$Unique_ID{COW00409} $Pretitle{266} $Title{Bolivia Chapter 2B. Independent Bolivia} $Subtitle{} $Author{Thomas E. Weil} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{peru bolivia president bolivian general years bolivia's independence country forces} $Date{1974} $Log{} Country: Bolivia Book: Bolivia, A Country Study Author: Thomas E. Weil Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1974 Chapter 2B. Independent Bolivia Liberation A critical event leading to the independence struggle was the invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1807 and 1808 by Napoleonic forces. The overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty divided local sentiment in Charcas into three main camps: those loyal to the deposed dynasty, those loyal to Spain irrespective of royal incumbency, and those desirous of pursuing an independent course in the Spanish American territories. Charcas had already made significant contributions to the third camp through the intellectual ferment of its academies and through its relatively iconoclastic behavior in the face of royal authority over a period of three centuries. Like all Spanish America, Charcas was rent by the standing quarrel between peninsulares and criollos, the latter resentful of the privileges reserved to the former and consequently open to radical ideas that promised them an improved position. At the same time, among those loyal to Spanish rule were conservatives, most of them prepared to wait for the question of legitimacy to resolve itself in Spain, and liberals, eager to welcome the reforms of colonial rule and practice that the Bonapartist victory seemed to promise. In 1808 Jose Manuel de Goyeneche, a Peruvian general representing the junta of Seville-an organ of popular Spanish support for the Bourbon Ferdinand VII against the Napoleonic forces-arrived in Chuquisaca. He came to press simultaneously the claims of Ferdinand and his sister Carlota, then governing Brazil with her husband, the Prince Regent John of Portugal, and anxious to extend her position into Spanish America. Goyeneche sowed confusion in the Audiencia of Charcas and gained the support of the president, Ramon Garcia Leon de Pizarro. When Pizarro attempted to arrest the judges of the audiencia for their resistance to Goyeneche and their general intransigence, the people of Chuquisaca rose against the president, arrested him, forced the archbishop to flee for safety, and established their own government under the recalcitrant audiencia. This move in the direction of independence (although based on proclaimed loyalty to the deposed Ferdinand) made May 25, 1809, an important date in Bolivian history. La Paz was the next city to fall to the forces of independence and, indeed, went further than had Chuquisaca in demanding independence from Spain. By November Cochabamba, Oruro, and Potosi had followed suit. Although the movement received sharp setbacks at the hands of royalist forces sent to La Paz under Goyeneche by the viceroy of Peru and to Chuquisaca by Viceroy Liniers of La Plata, Alto Peru was never again wholly subdued. In Spain the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte brought Ferdinand back to his throne in 1814. The Spanish Cortes (legislature) was favorably disposed toward the interests of the overseas Spaniards and, during a constitutional interlude in 1821, passed measures designed to conciliate them. But Ferdinand set aside the liberal Constitution of 1812 and, in 1823, reestablished his absolutist regime. In Alto Peru he enjoyed the unquestioning loyalty of General Pedro de Olaneta, an unswerving monarchist who resisted appeals by independence forces and Spaniards with equal vehemence. As commander of the absolutist forces, Olaneta was the paramount force in Alto Peru for the last years of the Fifteen Years' War. He finally found himself in the curious position of trying to found an independent kingdom in that territory for the sake of preserving it intact for Ferdinand. It was Olaneta's pocket of royalist resistance that confronted Simon Bolivar in 1825 after the rest of Spanish America had been liberated. Apart from the hardship inflicted on the countryside by marauding troops and on the cities as they changed hands repeatedly, economic life and social organization were disrupted; the population probably numbered fewer than 1 million by this time. Although Marshal Antonio Jose de Sucre, Bolivar's Venezuelan-born lieutenant, was impressed by the patriotism of the partisans of independence in Alto Peru, he had a premonition of what awaited him when Bolivar appointed him to lead an army in pursuit of Olaneta. Not wishing to assume the task, he expressed the fear that he and his forces would get themselves "into a maze of trickery." After a bloodless campaign in which the remaining Spanish forces gradually melted away and, after Olaneta had been killed, Sucre witnessed the convocation of the General Assembly of Alto Peru in Chuquisaca on July 10, 1825. In accordance with the marshal's decree of the preceding February, the delegates