Bolivia and the United States: A Limited Partnership (review)

Bolivia and the United States: A Limited Partnership. By KENNETH D. LEHMAN. The United States and the Americas. Athens, GA.: The University of Georgia Press, 1999. Maps. Notes. Index. xviii, 296 pp. Cloth, $55.00 Paper, $20.00.

It is not often that a scholarly work is published on U.S.-Bolivian relations, as Latin American scholarship has focused historically on either the larger republics or countries with a particular interest to the U.S., invariably because of revolutionary movements or regimes. Despite its less publicized role in inter- and intrahemispheric affairs, Bolivia is a very important country and its relationship with the U.S., especially since World War II, is quite significant and rather telling of how U.S. foreign policy is conducted with a country that has limited resources and even less political leverage.

Delineating the different political, economic, and cultural traditions in the U.S. and Bolivia, the author argues that since the early nineteenth century there have been historical obstacles to cooperation between the two countries. Lehman's poignant analysis addresses two important questions: To what degree are such differences the root causes of the lack of cooperation? To what extent are such difference relevant to U.S. hemispheric hegemony? While there have been a few worthy scholarly studies dealing with aspects of modern Bolivian history, the unique contribution of this monograph is that it synthesizes the history of U.S.-Bolivian relations in the last two centuries, as it endeavors to examine the relationship not just from a diplomatic but a cultural perspective as well.

After a thematic, albeit brief, overview of Bolivia's colonial history in which the structural foundations of monoexport dependency based on silver mining are established, the book examines the rebellion of La Paz and Bolivia's independence, placing it in a regional framework. Fundamental to U.S.-Bolivian relations, Manifest Destiny guided Washington's foreign policy during a transition period from Bolivian authoritarian regimes to a quasi-representative government driven by urban modernizers. Yet in the nineteenth century, when British capitalism reigned in Latin America and the mining capitalists enjoyed indirect political control in La Paz, the U.S. had minimal interest in Bolivia.

In the interwar era, when European companies began retreating from Latin America and U.S. firms gradually took their place, direct U.S. investments in Bolivia surpassed those of all other countries. As U.S. investments penetrated Bolivia's economy, especially in the raw materials sector, the country became integrated into the U.S.-dominated hemispheric system that collapsed during the Great Depression and set off a wave of nationalism and radicalism across the republics in the 1930s.

By far the most fascinating period of U.S.-Bolivian relations, the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionaria (MNR) years started with the promise of structural reform in 1952, but ended with a dubious record of military interference in the political arena in 1964, in no small measure due to the inordinate influence of the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Bolivia's internal affairs. Analyzing the MNR regime and its relations with Washington, chapter 4 is entitled "A Pragmatic Experiment," suggesting that MNR presidents, from Victor Paz Estenssoro to Hernán Siles, were pragmatic, from their own perspectives at least. Opting for cooperation with the U.S. and the IMF rather than pursuing the more independent route of embattled Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz, the MNR pragmatists were spared the wrath of the U.S. amid the Cold War, but scholars need to assess for themselves whether the MNR's pragmatism best served the Bolivian peoples' immediate and long-term political, economic, and social interests. "Most Bolivians remain desperately poor," concludes Lehman, "and many of the gains made by the 1952 revolution have been reversed. The per capita GDP stood at $764 in 1998, well below the regional average of $2,389" (p. 221).

To his great credit, the author notes that the...