, which came to be known as the Chaco Generation, searched for new ways to deal with the nation's problems. It resented the service of the rosca on behalf of the tin-mining entrepreneurs and criticized Standard Oil Co., which had delivered oil to Paraguay clandestinely through Argentine intermediaries during the war. The Chaco Generation was convinced of the need for social change. Gustavo Navarro, now more radical than during the 1920s, proclaimed the famous slogan "land to the Indians, mines to the state". The military, which came to power in 1936, tried to bring about change with popular support.

Type

Geopolitical, Country