to the assembly were chosen by the five provinces-La Paz, Cochabamba, Chuquisaca, Potosi, and Santa Cruz-to decide on the future political status of the country. Although Bolivar was cool to Sucre's initiative in this matter, the latter did his best to ensure honest elections so that the voters could choose freely among the alternatives. He even withdrew the army of liberation to avoid any hint of pressure on the delegates. Despite Sucre's good intentions, the assembly was less interested in faithful representation of the country's interests than in furthering the ambitions of the delegates. Almost all of them ,however, desired sovereign status for Alto Peru and, after much rhetoric, rejected two alternatives-attachment to the Viceroyalty of La Plata and reunion with Peru. Not altogether absent from their consideration was the factor of balance among the nations of the southern part of the continent. By choosing independence the assembly hoped to prevent Argentina from assuming undue weight in the regional configuration. Before the assembly completed its work, it adopted the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed on August 6, 1825; and five days later the assembly resolved to name the new nation after Bolivar, not without the hope that this act would placate Bolivar's reservations about independence for Alto Peru. On August 18, 1825, Bolivar entered La Paz and was greeted by elaborate ceremonies to honor him as Liberator-recognition that he never failed to share with Sucre. But Bolivar was outspoken about his doubts as to the ability of Bolivians to govern themselves. In all official acts from that time until his departure at the end of the year, he was careful to avoid recognition of Bolivia's independence, always referring to it as Alto Peru and signing his many decrees as dictator of Peru. Only in January 1826, when he turned the country over to Sucre, did he promise approval by the Peruvian congress of Bolivia's independent status. Bolivar's tenure as dictator of Bolivia was marked by energetic attempts to impose his ideas as a blueprint for the country. His decrees covered matters of landholding, education, public works, and the ordinary affairs of government, and he showed his awareness of the Indian problem by seeking to inculcate respect for manual labor in the rest of the population, hoping thereby to overcome the liability of continued exploitation of the indigenous population. Even after he had left Bolivia late in 1825, Bolivar, on request, supplied the General Constituent Assembly with the draft of the country's first constitution (see ch. 9). Marshal Sucre inherited Bolivar's mantle of authority in January 1826 and continued to govern by decree. He was an able administrator and farsighted in such matters as encouraging immigration. Formally installed as president after the General Constituent Assembly convened in May, he carried on the Bolivarian policies already elaborated. At the end of the year he was confirmed in office under the new constitution. The country seemed at this point to have been placed on a firm footing, enabling it to look forward to a national development that would restore some of its former prosperity. Foreign and domestic machinations led to Sucre's downfall in 1828, by which time fears had arisen that Bolivia might continue indefinitely as an appendage of Gran Colombia, the new republic composed of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, to which both Sucre and Bolivar properly belonged. The foreign author of Sucre's downfall was Agustin Gamarra, dictator of Peru, who engineered the Bolivian revolt against Colombian influence. Gamarra invaded and, with the connivance of certain Bolivians, forced Bolivia to expel Sucre in August 1828. Assessments of the Bolivar-Sucre regime vary considerably. Their detractors emphasize the non-Bolivian character of their rule, the naivete of their attempts to alleviate conditions for the Indian, and the baneful military influence they established as the basis of their positions. Their defenders can point, with at least equal justice, to the enlightened nature of their administrations as compared with much of what followed. Problems of Independence The president put into office by Gamarra ruled five days and was assassinated. Bolivians then elected their first native-born president, Andres Santa Cruz, marshal in the armies of Bolivar, whose previous military and political experience had been mainly in the service of Peru. The son of a Spanish official and Maria Calahumana, direct descendant of the last Inca, he had joined the Spanish army as a youth. After capture by the forces of Jose de San Martin in Peru in 1820, he changed sides and thereafter had a brilliant career in the patriot cause. There was reason to believe that his mother had thoroughly imbued him with a consciousness of his Inca heritage, which may explain his later ambitions. Santa Cruz assumed office in 1829 and, while watchful of events in Peru, devoted the first few years of his administration to highly constructive work in