Constructing a New Bolivian Society: Public Health Reforms and the Consolidation of the Bolivian National Revolution

CONSTRUCTING A NEW BOLIVIAN SOCIETY: PUBLIC HEALTH REFORMS AND THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE BOLIVIAN NATIONAL REVOLUTION Nicole Pacino University of Alabama in Huntsville On January 5, 1956 Bolivia’s President, Vı́ctor Paz Estenssoro, addressed the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario’s (MNR) seventh annual national convention. While he celebrated the 1952 National Revolution ’s successes, focusing mainly on accomplishments in agrarian reform and nationalization of the country’s tin mining industry, he also warned that “enemies of the revolution” conspired against the MNR at every turn. For this reason, he claimed revolutionary policies for enhanced social welfare and greater economic prosperity were necessary to safeguard these triumphs. Protecting the revolution’s achievements meant moving beyond its first phase, which Paz explained addressed Bolivia’s severest economic inequalities. For the revolution’s longevity and increased national wellbeing , he argued it was time to advance to a new “stage of revolutionary construction.”1 As Paz explained, this “construction of a new Bolivian society” required “new fundamental labor” that would highlight the central concern of any democratic regime: a concern for mankind.2 This idea represented what Paz commonly called human capital, a notion that implicitly associated economic productivity, Bolivian workers, and national wellbeing with revolutionary citizenship.3 Healthy bodies were a prerequisite for this new form of citizenship, and the MNR’s concern for individual Bolivians represented their desire to create ideal citizens that were sanitary, educated, economically productive, and culturally Hispanic. By linking the MNR’s revolution to democratic politics through a concern for ordinary Bolivians, Paz voiced the opinion that individuals could be improved through state policies. To create better Bolivian citizens, Paz outlined a trifold plan: social change, education, and sanitary reform.4 In this way, he merged social inequality and health care with the MNR’s political and economic agenda and suggested Bolivians would become revolutionary citizens by reforming individual practices. When Paz identified “sanitary politics” as one of the three main targets of reform in his January 1956 speech, he made public health campaigns a revolutionary priority. These sanitation reforms focused on maternal and infant health, vaccination against disease, and malaria eradication; they were, in essence, about changing people’s lifestyles, controlling bodies, and preventing the spread of disease in order to make Bolivia more economically prosperous and culturally homogeneous. Improvements to national health, he claimed, would be achieved in two aspects: curative and C  2013 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 25 The Latin Americanist, December 2013 preventative. The curative component suggested the healing of already existing maladies. In this instance, the MNR’s curative policy focused on expanding rural maternal and infant health programs. Conversely, the preventative component, or what he also termed “prophylaxis,” implied protection against dormant diseases that could infect the national body. This preventative aspect focused on vaccination campaigns and what Paz called “one of the most ambitious projects”: malaria eradication.5 While scholars have thoroughly examined the MNR’s social revolution through its political and economic reforms, particularly nationalization of the mining industry, agrarian reform, and universal suffrage, the cultural politics of the revolutionary era have received little attention. Cultural politics, or how definitions of culture are mapped onto ideas of national identity and citizenship, are essential components of post-revolutionary state building projects.6 Paz’s phase of revolutionary construction referred to projects of state and nation building, forging a unified national identity, and expanding a public health infrastructure. In this way, he linked the revolution’s cultural politics to the MNR’s desire to both institutionalize (agree upon and enact reforms) and consolidate (generate public support) the National Revolution.7 Public health provides a unique lens for examining post-revolutionary cultural politics because healthy citizens and workers were the foundation of the MNR’s political and economic reforms. As Hubert Navarro, the MNR’s Director of Biostatistics, explained, “human capital is the most valuable and irreplaceable treasure a nation possesses, [therefore] the state has the primordial obligation to care for its citizens’ health.”8 Referring to Bolivians as human capital placed individuals, and their health, at the center of national discussions of political unification and economic development . Additionally, highlighting the state’s obligation to protect its...