Bolivia. He ruled without a legislature for two years but called one in 1831 that united extremely capable men. They produced a constitution that year to supersede the Bolivarian one and approved a legal code drawn up at the direction of Santa Cruz, the first law code to be enacted in the new Spanish American republics. The Higher University of San Andres in La Paz also dates from this period. Making full use of his wide powers, Santa Cruz did much in his first four years of rule to order the affairs of the country, encouraging trade and industry and making advances in education, public works and pacification. In 1835 Santa Cruz signed a treaty with President Luis Jose de Orbegoso of Peru that permitted Bolivian intervention in Peru for the purpose of pacification. Acting in support of the agreement, Santa Cruz led forces to Peru and defeated in turn two competing would-be dictators, Gamarra and Felipe Santiago Salaverry. He then proclaimed the Peru-Bolivian Confederation with himself as "Protector". The potential power of this combination aroused the opposition of neighboring countries. Brazil and Argentina both protested, and the latter unsuccessfully invaded Bolivia, but it was Chile that proved the decisive opponent. Its invasion of Peru, culminating in the battle of Yungay, brought the confederation to an end in 1839 and with it the career of Bolivia's ablest nineteenth-century president. Santa Cruz was succeeded in June 1839 by Jose Miguel de Velasco. The New Peruvian president, Gamarra, believing it safe to absorb a Bolivia now lacking a Santa Cruz, invaded. General Jose Ballivian, distinguished revolutionary soldier and erstwhile Santa Cruz lieutenant who had been exiled from Bolivia, was recalled and became a national hero by repelling the invader at Ingavi, southwest of La Paz, in 1841, a battle celebrated in the country's annals as placing the final seal on Bolivia's independence. Ballivian then succeeded in overthrowing Velasco and making himself provisional president in 1842. With his position later secured by electoral mandate, he drew up a new constitution notable for its concentration of power in presidential hands. In some five years of autocratic rule, Ballivian aroused forces of opposition but maintained at least essential order in the country, in contrast to his equally dictatorial successors in office. Velasco enjoyed a brief return to the presidency after Manuel Isidoro Belzu had, in 1847, instigated a revolt that brought about Ballivian's fall. A year later Belzu repeated the performance with Velasco as victim and succeeded to the presidency. Himself a La Paz cholo (an accultured Indian-see Glossary) of little education, Belzu injected a temporary innovation into the country's political life during his tenure in the presidency from 1848 to 1855. Whereas his forerunners, all of aristocratic origin, had never seriously contemplated the participation of the lower classes in the affairs of government and national life, Belzu encouraged the cholos to rise against the ruling class and preached vengeance for the years of exploitation to which they had been subjected. The result was a succession of atrocities and reprisals producing a state of anarchy. The regime of Belzu consisted of a series of repressions of revolts rather than any program of reform that might have seemed implicit in his espousal of the cholo cause. Belzu resigned in 1855 after securing the accession of his relative Jorge Cordova as his successor. Ten years later he returned to public life in characteristic fashion, leading a revolt against President Mariano Melgarejo, who held office between 1864 and 1871. This time Belzu lost his life in the attempt. The country's first civilian president, Jose Maria Linares, who engineered the overthrow of Cordova in 1857, was no less dictatorial than Belzu but otherwise of completely different stripe. A member of the elite and supporter of Ballivian, he had served the latter as minister to Spain and secured official Spanish recognition of Bolivian independence in 1846. His rule, from 1857 to his overthrow in 1860, reestablished the educated class in the seats of government but was so harsh that it paved the way for the Reform Constitution of 1861. The junta that succeeded Linares ordered elections to choose deputies for the national legislature-an exceptionally able group as it turned out-which then drew up the new basic law. The ensuing year was one of struggle between the elected president, General Jose Maria de Acha, a foe of the liberal constitution, and Colonel Adolfo Ballivian, son of the ex-president and advocate of the 1861 charter. The revolution that resulted in 1864 brought into office the most flamboyant of Bolivia's military dictators, Mariano Melgarejo. Melgarejo, whose origin was similar to that of Belzu, was a man of impressive native ability and military valor, but he was also without restraint in the use of power, and his tenure has been recorded as "the acme of dictatorship" in Bolivia. His natural shrewdness, however, kept him in power through six years of intrigue and revolt. It was during his dictatorship, in 1867, that the first large loss of Bolivian-claimed territory occurred-not through military defeat, but through negotiation. In return for navigation rights on Brazilian rivers, including the Amazon, of which Bolivia was in no way prepared to take practical advantage, Melgarejo ceded approximately 100,000 square miles of territory. In this way Bolivia lost claim to its access to the Paraguay River in its northern reaches and about half its claims to lands in the Amazon basin (see ch. 3). In keeping with Bolivian tradition a revolt unseated Melgarejo in 1871. According to a contemporary diplomatic dispatch, his assassination while living in Lima as an exile "caused a profound sensation throughout the country but excited little sympathy." Agustin Morales, in spite of his avowed preference for "more liberty and less government," represented little improvement as president. Only with the accession of Tomas Frias, a man of education and cultural attainment, did Bolivia enjoy a respite from the military style of dictatorship. The relief was of short duration, however, for only two years later, in 1876, Frias' war minister, Hilarion Daza, overthrew him. Daza restored the military tradition in the presidency and, partly to strengthen his internal position, recklessly involved his country in the disastrous War of the Pacific. Bolivia's Atacama Desert and Pacific coast territories had become a coveted region because of their fertilizer resources-guano and nitrates-for which there was a ready market. Chilean companies had obtained concessions for exploitation of these resources earlier, but Daza saw an opportunity for increasing Bolivia's revenue by imposing higher charges. Chile seized the Bolivian ports, and in 1879 a war for which Bolivia was unprepared resulted. Bolivia's troops in its coastal province were easily defeated, and Chilean forces moved by sea to attack Bolivia's ally, Peru. Daza led a force to the coast to take part in the defense but soon deserted his troops and was exiled in ignominy. His successor, General Narciso Campero, led another force to help Peru; but the combined armies were defeated in 1880, and Bolivia withdrew, leaving Peru to fight alone for two years. It was not until 1904 that a treaty of peace was agreed upon by Bolivia and Chile, but the diminishing verbal disputes of the intervening years only underscored the futility of the Bolivian position. Its landlocked condition was as much the result of inept leadership as of foreign depredation (see ch. 3; ch. 15). The alternatives of continuing the war or accepting defeat and a landlocked status became the basis for the formation of the country's first political parties that were to be other than mere factions associated with ambitious men. The Liberal Party was originally formed by those who would not accept defeat and consequently drew the support of army leaders like General Campero and his wartime chief of staff, General Eliodoro Camacho. The Conservatives, the peace party, nevertheless won the election of 1884 and succeeded in remaining in power for fifteen years. During this period a degree of relative prosperity returned, owing to a resurgence of mining. Not only did the world price of silver increase for a time, but also the industrial ores, hitherto almost disregarded, appreciated in value. Copper, lead, zinc, and, most of all, tin began to be valuable as exports. The construction of the railroad from Oruro to Antofagasta, on the coast, in the 1890s facilitated the transport of ore. On the cultural side, there was a modest increase in the availability of schooling, but its benefits were reserved for the prosperous. The lot of the Indian remained unenviable, for increased economic benefits still depended on cheap Indian labor in the mines and in agriculture. Writing about the period around the turn of the century, a Bolivian author, Alcides Arguedas, applied the term "a sick people" (pueblo enfermo) to his countrymen, in recognition of the persistence of national problems. Mining remained the principal earner of the costs of the government and the chief means of employment for wages; but the general diminution of returns from the exploitation of mineral resources had long since foreclosed any possibility of national prosperity under existing conditions. Only in the first two decades of the twentieth century did tin emerge as a large-scale mining enterprise capable of substantial earnings on the international market. Although the business of tin extraction contributed notably to improvements in the country's rail network, its domination by a few large firms, controlled in substantial measure from outside Bolivia, prevented the kind of prosperity that silver had earlier provided for the country. Enrichment did not spread far outside the small group of owners and operators, and minimal wages and unsafe working conditions continued to bear heavily upon the workers. At the same time, agricultural production remained primitive, settlement thin and spotty, illiteracy high, and public life the province of only the well-to-do upper stratum. Revolution and violent change of government came again in 1898 and 1899. The Liberal Party, by now the party of the newly emergent and prosperous tin-mine owners and other entrepreneurs, ousted the Conservatives and, after interim rule by a junta, General Jose Manuel Pando became president in 1900. Besides dissatisfaction with the long-continued rule of the Conservatives, regionalism and federalism were also the root of dissension. The Liberals were strong in the mining area to the north and west, and the Conservatives, led mainly by the great landowners, controlled the south. The immediate cause of conflict was the Liberal demand to move the capital from Sucre to the larger, more vigorous and accessible La Paz, which thereafter became the de facto capital. The so-called Federal Revolution failed to achieve its announced goals, principally the substitution of federalism for the unitary system of government and the separation of church and state, but there became evident a new inclination to approach soberly, and to act with deliberation toward, the nation's problems. The reasoning of the Liberal movement was that the unitary arrangement had failed to produce national unity or political democracy and that federalism would be more in keeping with the nation's physical and mental regionalism. A national convention debated the alternatives for months in 1899 and found itself so evenly divided that no decision could be reached. Notably, its decision to adjourn was reached without undue rancor and was not followed by violence. On the religious question, the Liberals opposed the official status of the Roman Catholic Church and the privileges that such status afforded. The church-state question remained alive longer than the issue of federalism and actually brought about some changes. The right of public worship in faiths other than Roman Catholic became law for the first time in 1905. Later certain special privileges of the church were denied, and civil marriage was made a requirement in 1911. Highland Bolivia's remoteness from its eastern borders again contributed to its dismemberment. When the increased demand occasioned by the tire industry made Amazonian rubber highly profitable, Brazilian rubber gatherers and other adventurers working up the tributaries encroached on Bolivia's Acre territory. As early as 1899 one of these armed his men and proclaimed an independent republic, which was suppressed by a Bolivian expedition. Thereafter there was commercial competition and diplomatic negotiation with Brazil that finally resulted in a convention by which Bolivia relinquished its claimsin return for two small areas on the Madeira and Paraguay rivers, the equivalent of US $10 million, and the use of a railroad to be constructed around the rapids of the Madeira in Brazilian territory (see ch. 3; ch. 11). The Liberal Party retained power for twenty years without any outbreak of internal violence. This unprecedented situation in the country's history is attributable in part to the party's successful identification with the sources of real power and also to its shrewd and often wise use of the position it gained thereby. Most significant was the rise of the three great mining interests: Patino, Aramayo, and Hochschild. Their growth was favored by the Liberal group, which was committed to a laissez-faire policy toward private enterprise. The tin magnates provided the government's principal tax source and soon came to carry so much weight in the Bolivian economy that they became a potent political force. In effect the nation was run for over forty years with a sharp eye on the interests of the tin-mining group, for the national welfare was almost as dependent on its support as upon the world price of tin. The Liberal Party, having come to power through military support, was most favorable to projects leading to the development of a strong, well- trained army and, by reason of funds derived from the mining interests, able to contribute to them. Conversely, its purchases of military equipment, its approval of improvements in organization and training, and its employment of a German military mission all helped to ensure the support of the army's senior officers. In addition to taxes and fees from the mining industry, the government received substantial sums through its treaty settlements. In addition to the equivalent of US $10 million received from Brazil, the country in 1904 finally concluded a treaty with Chile under which it received US $8.5 million, less the value of the Bolivian section of a new railroad Chile would construct from La Paz to the sea at Arica. With these funds in hand other railroads were constructed, and by 1917 Sucre, Potosi, Cochabamba, and the lake port of Guaqui were all connected in one system. The long rule of the Liberal Party came to an end in 1920, not from any resurgence of Conservative strength, but because of an internal split. A faction calling itself Republican was defeated at the polls in 1917 but seized the government by a bloodless coup in 1920. The Republican period lasted through the 1920s and was marked by hectic financial operations backed by loans contracted abroad, mainly in the United States. Some of the money was put to good use-for example, a rail link connecting the Bolivian system with that of Argentina was built-but in general the national economy benefited little, and graft was rampant. The loans were supposedly secured by pledges against national revenue, and finally the foreign creditors insisted on the appointment of a resident commission to oversee collection. With the arrival of the world depression in 1929 the whole system collapsed, and with it the administration of Hernando Siles, the last Republican president. The immediate cause of Siles' downfall was his attempt to bypass the constitutional provision forbidding reelection by resigning in order to run again. The revolt that unseated him brought about rule by a military junta until 1931, when Daniel Salamanca was elected as a coalition candidate. Supposed by many to have been backed by Patino money, he was nevertheless highly respected for his competence and personal honesty. In turn, however, he fell victim to the frustrations stemming from Bolivia's series of defeats in the Chaco War. The dispute with Paraguay over a region in the Gran Chaco, to which neither country had clear title, and its development into the greatest conflict to take place in the Western Hemisphere since the American Civil War constituted an ironical tragedy. Whereas the War of the Pacific had concerneds a territory of great importance, both as to economic potential and the obvious Bolivian desire to retain its outlet to the sea, the Chaco dispute concerned terrain that was largely undeveloped. There may have been hope of oil discoveries in the area, but evidence indicates this to have been a rationalization of postwar origin. By the 1920s, although Bolivians still professed to yearn for access to the sea, they showed little if any bitterness toward Chile and had apparently come to terms with the arrangements agreed upon for Bolivian use of Pacific ports in Chile. Hostile feelings toward Paraguay, on the other hand, rose to a significant level. From the late 1920s, despite conciliation attempts by other countries, border incidents multiplied. Bolivia's determination to see the dispute through to victory was traceable to an overweening confidence in its resources and population, significantly greater than those of its neighbor, and its armed forces which, German trained for a decade past, appeared to outclass those of Paraguay. Moreover, and here is the principal irony in the contrast between the War of the Pacific and the Chaco War, the loss of its important Pacific territory had aroused a desire to open up avenues of transport and communication with the Atlantic to the east, in seeming disregard of great impracticalities. Even complete victory would confront Bolivia with the problem of providing means of land transport across 400 miles of roadless semidesert and swamp to river ports still nearly 1,000 miles from salt water. The war raged openly from 1932 to 1935, while continuous efforts by several groups of conciliators, including the League of Nations, failed to mediate the controversy. From the first the Bolivians were tactically outclassed and, although at times able to win small local successes, were consistently defeated in the more important engagements. By the end of 1934 they had been driven back 300 miles from their original positions deep in the Chaco to the foothills of the Andes, where a final stalemate was reached. Their German training and their superior numbers were canceled by inadequate logistical arrangements, poor intelligence, inept leadership, and dissension between military and civil officials. Not the least of the army's handicaps was the excessive rate of nonbattle casualties stemming from the inability of the highland Bolivian to become acclimated to the heat and the alternating drought and excessive rains in the low-lying Chaco (see ch. 15). Frustrated by their own lack of success, a group of senior officers in the field-including the commander, General Enrique Penaranda, Colonel David Toro, and (then) Major German Busch-took the opportunity afforded by a visit of President Salamanca to seize him and force his resignation. In his stead, his vice president, Jose Luis Tejada Sorzano, known to favor a cessation of hostilities, was accepted as president. An armistice, arranged in 1935 by a commission of neutral nations (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and the United States), was followed by a prolonged effort to reach a final settlement and a new boundary line (finally established in 1938). As loser in the war, Bolivia could not hope for satisfaction in the postarmistice deliberations; nevertheless, there ensued a wave of bitterness against the neutral nations involved, especially the United States. The bitterness was partially responsible for the seizure of Standard Oil properties in 1937.